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> In The Bitcoin Standard, Ammous blamed the Fed for the modern “breakdown of the family,” and for “perhaps most damagingly, the depletion of the soil of its nu
by seibelj 5y ago
> In The Bitcoin Standard, Ammous blamed the Fed for the modern “breakdown of the family,” and for “perhaps most damagingly, the depletion of the soil of its nutrients, leading to ever-lower levels of nutrients in food.” He compared the art of the Renaissance, Classical, and Romantic periods, all financed properly with sound money, to the decadent culture of the twenty-first century, with its “animalistic noises’’ and “immediate sensory pleasures.’’ “It was hard money that financed Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos,” he wrote, “while easy money financed Miley Cyrus’s twerks.” It was, moreover, “no coincidence that the era of central bank-controlled money was inaugurated with the first world war in human history.” Here was a theory of everything, a moral case for Bitcoin that encompassed art and war and even the nutrients in our soil. (Ammous disdains what he calls “fiat food,” claiming his diet consists of “approximately 95% red meat, 5% other meats, and approximately zero plant matter.”)
I un-ironically believe all of this, but when put in this way, it sounds crazy. But I believe it.
Is it not curious that true fiat currency is a relatively recent phenomena, perhaps 100 years old in reality and 50 years officially, yet amazing discoveries, inventions, buildings, factories, art, etc. were all made before fiat currency? Fiat isn't a requirement nor an inevitability - it is a human invention, and one I personally see as a mistake.
- lapetitejort 5y agoYou know what amazing discovery was made after fiat currency? Bitcoin. I think the human race still has something going for it.
- jandrese 5y ago"Wow, when you say it out loud it sounds crazy", followed by zero introspection.
- shralpmeister 5y agoIs it just me or does that read like a far-right, Christian, white supremacist screed?
- burnoutgal 5y agoYup, classic fascist rhetoric. It's not surprising they point to a woman being independent and expressing her sexuality as the example of "degenerate culture". The "other" (people of colour, women, queers) are producing art that represents our own experiences, which is a threat to their desired white hetero-patriarchal order. Never mind that Mozart wrote a ton of filthy shit. People have been obsessed with sex forever
- seibelj 5y agoI think the comment about the music is ridiculous, but the broader point about free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living, etc. is not without merit.
- batrachos 5y ago> free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living, etc. is not without merit. First, you have to establish that degradation has taken place. Considering that for most of civilizational history, the vast majority of people were wearing rags and eating grain porridge without spice or much salt and living in hovels, that doesn't seem obvious to me. Second, even if you do establish that, you have to specifically tie it to "fiat" currency and not some other factor. Those both seem like a tall order.
- UncleMeat 5y agoDegradation of food? Housing? Do you know what people ate when Bach was alive? Or in what conditions most people lived?
- cuteboy19 5y agoIt doesn't matter. Facts don't matter if you have spent significant amount of your life savings into magic internet money. Any news is contructed into 'this is good for bitcoin'. Even history itself is malleable, everything can be blamed on fiat (even though Bitcoin itself is fiat).
- frankbreetz 5y agoThe 50-100 years the has been an explosion of new discoveries. The model T was still being produced 100 years ago. To claim anyone has a worse life then 100 years(or whenever fiat was started) ago is a bit of a stretch.
- fullshark 5y agoThe conversion of US society from an agricultural one to an industrial one to an information/services one probably the larger trend driving results here, especially if the quality of produce/soil is something you're thinking about. The role fiat currency played in that is debatable I'll grant. RE: terrible art, the rise of that is the rise of art for lower classes in terms of more of it being produced and seen, which is a good thing I'd argue, as well as comparing art made in a 10 year period say with all of the best art western civilization has produced in the past 500 years.
- oh_sigh 5y agoIf our crops don't have any nutrients, how exactly would our animal products have nutrients in them? I doubt he is eating wild caught animals for a majority of his nutrition - presumably just eating factory raised pigs and cows which are fed the same crops that he believes has no nutrients. I'll also bet that Ammous ends up with diverticulitis within 10 years if his description of his diet is correct.
- youarethebest 5y agoGrass-fed animals unaffected. Easy to get if you actually look and are willing to support regenerative farms in order to obtain the best nutrition possible. I suggest researching into how animals turn grass into nutrients and the difference between crops for human consumption and grass.
- oh_sigh 5y agoDoes the guy in OPs statement only eat grass-fed animals? Isn't the source of the grass important? If it is grown in a wild field, maybe it will have all its natural nutrients. But if it is grown as a crop, or on a field under repeated heavy grazing, isn't that just as bad as what is happening to the human crops? Also, if the guy is going out of his way to only eat the best, most expensive beef, because corn-fed beef is actually bad, why doesn't he do the same thing for fruits and vegetables? You can get "wild grown" vegetables just like you can get wild grazed beef. It just costs more.
- youarethebest 5y agoI believe he does most of the time. Most people in the carnivore diet are moving to grass fed, otherwise they would be cornivores. Grass from cows has nature's fertilizer. Good ol shit that replenishes nutrients in the soil. Welcome to sustainable/regenerative farming. Because meat has everything humans need? Why eat pesticide and low quality "food" when you don't have to?
- Melio 5y agoIt's not just 100 years old. It's over 1000 years old and it evolved from nothing to what we have. It's very weird that you ignore history like this. You should read up on Spain, silver, gold, china and tons of other history regarding tender. What we have with fiat is your very well working monolith fine tuned over centuries while everyone who wants to make money of of you tells you why their Nanoservice with security holes and no features is so much better.
- Hendrikto 5y agoGold and silver coins are not fiat though.
- majormajor 5y agoHow much actual gold has to be in your gold coin before it crosses from "gold" to "fiat"? You had "debased" coinage in Roman times, if not earlier.
- Hendrikto 5y agoDoes not matter as long as it‘s a fixed minimum.
- quickthrowman 5y agoRight, and basing the supply of currency on the amount of two metal elements we can mine out of the ground is insane.
- Melio 5y agoIt's part of history and not the only part of it. From Wikipedia: "Government-issued fiat money banknotes were used first during the 11th century in China"
- nmhancoc 5y agoI think the phenomenon you're observing is that the quote observes a true correlation, coincidence, or relation, but "sounds crazy" because the implication it draws is _very_ strong relative to what can probably be evidenced. In other words, it _is_ the case that Renaissance works were financed with harder money than works today. That's a historical matter of fact. It _is_ the case that families are breaking down or that nutrient levels in produce (per unit size) have decreased. It's also the case that those events were coincident with a change of greater adoption of fiat currency vs hard currency (and I'd put it on a spectrum because of fractional reserve banking and other items which made the Gold standard dollars not _really_ redeemable in Gold and etc). With all that said, the "sounds crazy" comes in because it's totally unsubstantiated in the quote (and probably otherwise) that just because these things occurred together the change in the status of money is the primary driver behind the other changes. Edit: For example, if the change in money is the primary driver, then it is the case that the massive technology shifts we've seen aren't the primary driver. Nitrogen based fertilizers aren't the primary driver. Various civil rights movements aren't the primary driver. The presence of global travel, the formation of a global village, the new ability to communicate, none of these are the primary drivers. And the more you lean on fiat money being the explainer, the less you allow all these other things to contribute to the explanation. That case becomes harder and harder to support, I think.
- uoaei 5y agoThis is the classic conspiracy treadmill and subsequent dive: See correlations that are unsettling or suggestive; imagine causal forces which are fundamentally out of reach epistemologically, but explain the causation for the correlation which is apparent; institutionalize the theory into a worldview; attach your identity to it and obey in-group/out-group social maxims; find home in only the in-group because only they tolerate your assertions with no challenge; cement the worldview in your mind as a quasi-religious totalizing narrative because of the lack of challenges.
- uoaei 5y agoAh, so Bitcoin is just Goldbug-ism for the Age of Information.
- perardi 5y agoThere are just…I can’t even start with the sheer inanity of that quote. First off, the First World War happened on the gold standard. Most currencies, notably the British Pound, didn’t become decoupled from gold until after WW1. And those World Wars were enabled by technology, not fiat currency. Mass production of weaponry, rapid advancements in said weaponry, trains, fertilizer to grow more food to supply those front line…technology was far more of a driver than fractional reserve banking. And decadence? Decadence! The Sun King would like to have a word with you about “decadence”.
- youarethebest 5y ago
- jrm4 5y agoAnyone who is very serious about strong lines between "fancy" art and "low-class" art can be safely dismissed as an idiot. It takes only the tiniest bit of historical knowledge to understand that these things frequently, and frequently-rapidly evolve, usually from "low-class" to "fancy." See e.g. theatre, jazz, etc.
- astoor 5y agoThis exhibits many of the classic signs you are in a cult - believing "crazy" things that non-cult-members would not believe, suspending rational thought processes and deferring to charismatic leader(s), and blaming objects of persecution for an unfeasibly wide range of issues (e.g. blaming the Fed for everything from the "breakdown of the family" to "the depletion of the soil of its nutrients"). The rest of the article exhibits many more classic indicators of cult membership - extreme obsessiveness with leader(s), any criticism or questioning characterized as persecution, special persecution of former members (Musk in the original article), denying it is a cult, etc.