“I’m too invested in this gladiator match right now to be concerned with what my rights are” 💯 Distract the people with monetary policy that keeps them laboring ever harder for a dollar that is worth ever less, with aggressively marketed desires that create need, with sports and games that distract them from politics, and with religion which anesthetizes any desire to improve humanity beyond the useless acts of praying and feeling

The Romans conquered the Middle East to “civilize the barbarians” The British conquered the world to “spread Christianity” The Nazis conquered Europe to “spread German ethnicity” The Americans conquered the world to “spread democracy” We conquer for money and resources. If you think you’re on the moral side of imperialism, think again.

Dogmatic market worship and government hatred are symptoms of a person who recognizes that a problem is systemic, but who accepts the explanations give to him by the problem’s architects who benefit from the man’s complicity. A successful parasite convinces the host that it should be there.

“The Distribution of wealth … is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and on whatever terms. Further, in the social state, in every state except total solitude, any disposal whatever of them can only take place by the consent of society, or rather of those who dispose of its active force [i.e. government]. Even what a person has produced by his individual toil, unaided by any one, he cannot keep, unless by the permission of society. Not only can society take it from him, but individuals could and would take it from him, if society only remained passive; if it did not either interfere en masse, or employ and pay people [i.e. police] for the purpose of preventing him from being disturbed in the possession. The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society. The rules by which it is determined are what the opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might still be more different, if mankind so chose.” JS Mill. Principles of Political Economy

The United States is not a democratic society. It is not intended to be. It’s a polyarchy. Power resides in the hands of the wealth of the nation. https://magisterwernegren.com/2017/01/27/the-minority-of-the-opulent/

Some property rights began with work. Some property rights began with a theft from the commons. It’s important that we distinguish between the two. To advocate indiscriminately for property rights above natural rights doesn’t just defend the former type; it defends the property of those who have exploited the poor and weak.

Air is a resource commons. Water is a resource commons. Trees, land, fish, salt, oil….used to be resource commons. When corporations learn how to say “this is mine” and can create legal protections so they can sell public resources back to the public, they will.

A more immediate risk than CBDC’s is the disappearance of 100’s, or of the forced impracticality or illegality of cash payments.

The post-depression push for populations to leave their farms and move into cities was sold to America as “modernization.” It served to increase the pool of cheap labor for industry, and it opened up farm lands to be purchased by the large farming consortiums. And now the majority of seed, grain, poultry, soy, and beef is controlled by a few businesses, while the family farms have been lost.

Banks loaning money into existence incentivizes people to borrow for the purchase of real assets (real estate). They have amplified their market by reducing property taxes to leave more rents on the table to repay interest, by making mortgage interest tax deductible, and by allowing buildings and repairs to be depreciated over time. All of these are new developments, and all of these were designed into law by the finance industry to shift payments from the public tax base to banking profits. Bitcoin demonetizes real estate

Techy folks: Can I run a Tor Bridge on a Mac?

Coinbase gets sued for selling billions in unregistered securities. My friend went to jail for trading thousands in Bitcoin P2P. 🐿That’s the power of corporations and a Judicial System that was co-opted by monied interests to protect their ability to extract from the people.

💥💥I’m writing a massive check to the IRS today.💥💥 Don’t tell me that I’m not buying my fair share of bombs and rockets to kill people that I don’t know in other countries so that US corporations can take their resources under the magnanimous promise of “democracy.”

Read Michael Hudson.

There is no nation. There is collective myth.

Neither the militarized state capitalism of the United States nor a centralized welfare state is an adequate goal for us.  The systems perpetuate material, cultural, and environmental deficits.  Technological innovation...Bitcoin, Tor, Nostr... provide platforms for rational social order and the free association of people.  They empower the laboring masses, push the commercial and financial institutions toward democratic control, and disable the ideology of possessive individualism, predatory capital accumulation, and exploitation by external authorities. These institutions are inhuman.

We don’t need virtual reality to alter our perceptions. People already see the world in the way that confirms their biases and holds up their chosen myths. Everybody’s world is different… and everybody’s is an illusion.

Stories of extreme upward mobility serve to propagandize the myth that the American Dream is commonplace. This serves the elite, who want you to believe that you to can have a yacht. The belief that “hard work is all you need” will keep you working into the grave.

Most of you have more in common with the homeless man than you do with the billionaire, yet the billionaire dances and smiles and convinces you of your brotherhood. The middle class and the poor are wage earners, debt peons, receive little to no rents, own little real property, and are beholden to the finance, insurance, and real estate monopolies. The poor are not your enemies. The rentier that siphon unearned income from a system to which they bring no productive value, are your enemies.

Distain for the homeless and the destitute is the same distain that the billionaire class have for you. To blame others’ misfortunes on their shortcomings is to not understand that the system is designed to shift wealth from the middle and lower classes into the pockets of the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors. Blame the poor for their troubles, and you are complicit with the financial system that will eventually impoverish you in the same way.