Going back to a gold standard will limit the money supply. This means that there will be less capital for building $thing.<p>A gold standard means that when the economy gets overheated it pops, then contracts and you get deflation. This makes crashes last longer and harder. It requires greater fiscal discipline to overcome.<p>The problem with the USA "empire" is that for a trading empire to work you need a plan, and stick to it.<p>China has been quietly debt trapping a whole bunch of nations that have strategic things they need. They have been investing in infra and leasing it back to the host country. That takes planning, money vision and time. Something neither the president or congress have the ability to do.<p>The USA in the 40/50s played a blinder, neatly using war debt and the martial plan to usurp the exhausted british empire's trading power. The dollar became <i>the</i> global reserve and all of the new global institutions were setup and housed in the USA.
I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things.<p>-there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not.
-gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy.
-these ideas only sound self consistent without economic context.<p>But solution point 1 — brain drain the rest of the world — is an absolutely first rate policy. The fact that the US requires newly-minted PhDs educated here to get a different visa or leave is absolutely self-defeating. We should be welcoming skilled immigration from everywhere.<p>For my money, you’re better off reading Krugman, Brad Delong, and (my personal favorite) Michael Pettis. I’ll read Geohot when it’s about engineering or self driving cars.
Steve Jobs told Obama something similar once. The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities. Basically give those workers a visa along with their diploma.<p>Obama thought the idea was intriguing and mentioned it multiple times to his advisors. It never went anywhere though.<p>Brain draining the rest of the world is one of the main reasons for America’s success. It is due to America being a nation of immigrants that we can do this.
> The main product made by the US is the dollar, and it used those manufactured dollars to outsource everything. Most jobs in the US are now basically fake<p>These two hot takes at the top of the essay really undermines everything else the author might say in the article and brings into question how serious and critical their thinking is.<p>Several comments here against the article talk about the Chinese economy problems and this article in this morning’s BBC is a pretty good summary of the dynamics and the problems, notwithstanding manufacturing prowess, China is facing: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x4vj8rj9wo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x4vj8rj9wo</a>
There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch.<p>But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc?<p>Aside from anything else, the other countries become less able to trade on good terms, and thus less able to buy US products/services. And so it becomes a self-defeating policy long-term.<p>Good economists (and to be honest I don't know of many these days) know that there are no free lunches. We need to put as much effort into helping every other country develop and thrive - and by doing that we'll create many more customers for the products/services produced in our own countries, and everyone can end up richer.<p>After writing this I wonder even if the economic and political dysfunction we're seeing in so much of the world as actually the inevitable consequence of decades of brain-draining, rather than an indication of the need for more of it.
The big mistake of this kind of analysis is to assume that it depends only on the desires of the US. But other countries have agency too, they can also decide to be first class economies. The current status of China is due to its focus on achieving greatness. There's not much that the US could or can do to derail China from its achievements. Let's stop trying to block other countries and step up to work harder.
Well this was embarrassing to read. Good god man read an economics textbook or at least talk to an economist before posting.<p>Is industrial capacity important? Sure. Is it the top of the value chain? No.
For his solutions:<p>"Brain drain" is what we had been doing for the past 80 years or so. It worked great. We're specifically driving people away now.<p>"Gold standard" is an idea every sane economist rejected decades ago.
It's a surprisingly retro economic take from a tech guy. Kind of crazy to see famous tech personalities pivoting from "software is eating the world" to "it's fake unless it is made out of metal."
> Back the dollar by gold [...] The second will prevent a lot of the scams.<p>Oh boy... Bitcoin in many ways is idealized gold (unlike the real one, its supply is actually limited), yet there is no shortage of scams around it.<p>On the contrary, a gold standard would remove one of the most essential tools modern governments have: That of monetary policy. That sounds like a good idea if and only if there's an extreme shortage of trust in the government and institutions, and even then it's only the lesser of two evils (the other being inflation) and comes at a high price.
I get tired of people talking about how the US doesn't "make anything". I spent my adult life creating software that was super valuable. Along the way I worked with a bunch of people (from all over the world) who-- because of their brains and their education-- could have made almost anything very well. They didn't make steel or automobiles because that wasn't where their skills were best deployed.
This feels too all over the place and contains a lot of assertions without evidence.<p>I say this as a person who is very bearish about America.<p>> The sun never set on the British empire. Now they put you in jail for memes.<p>I’m pretty sure they put people in jail for the equivalent of memes during the imperial days, no? The king couldn’t put you away for speaking against him?
The gold standard makes no sense whatsoever, you want the money supply to be able to grow with the economy. Printing loads of money is bad, but a deflationary spiral due to a fixed money supply is even worse.
> The reason the banking industry is so big is that it is close to the source of the made up dollars. If currency is gold backed, you could imagine something similar happening to the mining industry instead. However, the mining industry is real! It uses steel and aluminum to build physical things<p>This is an interesting thought. I don’t like mining too much, as it has a lot of negative externalities. But the comparison of the two industries and how money is created is something to think about
Are bits like "they put you in jail for memes" intended to drive away people with a basic grasp of reality so that he can start a cult? Or has he already driven away everyone and his cult aren't able to point out the absurdity as they are all down the same rabbithole?
This started out interesting but then the red flags started to pop up. Going to jail in Europe for posting memes, gold standard, salivating over doing something that benefits the US and hurts countries that are already poorer than the US.<p>He has strong opinions on economics, but doesn't understand it. His points about economics are partially true but either subtly incorrect or interpreted incorrectly.
Protectionist polices can serve countries well. A lovely example is South Korea's entertainment industry (they prohibited displaying foreign cinema, and the resulting need to produce domestic cinema lead to them developing a strong and independent entertainment industry, examples: squid game, train to busan, etc...)<p>It looks to me like the countries in the pie charts are ones with protectionism (e.g., China), while you are seem to be implicitly advocating for the opposite...
“There’s two simple steps to restore American greatness:<p>1) Brain drain the world. Work visas for every person who can produce more than they consume. I’m talking doubling the US population, bringing in all the factory workers, farmers, miners, engineers, literally anyone who produces value. Can we raise the average IQ of America to be higher than China?<p>2) Back the dollar by gold (not socially constructed crypto), and bring major crackdowns to finance to tie it to real world value. Trading is not a job. Passive income is not a thing. Instead, go produce something real and exchange it for gold.”<p>The first step has been in existence for decades in the US. Also, it is not sustainable potentially destabilizes other countries. The second step may have some merit, but I seriously doubt it will turn things around by itself.<p>China has largely built domination over the US and manufacturing by a combination of the hollowing out of US manufacturing and other capabilities due to short term profit goals of US companies and unfair trading practices, primarily due to imbalanced environmental policies, labor policy, and currency manipulation by China.<p>Many free traders lambast protectionist policies, but protectionist policies are largely what made China what it is today.
Beware of anyone who hordes trust, because they may be planning to cash in on that trust to screw you over when you need them most.<p>The United States is shifting toward a zero-trust model. All deals and agreements must be based on tangible incentives and benefits. It will be an interesting era.
Proposal number 2 will destroy the US economy, completely destabilize prices, and make recovering from recessions painful and slow. There is a reason that no country today, including the ones that produce things, use the gold standard.
The real backing all economies across the world need, and look for in the US dollar, is trust. If we were capable of radical trust across every country in the world in tandem, then ideas of who manufactures more, salary, etc, would evaporate and it would be the timeless question of “how do we all survive and thrive together rather than against one another?”. Trust is a limitless resource that still has to be earned and that is why the US has been so successful, unfortunately we are destroying that trust.
"Trading is not a job. Passive income is not a thing."<p>Never a truer word spoken. Making money by moving money around. It shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be possible or at least should come with severe limitations that make it not possible to live off as a vocation. When person A 'wins', person B 'loses'.<p>It is a specific skill set that some humans have, but it's not one that should be valued because it gives nothing back to society. In fact, it's a net negative.
We used to have gold certificates. If you had a $20 gold certificate and converted it to gold in the 1930s, you would get one ounce of gold worth nearly $3k today.<p>Then the government did an exit scam, passing a law that the gold trade in statements on the certificates are void. You can still spend one of these bills today though. For $20.<p>Why should anyone expect any government to indefinitely honor gold certificates?<p>The only currency that can avoid being devalued by a single government, is a currency no single government can control.
> I’m talking doubling the US population, bringing in all the factory workers, farmers, miners, engineers, literally anyone who produces value<p>Based??<p>> Back the dollar by gold<p>Oh haha lol<p>No bud, gold isn't money.
> The main product made by the US is the dollar,<p>Very good point and one that not a lot of people understand.<p>There is also a tipping point at which governments will look elsewhere for a reserve and trading currency. Yes, today the USD is king, but that's in part because China's efforts to make the RMB a reserve and trade currency are half-hearted as they conflict with its efforts to retain an iron control over its currency exchange rate.<p>If the USD loses its preeminant status as _the_ global currency, the US is in very deep trouble.<p>This plays into the Middle East in ways that many people don't realize. The Gulf countries only sell their oil for USD (in exchange for protection from the US). The US has a very big stake in that continuing to be the case. Now granted, they are less important than they used to be because of fracking, but still a major player. (Some people say the invasion of Iraq was because Sadaam threatened to start selling oil for EUR instead of USD. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's definitely a plausible reason.)
Decoupling the Dollar from Gold (basically being able to print infinite money) opened the floodgates for all the FinScams that made up the last decades. Which ultimately led to an impoverished American Population and subsequent election of ignorant populist autocrats with no intent on fixing the broken system that brought them to power.
This person sees the world as a game where the US needs to be a supremacy over others.<p>> America really is at a fork in the road. In one world, they abandon all hopes of being an empire, becoming a regional power with highly protectionist economics. This happened before, and it’s called Europe. I know it’s hard to believe now, but Europe used to be the seat of power for the whole world. The sun never set on the British empire. Now they put you in jail for memes<p>It's simply a disgusting take. Full of ego and lacking any empathy for people inside and outside the USA because he is too busy thinking in zero sum caveman terms.<p>This type of mindset is the one that justifies all military interventions because "there must be a world superpower and it must be us".
His point with respect to the questionable nature of the modern economy is a good one. I’d guess that 20% of GDP is tax avoidance.<p>Everything with respect to real estate is a scheme to get government subsidy. If you go to a modern Courtyard or Hampton Inn, you’re sleeping in a tax shelter that rents beds
> The Demoralization<p>I don’t have time for these random words that blogs invent which makes sense if you followed the author for the past thirty entries but not if you just found this one random article.<p>Demoralize who? Because I can’t imagine the average citizen wanting to get on board with your nakedly imperialist plan.<p>The thing about cheering for “your country” doing well in terms of geopolitics is that you are either a completely misguided tool since the geopolitical interests have nothing to do with the interests of the average citizen. <i>Or</i> you are so wealthy and powerful that they do. In which case the average citizen has no common interests with you.
Sure, but you know what you should do if you were trying to completely destroy the US? Side with Russia against our allies, put up huge trade barriers on our neighbours, torch the rules based order, look at the world as split into many hemispheres of influence, unpick all the institutions that protect the government and the US citizens from scams and replace them with the richest man in the world, stand down retaliatory measures against cyber threats, shake down European democracies you were protecting for mineral deals, undermine the very idea of truth itself and flood the zone with shit.<p>You can absolutely forget competing with China under these circumstances, their system is starting to look better than the US will after another 1416 days of this.
He contradicts himself. Europe, in particular Spain, France and Germany are still manufacturing goods. And yet their economies are stagnant. Because those industries have seen no growth for decades already.
| Now they put you in jail for memes.<p>I'm going to nitpick on this line a bit, but bring it back to his core argument at the end. And I'm going to nitpick because in part, lines like this raise my hackles, but also because I think lines like this undercut his own argument:<p>This type of modern conservatism (which is what this take from George is, and is very tied to a new type of non-religious social conservatism) has lost the plot when it comes to basic justice. Threats in person to people are just plain old crimes. But package them in a funny picture online and it's free reign. Free speech absolutists (not sure that's what George is, but just using this as a broad label) have pretty convenient takes when it comes to the basic rule of law. Often those takes are pretty circumstantial, in some cases they're more than happy to deem speech threatening, but in the vast majority of threatening speech people actually experience, not so much. And remember, if the law is arbitrarily applied, it makes people less interested in a democracy, but they don't seem bothered by that.<p>Nor do they seem too bothered about the tens of thousands of people who suffer legitimate threats online daily. The social media companies know who those people are, down to what they had for breakfast that day. If we actually dared to, you know, enforce laws around threatening people our jails would be overflowing.<p>I agree to a very minor degree: you can google "jailed for memes" and find some questionable choices, but to use your voice for those handfuls of situations when literally thousands upon thousands of people are legitimately threatened each day online? I think I can guess what your true intents are: its to further a brutal status quo so you continue feeling good. It doesn't help his argument that the sentence before this line bemoans the end of empire.<p>And the frustrating thing is that one of his recommendations is kind of good: end the funny money system of business (not sure I agree with the how of the gold standard, but I'd have to defer to others there). But George just undercuts his argument with lines like this about memes, because if you pick it apart it just means he's advocating for the funny money version of enforcing the law. Ah, so George you're not against funny money in principle, it's more like "Funny money for me, but not for thee."
Good, simple run-down of how printing free cash like a banana republic through ZIRP by relying on the reserve currency status of the dollar hollowed out the US economy. It led to a scammy economy in which finance sharks printed money and generated financial assets out of thin air to bloate the value of everything. Stocks got overpriced to ~60x their value, real estate became an atrocious balloon. All the while without producing anything.<p>It even infected the tech sector and turned it from something that actually produces value to a casino that bets on 'potential' balloons to profit from bloated, overvalued stocks and valuations. Why produce anything when you can just make gobs of cash by shoveling the infinite amount of free cash that is entering the economy anyway...<p>All of this was at the cost of the physical goods and services. Now that the dollar has tangible competition, the entire scam is coming crashing down.
„Brain drain the world.“<p>Why? You could also invest in better schools and education in the US. A smarter population would also be good for democracy, because they would vote smarter. But I guess it is too late now. Dictators don‘t need a smart population, they need a dump one, so they can do whatever they want.
If I understand correctly, the definition of "largest trading partner" in the graphic is misleading because it is based exclusively on physical goods. But the US exports to many countries an impressive amount of digital services (Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple). If we take into account the value of these services I think that many parts of the map would return to blue.
> Sure, we don’t produce anything, but we have companies with high revenues and we can raise money based on those revenues. We’ll both be rich!<p>I think this is the central hole in the argument that the US is stagnant. The money that investors give you has to come from somewhere! Particularly in venture capital, you only get returns if you produce value.<p>Nevertheless, I do agree with a lot of the points here.
The mining industry is also subject to fakery. We don't have a database with all trades in it. We for the most part don't know what people are paying. The bid and ask prices are real? What part of those transactions involve things that only exist on paper?<p>Fort Knox is the funniest example. For the financial theather it doesn't matter if there is any physical gold.
Seems like George is inching towards learning about Triffin Dilemma[0].<p>To meet global demand, the issuer must supply enough currency, potentially weakening its own economy, but restricting supply would harm international trade and finance<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma</a>
Wow, fantastic analysis with enough ‘inconvenient truths’ to cause most people to ignore the hard message of where the USA stands in the world and some things we can try to sustain our economy and productivity. Are George's suggestions all practical? Sadly no, but I think it is generally good to have strong goals, and then achieve what we can.
He is a bit naive in general but he is mostly right.<p>1. Hyperfinancialization was a huge mistake (e.g. a house should not be an investment)<p>2. ZIRP was a huge mistake: revenue matters, the current SP500 P/E ratio is insane. [1]<p>3. Manufacturing matters if you want to keep the blue collar people engaged economically. It's bewildering how US Democrats turned their back on their political base, the proletariat.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/price-earnings.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/price-earnings...</a><p>Now, what he gets wrong. China is also doing hyperfinancialization, just slightly different. Their housing market is crazy with tofu constructions and mostly empty cities. And they got already the Evergrande collapse. China also over-invests to take over markets, for example BYD is kind of a gigantic ponzi scheme [2].<p>[2] BYD’s Financial Time Bomb: A Replica of Evergrande's Collapse in the Making <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpTWsBRIQs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpTWsBRIQs</a><p>As many other people said, Trump is making a huge mistake on tariffs. He should be putting tariffs on the completed products but not on the supply chain. Block subsidized EVs but not the small parts for industry and make Europe do the same. This would prick the Chinese manufacturing bubble.<p>And about importing talent, the system needs an overhaul. The H1B system is completely rigged and most of it brings cheap consultants for jobs easily sourced locally. Improve local competition. But bring the high earners. Make H1B for say 300k and up salaries for a minimum 5 year contract. And they should have a very strict English test, I'm fed up with people who don't bother to learn basic English because they live in bubbles of their country (and I'm foreign).<p>Also, and this is probably controversial, make some Singapore-style limits on who immigrants can live with and marry, forcing very different cultures assimilate. No more ghettos of very different cultures fighting each other. See how that's turning up in Europe. Before you call me a n*zi, Soviets did something like that, too.
I think the brain drain idea is fine. Making a goldbug argument is surprisingly regressive. Currency is a socially constructed phenomenon in all times and places, and gold is only special in that at this moment, reverting to it would cause a violent reset to the balance sheet - a temporary, painful fix.<p>The progressive option would be to deeply question "what lies beyond trade?" and to search for answers beyond the conventional regulated/unregulated spectrum, answers that are compatible in some degree with our starting place but allow broad movement. We know what trade is and does, but the economies it produces are no match for the hivemind efficacy of an ants or beavers. The frameworks of trade are negotiated around maintenance of fiefdoms, and economic activity is regularly blocked because the power structure will push against it and normalize "we can't have that here".<p>At the same time, we know that power needs checks and balances, and the capitalist mode of power creates some checks on power through its use of trade. That is what has kept it ahead of command economies.<p>What I find appealing about continuing down a crypto-oriented route is that it's a data structure with a balance sheet as a frontend. The frontend can change - it is a thing that can be experimented with. Valorizing the numbers on the balance sheet as gold-equivalent has always been an adaptive, "this is the only way we know how to do things" kind of social construction. If we can construct a different kind of game to play, the motives can shift.
A rather medieval way of thinking about gold - it is only scarce on Earth. The year is 2025, and asteroid mining is on the horizon, so gold supply could increase dramatically. Tying the dollar to something that may soon become abundant doesn’t seem like a brilliant idea.
> America really is at a fork in the road. In one world, they abandon all hopes of being an empire, becoming a regional power with highly protectionist economics<p>Seems like the current choice is to be highly protectionist, not sure if it means becoming a regional power.
> 1) Brain drain the world. Work visas for [...] literally anyone who produces value.<p>So, to put it in terms of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they want to drain the rest of the world of everybody but hairdressers and marketing experts?
Yet another prodigy turned to a "know it all" with no actual education to back anything said about specific topics.<p>You can critic America for failing to transition away from the manufacturing economy or how awfully bad they are at utilizing government to drive innovation or extra market value (look at the dogshit railway infrastructure) but pointing to manufacturer graph and doing soy face ain't it.
I have a better solution than what the author suggests. Accept that the American empire is on its last stages of a full on collapse. Every other empire before it eventually did anyway.
I don't see why the author thinks backing the dollar with gold is so important. Is China backing their currency with gold? If not, and it's so important, how did they get ahead?
'demoralization' is a good word to describe the mental state of imperial citizen<p>social being determines social consciousness, but social consciousness often lags behind social being.<p>when the empire was falling, its citizens still indulged in the eternal victories of the past. by the time they realized the empire's glory was irretrievable, it was usually already fallen.<p>this lagging may cause some consequences.<p>for instance, overconfident imperial citizens may try to contain rivals and prevent the empire's fall through various ways, tariffs, sanctions, or wars, the worst case<p>imperial citizens think a lot when they see this:<p>> In addition, we had and have military bases in Japan. This is not the same situation.<p>imperial policymakers may be rational, or may not be
Gold and Value producers reminded me of the Galt’s Gulch from Atlas Shrugged.<p>But I could not fancy this imaginary community to scale up to even millions
One thing that China does that I’d like to see more of (not that we don’t do it) are “wish lists” for products which use strategic technologies. So in their AI plan, they specifically call out applications for AI which can improve their cities like traffic light optimization.<p>It’s like a publicly funded version of YC’s call for startups. The difference is in the public sector the answer to “how do you make money” doesn’t have to be sell to a business/sell to consumers/run ads.
I thought this was an interesting post with some outlandish statements, but I was willing to grapple with them because I thought the author was cooking up something new...<p>Then I realized this was a post from geohot and felt very foolish the 15 minutes I spent thinking through his argument. Why is this so upvoted!
It's honestly for the best. US has been doing two-faced politics for years. Immigration is apparently a solution but the politicians have been waging a war on immigrants for as long as I can remember.<p>Even with the democrats it was the same thing. People who jump the border were the only sucesfull immigrants. Those trying the legal pathways are waiting for decades to get into the country. Now the message is again clear, be ultra rich and invest 5M to gain entry.
He is pretty clueless about a few things, namely 1) China inflated an even bigger asset bubble in the form of real estate and they are using dumping and aggressive trade to keep afloat, and 2)the regime can be ended in a few months without importing food since it’s not self sufficient in terms of food supply
George Hotz thinks silicon valley companies are all scams... in comparison to... Chinese companies????<p>I think this guy may need to travel the world a bit more.
A lot of companies here are shiite, but you really need to understand what the competition actually looks like under the hood. And I'm not just talking about Chinese government efforts to crank out more commodities, which has been a Communist metric of success since Mao Zedong's time.
I thought I was going to read something interesting, and while yes, America has significant problems and we are likely on the decline under this administration (and likely before), backing the dollar by gold is the same crackpot nonsense that Ron Paul people loved to hammer on about. What is even his point?
It's kind of sad that the author and most readers here do not understand that it's the same socialism they decry-but don't understand- that made China a great economic powerhouse and a stable democracy.
> abandon all hopes of being an empire<p>I should hope so! Imperialist ambitions are what Russia is still doing, but most other nations have realized that war isn’t profitable. Fighting a war to conquer factories will likely result in owning rubble.<p>This article has a more convincing description of how it works in modern times:
<a href="https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/" rel="nofollow">https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coa...</a>
Restoring “American greatness” is well beyond switching to the gold standard or “brain drain” of the world.<p>We need a paradigm shift from what we call neoclassical economics and neoliberal economic theory. The author sort of hints at it but goes off the rails with his conclusions, but this country was built on a _strong_ middle class. Purchasing power of the middle class has been decimated/stagnated.<p>Public companies no longer invest in the wellbeing of their employees (ie, increasing wages) or invest back into the company to improve efficiency and remain competitive. Instead we see massive amounts of that profit generated by labor invested into short term _stock manipulation_ via stock buybacks.<p>The endless thirst for paper growth and infinite profitability is ultimately not sustainable. The end result of this rapacious capitalism is what we see today:<p>- 40 year wage stagnation of middle class and minimal chance of upward mobility for poor<p>- loss of collective bargaining and via non-existent unions or decrease in participation<p>- loss of safety nets such as pensions<p>- increased cost of living due to corporations endless need for paper growth<p>(list can go on, but I’m typing on a phone)
Nice to see that Europe remains a failed socialist hellscape even in the eyes of supposedly smart Americans. Thanks for taking the time to write this. Must've took a solid 4 hours of googling on ketamine.
He equates protectionism with stagnation, being boring, the road to poverty, socialism, etc. Yet, the US was very protectionist during it's accent to becoming the world's largest economy. The free market zealotry came later.<p>(I'm not trying to say Trump's current plans have any merit - which seem to be without any strategic foresight or planning).
>I know it’s hard to believe now, but Europe used to be the seat of power for the whole world.<p>And Europe used that power to do some incredibly inhumane and shitty things, while enriching a tiny number of sociopaths. I had hoped we had improved as a species since then, but I don't think we have.
You know this is a serious article written by someone who knows what they're talking about when it earnestly quotes Curtis Yarvin on its third paragraph /s
Fantastic article. The banking system especially is a scam... the "fractional reserve system" basically allows elite friends of the government to create new dollars ($100 loaned for every $1 deposit). Move to gold and get rid of the corruption.