One of the reasons why I love Trøndelag

If I ran for office today, this would be my political platform: 1. Abolish the government's currency monopoly 2. Remove the capital gains tax 3. Cut taxes and public spending 10% per year, every year, in infinity

The future is decentralized, and going forward I want to spend more time here on Nostr, try tp provide value and develop this promising community. My previous book, Fraudcoin, started as a pamphlet, and in a few weeks or months I am going to post a new pamphlet here on Nostr. This is a preliminary outline: Working title: REBUILD Index: Preface Introduction Part 1: Once we were free Part 2: The road to serfdom Part 3: Libertus Conclusion Afterword I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I will enjoy writing it.

Long #Bitcoin is short gaslighting

I despise social engineering. Feel free to quote me on that.

A FOUR-LEGGED KING NAMED SAUR and why a Trønder shouldn't bow for anyone The smiling redhead you see at the picture below is a man who has tiny bit more rebellious genes in his body than the average Norwegian. And now he will tell you a story that helps you understand why he takes such pride in this fact. My late father researched our family tree several hundreds year back in time. All of my ancestors lived in Trøndelag, a beautiful region in the middle part of Norway. Trøndelag didn't really become a part of a unified Norwegian kingdom before late in the Viking Age. Until about 1050 AD the Trønders was more or less self governd. The political system was to some extent an anarchy based on a deeply rooted respect for private property, combined with disrespect for men who wanted to rule others. This didn't mean that the Trønders were without leaders or laws. Their famous Frostating law ("ting" means "court") was based on legal and cultural traditions that had developed over hundreds or possibly thousands of years. The leaders were numerous farmers and landowners from all parts of the region. They also had earls who were entitled to receive some taxes, likely in exchange for an obligation to organize safekeeping and military defence against intruders. The most fundamental part of the Frostating law was its so-called "resistance provisions", a system of self defence regulations that weren't part of any other Nordic laws. These rules stated that nobody, neither the King nor any man, could take something from a Trønder without the prior consent of the Frostating, which was controlled by the farmers and landowners. The law said that, if a king laid claim on someones property, for instance by introducing taxes, without the consent of the Frostating, the Trønders should cut a war arrow, that should be sent around to all corners of Trøndelag. The arrow carried a message, which said that everybody were obliged to try to kill the king, and if they didn't succeed in doing this, they had to chase him out of the country. Those who didn't pass the arrow to their neighbor, or who refrained from hunting down the king, would be punished with fines. An interesting aspect of the Frostating law was that the punishment for someone who took another man's property therefore were much more significant for the king than for anyone else. This is in practice the very opposite principle of our modern day's legal system, in which the laws are designed to protect the politival leaders against the citizens. There's in my mind no doubt that - the highly decentralized political power, - a completely decentralized defence system that required everyone to understand both the right to self defense and the moral obligation to help your fellow man, and - laws that were severely stacked against powerhungry men were key factors when it came to securing the Trønders' sovereignty and freedom. This didn't, of course, deter each and every bloodthirsty king from paying a visit to Trøndelag. According to the Royal Sagas, one of those who fell for the temptation was King Øystein of Oppland, an area south of Trøndelag. He lived in the 8th to 9th century and had earned the less-than-flattering nickname "Hardråde", which meant "hard ruler". After Øystein defeated the Trønders in a battle which we don't know when happened, he installed his son as King of Trøndelag. This probably wasn't the wisest decision that he had ever made, because shortly afterwards the son was killed by his unruly subjects. When Øystein got wind of what had happened he became furious, gathered his army and attacked the Trønders once more. Again he won the fight, but this time he decided to try and make a fool out of the Trønders. He told them that they could choose a new king, and gave them two choices - his slave Thore Faxe or a dog named Saur. The people of Trøndelag merrily elected Saur, and suddenly my ancestors had a four-legged king as their ruler. Based on what we know about the Trønders' appreciation of their freedom and their deeply rooted traditions as a sovereign people, the following is my interpretation of the events described in the sagas: Instead of allowing King Øystein the sweet taste of having taught the Trønders a lesson, they decided to make a complete mockery out of his plot. First, they pretended that they used some kind of witchcraft to give Saur three men's intelligence. They then claimed that he could say two words, and bark a third. Secondly, they let Saur have a splended farm named Saurshaug (Saur's hill, today Sakshaug, which is 30 km away from where I live). They gave him a high throne, and let him rule over his land from the top of a hill, as was customary for kings at the time. Thirdly, they gave Saur a collar of gold and a leash of silver. The dog king's hird (a professional royal guard) served and protected him. If it rained, they would carry him on his shoulders. A real king couldn't be seen with muddy paws as he travelled around and inspected the kingdom and his underlings. After a while the hirdsmen probably grew tired of all the work that they had to do to create this formidable farce. And when a pack of wolves one day came to Saurshaug, they egged the dog to go out and protect his royal herd. Saur went after the wolves, who of course ripped him to pieces. My ancestors probably wanted to send Øystein and all other kings the following message of defiance: F**** us once and we will kill your son. F**** us twice and we will ruin your legacy. They probably wanted Øystein to forever be remembered as the King who bitterly realized that the Trønders could be beaten, but that they never would be ruled by anyone. Having this story probably strengthened the value of the Frostating law as a weapon against tyrants and plunderers. If the knowledge about the unique resistance regulations in Trøndelag had been well known outside the borders of Trøndelag before King Øystein attacked them, the history about King Saur probably helped bringing word of their code to all corners of the world. It makes me proud to know our legacy as sovereign Trønders. We were the people who kept our freedom longer than anyone else in the fight against bloodthirsty kings who wanted to rule every Norwegian. Furthermore, it also makes me realize that I can only show my respect to my ancestors by promising them that I'm not going to bow for anyone. I am, after all, a trueblood Trønder.

CBDC is lipstick on the fiat money pig

Who would like to attend a Bitcoin meetup in Trondheim, preferrably daytime on a Saturday, in September or October?

Gaslighting has become the dominant currency in an increasingly politicized world. The politicians' problem is that it hyperinflates at the moment. Therefore the effect of the gaslighting decreases, while the level of noise it creates makes the signal of truth shine brighter.

I'll try to add some thoughts to a previous statement, when I wrote that our belief system is the foundation, layer zero, of civilization, while money is its cornerstone, layer one. The viewpoint I use here is anthropologist in its nature. I choose to use this as a starting point, since understanding money as a concept IMO should be based on a much broader analysis than for instance engineering or economics. The reason why I think money is so important for civilization is because money makes it possible - to transfer economic value quickly and over long distance - to preserve economic value over long periods of time - to give more options to participants in the game called "the generous tit for tat" - to have voluntary exchange with strangers because it takes trust out of the equation. - to quantify and calculate costs and interest - to make exponentially better use of our individual and differing talents on the basis of specialization - to make exponentially better use of those traits that separates us from other species, and most notably our appreciation of time preference - to incentivize peaceful cooperation and disincentivize coercion, violence and war - to capitalize on and unleash the value of private property - to give gifts to those who need them, without having to identify what they need most - to punish criminals in a humane way that focuses on compensating the victim - to let people build on their exchange in trade to alson include exchange of values, knowledge and culture In fact, I'm not able to wrap my mind around how a society can build something like a city without some form of efficient money. Am I missing something in my list above? Did this post trigger any ideas? Feel free to let us know your thoughts, they are important to us.

It's not so much about what they teach us as it is about what they don't teach us: The inflation policy requires that people don't learn about money, interest, time prefence, private property and free trade in school. Likewise, molding a large share of the population into socialists requires that people don't learn about money, interest, time prefence, private property and free trade in school.

The human specie separates itself from all other species due to its - understanding of and inclination to playing infinite games - superior ability to copy behavior and knowledge - deep appreciation (implicit and sometimes explicit) of the concept of time preference - capacity for imagining things - ability to use abstractions - self introspection - communicating by the use of words Anything else I should have mentioned?

My social media feed right now: Facebook: 90% bluepilling, 10% WTF-is-going-on-in-the-world?-pilling Twitter: 30% orangepilling, 60% blackpilling, 5% easy-entertainment-pilling, 5% join-our-new-cryptoscam-pilling. Nostr: 100% orangepilled-a-long-time-ago LinkedIn: 100% extend-and-pretend-don't-complain-pilling

Today's national currencies represent a gargantous energy-consuming machine. Bitcoin fixes this. How? A national currency, such as for instance the US dollar, inflates with on average 7% (new dollars that debase the value of all of the dollars that are already in existence). This effectively cuts the value of each unit of the currency in half in 10 years. Prices and wages don't increase nearly as much. This means that a company or a person who wants to maintain an after-tax currency reserve of equal value has to produce or work more and more over time. This extra work requires use of enormous amounts of energy. Everything in the production line that requires energy, such as workers and machines, will have to consume much more of it. The inflation rate of bitcoin (new bitcoin in addition to existing bitcoin) is in comparison only 1.8%. In May 2024 it falls to 1.1% and later it falls over time until it reaches 0% in 2140. Partly because of this quality the value of bitcoin outperforms all other assets, including stocks, real estate and gold. Because the value goes up, people who save in bitcoin can work less. This means that they can consume less energy. The amount of electrical power used to secure the Bitcoin network grows slower than the overall growth in production of electrical power. As a result Bitcoin's share of the consumption falls over time. In 2021 researchers at the University of Cambridge estimated at 0.5%. @LynAldenContact is considered as one of the leading macro and bitcoin market analysts. In her report "Bitcoin’s Energy Usage Isn’t a Problem. Here’s Why" udated in January 2023, she wrote that: "Since the world uses over 176,000 TWh of energy per year, that means that the entire Bitcoin network, at its peak consumption level, uses less than 0.1% of the world’s energy consumption." As time goes by and bitcoin gradually replaces national currencies, our monetary system's drag on the world's energy reserves falls dramatically. It's also every reason to believe that energy wasted on gaslighting people about Bitcoin's energy consumption will go down noticeable over the next few months. lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/

This was a good analysis of the European economy with a focus on energy, deindustralization in Germany, the Europeans' relationship with the US and why the euro might be hurt by European leaders' stance on the war in Ukraine.

When the strawman betrays you This note dives into some of the criticism of Seymour Hersh after he published his article «How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline» on 8 February this year. I do it to honor his life-long work as an investigative journalist, as I think his article was treated unfairly by many journalists, reporters and commentators. My objective as a writer is to seek and speak the truth. I mainly write about monetary policy. It has an important geopolitical context, which now and then makes me look at other political subjects that are closely related to monetary policy. One of these subjects is the co-operation between the governments of Norway and USA. The former adapts its monetary policy to the latter’s manipulation of the world’s global reserve currency, and for a long time it has been pretty much the same with the rest of the world. The result is a globally coordinated monetary policy that has implications for the two other major policy areas: Security and energy. Norway is a major oil producing country. It’s also a founding member of NATO. This makes Norway special, and understanding the interplay between Norway and the US government provides valuable information about America and the so-called “Rule-based order”. This is the system of international organizations, rules, and norms. Representatives of the US government increasingly refer to the “Rule-based order” these days, as the geopolitical situation changes from a state of American hegemony to a more multipolar world. In my job as a writer I focus on presenting the key facts and avoid speculating on people’s motives. If the facts are presented clearly and orderly, people can easily analyze them and form conclusions on their own. In my world conspiracy theories are an energy drain and a distraction that I shun. I think the same of most rhetoric. And I have nothing but contempt for people who try to obstruct public discourse by introducing strawmen and attacking them with a smirk on their face. Grammarly(.)com defines a strawman argument as following: «[T]he logical fallacy of distorting an opposing position into an extreme version of itself and then arguing against that extreme version.» This kind of trick is what was used by journalists, reporters and commentators in the mainstream and social media after Seymour Hersh published his article. He wrote about how the US blew up the pipe with the help of the Norwegian military. Hersh quoted his source, a person who said he had been part of the team that was planning the sabotage, and who said that the Norwegians «hated the Russians». Hersh also wrote that Secretary General of NATO and former Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg «was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since.» Furthermore, Hersh’ source said about Stoltenberg that: “He is the glove that fits the American hand.” Hersh drew a lot of flak from journalists, reporters and commentators in the mainstream and social media. Some of the most profound criticism was put forward in an article written by independent analyst Oliver Alexander, who wrote: “I doubt Jens Stoltenberg was a US intelligence asset in his early teens.” Alexander’s article was widely referenced by newspapers, including here in Norway. Commentators used the fact that Jens Stoltenberg only was a teenager during the Vietnam war as if it was some sort of a trump card that proved that everything in Hersh’ article was wrong. Jens was 16 when the war ended 30 April 1975. This supposedly proved that he couldn’t have cooperated with the intelligence community back then. People made the reference to Jens Stoltenberg as a strawman that they attacked with fervor. When reading these comments, I got a bad taste in my mouth and thought the behavior was suspicious. Everybody who knows something about the American intelligence service understands that it indeed would have been possible that the CIA had an asset who was a 16-year-old aspiring politician. The fact that he was born into one of the elite families of the Norwegian Labor parties actually meant that he could be an asset of immense value to the Americans. In the following I will present a timeline with facts without discussing or analyzing the information. It will enable you to make up your own mind about Alexander’s and the other commentator’s attacks on Seymour Hersh. 1931: Torvald Stoltenberg, Jens’ father, is born. 1950: Torvald enrolls as a student at the University of Oslo where he takes the equivalent of a Master of Law degree in 1957. As part of his studies, he goes to the US to study international relations. 1958: Torvald gets his first job as a secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Later his career will include being a diplomat stationed in San Fransisco, Secretary of State in three ministries, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defense. 1959: Jens Stoltenberg is born. 1965: Ola Teigen is elected president of the Norwegian Workers’ Youth League (WYL), the Norwegian Labor Party’s youth organization. WYL supports NATO membership. 1968: Someone steals a letter from Teigen’s desk. The letter includes information about large payments from the CIA (via another organization) to the International Union of Socialist Youth, where the WYL is a member. The newspaper Dagbladet writes about it a few days later and the scandal is a fact. 1969: Teigen resigns. The WYL’s investigative commission finalizes a report about the case. The report is marked “Strictly confidential”, and I don’t have any information about its content. WYL changes its stance on NATO and wants Norway to leave the organization. 1970: Teigen is found dead in Trondheim. It’s being reported as a suicide. 1973: Jens (14) enlists in the Labor Party and establishes a local department of the Workers’ Youth League. 1975: The Vietnam war ends. Jens is 16. 1983: Jens is elected vice president of the Workers’ Youth League. 1985: Jens is elected president of WYL. Prior to the election he supports the WYL’s fight for ending Norway’s membership in NATO. A journalist in the newspaper Aftenposten interviews him about this in the run-up to the election. Shortly after he is elected, Jens turns 180 degrees, and starts fighting for making WYL support NATO membership. 1987: Jens succeeds in convincing WYL about his stance on NATO. In his biography he says: “"I didn't lie to the journalist from Aftenposten, but I still couldn't look him straight in the eye." 1992: Trond Giske, who later became a high-ranking member of the Labor Party, but who is currently shoved out in the cold by the party’s leadership, finds a report at his desk on his first day as leader of the WYL. 1996: Anniken Huitfeldt, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, also finds the report at her desk on her first day as leader of the WYL. 2004: The book “Politisk overvåking av studenter på 1950-tallet” (Political surveillance of students in the 1950s), written by lawyer Asbjørn Fossen, is published. Fossen tells the story about how a group of students at the university, including Thorvald Stoltenberg, started a witch hunt against leftist students and reported about their activities to the American embassy. An official commission that was set up to investigate the Norwegian intelligence community’s surveillance of citizens, The Lund Commission, has later confirmed that the surveillance negatively affected Fossen’s and several others’ careers. 2016: An article in Dagbladet says that the aim of putting the report on the WYL’s new leaders’ desk was “to remind new leaders of history, so it would not repeat itself.” The newspaper interviews Huitfeldt, who explains that “I had been preoccupied with the CIA scandal for a long time. It went so far that a friend told me that "you need to relax, the same bad things won’t happen to you””. 2014: Jens is appointed Secretary-General of NATO. 2022: Jens is appointed leader of Norges Bank, the Norwegian Central Bank. When the Ukraine War breaks out, he instead extends his stay at NATO. Jens Stoltenberg has had a significant influence on Norwegian politics. He has been leader of the Labor Party, and held numerous high-ranking positions in the government, including Prime Minister in 2000-2001 and 2005-2013. Summary and conclusion If you familiarize yourself with CIA methods and read the timeline above, I will consider it rather unwise if you dismiss Seymour Hersh’s article on the basis that it says that American intelligence community trusted Jens Stoltenberg “completely since the Vietnam war” and that Jens only was 16 years at that time. Considering that Jens evidently had political ambitions already as a 14-year old kid, and that his father Torvald seems to have started his cooperation with representatives of the intelligence service at the American embassy already while he was a young student it seems quite plausible that Hersh’ source was speaking the truth. Having learned these facts, you should also view the rest of the arguments put forward by Alexander and the other critics of Hersh’ article with a great deal of skepticism. They haven’t done their due diligence, and now it’s them that we cannot trust. In this note I have shown how Jens Stoltenberg THE STRAWMAN has betrayed the critics of Seymour Hersh. I suggest that they go out, do their civic duty as writers and try to investigate if Jens Stoltenberg THE POLITICIAN has betrayed his fellow countrymen. If they care about their reputation that would be the only honorable thing to do. *** Afterword: In cases of tyranny, corruption and incompetence within government, no other group in society is more valuable than investigative writers. I salute people like Seymour Hersh, @schellenberger, @mtaibbi and our own @BjornJahr for playing a major role in seeking and speaking truth in a time when media constantly fails to do its duty. I hope they inspire young writers who are sick and tired of wandering through this fog of lies, the smearing and the bundle of cowardly tricks that meet us every time we open a newsletter or read comments on social media. The Norwegian journalist and author Bjørn Wormdal has written several books on the cooperation between Norwegian and American intelligence organizations. When Dagbladet interviewed him about his recent book “The Spy War – the secret spying co-operation between Norway and the US” he explained that representatives of the Norwegian intelligence authorities threatened him and tried to steer the content of the book. I haven’t read the book but would be interested to hear what those who have say about it. Lastly – we should keep in mind that people like Hersh and Wormdal must fight a significant challenge which best can be described as an asymmetry of information. Their investigations are of such a nature that they often run into things that governments want to keep secret, not necessarily due to our safety, but also because revealing information sometimes will be harmful to politicians’ and others’ careers. At the same time, as we have seen with the Twitter files scandal, they work actively to limit the writers’ freedom. While doing this they have all sorts of tools that can be used to surveille and cause problems for the writers. This asymmetry represents a major challenge for our democracy. If you understand and honor this fact, you also understand that you should be careful with how you go about when you comment on those who dedicate themselves to investigating the people who are supposed to represent us. Principle No. 1 is to check facts thoroughly and present them in a clear and understandable manner. If you found this note interesting, the algorithms and I would appreciate it if you click like and follow me. *** I have included some of the sources to this note below, including the article by Hersh, and Alexander’s comment. The sources are in English and Norwegian.

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now

Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

On the surface Seymour Hersh's story looks passable, but as you dig deeper it has more holes than the Nord Stream pipeline.

Dagbladet

Jens om Dagbladets KGB-avsløring: - Mange har levd med det de opplevde hele livet

Skandalen preget en hel AUF-generasjon, forteller Jens Stoltenberg.

Jens om Dagbladets KGB-avsløring: – Mange har levd med det de opplevde hele livet | bilindustrien

Der internasjonale nettverk skapes

Hva har NATOs nye sjef Jens Stoltenberg og EUs nye utenrikssjef Federica Mogherini felles?

NATO-Jens pynter på historien til AUF-Jens

I 1985 var målet for AUF-lederen Jens Stoltenberg å melde Norge ut av NATO. I dag sier NATOs generalsekretær at han på den tiden følte seg try...

Heksejakt på Studentersamfundet

Thorvald Stoltenberg sto sentralt i prosesser mot studenter på 50-tallet, hevdes det i ny bok.

Dagbladet

- Forsøkt kneblet

Journalist Bård Wormdal (64) retter fokuset mot Norges hemmelige etterretningsarbeid i ny bok. Det skal ha fått E-tjenesten til å reagere.

Everything scales in layers. This includes civilization. The foundation for every civilization is the people's belief system. This is the first layer. Money and the monetary syatem is the next layer - I call it civilizations' cornerstone. If you fuck up these two basic layers you fuck up every layer that has been built on top of them.

Who's pockets should the next war be paid from? A long time ago wars were financed by the ruling class. Conscription was rare, as the wars were mainly fought by professional armies. Their capacity for waging war would be limited by investors' willingness to let the kings and emperors borrow money. Looting the enemy was posted as collateral. In this way the war could partly be financed by the people living in the country that lost. This system could made it profitable for the super wealthy to profit from financing both sides of a war. The downside was that it caused a high frequency of conflicts. The upside was that the impact on the rulers' subjects were relatively limited. This gameplay changed significantly when Sweden established the world's first central bank in 1668. As I show in the #Fraudcoinbook, central banking and governments' deficit spending made it possible for the kings and emperors to force their costs upon their own people by inflating the country's currency. This sparked a wave of bloody and seemingly endless wars. The combination of central bank-coordinated lending to the governments and use of paper money meant that the rulers could use inflation to direct the general public's production capacity towards the waging of war. The money-printing became a super-efficient wealth and extraction device, that turned the citizens into batteries that made the kings' war machines run non-stop for years and years. The nation states' ability to wage war would in practice only be limited by the rate of the depreciation of the warring countries' currencies. If the country borrowed to heavily with the support of a central bank monetizing the debt, the currency would plummet, with runaway domestic price inflation and a swift breakdown of the country's economy. And that would soon force a state into making peace with its enemies. A period of almost 150 years of inflation-fuelled wars culminated with Napoleon's fall in 1813. The following 101 years would be a time of relative peace, when governments temporarily allowed themselves to be restrained by a hard currency regime such as the gold standard. This period of low monetary inflation and a significant economic prosperity came to an end in 1914. When World War I broke out the governments denied people their right to redeem gold for paper bills. Five years of the bloodiest inflation-financed war that had ever been faught until then followed. Soon after the same thing happened in the second world war. It's no coincidence that the US were on the winning side of WW I and II. The rising economic power managed to finance its participation in these wars with limited borrowing and without crushing its dollar. After WWII the dollar's reserve currency status helped the superpower to fight a seemingly endless number of wars using inflation of its money supply as means of finance. Having the ability to export its inflation instead of causing domestic prices to run amok was an asset of immense value for its growing military-industrial complex. This made it possible to shift at least some of the economic burden of money-printing from its countrymen and over to people in other countries. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US made a deal with China: Accept our dollars as payment for goods that you produce, buy our treasuries (US public debt) and let's shove Russia out in the cold. China happily obliged, and this love affair continued up until the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2020-2022. However, this period of romance between east and west has now effectively ended. Today US neocons refer to China as its enemy number one, and the conflict about Taiwan has been identified as a potential cathalyst for a new large war. In parallell the neocons who are most influential in the Biden administration also dream about overthrowing Putin and installing a puppet leader in Russia. The war in Ukraine can potentially function as a springboard for a war between Russia and a US-led NATO and EU alliance. The obstacle to the neocons' dreams of big wars is partly financial. Runaway federal deficits, a record-high public debt and decreasing opportunities to export newly printed dollars imply that an attempt to finance war with inflation can crash the USD, potentially triggering hyperinflation for the American people and a destruction of the US economy. Limited financial capacity from a domestic perspective doesn't seem to put any breaks on the neocons' ambitions. They probably hope to dip their hands into other countries' pockets. However, the number of friends of the American empire is dwindling fast, forcing them to talking their old and new allies in Europe to chip in. The EU is no obvious candidate. Large public deficits, economic stagnation for 15 years and a Germany which finds itself in an economic depression, cannot fight from a position of strength. The UK is in no better condition. High and lasting price inflation all over Europe doesn't improve the situation. Rampant deindustrialization of the West combined with the fact that the NATO countries have admitted that they were running out of conventional ammunition and had to send clusterbombs instead to Ukraine make the dreaming of new wars look downright silly. In this age of hubris I only find it natural if the plate-licking aggressors in Washington have set their eyes on the Norwegian people's saving account. The oilproducing country has been a US vasall state since WWII and its government has amassed a 1.4 trillion USD sovereign wealth fund. The fund is supposed to cover the states' future pension obligations. In the current political climate it can instead become a liability. If the US wants to wage wars in the near future, I believe the superpower will pull every string necessary to make the Norwegian government pay "its fair share". Either the neocons will force it to empty its pockets, or to make Norwegian politicians to wring more kroner out of the taxpayers' pockets. The neocons will probably turn a blind eye to the fact that Norwegian households have more debt than they have in any others countries, and that raising taxes will trigger a wave of defaults. Summary and conclusion: The neocons in Washington want to use wars to continue the US hegemony. They cannot finance these wars with inflation, and has a limited number of rich "friends". The Americans might be tempted to loot the Norwegian pension fund. The only problem is that more money helps very little when you have deindustrialized your country by turning it into an exporter of money. The US is in no position to wage large wars. It cannot finance them and it doesn't have the production capacity to turn money-printing or loot into guns and ammunitions. But the neocons will try, that's for sure. Because it's the only game they know.

Are you also constantly seeking out podcast episodes that have something valuable that you can learn from? This episode with @Michael Saylor on The RO Show blew my mind. I learned a ton about Bitcoin and I think it can be a perfect combined introduction and deepdive for most people. Enjoy, and tell me what you think afterwards.

Spotify

Billionaire Bitcoiner, Michael Saylor, Talks Money, Energy, Bitcoin! Ep.76

The RO Show · Episode

Do harm to do good is a deeply flawed concept