Phat Unplugged

I hope you will understand if we don't take your word for it.I also find your lack of self awareness to be entertaining, and educational. Here is a quote from your previous post:

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I listen to a social commentator named Jay Martin. Recently, he had a column on his website titled I Steal Only What I Can't Afford In his essay, Jay describes the history of his own family and the struggles which they had to endure to preserve their own lives. He makes a valid point concerning the government-sponsored "Think Tank" which in his opinion is fostering division between the young and the mature. I tend to agree. I see conflict every day at my job and it concerns me that this latest generation is being trained up in what I consider to be bad ideology.

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You listen to a podcast because you need to feel like you are a victim, based off some claimed ideology found in younger people. This feigned persecution of Phat (or conservatives in general) is found in a lot of your posts.

We don't study Chinese history in the West because China didn't have much of an impact on Western culture. We can see echoes of Hellenistic Greece in our governments today, partially because of how their culture was passed on to us by the Romans. Not so with Chinese history and past governmental systems. Jack Carr writes fictions novels. I've heard him speak a few times, and he's an intelligent guy, but I would never call him an expert in geopolitics. That sounds more like an insult for businesspeople.

Having worked in retail as a much younger man, I can confirm this. One of the guys I worked with would regularly bury merchandise in the trash and then come back at night to fish it out of the dumpster. Also had a coworker who was convicted of grand larceny for charging back customers' returns on her own credit card (which was idiotic because it was easy to trace).At the same time, when municipalities like San Francisco stated they would no longer charge people for theft under $900 they opened the flood gates.

Ahh, thanks for the correction. Definitely got that one wrong. It is interesting to see that other jurisdictions had similar policies but didn't see an increase in theft.It is interesting to see how the same policy plays out in different regions. If one sees an increase in theft but no strict punishment then it can snowball, especially when combined with higher rates of homelessness.

How it played out in SF:

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Prop 47 modified California Penal Code 459.5, which originally permitted the felony treatment of shoplifting, and in this capacity afforded police officers the legal ability to arrest a shoplifter on the grounds of burglary.

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Before Prop 47, police officers could perform arrests for shoplifting, but Prop 47 removed that authority, making it much easier to shoplift without any consequences. With the passage of Prop 47, police officers could no longer treat shoplifting as a burglary (as long as the dollar value of what was stolen remained below $950).

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The practical impact of all this? All "arrests" for shoplifting had to now be carried out through a "citizen's arrest" which is a legal process in which a non-law enforcement person had to 1) witness the event and 2) show up in court to prosecute the event (or at least testify that the person in question committed the shoplifting). After Prop 47, police officers were not permitted to arrest on the grounds of shoplifting.

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. . .

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The aftermath of Prop 47 revealed a surge in overdose deaths due to a lack of mandatory substance-abuse treatment, a surge of shoplifting brought about by diminished consequences, and a failure to address recidivism among repeat offenders. We must return to the drawing board and consider more effective ways to bring back a safe, clean, and vibrant San Francisco.
The impact of Prop 47 on crime in San Francisco | GrowSF.org

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In this atmosphere, petty theft (a misdemeanor) became endemic in SF.

The US has the most gold in its reserves, more than double the next closest country which is Germany.What we do know is that there isn't enough gold in the world to replace the US dollar in global reserves. They are going to have to go to something other than gold if they don't want to use dollars. This means they are going to have to trust some other entity that controls whatever other currency they want to use. In the case of BRICS, if they create something internally then it will be controlled by China given its dominance within BRICS. I don't think the other BRICS countries will agree to this.One of the main reasons people use dollars, other than its volume, is the stability and fairness of the US. The US doesn't manipulate its currency to improve trade. China does. The US is transparent. China isn't. Also, other countries are not able to manipulate the US through favors or threats. Other countries aren't as immune to manipulation. If you are looking for a high volume currency backed by a trustworthy nation there is only one currency that ticks all the boxes, and that is the US dollar.

If that were the case then the 2008 financial crisis would not have happened. What we have learned is that most business people are focused on short term profits, long term consequences be damned. Never trust your intuition. Follow the facts, not what you want to be true. Remember that the person easiest to fool is yourself.

I'm in the same boat. Best way to not lose half your stuff is not to put it at risk to begin with, not to mention your mental health. The freedom of the single life is also hard to give up.

Money does grow in the treasury. Almost sounds like the same thing.It's good to hear that you have come over the Light side of the Force. There are still things that are worth worrying about, but fear mongering is not the way to go. The best way to quash a problem is to solve it, not scare people with it.

That seems to be opposite of what you should want. You seem to think gold is better than fiat currency, so you should be hoping for prices to go down so you can buy more gold with the same amount of fiat currency. After you buy the gold, you shouldn't be worried about its price at all because you wouldn't ever trade that more valuable gold for the less value fiat currency, right?You also have to ask why people would be so willing to trade their gold for your fiat currency.

Gold is just some shiny stuff that people arbitrarily decided has value. It's as much a fiat currency as anything else.