SkyBlueFlux
Well-Known Member
I also read it all. I agree with you that this is the ramblings of somebody suffering from paranoid delusion. And it is a deep shame because aside from these notions of conspiracy he comes across as bright and actually quite an engaging writer.
It is interesting in that it's the first example of "enlightened centrism" I've seen that takes things to this extreme. Usually the "they're all as bad as each other" tactic is used to sound moderate. Here he uses it as proof that we live in a global kleptocracy, the parties are on the same side, and we're about to be plunged into fascism. An esoteric take, I'll give him that.
The crypto/Bitcoin stuff is a bit stupid though and belies a lack of understanding of how it works. I'm generalising to Bitcoin in what I say here because it makes up more than half of the entire crypto market, with Ethereum making up another 20% or so. The way it was designed and set up means that the information on who owns which coins is public domain and the algorithm and everything to do with it is completely open source. It is a decentralised ledger with records that the entire network of computers have to agree on, so you know who is holding what at all times (when I say "who" you have to know the corresponding wallet address to identify individuals). This means you can just add up the Bitcoin that's out there to calculate its market cap. You'll find it's at about USD 1.3Tr. While that sounds like a lot of money to a layman, it's chump's change really when you consider the GDP of the US is 25x that amount. I work with individual companies who manage assets many multiples of that amount. If they are creating a doomsday fund in cryptocurrency then their fund isn't very big in the grand scheme of things. Maybe a few Bezos worth (to coin a new standard measure).
Needless to say, when you start seeing messages in practically all media that you propose as evidence for the existence of a global conspiracy, you have to commit to the fact that you're saying all of those media creators are somehow in cahoots. Orwell doesn't seem to me like a bloke who would neglect to tell us if he thought 1984 was being played out in real life. Neither do the Simpson's writers, if we're being honest.
My life's mantra comes into play again here - I'll call it "Flux's Razor" - When faced with a variety of possible explanations for the situations we encounter in life, the most prosaic and boring explanation is basically always correct. Life is never as interesting as we would like it to be.
