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Great points.
I had a epiphany recently on the sermon on the mount opening: Blessed are the poor in spirit
It's basically affirming every thing in your list....which is blessed are those who don't trust in money and who can live as if they have nothing. Blessed are those who can live without the trappings of wealth...
Private property is affirmed, but taxation is not condemned as improper either.
Neither is slavery! (which I'm not suggesting is ok). Which is interesting because after all taxation is really just another form of slavery.
theological perspectives on economics.
I've been thinking recently about the entire Christ view of money (easier for camel to pass thru eye of camel rather than rich man to enter heaven, etc).
There is lots there to unpack, but to summarize - its not about condemnation of wealth per se, its actually reads much different if you think about it from a compassionate framework....he feels pity and sorrow for the rich-man because that rich man has become trapped by his wealth. He trusts in his money to provide him security, thus it blunts his trust in God.
If we can't get a rollback of AML / KYC / Bank Secrecy laws under Trump, then I worry that it will never happen....I don't say that because I blindly love orange man, its just that he was literally debanked in 2021....he knows the story first hand.
If the US moved away from these insane laws, the rest of the world would benefit since FINCEN is set from US policy....
I think a Catholic might quibble with you on this.
The text is not a magisterial document
You are 100% correct and in fact its my sneaking suspicion that the church was "having its cake and eating it too" since it got to release a very inclusive sounding statement without having it be binding church teaching.
Unlike many Christian traditions that can be misrepresented unintentionally Romans are probably the easiest to check on yourself due to their top down nature.
As a catholic, obviously I agree (even as a politically libertarian catholic who distrust top heavy governments). I honestly have lots of respect for the dialog Protestantism has created. The dialog and pushback has been a net-benefit to the catholic church thru the ages (I only wish it was possible to achieve that without the splintering).
I feel that prot-cath dialog 95+% of the time winds up just being semantics and fundamentally we have no real issues between us....the one real "defect" I see with Protestantism is that there are now something like 35000 denominations? Every guy who can revamp an old KFC can make a church and he becomes his own local pope. Without a central authority to rule on teaching it becomes a real mess....I saw billboards on trip to Florida last year claiming that "Jesus is NOT God" (basically "christians" refuting his divine nature.....we're talking about sects now rejecting Council of Nicaea (300AD)).
The real issue is the modern western merging of nation with state. Even if you hold a dispensational view of the Bible, does the state of Israel seem like a God fearing government?
So true, in the Bible Israel != A Political Entity. Yet thats what the modern state of Israel is...
Frankly even the catholic church has needlessly muddied the waters.
Quick recap:
- Jesus unequivocally states: "“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
- Following Jesus death, Peter, Paul and rest of early church teach that Jews have rejected the new covenant and this is what led to destruction of temple in 70AD and the resulting diaspora.
- Medieval church councils reaffirm that: only path to salvation is thru Christ.
- Vatican II arrives and offers the most "liberal" stance thus far: The modern church depends on historical Judaism, the old Testament is still valid, and even though the modern church is the "new israel" there shouldn't be any reference that Jews have been rejected or are accursed by God.
So far so good....even Vatican II is a valid point. After all its ultimately not even up to us to decide who gets into heaven and why....
Then 2015 arrives and the church says this:
“it does not in any way follow that the Jews are excluded from God’s salvation because they do not believe in Jesus Christ,” (https://www.ncregister.com/blog/new-vatican-document-on-jews-salvation-and-evangelization), and then adds rather confusingly rejects that there can be "two parallel paths to salvation".
The entry from 2015 has only further weakened the Church's claim on the primacy of Christ and unfortunately creates unnecessary confusion. Frankly, where things were left at Vatican II were fine and I don't think we required any further statements on the matter....
Strange thing is on Brave browser I can't scroll page via trackpad (must use scrollbars)....however I can with Firefox....
Although not really related to Bitcoin, I think the fight over the CLARITY (ie. market structure) bill is going to be telling.
The basic war is entrenched commercial banks want to prohibit stablecoins from paying dividends to holders....if they get their way (and Trump doesn't intercede), then I think it signals a net negative for Bitcoin, since it shows that legacy banks are still firmly in control of US policy.
Its something like a canary test....
Both sides have been very restrained in saying not the truth out loud, I think because its one of those things that once spoken can't be taken back (kinda like telling your spouse you are considering divorce).....
Once it gets to the stage where they are "saying it out loud" Trump is going to have the better narrative...."why should american tax dollars be paying for french defense....etc"
Domestically it would be hard for democrats to counter this as Trump will use the same message.
Having said all that, there are quite of few negative things that will probably come from this....I can't see how this doesn't lead to active animosity between US - EU going forward. Tariffs, fines against US companies, travel restrictions, etc....
Yes, my read of the situation is that in 2015/2016...prior to election....Trump was saying things like "why do we even need to be in NATO, etc".....
My take is he went in with the idea he could just pull out, then military advisors explained to him that it wasn't so simple, that in effect Europe was our advanced warning system and there would be some drawbacks to not having that....
Hence, the full court press to "get Greenland" during his second term. I think everyone in Europe knows thats the plan, which is why thats why they are so hysterical trying to stop it.
I know....
Does the EU not understand what the goal is? The entire point of Greenland acquisition is to pull out of NATO completely.
Right now europe is our advance forward base, the goal is to make that Greenland so we can ditch NATO.....
The results of gov funding are insidious even when they are reasonable and well-considered.
Case in point, about a decade ago I was doing work for a non-profit that was focused on medical research. The lead researcher was explaining to me that nearly all govt grants are earmarked for research that has provable improvement metrics....that sounds reasonable (and it is), but it winds up producing counter-intuitive industry wide effects when done at scale.
If you have some novel approach for say curing diabetes its very hard to get a govt grant for it, because the grant making process basically forces you to know the results before you apply for the grant (ie. we show a 6% increase in insulin response)....however for "bluesky research" you don't know that yet....
So the result is, the industry moves towards just tweaking existing pharma recipes hoping to find some incremental gain.
Again, I'm not really blaming govt, but its just when the largest check writer (by far) sets such rules it basically forces the entire industry to take the same approach.
If we later decide we don't need it
Thats my plan too, live forever.....j/k
On a serious note, pre-paying for those things are effectively lessening the burdens on your kids. One thing me and siblings were really grateful for was that my Mom had everything already sorted when she passed....burial plot, funeral cost, even wrote out what music she wanted for church etc....
When a loved dies, it can feel overwhelming to start making those kinds of decisions (and its even more complicated if you can't access their money at that moment), so that type of preplanning is good for kids.
To put this in context - they are basically doing real-world bitcoin mining. Fusion tech has been on the horizon for some time, the limiting factor has been that capital cost to build plants far outweigh what electricity can be sold for commercially. (Note there are other much better funded competitors to marathon in the space, in fact marathon is fairly tiny)
However this this approach flips the script, since this gold yield represents basically a 2x to electricity cost (current rates)...so if fusion electricity production normally would require a 20 year payback, this would bring it down to 10 years (obviously price of gold going up would accelerate that)...at this level it may start to attract investment
There are few headwinds though:
- Guesstimates are about $8B to build a 1GW fusion plant
- Will require substantial yearly mercury inventory
- Will require substantial mercury contamination solution for environmental protection
- Decays into other radioactive elements that will require 18-20 year containment
So although an interesting approach, this isn't going flood the market with gold....
Was Hans Luther part of the central bank during the weimar currency collapse?
Is the Atlantic really reaching the point that they are ignoring hyperinflation just because Hitler fired a head of a central bank and they think they can say "orange man bad"?
Every weight discrepancy
So true. They almost never bother to verify the weights either...they just "override" it.
Also, I've noticed Walmart checkout are far more forgiving....wouldn't surprise me if they have worked out that its pointless to involve humans since they are just going to override it anyway, so just accept the discrepancy and move on....
What about unrealized losses....will they cut me a check when price falls?