"This monograph presents a survey of the crucial link between state power and finance from the ancient era through to the present day. Cicero once said that the true sinew of war was endless streams of money." press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/455/
"Investment in accordance to productive capacity"
Indeed, you want to invest in projects with real cash flows. But you also don't want your money debased via inflation. So the measure of any investment is whether it can outperform simply holding BTC.
For years, retail and professional investors alike have benchmarked their returns in BTC terms. That's why coinmarketcap.com makes charts like this easy. You can see whether the no-op of simply holding BTC outcompetes an investment.
Additionally, you can quantify the daily fees paid, which can be plugged into a DCF model just like cash flows, even though these are chains rather than businesses.
This is a different sense in which BTC and other coins actually are "productive assets". cryptofees.info
Technologies like mass production & mass media enabled the growth of centralized states till ~1950. The transistor, PC, internet, smartphone, and BTC are now *on balance* decentralizing that power...albeit not without an attempted Counter-Decentralization. sotonye.substack.com/p/if-einstein-…
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There's dark talent around the world, from the Midwest to the Middle East. Backing this talent is the right thing to do morally and the smart thing to do economically.
To be clear: I'm not talking about sending more tech talent to the US. Instead, I'm talking about backing dark talent around the world.
That includes the many white kids from places like the Midwest who've been unfairly quota'd out of Harvard. But it also includes those outside America whose societies were ravaged by war, socialism, or communism...and who are just now starting to become productive again.
The goal is global equality of opportunity. The Internet actually now provides the basis for uniform rule-of-law via rule-of-code, starting with Bitcoin and smart contracts. We just need to execute from here.
Yes. That's what the blockchain is: everyone worldwide gets access to their ideal monetary policy, payments, smart contracts, and entity formation. Enforced by incorruptible & transparent computer-based judges. And opted into on a purely voluntary basis.
Fifteen years ago the far left still controlled almost one third of India.
The Modi government fixed the issue by using force against actual terrorists while addressing the underlying discontent with economic development. It worked. indiatoday.in/amp/india-toda…x.com/iyervval/statu…
Both America and China were invested in the illusion that China wasn't already the world's strongest economy.
Psychologically, it suited the incumbent to appear strong. So America downplayed China's numbers.
Strategically, it suited the disruptor to appear weak. So China also sandbagged its own numbers.
But the illusion is becoming harder to maintain.
In retrospect, all the China cope over the last decade or so was really just the stealth on the Chinese stealth bomber.
Hide your strength and bide your time was Deng's strategy. Amazingly, denying China's strength somehow also became America's strategy.
For example, all the cope on China's demographics somehow being uniquely bad...when they have 1.4B+ people that crush every international science competition with minimal drug addiction, crime, or fatherlessness...and when their demographic problems have obvious robotic solutions.
Or, for another example, how MAGA sought to mimic China's manufacturing buildout and industrial policy without deeply understanding China's strengths in this area, which is like competing with Google by setting up a website. Vague references to 1945 substituted for understanding the year 2025.
One consequence of the cope is that China knows far more about America's strengths than vice versa. Surprisingly few Americans interested in re-industrialization have ever set foot in Shenzhen. Those who have, like @Molson_Hart, understand what modern China actually is.
Anyway, what @DoggyDog1208 calls the "skull chart" is the same phenomenon @yishan and I commented on months ago. Once China truly enters a vertical, like electric cars or solar, their pace of ascent[1] is so rapid that incumbents often don't even have time to react.
Now apply this at country level. China has flipped America so quickly on so many axes[2], particularly military ones like hypersonics or military-adjacent ones like power, that it can no longer be contained.
A major contributing factor was the dollar illusion. All that money printing made America think it was richer than China. And China was happy to let America persist in the illusion. But an illusion it was. Yet another way in which Keynesianism becomes the epitaph of empire.