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Showing posts from December, 2021

The Siege of Socialism

Whereas socialists condemn slavery of the past, they seek in the present (and into the future) to bind slaves to their ever-changing concept of the “common good.” Ironically enough, as a percentage of his productivity, the average slave up through the nineteenth century actually kept more than three-fourths of his productivity, considerably more than the average taxpayer today.  Moreover, the average slave reserved the option to eventually buy his freedom: indeed, many slaves became freemen in just this fashion. However, it’s virtually impossible today for the average taxpayer to ever reclaim his freedom; he’s met everywhere with superficial justifications for his continued enslavement to the consensus, the “common good” and the tax collectors who enforce their will.  Whether the layman, the intellectual or the politician, slavery has never been a question of morality, but rather about how close the slave ought to be to his master, and what ends his work ought to serve. Whethe...

What the 21% Flash Crash Proves About Bitcoin

The price of bitcoin plunged overnight by more than 21 percent: this placed the digital "asset" $26,756 (38.8 percent) below its November 10 high. While some bitcoin speculators are unfazed by the decline, citing past volatility to assuage their concerns, their indifference to the price action of bitcoin exposes yet another of its weaknesses: bitcoin is not a store of value; it is not money; and its use case is exclusively limited to its use as a speculative risk asset.  Since its conception, bitcoin enthusiasts have characterized the cryptocurrency as an alternative monetary asset, namely "Gold 2.0". They have likened certain qualities of bitcoin to those of gold, and they've claimed that bitcoin improves upon gold just as every other digital asset has improved upon its predecessor: whether it's e-mail, audio files or online shopping, the bitcoin enthusiasts claim that the digital space is the preferred domain for all things.  Unfortunately, the bitcoin ent...