Do harm to do good is a deeply flawed concept

Do you know why #Bitcoin saves much more energy compared to the energy which has to be spent on securing its network? There are many reasons, but first of all because it removes a lot of the friction that we get when we have a society which is built upon inflation as a policy.

The effect inflation has on the rural areas, and how to counter it. The inflation economy is based on debt growth. The geographic areas with the highest debt growth also get the highest price growth, in terms of wages and house prices. This attracts people and capital from the rural areas. The result is depopulation of the rural areas and uncontrolled growth of the cities. In Asia, for example, the United Nations estimates that the urban population will increase by almost two billion by 2050. It goes hand in hand with the exponential global debt growth, which was 70% in just two years during the Covid-19 pandemic. It's as if the debt-based system plugs millions of cannulas scattered across the countryside, bleeding the rural districts slowly to death via a tightly knit web of plastic tubes. Over time this creates major problems for your country, for instance with regards to the cost and quality of food production. It also creates huge challenges with maintenance of critical infrastructure, both in the cities and out in the districts. The inflation policy is almost like a cancer for your country, and the effect it has on where people live is one of the most visible symptoms. If you read governmental white papers etc. on demographics and district politics you probably won't find anything about inflation. Instead they are filled with all kinds of proposals on how one can stimulate growth with for instance subsidies and tax exemptions. I have done that job and haven't found anything on inflation in such papers here in Norway. What few seem to understand is that the political measures that the experts and politicians propose aren't nearly powerful enough to counter the instant bleeding of the countryside caused by the inflation policy. The question is what you can do about this. We have two effective tools that we can use. And these tools have a stronger network effect than anything else. They are: - information - money The first and most important thing to do is to share this information. You won't find it other places. The schools don't teach it, and the MSM don't mention it. Even economists who understand inflation rarely say anything about the effect inflation has on demographics. I have read, discussed and written a lot about inflation and I rarely see this aspect of it being mentioned. So, sharing this information is very important. The second thing is to start using silver and gold coins and bitcoin as gifts to your friends and family. Tell them that you give them something that stores value better than your national currency, which typically lose half of its value in about 10 years, due to the policy of increasing the supply of more money into society. And tell them that by doing this you support a healthier development in your country, because the national currency sucks the lifeblood out of the rural areas while it makes the cities grow in an uncontrolled manner. When they ask how, you have the answers above. Information and money are also important in the way they connect people who don't know each other. Combining these two resources can be very effective. You can try to tell people that they are free to pay for goods and services you sell, for instance when you sell used sports equipment, in silver coins gold coins or bitcoin. And if it's you who's buying for instance a used bike, you can give the seller the same alternatives. Tell them why you prefer to do it like this and they will learn something from you. In this way you give people valuable information and forms of money that counter the destructive policy of inflation at the same time. The network effect of sharing of information and using sound money as gifts and payments is extremely powerful. Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments below.

I am an activist, because I believe that we need to reclaim our right to use whichever money we like best - what we call monetary freedom. Without this very basic human right we cannot IMO be free in any meaningful sense of the word. Having read a lot of about the economics and politics of money in previous years, I stumbled upon the following story in 2008: A 1000 years ago, Einar Tambarskjelve was the protector of my ancestors - the free people of Trøndelag, which is a large region in the middle part of Norway. Harald Hardrada, the evil Viking king and ruler of Norway, killed Einar Tambarskjelve and his son Eindride in a cowardly plot in Nidaros in 1050, the city which today is known as Trondheim. The killing of Einar and Eindride made it possible for Hardrada to enslave my people, as he became the first ruler of Norway who, in the same year, successfully introduced inflation as a policy. The picture shows an example of the silver coins that were struck in his mints in Trondheim and Hamar. Hardrada introduced a law that said that people who didn't accept these coins could be punished by death. The people would have to bring their silver to his mints in order to get usable money. Harald took some of their silver as a fee for the "service". In just 16 years he reduced the coins' silver content from 90% to 33%. By doing this he effectively tripled the nation's money supply, while he at the same time amassed an enormous wealth and political power. The average speed of the devaluation of the nation's money was just shy of 7% per year. This inflation rate is the exact same as we have had in recent years, both in Norway and in the US, for instance between 2002 and 2022. Harald knew that he could use this policy to enslave my ancestors. We don't learn anything about this in the school or from MSM. You probably wouldn't have heard about this story if I hadn't decide to tell people about what I learned 15 years ago. We shouldn't be naive and say to ourself that today's rulers don't understand the power of the inflation policy. They might not know precisely the mechanichs of the monetary system. But our politicians know exactly how important inflation is for them to keep us under their heal. I strongly believe that we can reclaim our right to have monetary freedom

Today I will explain one of the most powerful graphs you will ever see in your whole life. But before we look at the graph, I can mention that about 60% of Americans invest in stocks and about 50% of Norwegians invest in stock funds. Few know that the value of their investments in stocks isn't able to keep pace with the money's reduction in purchasing power over a longer period of time, when measured against all types of economic goods. The reason is that few understand the effect of monetary policy and that their investments compete with an inflation of the money supply which is roughly on average 7% per year, both in the US and in Norway. The red line in the graph refers to the official M2 money supply (Norwegian kroner). The dark blue line is the Oslo Stock Exchange's main index. This includes dividends paid to the shareholders. As you can see the stock index isn't able to keep up with the rate of the money printing. You get about the same results with USD and the S&P 500 index. The dark blue line isn't adjusted for capital gains tax. The more money that is printed, the more the price of the stocks will rise and the more you will have to pay in capital gains tax. Neither is it adjusted for management fees. Investopedia says that "Management fees can range from as low as 0.10% to more than 2%". When you take capital gains tax and management costs into account, it's very, very few who can beat the 7% rate of increase in the money supply. That's why professional traders "gear" their stock investments by borrowing money so they can double or triple the investment and their profits, as they go in and out of stocks. Access to cheap credit and understanding how the stock market works makes it possible for them to beat the index. It's the same with large corporations who invest in real estate, factories and other forms of capital. They use cheap credit to make a profit. The yellow line is the price (NOK) of physical gold. It has performed just slightly below stocks. When you take into account that the risk associated with buying gold is lower than the risk associated with buying stocks, it looks like gold has been a better investment than stocks. Many people believe they are saving when they buy a house that they can live in. The green line shows that the average nominal price of homes in Norway cannot at all keep up with the rate of money printing. Norwegian households are more indebted than in any other countries, because they have bought into the idea that buying a house is saving, which it in general clearly isn't. The light blue line at the bottom of the graph is CPI, the Consumer Price Index. This is important, because wages are adjusted by CPI, give or take a few percentage points. The development of wages is far, far lower than the rate of money printing as well as the stock market index, gold and homes. This means, for instance, that buying a home becomes more and more costly in real terms for wage earners as time goes by. But this is how the monetary policy works. The few who gain from money printing have to make someone pay for it. And this group is the wage earners, ordinary workers like you and me. Roughly speaking it's the government and the wealthiest 1% of the people who benefit from the money printing. A few more manage to preserve the value of their savings by taking risks and investing their earnings in securities. The overwhelming majority lose out. We are the ones who finance what the 1-percenters and the government earn from the system. This is also what explains the ever increasing wealth gap and concentration of economic resources on fewer and fewer hands. Without this redistributive effect, the government wouldn't bother to have a monetary policy based on inflating the money supply. Perhaps you now begin to understand that it's no coincidence that those who wake up to this reality become interested in gold and #Bitcoin   

The rarer truth becomes the simpler the truth has to be for it to create a signal that shines through the noise of all the lies. That's why Bitcoin is so important.

#Bitcoin needs to be a happy freedom project.

I believe #bitcoin increasingly will be used conciously by smart millennials' in their attempt at defending themselves against the political, social and economic shitstorm of a heritage that the boomers and generation X are trying to talk them into taking over.

It must have been a historic revelation by Jeffrey Sachs when he 6 days ago explained in The Duran Podcast that the Western countries decided to save Poland from hyperinflation in 1991, while they decided to let hyperinflation destroy Russia's economy and throw the former superpower into a complete chaos. To me it was the final piece in the puzzle, as everything made sense with regards to how the new world order with the US hegemony and the so-called "Chinese miracle" emerged after Soviet Union's collapse. https://www.youtube.com/live/0VMUkLlO4w4?feature=share

Inflation is a policy. Why don't they teach us this in the schools?

New op-ed, this one I wrote together with Alexander Ellefsen, published today in Bitcoin Magazin.

Bitcoin Magazine

With Crumbling Economic Fundamentals, The Future Of Bitcoin Adoption In Norway Is Bright

Bitcoin adoption in Norway has been slow, but the dwindling value of the nation’s currency and growing concerns about the economy might speed it up.

Not teaching money and inflation in economics is like not teaching gravity in physics.

The combination of the short term volatility and the long term number-goes-up proposition of bitcoin might lower people's time preference, as it disincentivizes actions aimed at a quick profit and incentivizes actions aimed at long term benefits.

I posted a positive note on Bitcoin on Facebook today and I've so far only received one hateful comment.

Bitcoin helps us to rediscover values that are decoded in the human genes. It's basically gene therapy.

CBDC has total faceplant encoded in its genes

Swan says "Bitcoin is a religion". I ask if that is a good idea. Bitcoiners now seem reluctant to answer. What are your thoughts? I'm inclined to see lack of engagement as a confirmation of my suspicion that many Bitcoiners don't like the idea that bitcoin is a religion, or that normies think of bitcoin as a religion. I see myself as a Bitcoiner newbie. And I'll state my view about this question later, in some more detail. https://twitter.com/enur72/status/1676246611968630784?t=rEDjuSvNpt-OnTHo9ODz4A&s=19

I would say it's reason to be optimistic on behalf of humanity when a book debunking the myth "inflation is good" is the most popular book in Norway in economics/political economics/macroeconomics/economic history.

I've got a raffle going, feel free to join if you want to win some good stuff to read on the beach this summer 😎

X (formerly Twitter)

Rune Østgård (@enur72) on X

Is the Norwegian people really free? In this comment I discuss the most important economic policies in Norway, how it affects the citizens and what...

A big shout out to all of the Nostrians who joined me in the celebration of the first ever official "Kick-the-central-banks-in-the-nuts-day" on the 22 June. We're approaching 24H since I tweeted, and it has now reached 1.5 million viewers. Rave on!

X (formerly Twitter)

Rune Østgård (@enur72) on X

"Double" interest rate hike in Norway The Norwegian central bank today announced that it raises the key interest rate with 0,5%. It blames the w...