Math should be slave, not pope
I've given up arguing with "conservatives" on educational topics. They're stuck in a self-defeating war between old abstractions and new abstractions. They want students to memorize Cicero and Locke. They want students to memorize Euclid and Descartes.

This is the wrong argument. Students shouldn't be memorizing ANY abstract theories, new or old. Students should be learning how to USE math and politics, and at the same time learning how enemies MISUSE math and politics.

Bitcoin shit provides a perfect illustration of both at once.

Ethereum is a wildly obvious trick, a version of the old Spanish Prisoner swindle. You see the potential of a huge jackpot. The swindler runs you through a complicated set of hoops, involving a fake stageplay of good and evil elements. You're helping to defend the good side, but you know that you're also slightly outside the law, so you aren't going to call the cops. You pay and receive mysterious amounts to help the good side win. What you DON'T notice is that every transaction comes with a cost, and you don't get the cost back in the end.

Last week's "constitution" dodge is an ideal example of the sloshing and the hidden cost. Thousands of people contributed about $200 each, expecting to get the money back if the bid failed. Well, they can get the money back, but the 'gas fee' on each side of the transaction ranges from $75 to $100, arbitrarily changing all the time. The lucky ones might get $50 back; most will end up with nothing.

Aside from the swindle aspect, why in the fuck would anyone agree to ANY transaction that costs the same as the transaction? Non-crypto transactions typically cost about 3%, not an arbitrary huge amount.

It's clear that MATH IS POPE for these people. They don't know how math really works because they haven't used it yet for any real purposes like cooking or carpentry or sewing or sales clerking. They just know that math is infallible, and even worse the math embodied in the crypto is OFFICIALLY INFALLIBLE. You aren't allowed to read the scriptures and make your own interpretation. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

= = = = =

The potential of computerized cheating was visible from the start. Sheldon Dansiger, writing in 1967, tried to remind programmers and trainers of the danger:

Before computers became part of the American way of life, there were countless occurrences of embezzlements and frauds done by hand. With the computer mystique now present, there is a strong indication that a day will come in the not-too-distant future when a new, sophisticated style of stealing will begin coming to light. What can we do about it?

Dansiger was a real auditor who had seen the tricks of embezzlers, and could also see how to computerize each of the tricks.

If students were learning math as a NATURAL TOOL of selling and buying and clerking, math would not be a mystique.

= = = = =

Another DAO swindle would fail if people had learned the important parts of history.

Swindlers have organized a "new city" based on DAO code, and they've already crowdfunded a 40 acre piece of land in Wyoming. The land is barren and useless, just right for a utopian cult with no skills and no chance of success.

History is full of utopian projects. The cultists think they're blazing new trails in governance and religion and economics. In reality they're just losing their savings and wasting part of their life. The organizer always absconds with all of the money.

The Topolobampo Colony is a perfect example. Kansas Populists, persuaded that they were beating the banks and inventing a new way of life, flocked to Albert Owen's colony in a distant part of Mexico. Nothing happened. Owen got rich.

School history could help people to see this type of shit if it focused on scams and bubbles and utopias instead of battles and generals and "constitutions".

= = = = =

Bitcoin is also venturing into "art", without inventing or creating anything at all.

NFTs are collages of real art. I only see one attempt at "creating" art. This NFT mixes the real photos in a pattern that was common in the earliest era of digital graphics around 1962: repetitive sinusoidal doodles. It doesn't even use the power of modern computers, let alone the imagination of a real artist.

= = = = =

When math is taught as a NATURAL TOOL in the middle of real work, you can't be fooled by cheaters. When you're sewing or cooking or soldering, you use ANALOG measuring tools like cups and tapes and voltmeters. You constantly learn that measurement is ALWAYS APPROXIMATE, and you learn that the results of proportions and formulas can only be applied APPROXIMATELY.

Reality itself is infallible. Following math will lead you to cook inedible glop or sew a misfitted shirt or solder a fuse-blowing short. You need to be guided by reality at all times, keeping math down in the role of occasional servant.

Labels: Experiential education, MMT, Real World Math

  ¶ 10:44 PM

  Speaking of Thiel and Shannon....
Speaking of Thiel questions, and things I didn't know, here's a fine example.

Economist Matt Stoller narrates how we lost our industry and our country to China, leaving only the rich alive.

It was a two-sided pincer movement as always. I didn't know about the other side.

The obvious side was the Friedman twins, Milton and Thomas. Share Value is the universe. Products and factories and workers must be exterminated.

The official opposition was the Consumer Rights Movement, which said that low prices are the only thing in the universe. How do you get low prices? China.

I wasn't aware of this movement, but it fits the pattern. Deepstate always runs "two" "opposites". One side pleased the rich fuckheads, the other side pleased the consumers. BOTH AGREED that production should stop. BOTH AGREED that SKILL is irrelevant. BOTH AGREED that humans have no purpose except enriching the rich.

The consumer pincer evolved into MMT and the web's fake 'everything for free'. These movements tell us that we shouldn't have to pay for anything, which REALLY means that we're worthless and disposable. When you're not a source of money for business, you're NOT NEEDED by business.

Thanks, Stoller! You told me something I truly didn't know, and it's a non-trivial consequential piece of information.

Incidentally, I paid for value by subscribing to Stoller's Substack. It doesn't look especially interesting, but one Shannon fact is worth plenty. Also, Substack itself has SO FAR avoided censoring unfashionable opinions, which makes it worth supporting FOR NOW.

Also incidentally: Before the web, dissidents communicated through obscure newsletters, generally mimeographed or Varityped. Substack seems to recognize this historical resonance. Each of its writers has a newsletter, not a blog or a webzine.

Labels: Aberree, MMT, NOW I SEE, Shared Lie, skill-estate

  ¶ 6:13 AM

  Sequence of closure
Here's a half-baked or maybe milli-baked thought.

Since 1946, Deepstate first closed down the physical channels to information and then closed down the mental channels to information.

Before the Web, acquiring information took physical work, skills and knowledge. You had to own a shortwave radio, or run your own experiments, or take care of your own body, or search on foot through the old stacks of a library, or find and subscribe to obscure newsletters.

Those activities were physically difficult and sometimes expensive, but they were AVAILABLE AND LEGAL. Shortwave receivers were common, and stations were all over the world. You could buy all sorts of chemicals and medications at the hardware store or pharmacy. The libraries were open to anyone. Obscure newsletters were eager to gain new customers.

The physical channels are already closed, and the "replacement" virtual channels are starting to close as well. The shortwave band is abandoned. All chemicals are forbidden by EPA. All medicines are forbidden by FDA. All methods of maintaining health and immunity are LETHALLY forbidden by CDC. Google's online library is removing entire classes of info and maps. Newsletters are published via Facebook, which is shutting them down.

Result: First we lost the SKILLS of acquiring and distributing info physically, and then we lost the CHANNELS for acquiring info without skills.

Parallel to the central/decentral timeline for media described here.

Parallel to Deepstate's ruination of industry. First we offshored the skills to China, and now we're closing down access to the remote skills in China.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, endless hell, MMT, skill-estate

  ¶ 8:35 PM

  McAfee dead
Apparently he committed "suicide" in prison.

I wish I could work up sympathy, but I can't. He didn't NEED to be in jail. He was rich. He could afford to pay taxes. He chose to evade taxes for the joy of cheating. Not a martyr, just a fool.

He was a poetic spokesman for HARDASS realism, but he was also a salesman for Bitcoin, an unrealistic fraud.

= = = = =

Reprint from a few months ago:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Truth is just an advertising gimmick.

Well, not exactly and not entirely. But it's a fairly consistent pattern in political circles.

What does truth advertise? Fake monetary reforms.

In the 1880s, the prairie populists under Jennings Bryan were telling the HARDASS truth about corporations and banks. Their solution was more debt plus Bimetallism, now forgotten. Bimetallism was a variable mix of gold and silver that would remove gold from its position as the one solid measuring baseline. Debt plus bimetallism would give MORE power to the banks, not less.

Now many (NOT ALL!) of the people who are telling the truth about economic crimes and "global warming" crimes and "virus" crimes are also selling Bitcoin. Bitcoin is another scheme to remove solid baselines from money. Bitcoin goes vastly farther than bimetallism, removing money from money. Bitcoin is an abstraction that can't be spent, can't be earned, can't be relied on for stability, and can't be reliably stored. It violates every single rule for currency.

Hardass realists, from McAfee to Assange to AIER, are Bitcoin salesmen.

This contradiction doesn't fit the usual Sucker Filter pattern. The usual scammer is looking for suckers who are unmoored from reality, who will believe any sort of nonsense if it's presented convincingly. The sucker category here is based on social position, not truth detection. In a time of total lies, people who see the truth about anything at all are dissidents, constantly mocked and shunned and punished. They need reassurance and respect. The scammer creates respect by agreeing with the sucker on most of reality, and then uses the respect to sell one obviously unreal product.

In between the 1880s Bryan types and the 2020s McAfee types, there were two giant exceptions to the rule. Harding and FDR. Both of them told the hard truth about economics, and used the truth to create GENUINE REFORMS that dethroned the bankers and restored human skill and human culture.

How do we break out of the Bryan/McAfee side of this cycle and get back to the Harding/FDR side?

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: infinite STUPID, MMT, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 1:56 PM

  Truth is just an advertising gimmick
Well, not exactly and not entirely. But it's a fairly consistent pattern in political circles.

What does truth advertise? Fake monetary reforms.

In the 1880s, the prairie populists under Jennings Bryan were telling the HARDASS truth about corporations and banks. Their solution was more debt plus Bimetallism, now forgotten. Bimetallism was a variable mix of gold and silver that would remove gold from its position as the one solid measuring baseline. Debt plus bimetallism would give MORE power to the banks, not less.

Now many (NOT ALL!) of the people who are telling the truth about economic crimes and "global warming" crimes and "virus" crimes are also selling Bitcoin. Bitcoin is another scheme to remove solid baselines from money. Bitcoin goes vastly farther than bimetallism, removing money from money. Bitcoin is an abstraction that can't be spent, can't be earned, can't be relied on for stability, and can't be reliably stored. It violates every single rule for currency.

Hardass realists, from McAfee to Assange to AIER, are Bitcoin salesmen.

This contradiction doesn't fit the usual Sucker Filter pattern. The usual scammer is looking for suckers who are unmoored from reality, who will believe any sort of nonsense if it's presented convincingly. The sucker category here is based on social position, not truth detection. In a time of total lies, people who see the truth about anything at all are dissidents, constantly mocked and shunned and punished. They need reassurance and respect. The scammer creates respect by agreeing with the sucker on most of reality, and then uses the respect to sell one obviously unreal product.

In between the 1880s Bryan types and the 2020s McAfee types, there were two giant exceptions to the rule. Harding and FDR. Both of them told the hard truth about economics, and used the truth to create GENUINE REFORMS that dethroned the bankers and restored human skill and human culture.

How do we break out of the Bryan/McAfee side of this cycle and get back to the Harding/FDR side?

Labels: Metrology, MMT, skill-estate, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 11:28 PM

  Misses one point, gets the other
An overlong article in Spiked reviews Thomas Frank's latest book on real Populism. It sounds like Frank mostly gets it, but misses one key point. Unlike other "leftist" authors, Frank realizes that Trump is a faker, but he makes the wrong comparison.

I've been studying and writing about real Populism for 12 years, and I know a few things. One of the things I know is that Jennings Bryan was a faker in the same way as Trump.

= = = = = START REPRINT:


Some articles are comparing 1919 with 2019 in terms of globalism vs populism. It's a weak comparison.

One important point is missing: The populists of 1890-1920 were fakers. Jennings Bryan and his equivalents in the prairies diagnosed the problems of finance-centered capitalism correctly, but offered a prescription that would INCREASE the power of banks. They promised easier borrowing and looser money. They were pluponents, not opponents.

The tools and measurements are different today. Bimetallism no longer makes sense because we abandoned ALL metals in 1971. ZIRP and QE were unthinkable in 1920. But the direction is the same.

Real populists today are NOT fakers. The non-Soros side of the world is getting out of debt and returning to the gold standard.

Among the populists in Sorosia, there's one subtle difference that I didn't notice when I was discussing this a couple years ago.

Jennings Bryan's campaign diagnosed the problems correctly and prescribed wrong. Voters who truly understood the situation had enough info to make a proper decision.

Trump's campaign rhetoric diagnosed the problems correctly AND prescribed correctly. His campaign advocated tighter money, higher interest, and less emphasis on the Dow.

He switched to pluponent AFTER he took office. His real base in NYC knew all along that he would serve them, because he's been serving them for 40 years. They kept quiet for strategic reasons.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Frank gets FDR right. FDR was the only TRUE Populist. Instead of shutting down the productive economy and bailing out the banks, he shut down the banks and bailed out the productive economy.

= = = = =

Sept 23 update: In a later discussion at Spiked, Frank deals with McCarthyISM, recognizing correctly that the ISM was just another way for the aristocrats to call populists crazy. He recognizes that the same thing is happening with TrumpISM. But again he misses the deeper connection by treating both McCarthy and Trump as spontaneous expressions of populism. In fact both are tools created and operated BY the aristocrats, and more specifically both were created and operated by the exact SAME aristocrat. Roy Cohn. This is an openly known fact in both cases, not a secret. Roy Cohn became McCarthy's "boyfriend" and used sex and blackmail to push him into drunken excesses that served Deepstate's ends. We don't know how Cohn created Trump; it appears that Trump was more of an active participant and star student, not a drunk rape victim. Nevertheless, both are the same machine operated by the same people for the same purpose.

Why does Frank miss these connections when he sees everything else with crystal clarity? Maybe it's just personality and life experience. Frank seems to be a likable optimistic extrovert who didn't spend his youth fending off bullies and beatings. He hasn't been in prison, wasn't forced to learn about intractably evil people, and didn't acquire mental immunity.

In this second piece Frank makes one HUGE point that is UNQUESTIONABLY CRUCIAL AND VALID. NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER LISTEN TO AN EXPERT. ALL EXPERTS ARE TYRANTS WHO SERVE SATAN.

Labels: Jail mode, MMT, Pluponents, skill-estate

  ¶ 2:58 AM

  Subtle difference
Some articles are comparing 1919 with 2019 in terms of globalism vs populism. It's a weak comparison.

One important point is missing: The populists of 1890-1920 were fakers. Jennings Bryan and his equivalents in the prairies diagnosed the problems of finance-centered capitalism correctly, but offered a prescription that would INCREASE the power of banks. They promised easier borrowing and looser money. They were pluponents, not opponents.

The tools and measurements are different today. Bimetallism no longer makes sense because we abandoned ALL metals in 1971. ZIRP and QE were unthinkable in 1920. But the direction is the same.

Real populists today are NOT fakers. The non-Soros side of the world is getting out of debt and returning to the gold standard.

Among the populists in Sorosia, there's one subtle difference that I didn't notice when I was discussing this a couple years ago.

Jennings Bryan's campaign diagnosed the problems correctly and prescribed wrong. Voters who truly understood the situation had enough info to make a proper decision.

Trump's campaign rhetoric diagnosed the problems correctly AND prescribed correctly. His campaign advocated tighter money, higher interest, and less emphasis on the Dow.

He switched to pluponent AFTER he took office. His real base in NYC knew all along that he would serve them, because he's been serving them for 40 years. They kept quiet for strategic reasons.

Later footnote: Bryan's Pied Piper role is verified. His job was to gather up the dissidents and lead them off the cliff.

Labels: MMT, Pluponents

  ¶ 7:06 AM

  Observations from real experts
Continuing this week's modularity theme....

Some observations on bitcoin from an econ blogger who has contact with real bankers. The bankers are telling him:

1 bearer style assets are user hostile and wont catch on
2 conflating settlement and payments is bad news
3 final settlement not required for payments
4 hard to financialize something which resists regulation

= = = = =

1 and 4 are sort of conditional. It's possible though unlikely that bitcoin will become more user-friendly. Bitcoin resists regulation because bitcoin is NSA, not because bitcoin is "decentralized". NSA wants to avoid the usual written regulations so it can use bitcoin for tyranny and blackmail.

2 and 3 are intrinsic to the whole process of banking and business. These are not usually discussed in the context of bitcoin, and I hadn't thought about them before.

Bitcoin is incurably and intractably GLOBAL. Every transaction requires automatic settlement, and nominal permission, by everyone on the whole chain.

Real banking, like all real business, is always modular and bilateral, a single wire connecting buyer and seller in a trust relationship. The buyer who writes a check trusts that the bank will sooner or later transfer funds to the seller's account, and the seller trusts the bank to give him the money. Neither party needs to know how and when the bank handles the intermediate steps of the transfer.

In earlier centuries, and even now in unconventional banking like scrip and hawala, the settlement happened rarely and bilaterally. Each bank was fully modular. Each bank maintained a pile of real money through its normal savings and loan activities with its own customers. Each bank would keep a ledger page of its credits and debits to each of the other banks. Once a year, Bank 1 and Bank 2 would transfer their net result in gold to null out the differential. Bank 1 and Bank 3 would transfer their pairwise net result, and so on. In an active system those net differences tend to be small because there are lots of checks going both ways between each pair of banks. Each bank's customers didn't know about the transfers and didn't need to know.

Labels: MMT, Patient things, Real World Math, scrip

  ¶ 7:28 AM

  Real value ledgers
The blockchain fad is a bizarre symptom of Deepstate-induced craziness. First let's ignore the simple and obvious facts that (1) Bitcoin's founder openly proclaimed his CIA connections (2) Bitcoin is perfectly centralized, running all transactions through NSA. Even without those blazingly obvious links, the idea is still crazy and harmful.

As an old pen-and-ink bookkeeper, I have a feel for how ledgers are supposed to work. Ledgers aren't supposed to be accessible and changeable by everyone in the world. Ledgers are supposed to be an accurate and unchanging record of the Debits and Credits, the outputs and inputs, of ONE business or organization or individual.

Modularity is IMPERATIVE and BASIC to the functioning of an organism, and thus to the ledger that records the functioning.

Without modularity, without borders and layers and hierarchy, you can't even define inputs and outputs so you can't have a ledger. You can't have any sort of schematic or equation or model unless you have a boundary.

= = = = =

This article in a 'new econ' website invokes the double-entry ledger to explain fractional reserve fake currency creation.

The commons is a conscious implementation of reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruists, whether human or ape, reward those who cooperate with others and punish those who defect. A commons works the same way. A resource such as a lake or a field, or a monetary system, is understood as a shared asset.

If one’s business activities hurt any other market participant, they undermine the integrity of the marketplace itself. For those entranced by the myth of capitalism, this can be hard to grasp. They’re still stuck thinking of the economy as a two-column ledger, where every credit is someone’s else’s debit. This zero-sum mentality is an artifact of monopoly central currency. If money has to be borrowed into existence from a single, private treasury and paid back with interest, then this sad, competitive, scarcity model makes sense. I need to pay back more than I borrowed, so I need to get that extra money from someone else. That’s the very premise of zero-sum. But that’s not how an economy has to work.

Zero-sum misses the point entirely. The crucial difference is where the CRedit comes from.

Value is an increase in order. Value is an increase in life and beauty.

In the most basic agricultural forms of commerce, the CRedit is CReated by plants, who turn sunlight and water into infinitely ordered life, and secondarily by animals who eat the plants and transform the order into a more condensed order.

CR represents an increase in order.

Within the boundaries of the ledger, CR is measuring the number of currency units paid to the farmer or miner or oil driller or supplier, but it directly represents an increase in order, an increase in life.

DR is also an increase in order.

The business processes the raw input, using human labor and machinery, and turns it into a more complexly ordered object, or makes it more convenient to use, or more attractive to buy, or more STORABLE. Storage is probably the most important increase in order.

DR in the ledger measures currency units coming into the business from the customer who gains convenience or storability.

= = = = =

I've often cited Steinbeck's analogy: Real value business brings in salmon, puts it in cans with human and machine labor, and sells it. Capitalists HATE human and machine labor. They would rather can salmon with ledgers, and now they've finally managed to do it.

= = = = =

Using salmon, Polistra shows how the REAL-VALUE ledger measures the increase in order on both sides of a REAL-VALUE business.

On the CR side, Nature increases order by growing a salmon. The fisherman brings in a salmon, adding a unit of life-order to the business. The ledger represents this CRedit as money going back to the fisherman.



On the DR side, the business increases order by filleting the salmon and placing it in cans, then selling it to customers. Canning makes the salmon more convenient for ordinary people without butchering skills, and it makes the salmon STORABLE. The ledger represents this increase in order by showing the money flowing from customers to the business.



A business wants to have input money exceeding output money. Profit means that the business is creating more order than it consumes from its suppliers. In other words, the business is alive. And this accumulation of increased value is where the money supply really increases. The Soviet system recognized this basic fact by using VAT to determine when the national money supply would increase.

= = = = =

From this viewpoint we can see how debt is actually a LOSS of real value. When a business rents money from a bank, the incoming money was NOT generated by nature or labor. It was counterfeited by the bank. The business gets nothing but an obligation to repay the money, which limits the freedom of the business. The interest paid to the bank must be sucked out of the real value accumulated by the business.

Modern economics turns the whole picture upside down by treating the sucked-out interest as the "creation" "of" "value".

Labels: MMT, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, Real World Math, storage

  ¶ 10:28 AM

  Superfiat
I've pointed out before that ... the Populists of the 1890s were good diagnosers but terrible prescribers. They analyzed the problems of financialism and globalism beautifully, but their proposed solution was always a weakening of the gold standard. Exactly backwards. What happened when Nixon finally killed the gold standard? Final victory for the bankers and globalists. For some reason the usual Populist Pill was Bimetallism, which mixed 15 parts silver and 1 part gold into a magic token that would destroy all bankers.


It's not clear from available documents whether influencers like Jennings Bryan were Agents Provocateurs or just poor economists. In fairness, they didn't have a lot of experimental data on the effects of breaking gold. Bubbles were common during pure gold periods. Gold doesn't prevent bubbles. Only regulation prevents bubbles. Gold DOES discourage infinite creation of fake value. Those populists couldn't have imagined monstrosities like QE and MMT, but they should have remembered Madman Lincoln's inflation, and the inflation in the first decades after 1776.

Modern bad prescribers don't have that excuse. They are living inside an era of infinite QE and MMT. We can see clearly that true nationalists like Russia and Persia are moving back to gold and savings as fast as they can, while globalists are spinning out of orbit toward infinite debt and total abstraction.

Nevertheless, the "independents" continue to prescribe Bitcoin, the modern magic token that will destroy all bankers by giving total control to Deepstate.

Via ZH, a perfect parallel. The author claims that nationalism and Bitcoin go together, just as nationalism and bimetallism supposedly went together. The author sets up two alternatives: Central bank fiat vs Bitcoin. He doesn't even mention the other end of the scale. Bitcoin is super-fiat, not anti-fiat. Gold is anti-fiat.

Labels: MMT, Pluponents

  ¶ 1:01 AM

  Parkinson all the way
A couple weeks ago I said:

Actually the Austrian nationalist party would have done better to simply disband after Kurz adopted their platform and started controlling the border. Mission accomplished, go home and rest. An organization that keeps running after its purpose is achieved ALWAYS descends into corruption. Parkinson's Law.

Convective thought:

This also applies to individuals and even organs and cells.

I've been saying this forever in the context of crime and Sorosian dysculture:

A man is meant to MAKE things. If he can't MAKE things, he will BREAK things.

This is exactly the same law. Without PURPOSE, a man descends into corruption. Crime, addiction, suicide. Hadn't quite connected it until now.

Within the organism, Nature mostly takes care of the problem. Janitor cells ruthlessly clean out cells that aren't actively participating in the organ's purpose.

The vast majority of "reformers", in prisons and poor neighborhoods and poor countries, totally miss this part of Natural Law. They believe, or pretend to believe, that supplying money WITHOUT VALUE will solve all problems. Dead wrong. It always creates more problems. The welfare only feeds the corruption. In poor neighborhoods, welfare checks are the venture capital for criminal enterprises. In poor countries, Foreign Aid buys mansions and limos for the dictator.

The intellectual leaders of "reform" have no illusions about their purpose. They are intentionally creating new problems which will "justify" more expenditure and power for their organizations. Another Parkinson's Law, probably the most important one.

Labels: Make or break, MMT, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 11:00 PM

  MMT conquers all
DW has a cute feature on the Trabi, with pix from a 25th anniversary meeting of the Trabi club. Most of the description is accurate, with one notable exception.

When you finally received your Trabant, you couldn't drive around as carefree as these guys at the Anklam convention. You had to keep track of how much gas was still in the tank — regular Trabis didn't have a fuel gauge. The only sign that the car was running out of fuel was when the engine started sputtering. That was the driver's cue to find a gas station, and fast.

Not quite. Like the early VW, the Trabi had a two-way valve in the tank. In the normal setting, the fuel came from a couple inches above the bottom. When it started sputtering, you quickly turned the valve to 'Reserve', which opened up an inlet at the bottom. You then had about one gallon left, which would take you 30 or 40 miles. Unless you were way out in the wilderness, you had plenty of time to find a gas station.

= = = = =

In an MMT mood, this leads me to.........

= = = = = START REPRINT:

What happened to free samples in the mail? I used to enjoy getting those little one-use packets of soap or shampoo or aspirin, keeping them as 'reserve tanks'.

A habit inspired by the old pre-1961 VW, which had no fuel gauge. You were supposed to be Krautistically disciplined, filling the tank every 200.00 km on the dot. As a concession to sloppy non-Aryans the Bug had a little lever under the dashboard that gave you an extra 'Reserve Tank' to reach the next Official VW Petrol Station. (Actually there wasn't an extra tank; the lever simply switched from a high inlet pipe to a low inlet pipe so you could use the lowest gallon in the tank.) Needless to say, the device worked exactly once for us disorganized non-Aryans because we not only failed to track each kilometer in the Fahrenlogbuch, we also forgot to set the lever back to the normal high-inlet position after filling up.

Still, I liked the principle and formed the household habit of keeping one 'reserve' for necessaries like soap and toilet paper, in a non-obvious location so I won't just unconsciously pick it up and use it. Those samples were ideal for the purpose, and occasionally served their intended purpose of switching me to another brand.

Sometime in the last decade, consumer companies absolutely stopped all free samples, and charities stopped sending those little guilt-inducing free gifts. Those gifts worked: even though I knew the little gadget wasn't really made by the blind crippled orphans at St Sulphura's Home, my old midwestern ethic required me to pay for something received.

Was the loss of samples a result of 9/11? Heimatssicherheitsordnung? Seems like it would have to be a regulation, not just a postal rate hike; higher rates wouldn't cause total cessation.

Google doesn't have an answer to the question, at least with the phrases I can think of.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

It's not surprising that DEUTSCHE Welle no longer understands DEUTSCHE Schwabischkeit. Soros conquers all.

Labels: MMT

  ¶ 11:43 PM

  What happened?
Via twitter,



A 600-page textbook about MMT has sold out.

Sold out? How can that be? Everyone knows that every resource is infinite! That's the whole point of MMT. You can borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow and spend and spend and spend and spend, because you can't possibly run out of VALUE.

But for some mysterious reason, completely outside of your comprehension, the printer was unable to order INFINITE reams of paper, and unable to order INFINITE hours of labor by the pressmen, and unable to order INFINITE space in their storerooms.

You need a new publisher, Mosler! You need an MMT publisher who can instantly create INFINITE paper out of INFINITE trees, and INFINITE ink out of INFINITE petroleum, and INFINITE power for the presses out of INFINITE coal, and INFINITE labor out of INFINITE unpaid slaves, and INFINITE storage space out of INFINITE concrete and steel and asphalt.

That's the MMT world. You believe in the MMT world, but for some reason you were unable to use the INFINITE resources of the MMT world.

What happened?

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy, MMT, storage

  ¶ 11:10 PM

  One dumb, one evocative
Sailer, as always, asks evocative questions.

Is “Belt and Road” plural or singular? More fundamentally, what does “Belt and Road” mean? It always reminds me of the old “Belt and Suspenders” wheese, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny.

How is the Belt and Road tied into the suppression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang (Sinkiang)?

First question is dumb, unless he's being Zennish. Belt means sea connections, road means truck roads and railroads. As I've noted, the GEOGRAPHICAL purpose of the Road is simply to factor the Western Hemisphere out of the world, to Ctrl-Z Columbus.

Second question is the sharpie. Muslim countries are backing away from the Road, mainly because it requires huge DEBT to China if they want to participate. They don't seem to be focusing on China's anti-Muslim pogrom.

Should they be worrying about the Uigurs? It's not necessary. The two things go together. Debts and bets are the NYC way of doing things, and NYC hates Muslims. NYC/DC is killing millions of Muslims in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc; and NYC/DC is suiciding millions of Christians here at home.

China is NYC squared. The Chinese invented banking and gambling, so it's perfectly consistent that they also pogrom Muslims and other Natural Law believers who don't go along with debt and gambling.

This is the part that scares me about the Road, not China's internal pogroms. Connecting is voluntary, but after everyone else is tied, the pressure on outliers will be immense. Will Malaysia or Pakistan be allowed to connect in their own way without debt? Remains to be seen.

Russia may be the crucial variable. The Russian empire forms the heart of the Road. The project can't possibly work without Russia. Up till now, Russia has been on the Natural Law side of the ledger. Its feudal/Soviet tradition works with very little debt, though debt isn't explicitly proscribed. Up till now Putin has carried on the low-debt tradition, but lately he's been making more NYCish noises.

= = = = =

Later: His first question turned out to be evocative after all,

Labels: MMT, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 12:36 AM

  Fucking fucking idiots
The parade of idiots marches on.

Residents of New Jersey's largest city might find themselves showered in cash, as Newark Mayor Ras Baraka says the city will study a pilot program to provide universal basic income (UBI) to all residents whether or not they have a job.

"We believe in Universal Basic Income, especially in a time where studies have shown that families that have a crisis of just $400 in a month may experience a setback that may be difficult even impossible to recover from," said Baraka during last week's State of the City address at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, noting that 1/3 of the city lives in poverty.

No no no no no no no, you fucking fucking fucking fucking idiots idiots idiots idiots.

UBI is just another way to KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL the poor, and you fucking well know it.

Newark used to have REAL PRODUCTIVE USEFUL USEFUL USEFUL JOBS JOBS JOBS for ordinary men, and a lot of hi-tech jobs for engineers as well.

Here's just one tiny sample of one sector of industry, from the ads in a 1957 electronics buyers guide.



And the same was true in other sectors of industry.

Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark. Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.

= = = = =

You want numbers numbers numbers? Okay, here's some data from the 1960 census.

Unemployment: Newark 4.5% vs national 5.1%.

Median income: Newark $7149 vs national $5660.

Distribution:
Newark 10% of pop under $3000 vs national 21%.
Newark 26% over $10000 vs national 15%.

Half the national poor end, twice the national rich end.

[Inflation since then is about 10, so just tack a 0 on those incomes for modern equivs.]

Newark may not have been a pretty place to live, but it was a good place to work.


MEN NEED TO MAKE THINGS. IF MEN ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE THINGS, THEY WILL BREAK THINGS.

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy, Make or break, MMT

  ¶ 2:00 AM

  Toldja so a thousand fucking times
Today Big Banker Bill Gross endorsed MMT.

Two days ago, Big Banker Buffett endorsed MMT.



I've been trying to tell the idiots about this for five fucking years.

Maybe they'll listen now that COOL people are SLAPPING THEM IN THE FACE.

YOU ARE NOT SERVING THE #RESISTANCE. YOU ARE EMPHATICALLY NOT SOCIALISTS. YOU ARE WORKING FOR NSA. YOU ARE SERVING GOLDMAN. YOU ARE SERVING SOROS. YOU ARE SERVING SATAN. YOU ARE MERE TOOLS IN THE BLOODY OMNICIDAL TALONS OF SATAN.

Worst of all, you're working for REPUBLICANS. Just as Obamacare was rebranded Romneycare, MMT is rebranded supply-side economics. MMT = SSE. Both of these magic myths tell you that you have a "right" to get whatever you want from the government without paying taxes. All the wisdom of the ages agrees: if you're not paying directly for a service or product, you're a tool.

Labels: Deadthink, From rights to duties, MMT

  ¶ 12:03 AM

  It's Roy all the way down
Most modern "movements" are Deepstate stings intended to fail. Deepstate runs "both" sides of important issues, intending to produce chaos and destruction.

Roy Cohn was the best puppetmaster with the best record of destroying the sides he penetrated. Joe McCarthy, Birchers, Trump. All designed to make "right" wingers fail. Roy's record is perfect.

Green New Deal is the latest effort. It can't possibly succeed. When it fails, it will force us to adopt MMT to eliminate all real value.

What if earlier movements were also intended to fail, or simply intended to create chaos?

The agitators for "rights" in the 1700s were the same species of demonic alien monster as modern "leftist" activists. Their agenda of "rights" and "equality" was perfect nonsense. All sane people at that time knew that people are different. Sane people also knew that government works best when it runs on the basis of inherent duties, not "rights".

The course of antihuman events ran differently in US and France. Both started with chaos, then the US chaos settled quickly into a system that served NYC bankers, which was undoubtedly the original goal. Later sub-revolutions served to reinforce and extend NYC power. We're still there with Trump and Gaia and MMT all working for NYC. The French setup ran out of control for 20 years while the branches of the revolution engaged in mutual head-chopping. After all the heads had rolled, France settled back into normal neocon imperialism. Still there.

Farther back, the Jesus cult smells a lot like a Roy Cohn setup. Jesus posed as an enemy of the Roman imperialists and the Jewish high priests. His advice to his followers was just as crazy and self-destructive as the "equality" crap of the Endarkenment. His movement failed initially, then persisted underground for a few centuries until it re-emerged as the power vector of the imperial bureaucracy. The Roman branch is still there, still serving and emulating Caligula. (=Soros in modern currency.)

The miracle of the Jesus cult is that later rebellions FROM the cult, like Islam and LDS, genuinely escaped from the original Deepstate motive and returned to Natural Law.

Labels: From rights to duties, MMT

  ¶ 5:42 AM

  Finally some pushback
I'm glad to see ZeroHedge pushing back against the MMT monstrosity. This rancid shit has been growing for 5 years, gaining idiotic cultists, with no publicly visible complaints. ZH tends to hit both sides of most issues, but until now they've only carried the positive side of MMT. When ZH links to a side, people read it.

Labels: MMT

  ¶ 1:49 AM

  More blasphemy
A couple days ago I cited part of the REAL New Deal. It was necessary in 1933 and it would be even more necessary now. Not just metaphorically or 'mutatis mutandis', but pretty much verbatim. We've lost and reversed all the gains and improvements, so we need to start from the same zero point again and fix the same fucking problems again.

Compare with the blasphemous "Green New Deal", which is the EXACT PRECISE DIAMETRIC OPPOSITE of the real New Deal in every way, with one minor exception. I've pulled some points from the official plan.

= = = = =

Dramatically expand existing renewable power sources and deploy new production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources; building a national, energy-efficient, “smart” grid;

The real New Deal dramatically expanded REAL renewable power, namely hydro dams. It's PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to power a country solely with solar and wind. We know for sure that "renewables" will exclude hydro and nuclear up front. We already have a "smart" grid, thanks to the 1999 Enron fraud of securitized power sponsored by Bill Clinton. The "smart" grid cascades a single popped breaker into a widespread outage MUCH faster than the previous "dumb" grid.



Upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety;

EVERY BUILDING, for efficiency, comfort and safety??????? JESUS. This would cost QUADRILLIONS of dollars, even if you could recruit enough contractors to do the work, which is WAY BEYOND PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.



Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries, including by investing in local-scale agriculture in communities across the country;

In other words, eliminate all industry and agriculture. This is the most blasphemous part. The Greenies have already accomplished about 2/3 of this goal, so we can trust them to accomplish the rest.



Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure, and upgrading water infrastructure to ensure universal access to clean water;

Water improvement is feasible. This is the ONLY element of the monstrosity that concords with the REAL New Deal.



Funding massive investment in the drawdown of greenhouse gases;

We're already wasting massive amounts of money on this omnicidal holocaust. More investment means more share value for Goldman and more millions of dead Americans.



Making “green” technology, industry, expertise, products and services a major export of the United States, with the aim of becoming the undisputed international leader in helping other countries transition to completely greenhouse gas neutral economies and bringing about a global Green New Deal.

This is the Green version of neocon imperialism. We're already exporting genocide in the form of weapons and wars and CIA cultural extermination. Sanity is spreading fast in the world, and nobody wants a NEW form of US-exported genocide. With any luck, the rest of the world will get together and bomb us off the planet. They should have done it already, but maybe this new super-turbo-extreme imperialism will finally get it done.



The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall recognize that innovative public and other financing structures are a crucial component ...... the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, PUBLIC VENTURE FUNDS and such other vehicles or structures .... in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.

This is the real purpose and payoff. New forms of financing. New ways for Goldman and JPMorgan to generate infinite debt and kill millions of people. MMT isn't mentioned in the outline, but all of the supporters are MMT psychotics. MMT will hyperexponentially expand the omnicide.

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy, MMT

  ¶ 1:00 AM

  Bitcoin and gypsies and Schiff
I've been noticing a pattern lately. People who work with INTANGIBLES like stocks and shares and other frauds ALWAYS believe in Gaia, and ALWAYS go along with EPA nonsense about toxins. They also go along with obvious nonsense like Bitcoin and MMT.

Even the alleged "skeptics" and "leftists" who OUGHT to see the connections between Gaia and Goldman are still Gaians. They are properly suspicious of everything the banks do, EXCEPT for Gaia.

People who work with TANGIBLES, people who make or repair or sell THINGS, are much less likely to go along with these particular frauds.

An illuminating remark from Peter Schiff in the latest QTR podcast:

CNBC invites people who are involved in selling Bitcoin and treats them as 'crypto experts'. The real crypto experts are the people who chose NOT to invest in Bitcoin. Those are the people who understand how crypto works.

Simple point, but never stated before. Conventional and unexamined wisdom, constantly pushed by the tech monsters, says that understanding how a thing works makes you more likely to use it.

Schiff's point is one step back from conventional. He says that understanding a thing makes you more likely to KNOW WHETHER TO USE IT.

Applied to Gaia: Conventional wisdom tells us that scientific literacy makes you more likely to believe in Gaia. Not true. In fact a solid understanding of science gives you a basis to DECIDE WHETHER A THEORY IS TRUE. The CO2 theory is demonstrably false by all the rules of real science.

Applied to Die-Versity: Die-Versitarians tell us that familiarity with The Other makes you more friendly toward The Other. Not true. In fact familiarity with one specific group gives you a basis to DECIDE WHETHER TO ASSOCIATE with that group.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Carbon Cult, MMT

  ¶ 3:32 PM