It’s wild to think about how much radness and joy Ozzy and Hulk Hogan contributed to my childhood. Skateboarding and Sabbath go hand in hand. And from a very young age I was completely obsessed with wrestling. If I think of the transference of passion through my life it was wrestling -> music -> skateboarding -> bitcoin. Crazy to lose both those absolute legends of culture in the same week.

If Vancouver hotel/airbnb prices are any indication of the cost of living there, then that place is beyond fucked.

Some knee-jerk thoughts after engaging with Thomas Pikkety’s key points from his book Capital in the 21st Century. Ideas of progressive income tax make sense to the bourgeoisie academics that propose them because they will benefit from them directly through redistribution of wealth towards “social” programs like education. They produce nothing of real value and so to exist they must redistribute value towards themselves under the veil of economic equality. I’m not entirely sure if this is conscious or unconscious but it is a clear dynamic. Having grown up poor, and working in service industries and the trades, I can tell you that labourers in these fields do not want more taxation. All these solutions intentionally ignore the foundational problem of money printing because to acknowledge this would be against their own self interest as those who have a seat near the printer. The idea of higher capital gains tax as punishment for the capital accruing wealthy classes ignores the fact that ordinary citizens now MUST invest their income to try to preserve it. The democratization of investment through apps like Robinhood etc. means that Jimmy the plumber now invests in the S&P (along with riskier plays like meme coins) to preserve/grow his wealth. The money is broken so he has to flee somewhere. Increased capital gains taxes and wealth taxes punishes ordinary citizens for trying to preserve their capital in the face of the debasement of their currency. Taxation is inherently immoral but capital gains is the most immoral in that you are forced into investment because your money is melting, and then you’re taxed for trying to stop the melting. We don’t need more taxation. We need money that doesn’t fucking melt. But what do I know, I’m just a lowly pleb in the face of ivory tower economists.

Yesterday, in a fairly normie group chat I’m in for skateboarding, I posted a meme about taxation and cheekily said “Taxation is theft”. What followed was me being berated about how good government programs in Canada are, and yes, they even brought up “Who will build the roads”. But what was most striking was the ad hoc arguments on my character/personality. I’m not denying I can be an asshole. The truth just hurts sometimes. There was a clear unwillingness to have a real conversation. They all defended taxation adamantly with very little criticism of the system. I imagined even the most lefty tax payer would complain about upwards of 40% of their salaries going to the government each year. But they seemed very content with it.

The quiet part has been officially said out loud. “It’s kinda like early ICOs where you have like a posse of people you bring into the token”.

With each passing day I become more and more hardened in the political ideology of “leave me the fuck alone and stop bombing people”.