Freedom dies gradually then suddenly. If its not protected with vigilence, freedom dies.

Just heard from Marco (a Bitcoiner) in Lebanon via video about the situation there. What struck me was his optimism. In the midst of hyperinflation and war, Bitcoin offers hope.

I've been saying for a while that IBM is a zombie company. I had no idea how bad it was until I read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/IBM/comments/1fqt826/why_are_any_of_us_still_here_ibm_is_dying_and_we/

The main deception of authorities in general and regulators in particular is that gatekeeping is a net benefit. It sounds reasonable, for example for certain goods and services to have to go through some examination before being brought on the market, particularly if it has some potential for harm. And at first, that may even work, and certain dangerous goods and services not brought to market as a result of the gatekeeping. But as regulion ages, not only does gatekeeping keep out dangerous goods and services, but also new and innovative goods and services. This is due in part to the capture by the incumbents that have influence over the gatekeeping, but also due to the burden that increases as the bureaucracy around the gatekeeping grows. Indeed, the incumbents often collude with regulators to make it so that nothing can get through the gatekeeping except the incumbents, often getting carve outs for "legacy" institutions that got past the gatekeepers when the requirements were much more lax. Gatekeeping ultimately then makes everything static and becomes a giant rent-seeking operation, where payment to the rent-seekers become licensees who refuse to issue new licenses. Competition slowly disappears, through mergers, bankruptcies and so on until there's only a few players, who, being critical to the economy as the only providers, get bailouts when they are in trouble. Such has been the fate of many different industries where a few giant companies dominate. Industries as diverse as Banking, Airlines, Health Care, and Food Production all operate in something like a pseudo fascist manner. Note that I use fascist here in the original definition, where companies are essentially directed by the government. Gatekeeping, in other words, is the first step toward tyranny and it should be opposed on philosophical grounds.

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Bitcoin Tech Talk #416

Interesting Stuff

Hardware is the next frontier for open source.

Forgiveness is hard, but do it for the sake of your soul.

Are there any Nostr clients that don't have such a present bias? I'd like to see older posts that have been popular and continue to get engagement as that's probably the most evergreen content. Wisdom > hot takes.

The software that civilization runs on has a lot of bugs and incompatibilities.

Every central bank is a vampire, sucking the life out of the economy and turning many other institutions that get bailed out into vampires as well.