In other words, it _is_ the case that Renaissance works were financed with harder money than works today. That's a historical matter of fact. It _is_ the case that families are breaking down or that nutrient levels in produce (per unit size) have decreased. It's also the case that those events were coincident with a change of greater adoption of fiat currency vs hard currency (and I'd put it on a spectrum because of fractional reserve banking and other items which made the Gold standard dollars not _really_ redeemable in Gold and etc).
With all that said, the "sounds crazy" comes in because it's totally unsubstantiated in the quote (and probably otherwise) that just because these things occurred together the change in the status of money is the primary driver behind the other changes.
Edit: For example, if the change in money is the primary driver, then it is the case that the massive technology shifts we've seen aren't the primary driver. Nitrogen based fertilizers aren't the primary driver. Various civil rights movements aren't the primary driver. The presence of global travel, the formation of a global village, the new ability to communicate, none of these are the primary drivers.
And the more you lean on fiat money being the explainer, the less you allow all these other things to contribute to the explanation. That case becomes harder and harder to support, I think.
See correlations that are unsettling or suggestive;
imagine causal forces which are fundamentally out of reach epistemologically, but explain the causation for the correlation which is apparent;
institutionalize the theory into a worldview;
attach your identity to it and obey in-group/out-group social maxims;
find home in only the in-group because only they tolerate your assertions with no challenge;
cement the worldview in your mind as a quasi-religious totalizing narrative because of the lack of challenges.
RE: terrible art, the rise of that is the rise of art for lower classes in terms of more of it being produced and seen, which is a good thing I'd argue, as well as comparing art made in a 10 year period say with all of the best art western civilization has produced in the past 500 years.
Never mind that Mozart wrote a ton of filthy shit. People have been obsessed with sex forever
First, you have to establish that degradation has taken place. Considering that for most of civilizational history, the vast majority of people were wearing rags and eating grain porridge without spice or much salt and living in hovels, that doesn't seem obvious to me. Second, even if you do establish that, you have to specifically tie it to "fiat" currency and not some other factor. Those both seem like a tall order.
The government is prioritizing the wrong things, which is leading to today's degradation of food, but lack of government intervention also results in the degradation of food.
Housing quality and standard of living are at their best ever - if free money is causing that, thats not a terrible outcome
https://www.fightchronicdisease.org/sites/default/files/docs...
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/vanishing-...
If I go to Safeway and don't find something healthy, I will nevertheless buy something for the simple reason that I am hungry. Want healthier food in a society? Sell healthier food in a society.
It's not the job of consumers, nor is there any reasonable communication channel, to dictate what is put on shelves. They can only provide feedback based on what is already there. If they have a limited selection, you will receive a censored signal, and you cannot judge the outcome based on counterfactuals of what they would have bought if something else was in the pool of offered products.
Above describes the folly of "demand-based" economic thinking. If there was truly an infinite supply and infinite variety of products, it makes sense to consider demand-based perspectives as actually expressing consumer desires. But it doesn't do that -- it only expresses preferences among the finite selection available, and you can very quickly sink into a feedback loop that encourages unhealthy diets by conflating the two perspectives.
In a free market the job of consumers is to use communication channel of purchases to signal what they want to have stocked on the shelves. Safeway stocks junk food because that is what people buy.
Where is the answer to the problem? Signals are carried in codes, and codes can be more or less efficient at conveying information. How does a sample from a biased population provide any information about the true mean? How would offering only Cheez-its and Gatorade tell you about consumer desires for eggplant?
Many accuse their fellow humans of degeneracy but that narrative only serves to obfuscate the primary role of corporations, for which we can make much stronger accusations of degeneracy.
Dear reader, observe the classically crypto-fascist rhetoric with its complete lack of self-reflection and deflection via essentially empty-headed, debate-bro tactics.
Small changes in per-unit micronutrient quantities are not the cause of modern obesity. If you do want to make some claim that worldwide nutrition was better at some point in the past, that point was definitely not when Bach was alive.
Strange to see such paternalism about people making unhealthy dietary choices from a crowd I mostly associate with libertarian thinking.
It's becoming clearer that Bitcoin is the "currency" of the far right. For those of us who consider this ideology abhorrent and counter to the ideals of a free and democratic society it's good to have that out on the table and on full display.
Does this extend to all cryptocurrencies or is it just Bitcoin?
A Ukrainian organization called 'Come back Alive' who have just been de-platformed by Patreon [0] are now turning to Bitcoin donations [1]. Does that make them far right?
Or maybe the starving Afghans who are under sanctions due to the Taliban are trying to survive by using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies managed and accepted by NGOs helping them survive [2]. Perhaps they are all far-right too?
[0] https://blog.patreon.com/on-the-removal-of-come-back-alive
[1] https://decrypt.co/93810/patreon-suspends-ukrainian-ngo-come...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2022/01/19/crypto-afghanistan-sanct...
It will be used by people and groups you like and dislike. And the great thing is that neither you nor anyone else can do anything about it.
If a claim is without any evidence and has no substance, it can be easily dismissed and ignored.
Not every silly, baseless conspiracy theory has an immediate association with the 'far-right' or with 'Christian, white supremacists' and especially not this one.
As long as they have zero evidence and they are unable to substantiate it, who cares? We already know bitcoin has failed being a peer-to-peer electronic cash system and it is still useless as a currency.
> He compared the art of the Renaissance, Classical, and Romantic periods, all financed properly with sound money, to the decadent culture of the twenty-first century, with its “animalistic noises’’ and “immediate sensory pleasures.’’
Does seem a lot like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art
I'll also bet that Ammous ends up with diverticulitis within 10 years if his description of his diet is correct.
Easy to get if you actually look and are willing to support regenerative farms in order to obtain the best nutrition possible.
I suggest researching into how animals turn grass into nutrients and the difference between crops for human consumption and grass.
Also, if the guy is going out of his way to only eat the best, most expensive beef, because corn-fed beef is actually bad, why doesn't he do the same thing for fruits and vegetables? You can get "wild grown" vegetables just like you can get wild grazed beef. It just costs more.
Grass from cows has nature's fertilizer. Good ol shit that replenishes nutrients in the soil.
Welcome to sustainable/regenerative farming.
Because meat has everything humans need? Why eat pesticide and low quality "food" when you don't have to?
The rest of the article exhibits many more classic indicators of cult membership - extreme obsessiveness with leader(s), any criticism or questioning characterized as persecution, special persecution of former members (Musk in the original article), denying it is a cult, etc.
First off, the First World War happened on the gold standard. Most currencies, notably the British Pound, didn’t become decoupled from gold until after WW1.
And those World Wars were enabled by technology, not fiat currency. Mass production of weaponry, rapid advancements in said weaponry, trains, fertilizer to grow more food to supply those front line…technology was far more of a driver than fractional reserve banking.
And decadence? Decadence! The Sun King would like to have a word with you about “decadence”.
It's over 1000 years old and it evolved from nothing to what we have.
It's very weird that you ignore history like this.
You should read up on Spain, silver, gold, china and tons of other history regarding tender.
What we have with fiat is your very well working monolith fine tuned over centuries while everyone who wants to make money of of you tells you why their Nanoservice with security holes and no features is so much better.
I un-ironically believe all of this, but when put in this way, it sounds crazy. But I believe it.
Is it not curious that true fiat currency is a relatively recent phenomena, perhaps 100 years old in reality and 50 years officially, yet amazing discoveries, inventions, buildings, factories, art, etc. were all made before fiat currency? Fiat isn't a requirement nor an inevitability - it is a human invention, and one I personally see as a mistake.