#### Politics ####
## Curfews have been lifted in D.C. and
L.A. county. The violence is dying down, and the four officers being
charged seem to have had an effect. Was there also an effect from the
National guard?
#Jim Craig, an associate professor of
military and veteran studies in relation to the Ferguson civil
distress in 2014 said, “calling out the national guard for a flood
is one thing, calling out the national guard for riots and unrest
moves say into the extreme.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/what-is-national-guard-ferguson-missouri
#So let’s not discount the extreme
nature of what has just happened and also the fact that it has become
obviously much more common since many states deployed the nation
guard this last week.
#As of June 2, 23 states activated the
National Guard in reaction to the riots, 17,000 of them on Monday
morning. 45,000 have already been activated in response to the Covid
crisis. That means about 66,700 National Guard personnel are active
right now in all 50 states. This is multiples of the amount of
active-duty troops in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
##
Even though things seem to have been dying down and staying peaceful
Portland is still dealing with violence as they have a large ANTIFA
to citizen ratio, and some rioters abroad have begun to express their
solidarity with the American rioters by rioting themselves. Greek
demonstrators as the most extravagant of them all threw Molotov cocktails towards the U.S. embassy in Athens.
## No
longer are the protests for justice for George Floyd as that seems to
be well on its way, but the riots are now against white superiority and police brutality.
##
This is good, more or less, it’s undoubtedly something that needs to
be addressed. But what comes to mind is Killer Mike’s speech in
Atlanta a few days ago. We need to be beating our opposition up in the
voting booth. By putting the the politicians you want into the jobs
where they can make a difference there’s a big chance of changing
some things. But right now the rioters are trying to kill wasps with
a shotgun, it’s not going to work, they’re going to cause a lot
of damage, and get themselves hurt in the process. Dealing with wasps
properly is going to take more time and effort but will be much more
effective.
...Which
leads me to, another success in this saga:
## Defund the Police
## NYC Comptroller Wants $1.1B cut from
the NYPD
#The cut is supposed to happen over the
next four years in order to aid “vulnerable communities most
impacted by police violence and structural racism.”
#The plan: $265M annually by reducing
headcount through attrition, suspending hiring of new police classes,
and scaling back overtime. According to statement from Scott
Stringer.
#The 1.1B cut is a %19 reduction in the overall budget for the NYPD
## So that’s a win! Or, is it just a
consolation prize? Like we talked about there is a substantial amount
of National guard deployed right now. I realize that many of the
people in the national guard are average citizens on reserve, but
this feels close to martial law! Maybe governors of all the states
are realizing how easy it is to deploy the National Guard reserves
during a crisis and therefore don’t feel the need to have police
funded? This is a major speculation and as I’m sure the NYC
comptroller and Governor Cuomo know each other but it’s a long shot
that they are colluding.
## Never the less, I am always
suspicious when the government “cuts back” and ask myself, are
they really cutting back or are they just moving power and influence
form the front-end to the back-end in order to save face but retain
control.
## If it is in good faith, is it really
the most effective route to take? Right now it probably is for many
reasons, the least of them not being that of calming down the angry
people and showing them that the government cares. But I feel there’s
more of a change in the way of a spiritual revolution that could be
of a larger benefit.
## Nicolo Machiavelli’s eighth rule
of war: Discipline in war counts more than fury.
https://warontherocks.com/2014/08/machiavellis-27-rules-of-war/
## “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” - Aristotle
#### Covid ####
## NYC hits zero confirmed covid deaths
for first day since march
#NYC hit it’s peak death rate on
April 7
## The fact is that this pandemic has
been bad, but not as bad as we expected.
## Another 1.9 million have filed for
unemployment, the ninth week of that number declining but still a
massive ammount of unemployed. Still more unemployed than during the
great depression.
#### Crypto ####
## MakerDAO weighs accepting real-world
assets as crypto loan collateral.
#Another step towards more robust
decentralized financial services, one of the most promising ideas in
the cryptocurrency space.
https://www.coindesk.com/makerdao-weighs-accepting-real-world-assets-as-crypto-loan-collateral
#With decentralized financial services
everyone with an internet connection can take advantage of the same
methods that the ultra rich use in order to protect their wealth.
#That is, creating liquidity from
nonliquid assets and therefore adding a layer of protection from
inflation (among other things.)
#Why do you think that the ultra
wealthy buy painting for hundreds of millions of dollars? It’s a
very slowly appreciating thing and is difficult to take care of.
First of all it’s definitely insured so they can recoup much of
that cost, but it’s also very easy to put that up as collateral and
open a line of credit with a bank that cost them about 1% in
interest. So they do in fact use the money to purchase the painting
but in a roundabout way make it possible to take that money back out
from the investment without actually selling the asset itself.
#Projects like Celsius and MakerDAO do
the exact same thing but with cryptocurrency. It requires no credit
rating, little KYC, and your loan comes to you with about a 1%
interest rate.
#The advancement of Non-fungible
tokens, which is what powers crypto kitties, is what will be able to
act as lesson between your real world assets and the loan that you
take out (in a USD-pegged stable coin, by the way.)
#Goes to show that most technological
advancements become applied to at worst borderline nonsensical
projects and at best fun things to do before they go on to
potentially change the entire world as we know it.
#This is a big deal that could make
MakerDAO a lot of money and enable the common people to take
advantage of financial services that are currently reserved for the
wealthy and well-connected.