Special interest groups and lobbyist from the credit card processing companies buy their votes. If not for lobbyist, their own incompetency can usually explain it away. They don't understand the technology behind it and see Bitcoin as a competitor to USD, therefore they believe it must be regulated through taxation. Not a large secret, Washington D.C. being pro-corporation and anti-consumer has always been the norm, you wouldn't expect Bitcoin to be any different surely.

People already knew your bank accounts could be frozen at any time. Canadians voted for this clown, they don't mind some radical far lefty casually using his personal politics to target the online banking of law abiding citizens. We don't even know if the funds that were donated were used for illegal activity, but that wouldn't matter either. If you receive money from someone but have it in an account for the purposes of something the government doesn't like, legality aside, they can decide whether or not to confiscate.

Trudeau just wants to enforce his tyranny on anyone that might disagree with him (or anyone with a functioning brain, essentially).

Exactly, so someone eating a proper diet doesn't have a need for supplementation. Vitamin D in particular might be something someone might supplement, because of a sedentary lifestyle indoors, you won't get as much as you need. A lot of the multivitamins people take are nothing more than marketing gimmicks or placebos.


I agree generally, but the harm of having excess vitamins in your body isn't anything significant unless you are triple dosing on every vitamin supplement imaginable. And even then it'd probably depend on other factors.

Some cities in California decided to revoke their mask mandate for school aged children. Despite showing no evidence of effiacy, they still had a mask mandate, which I was surprised to learn. Better late than never, I suppose. Then I see the mask mandate lift only applies to school aged children masking outdoors. I hadn't considered these hypochondriacs were advocating for mask wearing outdoors, where transmission is severely limited. So much for "science."

And on top of that, they choose to go over a trillion dollars in debt to the Chinese while unable to handle their own economy -- gives China the ability to advance themselves, pay nothing in R&D, while the US continues to drown in debt. If the Chinese take over Taiwan, they'll dominate the chip production too, then the world can enjoy paying the CCP for a chip supply that they have no control over.

https://www.dw.com/en/canada-pm-trudeau-invokes-emergency-powers-to-deal-with-protests/a-60777581

Trudeau getting a bit nervous and invokes Emergencies Act to delegate himself more power and deal with the protests. Keep in mind the absuridity of his claims -- Trudeau seems to believe that truckers should face a vaccine mandate, despite trucking being one of the most isolated occupations aside from remote work online. Truckers are rightfully upset, and in response to governmental overreach, Trudeau has decided that he needs even more authority.

Even with solar panels, there's lots of issues. They aren't life long, they need to be repaired and maintained, and their efficiency goes down by 1% every year. The only renewable energy source that has any chance at being sustainable is nuclear, but the environmental radicals won't that happen either.

Oil and gas is only part of it. You could omit the entire energy industry and inflation is still out of control. Supply chain issues are part of the problem, but so is the fact that most governments closed their economies off almost entirely and then began artificially stimulating it through endless printing. The issue is much worse than scarcity of products -- ramp up energy production to fix energy shortages. Money supply doesn't work that way. Once money begins circulating into the economy, you can't just remove it without major hurdles unless you plan on siphoning out funds from people's bank accounts.

I see smoking the same way as someone with severe obesity and heart disease -- they know what they're putting into the body, they know it's toxic for them, and they accept the risks. There is no solution, unless you're suggesting that cigarettes be banned.


Since when? Smoking rates have plummeted over the last decades and there aren't any children in this world that don't understand smoking is bad for you. Smoking is a nonissue.

He is serious, this isn't a bluff. Putin didn't get much resistance from the international community when Crimea was annexed. Merely some harsh words. He has the green light from the west, and oil control of plenty European countries.

As harsh as it may sound, no one in the international community cares enough about Ukraine to help defend them. I put the chance at invasion at more than likely. At first it seemed as if Putin was putting pressure on Ukraine to make concessions and ease off of joining NATO -- who knows, maybe they might be able to resolve things diplomatically, but don't count on Ukraine caving in to demands.

The US doesn't have to recognize the Taliban as the official new government, they weren't democratically elected so the funds still belong to the previous Afghanistan government. Seeing as they're no longer active, that means the funds are forfeited. It's not fair, but welcome to currency centralization. If the Afghanistan people were concerned about money mismanagement, they shouldn't have allocated 7 billion USD to a government that has a tough time managing their own economy and maybe owned a bit of crypto themselves.

Inflation isn't actually a problem, we just accept it to be a problem because wages growth doesn't coincide with inflation. Granted, it's unreasonable for wage growth to keep up with inflation if it's something like 5 percent; if the banks target inflation at 2 percent and actually manage to keep it there, there wouldn't be any talks about inflation because most people in a working economy can garner a 2 percent wage increase year over year.

Issue right now is most countries shut down their economies for COVID while increasing the money supply, so the economic growth was not able to keep up with disproportionate amount of money that was being spent. Wage growth might've gone up by 2-3 percent if you're lucky, but inflation could've been at 5 percent plus, meaning you have less purchasing power.

The peaceful portion of this unification quite literally is China using their military power to strong-arm Taiwan into submission. Taiwan will fall just like Hong Kong did. It won't be a military invasion, rather slow adoption of Taiwan's governmental framework into China's hands because Taiwan does not have the military capacity to respond. It will be peaceful, but forced, with little resistance. And then China gets hold of one of the largest microchip manufacturing industries in the world. Surely would put a damper on mining operations.

I'm talking about the global economy. Asset forfeiture is a different matter. Bitcoin is composed of day-to-day users and institutional users. When there's uncertainty, people like to invest into precious metals. If you're a Ukrainian, crypto currency is a smart choice, but again, I'm talking about the global economy outside of Ukraine and Russia.

I mentioned before -- there are absolutely zero countries that plan to tank their own economy to rescue a useless country like Ukraine.

Any potential "WW3" scenario is going to tank BTC, people will diversify into hard assets.

A small scale invasion shouldn't have a large impact. Small scale meaning Russia and Ukraine involvement only, oppose to NATO countries and the West getting involved. The U.S. has made clear they will not be entering a war so we don't have to worry about the U.S. economy taking a hit. Russia can't afford a war either but their GDP isn't large enough to make a difference in the price anyways, so their economy is rather inconsequential (absent of full collapse, then clearly that has implications).

Follow the oil, though. When the oil reserves run dry because Russia cuts off supply, then you might worry.

Russia/Ukraine tensions escalating. US to deploy more troops into Poland.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/11/russia-invasion-ukraine-imminent-white-house/

U.S. claims that an invasion is immanent and has long called for U.S. citizens to evacuate the country. The reporting on the Ukrainian side is that the U.S. is attempting to fear monger and that the threat of invasion is overblown. I'd side with the U.S. in their assessment, Russian aggression will not be curbed with diplomacy, and all diplomatic efforts have failed. Whatever Putin wants, he'll get it.

A few ways you can cut the national debt: Raise taxes, grow the economy, reduce spending. US has chosen to ignore all three, continue inflating their currency, and loaning themselves an indefinite amount of money with no intention of ever paying it back. Absolutely nothing will stop the U.S. from printing even more money, and the 7.5% inflation rate isn't a deterrent either. Why do you think there's so much talk about a fed coin? Instead of printing, the money supply can be controlled by a number pad.

Isn't it amazing how much power can be delegated to the government, as long as it's sold in the name of safety? People have lost their mind with COVID and will readily give up any and all civil liberties as long as they feel safe, regardless if whether government can actually protect them or not. I wouldn't be so oppose to letting hypochondriacs live the way they want to live, except for the fact they wish to dictate how others should live, and demand government enforce those wishes. Can't do that.

mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticle tech that are used in the top two vaccines, Pfizer/BioNTech & Moderna haven't been around for decades. We understand them to be generally safe, absent of any long term data. There's research dating back years involving lipid nanoparticle cytotoxicity, and it is only recently that it's being uncovered that some of the potent side effects from the vaccines are in fact caused by LNP's and not the spike proteins formed by the mRNA. Not a bad trade if you're dealing with someone that has managed to be unexposed to COVID and has significant underlying conditions. Though I'm skeptical after 2 years of anyone that hasn't been in contact with COVID in some way.

Issue is, vaccination is being pushed onto people who don't need it (ie the naturally immune and/or young folks).

This is the issue, people are being forced to get vaccinated with mandates. Issuing a vaccine mandate, putting someone in the position to decide between their job/livelihood or getting the vaccine is forcing the vaccine. No one serious disputes the vaccines are effective in preventing hospitalization or death; surely they serve some efficacy in reducing severe COVID illness. Ignored in the "safe and effective" conversation of vaccines are the pertinent safety issues that might arise from side effects. There is no long term data on the vaccines, someone performing a cost/benefit calculation derives a different conclusion depending on their own personal circumstances. The logic doesn't hold up for a vaccine mandate with a preventative therapeutic still requires long term studies for side effects.

Do you believe it is unreasonable to be concerned about long term side effects, or even immediate side effects, when the studies haven't even been done yet?

Pre-COVID, I've never seen anyone be called an anti-vaxxer or conspiracy theorist for inquiring about side effects from therapeutics with limited clinical trial info. I wonder what happened.