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The Case For Bitcoin To Separate Money From The State

By separating money from the government, Bitcoin takes the control of money out of the hands of politicians and gives it back to the citizens.

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By separating money from the government, Bitcoin takes the control of money out of the hands of politicians and gives it back to the citizens.

This is an opinion editorial by Ryan Bansal, a professional software engineer and author of a Bitcoin newsletter.

“The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them.” — Hal Finney

Technologies are just amplifiers, not arbiters of morality. By extrapolating from the above quote, it is within reason to claim that any technology can be both a tool for either tyranny or for freedom depending on whose hands are on the power lever.

The principle of checks and balances shows that in any kind of system that relies on concentrated power, that central institution becomes the honeypot for malicious actors. Also, keep in mind the democratic principle that more distributed decision-making is more robust and fair for any society. So it sounds like a no-brainer that the best way moving forward is to develop and adopt technologies with no single ultimate power lever?

Having said that, let’s now talk about one of the most important technologies of all: money. In the evolution of monetary technology from barter systems to seashells to metal coins to gold-backed banknotes and now a central-bank-controlled fiat digital currency, the power distribution has gone from being more decentralized to being more centralized to the point where governments have managed to establish a coercive monopoly on money.

Now, I think it is a fairly non-controversial statement to say: Government corrupts anything it touches. Sure, the convenience of digital money is unmatched, but it is also important to understand the other side of it, i.e., the counterparty risk, which means needing to trust a custody provider to secure your assets — along with the fact that the historical track record of keeping this trust is not great.

However fortunately or unfortunately, recently this breach in the contract has started to happen more widely and openly. Take for example a developed democratic country like Canada, freezing the bank accounts of its citizens for protesting against COVID-19 restrictions or a country like Russia putting restrictions on its people trying to withdraw their funds after the country invaded its neighbor. In a world run purely on physical cash, this kind of power to unconstitutionally violate private property rights would be impossible to execute.

(Source)

Apart from the worsening financial censorship and geopolitical sanctions — which are a relatively recent phenomenon now that money has become almost fully digital — the corruption arising from the advent of fiat money and its problems goes further back to 1971. What do I mean? The plethora of metrics one can use to measure the health of an economy like index funds price-earnings ratios, Gini index for wealth inequality, consumer price index for inflation and cost of living, the ratio of income growth versus productivity growth, individual homeownership rates and many others have all gone haywire since the then President Richard Nixon decided to move away from the gold standard.

If you haven’t guessed the next move of governments by now, allow me to introduce you to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Think today’s digital money is bad enough as is? Now imagine what if it was also programmable?

You can say goodbye to any last sliver of financial autonomy. Before we know it, we’ll be living in a surveillance state with social credit scores, just like the Chinese citizens. If you’ve seen politicians trying to put a positive spin on them by randomly throwing around buzzwords, like “blockchain,” go back to the top of this article and read the first line again.

The problems that the government creates can be spoken of at great lengths, but let us move on to the solution: How to take the control of money out of the hands of politicians and give it back to the citizens?

“I don’t believe we shall ever have good money again before we take it out of the hands of governments.” — Friedrich Hayek

Imagine if our monetary system had the privacy and autonomy of cash; the convenience of being instantly and digitally transferrable all over the globe; all the while also retaining the properties of gold, i.e., nobody can steal your purchasing power over time by arbitrarily manipulating its supply only to serve their perverse political incentives?

Moreover, what if it was also running on an open-source codebase and used a public database making it globally accessible, completely transparent and fully auditable by anyone? Plus, what if it also allowed anyone with an internet connection and a computer the ability to weigh in on its monetary policy?

Finally, what if the proposed system was also decentralized in a way that it becomes impossible to stop, controlled or corrupted by anyone due to the lack of a single point of failure or by any central authority?

Sounds like a monetary technology on steroids, doesn’t it? Well, in 2008, a solution to these problems was proposed by someone using the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. I’d also like to highlight that it didn’t just come out of the blue, it has been in the making ever since the central bankers established control over the money. More precisely, it took almost 40 years of research and multiple failed attempts to engineer this masterpiece. The following visual is more tangible:

(Source)

I’d like to close by reiterating that the notion of separation of the money from the State may seem radical to you at first, but it is actually not. As I mentioned before, the monetary technologies we’ve used throughout most of our history were way more outside of the state control than current fiat money. In one way or another, the State managed to capture them. Gold is the best example of such a non-sovereign asset that people used as money for the longest time, but it had obvious attack vectors in the form of various physical limitations, i.e., hard to store, hard to secure and hard to move.

Historically speaking, there has been a tug-of-war between fiat and non-government monies. Therefore, the real issue at hand is not one of “if” money will separate from government control, but of “when.” With Bitcoin, I think the moment is finally here.

Now obviously if this article has not managed to fully convince you how Bitcoin was designed to be a truly democratic and inclusive monetary system and if you still insist on calling it a scam, I hope you’ll at least consider it is something worth taking a harder look at.

This is a guest post by Ryan Bansal. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Disney remote jobs: the most magical WFH careers on earth?

Disney employs hundreds of thousands of employees at its theme parks and elsewhere, but the entertainment giant also offers opportunities for remote w…

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The Walt Disney Co. (DIS)  is a major entertainment and media company that operates amusement parks, produces movies and television shows, airs news and sports programs, and sells Mickey Mouse and Star Wars merchandise at its retail stores across the U.S.

While most of the jobs at the multinational entertainment conglomerate require working with people — such as at its theme parks, film-production facilities, cruise ships, or corporate offices — there are also opportunities for remote work at Disney. And while remote typically means working from home, with Disney, it could also mean working in a non-corporate office and being able to move from one location to another and conduct business outside normal working hours.

Related: Target remote jobs: What type of work and how much does it pay?

What remote jobs are available at Disney?

Many companies, including Disney, have called employees to return to the office for work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the bulk of the company’s positions are forward-facing, meaning they involve meeting with clients and customers on a regular basis. 

Still, there are some jobs at the “most magical company on earth” that are listed as remote and don’t require frequent in-person interaction with people, including opportunities in data entry and sales.

While thousands work in forward-facing positions, such as greeting customers at Disney’s theme parks around the world, there are some positions with the Walt Disney Co. that allow work to be done remotely.

Orlando Sentinel/Getty Images

On Disney’s career website, there are limited positions available where the work is completely remote. One listing, for example, is for a “graphics interface coordinator covering sporting events.” This role involves working on nights, weekends, and holidays — times when corporate offices tend to be closed — and it may make sense for the company to hire people who can work from home or to travel and work in a location separate from the game venue.

Some of the senior roles that are shown on the website involve managers who can oversee remote teams, whether that be in sales or data. Sometimes, a supervisor overseeing staff who work outside corporate offices may be responsible for hiring freelancers who work remotely.

On the employment website Indeed, there are limited positions listed. A job listing for a manager in enterprise underwriting for a federal credit union indicates weekend duty, working outside of an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule, and being able to work in different locations. The listed annual salary range of $84,960 to $132,000, though, is well above the national annual average of around $50,000.

Internationally, Disney offers remote work in India, largely in the field of software development for its India-based streaming platform, Disney+ Hotstar.

The company also offers some hybrid schemes, which involve a mixture of in-office and remote work. For a mid-level animator position based in San Francisco, the role would involve being in the office and working from home occasionally.

How much do remote jobs at Disney pay?

Pay for remote jobs at Disney varies significantly based on location. A salary for a freelance artist in New York City, for example, may be higher than for the same job in Orlando, Florida. 

Disney lists actual salary ranges in some of its job postings. For example, the yearly pay for a California-based compensation manager who works with clients is $129,000 to $165,000.

In an online search for “remote jobs at Disney,” results range from $30 to $39 an hour, for data entry, or $28.50 to $38 an hour for social media customer support.

How can I apply for remote jobs at Disney?

You can look for remote jobs on Disney's career site, and type “remote” in the search field. Listings may also appear on career-data websites, including Indeed and Glassdoor.

How many employees does Disney have?

In 2023, Disney employed about 225,000 people globally, of which around 77% were full-time, 16% part-time, and 7% seasonal. The majority of the workers, around 167,000, were in the U.S.

Disney says that a significant number of its employees, including many of those who work at its theme parks, along with most writers, directors, actors, and production personnel, belong to unions. It’s not immediately known how many remote workers at the company, if any, are union members. 

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FoxO6-mediated ApoC3 upregulation promotes hepatic steatosis and hyperlipidemia in aged rats fed a high-fat diet

“This discovery unveils a potential novel molecular target for therapeutic strategies against hepatic steatosis during the aging process […]” Credit:…

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“This discovery unveils a potential novel molecular target for therapeutic strategies against hepatic steatosis during the aging process […]”

Credit: 2024 Kim et al.

“This discovery unveils a potential novel molecular target for therapeutic strategies against hepatic steatosis during the aging process […]”

BUFFALO, NY- March 20, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as “Aging (Albany NY)” and “Aging-US” by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 5, entitled, “FoxO6-mediated ApoC3 upregulation promotes hepatic steatosis and hyperlipidemia in aged rats fed a high-fat diet.”

FoxO6, an identified factor, induces hyperlipidemia and hepatic steatosis during aging by activating hepatic lipoprotein secretion and lipogenesis leading to increased ApoC3 concentrations in the bloodstream. However, the intricate mechanisms underlying hepatic steatosis induced by elevated FoxO6 under hyperglycemic conditions remain intricate and require further elucidation.

In this new study, researchers Dae Hyun Kim, Seulah Lee, Sang Gyun Noh, Jaewon Lee, and Hae Young Chung from Pusan National University aimed to delineate the regulatory pathway involving ApoC3 controlled by FoxO6 and its resultant functional impacts.

“[…] we employed a spectrum of models including liver cell cultures, aged rats subjected to HFD, transgenic mice overexpressing FoxO6 (FoxO6-Tg), and FoxO6 knockout mice (FoxO6-KO).”

Their findings indicate that FoxO6 triggered ApoC3-driven lipid accumulation in the livers of aged rats on an HFD and in FoxO6-Tg, consequently leading to hepatic steatosis and hyperglycemia. Conversely, the absence of FoxO6 attenuated the expression of genes involved in lipogenesis, resulting in diminished hepatic lipid accumulation and mitigated hyperlipidemia in murine models. Additionally, the upregulation of FoxO6 due to elevated glucose levels led to increased ApoC3 expression, consequently instigating cellular triglyceride mediated lipid accumulation. The transcriptional activation of FoxO6 induced by both the HFD and high glucose levels resulted in hepatic steatosis by upregulating ApoC3 and genes associated with gluconeogenesis in aged rats and liver cell cultures.

“Our conclusions indicate that the upregulation of ApoC3 by FoxO6 promotes the development of hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia, and hepatic steatosis in vivo, and in vitro. Taken together, our findings underscore the significance of FoxO6 in driving hyperlipidemia and hepatic steatosis specifically under hyperglycemic states by enhancing the expression of ApoC3 in aged rats.”
 

Read the full paper: DOI: https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205610 

Corresponding Author: Hae Young Chung

Corresponding Email: hyjung@pusan.ac.kr 

Keywords: HFD-feeding, aging, forkhead transcription factor O6, ApoC3, lipid accumulation, hepatic steatosis

Click here to sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article.

 

About Aging:

Aging publishes research papers in all fields of aging research including but not limited, aging from yeast to mammals, cellular senescence, age-related diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s diseases and their prevention and treatment, anti-aging strategies and drug development and especially the role of signal transduction pathways such as mTOR in aging and potential approaches to modulate these signaling pathways to extend lifespan. The journal aims to promote treatment of age-related diseases by slowing down aging, validation of anti-aging drugs by treating age-related diseases, prevention of cancer by inhibiting aging. Cancer and COVID-19 are age-related diseases.

Aging is indexed by PubMed/Medline (abbreviated as “Aging (Albany NY)”), PubMed Central, Web of Science: Science Citation Index Expanded (abbreviated as “Aging‐US” and listed in the Cell Biology and Geriatrics & Gerontology categories), Scopus (abbreviated as “Aging” and listed in the Cell Biology and Aging categories), Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, EMBASE, META (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative) (2018-2022), and Dimensions (Digital Science).

Please visit our website at www.Aging-US.com​​ and connect with us:

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For media inquiries, please contact media@impactjournals.com.

 

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The Digest #194

Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Ben Graham, GAAP accounting, John Templeton, AI dystopia, Inflation, Bloomstran on Berkshire, Intuitive Surgical, The lessons…

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Poor Charlie’s Almanack

Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger was first published in 2005 as a “coffee table” style book. It was beautifully presented but came with a high price tag. It was also heavy, somewhat unwieldy to read, and not very portable. The book’s format and price probably limited its reach. 

Stripe Press published a new edition of the book shortly after Mr. Munger died last year at the age of ninety-nine. Amazon and other vendors instantly sold all available inventory. After waiting for three months, I finally received my copy last week. 

Peter Kaufman is the editor of all editions of the book and I suspect that his main goal two decades ago was to honor Charlie Munger’s wisdom in a format that was not expected to “go viral.” In 2005, Charlie Munger was well known in the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder community and in the value investing world, but he was not as prominent as he became during his final decade. The clear purpose of the new edition is to disseminate his ideas as widely as possible. 

The new edition is abridged to reduce repetitive content and I will withhold judgment about the wisdom of this abridgment until I finish reading the book. Since the heart of the book is comprised of speeches given by Charlie Munger, there are definitely cases where the same ideas are presented again and again. 

Great books can be read many times while remaining highly relevant. I found this to be the case when I reread Charlie Munger’s Harvard School commencement address delivered in June 1986 when his youngest son was among the graduates. In the speech, Mr. Munger “inverts” the typical advice delivered in such speeches by explaining how the graduates should go about guaranteeing a life of failure and misery through time-tested strategies such as ingesting drugs and indulging in envy and resentment. 

I am not sure how many graduates were convinced by Charlie Munger on that early summer day, but I suspect that most of them remember the speech because it was so unconventional. In contrast, I have no recollection of the commencement addresses when I graduated from high school or college, or even who the speaker was.


Articles

A Memorial for Charlie Munger by John Harvey Taylor, March 12, 2024. This is a brief account of a recent memorial service for Charlie Munger at Harvard-Westlake School. “We learned Sunday that someone once asked if he knew how to play the piano. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never tried.’ Yet he tried and finished so much in his century. Imagine what he is making of eternity.” (Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles)

Benjamin Graham: Big Moments on the Way to Big Earnings, March 2024. Ben Graham’s granddaughter reflects on the challenges Graham experienced when he applied for college. “Most graduating seniors make their college plans in advance, but Ben Graham had no money for tuition. All through the long days of arduous farm labor, my grandfather dreamed of winning a Pulitzer Scholarship.” (Beyond Ben Graham)

Graham’s “Unpopular Large Caps” Part 2: Thoughts on Diversification by John Huber, March 19, 2024. “I would segment these ideas into two groups: core operating investments and bargain assets. In the former, you want to be very selective in picking a relatively small number of companies you intend to own for the long term. In the latter, you’d want to think like the insurance underwriter, buying as many as you can to ensure that the law of large numbers is on your side.” (Base Hit Investing)

Warren Buffett Minds the GAAP by Donald E. Graham, March 13, 2024. “I have a challenge for the FASB and the SEC: If you believe today’s accounting rules present a clearer picture of Berkshire’s results, put it to a test. Ask Berkshire’s shareholders if they prefer the present method of reporting earnings over the status quo ante. I don’t believe a single informed shareholder would say so. The rule is confusing and uninformative.” (WSJ)

  • Berkshire Hathaway’s Distorted Quarterly Results, August 7, 2022. “Berkshire’s net income figure has been totally useless for analytical purposes since 2018. This is true on an annual basis and even more true on a quarterly basis.” (The Rational Walk)

Sir John Templeton: The Gentleman Bargain Hunter by Kingswell, March 12, 2024. “Templeton, who passed away in 2008, arrived on the investing scene with a series of uber-profitable contrarian bets in the early days of World War II — and continued to outwit Mr. Market with maddening consistency for the next several decades.” (Kingswell)

They Praised AI at SXSW—and the Audience Started Booing by Ted Gioia, March 19, 2024. Many recent innovations seem to have a dystopian aura. Apparently, this sentiment is not restricted to the usual luddites (old men shouting at clouds) but is shared by some of the attendees of SXSW. What seems cool to tech bros in Silicon Valley might not seem so cool to those outside tech culture. (The Honest Broker)

We Still Don’t Believe How Much Things Cost by Rachel Wolfe and Rachel Louise Ensign, March 12, 2024. People tend to focus on the aggregate amount of inflation over the past few years and interpreted transitory to mean that price spikes would reverse. Of course, politicians and economists only meant that the rate of inflation would decrease, not that prices would ever return to pre-pandemic levels. (WSJ)

My 2023 Apple Report Card by John Gruber, March 18, 2024. A solid report card overall from a widely read technology blog. (Daring Fireball)


Podcasts

Christopher Bloomstran on Buffett, Berkshire, Munger, and China, March 19, 2024. 1 hour, 1 minute. Video. Also be sure to check out the latest Semper Augustus client letter which has a lengthy section on Berkshire Hathaway. (Value After Hours)

Renaissance Technologies, March 18, 2024. 3 hours, 10 minutes. Notes“Renaissance Technologies is the best performing investment firm of all time. And yet no one at RenTec would consider themselves an ‘investor’, at least in any traditional sense of the word. It’d rather be more accurate to call them scientists — scientists who’ve discovered a system of math, computers and artificial intelligence that has evolved into the greatest money making machine the world has ever seen.” (Acquired)

Intuitive Surgical: Robotic Precision, March 20, 2024. 1 hour, 6 minutes. Transcript“Intuitive creates robotic products to assist minimally invasive surgeries. Its Da Vinci system is a pioneer in this area as it increases the efficiency & accuracy of surgery and reduces the burden on the surgeons themselves.” (Business Breakdowns)

The Lessons of History (Will & Ariel Durant), March 18, 2023. 53 minutes. Notes“In every age men have been dishonest and governments have been corrupt.” (Founders)

A Classicist Believes that Homer Directly Dictated the Iliad, and Was Also an Excellent Horseman, March 14, 2024. 53 minutes. “The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure?” (History Unplugged)


Triumph of Achilles

Triumph of Achilles by Franz von Matsch, 1892 (public domain)

Copyright, Disclosures, and Privacy Information

Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice and all content is subject to the copyright and disclaimer policy of The Rational Walk LLC.  The Rational Walk is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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