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This started out interesting but then the red flags started to pop up. Going to jail in Europe for posting memes, gold standard, salivating over doing something that benefits the US and hurts countries that are already poorer than the US.

He has strong opinions on economics, but doesn't understand it. His points about economics are partially true but either subtly incorrect or interpreted incorrectly.



There's this piece of product-management wisdom that I've been thinking about lately, which is that users almost always understand their problems better than you do. If the metrics say things are going well, and your users say everything sucks, your metrics are probably wrong. But the complement to that is that users mostly suck at solutions: you understand the constraints and difficulties of your product better than they do, so they tend to suggest things that are infeasible, overly specific, or prohibitively difficult to build.

When the public gives (or random bloggers give) give a damn about economics, it's a sign the economy isn't working. Of course they don't have useful solutions - they're not economists - but that feels a little beside the point: you don't have to be a plumber to recognize that your house is full of sewage. And since no one can be an expert in everything, life demands the ability to identify and call attention to problems you cannot personally solve.

An article like this is the equivalent of your roommate going "oh, damn, the living room is full of sewage, we better do something about that!" Of course you'll vigorously agree at first, because you're talking about the problem (which is clear to everyone). But then your roommate suggests fixing it by dropping dynamite down the drain - i.e., talking about the solution - and you're a lot more likely to disagree.


I really like this framing. Thanks for sharing. There’s quite a few (hard) problems end up following this pattern.


The best person to implement or flesh out a solution is also rarely the one who came up with it.


I dunno if he’s far-right MAGA but these red flags are all far right talking points.

No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard.

Seems like geohot should stick to jail breaking iPhones and mocking programmers and CTF challenges… and maybe read a few more books and attend some lectures if he wants to continue deepening his understanding of economics and political science.


I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points".

It immediately frames questions as "us vs them", if there's a talking point you hear come up frequently and it's easily dissolved: learn how to dissolve it.

The fewer people walking around with incorrect ideas about things the better we all are.

If people rebuff you, maybe they had a point the whole time? If they change the subject or resort to ad hominems, then it's clear to everyone listening that the talking point was bogus. You might not change the persons mind, but it can help others.


We have a limited amount of attention to give and trust to offer, so we filter ideas with heuristics.

One of the heuristics is that if someone says something very left-field, does not qualify why it falls out of consensus, and it appears the same as arguments made by politically motivated actors, we trust it a lot less.

Especially when that person has no expertise in the area and is mostly famous for a completely different thing.


Ignorance is never the right call.

Ignorance just leads to further polarisation, and honestly, we've got to be close to a breaking point soon.


No, it's a useful framing.

I might have time for reading an interesting take on economics. I can learn from that, even if I don't agree with the overall position. (That was one of the beauties of HN 10 years ago - you learned from people you disagreed with. You could even wind up upvoting posts you disagreed with, because they had an interesting point that made you think.)

If something is a collection of far-right or far-left talking points, I don't have time for it. Either way, it's too little reality and too much zealotry, propaganda, and shilling. I don't have time or patience to wade through it and dissect all the problems and issues and just general falseness of it all.

Now, that framing can be used as a general pejorative ("I don't like that"), or even as an attack from the other side (far-left labels normalcy as far-right, far right definitely labels normalcy as far-left). But, honestly given, it's useful to know something is far-right or far-left, just to avoid wasting my time and sanity.


> I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points".

You might hate the idea, but it's actually an excellent characterisation of how ideas spread in a polarised environment.

If you ever try engaging with both extremes over a long period of time eventually you'll notice that both of them repeat the same narrow set of ideas and sound bites over and over again. It's like these people train themselves in having arguments by repeating the arguments they read about. If you spend enough time with these people you can play a game with yourself, which is to try and map out the set of existing arguments and try and predict if you say X what will the person respond.


> No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard

Except, of course, Miseans.


The Ludwig von Mises & Rockwell Miseans? They want to bring back a whole lot of other bad ideas too [0]. Hence the red flag.

[0] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/neo-confederates...


Did you seriously just try and conflate austrian economics with racism?


Me, personally? No. I didn't have to do anything. Mises did it himself. Rockwell, Koch, Blumbert, Ron Paul, etc co-opted it and amplified it.

Mises did it to his own ideology. He was often employed by the Hapsburgs. Otto von Hapsburg was a sponsor of the Mises institute. His writings and ideas remain fringe because it comes with the baggage of racial politics and the monarchy stuff. Modern libertarian anarchists that still follow the Austrian school may reject some of those parts but the radical organizations that have co-opted it certainly haven't... and guess who's in power right now in the US?

Besides, the Praxeological arguments and system haven't held up. The field moved on to empiricism. Mises isn't often remembered for those arguments. It's generally the other stuff people seem to dig up.

It's still a fringe theory and will probably remain that way.

Update: gold standard/gold-hoarding is strongly associated with radical right-wing extremists, hence red-flag. OP says, "diversity is our strength," which is encouraging... but gold standard stuff, even if simplistic ("gold real, debt imaginary"), is still a red-flag.


It's all a fringe theory, until it isn't.


Ok, claiming it's a fringe theory isn't a strong criticism.

A theory that rejects empiricism and is based on private ownership, an idealized vision of markets, and limited state intervention is refuted by so many wars.


Which wars, specifically?


It tells you a lot about hn that a political rant by a confused hacker can hit the front page, while actual reporting on what the government is doing is flagged to oblivion.

Success in one domain should not imply competence in another.


is there any reliable source for that "going to jail in europe for posting memes"? I keep seeing this argument in online arguments, but can not find a credible source


While not an answer to your specific question, this popped into my head as being similar in tone to what I think you're asking about.

https://reason.com/2024/10/17/british-man-convicted-of-crimi...

(An example of something that might be perceived by some as a judicial over-reaction based on perceived offensiveness to others.)


From what I understand the Public Spaces Protection Order is a law that exists exactly for this reason, how would this be a judicial overreaction?

Seems similar to the German law that makes it illegal to wear politcal symbols or talk politics outside of polling places. There is an undefined "buffer zone" outside of the voting location where, if you display political symbols, you will be arrested. This is a limitation of freedom of expression, but IMHO it makes total sense.


Germany is indeed like the UK in that it also does not believe in basic free speech protections. These anti-speech laws don't produce much domestic outrage because the people of Europe just like their politicians don't believe free speech is important. They believe anti-speech laws "make total sense". In many European countries you get visited by the police if you post the wrong kind of memes. You get arrested if you wave a Palestinian flag. Insulting a politician or police officer has been criminalized. These things all have a chilling effect on free expression.

The US has much stronger free speech protections than Europe. (At least for now.)


The man in the linked article did not display any signs or symbols, did not engage in speech, and did not "express" himself. If standing solemn is an arrestable offense, then anyone doing anything is subject to arrest. The police may think fascist thoughts are running through any random person's mind at this very moment.


This makes it sound like the police just passed by, saw him there and decided to arrest him, when in fact:

"On the day, he was asked to leave the area by a community officer who spoke to him for an hour and 40 minutes - but he refused."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo


"A man has been jailed today after pleading guilty to posting grossly offensive messages on social media."

- The Crown Prosecution Service

https://www.cps.gov.uk/north-west/news/man-jailed-offensive-...


This wasn't someone posting just a meme online or anything. The guy was posting racist shit during civil unrest [1]. Literally throwing oil on a fire. Yeah, you are going to get prosecuted for that.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdww5lx2vo


I’m astounded by your thought process. Yes, he was posting racist shit during civil unrest, as is his right. Or at least, should be.

As a liberal, your attitude is exactly what got US democrats steamrolled in the latest election.


"In those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors."

- Benjamin Franklin

This is why we fought a war to be separate from your "wretched" country. You're justifying jail time for racist speech!


> You're justifying jail time for racist speech!

For inciting further civil unrest during civil unrest.

Kinda weird to just cherry pick some things from my post.


> he can scarce call any Thing else his own

Ironic coming from a future slave owner. He did become an abolitionist, after travelling to France and England and being exposed to some, for Americans, pretty radical ideas.


This hinges entirely on what the captions were. What did they say? Even US free speech laws doesn't protect certain forms of speech (eg. "imminent lawless action"), so whether it's a meme or not holds little relevance.


There are multiple cases in Germany (where I live). I cannot find them all, but "Pimmelgate" is a famous one where one guy on twitter (that's what it was called at the time) told a local politician "Du bist ein Pimmel" (in English: "You're a dick") and the next day the police showed up at his apartment and searched it.

The issue is the harassment. Most of these cases are baseless and get dropped once presented to the public prosecutor. But it puts unwarranted stress on people who just opened their mouth, regardless if I disagree with what they had said.

If these cases were moved forward, they could end up in front of the European Court of Human Rights, where Germany and Austria are among the worst offenders[1] when it comes to the article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights[2], which grantees free speech in the EU.

Usually these individual cases are used by neo-conservatives to criticize Europe and describe it as (their words) "a socialist hellhole."

While this argument (= "there is no free speech in Europe") might be based on some truth, and while I agree that the free speech situation in most of Europe could be improved, I think it is grossly exaggerated.

[1] https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/#{%22languageisocode%22:[%22ENG%2...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...


My question was specifically about being jailed for expressing their opinion? Is this something that happens all the time in Germany (from what you wrote I would say no. It's a hassle but at most you get a fine that you can appeal, right?). Americans seem to think that people post a meme and end up in an american style max-security federal prison or something, while actually the offender gets a minor slap on the wrist.


If that, as @acatton says. It is certainly not happening all the time. There are laws around libel and slander, which are more aimed at civility than anything else, but its rare that they make it to actual court. In Britain at least there is a long held tradition, and some rightly infamous accompanying libel cases, where 1 farthing/penny/pound damages (inflation has had some effect I guess) were awarded in an ok, you win but the moral case was with the defendant signal. One of the more recent:

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/judge-right-to-award-lying-...


It doesn't happen, unless your opinion is something very specific like holocaust denial and you double down on it multiple times. People do not get jailed for posting memes.


here you go, guy got jail time for a crude joke in the UK

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925


This is exactly why I asked for credible sources. This man never got any jail time (even a cursory search of the article you linked shows that), if anything this stunt made his youtube career take off.

"Meechan was sentenced to a fine of £800, with no prison sentence." i mean his video probably made more money than that...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/count-dankula-na...



Hmm, I found this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070315091415/http://news.com.c...

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

Drawn up in 2005, passed by Bush in 2006.


Lol, nearly unlimited my ass. Not anymore anyway, under the new regime


The two UK cases:

- Nazi pug man got a fine of £800; no jail.

- Cheshire people; in the context of rioting and the consequences of rioting.

For the record I think (personal view only) that the Nazi pug man should never have been prosecuted, I personally find it grossly offensive but I think that the harm of stopping people saying these things is greater than the harm of the idiot saying them.

The Cheshire thing I find much more serious, it seemed to me that this was about people calling for other people to get hurt and killed. Is it really the case that it's ok to threaten people or to call for violence against a community in the USA?

Also, what about folks like Snowdon and Assange? I mean if freedom of speech is absolute in the USA why can't they just tell the CCP about USA nuclear control?


> Is it really the case that it's ok to threaten people or to call for violence against a community in the USA?

In cases like that, courts in the US make the determination as to whether the speech is protected based on whether it may cause “imminent lawless action”—hard to say in the Cheshire case without seeing what they were actually posting, but encouraging people to start violent riots would not be protected in the US either. There are plenty of cases of people getting arrested in the US for Facebook posts inciting violence.


have we already forgotten recent event when insurance company send a woman to jail for threats (unrealistic).

US woman arrested for allegedly threatening health firm: ‘Delay, deny, depose’

is this equivalent of EU meme jailing?


>Also, what about folks like Snowdon and Assange? I mean if freedom of speech is absolute in the USA why can't they just tell the CCP about USA nuclear control?

Why do people constantly and intentionally misconstrue arguments? It's so obnoxious and intellectually dishonest. I didn't say it was absolute. It's like people can't even have a conversation anymore without dealing with this.

>I think that the harm of stopping people saying these things is greater than the harm of the idiot saying them.

Oh, so you're a Nazi sympathizer? See how annoying that is when people intentionally misconstrue arguments?

I know it's a habit these days with the news and I don't mean to jump on your shit, it's quite common; but it's bleeding into person to person conversation and you just can't have any meaningful conversation this way.


I did not see that as an attack towards you or miscontruing any argument you made, rather putting things in perspective for people who may believe JD Vance & co when he talks about freedom of speech. I also did not see your statement "seems abhorrent to americans" as a value judgement you hold in regards to european freedom of expression laws.


>> These things seem abhorrent to Americans who have nearly unlimited free speech protection.

> Also, what about folks like Snowdon and Assange? I mean if freedom of speech is absolute in the USA why can't they just tell the CCP about USA nuclear control?

I said it was near unlimited protection and he claimed I said it was absolute so he could make a counter argument. He intentionally misconstrued my argument to make a counter argument. What am I supposed to do, defend and argument I didn't make? It kills any conversation or sharing of ideas. It's annoying.

The news does this all the time.


You can also be arrested and jailed for social media posts in the US if those posts break the law. For example:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-influencer...

This “arrested for a meme” meme is so dumb. What’s important is the content of the meme, not the fact that it’s a meme.


I mean that glasgow guy was sentenced 800 pounds, went viral from those videos, and now has a huge youtube following...seems like a great deal

About those second 2 guys, what's that phrase that americans like so much? Fuck around and find out. I think the US, even in their nearly unlimited free speech, has similar laws in regards to inciting violence. Defamation, slander, fighting words, are also not protected by free speech. So really, the only difference between the US and UK is that the UK does not allow hate speech.

Germany has some more regulations, but the real significant difference seems to be about not being allowed to display nazi symbols or denying the holocaust.



I suppose this doesn't remotely qualify as "memes", but Mr. Bond went to prison for ten years in Germany for making racist rap songs.


It was Austria, and I think it's pretty telling that when free speech limitations come up in these kind of threads, it's always neo-Nazi stuff.


seriously why do people get so mad that a rapper can't release such classics like "Mein Kampf mixtapes" or "A Nazi goes to Afrika" in the country that birthed the guy who destroyed the world. (I know why they get mad)


meme is a very vague term. it could have been death threat meme. its like saying "he went to jail for speaking". well its possible and might be totally justified. depends on what was said. for example death treats, bomb threats, scamming people. its all fits under "he was speaking"


It’s true for Germany. There recently was a case of a podcaster whose acquaintances were tapped and was apprehended while walking with his 1yo for posting memes. An AfD politician was fined 6000€ for posting crime statistics. A man had his house searched for sharing a meme of calling a politician something along the lines of „idiot“. There’s also the 60 minutes interview where prosecutors brag about confiscating devices for posting memes.

From what I hear from acquaintances and social media, the UK is even worse.


> An AfD politician was fined 6000€ for posting crime statistics.

No, she was not fined for posting crime statistics [0].

> Kaiser published a tile on her social media accounts with the text "Afghanistan refugees; Hamburg SPD mayor for 'unbureaucratic' admission; Welcome culture for gang rapes?"

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_Kaiser...


> [media posts] reinforce the "negatively abbreviated representation" and fuels an atmosphere of fear and rejection. In explaining the verdict, Halbfas also made it clear: "Those who attack human dignity cannot invoke freedom of speech."

She was found guilty of reinforcing negative stereotypes and by doing so she "violated the human dignity of a distinct group of Afghan refugees".

Where is the line between having anti-immigration politics and harming refugees? If free speech means anything it should at least protect political opinions, and that includes politics many of us find distasteful or racist.

Dragging somebody through the courts and fining them heavily for a simple social media post is pretty extreme. If her post was deserving of a €6000 fine what kind of commentary will get you fined €1000? Which opinions will get you a visit from the cops and a stern talking to? Who decides where the line is between acceptable political opinion and unacceptable hate speech? How are regular people supposed to tell the difference? Or are regular people just expected not talk about controversial subjects at all if they can't afford to pay a €6000 fine?


> Dragging somebody through the courts and fining them heavily for a simple social media post is pretty extreme

Simple cute social media post where she equates afghan refugees to gang rapists.

> Which opinions will get you a visit from the cops and a stern talking to?

Racist ones that leads to violence. Argument started from "going to jail in europe for posting memes" to "posting statistics" to blatant racist xenophobic stereotyping punished via financial penalty. Free speech crusade came all the way to this goal post.


Free speech must include unpopular and even grotesque speech. That's not moving the goal post that's the entire point.

It's no coincidence that the laws used to punish people for speech are exceptionally vague. There is no clearly defined benchmark of harm. In fact harm does not need to be demonstrated at all. Simply asserting without evidence that a blog "leads to violence" is sufficient for those who don't believe in free speech.


Calling such posts grotesque and unpopular is quite euphemistic. They are aggressive and dehumanizing. And the determination on what should or shouldn't be protected as free speech doesn't happen in a vacuum: these attacks were targetted at a minority which is already regularly assaulted violently just for going about their day, because of violence-inciting shitposts like that. Of course you can't usually prove that post A led to violent crime B, but simply pretending like telling people over and over again that some group is criminal scum isn't going to lead to more violence against them also can't be the solution.

I also think that such laws almost have to be kind of vague by necessity, because the agitators will just try and be clever for plausible deniability. The idea is that a judge will rule on it, and the accused gets legal representation to defend their case. Of course you can always find some case where you may think the ruling was too harsh (or too lenient), but overall, the system seems to work pretty well. You really have to dig deep to find one or two iffy cases.


"the Rotenburg District Court concluded that Kaiser had taken the quoted information out of context in the post text and knowingly risked that the tile would be perceived as incitement to hatred by an objective observer. Additionally, the rhetorical question violated the human dignity of a distinct group of Afghan refugees."

- Wikipedia

You're ok with that?!


I am. She got a court date and she got legal representation. She got the chance to convince the court that she did not intend his post as an incitement to violence, and she failed to do so.

I strongly believe that inciting hate and violence against others should have consequences. And I'm glad to live in a place where society decided that there is no place for such things. We're not talking about political opinions here, but hate speech with clear intention to cause harm.


Happy to fix that for you. You can no more go to jail for "posting a meme" than you can do for "speaking some words".

Context and content is important. There are limits to allowable speech (yes, even in the USA) and if you transgress that you can be breaking the law.


ok but I was asking for some reliable sources, not a paragraph of anecdotes. I could go google each one myself, but I don't even want to imagine in what kind of hellhole websites I will end up in if I do that.


German police raid homes of activists for making anti-Israel social media posts https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-police-raid-prop...

(Trump also just tweeted that activists will be imprisoned)


I find it interesting that the first replies i got were about racists, nazi sympathizers, afd people and so on (who it turns out never got jailed, but fined, and not for "posting a meme" but for going against well known laws against inciting violence).

Yours is the only reply (yet) that talks about Palestine, that I find much more interesting in this context. It should be noted that pro palestinian protesters have been arrested in the US too, so I don't know if it's really a good point when comparing "freedom of speech" between the US and Germany.

Unless what you meant was "freedom of speech" is an illusions and Americans are deluded into thinking they have more of it.


Both US and Germany are rapidly criminalizing vocal support for Palestine and criticism of Israel. Canada is, too - they've escalated a protest crime (painting a message against IDF recruitment on private property... the owner of a large bookstore chain here pays Canadians to go join the IDF) into a hate crime by calling it antisemitic so they can prosecute it more harshly.


Your link doesn’t state that.



In the subtitle of the DW link: "One of the suspects was accused of a violent attack on a state politician."

Seems like this was not just about posting memes.


The articles are about a handful of cases. You ignored all the others which were non violent and picked the irrelevant detail to share deceitfully as representative of the rest.


That seems to be a common tactic for authoritarians trying to control others by taking away their speech rights.

Notice also that the poster was only accused, not found liable or convicted. That means almost nothing - you can accuse anyone of anything.

Notice also the guilt by association, where the possibility of the poster committing violence (which isn't impossible) is used to try to invalidate their right to speech.


I'm not the parent, but one reference they made but didn't link was this 60 Minutes clip "Policing the internet in Germany, where hate speech, insults are a crime". It was a bit of a meme in Germany.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc

Still, the author of the original article has some pretty polarising and crude views, and I think it's valuable to keep that context in mind. The key is not to be lazy and just dismiss everything that doesn't come from the smoothest PR media personality.

For me, it felt like reading a frustrated author arguing against over-reliance on the service sector as an economy, given the dependencies it creates. There is certainly nationalism, realism/geopolitical views and a somewhat raw criticism of the current monetary system in the mix. The author sprinkles a lot of cultural references all over it and concludes with a tongue-in-cheek hint at an accelerationist strategy.

.. based on that random blogpost I probably still wouldn't buy any gold just yet.


The only people who are in jail for political reasons in the UK are fossil fuel company protestors, who were jailed for planning a protest during a Zoom meeting. Others have been jailed for relatively minor but high profile actions, such as throwing paint at paintings (protected behind glass).

People have been jailed for racist rioting and planning racist riots, but not many people in the UK see that as a bad thing.

The climate change prisoners are getting a lot more support.

The US imprisons countless black people every year for the flimsiest reasons with questionable due process, in for-profit prisons, some of which have been caught operating with kickbacks for judges.

Also, Aaron Swartz.

And multiple arrests of journalists.

https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/journalists-arrested-in-...

The idea that the US is some kind of utopian beacon of free speech while the rest of the world is authoritarian and repressive is utter nonsense.


> People have been jailed for racist rioting and planning racist riots

This is a factually false. The recent UK riots were largely about protesting violence (stabbings, killings, rape (which increased by a factor of 4.3 over 13 years, closely correlated to migration) and unchecked immigration (which is unpopular and opposed by a large fraction of the population, from someone who lived there).

These are, factually, not issues of racism - they are humans rights (in the case of the violence) and extremely reasonable political positions (in the case of cutting down immigration), and it's intentionally and maliciously deceptive to claim that they're "racism".

Yes, it's likely that some number of people at the riots were there because they were racist. No, the majority of the protestors were not there for that reason, and claiming that that small fraction makes the riots "racist" (not that that's even a coherent statement to make in the first place) is a lie.

Additionally, it's also a lie to claim that only people participating in or planning the riots were jailed - "A judge has warned that anybody present at a riot will be remanded in custody, even if they were only a “curious observer”"[1], which was actually implemented, with documented video evidence of people getting arrested for merely filming the protests and police, with no participation[2].

It's deeply evil to defend the UK government's behavior here.

> The idea that the US

This is the tu quoque fallacy, in addition to being irrelevant - the topic is the UK and EU on free speech, not the UK.

This whole comment is just a tangle of lies, fallacies, and emotional manipulation.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/09/judge-refuses-ba...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0X4uPjcEsE


It's geohot

Leading with a Curtis Yarvin citation as supporting material


Genuine question: Is George qualified to be making statements concerning economic outlook?


It does say at the bottom of the page "A home for poorly researched ideas". So I don't think even he is very confident in what he is saying. I assume they are just trying to be provocative. Judging by the number of comments here, it worked.


This is called lamphshading.

Lampshading is when someone acknowledges a flaw or controversial aspect upfront, often humorously or ironically, to deflect criticism or give the appearance of humility or openness.

Saying something like "A home for poorly researched ideas" while actually propagating extremist, controversial, or misleading content is a tactic intended to: disarm critics, avoid accountability, and create plausible deniability.


Joe Rogan does this all the time "Well I'm just an idiot who don't know nothing about nothing, but let me proceed to divulge the following BS to hundreds of millions of people as if it were an uncontroversial fact. When I get fact checked we can laugh it off together."


I guess similar to when people (often the 'alt right') say something abhorrent and then claim afterwards they didn't really mean it.


"it was just a prank, bro!"


i.e. the "geohot method". Why this guy still pulls so much traction is a mystery.


lotta good cracks back in the day

some of his "watch me program" vids are also pretty popular. I learned a lot from watching his workflow.

but I'd never trust him when talking about economics or politics, or even where to go for dinner.


Think about this: in a complex enough information system, there's almost no one that understands all of it, therefore you need teams to take care of certain functions and processes. Multiply that by 3x10^33 and you have a economic system. Creating a representative of society like the state and the state creating institutions responsible of education, housing, finances, security, food production, etc. is why countries advance as a collective of individuals.

No individual, other than setting up lofty but ambiguous goals like reducing hunger/malnutrition, understand how or why certain goals should or not be set for certain sectors and why the processes are what they are to accomplish them.


Yea I had the exact same experience reading this.


Yeah same. I'm not an economy understander, the article had lots of upvotes, seemed like kind of interesting ideas at the start. Then he wrote "jailed for memes" and oh, it's just another crank who escaped confinement from Elon Musk's X. I come back to the HN discussion and sure enough he has no idea what he's talking about.


You forgot the part where Trump's America apparently becomes socialist...

> Protectionist America is a boring place and not somewhere I want to be. It kicks the can further down the road of poverty, basically embraces socialism, is stagnant, is stale, is a museum…


“When I said on Lex”


It didn't even start out interesting. The main product of the US is weapons not "the dollar". Electricity generation is a metric for what exactly? China's popoulation is rapidly urbanizing. That's all that shows.

But the killer is the gold standard. The author seems to be confusing this with fractional reserve banking. Interestingly, they're anti-crypto, which is kinda odd because most gold bugs became crypto bros.

China's foreign policy is very different. China invests in creating infrastructure in countries to help make them future customers for Chinese products. US foreign policy is simply to loot the Global South and to use foreign aid as a form of economic imperialism.


He doesn't even see that the value in gold is what we assign to it. Almost no different to the value of cryptocoins. He doesn't notice the contradiction:

> Back the dollar by gold (not socially constructed crypto)

Gold is worth so much in dollars because everyone thinks everyone else also wants it. Sure you can process it for some industrial use, but most of the worth is because "Someone else will also find this worthy").

I have a 100 trillion dollar note (Zimbabwean) in my wallet, is it worth anything? Just the novelty value. Is the $100 (US) note worth anything? Well I can buy $100 worth of groceries, which at the moment is probably 20 cartons of eggs, but the way Musk is doge-ing the nation, it could be only 4 cartons in the near future...


Gold has a limited supply and it's a precious metal, so it has nice properties, can't be easily destroyed and lasts forever.


To be fair, you can't just manufacture more gold. I mean you can dig more up or buy more but you're limited to how much gold there is. That's the argument used. There seems to be over 200,000 metric tons of it ever mined.

What many gold bugs and crypto bros don't seem to understand is that:

1. The US dollar was never 100% backed by silver (originally) or gold;

2. What really backs the US dollar is the US military. This was true with the gold standard and it's true now;

3. The ability to manufacture more dollars and thus control the money supply is a feature not a bug;

4. Fractional reserve banking is so stunningly successful, it's impossible to ignore; and

5. A lot of the problems detractors point to are really symptomatic of unfettered neoliberalism, not abandoning the gold standard.


Of course the same can be said for BTC: finite supply, needs to be mined.


Unlike gold, the "finite supply" of BTC is socially constructed.

That's my whole argument for gold. The finite supply isn't socially constructed, and getting more requires building real infrastructure.


1. The supply is nonetheless constrained and immutably fixed; what is the relevance of whether it is by contract or law of nature?

2. What do you mean by "real" infrastructure? Crypto-mining rigs are no less real than actual mines.

My argument would be that gold's value is as much a social construct as that of crypto; value is just a function of supply and demand.

I'm guessing you might post that there is a third input: utility. "Currency" is one use for gold, but can certainly serve many purposes, whereas crypto coins are strictly used as currency. That fact is presumably taken into account by a coin's price; nonetheless, it still has whatever value the market says it has at any time.


Except none of the crypto "currency" is used as currency at all, and never will. It's used as a crypto asset. For speculation. Or even worse, straight up fraud. The only time I heard crypto was used as currency, is the infamous pizza a decade ago


Computer programs and algorithms are the last thing that I would call "socially constructed".


The meaning behind them are, though. When car alarms was a big thing, it might wail, and the idea was people would have a look to see if somebody was trying to steal your car, but at the end it was mostly false alarms. So the wailing got the reaction of "Not that shit again!".

Meanwhile a TSA scanner's beep get treated as "this person is bringing a problem.".


> The main product of the US is weapons not "the dollar"

I interpreted it as - the US "exports" debt in exchange for the import of goods and services. It's a deficit country, it consumes more than it produces.

China (not only China) is a surplus country, they produce more than they consume. They store that surplus into US financial assets but also increasingly into other places, like developing countries. I've read that their investments into developing countries are often unprofitable. Previously they've been using the excess production to invest into real estate and infrastructure but those were often money-losing investments too (empty houses, under-utilized high speed rail with high maintenance costs).


A lot of people think we didn’t have fractional reserve banking when we had the gold standard. Alas: we did.


> China invests in creating infrastructure in countries to help make them future customers for Chinese products ...

Really? Because the vast majority of "Belt and Road" destinations connect China to raw resources. I'm sure that's just a coincidence. China is making it pretty damn clear that they do not intend to pay for those resources, or at least not in money, especially now that the "Belt and Road" initiative has turned into yet another Chinese money pit so deep it makes Trump look like a great businessman, and on top of that it made China so unpopular it makes it look like Europe loves Trump. And everyone reports another problem: CCP officials, even low level ones, make Trump look like a humble man.

Locals seem to hate the Chinese, and Chinese investments, everywhere the Belt and Road goes, whether it's Pakistani in Balochistan, Greeks in Piraeus, in Madagascar the people pretty much kicked out the government, largely over Chinese presence, China is now negotiating in Australia by openly threatening with warships in Sydney harbor firing live ammunition in the direction of the city and even their military base in Djibouti is not popular, despite being right next to a US, a French and a Japanese military base that ARE popular (despite middle eastern tensions. You know, you'd think the US base would be in the locals' bad graces given the last 2 years. It's not).

If this is supposed to build to a long lasting mutually beneficial trading relationship between China and these countries, they're not off to a great start. Not on the economic aspects, not on the political aspects, not on ...

But frankly, the answer to this weird state of affairs is brutally simple: China has no intention to turn this into a long lasting mutually beneficial trading relationship, and neither do those countries or those peoples.


China offers significantly better terms than the IMF and it comes with far less onerous conditions, most notably the IMF imposes "economic reforms" that tend to be absolutely devastating in the same way that economic austerity measures in the developed world have been devastating to working people and nothing more than a vampiric drain on the economy to the benefit of the wealthiest.

The IMF (and World Bank) is economic imperialism doing things like preventing African countries from growing crops to feed themselves. Instead they need to produce export crops and then they can buy excess food created by Europe and the US. This has resulted in famines and utterly destroyed, for example, the economy of places like Somalia [1].

Yes, China is seeking preferential access to natural resources and considering the strategic importance of the borrower. But the general consensus seems to be China's terms are better than the West's.

[1]: https://twn.my/title2/resurgence/2011/251-252/cover06.htm


I read this article. Is this serious? This is Russian pseudo-communist propaganda meant to attack globalization. It is well written, remarkable even, but totally unreasonable:

1) Chossudovsky criticizes subsidized grain imports for undermining local markets, but in contexts of hyper-inflation or economic collapse (e.g., Somalia’s public sector wages dropping to $3/month), external food aid was the only means for households to survive. Criticism that it destroyed the market is dishonest. Markets ALSO don't survive if the customers die off. Obviously.

2) While imposed austerity measures that worsened inequality and local economies, the alternative—total state insolvency—would have been far worse. A teacher wage of $3 is still far superior to a collapsed state offering a wage of $0, and probably forcing locals to wage war on each other. PLUS the state needs to get back to surviving on it's own, without external help, or it would just delay total collapse instead of fixing it.

I was curious about this article. So well written, but it's a totally unfair attack piece, it's lunacy ... and here is the wikipedia page on the author:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky

"Michel Chossudovsky (born 1946) is a Canadian economist and author. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa[1][2] and the president and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which runs the website globalresearch.ca, founded in 2001, which publishes falsehoods and conspiracy theories.[3][4][5] Chossudovsky has promoted conspiracy theories about 9/11."

"In 2017, the Centre for Research on Globalization was accused by information warfare specialists at NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (STRATCOM) of playing a key role in the spread of pro-Russian propaganda.[12] A report by the U.S. State Department in August 2020 accused the website of being a proxy for a Russian disinformation campaign."




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