33 - Bangkok for a bit
🇹🇭 We are continuing in transit this week - heading from Belfast down to Dublin and then via Doha Qatar to Bangkok Thailand. Travel was surprisingly smooth and it is nice to be out of the cold of Northern European October. We do feel good here in SE Asia - it does feel like coming home.
Aircoach is the easy way to get to Dublin airport - be sure to book online in advance and put your luggage near the rear of the stowage in front of the box thing. The drivers that we had each way were pleasant and friendly. Note that they are likely to start charging for more than one piece of luggage - it's not obvious how they would enforce this properly and fairly that without adding more people or massively over-stressing the one driver they have on each bus.
Dublin airport was also quite smooth - we did pay the extra to get fast track security; yet again I have the feeling that they have "turned down" the sensitivity and they seemed to be stopping much less than before. There also seem to be less staff around - I wonder why?
For the 7-hour flight to Qatar we had done online checkin so only needed bag drop - this was smooth and staff were friendly. It does help to have paper copies of all important documents; V is the organiser and she is the BEST!
Officially on the flight masks are mandatory(!) but clearly most people have just had enough of all this nonsense and the crew had the sense not try to enforce it - even if they had to comply themselves. Enough is enough; in fact it is already far too much - use your brain, folks. The social and psychological damage that has been inflicted on entire populations can never be justified by any benefit even if it would exist. BTW - have you ever stopped to wonder why they have left all the mandatory mask stickers up everywhere on buses, trains and in airports?
Doha/Qatar airport was a bit less smooth than I remember from last time we passed thru - albeit in the opposite direction. It was still OK and better than most transit airports, the best bit being minimal security between flight transfers but the WiFi is crap.
The 7-hour flight from Qatar to Bangkok was also OK - it was an A380-800 and we had the front row on top deck - so enough legroom. Of course there was a sandwich meal shortly after take-off and breakfast 2 hours before arrival - so not so much sleep. You do seem to eat continually on flights to the east!
Arrival in Bangkok was pretty much as usual - long walk to arrival but all queues were working and it was pretty smooth - note that they do take all fingerprints and photo and in general everything in Thailand is very tightly controlled - you even need passport to get a SIM card or a metro card. All this is coming soon to a C40 city near you too.
Regarding Prepaid SIM choice, there are three main suppliers in Thailand: DTAC, AIS and TrueMove. We picked DTAC since you can buy them in the luggage collection area while waiting for your luggage and since they have a 90 day option with unlimited data at a reasonable price. For more research check here - and the wiki covers other countries.
As for Bangkok - it is pretty much as I remember it from when I was last here nearly 3 years ago. It seems to have survived all the recent nonsense surprisingly well however it is sad to see how much the local population has been zombified by all the mask wearing - with luck the current influx of tourists who clearly know better will help re-orientate people. That influx is well under way and I expect it may well pick up even more as people seek to get away from the madness elsewhere.
Around Bangkok, we covered much ground visiting: EmQuartier, Benjasiri Park, CentralWorld, Soi Wanit, ICONSIAM and Wat Po as well as the graffiti walls around Charoen Krung and meeting up with friends here. For superb Indian food, I do recommend JHOL in Sukhumvit Soi 18. Chatuchak is for Saturday.
🇭🇰 Meanwhile in HK
Yes, I did hear that HK will give away 500,000 plane tickets in a bid to attract people to go there. Sorry to say, but I think they need to look first at the restrictions and rituals that they require you to perform on and after arrival. At last count there are no less than 11 tests that you need to submit to in your first week there - not to mention all the additional track and trace. In what reality and for what real benefit could this ever be justifiable? Even SCMP does not think it makes sense!
Isaiah's Job...
This week I was reminded of Aleks' article The Remnant, The Parasite & The Masses. It was inspired by a 1930’s essay by Albert J Nock; Isaiah’s Job. Aleks discusses this here in his reading of the article. As Remant, you can be sure of only two things:
- the Remant exists
- they will find you
For those of you who are awake to what is happening - this is important advice to keep in mind. No need to spend effort trying to wake people up - rather focus on helping and collaborating with those who are awake or wakening and need help.
📚 Book of the week
This week I went back and re-read parts of Jeff Booth's super book - The Price of Tomorrow - well worth your time.
Jeff explains how our economic systems were built for a pre-technology era when labor and capital were inextricably linked - an era that counted on growth and inflation and an era where we made money from inefficiency. That era is over, but we keep on pretending that those economic systems still work.
The only thing driving growth in the world today is easy credit, which is being created at a pace that is hard to comprehend and with it, debt that we will never be able to pay back. As we try to artificially drive an economic system built for the past, we are creating more than just economic trouble.
Back in January 2020 when he released the book he predicted that the world would become profoundly more polarized and unsafe. We needed to build a new framework for our local and global economies, and to accept deflation and embrace the abundance it can bring. Otherwise, the same technology that has the power to bring abundance to us and our world will instead destroy it.
🤔 Look around you and think...
When Money dies - follow-up
Recall last week's book of the week - well now you can listen to John Vallis discuss this in his book club. Well worth a listen.
🛠 Update on my Projects
Recall that over the coming weeks I will be assembling and sharing quality educational material in relation to money and bitcoin - along with associated use cases and technology. This week we are starting on some essential foundations that you really need to know first. Do give feedback and ask any questions below.
💰 Bitcoin and Lightning
Getting started - you first need to understand "What is money". This might sound stupid but it is something that you were probably never taught and have never thought about - other than "it's what's in my wallet or bank account".
The essential properties of good money fall into three categories - summarised in the table below.
- Store of Value - first and foremost, money allows you to store value that results from your effort/time/work or from exchange of some valuable good or property
- Medium of Exchange - you can exchange things of value for money and vice versa. This happens through an agreed "exchange rate" - for example an hourly or daily rate or a "price" for some good or property.
- Unit of Account - it should be widely recognised as an unambiguous unit of measurement
For your homework this week you can think about how well Cash meets these characteristics. Think too about how well money in your bank compares as well as money used through your credit or debit card and then also services like Paypal (recently a lot of negative press - see here from Neil). You might think too about how gold (the traditional store of value) compares as money; in subsequent weeks I will be doing deeper dives in some of these comparisons.
🤔 Some clues
Hint - at first you might think that Fiat Money is a good store of value but a bit of reflection should tell you that in reality your money buys you less and less every year (even every month lately) - due to "inflation". Contrary to what you are told - inflation is not good for you - it is a silent stealer of your wealth and stored value.
It is for this reason that people have attempted to store wealth elsewhere (in addition to gold) - the main places recently being stocks (shares in companies) and property (houses). As a result these assets have acquired "monetary premium" - ie a higher price due to their "financialisation". A bigger problem is that this premium is being paid in "borrowed money" - money that you and the other buyers did not earn; in fact it did not exist till the bank just gave it to you in your mortgage. As such, that money was just "magic-ed" into existance and it does not represent any real effort or stored value. Among other things this has the effect of devaluing the pounds, dollars or euros of everyone else - just like when (in Monopoly) the bank gives everyone extra money. Wait, didn't the government just do this recently?
As Ray Dalio explains in his now-famous video: How The Economic Machine Works this leads to boom-bust cycles and eventually a Great Deleveraging that may or may not be "beautiful". Guess where we are today?
📖 Course material and going deeper
For those who want to go deeper I do recommend the following free learning resources
- Looking Glass Course - Debt, Inflation and the bigger picture - an interactive, online course - set aside about 2 hours
- Lyn Alden's paper from March: What is Money, Anyway? It's a long read so you might prefer to have Guy read it to you. Also a 2 hour read but it is superb.
Next week we will look into how the bitcoin network works and how it delivers the key functions and attributes of money.
🎓 Reading, listening and learning
Below are some more interesting sources that I came across, or was reminded of, in the past week - for your enjoyment and edification:
🇹🇭 Since we are here in Thailand I have got to recommend Thailand Weekly - an excellent source of timely insights and commentary.
🇹🇭 Also fun and informative is Chris' channel - Retired Working for You. I even had the pleasure to bump into him in a coffee shop in Sukhumvit - small world! He just returned to Thailand after a bit of a hiatus - let's see...
⚠️ On a more serious note
Consider Godfrey Bloom Online. You should also listen to his interview Corrupt Money Corrupts Absolutely with Robert Breedlove
What's causing all those Excess Deaths? Tom Woods discusses with Dr Peter Kory and I recommend Peter's website and substack as well.
A rather interesting discussion: Hrvoje Morić discusses with Marc Morano on his new book “The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown”.
Also by Hrvoje, I really appreciated this interview with Lucas Gage: US Empire & Neoliberal Globalism Stretching Thin, World’s Getting Sick of It
I do also recommend reading Lyn Alden's latest newsletter: October 2022 Newsletter: Energy vs Sovereign Bond Markets - covering:
-Recent disorder in developed country sovereign bond markets.
-Why sovereign bond problems aren't going away.
-Ongoing supply-side constraints in energy markets.
-The current state of the newsletter portfolio.
🇮🇲 Neil from Isle of Man explains
- Why PayPal Are FREEZING Accounts - hint - it was no accident and google is already fixing its search results so that you will think it was - this is gaslighting and revisionism in action. James and James came to a similar conclusion and as a bonus you get some additional insights on SWIFT!
- Bank Of England: 3 More Days - by the time you read this it may already be too late
- Just like that - the Empire Strikes: Bank Accounts Cancelled & Australian Banks Offline - and there may well be much more under the surface.
🤔 You likely want to give this proper consideration
As always, Max's latest walk and talk is informative and thought-provoking - Political Party Time
He goes rather far in the second part of the video and you may or may not be ready but do watch the first 50 minutes or so at least. He is also a bit repetitive in the second part due to trying to recover from recording issues that he had this week.
Link to that Social Credit Score experiment in Bologna and the corresponding YT video - you have been warned.
🤪 Finishing up on a lighter note
For quite some time I have been aware of Unico Sobreviviente - you may or may not have heard about him. He claims to be a "time traveller" who is trapped in the future (in 2027) in Spain with nobody else around but him! As proof he posts videos every few days of scenes around Spain where nobody but him can be seen - somehow TikTok and Youtube are the only functioning links between the universes! He has millions of followers on Tik Tok and as far as I know nobody has definitively been able to explain how he does it. It is certainly very convincing and hard to spot anything to give it away. Check it out and improve your Spanish.
A possible explanation is here. I think the Spanish TV series is an important clue and The Empire might well be testing sophisticated new AI/deep-fake technology before a wider roll-out on the general population. What do you think - comment and discuss below!
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