Digitalized dollars are basically CBDC's. Idea is to get rid of paper based cash and force people to rely on a central authority for digitalized funds. It allows the central authority to revoke the funds at any time or disallow users to spend the funds (ie freeze accounts).

Bitcoin isn't inherently threatened by CBDC's because they don't operate the same. That being said, the indirect threat exists because government will never cease to act on an opportunity to regulate Bitcoin into the ground while propping up their own useless currencies riddled with inflation and inept central bank control

I'd be worried if I were you.

UN is a globalist organization that paddles around the world on their sanctimonious sailboat telling the developed world that they need to act in accordance to their own virtues. Recall that the UN, among other things, has criticized Israel for constructing a wall for national security, but will not provide much scrutiny to China for its human rights abuses.

Targeting the fossil fuel companies seems next on the agenda because it's popular to be a climate change extremist in 2022. I notice in the article they regurgitate the usual talking points of "record profits" in order to justify these taxes. Seems on par with these folks.

There's 11,654 fatalities related to alcohol impairment, which represented approximately 30% of all accident-related deaths so there's a little over 30k fatal accidents in the U.S. yearly. An alcohol detector seems like an unnecessary intrusion to solve an issue that doesn't exist. 11,654 fatalities in a country with how many millions of drivers?


It's always the consumer that foots the bill for these sort of expenses. The car companies are going to factor these costs into the price of their car. And what other data will be monitored? These sort of ideas always start with good intention (ie saving lives) and then turns into government overreach. First it's alcohol detection, then it becomes speed detection. Then law enforcement gets to bust down your door because you went a bit over the speed limit.

So money can be considered a form of "speech" in the most liberal forms of democracy and I'm generally okay with it.

I agree with your idea of capping contributions, here are some that I'd also support:

Political contributions are all public, no anonymous donations.
Corporations cannot donate directly on behalf of a candidate, individuals of a corporation are of course exempt (ie board members).
Cap political contributions but also adjust yearly for inflation.
Contributions must be spent only towards campaign towards individual campaign expenses and cannot be stowed for other elections of other politicians.*

*Doing this would prevent one politician from having too much financial power. Say you're Donald Trump and have 100M USD in campaign donations that's ready to be injected into political campaigns of other people, you own everybody else.

Granted every country's laws are different, making a few basic stipulations you can have money in politics without too much problems.

Side note - I suppose there is nothing stopping an individual from registering a business, pouring his money or someone else's money into media campaigns on behalf of a candidate to bypass some of the stipulations I've made above, but I guess there could be laws to address this too.

The thing is, no one is entitled to housing the same way no one is entitled to inherently benefit from a capitalistic system. In fact, there's a lot of "losers" in the capitalism system. That doesn't mean communism or socialism is the alternative answer. I don't consider the burden of having to sustain yourself through food, water, and shelter to be a burden that's attributable to capitalism. It's packaged in as part of the deal with being a human.

Only in a utopia would people not be burdened by the system, and that's unattainable.

Not a quote from me, but I borrow from it loosely:

Socialism is a great idea, wrong species.

It works great if we're all mindless insects without any desires to exceed past the norm.

The military industrial complex can profit a lot from war, if they are so inclined. It usually involves an incestuous relationship between the private sector and government. The citizens pay, the members of government gets their kickbacks and the war industrial companies profit.

The Russian war is different insofar as "for-profit" wars are concerned. The effects wouldn't be so debilitating had there not been so much focus on environmental concerns within the context of energy production. The entirety of Europe can hardly afford the price hike in energy and winter is coming. Who cares about the environment? The reduction in agricultural industries are because of fertilizer shortages, not the environment.

I saw the announcement from Twitch.tv on Twitter started to circulate and didn't realize that an Amazon subsidiary would single out websites in their blanket gambling ban from platforms outside of the U.S. in their official announcement. But hey, free advertising. Seems unfairly targeted, but I digress.

This character "Sliker" seems to be a big part of why this discussion is even happening. I'm for adults having the liberty of what type of entertainment they choose to consume, and if a disclaimer on gambling related live streamers might waive liability from children watching the shows, then put a disclaimer on the channel. Because one live streamer decides to swindle money from viewers, everyone else has to suffer?

I'm open to the argument that amazon might have a monopoly in local markets because of the wholesale/online advantage, which might require some level of regulation. Except the tyrants in California decided to lockdown their entire economy during COVID and implement business killing regulations which allowed Amazon to drink up the consumer base when small businesses couldn't adhere to the COVID regulations. Combine this with inflation, I'm sure it would appear the higher prices are a result of corporate monopoly and not anti-competition government policy.

Seems on par for California to blame the businesses for their own incompetence. Somehow they're still confused as to why they're leaving.

I've never heard of Patagonia before. Looks like they're a U.S. company (HQ is in the U.S.)

So hypothetically let's say that all funds of this climate trust group are all allocated to the U.S and factor in basic facts on the climate change debate.

The U.S. produces 12-13% of cumulative global emissions. China, India, are among the other major polluters. China produces the most carbon emissions by far.

Out of only 12-13% of emissions, transportation is the largest contributor of U.S. carbon emissions at 40% of total emissions. Other contributors are electricity production, agriculture, home heating/cooling.

Take 100M USD of their estimated contributions and their impact on temperatures globally will be virtually...zero.

This is what climate change activists don't understand. They think throwing money at the issue will somehow slow global temperature rise when the U.S and EU are the only countries at the forefront of the climate change revolution. It isn't enough.

Take the money and give it to the Germans so they can set it on fire for heat this winter. It'll be put to better use.

There are some proposals in the EU and U.S. that are being set in stone for crypto regulation and the basic premise, as they allege, are "anti-fraud" consumer protections and environmental regulations, some of which include European crypto companies to document/register their carbon footprints associated with their commerce (amongst other nonsense).

These regulations won't kill crypto, but anyone suggesting that this won't massively impact the market is under estimating how regulations impact global markets. Adding in hoops that crypto-based companies have to jump through in order to comply with the law discourages their growth.


Plan on shorting crypto/crypto assets? I would call that gambling more than investing. To each his own, I guess.

And in fact, this happens a lot more than people think: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/economy/china-bank-runs-protests-intl-mic-hnk/index.html



You are at the bank's mercy when you declare your funds to be an asset of a centralized financial institution. Banks should be viewed as nothing more than a business. You put money into the solvency of a business, collect interest payments, and do not guarantee to yourself that your funds should be there the next day. If a bank goes under for whatever reason, what are the chances you'll receive your funds? You don't have recourse.

It's in part due to the government subsidies that are allowing renewables to dominate the job market, also ESG. Part of ESG are environmental concerns, so companies are going to be investing into environmental enterprises/initiatives in order to check the box, not because they believe it'll be profitable.

Fossil fuels still hold the vast majority of energy market share and will for the foreseeable future. I don't doubt that fossil fuels will phase out with renewables taking its place. It only seems premature to believe that it can happen within the next 20-30 years (some of the climate change alarmists think it can happen sooner, even).

Binance sanctions are the least of your concerns if Taiwan and China get into a war. Taiwan is responsible for a large portion of semiconductor manufacturing and Taiwan will destroy these manufacturing facilities rather than allow China to get their hands on them. Chip shortages would get even worse, not great for the crypto scene nor is it stable for the global economy when the U.S. is in a proxy war with China.


The U.S. is involving themselves indirectly in the Ukrainian war by supplying something like 50 billion USD in direct payments or aid. The U.S. relies on Taiwan for semiconductors. If China starts a conflict, they will get involved through sanctions at the absolute minimum. Sanctions don't just hurt the sanctioned country, they inflict economic damage on both parties.

Central banks only control inflation through interest rates because they don't put a cap on the money supply. You could theoretically have inflation without fluctuation in the money supply if some global event, ie war/COVID-19, caused supply chain issues and increased the scarcity of consumer products. The difference is, induced inflation through money supply increase ensures that the prices do not actually come down. You can't take the money out of circulation once it's already in there (very easily, for that matter). Temporary price increases due to global events eventually stabilize once supply chains return to normal -- it causes prices to go down.

Interest rates are only part of inflation. That's more the reactionary mechanism of inflation. The core mechanism is an unchecked money supply.

Las Vegas was built in a desert. They turned a wasteland into a casino/competitive sports hub. I don't have the specifics on how they're able to import water to supply the city, but it can be done.

The housing problem wouldn't be an issue as long as the infrastructure is built. There are housing shortages and an influx of folks leaving California for states more Eastern. Whether this "Marc Lore" character ends up building this thing in Utah, Arizona, or Nevada, they might attract some fleeing California residents.

Edward Snowden will die of old age before the West and Russia establish a working relationship.

And that includes Putin dying of natural causes and a new Russian government installment. There is no repairing the broken relations. It will be like this for decades.



Snowden is safe.

Hypothetically, let's say it was not Snowden and it was the next NSA leaker that wanted to seek asylum. The question is which one of these countries is least likely to extradite to the U.S.

Iran and China maybe, but then you'd have to live in Iran or China...I'd take my chances being caught by the feds in the U.S. 

Discloser that this not meant to be a long term solution or solution for urban residents: Self sustenance through gardening is an idea that I ridiculed in the past because I believe it to be an unreliable source of food. As in, what people could be agriculturally inclined and start a garden that would be diverse enough to sustain a family?

Turns out it would it's a whole lot easier than people might think, the primary limiting factor is land availability. Once you've sourced the seeds, the land/soil conditions can be an obstacle.

If you're willing to put in the work, the idea isn't so outlandish. Would save on your grocery bills, and probably taste better than the processed junk they have in stores anyways.

The idea here being that Ireland is looking to restore it's tourism and entertainment sector, so they're issuing a UBI to produce creative content.

My guess is this will have a negative ROI, as with most UBI expenditures. The government isn't as good as allocating funds as the market would allow. Meaning, if the tourism industry is sunk due to COVID, investing into UBI for musicians and artists in order to restore a dead industry that the market hasn't afforded a recovery for yet is money down the drain.

UBI only works if there was some seismic economic event that put a large segment of the working population out the workforce. COVID and the entertainment tourism industry hardly qualifies.

I'm not clear on what China's immediate goal here is. Their economy isn't doing great so it's within China's interest to form some workable relationship with Putin for the sake economic benefit. That's not to say that the CCP is cozy with the Kremlin. The relationship is symbiotic and once either side no longer seems utility in one another, the relationship ceases.

If Xi Jinping beings to question your war strategies, then you're in a bad place and Putin's economy hangs in the balance.

Some of the larger markets, U.S. and China, matter a lot for Bitcoin's price but I see their government's as being extremely anti-crypto. China is in a league of it's own, but with this methodology you have the U.K. ranked below China in crypto adoption. Doesn't make any sense, even with the U.K.'s regulation on the crypto space.

China's economy is fragile and their government has expressed anti-Bitcoin rhetoric in the past. Their enforcement and penalty for using crypto isn't stringent. If they wanted it to be, they could flip the switch on a whim. China shouldn't be on this list.


Precisely the problem. Transaction volumes only give the partial story. Adoption is government dependent. Some number of whales could inflate the transaction volumes.