PRay TeLL, Dr. Hash

There’s 166,500 tons of gold in the world, all together it would fit into an olympic-sized swimming pool. In contrast, there’s about 100,000,000 tons of silver in circulation, so about 550 times more silver than gold. The value of everything in the world is estimated at $100 trillion, so if currency were tied to silver, silver would be $100,000 per ounce and gold would be around a billion dollars...

Social Security & Medicare obligations are staggeringly underfunded, $100 trillion at least, and that’s not even including government pension obligations, which are truly obscene. Consider that the average Social Security per person is under $2K/month: compare that to state government pension benefits of NY firemen of $20K/month, and CA’s ex-Treasurer gets $50K/month: there’s even an OR health...

Supposedly there's $24 trillion of retirement funds in the Stock Market but even that only represents about half of what is owed to retirees. Retirement is a Ponzi scheme where new workers pay in but it's not enough to make payments to retired workers. Therefore the Market has to increase by at least 5% yearly to keep retirees from freaking out, especially voters, but the Market doesn't have any l...

A common misconception is that government can save money, specially Social Security, and that there is a cache of money called the Social Security Reserve that is going to run out. That’s an intentional fabrication perpetrated by political demagogues because the constraint is only a legal one: the original Social Security legislation wanted to prevent any money for Social Security coming from gene...

Capitalism is based on avarice so strong it overcomes even fear, anger & lust which would otherwise shape society, so as bad as greed may be, it’s better than the alternative. Unfortunately, in a Capitalist society everything is for sale: loyalty, trust, integrity. It’s not surprising that an economic theory with such compromised roots would have such critical weaknesses. Government’s virtuous...

The odd thing about insurance is that nobody ever wants to collect, they just want to have it. Unfortunately, there’s the moral hazard of insurance where people act irresponsible because they are insured, or even cause intentionally damage so they collect on the insurance. There’s also the perverse incentive of fault-based insurance, somebody else can trigger your insurance to pay them: intentiona...

One of the stunning things that Lockdowns showed us was that the U.S. manufacturing capability & supply chain is very robust. Even with most of the nation not working, there was still enough excess capacity in reserve to quickly expand to fill the need, minimizing the time of shortages, real or manufactured, to at most a couple of months. However, we don’t have infinite flexibility, if people...

The infamous NYT 1619 Project postulates that America’s success is the result of using slavery. They point to Rome and ask when was there societal advancement without slaves? How many wars of the past were fought just to get slaves for the conquerors? Slaves laid the foundation of everything, they say. However, change the definition of “slave” only a tiny bit, and many people today live the lives...

With more people and more productivity there needs to be more money. Back in the days of gold backing money, 3% more gold a year was mined to approximately match this growth. Even when money was decoupled from gold, the money supply was targeted to grow at 3% a year. In an ideal world, one that existed for decades, things ran relatively smoothly because the math added up but then politicians took...

Let’s review more Internet & debate concepts: 1. The vast majority of Internet traffic is bots. 2. A VPN is snake oil. 3. Public Internet became a reality despite public institutions working against it. 4. Wikipedia went from untrusted to trusted back to untrusted. 5. Yelp reviews are the easiest way to assassinate a business. 6. People with a fragile ego shouldn’t debate online. 7. Sometimes...

You must be able to identify your problems & your enemies succinctly with words, which is why torturing the language & redefining words is such an effective tactic, it’s an Oral Illusion that distracts you from what’s happening. The technique works because it takes time for new words with the old definitions to emerge, and during that time activists can exploit people’s preconceptions and...

The Enlightenment that produced so many liberal concepts, like liberty & free speech, also ushered in the age of science. A scientist starts with an idea, a hypothesis, that might explain an observable phenomena, then determines an experiment that would test that assumption, and if the results match the prediction, the hypothesis is a proven theory and becomes accepted science. A hypothesis do...

It’s difficult to have any kind of discussion online without getting into a link war, where both sides post links to supposedly authoritative sources that support their position then counter-post additional links from other expert articles, thinking that the most links, or most famous source of a link, wins. The thread usually includes images from the link so that any hand-written message is overs...

Trolling online is very entertaining if done correctly, and it can also be used to impart information without being condescending or obsequious. If truth is the basis of a troll, readers come away with new insights while being amused in the process. It’s the kind of thing where you say, “I’m joking” at the end but you’re not really, you just say that to relieve interpersonal tensions. Nobody likes...

Everybody has a fragile ego, some more than others. It comes from people’s natural inferiority complex: the subliminal sense that they are frauds and that the real achievers can tell. Often their fear is justified in reality which creates extremely fragile egos. However, the real difference is between those who have healthy self-awareness vs. the narcissists who think everything is about them and...

I ignore Yelp: in fact, I fastidiously avoid it and its cohorts. I hate the whole idea behind user feedback apps: it gives inordinate power to narcissists & exploiters. I come by this revulsion through personal experience: I have been negatively impacted by reviewer’s comments to such an extent that I could not move forward with what I was trying to do. These people were intent on hurting me f...

The idea of Wikipedia was a great one: a free online encyclopedia where experts on a topic could explain it and other experts could add to or correct until the description was perfect. It got so good that Wiki links could be cited in professional journals, or at least the references from the Wiki page. The first decade of Wikipedia was indicative of the benefits of worldwide interconnectivity &amp...

Many communities were finagled into giving cable companies monopolies, to the point of denying new competing technologies from entering the market. The cable giants like to exercise their monopoly power by jacking prices and there’s no place for customers to go. The solution is to break those monopolistic deals; let WiFi towers come in and get some competition going. Elon Musk’s Starlink will cert...

Many YouTube channels rely on advertisers who invoke fear to sell their products: food storage, survival gear, gold, and worst of all: VPNs, Virtual Private Network software that claims to keep your time on the internet anonymos. At least the others sell you something tangible but the VPN folks prey on ignorance. Unless everyone is on a VPN, it’s a farce: your Internet provider can recognize a VPN...

I’ve ran several Internet forums over the past 3 decades, starting with a mailing list back in the Stone Ages. While almost all other Old School forums have switched over to social media platforms, I still fully control my own with a remote server & storage company that I change as prices change or security issues emerge. I don’t even know where the site is currently hosted, but parts of it ar...

Let’s review more foreign & military concepts: 1. What happens in foreign countries stays in foreign countries. 2. Brexit isn’t that much different politically than Brentry. 3. Taiwan is on their own if China decides to annex them. 4. The South China Sea isn’t named that by coincidence. 5. Iran is the scapegoat for all problems in the Middle East. 6. Look to Japan to see where the world is hea...

War is not an economic decision: America did not invade Iraq & Afghanistan to save money; Russia did not support its citizens in East Ukraine to increase its wealth; China is not taking the South China Sea because of monetary concerns, and money is certainly not radical Islam's motivation. No, War is caused by escalating tensions that are more emotional than rational, more ideological than pra...

Hegemony in trade, law, economy, military, technology, culture, media & globalization is where elite nations make rules that all other countries must follow to avoid political & economic isolation. History has seen some spectacular hegemonic empires: Mesopotamia, Mongol, Roman, British, and as of now, America. American hegemony was literally the last man standing, militarily-wise, after WW...

Most Americans don’t know much about other countries but they know Japan, even some of it’s history & culture. For whatever reason, Japan has been world-leading is several areas; most famously its products. This is doubly amazing since Japan’s economy has been flat for decades, and its population is aging and in steep decline. Other countries would allow immigrants from developing nations to f...

Iran wants to develop nuclear power: why should they even have to ask us? They don't owe us anything: we didn't defeat them in war, and they didn't fly airplanes into buildings, Saudi Arabia did that. Other, worse nations like Pakistan, who harbored Bin Laden, and N. Korea already have The Bomb. The U.S., who invaded & destroyed Iraq for similar made-up reasons, is an unprovoked bully towards...