The end of you country is coming because of internet and blockchain.
We know this because it has already happened several times in the past. Each time a new information tech appears, a new type of government appears. 🧵
Consider the Catholic Church in the 1500s
Dozens of movements protesting the Church appear over the centuries. But the Church systematically quashed them. It's easy to burn a heretic and his writings.
At the time, the Church was the most powerful entity because of it monopoly on information.
The clergy was educated, it had access to plenty of books, it could read (Latin, which most books were written on), they learned secrets via confessions, they had a monopoly on the word of God (locals spoke vernaculars), and they had European-wide correspondence.
They always knew better than anybody what was happening.
The secular power, under the feudalist system, had a strong hierarchy and a fractal system like the Church, but it didn't have the same sort of interconnected networks. The result? Less power
Then comes the printing press. Within decades, Martin Luther publishes his 95 Theses, which spread like gunpowder: now you don't publish one copy at a time. You can publish thousands. The Church can't stop it.
More generally, they lost the monopoly of information, and hence of ideas. Merchants, academics, lords... All have now access to more information and communicate more.
The Catholic Church, which had risen in power for 7 centuries, splintered in a matter of decades.
What replaced it? Something enabled by the printing press too.
See, before the printing press, in Europe there are areas spoken by Romance languages, Germanic, Slavic...
From Portugal to Wallonia, there's a gradient of change of local vernaculars. The next valley speaks a similar language, but not quite the same. And these changes accumulate with distance.
This stops with the printing press.
Books are printed in the major cities, which have the most writers and the most readers. Publishers publish in whatever will sell best, ie the most widely-spoken vernaculars of the time.
Those close-by will learn to read and understand these vernaculars. Over centuries, entire geographical areas start speaking the same language. They share the same ideas. A brotherhood sentiment emerges. A national sentiment.
So nation-states emerge to displace the feudalism that had been reigning for over 500 years, thanks to the printing press.
The same thing happened with broadcasting media in the 20th Century: they enabled totalitarian political systems, impossible before.
Before them, writing enabled kingdoms, empires, and churches.
In the next articles I'll explore the patterns of this newly-emerging type of government: taxation, decentralization, inequality, SEZ.. Subscribe to get it.
Two shocking events from last week unmasked eco-terrorists disguised as environmentalists:
1. The Philippines banned golden rice, condemning thousands of children to blindness and death 2. German Greens lied to closed nuclear plants
This is what happened and how to reverse it:
1. Golden Rice Ban
Golden Rice has added vitamin A over 100,000 children every year and turns blind over 100,000 more
Golden Rice has additional vitamin A, and eliminates that problem
But Greenpeace got a Filipino court to ban it. Why?
The court says "there's not enough evidence". But there is, proven by safety tests from countries like the US, Canada, and NZ. It is just like rice, except with more Vit A
You think housing prices will keep going up because you've seen it all your life. But this is a historic anomaly that is likely to reverse soon: Prices might start shrinking in many places.
This thread is the case against investing in housing:
Our perception of real estate prices is extremely biased.
Most ppl alive today have only experienced them since WW2, but that's a completely anomalous period!
Prices before did not grow as much. Here are real prices for 14 countries
What happened?
Supply and demand
The last 80 years have seen a growth of housing demand never seen before. At the same time, supply has been shrinking consistently. These trends are all reverting now. Let's look at them in detail:
Why do Jamaicans speak English, when most of its neighboring countries don’t?
Why was the pirate capital there?
Why is it underwater now?
Why did pirates drink rum?
Why are most Jamaicans black?
This map of shipping lanes today gives you a hint:
Jamaica is in the middle of all these shipping lanes, but isn't a major shipping hub today
This is not new: Back in Spanish colonial times, Jamaica was not in the main trade routes either
Spain's main goods were silver from Mexico and Peru and luxury goods from China
Spaniards gathered them in Panama, Portobello, Cartagena, and Veracruz
Ships arrived from Spain to Puerto Rico and left via Habana (Cuba)
Jamaica was not a main port
Why?
This machine makes fuel from thin air
It's carbon neutral
And it does this at record-low costs
Energy and the environment will look completely different in 10 years
Here's why: 🧵
The problem with fossil fuels today is not that we burn them, it's where they come from: They had been locked in the ground for millions of years and now they're back in the atmosphere. The pbm is the "fossil", not the "fuels"
If we make fuels out of thin air, we can burn them
How can we do it?
Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4)
You just need some energy to force some carbon (C) to bing to hydrogen (H)
Carbon can come from air (CO2)
Hydrogen can come from water (H2O)
The energy can come from the sun (solar panels)
This video of the Rock of Gibraltar gives an intuition for why some areas of the world have deserts next to rainforests
What's happening here?
How can you use that to predict where there will be deserts or rainforests?🧵
Look at the map below: In some places, deserts and lush forests are side by side. Why?
The mountain chains between them
The effect is called the Rain Shadow:
• Air comes wet from the sea
• As it hits mountains, it goes up
• Higher altitudes are cooler, so the air cools
• That condenses water (like the droplets on you Coke glass)
• Rain falls
• Air is dry past the mountains
Egyptian pyramids are not where they're supposed to be. Why?
Why is Cairo, the biggest African city, where it is today?
Alexandria?
Why do over 100M Egyptians live so densely clustered?
These questions all have the same answer. Look:
1st map: population density
2nd map: satellite
The "flower" is the inhabited part of Egypt, which is basically the Nile
It makes sense: outside of the Nile, Egypt is like the rest of the Sahara desert, an inhospitable hell for humans