Im old enough to remember that people thinking NSA/CIA is watching everyone's internet activity were universally considered deranged schizophrenics.

Whatever fears we have about privacy always turn out to be grossly optimistic underestimates. The next step is, of course, that these emergency measures will remain in place forever.

It was their friend obviously.

>Australians have chosen

Have they?

Unless there are stated penalizations for violations, rules mean nothing.

Interesting. So 50 years ago, with labour efficiency and productivity being a small fraction of what it is today, single-family houses were easily built and bought by people.

Today its somehow an unreachable goal that people cant obtain. Why? I dont want to live in a pod or communal flat with 20 people. How are people not revolting over the direction western economies are taking?

You can easily get an affordable single-family house - it's just going to be a long, long way from your job because you'll have to drive through all the land taken up by less affordable single-family houses who want to pay extra to live closer to where everybody else is.

Because the population has increased over the course of fifty years. There's a limit to how many single-family houses you can build that are reasonably close to jobs.

California has a long way to go before it starts to become attractive.

Interesting, thanks. I never expected to agree with Moldbug.

This wouldnt be even legally possible in vast majority of western countries. Americans are weird.

Just go to r/politics, they loved intelligence agencies a lot for fighting against the so-called russian collusion.

"so-called"? you mean the one where there are multiple connections and convictions related to russians? that "so-called" collusion that was covered up?

Are you talking about Flynn? Imo, being apolitical, that looked like an inconsequential offense, and the FBI response to it looked like a dumb waste of time. And the longer they dragged it out, the dumber it looked.

A lot of people thought that, at the dawn of the crypto era.

I think an effective way to fight capitalism would be to rethink the banking system. We need public banks which will invest in the productive sector like manufacturing instead of speculating. That's how banks used to operate actually. Well yes crypto definitely won't get us there right now.

> That's how banks used to operate actually.

I assume this is not easily generalized but I'm curious to know more about this, what the context is, what the historical turning points are.

Economist Michael Hudson has written about it, his point of comparison is usually the german banks of the 19th century which financed rapid development of their industry to US banks post 1970 which mostly speculated and invested in Finance and Real Estate (FIRE sector)

Thank you, he seems to have very distinct and interesting views!

Cryptocurrencies do have value as black market currencies but it doesn't justify the hype.

I would appreciate some clarification here.

First, capitalism doesn't necessarily require breaking the law, and capitalists use the banking system to a great extent.

Second, many cryptocurrency transactions are logged and more discoverable ("observed") than bank transfers.

How do you fight capitalism by avoiding wire transfers?

I'm 'competing' plenty by staying afloat and providing for my family every single day, thank you very much. And yes, sure. Call it what you want, but I don't want myself or anyone to have to 'compete' to prove their worth.