The fall of the US empire... 🇺🇸🇺🇸

May not exactly happen.

The empires of today I believe evolve before they tumble.

If you ride your bike too hard into the heat with too little food and water, you bonk.

The empires of previous times bonked, essentially. They pushed as hard as they could. They had 1 gear and tried to get it all. They didn't know that it wouldn't work. The empires of today..

Well, eventually the powers that be realize that control is fleeting and total world dominance is not a possible outcome. And so it's the wrong thing to try for.

They learn not to bonk.

Their strategies evolve. They want to hang on and have as much as they can for as long as they can.

And that's probably what's playing out right now.

The exponential growth rate of technology needs to be appreciated.

More than ever before, there's a steep upward slope and an increasingly improving economy and human condition.

Lost in their textbook, Keynesians don't realize this. They think economies sway around aimlessly and breakdown at random. They don't realize human cooperation is a balanced and powerful force. We're like ants. It doesn't randomly change or stop working for no reason.

It breaks when people with guns and armies march in and break it, or when they use their guns to create rules and imbalances that gradually distort it over time.

With an increasingly better economic output, it can absorb increasingly more damage.

So on one hand it's a mathematical certainty that it will crumble. Unfunded liabilities and more people than ever before depending on state money, and a wildly high immigration rate to enable people from all over the world to come and claim rewards and grow dependent also.

Yadee yada.

Blowing up and destabilizing other countries, huge welfare state, and a wildly high immigration rate is just an awesomely bad combination of things.

Given enough time, there has to be a big moment of ruin.

BUT, the underbelly of exponentially growing real economy can absorb more damage than ever before.

I feel like the 2020s are gonna be a sick decade.

"the twenties"... we finally have a decade that sounds right.

So they aren't necessarily pushing it to the point of collapse. It's more like we the people don't get to realize all the gains of exponential growth that we'd naturally be entitled to if everyone was peaceful.

To avoid collapse or epic ruin or whatever, they don't even need to reverse the policies. It wouldn't hurt. But all that really has to happen is they don't make it worse.. or at least, don't make it increasingly worse at a fast enough rate.

And then "they" and their systems and various involvements just fade out of relevance over time, as people find better ways of doing things.

Peaceful cooperation is +EV and eventually wins out.

China may be the big producer.

But who really needs stuff?

All you need are bits, love, food, shelter.

What seems like a path towards world dominance may morph into just making things. Not that glamorous.

War isn't cool anymore and it won't be cool in the twenties.

::knock on wood::

The ruling class will try to leech and extract what they can from their relatively whipped and obedient citizenry. But it can only go so far before they gobble up their competitive advantage and people would choose to make things elsewhere.

China too will evolve.

People will make things on their 3D printers and deliver it to their friends on a drone.

The gig is up.

Satoshi has all the bits.

The powers that be probably have all the bits and are accumulating.

Not all of them, just a disparate amount of them. (Because unlike the people who read their textbooks, they know how things actually work and make good decisions. They know this is the next wave.)

But they'll have to spend it carefully, and gradually they fade into just regular people.

Michael Novagratz was on CNBC.

The CNBC host is sharper about Bitcoin than he is, lul.

I like Mr. Novagratz and I like that he speaks "crypto" to the mainstream people of finance. Soothing voice. Strong American man. But he's kind of altcoiney, and doesn't make clear sense wrt to Bitcoin.

He sees Bitcoin as "digital gold" or "a store of value" but "not a currency".

Of course Bitcoin is too volatile to be a currency right now. No one believes it presently, right now, today would work well as a currency. (Wacky how short-term oriented people are.)

But you better hope it will be one eventually -- or that it will have some other major use -- or else there's absolutely no reason it would ever be "digital gold" or a reliable way to store value.

The reason it has value is because people speculate it will one day be used.

It can't just randomly be "digital gold" if not for there being a point to it.

And no, fixed supply does not mean volatility.

It's volatile right now because it's brand new. And because it's epic. It's not reasonable to expect it would go from 0 to epic in a straight line.

Not because the supply is fixed.

If a small handful of people were allowed to play around with the supply at whim, this would increase its volatility. (The uncertainly of not knowing which arbitrary decision someone will make does not somehow clean up volatility.)

The dollar and other fiats are stable today because they're widely used and it's very clear to markets what their role is. Perception and demand aren't wildly changing. Not because of the aspect where the supply changes at the whim of a few people.

Too much dumbness out there.

😴😴 yawwwnnnnnnnn 😴😴

Try to be the smart money, people.