I'll play the devil's advocate here.

The point about bringing up things like dryers and washing machines using energy is pretty simple: Using energy is not a bad thing. You, person who is arguing against bitcoin because of its energy use, are actually in favor of using energy for lots of things. So the mere fact that bitcoin uses energy is not an argument against it. Because you yourself use and do lots of things that use up energy. Get the point? Calling it "whataboutism" doesn't challenge the point. When someone brings up the energy use it's a perfectly relevant thing to bring up that they themselves use energy all the time. Why do they do that? And why is it a bad thing in this particular case and not in all the other cases where they are in favor of using energy?

Ahh because it provides utility. Now we can get on with the argument: what is the utility of bitcoin? And why does it require energy? And is the energy expenditure worth whatever we're getting out of it? Using the logic which you dismiss as "whataboutism" we can get to the point of what the utility of bitcoin is and what role energy plays in that.

I have little doubt that the use of credit will reduce much. Instead of taking out a loan I suspect many will simply save money for a few years and start their business out of their savings.

Generational wealth will be feasible for small income families and the accumulated "money under the mattress" might be used by children and grandchildren etc to start a business or buy a house.

I'd expect the demand for borrowing money to be smaller because money can again function as savings technology. And the demand for lending out money at interest to be smaller (One of the reasons that people lend out their money disappears under a sound money. Savings don't have to produce yield if there's no inflation. In that world you can just save the money. 0 yield keeps up with inflation just fine in that system.)

I'd nevertheless expect some people to still opt for a loan e.g. when they want to keep full ownership of their company. They will pay the interest from the profits of the business after it got off the ground using the borrowed money. And I suspect they'll find a counter-party willing to take the risk of the business failing in order to earn money in the form of interest, The one who takes out the loan would face a risk that the money appreciates as it covers a growing economy and therefore the real value of the sum that is owed increases. It may be more difficult to extract a given amount of money out of the economy in the form of profits e.g. because of innovation, invention and competition force a business to lower prices.

For those to whom "conspiracy" or "conspiracy theory" is synonymous with "whacky idea that is obviously false" or "untrue by definition" I'd recommend going through the findings of the Church Committee. It was an investigation that got carried out in 1975 that opened the CIA's book at least in part. We don't know what they managed to hide successfully but what was revealed is quite significant. There's lots of conspiracy theories that are untrue, don't misunderstand me. But conspiracies are actually quite common in the history of human affairs.

A recent example from the saga kicking of this dacade: social media companies like facebook, google, twitter conspired with the USA federal government to censor speech contradicting the government sponsored narrative of the day. Conspiracies to censor dissident speech continues on other topics like the causes of the conflict in ukraine. And it doesn't end with censorship. There's also quite a bit of lawfare.

But again: history is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is simply a particular form of humans working together. Of humans making agreements with eachother to coordinate their actions. This is very natural behaviour for humans.

It should also be noted that there's a predictable cycle the PR on these things goes through from "It's not happening. That's a conspiracy theory" to "It's happening and that's a good thing, even a necessary thing" That's what happened with talk about these various international groups like Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, WEF, bohemian grove etc. For decades the existence of these sorts of groups was denied but now we're at the point where it's a good thing and we need global governance etc. Ignore as long as you can. Then deny it as long as you can. Then act as though you never denied it and spin a positive story about it. That doesn't seem like a very wholesome pattern to me and it may indicate the existence of a conspiracy.

I should also note finally that what could be called conspiracies can actually be acted out with all the best intentions and so-called noble lies. You see we've got to conspire because if we're open about what we want to do then the people won't accept it but the people don't know what's good for them so we've got to take matters into our own hands and conspire to save us all. This kind of use of evil means in pursuance of what are seen as good ends does happen sometimes. In my view these kinds of people more often than not pave the way to hell with good intentions when they act in that manner. Then there's also the capacity of humans for self-deception and maintaining self-serving lies. Know thyself. It is difficult.

I am also reminded of a podcast interview with a guy who documented himself running 5 marathons in 5 days fasted. He didn't eat anything for the whole 5 days. He was not an athelte. He just wanted to make a point about fat stores and hormones. There alot of misinformation on the subject of diet and atheltic performance but luckily we've got guys like Tim Noakes, Jeff Volek and many others dispelling these myths and common misconceptions that have misguided so many people

There's a recent lecture by long-time ketogenic diet researcher Jeff Volek. He studies things like rates of glycogen replenishment and how that differs in low-carb athletes versus high-carb athletes. He talked about that specific topic in a lecture recently uploaded on youtube. Also worth mentioning in this context: World Strongest Man 2017 winner Eddie is currently doing the carnivore diet. He has been doing it for about a month and a half at this point while training twice daily for an upcoming MMA bout. He also keeps up with strength workouts. I was pleased to learn that 8+year carnivore doctor and top level athlete himself was advising Eddie. Shawn's book "the carnivore diet" may be a good intro to the main ideas and rationale behind this way of eating. I'd also recommend doctor Ken Berry in general and more particularly his recent debate against Joel Khan on a youtube channel by the name of Lauren Knight Hughes or something similar to that. I'd probably agree with most of the statements if not all them he made in that debate.

There's a recent lecture by long-time ketogenic diet researcher Jeff Volek. He studies things like rates of glycogen replenishment and how that differs in low-carb athletes versus high-carb athletes. He talked about that specific topic in a lecture recently uploaded on youtube. Also worth mentioning in this context: World Strongest Man 2017 winner Eddie is currently doing the carnivore diet. He has been doing it for about a month and a half at this point while training twice daily for an upcoming MMA bout. He also keeps up with strength workouts. I was pleased to learn that 8+year carnivore doctor and top level athlete himself was advising Eddie. Shawn's book "the carnivore diet" may be a good intro to the main ideas and rationale behind this way of eating. I'd also recommend doctor Ken Berry in general and more particularly his recent debate against Joel Khan on a youtube channel by the name of Lauren Knight Hughes or something similar to that. I didn't see much if anything wrong with the case he made.

I was a hair's width from getting mine analyzed by them but ended up not bothering or postponing it until I forgot about it. I've come around to the point of view of being happy about that. I didn't then worry about the privacy implications and other potentially undesirable possibilities that have come in view since then. I'm also reminded of this: During my teenage years I was one of these techno-optimist types fascinated and enthused about transhumanism. I still see the positive potential but there's some seriously next level totalitarian potential there also which I spent hardly any time thinking about during these years. This additional lens on the technological developments have dampened my enthusiasm for them somewhat. I no longer wholeheartedly support the stuff without reservations.

I did find it strange that it appeared Saylor could not understand the concept or the utility of savings without yield. Your savings don't have to yield anything on a sound money standard, isn't that literally the main point of bitcoin for many people? People who don't want to invest, who aren't interested in yield but intead just want to keep what they've got (without risks that come with investments) plus potentially becoming the beneficiary of innovation/invention-driven price reductions. Isn't the whole point that the need for yield disappears in many cases because the only reason people need yields is because the money continually inflates. When that problem is solved then a whole classes of yield-bearing investment instruments become unnecessary namely those that are used as an alternative for saving because saving money doesn't work if the money is broken.

Another thing which I found very strange happened during the part where they were talking about whether credit will still exist deep into a free market on a bitcoin standard. I tend to agree with Saylor that there will exist a supply and a demand for credit in a free market on a bitcoin standard. I think Saylor made some good points. But then Saylor went on to claim that Saif wants to ban credit seconds after Saif said literally the opposite. And multiple times before that Saif repeated that he was not making any claims about what ought to happen, but instead about what he thinks will happen as a natural result of the economic logic / the incentive structure. Saylor should have kept arguing on that same level instead of inventing straw men to attack. That was disappointing.

Still I like Saylor alot and one of the big reasons for this is his focus on remaining constructive but that quality sadly could have been on better display this episode.

I am also reminded of the Voltaire quote "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" and "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

Good intentions can be misguided by manipulating the info-space using the twin tools of propaganda and censorship. "I don't hear anyone or any expert contradicting this and it keeps getting repeated so I guess it must be true. Not sure if it makes sense to me but I guess I''ll trust the experts." The masses can go along and help commit atrocities thinking they're doing something good or necessary.

It's hard to get a majority to believe absurdities and to keep them believing it without employing mass censorship.

I thought Rfk spoke excellently on the subject of free speech and others during a recent live event that took place shortly after this recent second (known) assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life. It was an event organized by Tucker Carlson. Larry Elder was present also. Anyone who hasn't watched a couple hours or more of Rfk Jr's long form content: I beseech you to do that.

Shout-out to Mike Benz. Him be the bestest journo on this subject I know. Honorable mention to Michael Shellenberger

It's a personal judgement. Subjective valuation and all that ;) Obvious to me

Obligatory mention of the Tuttle Twins illustrated book series and animated video series. Shout-out to Connor Boyack.

Nothing about investing, protecting your purchasing power, money creation and inflation etc during any schooling I've been exposed to. My real education on that front started around 2012 when I watched the zeitgeist film or films. Before that time I don't think I ever seriously thought about the money we use, how it gets created, whether anybody controls it, the architecture of the system, other ways to do it etc. I think there's some serious flaws, misconceptions and misguided or erroneuous lines of argument in that film series but I think it played an important role in getting the ball rolling or setting people down some fruitful rabbit holes. It would be quite a few years later before I delved into the so-called austrian-school perspectives on this. Mises "Economic Calculation int he Socialist Commonwealth" helped me quite a bit in understanding prices, processes of price formation and the relation to free markets and the notion of economic calculation. I often recommend that piece together with Mises' "Bureaucracy" and Bastiat's "The Law".

Obviously steak. And it's also the best thing you don't cook.