bitcoin_anon

Belloc's The Jews is a nice introduction to this issue. He wrote it a century ago when things were similarly heating up, but before things had clearly boiled over.

He was prescient when he said:

"For if the quarrel is allowed to rise unchecked and to proceed unappeased, we shall come, unexpectedly and soon, upon one of these tragedies which have marked for centuries the relations between this peculiar nation and ourselves."

He was a devout Catholic, had Jewish friends, and devoted a chapter to what was wrong with antisemitism. He was earnestly trying to solve the problem before it was too late.

And for every adult who believes they have healthy boundaries with recreational drugs, how many are addicts? Based on my experience, I find the words healthy and recreational to be carrying too much water in this context.

I agree. Also, the quality and independence of the research will improve when it is funded outside of government influence.

In the meantime, read Good Energy to learn how to care for your mitochondria.

I will add creatine as a supplement to improve sleep in the face of hard exercise.

Echoes of Howard Roark.

There is a difference between cutting back on aid to other countries and a leader starving his own subjects.

Indeed. Was Beepboop arguing that inflation is the mechanism that funds our shared existence?

Why do you think cryptocurrency at its philosophical core enables wealth hoarding? If I don’t pay my property taxes, I lose my house, regardless of how much cryptocurrency I own.

Why can’t we have a separation of money and state where the state receives its due through taxes and is unable to inflate the money supply?

> there was always prostitution and sexual violence as an outlet for those unwilling to better themselves.

Prostitution and rape are not perfect substitutes for consensual sex. The risks are much greater, so on the margin, there are men who are not willing to partake in these, and instead choose to better themselves when faced with a lack of partners.

> There were real practical concerns that have only recently been worked around.

I would add the caveat that things have not been completely worked out yet. I agree that religious customs around sex served a practical purpose.

However, easier access to sexual pleasure seems to have unintended consequences. Traditionally, a woman and her family should be damn sure that a particular man is worthy of female costs of pregnancy. So there was more pressure exerted on men to be worthy of sex. Easy access to sexual pleasure lowers the bar for men.

The average US citizen used to understand the importance of money, how it’s defined, etc. There were entire elections over it (see Andrew Jackson).

Now we’re told it’s too complicated to understand, leave it to the experts in Washington. If we put restraints on their ability to create money bad things will happen.

Separate money and state!

> 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least the 1970s, with the main deviation in the past few years coming from the after-effects of the pandemic? [1]

Why do you choose 1970 as a baseline? Federal spending is absolutely out of control when compared to, say 1913, as a baseline.

“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

- Thomas Jefferson

allocate: distribute according to a plan or set apart for a special purpose

But these aren’t about the government allocating stuff.

Please go on about the regulations that libertarians love around allocation of stuff.

This reads like a description of someone with an avoidant attachment style.

My hot take on this is that it is due to a lack of energy. I liked the phrase “a will to have nice things.”

We all want the nice things. However, they require conscientiousness. People who are run down and lack energy struggle with conscientiousness.

So why are we all rundown and lacking the energy required to have nice things? There are many reasons, some controversial.

One that is not so controversial is the industrialization of food. As the quality of food that our mothers consume has degraded, so have their offspring. I believe in TCM this concept is called maternal jing, or the essential life essence that you receive from your mother. Healthy moms breed a healthy populace. This is a problem generations in the making that keeps getting worse.

One that is more controversial is the impact of banking. Money is the life blood of society, and we’ve given bankers the right to siphon off our blood as they see fit. Generations of wealth transfer from the working class to bankers has left the populace anemic.

Japan has it better because they have maintained a more traditional way of life.

School is the industrialization of childhood.

What do you think of Ayn Rand’s works of fiction?

If you treat the cause, the symptoms go away along with a possible stream of revenue for the "health" care industry.

The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests starting children on weight loss medication as early as 12 years old:

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/151/2/e20220...

The farmers are subsidized to grow the corn. 10% of SNAP benefits are spent on sugary drinks. Yet we're expected to believe that these children were born w/ the chronic disease of obesity and they'll need to be on these drugs their whole lives.

The case for higher population is that it indicates that a species is thriving.

Indeed. There are cultures that are presently above the replacement rate curve, e.g. the Amish. As our culture depopulates itself, these more successful cultures will become more prominent.

You just failed the test.

My health has been improving by eating according to this book:

https://a.co/d/2dHgtQr

Let’s get some games going on new tables.

It wasn’t widely distributed over the internet until Bitcoin. Bitcoin solved the problem of irreversible payments over a communications channel without an intermediary.

I disagree. I’m fine with millions of recreational users supporting smugglers so that a single patient can get the medicine they need. It was the black market the safeguarded this plant for generations until we came to our senses again.

Reminder that until recently, most cannabis patients relied on smugglers to treat their illnesses.

Cannabis is similar, and there we recognize that the odor compounds have psychoactive effects. In fact, we have some viroids that have crossed over from hops.