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☮ Social ☮ PD Social Talk Thread: If 2020 Was the Dumpster, Can 2021 Be the Fire?

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Buzz Lightbeer said:
Guys, what I don't quite get about crypto is that if some cryptocurrency ever got adopted, as in it being the global reserve currency, that would be a disaster for many extremely powerful financial institutions right? With the dollar as the current reserve currency, that gives immense power to the US, and they have gone to extreme lengths to maintain global domination. I just cannot see it happening, it would have to coincide with the demise of the US, and possibly some other powerful countries.
If it's just another currency nothing much changes right? Am I missing something? Hard to find in depth info on this.
Click to expand...

Even if it doesn't topple the dollar, it still weakens it, which is a good thing, I think?
 
pharmakos said:
Even if it doesn't topple the dollar, it still weakens it, which is a good thing, I think?
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Maybe. I don't exactly like the idea of a geopolitically dominant China. No matter the shittiness of the US, I would take our dominance over China's any day, and that is not at all because I'm American.

Personally, I think China's growing influence is one of the greatest current global threats.
 
Buzz Lightbeer said:
Guys, what I don't quite get about crypto is that if some cryptocurrency ever got adopted, as in it being the global reserve currency, that would be a disaster for many extremely powerful financial institutions right? With the dollar as the current reserve currency, that gives immense power to the US, and they have gone to extreme lengths to maintain global domination. I just cannot see it happening, it would have to coincide with the demise of the US, and possibly some other powerful countries.
If it's just another currency nothing much changes right? Am I missing something? Hard to find in depth info on this.
Click to expand...

The idea of crypto isn't for it to become the official reserve currency. It's that it is money outside of any system of government. It's just something that people agree is worth money, enough people to create a whole ecosystem of digital assets. it doesn't matter whether the US agrees it is a reserve currency, what matters is that lots of people agree it's worth money across the world. And since they do, it is something worth money that is not connected to the US, or to any other country or government.

I wasn't aware people were thinking it was going to become the world's reserve currency, I thought people just considered it a hedge against inflation, and a safeguard against declining fiat currencies.
 
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fuck man i should of sold my bitcoin when it hit its peak fuck ELON MUSK! that prick should be charged for market manipulation.
 
TripSitterNZ said:
fuck man i should of sold my bitcoin when it hit its peak fuck ELON MUSK! that prick should be charged for market manipulation.
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Yeah it is probably not the end of the this bull run. Just consolidating. Also yeah, Elon needs to feel some ramifications, that guy is a fucker. But the market is extremely reactive, don't make panic decisions. A week in crypto feels like a month.
 
ima hold already spent my bitcoin on things like shoes and stuff though when it was peaking high but still have some left over
 
Xorkoth said:
The idea of crypto isn't for it to become the official reserve currency. It's that it is money outside of any system of government. It's just something that people agree is worth money, enough people to create a whole ecosystem of digital assets. it doesn't matter whether the US agrees it is a reserve currency, what matters is that lots of people agree it's worth money across the world. And since they do, it is something worth money that is not connected to the US, or to any other country or government.

I wasn't aware people were thinking it was going to become the world's reserve currency, I thought people just considered it a hedge against inflation, and a safeguard against declining fiat currencies.
Click to expand...
Yes I understand what crypto does =D but for e.g. BTC to have value in the future, there would need to be some eventual utility for it, and if that ever were the case, we go full circle right?
With bitcoin constantly in circulation, that would drastically diminish the power from central banks, they would no longer have complete power over currency circulating in their country, especially since they don't have as much in reserve themselves. So why would these people ever adopt BTC? And I'm quite sure it ultimately is up to them, given how much they've historically influenced politics, who in turn have close ties to the largest corporations.
I can see them issuing their own cryptocurrencies but then we're essentially back where we started...

My economics knowledge is limited, I also asked because I don't know and don't understand enough :)
 
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Went to the gym feel really good from it noticing progress aswell my chest and core and arms are looking more toned and stronger. was so tired but forced myself to go instead of sleeping now im wide awake. walking around feels very different after shrooms my mind state is over the place but i think deep down im a bit better off just have to process everything. Have the urge to drop for my trip anniversary on the 20th but ima skip it + if i dose and dont meet god then ill be disappointed
 
psy997 said:
I would take our dominance over China's any day, and that is not at all because I'm American.
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I honestly think it is because you are American, or Western. Large parts of the world have personally experienced the destruction that the US can bring (coups, invasions, sanctions etc...), on the other hand you have China luring people in with money, instead of strongarming everyone. I would also prefer the West to remain dominant, but I'm not that convinced that China as the main superpower is that bad of a thing, it's obviously not ideal but they have hardly shown aggressive intentions, especially compared to the US. They should sit around tables (resolve differences and talk about each others shortcomings), invest in their own people and convince others that the Western way is the way.

I don't quite understand this fear from China, I wonder what you mean that they're one of the major global threats? It's not like our countries are going to disappear, and if we handle the next decades intelligently, we can be just as or more wealthy, I think.
 
Buzz Lightbeer said:
Yes I understand what crypto does =D but for e.g. BTC to have value in the future, there would need to be some eventual utility for it, and if that ever were the case, we go full circle right?
With bitcoin constantly in circulation, that would drastically diminish the power from central banks, they would no longer have complete power over currency circulating in their country, especially since they don't have as much in reserve themselves. So why would these people ever adopt BTC? And I'm quite sure it ultimately is up to them, given how much they've historically influenced politics, who in turn have close ties to the largest corporations.
I can see them issuing their own cryptocurrencies but then we're essentially back where we started...

My economics knowledge is limited, I also asked because I don't know and don't understand enough :)
Click to expand...

Value is not inextricably linked to utility, eg. gold. "But gold does have some utility!" Yes, and so does BTC, though it's not amazing at what it does considering it's inefficiency.

Rarity/scarcity is also a huge driving factor of value, and BTC has that going for it big time.

Also, if humans can speculate that something has value and especially will increase in value, then said item's value will undoubtedly increase, unless it proves itself to be too dangerous to hold value. Bitcoin is dangerous in that it is environmentally questionable (right now), and still highly volatile. However, the potential increase in value and thus profit far outweighs those dangers, and so, it continues to hold and gain value.

Buzz Lightbeer said:
I honestly think it is because you are American, or Western. Large parts of the world have personally experienced the destruction that the US can bring (coups, invasions, sanctions etc...), on the other hand you have China luring people in with money, instead of strongarming everyone. I would also prefer the West to remain dominant, but I'm not that convinced that China as the main superpower is that bad of a thing, it's obviously not ideal but they have hardly shown aggressive intentions, especially compared to the US. They should sit around tables (resolve differences and talk about each others shortcomings), invest in their own people and convince others that the Western way is the way.

I don't quite understand this fear from China, I wonder what you mean that they're one of the major global threats? It's not like our countries are going to disappear, and if we handle the next decades intelligently, we can be just as or more wealthy, I think.
Click to expand...

I do not think so, and will attempt to explain myself a bit. I am planning on leaving the US at some point in my life as I don't have faith in it's continued flourishing, and while I am a patriot in the sense that I think the project of the United States is a beautiful idea, I know that I can't in good conscious fully abandon the well-being of my current home and home of my family, and I believe that a large percentage of cutting edge cultural and technological advances are occurring here and so, the country is worth fostering, I am in no way beholden to any nation-state, including my home.

What I am beholden to is the greatest chance for continued human existence and easiest/quickest human flourishing. That being the case, an examination of the pros and cons of various nation-state's global dominance is required. To simplify things a large amount: I am much more sympathetic to the ideals of freedom, despite the myriad failures of the US, say, to truly uphold those values, considering the obviousness of failures occurring and the continued value placed on free speech (again, despite erosions) than I am to the explicitly individually oppressive, collectively oriented, explicitly censored approach of China. I think that the fumbling, dumb, brawn of the US is easier to deal with than the sly, non-traditionally violent China, whose social policies unfortunately even further enable national misbehavior considering the efficacy of maintenance and growth of quality of life for citizens, and subsequent greater appreciation of and lenience regarding misbehavior towards the government.
 
Crypto is looking whack as fuck. I feel kinda stupid for not selling more vechain when it hit 0.24, it was obvious it wasn't sustainable, shit went 10X in a couple months. Only sold a third of my stack, should've gone for more. Now it's at 0.15.

But oh well, retrospective thinking is always just anxiety and regret. I guess I'll just hold till the next bull cycle haha.
 
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psy997 said:
Personally, I think China's growing influence is one of the greatest current global threats.
Click to expand...

psy997 said:
I do not think so, and will attempt to explain myself a bit. I am planning on leaving the US at some point in my life as I don't have faith in it's continued flourishing, and while I am a patriot in the sense that I think the project of the United States is a beautiful idea, I know that I can't in good conscious fully abandon the well-being of my current home and home of my family, and I believe that a large percentage of cutting edge cultural and technological advances are occurring here and so, the country is worth fostering, I am in no way beholden to any nation-state, including my home.

What I am beholden to is the greatest chance for continued human existence and easiest/quickest human flourishing. That being the case, an examination of the pros and cons of various nation-state's global dominance is required. To simplify things a large amount: I am much more sympathetic to the ideals of freedom, despite the myriad failures of the US, say, to truly uphold those values, considering the obviousness of failures occurring and the continued value placed on free speech (again, despite erosions) than I am to the explicitly individually oppressive, collectively oriented, explicitly censored approach of China. I think that the fumbling, dumb, brawn of the US is easier to deal with than the sly, non-traditionally violent China, whose social policies unfortunately even further enable national misbehavior considering the efficacy of maintenance and growth of quality of life for citizens, and subsequent greater appreciation of and lenience regarding misbehavior towards the government.
Click to expand...


I agree with Buzz, I don't get this take at all. Sure, I wouldn't like to live under the totalitarian regime of the CCP. But on the other hand, China are far less imperialistic than the US. They are only interested in Economic dominance, but they see their own culture as a thing for the Chinese people, in that sense you don't see them exporting and imposing their values as the west did during the colonial era and now through mass media and the cultural industry. They are very nationalistic and live their political processes inwardly, so they are not interested in exporting their model. This is why we haven't seen a flood of Chinese music, cinema, books, TV programs, etc, correlated with their economic rise, as it was the case with the US for example. They don't have a cultural agenda for the rest of the world. They just want to flood our shelves with their products. They are only interested in becoming an economic power. They are not bombing people or promoting coups to bring communism as the west has done to bring "Progress" and "democracy".

And to be honest, and I don't mean this in a bitter way, just taking the license to be sincere on this point: the global south would probably be better off with a Chinese dominance. The biggest detriment to social change in my region is the lurking fear of a US backed coup, and its a fear not without grounding, as it already happened in '73.

I say this with all respect and no intention to sound confrontational or whatever. Please don't take it personally. You know I love you all, and when I was in the US for work a few years ago I got to really appreciate and understand your culture, and I felt welcomed and had a great time. I have nothing against northamerican people, it's just your foreign policy that kinda suck, I guess it's not hard to see the reasons why.
 
Buzz Lightbeer said:
Yes I understand what crypto does =D but for e.g. BTC to have value in the future, there would need to be some eventual utility for it, and if that ever were the case, we go full circle right?
With bitcoin constantly in circulation, that would drastically diminish the power from central banks, they would no longer have complete power over currency circulating in their country, especially since they don't have as much in reserve themselves. So why would these people ever adopt BTC? And I'm quite sure it ultimately is up to them, given how much they've historically influenced politics, who in turn have close ties to the largest corporations.
I can see them issuing their own cryptocurrencies but then we're essentially back where we started...

My economics knowledge is limited, I also asked because I don't know and don't understand enough :)
Click to expand...

Well yeah BTC is shit for a currency and I don't think it will ever attain daily use as such (I certainly hope not, unless the energy consumption issue is solved... it is already congested enough as is). However BTC, for now, is a store of value because it is the dominant crypto in the market that even institutional money is getting into. That said, there are a variety of other cryptos that would work great for daily transactions (NANO comes to mind... it is entirely fee-less, and instant transfers, and uses very little energy, and was put to a stress test back in 2017 or 2018 and was able to match performance of the credit card processing system of VISA, if I remember correctly). However, in truth, a crypto needs to be pretty stable (not fluctuate so drmataically with the whole market) in order for this to be really feasible to replace existing centralized systems. My guess is that next bull run is going to be early mass adoption, and then the one after that will be full adoption. Once full aodpting is reached, some of the instability and scaling issues can be solved.

However the big question is, will world governments like the US actually allow this to happen, or will crypto remain a store of value and transaction facilitator for under the table stuff? And decentralized services platforms (for example, SONM is interesting, it allows people to rent out their computers to contribute computing power to clients who want to avoid using centralized services like AWS architecture).
 
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I dipped out of crypto last week. Took my doge earnings and paid off my credit card and booked a birthday massage for my gf. Feels good to not have to check it multiple times a day and stress over the constant ups and downs. I’ll be back eventually but for now I like the mental freedom I feel from not having money invested.

I just got over having covid. It didn’t hit me too hard. It felt like a minor cold or allergies but since I didn’t have to go to work for a week I took that time to binge on various dissociatives and xanax and baclofen. It was a nice little break from reality. A few times I blacked out and woke up the next morning a little confused about what happened the night before.
it made dealing with covid a breeze.
 
Delsyd said:
I dipped out of crypto last week. Took my doge earnings and paid off my credit card and booked a birthday massage for my gf. Feels good to not have to check it multiple times a day and stress over the constant ups and downs. I’ll be back eventually but for now I like the mental freedom I feel from not having money invested.
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A real winner
 
If you all will forgive a significant digression let me dust off my International Relations which is what my first degree was in although I never used it. Funnily enough I did have a chat with a CIA recruiter one time but by that time was already doing my studies in preparation for what I actually do now (that and the polygraph would've probably been interesting to say the least.) Sometimes I wistfully think of what might have been and the missed opportunity to run around subverting democracies and fun shit like that (or more likely sitting in a cubicle and functionally doing basically the same shit I did in school, writing papers.) Anyhow...
Img_9999 said:
China are far less imperialistic than the US. They are only interested in Economic dominance, but they see their own culture as a thing for the Chinese people, in that sense you don't see them exporting and imposing their values as the west did during the colonial era and now through mass media and the cultural industry. They are very nationalistic and live their political processes inwardly, so they are not interested in exporting their model. This is why we haven't seen a flood of Chinese music, cinema, books, TV programs, etc, correlated with their economic rise, as it was the case with the US for example. They don't have a cultural agenda for the rest of the world. They just want to flood our shelves with their products. They are only interested in becoming an economic power. They are not bombing people or promoting coups to bring communism as the west has done to bring "Progress" and "democracy".
Click to expand...
Check out what China is doing in Africa though. Not fomenting coups (yet?) or dropping bombs but doing exonomic imperialism very much on the model of what the US has done in various places. They are less militaristic than the French also operating in Africa (something you almost never hear about) but are definitely pushing their political and economic model (see the very totalitarian Eritrea which receives a lot of Chinese aid and there has even been discussion of military bases) but more importantly exploiting natural resources and setting themselves up to do so and thereby coopt the West with various critical supply chains thereby increasing the already very significant dependence of the rest of the world on China. This might arguably be a net good in that it is another factor to prevent war but nonetheless any inch of power to the Chinese is dangerous as they are, quite contrary to what you are saying, getting much bolder with subversive overseas activities including right here in the US (Confucius Institues? Underwriting grants for leftist professors? And of course a lot of plain old spying...) which bring to mind the "active measures" of the KGB. Make no mistake the Chinese definitely do want to establish dominance and make the whole world dependent on them and eventually develop their system.

tl;dr: Sina delenda est.
Img_9999 said:
And to be honest, and I don't mean this in a bitter way, just taking the license to be sincere on this point: the global south would probably be better off with a Chinese dominance. The biggest detriment to social change in my region is the lurking fear of a US backed coup, and its a fear not without grounding, as it already happened in '73.
Click to expand...
Chile and Allende? No pretendo explicarte la política de su propio país :) pero also for the benefit of other readers there was a lot of fuckery in the 1970 election by both the CIA and the KGB so it's not really fair to single out the US here for being interventionist just because their particular active measures in terms of backing a certain brand of caudillismo won out. Pinochet to say the least did a lot of horrible things but who knows what a socialist to at the very least semi-Marxist (although not fully ML) government would have done if they had more time (I imagine just as many Russians would eventually have wound up down there dictating economics as the "Chicago" Americans did under Pinochet despite Allende's almost Third-Worldist stated desire to develop a distinctly Chilean socialism. The KGB was all over the place too. It even seems elements in the KGB deliberately screwed Allende in '73 in hopes of getting someone more Russian influenced in power during the chaos. Obviously didn't work out well for them. But what if the coup had failed?) If not for foreign involvement there would probably be a comfortable and stable government of an elitist and conservative kind of nature (the name of the candidate to his right from the PDC that Allende very narrowly defeated escspes me, he had been president before?) but much less extreme that what would up happening.

But it is pretty much impossible to really imagine Latin American politics then or now without a lot of foreign fuckery by gringos and pinkos alike. Since it was on the US doorstop, it was both immensely attractive to the latter as a way to threaten US interests and the former to maintain a cordon of Marshall doctrine safety. It is unfortunate that many very real human lives are used as pawns in that game but the truth is that it was being played by both sides and putting the blame entirely on the US is unfair.

The Chinese undoubtedly would like to get a seat at that table but at this stage I don't think they have the capacity or the balls to really interfere in Latin America to the extent and in the way the USSR did, although they are doing their stuff there,, right now they're first and foremost busy fucking around in Africa which entails not only messing with the French but there is in fact a much larger US presence there than people think at least in terms of military bases. That is where shit is going to pop off in terms of Chinese vs Western political fuckery and I am absolutely certain the Chinese would have no problems backing a coup or two if they can get away with it. They are preferring subtle means for now though.

While they are not using that kind of overt violence and their totalitarianism is relatively "soft" (social credit scores and creepy re-education camps vs chucking people out of helicopters) you can have no doubt that the Chinese will be more than happy to export it along with their cheap plastic trinkets and shoddy synthesized cathinones.
Img_9999 said:
I say this with all respect and no intention to sound confrontational or whatever. Please don't take it personally. You know I love you all, and when I was in the US for work a few years ago I got to really appreciate and understand your culture, and I felt welcomed and had a great time. I have nothing against northamerican people, it's just your foreign policy that kinda suck, I guess it's not hard to see the reasons why.
Click to expand...
Yeah it must kind of suck as a continent to have had the Bolívarian revolutions throwing off the Spanish monarchy in the 19th century and then not to soon thereafter getting sucked into the control of a much closer superpower. It's kind of the nature of international power politics though. Communism that close to home was (and is) just not something the US can tolerate, we came very close to nuclear war over Russian actions in a much smaller (albeit much closer) nation and currently are engaged in all sorts of fuckery in Venezuela and Bolivia. Interesting to note that they maintained significant Russian ties e.g. they are currently getting Russian COVID Vax and even more interestingly Chile is getting the Chinese one which is a significant flex of soft power if their ever was one. Interesting times we live in for sure.
 
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Well I just got this amazing job offer as a sales representative for a solar energy company and I decided to take it and work there part-time. Will also be working at the restaurant full-time so im going to be a really busy man for the foreseeable future like 60-70hr work weeks but if this takes off I may transition into doing it entirely. Have a business meeting with the owner in a few days im giving my drug collection to loved one to hold onto so I can focus on this right now. I mean the figures he gave me about what I could make potentially are very impressive and I'd be able to get a mortgage on a home in a few years. It's time for me to tighten my belt and really get to work right now and sieze this opportunity.
 
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