Payback is a Bitter Pill

China Joe Biden is a Chinese Communist Party shill, there's no question of that. The question is, has he opened the southern border in order to allow China to smuggle fentanyl into the States? Lots of people are now pointing out that this is at least a side effect, if not an intended outcome, of Biden's border policies. 

Now, I am not opposed to open borders because: 

1. our country was founded as an open borders country, 
2. Aquinas was fine with open borders, 
3. the Holy Father is fine with open borders,

But, even if none of that were true, the fact that China is importing a powerfully addicting illegal drug into the United States is unsurprising. If this were a movie, we would expect this to be the end of the reel, wherein after the protagonist suffers endless outrages, he wreaks havoc upon his tormentors. Given what we did to China, and in deference to America's favorite Hollywood ending, China owes us at least that courtesy. Sit back, grasshopper, and I will tell you the tale:

China had much to sell the West, but the West produced virtually nothing China needed or wanted. As British and American citizens consumed tea in great quantity but failed to produce anything the Chinese wanted, the threatening imbalance of trade between East and West became acute.

Both British and American companies solved the problem by illegally importing opium into the Chinese mainland. Chinese officials had long outlawed the drug because they recognized it as a poison. By the late 1700's, however, Britain had control of India’s poppy fields and her navy made it possible to smuggle tons of the stuff across the Chinese border and into Chinese harbors. American businessmen, having no access to Indian poppies, dealt themselves into the illegal drug trade by encouraging Turkish farmers to plant poppies so they, too, could grab part of the drug business.

China responded by confiscating and destroying the huge opium stocks in British warehouses on Chinese soil. Britain went to war to recover the cost of the lost opium, not once, but twice (1839-1842 and 1856-1860). The resulting British victories not only opened Chinese ports to the Western importation of opium, it also gave American citizen Warren Delano, FDR’s grandfather, the enormous wealth which FDR would use to such excellent effect in his own presidential election campaigns. In short, it is not too incorrect to say that FDR's presidency was made possible in part via drugged Chinese slaves.

That's correct: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandfather imported opium into China despite the fact that China had outlawed opium. This illegal opium trade led directly to the Opium Wars that destroyed China as the centuries-long Asian superpower. It led directly to the burning of the Old Summer Palace, which still angers the Chinese, and to the subjugation of China for centuries by the West. The grandson of one of the major Chinese drug runners became the President that lorded it over them during WW II. 

China never forgot that.

Now, China seems to be returning the favor.

And we are left to whine that payback is a bitter pill. 

Should the Alamo Be Legitimized?

What I can't understand about Republicans and conservatives is, why you insist on making heroes out of a bunch of Democrat Protestant pro-slavery asshats?

That's what the Alamo was about - it was about a bunch of Democrats, a bunch of illegal alien immigrants - fighting to keep slavery alive in Texas. Why? Because that's what Democrats always do, and that's what they were doing at the Alamo, that's what they were doing in the entire fight for Texas independence. They were fighting for the right to be Democrat slaveholders, and everyone at the time knew it.

The prime cause, and the real objects of this war [the Texas Revolution], are not distinctly understood by a large portion of the honest, disinterested, and well-meaning citizens of the United States…. They have been induced to believe that the inhabitants of Texas were engaged in a legitimate contest for the maintenance of the sacred principles of Liberty, and the natural, inalienable Rights of Man: --whereas, the motives of its instigators, and their chief incentives to action, have been, from the commencement, of a directly opposite character and tendency…to wrest the large and valuable territory of Texas from the Mexican Republic, in order to re-establish the SYSTEM OF SLAVERY; to open a vast and profitable SLAVE-MARKET therein; and, ultimately, to annex it to the United States…. The Slaveholding Interest is now paramount in the Executive branch of our national government…. Benjamin Lundy, 1836

John Quincy Adams testified in the House of Representatives (Dec 1835) that Lundy was absolutely correct:

And this is the nation with which, at the instigation of your Executive Government, you are now rushing into war, into a war of conquest; commenced by aggression on your part and for the re-establishment of slavery, where it has been abolished, throughout the Mexican Republic. For your war will be with Mexico---with a Republic of twenty four States, and a population of eight or nine millions of souls.... 

And again I ask, what will be your cause in such a war! Aggression, conquest, and the re-establishment of slavery where it has been abolished. In that war, sir, the banner of freedom will be the banners of Mexico; and your banners, I blush to speak the word, will be the banners of slavery. 

Every abolitionist of the age said the same thing:

"It is impossible for any honest man to wish success to Texas. All who sympathize with that pseudo republic hate liberty and would dethrone God."

—abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator

In early 1836, the largest Texas force in the field, commanded by Colonel James Walker Fannin, was composed of over ninety percent of United States citizens. Even many of the Northerners in the US saw the danger Catholic freedom posed for the Protestant slave-holders. They saw Santa Ana's insistence on freeing slaves as a direct threat to Southern and Western slave-holding states. The existence of a free Catholic Texas was an incitement to slave revolts throughout the South. The Texans at the Alamo were not freedom fighters, they were slavery fighters, as Democrats always are. When you put a halo around the Alamo, you defend illegal immigration, you defend slavers, you defend the use of violence in the name of, in the support of, illegal immigration and slavery.

When you look at all the details, really study what the American Protestant Democrats at the Alamo and in the larger fight for Texas independence were doing, you soon realize they were the early 19th century version of BLM and Antifa. Why would conservatives defend this nonsense?

Why would anyone from the party of Lincoln want to legitimize Democrat asininity?

Protestants Claim Scripture is Heretical

 There has been a recent kerfluffle over a comment by a pastor, in which Reverend Warnock, a pastor who oversees MLK's church, said:

The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves.

This comment has been condemned by Protestant commentators as heresy. Well, there's nothing heretical in Warnock's statement unless you're a Protestant, but Protestant theology has always been nonsense.

Take the first sentence, "The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Yes. Exactly right. The resurrection of Jesus is immanent, the meaning of the resurrection is transcendent. That is, the resurrection is a real thing that happened in the flesh, risen flesh that could be touched, it is closer to us than we are to ourselves, it is bound up within who we are, while the meaning of that resurrection is transcendent, it is higher than us, it draws us up beyond ourselves into the heart of the Trinity. Yes. Precisely correct.

Second sentence, "Whether you are a Christian or not," - yes, as Paul says in Romans 2 “They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)" . That is, we all know what the law says, even when we don’t know the law. And, we all prove it by doing what’s in God’s law without even knowing it. And this knowledge and acting on this knowledge will "even defend them" on the Day of Judgement.

And the last part? "Through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves." As Augustine of Hippo says "He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent." (St Augustine, Sermo 169, 13 (PL 38,923)). Paul pointed out that "We are God's co-workers" (1 Cor 3:9). God's work is our salvation, so our co-work is also our salvation. Paul talks about "working out my salvation in fear and trembling". (Phil 2:12) and even goes so far as to say "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church..." (Col 1:24). That is Paul asserts not only that Jesus' suffering actually LACKS something, he asserts that he, Paul, can make up what is lacking!

Jesus points out that we must do this through good works, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. The people who do this are the people who are gathered together and saved on the last day.

Grace affects the whole person. The mind responds with faith, the body with works, both happen simultaneously. We are NOT saved through faith alone, as the Letter of James points out. Even the demons have faith in the resurrection, but that does not save them.

The good reverend just echoed Scripture and Saint Augustine.

People who object to what he said know neither Scripture nor the power of God.

What is Liturgy?

Many people today are familiar with ritual, but are not familiar with liturgy. Ritual is a set of actions done in accordance with social custom or normal protocol. For instance, Westerners ritually shake each others hands upon meeting, and ask the ritual question "How are you?" Liturgy is a special subset of ritual, it is a ritual done not for secular purposes, but for theological purposes. Why is liturgy necessary? Liturgy is necessary, in part, because Scripture is hard to understand:

He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. ~2 Peter 3:16

Liturgy is a call-response prayer in which the prayer leader proclaims a passage from sacred Scripture and the rest of the prayer group responds by proclaiming a matching response from another place in sacred Scripture. Upon hearing the Word of God, the participants move in conformance with that Word, standing, kneeling, sitting or genuflecting, in order to better understand the Word’s impact on themselves and the world.  The Scripture passages in both the call and the response are pre-selected to match the liturgical calendar, that is, the Scripture passages used in liturgy are meant to match the day and season of the year, or to match the sacrament that is being conferred within the liturgy.

As a result, liturgy always includes three elements, all of which are universally available to the liturgical Christians of that denomination: 

1. Daily Scriptural prayers at set times of the day (Liturgy of the Hours)
2. Actions and commemorations keyed to each year's calendar (Liturgical seasons and liturgical calendar)
3. Liturgical services proper (e.g., Sacrifice of the Mass aka the Divine Liturgy) 

The purpose of liturgy is two-fold. First, by its unrelenting emphasis on Scripture, it is meant to assist both the celebrant and the congregants gain an understanding of how God’s mind works, and what God wants of us. Second, it is meant to “wash the world in the Word”, liturgy is intended to use the grace of the Scriptures and the sacraments that it wraps within its embrace, to sanctify the whole world.

Both magic and liturgy involve ritual, but the reasons for the two kinds of ritual are very different. Early man felt himself surrounded by unseen, powerful forces. Like a stranger using a handshake to prevent violence, early man used ritual magic in order to attempt to control the unseen forces around him so that he will not come to harm. Pagans used the ritual of magic to control, or at least placate, the gods.

Early Christians saw the world quite differently. They knew there was only one God. They knew God could not change or be changed. For liturgical Christians, the purpose of the specialized ritual they call liturgy was not meant to change God, it was meant to help man understand God's intentions. Early Christians used liturgy to help adapt man to God's purpose. Christians viewed man as fallen, so they the need to wrap many of the most important activities of life inside of liturgical actions, so that their own actions would be correctly oriented towards God.

Liturgy is the opposite of magic. Magic is meant to control the gods, to get the gods to do what men want them to do. Liturgy is meant to change man, it is meant to help man do what God wants us to do. 

Liturgy, then, is to live Scripture, employing the whole person, both mind and body, wherein the whole person, both mind and body, responds to grace. Just as the individual grains combine to form the bread, the individual grapes combine to form the wine, so the individual Christians combine to act as One Body.

Now, some object to liturgy because it seems contrived to pray a set, stylized prayer at specific times during the day. Liturgy doesn't stop you praying when and where you want, but it allows you to consistently pray with other Christians.

Say, for instance, you had a friend. You wanted to spend some time in prayer with that friend. You would schedule a time and place to do this, correct? Well, all baptized Christians are brothers and sisters in Christ, so liturgy is a way of scheduling time to pray with your brothers and sisters when you have never - and will never - meet them.  

When you and your friend pray together at your scheduled time, you share your prayers with each other, right? You might pray quietly, but you might also want to pray out loud, so that you two could hear each other's prayers and each make the other's prayer part of your own prayer. 

Same with liturgy. Except the brothers and sisters are speaking different languages, all over the world. So, by agreeing on what Scripture passages you will pray ahead of time, it allows everyone to "hear" each others' prayers, even if these prayers are spoken in a different language thousands of miles away, even if they are not spoken at all.

So, liturgy is a way to pray with all the friends in Christ, past, present and future, whom you have not yet met. 

Making Software Companies Liable

It is long past time to start suing software companies for the security holes in their products. There is precedent. The automobile was invented in 1888, but the court system reacted to the new technology by essentially asserting the driver assumed all responsibility for safety, the auto manufacturer virtually none.  This attitude towards safety and security continued until 1965, when Ralph Nader released "Unsafe At Any Speed", exposing the dangers modern auto manufacturers knew were baked into their products, but deliberately ignored. At first, the response was dismissive. 

A TIME essay the following year portrayed Nader as a polemicist who was trying to paint auto accidents as solely the fault of the machines, with no account for driver error, and asserted that the book was “an arresting, though one-sided, lawyer’s brief that accuses Detroit of just about everything except starting the Vietnamese war.”

But, after a series of Congressional inquiries into auto safety, the courts soon sided with Nader's analysis and began holding auto manufacturers responsible for the people riding in their products. It took nearly a century for the auto industry to move from "new technology" wherein the user assumed all risk to "established industry" wherein the industry had to take responsibility for the safety of its products.

Modern software design and development arguably dates from the late 1960s and 70s, when mainframes began to infiltrate the business segment of American industry. In the succeeding fifty years, software has come to dominate almost every aspect of every industry. It is certainly time for this industry to take responsibility for the safety and security of its products. 

However, when we see remarks like this, it does not engender confidence that this has happened:

"Open-source developers say securing their code is a soul-withering waste of time (TechRepublic, Dec 11,2020) A survey of nearly 1,200 FOSS contributors found security to be low on developers' list of priorities....Moreover, responses indicated that many respondents had little interest in increasing time and effort on security. One respondent commented that they "find the enterprise of security a soul-withering chore and a subject best left for the lawyers and process freaks," while another said: "I find security an insufferably boring procedural hindrance.""

GitLab's "2019 Global Developer Report: DevSecOps" survey of over 4,000 software professionals agrees:

"Nearly half of security pros surveyed, 49%, said they struggle to get developers to make remediation of vulnerabilities a priority. Worse still, 68% of security professionals feel fewer than half of developers can spot security vulnerabilities later in the life cycle. Roughly half of security professionals said they most often found bugs after code is merged in a test environment.

At the same time, nearly 70% of developers said that while they are expected to write secure code, they get little guidance or help. One disgruntled programmer said, "It's a mess, no standardization, most of my work has never had a security scan." Another problem is it seems many companies don't take security seriously enough. Nearly 44% of those surveyed reported that they're not judged on their security vulnerabilities."

And then there is this gem from freelance developers:

Of the 18 who had to resubmit their code, 15 developers were part of the group that were never told the user registration system needed to store password securely, showing that developers don't inherently think about security when writing code....The other three were from the half that was told to use a secure method to store passwords, but who stored passwords in plaintext anyway....

Of the programmers who actually bothered to submit a password storage system that was encrypted, almost 75% of the solutions were deprecated. That is, the solutions used already-compromised ciphers. The "solutions" were broken before they shipped. Of the 75% who failed, nearly 20% used Base64, which isn't even an encryption algorithm.

The 2019 study showed that current developers aren't any better than unsupervised students.

It is perfectly obvious that companies aren't demanding appropriate security training, so no one is providing it. Why aren't companies demanding it? Because software companies cannot be sued for creating insecure code. As one technical article pointed out:

"There is no software liability and there is no standard of care or 'building code' for software, so as a result, there are security holes in your [products] that are allowing attackers to compromise you over and over."—Joshua Corman

The end-user license agreement (EULA)—a dense legalistic disclaimer that only 8% of people read, according to data collected in 2011—essentially states that people do not have to use the software, but if they do, the developer is not responsible for any damages. EULAs have been the primary way that software makers have escaped liability for vulnerabilities for the past three decades.  

This laxity on the part of software and hardware companies has produced a multi-billion dollar international crime industry in which: 

Only 3 cyber incidents out of 1000 see an arrest [much less a conviction]... By comparison, the clearance rate for property crimes was approximately 18% and for violent crimes 46%, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Report (UCR) for 2016.

But the use of information technology is so ubiquitous that:

... the US Department of Treasury has designated cybersecurity incidents as one of the biggest threats to the stability of the entire US financial system....  

Third Way’s analysis estimates that the enforcement rate for reported incidents of the IC3 database is 0.3%. Taking into account that cybercrime victims often do not report cases, the effective enforcement rate estimate may be closer to 0.05%. [emphasis added]...  

The FBI reports that using the IC3 data to develop law enforcement referrals, it only secured nine convictions in 2016, down from nineteen cases the previous year.

Make no mistake: the cybercrime wave has been created by the poor coding practices at every software firm in the world. This has to end. For years, the IT industry has been urging everyone to wrap their products, data and business processes 'round with an IT blanket. But, when that same IT wrapper's poor design and lack of security began enabling the corruption or destruction of the products, data and business processes that were entrusted to them, the IT industry suddenly decided it is not responsible for the result. 

It is impossible to refer to members of the industry as "IT professionals" when those same people refuse to take responsibility for the security disasters their indifference has helped create. That isn't a professional attitude. It isn't even an adult attitude. It's time for IT to grow up.

If an organization is successfully hacked, someone in the IT supplier chain needs to be fined and/or jailed. Maybe it's the software company, maybe it's the integrators, maybe it's the developers, maybe the C-suite that runs the company, maybe the hardware people. Maybe all of them, or maybe just a selection. It doesn't matter. Someone or everyone in the chain needs to face consequences. Until IT people start facing serious consequences for their failure to care for the data and processes entrusted to them, they aren't going to change. We've waited fifty years. How much longer do we wait? 

UPDATE: Well, this ZDnet article on website password storage is rather chilling. This article describes how passwords SHOULD be stored, and this one gives more technical details.  

UPDATE II: It's 2022, and nothing has changed.

Physics and Innovation

 Physics doesn’t take a vacation because of innovation... the simple facts are these:

During the average commute, ANY car uses about 7 hp per minute, (or the equivalent) or 420 hp in an hour. Converted to watts, that is 313,320 watts or enough energy to power 5 houses for an entire day.

The average commute in an electric vehicle, like any other vehicle, uses the same power.

So... if 5% of the homes acquire an EV, it is like that city has added 25% more houses, only the power consumption as they charge overnight, (8 hours) triples the load on the grid to the equivalent of 75% more houses.

What grid can handle nearly doubling the load?

Who is going to pay for it?

Why China Won't Go To War

 China can't afford to go to war. War used to be a way to employ excess sons. China no longer has excess sons. Every man's death in war extinguishes an entire family line. Each death also hastens the aging of the population by removing decades of man-years per corpse from production.

In addition, invading the most likely flash-point, Taiwan, creates its own problems. The world is currently experiencing a massive chip shortage. The biggest fab labs in the world are in Taiwan. If China were to invade, the Taiwanese would almost certainly destroy the fab labs to keep them out of Chinese hands. China uses 61 percent of the world’s chips in products for both its domestic and export markets, importing around $310 billion worth in 2018. That is, China depends on chips just as much as everyone else does.

And each year the Chinese do NOT go to war, their whole population gets one year older, exacerbating their demographic problem, and making it less likely they will risk a high-casualty conflict.

We are a paper tiger due to the politically correct crowd infiltrating the military, but China's a paper tiger because it's demography doesn't really allow a full-scale, high-casualty war. 

It's a Mexican stand-off between an old man and a transsexual.

Biden's Senile Dementia

So, they are green-screening Biden now.

Watch these two videos and pay close attention to Biden's hands as they interact (or rather, as they don't interact) with the microphones at the bottom of the screen. One video is much more egregiously faked than the other is.

Apparently, the senile dementia has progressed to a point where they have him practicing they same lines in front of a green screen until he gets it right, then they photoshop in the adoring press.

Same interview, different angle, same problem:

Now, this is an obvious, high-school level mistake. The question then is, are his handlers truly this incompetent, or are Americans being deliberately baited by being presented with an obviously faked interview event? 

If the former, then Biden's senile dementia has progressed to such a point that he has to be made to continuously practice his answers in front of a green screen until one of the takes is good enough to publish, then the adoring press is green-screened in. Also, his handlers are grossly incompetent at their jobs.

If the latter, Biden may or may not be suffering from senile dementia, but he and/or the people handling him have decided - for whatever reason - to make it obvious that they are deliberately manipulating the world's perception of events. Is it more charitable to consider the people around him idiots or malevolent? 

And therein lies the problem: sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malevolence.

2020 Census and Illegal Immigrants

 From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"Granting slaveholding states the right to count three-fifths of their population of enslaved individuals when it came to apportioning representatives to Congress meant that those states would thus be perpetually overrepresented in national politics. However, this same ratio was to be used to determine the federal tax contribution required of each state, thus increasing the direct federal tax burden of slaveholding states."

Replace the word "slaves" with "illegal immigrants" and the exact same argument is taking place right now with the 2020 Census. The abolitionists (the conservatives) don't want illegals counted, the pro-slavery (liberals) DO want them counted for purposes of representation.

But conservatives wouldn't have a problem with counting them (while liberals would) if it increased the federal tax burden on states with high numbers of illegals (sanctuary states).

How about we resolve it the same way the Founders did - count illegals as three-fifths of a person, and call it a day?

Oh, and if you're wondering why the Constitution doesn't mention how to handle illegal immigrants in the census counts, it is because there was no such thing as an illegal immigrant for the first century of this country's existence.  The Constitution does not list the ability to restrict immigration among the enumerated powers possessed by the federal government. Thus, technically, the power to restrict immigration is reserved to the states. There was no federal law restricting immigration until 1875's Page Act. That means it took almost a century for Congress to violate the Constitution, usurp states' rights and create an unconstitutional federal restriction on immigration. Congress had to wait until the Founding Fathers had all been dead several decades before they dared make this over-reach.

Addendum:

“When foreigners after looking about for some other Country in which they can obtain more happiness, give a preference to ours, it is a proof of attachment which ought to excite our confidence and affection.”   ~ Benjamin Franklin

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. when they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe."  ~Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Paris Dec. 20. 1787.           

NB: The United States was 80% agricultural in 1789, today it is 80% urban.

USD vs. Gold vs. Cryptocurrencies

Is the US Dollar (USD), gold, or cryptocurrencies, really money? How are the three to be compared? According to the Austrian school, "fiat money [is] money that comprises things with a special legal qualification.” Further, since the Austrian school does not recognize things as having objective economic value, all money is "fiat money", even gold:

[i]f the objective exchange-value of money must always be linked with a pre-existing market exchange ratio between money and other economic goods (since otherwise individuals would not be in a position to estimate the value of the money), it follows that an object cannot be used as money unless, at the moment when its use as money begins, it already possesses an objective exchange-value based on some other use.

There are a lot of things which have "exchange-value based on some other use." Lumber, sand, gold, and, as we shall see, cryptocurrencies, can be used for things other than exchange-value. Gold, for instance, can be used in jewelry, industrial applications, etc. One way gold differentiates itself from most other things is by being an element on the periodic table, and therefore both essentially indestructible and essentially impossible to produce. It can be found (via mining), but not produced. Its quantity is limited: demand for its uses grows with population growth or increased utility, while supply does not necessarily grow commensurate with demand. 

How does this compare to cryptocurrencies and the USD? To understand how cryptocurrencies compare, we must first,  look at how the USD works, and at how cryptocurrency is constructed. Let's start with the USD. As Forbes points out:

we already HAVE a national digital currency. It’s fast, cheap and secure! It has no issue with regulators, and it’s accepted everywhere. Who knew? It’s called … the US dollar.... almost 90% of US dollars have no physical existence – they are purely digital. But this isn’t just for the USA; world-wide, only 8% of currency exists as physical cash!

How does gold compare to national fiat money (e.g., the USD) and modern cryptocurrency? Well, primarily because all national currencies have legal recognition by their various issuing governments,  all national currencies have "a special legal qualification." As national currencies like the USD occupy space on their respective government hard drives, these same national electronic currencies are wrapped up in various cryptographic wrappers. The cryptographic wrappers are extrinsic to the currency itself. None of the currencies have built-in encryption, rather, the encryption schemes used are added "after the fact", as it were. For national currencies, encryption is necessary for safe exchange, but encryption is not technically intrinsic to the currency itself. 

Encryption is necessary because neither national currencies nor cryptocurrencies have actual, physical existence.  Both exist either primarily, or entirely, inside of computers. Gold's "encryption" is, of course, it's physical existence. If you don't have it in your hands, then you don't own it, you can't use it. Gold cannot be copied. For physical printed cash, governments try to mimic gold's characteristics by making the paper bills and metal coins hard to copy. Physical cash must be held in your hands to use it. 

For the digital versions of currency, these physical characteristics are mimicked by accounting and encryption. Accounting tracks digital cash to make sure it does not get double-spent (i.e., the same dollar is not spent on two different products at the same time). Encryption of digital assets prevents their being usefully copied. Encryption also allows only the person with the decryption key to open the encryption wrapper and make use of the encrypted money, so only people with the decryption keys "have the cash in their hands", so to speak. 

Currently, neither cryptocurrencies nor gold have "a special legal qualification". But both do have alternate exchange-value uses. Gold has industrial and cosmetic uses. Cryptocurrencies have ledger uses. What does "ledger uses" mean? Let's take a look at how crypto is constructed. 

The technology is still in its infancy, but cryptocurrency has its own market niche of usefulness above and beyond the simple ability of being able to move across national boundaries with a minimum of fuss. That movement, of course, is the one use case everyone knows. Cryptocurrency is instantly accessible anywhere in the world where the Internet is available. Even better, it is possible to move a billion dollars to another person for less than $5 in transaction fees. That cannot be done with any other form of value store.

But cryptocurrency differs from gold, USD and other national currencies in several other major ways. First, the design. The diagram above is a generic undifferentiated framework common to all cryptocurrencies. It is presented just to give you an idea of how cryptos work, generally speaking.

However, the actual design of the individual blocks in each cryptocurrency's blockchain is unique, differentiating it from all other cryptocurrencies. Design differences might lay in the size of the data block, the number of coins that can be produced, the kind of data that can be stored in the data block, the time interval during which a new block is generated, the level of modularity associated with each block, etc., but the design of each crypto is unique to itself. Thus, there is only ever one Bitcoin, no one else can invent Bitcoin again. Other cryptos very similar to Bitcoin may be produced (e.g., Litecoin), but nothing else will be Bitcoin.

Unlike USD or national currencies, where encryption is added as an after-thought, encryption is built-in, a fundamental part of the design of every cryptocurrency. This makes cryptocurrencies inherently more secure than any national currency. One may object by saying that blockchains have been hacked and large quantities of cryptocurrencies stolen, and this is true, but these hacks are much less common in cryptocurrencies than they are in national currencies. Further, these hacks occur as a result of programming errors, not encryption errors. We will see why this distinction matters in a moment.

Unlike national currencies, most cryptocurrencies have a bounded upper limit as part of their design. That means only a certain number of "coins" can exist in bounded cryptocurrencies. Although crypto is obviously not an element on the periodic table, the inherent limit to the number of coins in every bounded cryptocurrency means it acts in a way similar to gold. Crypto of this kind can only be found, not created. Once the upper limit is reached, no more coins of that type can be found. Ever. Unlike national currencies, which governments usually inflate in order to reduce their own debts, bounded crypto cannot be inflated. Indeed, given the fact that people will, over time, lose their decryption keys or die without passing their decryption keys onto others, bounded crypto is relentlessly deflationary. Once max supply is reached, the supply will only drop. This is different than gold. Lost gold can theoretically be discovered again. Lost Bitcoins are gone forever. 

Like gold, and unlike national currencies, bitcoin is decentralized. While certain geographic areas may be rich in gold, or rich in cryptocurrency miners, for most cryptocurrencies, no single entity controls a typical cryptocurrency network. No one entity can decide to change the structure of the coin or the distribution of the coin. Whereas national governments (that is, powerful individuals and groups) use the force of national law to guarantee the integrity of their own government currencies, the laws of physics guarantee the stable characteristics, accessibility and integrity of gold, while the laws of mathematics guarantee the stable characteristics, accessibility and integrity of cryptocurrencies. Given the close interconnect between the laws of physics and math, the math of cryptocurrencies is as stable as the physics of gold. Just as someone could theoretically use the power of nuclear fusion to create more gold, someone could theoretically use the power of computers to break encryption, but given the physics and the math, neither endeavor is likely to occur in our lifetimes.  

But none of these are use cases. Does cryptocurrency have a use case, as gold does? The simplest answer: Yes. Examine the diagram above. The data section in every cryptocurrency block can hold not just transactions, but anything at all. For instance, the data section can hold other cryptocurrencies inside itself, It can hold not only data, but programs. Thus, a cryptocurrency can do something that no national currency, and no bar of gold, can do.

Say, for example, you need a new refrigerator. You can program your cryptocurrency to monitor the prices of refrigerators with certain characteristics, then automatically use itself to buy the optimal refrigerator when it reaches your optimal price, and automatically have that fridge delivered to your door. You can't program a thousand-dollar bill (or any national currency) nor even a bar of gold to do the same thing. Such a program is called a "smart contract".   

Smart contracts are part of DeFi (Decentralized Finance). A smart contract is an example of a Dapp (Decentralized Application). Different cryptocurrencies have different DeFi capabilities. Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, is very, very hard to program with DeFi, so nobody does it. But Ethereum, BinanceCoin and Polkadot, all second-generation currencies, are much better at it. Cardano, a third-generation currency, is even better still, and much easier to program. So, in addition to being able to transfer large sums quickly and cheaply, smart contracts specifically, and DeFi + Dapps in general, are additional use cases for cryptocurrencies.

But DeFi and Dapps are not all that can be done. Cryptocurrencies can act as immutable ledgers. Once data is written into a block, the hash prevents the data from being changed. Precisely because the data section can hold... well... data that cannot be changed, cryptocurrencies may be used as a pre-eminent way of tracking information that needs to be publicly available but also needs to be tamper-proof. So, information on chain-of-custody issues, such as car ownership and maintenance, land deeds, lien information on said land deeds, food transport, high school and college transcripts, proof of employment, etc., could be put on a block chain, available for tamper-proof public inspection. 

Even medical records could be encrypted, placed in a public blockchain, and therefore be available world-wide for use. Since these records would be encrypted, they would only able to be decrypted by the record owner. The advantage? If the owner of those records is away from home but needs medical care, the medical records are still instantly available to any medical facility in the world that has an internet connection. Instead of taking days or weeks to locate and transmit the appropriate information to the emergency medical provider, the data owner simply unlocks the medical information using the decryption keys and it is instantly available. 

So, revisit the smart contract for the refrigerator. You can program the currency to spend itself for the fridge, not only if it reaches the right price point, but also if it has the right production facility, the right transport history, and a good maintenance history. If you want to buy only American, the ledger capability allows the crypto to track the provenance of the goods, allowing everyone to guarantee that you are, really, buying all and only American. The currency itself will verify that every part of the supply-chain was American, not a bit of it foreign. Or, if you only want to buy ethically-sourced products, the crypto would guarantee that you got your wish by refusing to spend itself unless the entire supply chain for the product was ethically-sourced, according to the criteria you set. Try doing that with a fifty-dollar bill.  Or a bar of gold. 

In an age where timely access to information is worth money, the blockchain is an efficient way of seamlessly making stored information quickly available while simultaneously guaranteeing the integrity of the information. Crypto is not just a store of value that is almost universally and instantly available, it is also a contract instrument and an immutable data ledger. Gold has its uses, national currencies have theirs, but DeFi  + Dapps, that is, easy access to widely available, easily transportable, tamper-proof public records, is a very valuable use case. And that is why cryptocurrencies are booming.  

Now, are cryptocurrencies in a tulip-like bubble? Yes. There is no question that many of the blockchains that currently carry significant value are not well-designed and will therefore not survive. Thousands of companies are trying to figure out how to use blockchain right now, just as thousands of companies were trying to figure out how to use the internet back in the 1990s. Most of those groups will fail. But there will be some jewels, just as there were during the dot.com bubble. Remember, Amazon, Google and Netflix all started during that late 1990's bubble. If you invested in them then, you are a multi-millionaire today. If you invested in the bubblelicious losers, you stood a good chance of losing your shirt. 

The same thing is happening right now with blockchain. Some will be jewels that survive and thrive, but most will fail. For instance, Dogecoin has no inherent value, no developers adding value, and an infinitely growing supply. It's definitely a bubble blockchain. For all its notoriety, Bitcoin is almost identical to Dogecoin. While it is is superior to Dogecoin in that it has a capped, or bounded, supply, it is hard to develop on, so it has few developers. However, it has first mover advantage, which means most people buy into it, not because it is good, but because they have heard of it. This will not last.

Ethereum has a mediocre architecture, a fairly lousy fee structure, and no upper bound to the number of coins that can be created, but it has a lot of developers. Ethereum has first mover advantage in the DeFi/Dapps space. Those developers and that first mover advantage give it much more value than Bitcoin. Cardano has a much superior architecture, a superior fee structure, an upper bound to the number of coins and lots of developers, so it also has much more value than Bitcoin. When Defi/Dapp ability is added in August, its value will increase again. Other coins vary in their characteristics as well. If you want to invest, keep in mind that blockchain is definitely in a price-discovery bubble (and has been since it was invented), but it also definitely has a few blockchain gems. You have to do your due diligence and determine which blockchains have enough value to survive the bubble. Those are the ones that will drive value. 

Salvation for the Rich

Sure, literate people can read God's Word for themselves, but that doesn't mean everyone can understand it for themselves. Scripture itself says it contains "things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction" (2 Peter 3:16). Worse, Bible-only theology limits salvation to those who can read. A large percentage of the world is illiterate. Even when the Bible is translated to their language, they can't read it.

The advantage of the sacramental economy used by liturgical Christians is simple: the sinner doesn't need a high-tech skill (literacy) in order to be saved. All the sinner needs is to be breathing, and s/he can be baptized, confirmed, chrismated, etc.

The Protestant system has always been salvation for the wealthy, not the poor, because literacy has always been a skill reserved to the wealthy, and unavailable to the great mass of the poor.

Demonstration:

While only 12% of the people in the world could read and write in 1820, today the share has reversed: only 14% of the world population, in 2016, remained illiterate.

In 2019, the illiteracy rate among adults aged 15 years and older was 34.7 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. In South Asia the illiteracy rate was 27.1 percent. Adult illiteracy rate is defined as the percentage of the population ages 15 and older who can not read or write.

Even if literacy is attained, at what level is it attained? How well does someone have to read in order to be considered "literate"? For instance, let us consider the 2012 edition of the PIAAC, or Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. To begin, the study has a title that could not be understood by most of the people it surveyed.

The average American reads at the 7th or 8th grade level.... 4% [of Americans] are nonliterate.... 14% have below-basic literacy levels.... 34% have basic literacy levels. [This means] Half of U.S. adults can't read a book written at the 8th-grade level. ... most cannot identify the link leading to the organization’s phone number from a website with several links, including “contact us” and “FAQ.”

On a reading scale from 1 to 500, the US scores an average of 270, which places it below average on the international comparison chart, but even the highest scoring country, Japan, scores only a 296. That means that even the Japanese, on average, can barely identify relevant information in a two-paragraph essay and interpret a generic chart with 15 items. 

So that raises a very important, but generally overlooked, set of questions for Bible-only Protestants. At what grade level is your English-language Bible translated to? Here is an estimate from the biblegateway.com website. The first number is the grade level for which the Bible is generally considered accessible; the number in parentheses is an estimated age at which a reader can fully read and understand it. As you can see, over half the translations cannot be understand by half of Americans:

• Mounce — 12+ (ages 17+)
• KJV — 12+ (ages 17+)
• RSV — 12+ (ages 17+)
• Geneva — 12+ (ages 17+)
• WEB — 12+ (ages 17+)
• NRSV — 11+ (ages 16+)
• NASB — 11+ (ages 16+)
• Amplified — 11+ (ages 16+)
• MEV — 11+ (ages 16+)
• LEB — 11+ (ages 16+)
• ESV — 10+ (ages 15+)
• J.B. Phillips NT — 10+ (ages 15+)
• NABRE — 9+ (ages 14+)
• NIV — 7+ (ages 12+)
• CEB — 7+ (ages 12+)
• NET — 7+ (ages 12+)
• GNT — 7+ (ages 12+)
• ISV — 7+ (ages 12+)
• NKJV — 7+ (ages 12+)
• HCSB — 7+ (ages 12+)
• The Voice — 6+ (ages 11+)
• NLT — 6+ (ages 11+)
• CEV — 5+ (ages 10+)
• GW — 5+ (ages 10+)
• The Message — 4+ (ages 9+)
• Living — 4+ (ages 9+)
• ERV — 4+ (ages 9+)
• NCV — 3+ (ages 7+)
• ICB — 3+ (ages 7+)
• NIrV — 3+ (ages 7+)

Once we get to the lower grade levels, another question arises: is this even really a translation? After all, shouldn't we be reading the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, the language of the prophets and apostles? If we aren't reading it in the original languages, are we really reading the Bible at all? If you are willing to say an English translation suffices, then how dumbed down does it have to get before it is no longer truly a Bible at all, but just a summary, a paraphrase, a gloss, instead of the Word of God?  

History is filled with Bibles whose translations or printings were not wholly accurate: the Murderer's Bible (left out the "not" in "thou shalt not kill"), the Wife-Beater's Bible, etc. So, if there is one faulty word, let out or added in, is that book no longer the Bible? How much can be paraphrased (because all translations are inherently inexact, and therefore paraphrased - how to correctly translate passages in Isaiah is a great example of this) before the work is no longer a Bible?

Even if you read the books in the original Greek and Hebrew, which books are you reading? There are several ancient versions of Isaiah, for instance. Which is Scripture, and which isn't? Only a rich person with a lot of resources would have the time to both learn the necessary Hebrew (or Greek, for the Septuagint version), much less be able to make an informed choice. And what if he chooses incorrectly? How would a less informed person know that the translation in front of him isn't actually the Bible?

For the liturgical Christian, these questions are interesting, but not threatening. But for the Bible-only Protestant, these questions are downright deadly. Once we admit a third-grade Bible is still a Bible, then how is a sermon delivered by one of the Apostolic Fathers *NOT* also the Bible? 

After all, when we translate the Bible to a third-grade level for young readers, aren't we doing EXACTLY the same thing the Apostolic Fathers did in their sermons - translating the difficult language of the Bible to a listening audience who can't read the original? If you admit a third-grade English, Japanese or Russian edition is "the Bible", when all it is REALLY doing is recasting the original Greek and Hebrew into a form third-graders can understand, then how can you deny that every sermon that explains, i.e., recasts a specific Biblical passage into a form an audience can understand, is not also "the Bible"? Where do you draw the line?

When considered this way, all of these sermons ARE the Bible. They are just live translations from the original languages into an age and grade-level appropriate language. The sermons of the Fathers are just as much God's Own Word, the very light of Scripture, as the New Century or the Living Translation Bibles used with children. How can anyone deny that a live translation of Scripture, which we call a sermon or homily, is just as much Scripture as any modern translation is? And if this is true, then when a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox points to a sermon from the Apostolic Fathers, is he not really just pointing to Scripture itself? Do not the Protestants have to accept those same sermons as bearing doctrinal and instructional weight comparable to Scripture?

These are an intensely difficult set of questions for Christians who do not admit the Magisterium. 

And these questions are problems precisely because Bible-only theology must always come down to salvation based on wealth and intelligence. The wealthy have the leisure time and the resources available to hone their literacy skills. Given a common subject (the Bible), the intelligent require less time and resources than the stupid to master the same material.

Protestant theology explicitly says you have to know Christ to be saved AND knowledge of Christ comes through Scripture. Protestant theology therefore implies the wealthy and intelligent are more likely to be saved than the poor and stupid. If you are a Bible-only Christian, there is no way to avoid this conclusion. Liturgical Christians don't have this problem. Knowledge of Christ does come through Scripture, of course, but it also comes through the direct contact with sacramental grace. As an Eastern Orthodox, Coptic or Catholic Christian, I don't need to be literate to be saved, I only need to be breathing and receptive to sacramental grace. The differences are clear. 

The problem, of course, is that half of the country is unable to understand anything I've just written. 

Renewables destroy the environment

Industrial solar and wind farms take up enormous amounts of land, often requiring all wildlife, even all the vegetation, on the site to be killed or removed.

Wind, solar, and hydro energy all have one thing in common: they destroy habitat as well as directly kill wildlife, including listed endangered species and their habitat

Solar panels themselves are made with heavy metals mined by child and slave labor. When hurricanes or tornadoes destroy those panels, the heavy metal from the debris leaches into and contaminates soil and groundwater. Since solar panels cannot be economically recycled, they get buried in landfills at the end of their life, again contaminating soil and groundwater. See this Forbes story, or this FEE story, this Wired story, this Discover Magazine story, or this ScienceDirect story:

Thin-film solar panels (TFSPs) are widely used in integrated photovoltaic and solar power systems...Heavy metals were released from TFSPs in the burial experiment, and the rates of metal release changed with variations in both the amounts of TFSPs in the soil and the soil properties. The increased concentrations of heavy metals such as Zn, Cu, Ni, Ga, Pb, In and Cr in soil samples were correlated to the amounts of TFSPs added. The results of this study confirmed that, when buried, TFSPs polluted the soil.

This article from PV Magazine confirms the problem:

The authors of the paper cited the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive introduced by the European Union as an example other countries should follow to define new policies for the management of PV waste. Otherwise, stated the researchers, the lack of economic value in recycling such products at present is likely to see significant volumes dumped in landfill.

The presence of hazardous heavy metals such as the cadmium, tellurium, indium and gallium used in thin-film products would represent a significant threat to health and the environment if not disposed of correctly...

This Foreign Policy article documents how the solar panel industry uses child labor to provide toys to rich people:

Renewable technologies create ethical issues at both ends of their life cycle. Sovacool was part of a team of researchers who recently visited the two ends of technology supply chains: artisanal cobalt mining sites in Congo, where miners extract the metal using rudimentary tools or their hands, and electronic waste scrapyards in Ghana, a global cemetery for electronics such as solar panels. The team’s findings reveal widespread child labor, the subjugation of ethnic minorities, toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, and gender inequality along the length of the supply chain....By 2050, which is the rough expiration date of solar panels manufactured today, the technology is estimated to produce 78 million metric tons of waste—some 80 percent more than the total annual waste from all combined technologies today.

The New York Times has already documented that Chinese solar panel firms use slave labor extensively in order to feed Western desire for 'clean" energy.

According to a report by the consultancy Horizon Advisory, Xinjiang’s rising solar energy technology sector is connected to a broad program of assigned labor in China, including methods that fit well-documented patterns of forced labor.

And Green Tech Media documents the same problem:

Some of these challenges, such as those around the cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries, are well known. However, while the persistent presence of child labor in Congolese cobalt mines has left companies struggling to address supply-chain traceability, other human rights impacts from renewable energy may be flying under the radar.

Our research shows that labor rights issues are present in renewable energy supply chains, including in the manufacturing of solar panels and the cultivation of palm oil and sugarcane used in biofuels.

Wind turbine blades cannot be recycled. They are cut into pieces and buried in landfills. 

When wind turbine blades are decommissioned they are usually scrapped and thrown into landfill because they cannot be recycled. In the U.S. over the next four years alone that will be the fate of more than 8,000 blades. As wind installations increase so will that number. ...

A recent Bloomberg News article stoked concern by shining a spotlight on Casper, Wyoming, home to a graveyard for nearly 900 wind turbine blades.

Casper’s municipal landfill serves as a final resting place for spent blades, the volume of which has been growing exponentially as wind energy’s robust expansion continues. The article suggested that over the next four years alone, the United States will decommission more than 8,000 blades.

Even NPR admits this is an issue. When you've lost NPR, who is left to support you?

While most of a turbine can be recycled or find a second life on another wind farm, researchers estimate the U.S. will have more than 720,000 tons of blade material to dispose of over the next 20 years, a figure that doesn't include newer, taller higher-capacity versions.

And virtually no one calculates the energy expense in attempting to grind up or bury these blades in landfills. 

So, if you hate, absolutely HATE the environment, use wind/solar.

If you LIKE having children and other slaves work for you, use wind/solar.

Renewables destroy the environment and enslave children.

So, to sum up:
Solar uses child/slave labor to mine the heavy metals used in solar panel construction. Tornadoes and hurricanes shred the panels, resulting in soil and groundwater contamination. Panels cannot be economically recycled, so they end up in landfills where they again contaminate soil and groundwater with heavy metals.

• If you like child labor,
• If you like slave labor,
• If you like poisoning the environment,
• Use solar!

It's the rich man's toy, made by slaves, that poisons the environment! 

Why Electrical Vehicles Cannot Work

From a comment on the web: 

The average power line in a residential neighborhood is capable of transmitting around 500 simultaneous amps before the pole transformers start blowing. That is why you start getting brownouts when everyone uses air conditioning in the summer. As the lines heat up, they get less efficient.

Most American homes have a 100amp service, even though a lot of new construction doubles this. The normal draw of a house is around 20-30 amps, unless you are running a high draw appliance. Then you might hit 40-60. 

We barely have enough generation capacity to run everything now. In states like California, they don't have enough and have to siphon energy from other states. Where is the energy going to come from to charge all the electric cars? Nearly all of them will be plugged in at the same time. 

It doesn't matter how far the technology goes, the power need is there. The faster the charge, the higher the amperage needed. Current fast charging systems use just over 70 amps. Requiring most homes to install a second 100 amp service. But that is only good for one car. To charge two cars and have enough power for your house, you'll need at least a 300 amp service. You start to notice a problem if you and your neighbor both have a 300 amp service and charge two cars at night. That pole transformer down the street will blow in a few seconds.

The function of that transformer is to step down the voltage from a few thousand volts to the 240v your residence runs on. There are larger transformers that handle more amps, but they are in the local substation. To handle a neighborhood of electric cars, you'll need a substation for every block and a pole transformer outside every house. 

It just isn't feasible. The infrastructure needed for 200 million electric cars in the USA will cost trillions. It won't happen. The electric dream of blogs like Electrek and their brainless commenters is really a nightmare for everyone.