The Balancing Act

I guess it's all just a balancing act between confidence and humility. Who does it best?

My Goodness, The Blood Moons Is A Comin'

Tax day will be the next blood moon.

My Goodness.

Imma start diggin my shelter today, and fillin' it with the Bible for to read,

and some Ko-rans in order to burn for heat.

The Only Hope

The continued existence and emergence of Edward Snowdens is the only hope.

They provide the only effective adversarial pressure, without which expansion occurs without natural bound, eventually suffocating the supposed protectorates...

of course,...

"for their own good".

A cynical case for inflationary monetary systems

You should not, necessarily, believe in the government's ability to "store value" for you.

By holding cash, you do just that.

By purchasing property, you make the decisions as to what will likely store value, or increase in value, whether in real or nominal terms. Of course interventionist government policies distort (read: essentially drive and control) and determine which industries will "profit" the most from the inflationary monetary system that underlies those gains. So the core problem may more accurately be identified as the spending policies themselves, rather than the simple existence of an inflationary monetary system.

Of course it is a small step to understanding the symbiotic relationship between the two. The policies can not be implemented without the printing of the cash. So in the "real" sense of the world we actually live in, they can logically be viewed as intertwined and essentially a single functioning system.

Not that drawing a distinction would even necessarily matter. Nothing is likely to change, certainly not any time soon. But in a theoretical sense, I wonder what a strictly controlled inflationary monetary system (ie. we will print 3% additional dollars every year and distribute them evenly among the population) combined with a non-economically-interventionist government would, theoretically, produce.

The questions regarding the effect on the poorest of the population, as well as the country's ability to compete economically with emerging economies (vis a vis minimum wages, both in terms of mandates and logically necessary increases due to the inflation) would of course have to be examined.

The fact is I am as skeptical

of a pasty, white dude wearing a hoodie as I am of a bandana or droopy pants-wearing black man. The color of the skin has literally no effect on my degree of skepticism, or the degree to which I would tend to monitor the person's actions. The only thing that will affect my skepticism is the person's "behavior" in the sense that the more they appear to be meandering, the more skeptical I will naturally be.

The unease that comes from the inability to see another's face is hard-wired, instinctual and an entirely justifiable survival mechanism. The desire to hide one's face whilst engaging in illicit acts is equally so.

This is what you call "cullin' cold"

or killin' cold if you prefer.

angry sort of, make you think you offended the Gods kind of cold.