I think "means to produce" might be a better term here.
A good economy and the emergence of a strong political power normally stem from being able to produce something. It is normally either food, good transport links or exports.
The strong political power can come first and adopt free markets, from which a good economy will follow. Venezuela was able to produce oil but their country sank into debt once the oil prices crashed and there wasn't enough money being generated in the private sectors. Of course Venezuela was an attempt at a socialist nation which had shunned the private enterprise entirely. Israel early on in its development was a free market economy by technicality but rose to participate in the global economy once they began to adopt free markets by decreasing social welfare. Benjamin Netanyahu in the late 90's was a proponent of such principles. |
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So here was a very intriguing encounter that I had, about 3 or 4 months ago. I was in the sauna in LA fitness and it was just me and one other guy in there. All of the sudden he started talking to me, had some very positive things to say about my "energy" he said he liked my energy and that he could tell that I had some big things in store in my future. Very intrigued I questioned him on this and asked him what he did for a living. He told me " Its my job to usher in the next payment system into the world". After talking to him more and more about it, it turned out that this guy was traveling country to country making huge deals in BTC with high ranking government officials. He kept saying that its his job to keep BTC in "Sovereign hands" I found this all very interesting.
He elaborated some more saying that the CIA was the group that really created BTC. He went on to speak about the white hats and the black hats in the CIA, aka the good guys and the bad guys, and that basically the whole agency was at war with itself. Crazy wild stuff here. Just an average day out at the gym for me, lmao. Anyhow, I finally got a chance to write it down and talk about it. I could go way more in depth but I don't want to sound crazy here, a lot of what was mentioned truly had me a little taken back. Like what if what he was saying was true, he said that the best way to play the field is to play both sides of the coin, to ensure your success, because then at that point no matter what you would do you would win. I don't know if anything what he said was true that night, but i'll tell you one thing, it sure was entertaining.
Has anyone else had any strange encounters like this?
You met a junkie. My advice to you is to run from a person like this in the future immediately. It's LA, half of those folks are probably on something. |
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Statistically, 95% of entrepreneurs have a bachelor's degree or higher and I wonder, for those of you who are involved in entrepreneurship, how useful was higher education for you?
Because most bachelor degrees are obtained at a young age before entrepreneurs start their business. It's not that someone necessarily needs a degree to start and operate a successful business. You generally need some experience, and you get experience by getting a degree and getting a job traditionally. That being said -- in the age of the internet, degrees are becoming obsolete. They're not entirely necessary for the job market or to gain experience. |
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Bitcoin would probably sky rocket if the U.S. and China were at war but it still wouldn't be worth it. Having two of the largest economies within a war would destroy global shipping logistics and send the global economy down the gutter. The Ukraine/Russia war caused the European energy market to destabilize for the better part of 6 months and the prices still haven't recovered. What would a war with China do? Too much of the world economy is at China's mercy, unfortunately. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-chinaU.S. is deeply intertwined with the Chinese economy, including trading deficits to the tune of hundreds of billions per year. |
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I do favor the bill. For the sake of shaming these people who claim that Bitcoin mining is harmful to the environment, let the bill pass thru. At least people will know the truth when these miners disclose the emissions created by mining. Having the data is way better than just refuting the claim of others that Bitcoin mining is harmful to the environment. So let it be, I believe this is a good thing for Bitcoin industry if proven that Bitcoin mining is not harmful as what many people thinks.
Miners shouldn't be forced to jump through compliance hoops in order to mine crypto. That's the main concern. Any industrial bitcoin operation is going to keep track of energy usage. Emission tracking probably introduces a bit more complications, and if this bill were to pass with complicated jargon and provisions, then it would make operations that much more difficult. Yet again, more useless noise by the climate change activists in the U.S. Congress. |
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This January 6th nonsense highlights exactly what's wrong with the left vs right bullshit. It's very obvious the left turned away additional security and the security that was there was ordered to fall back and let the protesters in. It's also obvious that the FBI and antifa were the ones that were riling the crowd up and pushing them into the building. Sure, the right wingers talking about stopping the results were bat shit crazy, but taking advantage of crazy people to create some invasion talking points is honestly worse than the mentally ill people who thought that storming government buildings was a good idea. It's all such a joke. I can't believe anyone gives a shit about this other than to find out why it was allowed to happen.
What do you make of Rupert Murdoch admitting Fox ordered the network to keep lying to the public because he feared losing his viewers to more right-wing media outlets like Newsmax? He said it was all about the "green". That to me is outrageous, the legacy media in the USA has unparalleled power and influence and they have been shown to be very dishonest and corrupt. I was actually a big fan of Tucker Carlson and this makes me view him in a completely different light. They are all full of sh*t. Fox became too cozy with Trump and so did Tucker Carlson. Sean Hannity was long time friends with Trump so even if he thought the election fraud claims were BS I expected him to shill for him regardless. Tucker Carlson spent too much time covering these nonsense lawsuits. Seems to me he was skeptical of their legitimacy but he gave them some level of credence. Fox over the last decade has been on the decline as with a lot of the MSM. If given the opportunity to mislead for viewership, they'd do it. |
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I don't understand what you are trying to pull here but for the record, Sanders is fighting for the student debt, 7 paid sick days for all rail workers, outrageous greed of the pharmaceutical industry, an increase in teacher pay, Social Security amendment, etc. This is the reason why he was made this year the chairman of the labor, health, education, and pensions Committee. I wonder where you get the idea of him being among the government that screwing people.
These politicians will repeat the same lines without ever explaining to you how they intend to pay for any of these benefits. You know why that is? These ideas sounds great on paper until you realize every government that's ever tried socialism has had its economy corrupted because of the inability for government to succeed in creating a social welfare state. It's easy to suggest that the greed of private corporations be amended without actually defining what the greed is. To the socialists, greed is any profit motive at all. |
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Regulation in the healthcare industry is the reason. Healthcare companies/drug manufactures have monopolies to the rights to sell certain medications. So they can set the prices. It would be illegal to import medications into countries that have licenses given out to these drug manufacturers. Joe Biden and the democratic party will regurgitate the same lines about the healthcare system in the U.S. but their solution is to generate money on the federal level and give them to companies in the private sector which only encourages them to raise their prices even more. This is the shittiest system I have ever heard of and I am 100% sure that such a system doesn't exist anywhere outside the United States. Monopolies exist everywhere. But nowhere else it results in a 10,000% markup to the final product. And every now and then the media creates hype. A few years back, there was a lot of hue and cry when Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals increased the price of Daraprim by 5,000% back in 2015 ($13.50 per pill to $750). Similarly, Eli Lilly faced a lot of flak recently over the sky high prices for generic insulin. But the media keeps these issues in limelight only for a few days. Once they receive advertisement deals from the Pharma companies, they allow the news to die down. It's a system amendable to changes. But it's designed to attract investment into the healthcare/drug manufacturing industries. If a company is going to sink funds into R&D for a new drug, they hold the intellectual property to such drugs and should be able to profit from it. Insulin isn't proprietary to any one company anymore, so I would argue there shouldn't be manufacturing exclusivity for these generic drugs. This has been a problem for ages. There hasn't been a politician yet that's proposed a workable solution that isn't merely government subsidized healthcare. I imagine if Biden were to get reelected it would be more of the same for the U.S. |
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Regulation in the healthcare industry is the reason. Healthcare companies/drug manufactures have monopolies to the rights to sell certain medications. So they can set the prices. It would be illegal to import medications into countries that have licenses given out to these drug manufacturers. Joe Biden and the democratic party will regurgitate the same lines about the healthcare system in the U.S. but their solution is to generate money on the federal level and give them to companies in the private sector which only encourages them to raise their prices even more. |
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Looking at this country now ,not all people want to move from the state we are to the next level
I expect that you mean your country is Nigeria, since it is the only country, as far as I know, in which presidential elections are held, which began yesterday, Saturday. Isn't it? In the Nigerian example, the hypothesis of the candidates' offer to buy votes is very candidate, since there are 18 candidates competing for one seat (presidency). Of course, this falls within the list of political corruption, because a person who works to buy votes from voters to ensure victory means that he is not eligible for that position. As for the voters, they are also involved in corruption if they accept to sell their votes at any cost. What happens when the politicians offer indirect bribes? Promising the voting population direct stimulus or social welfare for their votes? Of course this is the appeal socialism/communism gives. It's using government resources to purchase votes under the guise of welfare programs. These programs have never been successful. They've just created a lot of debt. Voters are susceptible to such bribes -- why wouldn't they be. It's free money! COVID produced a lot of this. Politicians running all over the world made sure to promise nonexistent government assets to the voters in order to help their reelection campaigns. |
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You mean half of the world doesn't have proper access to internet?
It's not literally half, but according to data for 2023, even around 35% of the world's population does not have access to the internet at all, while it is questionable how many people have a permanent and high-quality connection to the internet. Many members of this forum from some African countries have exactly this problem, their internet actually depends on whether they have electricity, and this makes their activities much more difficult - although this is not something specific only to Africa. But even if we take the 2/3 who have access to the internet, looking at it as a whole, all researchers say that less than 5% of the world's population is in some way involved in cryptocurrencies, and of that number there are certainly many who have invested only in altcoins. When you draw a line under all that information, then your question cannot get any kind of positive answer, regardless of which aspect of the problem you are talking about (if the problem exists at all). You're exactly correct. People need to realize that access to internet isn't the only hurdle. Even if people have access to internet, poverty levels within the immediate area are what matters. If internet serves as a luxury and food/water/shelter take priority, it isn't reasonable to expect these people to adopt a digital currency that has volatility in its value. Crypto is mostly designed for the first world. Trying to make Bitcoin palatable to under developed countries is a challenge. |
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I did not know where to post this, so here it goes. Today I realized Wuhan was trending on Twitter, the reason being that it seems the FBI has declared that they indeed has serious suspicions that Covid-19 was indeed the product of a laboratory leak in the city of Wuhan-China. The news is having such impact this morning that even CNN is reporting on it. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/28/politics/wray-fbi-covid-origins-lab-china/index.htmlThis is quite ironic, considering that the laboratory theory was deemed to be false during the first months on the pandemic. Curious to see how this develops and affects the Chinese-American relations. The intel agencies are about 2-3 years behind on what the facts are. The scientific community had a monopoly on the COVID-19 narrative and were upset that there could be another theory as to the origin of the pandemic. Anyone with even the slightest skepticism would have seen the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a potential suspect, but the scientific bureaucrats told everyone they weren't allowed to discuss such matters. Slowly they're acknowledging that masks were not effective. Eventually I'm assuming they'll come around to the vaccine. |
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Well, it's true that Bitcoin would weaken the ability to implement economic sanctions. I don't think it's possible to argue otherwise.
But the argument I would make is that sanctions don't only include economic restrictions. And even with economic restrictions, asset forfeitures and penalties are only part of the sanctions that could be issued. You wouldn't necessarily need decentralized currencies to implement successful sanctions and there are other ways to gut a country's economy even if they were to circumvent such measures through Bitcoin.
For example -- if the U.S. provides military aid to a country, merely withdrawing that aid would be sufficient to compel compliance. And of course, the U.S. has military holdings all over the world which direct influence over other countries.
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FED solves everything by printing money so why would someone prevent issuing CBDC. With CBDC, printing is much easy, it's just digitally adding zeros. Isn't life much easier when the government prints money than not?
If the government does the same with the Nigerian government by deeming a $100 or $20 bill, people will be forced to use the CBDC wallet.
If this is the case in the US, why not get rid of the FED, and let the US Treasury print the money? Why pay for FED people and the owners of the FED, when the US could cut out this waste by printing the money themselves? Besides, then there wouldn't be any reason for the IRS tax. The FED is a method to screw the people out of their money/labor.  The treasury is responsible for the physical printing of U.S. currency but with how banking works now the fed can just digitally transfer credits to whatever accounts they need. The oversight is completely political and of course it doesn't help when currency and digital credits can be generated out of thin air. Even if you dissolve the agencies, as long as USD can be created without repercussion then the Congress will continue to spend money that isn't there. Perhaps the fed isn't the issue, the politicians are. |
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Bitcoin is the best alternative way to save money, with Bitcoin you have control over your savings because it's your wallet and your key and you are your banks!
Bitcoin is not good for savings because of its volatility and if there’s a crisis, you can’t be so sure that cryptocurrency will be the safe haven, remember during the pandemic and the war? People are panicking and the cryptomarket is down as well. Keeping your keys might also be your another problem, you have to make sure during the crisis you have this with you or else your wallet will be hacked or be wasted at all. I still see Bitcoin as a good investment for long term, I just don’t see this as a best option during crisis because usually, cash is still the best option. Partially true but also consider that the value of all assets went down. Stocks, real estate, crypto, etc. If your putting some of your net worth into crypto for the sake of long term savings, then it isn't particularly relevant if crypto has a bad single year. Unless you need to liquidate those crypto assets or spend it directly, then individual yearly performances don't matter -- you'll experience growth over many years. When there's a crisis, nothing is safe. Applies to fiat currency too. But, you can mitigate crisis by diversifying your assets. |
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Some people will say that Fiat is trash and they keep all their money in stable coins, the truth of this is you are doing things wrong, the stable coins in crypto space are backed by nothing, they can vanish into thin air if the government doesn't want stable coins to exists.
Stablecoins aren't backed by anything the same way fiat currencies aren't backed by anything. It doesn't have to be one or the other, you have a wide array of options when it comes to decentralized cryptocurrencies. I don't consider a stablecoin to be a legitimate cryptocurrency anyways. Stablecoins will still inflate the same way fiat currency does if the currency its pegged to begins to inflate, so there's virtually no competitive advantage they offer. You're still beholden to the issuer and expected to trust them no less than you were of the issuer of the fiat currency. |
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in the UK i have seen how the whole sale market have increased their cost vs price multiplier. and then the retailers do the same
meaning they make alot of profits
yet at the farmers side. their costs have not moved up much at all
it doesnt cost much diesel for a farmer to walk across a field and open a gate for cows to move to another grazing field
Labor shortage and energy prices could force the end retailer's operating cost to increase. Say for a manufacture of consumer goods -- even if the raw materials don't increase in price, if the price to sell the good increases, then they're forced to pass on the cost of goods to the consumer. (Price to sell could include shipping cost, price to put the product together, marketing, etc.) It's why this concept of "corporate greed" existing is so ridiculous. It's as if there is industry wide collusion in every sector to collectively raise prices on consumers when the reality is operating costs increased dramatically even if raw materials cost don't necessarily increase. |
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So let me just say this: It's gonna be a constant back-and-forth -> legislation to increase control and cencorship vs innovation to protect privacy and freedom.
Subtle attempts to control crypto and Bitcoin specifically will be more efficient and are more scary than direct bans - because these things can happen unnoticed to the majority of Bitcoin users, which is far more scary than direct attacks (which would probably have an opposite effect because there would be a lot of resistence in freedom based societies).
Some such subtle attempts would be taxation in my opinion. Non-Bitcoiners wouldn't be particularly interested because it isn't their income that's being taxed. Bitcoiners would probably comply because it's the lawful thing to do, but others would probably divest from Bitcoin or just invest into other cryptos if the tax was targeted towards Bitcoin in particular. Taxing would be more effective than a ban because a ban would compel people to circumvent the government's efforts, whereas taxation would compel compliance. |
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You're probably correct because the GOP base has become accustom to losing. They would prefer to have Trump run again after losing once before to the same person, who I may remind you is in some vegetative state.
Trump only needs a plurality in the Republican primary. He can get away with a win even if a majority of primary voters vote against him. It's how he was able to win the primaries in 2016. DeSantis would need the support of everyone else except for Trump voters, which is difficult in a crowded primary field where the vote is going to be split a dozen different ways.
So if Trump wins the primary, he will lose again to Joe Biden as nearly every head-to-head poll shows Trump losing to Joe Biden. If DeSantis miraculously wins the primary, he would lose to Biden only because ~5% of GOP voters would rather stay home and let Biden win instead of voting for the man that beat out their guy in the primaries.
Don't see any foreseeable way Joe Biden leaves office in 2024 meaning a dementia patient will continue to oversee global order.
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China has the upper hand because there isn't any separation between central banks, government, and "private" banks. I use private loosely, because the Chinese government has complete control over them even if they're designated as non-state entities. If the Chinese government were so inclined, they could compel all their citizens to use CBDC's. They haven't hesitated to use authoritarianism in the past for compliance and most all banking in China is digitalized so it'd be pretty simple to introduce. |
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