He was prescient when he said:

"For if the quarrel is allowed to rise unchecked and to proceed unappeased, we shall come, unexpectedly and soon, upon one of these tragedies which have marked for centuries the relations between this peculiar nation and ourselves."

He was a devout Catholic, had Jewish friends, and devoted a chapter to what was wrong with antisemitism. He was earnestly trying to solve the problem before it was too late.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692325

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Why do you think cryptocurrency at its philosophical core enables wealth hoarding? If I don’t pay my property taxes, I lose my house, regardless of how much cryptocurrency I own.

Why can’t we have a separation of money and state where the state receives its due through taxes and is unable to inflate the money supply?

Prostitution and rape are not perfect substitutes for consensual sex. The risks are much greater, so on the margin, there are men who are not willing to partake in these, and instead choose to better themselves when faced with a lack of partners.

I would add the caveat that things have not been completely worked out yet. I agree that religious customs around sex served a practical purpose.

However, easier access to sexual pleasure seems to have unintended consequences. Traditionally, a woman and her family should be damn sure that a particular man is worthy of female costs of pregnancy. So there was more pressure exerted on men to be worthy of sex. Easy access to sexual pleasure lowers the bar for men.

Now we’re told it’s too complicated to understand, leave it to the experts in Washington. If we put restraints on their ability to create money bad things will happen.

Separate money and state!

Why do you choose 1970 as a baseline? Federal spending is absolutely out of control when compared to, say 1913, as a baseline.

“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

- Thomas Jefferson

We all want the nice things. However, they require conscientiousness. People who are run down and lack energy struggle with conscientiousness.

So why are we all rundown and lacking the energy required to have nice things? There are many reasons, some controversial.

One that is not so controversial is the industrialization of food. As the quality of food that our mothers consume has degraded, so have their offspring. I believe in TCM this concept is called maternal jing, or the essential life essence that you receive from your mother. Healthy moms breed a healthy populace. This is a problem generations in the making that keeps getting worse.

One that is more controversial is the impact of banking. Money is the life blood of society, and we’ve given bankers the right to siphon off our blood as they see fit. Generations of wealth transfer from the working class to bankers has left the populace anemic.

Japan has it better because they have maintained a more traditional way of life.