Wokeness and crypto have a few things in common. They’re both imaginary currencies that claim to exchange bad for good when they actually trade good for bad. Their value lies entirely in a state of mind. If you believe that we are heading toward an imaginary utopia, political or technocratic, they seem very exciting.
Theories are no substitute for facts. Utopians run on theories that can only be implemented either through mass delusion or mass repression. And when utopian ideas infect institutions, they pose a systemic risk.
It’s no coincidence that SVB and Signature were suffering from both wokeness and crypto. Why settle for one scam when you can have two?
Scams, hoaxes, delusions and a general inability to distinguish reality from wishful thinking have become an unfortunate part of our mindset. America was built by pragmatists. For all of our idealism, we moved forward by dealing with reality, not, like failed societies, retreating into an imaginary world and then lashing out when it fell apart.
Fantasy has overtaken reality across the spectrum. From our financial institutions to the military to criminal justice to public health, policy is a grab bag of wishful thinking, aimless visions composed of buzzwords that convey a cultural mindset but are not grounded in any reality that functions outside its echo chambers.
The whole thing gets too big to fail and when it does, the systemic risk is just passed further up the ladder until everything is at risk.
The value of crypto was that it wasn’t under governmental control. But governments are now taking control.
And when they do, I cannot see how we can resist tyranny except by reverting to barter. That was easier when we actually produced goods and our population was more agrarian.
Thanks KH. I liked Aristotle’s work on economics. He showed how barter came to involve various metals, then how the metals came to be used as a store of value, in addition to their direct practical use. So the fallback position if the government takes away regular money is precious metals. But that is a lot more difficult than using regular money. Since using precious metals is not likely to be a practical option in many or most cases, the next fallback position is barter. In the USSR barter was used a lot as I understand it, when goods became available people would stock up on them and store them illegally in their apartments, then barter them for other goods.
The third horseman of the apocalypse, is riding a black horse holding a pair of balances in his hand. He represents an economic failure on a worldwide scale. He is followed quickly by the pale horse and rider, who represents war on a worldwide scale, one in which one forth of the earths population will be killed off. Followed shortly by another forth of the population dying from effects of the war.
It is interesting to see the prophecies written 2,000 to 3,500 years ago coming into place as they were written about back then.
Thanks WJ. The Wokies almost brought about a worldwide economic collapse the last few days, due to the panic which led to a run on the banks.
The crony capitalist bank bailout 15 years ago trained banks to expect bailouts. Banks can invest according to ESG and disregard returns. The federal notes and bonds banks bought were at rates too low to keep after Biden’s inflation lowered their value. They became losses. If bank consolidation reduces the number of banks, it will be easier for the government to control the money of the people even more and cancel them.