> In The Bitcoin Standard, Ammous blamed the Fed for the modern “breakdown of the family,” and for “perhaps most damagingly, the depletion of the soil of its nutrients, leading to ever-lower levels of nutrients in food.” He compared the art of the Renaissance, Classical, and Romantic periods, all financed properly with sound money, to the decadent culture of the twenty-first century, with its “animalistic noises’’ and “immediate sensory pleasures.’’ “It was hard money that financed Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos,” he wrote, “while easy money financed Miley Cyrus’s twerks.” It was, moreover, “no coincidence that the era of central bank-controlled money was inaugurated with the first world war in human history.” Here was a theory of everything, a moral case for Bitcoin that encompassed art and war and even the nutrients in our soil. (Ammous disdains what he calls “fiat food,” claiming his diet consists of “approximately 95% red meat, 5% other meats, and approximately zero plant matter.”)
I un-ironically believe all of this, but when put in this way, it sounds crazy. But I believe it.
Is it not curious that true fiat currency is a relatively recent phenomena, perhaps 100 years old in reality and 50 years officially, yet amazing discoveries, inventions, buildings, factories, art, etc. were all made before fiat currency? Fiat isn't a requirement nor an inevitability - it is a human invention, and one I personally see as a mistake.
I think the phenomenon you're observing is that the quote observes a true correlation, coincidence, or relation, but "sounds crazy" because the implication it draws is _very_ strong relative to what can probably be evidenced.
In other words, it _is_ the case that Renaissance works were financed with harder money than works today. That's a historical matter of fact. It _is_ the case that families are breaking down or that nutrient levels in produce (per unit size) have decreased. It's also the case that those events were coincident with a change of greater adoption of fiat currency vs hard currency (and I'd put it on a spectrum because of fractional reserve banking and other items which made the Gold standard dollars not _really_ redeemable in Gold and etc).
With all that said, the "sounds crazy" comes in because it's totally unsubstantiated in the quote (and probably otherwise) that just because these things occurred together the change in the status of money is the primary driver behind the other changes.
Edit: For example, if the change in money is the primary driver, then it is the case that the massive technology shifts we've seen aren't the primary driver. Nitrogen based fertilizers aren't the primary driver. Various civil rights movements aren't the primary driver. The presence of global travel, the formation of a global village, the new ability to communicate, none of these are the primary drivers.
And the more you lean on fiat money being the explainer, the less you allow all these other things to contribute to the explanation. That case becomes harder and harder to support, I think.
The conversion of US society from an agricultural one to an industrial one to an information/services one probably the larger trend driving results here, especially if the quality of produce/soil is something you're thinking about. The role fiat currency played in that is debatable I'll grant.
RE: terrible art, the rise of that is the rise of art for lower classes in terms of more of it being produced and seen, which is a good thing I'd argue, as well as comparing art made in a 10 year period say with all of the best art western civilization has produced in the past 500 years.
Yup, classic fascist rhetoric. It's not surprising they point to a woman being independent and expressing her sexuality as the example of "degenerate culture". The "other" (people of colour, women, queers) are producing art that represents our own experiences, which is a threat to their desired white hetero-patriarchal order.
Never mind that Mozart wrote a ton of filthy shit. People have been obsessed with sex forever
I think the comment about the music is ridiculous, but the broader point about free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living, etc. is not without merit.
> free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living, etc. is not without merit.
First, you have to establish that degradation has taken place. Considering that for most of civilizational history, the vast majority of people were wearing rags and eating grain porridge without spice or much salt and living in hovels, that doesn't seem obvious to me. Second, even if you do establish that, you have to specifically tie it to "fiat" currency and not some other factor. Those both seem like a tall order.
The factors leading to the dust bowl in the 1930s happened under the gold standard.
The government is prioritizing the wrong things, which is leading to today's degradation of food, but lack of government intervention also results in the degradation of food.
Housing quality and standard of living are at their best ever - if free money is causing that, thats not a terrible outcome
Well we are approaching half of americans having a chronic disease and a large part of that is from what we eat along with lack of exercise. it does seem like we have a degradation of the nutrients in our food supply as well.
Surely this is a problem of supply and not demand.
If I go to Safeway and don't find something healthy, I will nevertheless buy something for the simple reason that I am hungry. Want healthier food in a society? Sell healthier food in a society.
It's not the job of consumers, nor is there any reasonable communication channel, to dictate what is put on shelves. They can only provide feedback based on what is already there. If they have a limited selection, you will receive a censored signal, and you cannot judge the outcome based on counterfactuals of what they would have bought if something else was in the pool of offered products.
Above describes the folly of "demand-based" economic thinking. If there was truly an infinite supply and infinite variety of products, it makes sense to consider demand-based perspectives as actually expressing consumer desires. But it doesn't do that -- it only expresses preferences among the finite selection available, and you can very quickly sink into a feedback loop that encourages unhealthy diets by conflating the two perspectives.
' It's not the job of consumers, nor is there any reasonable communication channel, to dictate what is put on shelves. '
In a free market the job of consumers is to use communication channel of purchases to signal what they want to have stocked on the shelves. Safeway stocks junk food because that is what people buy.
Where is the answer to the problem? Signals are carried in codes, and codes can be more or less efficient at conveying information. How does a sample from a biased population provide any information about the true mean? How would offering only Cheez-its and Gatorade tell you about consumer desires for eggplant?
Many accuse their fellow humans of degeneracy but that narrative only serves to obfuscate the primary role of corporations, for which we can make much stronger accusations of degeneracy.
Dear reader, observe the classically crypto-fascist rhetoric with its complete lack of self-reflection and deflection via essentially empty-headed, debate-bro tactics.
There has never been a time in human history where a smaller percentage of the population faced starvation. Actual wars were fought over access to spices I can buy for three dollars at the supermarket.
Small changes in per-unit micronutrient quantities are not the cause of modern obesity. If you do want to make some claim that worldwide nutrition was better at some point in the past, that point was definitely not when Bach was alive.
What's really being said here is "people need to make better nutrition choices." Or can you support a claim that highly processed super-tasty engineered and mass-produced food is purely a function of ag subsidies? And that there would be no market pressure to create such a thing in your world.
It doesn't matter. Facts don't matter if you have spent significant amount of your life savings into magic internet money. Any news is contructed into 'this is good for bitcoin'. Even history itself is malleable, everything can be blamed on fiat (even though Bitcoin itself is fiat).
To those of us who are far-right, Christian, and have noticed the lack of distinction that seems to be applied between say, David Duke, and Chris Rufo, this is not the takedown-by-association you seem to think it is.
You are inside a cult, complaining that people outside have not differentiated levels of extremes inside the cult, and therefore you do not view being similar to the cult as a bad thing. This is not a defense of the cult you seem to think it is.
It was not intended as a take down. Thanks for clarifying.
It's becoming clearer that Bitcoin is the "currency" of the far right. For those of us who consider this ideology abhorrent and counter to the ideals of a free and democratic society it's good to have that out on the table and on full display.
> It's becoming clearer that Bitcoin is the "currency" of the far right.
Does this extend to all cryptocurrencies or is it just Bitcoin?
A Ukrainian organization called 'Come back Alive' who have just been de-platformed by Patreon [0] are now turning to Bitcoin donations [1]. Does that make them far right?
Or maybe the starving Afghans who are under sanctions due to the Taliban are trying to survive by using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies managed and accepted by NGOs helping them survive [2]. Perhaps they are all far-right too?
Maybe if you have been chasing or watching imaginary nazis in computer games, movies and on the 'news' in the last four years perhaps?
If a claim is without any evidence and has no substance, it can be easily dismissed and ignored.
Not every silly, baseless conspiracy theory has an immediate association with the 'far-right' or with 'Christian, white supremacists' and especially not this one.
As long as they have zero evidence and they are unable to substantiate it, who cares? We already know bitcoin has failed being a peer-to-peer electronic cash system and it is still useless as a currency.
> He compared the art of the Renaissance, Classical, and Romantic periods, all financed properly with sound money, to the decadent culture of the twenty-first century, with its “animalistic noises’’ and “immediate sensory pleasures.’’
The 50-100 years the has been an explosion of new discoveries. The model T was still being produced 100 years ago. To claim anyone has a worse life then 100 years(or whenever fiat was started) ago is a bit of a stretch.
If our crops don't have any nutrients, how exactly would our animal products have nutrients in them? I doubt he is eating wild caught animals for a majority of his nutrition - presumably just eating factory raised pigs and cows which are fed the same crops that he believes has no nutrients.
I'll also bet that Ammous ends up with diverticulitis within 10 years if his description of his diet is correct.
Does the guy in OPs statement only eat grass-fed animals? Isn't the source of the grass important? If it is grown in a wild field, maybe it will have all its natural nutrients. But if it is grown as a crop, or on a field under repeated heavy grazing, isn't that just as bad as what is happening to the human crops?
Also, if the guy is going out of his way to only eat the best, most expensive beef, because corn-fed beef is actually bad, why doesn't he do the same thing for fruits and vegetables? You can get "wild grown" vegetables just like you can get wild grazed beef. It just costs more.
This exhibits many of the classic signs you are in a cult - believing "crazy" things that non-cult-members would not believe, suspending rational thought processes and deferring to charismatic leader(s), and blaming objects of persecution for an unfeasibly wide range of issues (e.g. blaming the Fed for everything from the "breakdown of the family" to "the depletion of the soil of its nutrients").
The rest of the article exhibits many more classic indicators of cult membership - extreme obsessiveness with leader(s), any criticism or questioning characterized as persecution, special persecution of former members (Musk in the original article), denying it is a cult, etc.
There are just…I can’t even start with the sheer inanity of that quote.
First off, the First World War happened on the gold standard. Most currencies, notably the British Pound, didn’t become decoupled from gold until after WW1.
And those World Wars were enabled by technology, not fiat currency. Mass production of weaponry, rapid advancements in said weaponry, trains, fertilizer to grow more food to supply those front line…technology was far more of a driver than fractional reserve banking.
And decadence? Decadence! The Sun King would like to have a word with you about “decadence”.
Anyone who is very serious about strong lines between "fancy" art and "low-class" art can be safely dismissed as an idiot. It takes only the tiniest bit of historical knowledge to understand that these things frequently, and frequently-rapidly evolve, usually from "low-class" to "fancy." See e.g. theatre, jazz, etc.
It's over 1000 years old and it evolved from nothing to what we have.
It's very weird that you ignore history like this.
You should read up on Spain, silver, gold, china and tons of other history regarding tender.
What we have with fiat is your very well working monolith fine tuned over centuries while everyone who wants to make money of of you tells you why their Nanoservice with security holes and no features is so much better.
I un-ironically believe all of this, but when put in this way, it sounds crazy. But I believe it.
Is it not curious that true fiat currency is a relatively recent phenomena, perhaps 100 years old in reality and 50 years officially, yet amazing discoveries, inventions, buildings, factories, art, etc. were all made before fiat currency? Fiat isn't a requirement nor an inevitability - it is a human invention, and one I personally see as a mistake.