Sunday Ramble
The days keep rolling by here in the Amazon. Between the torrential rainstorms, the road to town continues to deteriorate, making us constantly wonder if we will be hoofing it after the next big downpour. But, of course, it’s a relatively trivial downside to living outside the concrete jungle, where we’d be sharing walls and moto-taxi noise with Tarapotan neighbors.
I’ve been pondering the transhumanist movement for the last couple of weeks. The movement has turned Yuval Harari, one of the speakers featured in the JP Sears video in last week’s Ramble, into the poster child for the WEF’s efforts, unwittingly or not. The transhumanist movement is the belief that humanity is going to merge into silicon apparatus to extend its abilities in the not-so-distant future. And in the far-off future, perhaps we drop the meat suits altogether and become silicon-based life forms. So yeah, it’s pretty heady, out-there stuff that, unsurprisingly, comes from the musings of intelligent people divorced from day-to-day reality by vast sums of wealth.
I find the transhumanist idea best described in the What Is Money podcast series with Balaji Srinivasan. Robert Breedlove hosts the unsummarizable seven-episode series containing vast predictions for the future with Balaji. You can find all the riveting episodes here — genuinely riveting. Balaji has earned a broad audience for his voracious ability to synthesize copious amounts of information to provide reasonably accurate future views. He’s racked up more academic accreditation and business successes than I can dream of in three lifetimes. It makes me want to crawl into bed and get a good night’s sleep just thinking about it.
In the last episode of the series, Robert dug into what makes Balaji tick. Frighteningly, his views on transhumanism align with Yuval Harari. The idea that we will overcome longevity and cognition limitations in the human species is all but inevitable to both Balaji and Yuval. And indeed, they may be right. However, transhumanism doesn’t limit itself to just bettering the human condition, but surpassing it and becoming the equivalent of Marvel comic heroes.
I find it worrying how Balaji claims transhumanism competes with the anarchic principles of living as pagans off the land. There are only two poles on the spectrum the future offers: either embrace transhumanism and become god-like or live tribally off the land. Maybe he’s right, but I can’t help thinking: where is the human heart in all of this? Transhumanism sounds like a heartless robotic future where we push ourselves out of our emotional capabilities and into some hyper-rational future — machines become us. Perhaps I’m naive, but I believe it’s this third, heart-based option that gets overlooked by the intellectual elite.
Always, and forever, it’s the bravery of the human heart that transforms humanity’s power structures. The image of the lone China man facing down the tanks in Tiananmen square comes to mind as I typed the last sentence.
A man single-handedly standing up to the raw power of the Chinese state portrayed what that state was to the world, altering billions of minds for decades to come in the process. Of course, that didn’t cause the Chinese government to fall, but it did change their discourse, soften their approach, and slow their roll for a short decade or two.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention of Bitcoin is nothing if not heart-based. It directly attacks the single biggest atrocity against humanity since the US dollar was separated from the gold standard — theft of human time. Time is the only resource each of us shares equally with one another. We are all similarly humbled and desirous of another few minutes of life when the last moments of our life becomes present. Losing the choice of how we spend our time puts is just a stone’s thrown from being imprisoned or enslaved. This astounding chart shows the reality of the time theft Americans have experienced since the US dollar was divorced from the gold backing it.
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis chart shows that the share of gross domestic income for workers has declined since the US dollar moved to fiat. It’s astounding…and succinctly captures the problem with unrestrained money printing — workers need to work more hours to capture the same value. If that’s not time theft of the one scarce resource each of us shares equally, I don’t know what is.
It’s not hard to understand why people are moving from money inside the state’s control to money outside of it — it offers the promise of more time. The greatest freedom is choosing what we do with our time. But unfortunately, none of us have that choice without getting outside the hamster wheel of working to cover our necessities in life. That’s why Michael Saylor dedicated the hope.com domain to Bitcoin education. Satoshi gave all of us the heart-based condition of hope — it’s only a matter of time before you realize it if you haven’t yet.
Rad Things on the Interwebs
How smart is this dog?!
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekly Range: $28k - $44k
The dastardly range of $36k to $44k remained intact as last week closed at $41.3k. After three weekly closes around the $38k price, closing at the higher end of the range suggests further upside, but until $44k holds on a weekly finish, there’s no assurance we’re breaking to the upside. I expect the chop to continue in this price range in the week ahead, though it doesn’t look like we’ll close below $38k this week. The last similar consolidation occurred in May last year and took ten weeks to resolve. We’re in week nine of the current consolidation, so perhaps we’re nearing the end of this range in the weeks ahead. To reiterate, below $36k on the weekly close or above $44k on the weekly close are needed for a new trend to emerge.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: What is outside money?
A: Outside money is a term used to describe money outside of state control.
Zoltan Posar of Credit Suisse coined “outside money” in a recent note to investors describing how we are living through another Breton Woods moment. Breton Woods III, to be exact — the first at the end of the last World War when the gold-backed dollar became the center of the financial ecosystem and the second in 1971 when the dollar became unglued from the gold backing it. Outside money is the opposite of inside money, which is money created and managed by a nation-state.
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Love your quote "the musings of intelligent people divorced from day-to-day reality by vast sums of wealth". YES INDEED.