World dying from cancer of states

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for October 20, 2024)

I don't support Israel. I don't support Palestine. I don't support Ukraine, Russia, or any other state. I support individuals who live in places claimed by those states, as long as they aren't violating the life, liberty, or property of others.

States-- political governments-- are a threat to every life on the planet. If life on Earth is wiped out, and it isn’t due to an asteroid or a gamma-ray burst, it will be because of states doing what states do. It is preventable. Few have any interest in preventing it.

Most people want to cheer for a team. They call for unity but crave division and conflict. They like the drama which comes from national and international politics. They believe one side is good and the other is bad. They are wrong. All states are bad. They are grounded in the belief that a right to govern others exists. States survive on the superstition that doing wrong isn’t wrong if it's done by people claiming the imaginary authority of a government.

Some people claim states are a necessary evil. Evil is never necessary; it’s a choice. The wrong choice.

When people invade, attack, destroy, kidnap, or murder because the state tells them to, they are the bad guys. Even if someone else, acting on behalf of an opposing state, did the same to them last year. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. States drive people insane, causing them to do insanely evil things, expecting this will make the world better. It never does; it never will. Politics makes people stupid and encourages them to do evil.

In the moment, in any conflict between individuals acting on behalf of governments, someone is more wrong. It's the one doing the invading, attacking, destroying, kidnapping, and murdering. Sixty seconds from now, it could be the other side which is more wrong.

A one-world government is not the answer. It would only be a bigger, all-encompassing state. It would be just as evil, just as deadly, and even more tyrannical. Someone reading this just had the rug pulled out from under them. They thought opposing the existence of states meant I was supporting global government. They couldn't be more wrong.

Tragically, the rest of us are forced to live in a world with such stupid, pointless evil. A world dying from the cancer of states.

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Spend or save? Save or spend?

As so often happens when Bitcoin has a rally, I'm torn between spending it now while it's high, or using it as my "retirement account" and counting on it to just keep going up over the long term.

Of course, it may have dropped precipitously since I wrote the above paragraph, so this may be moot. You never know.

Those of you who have/use Bitcoin, what do you do?

When I first started dabbling in Bitcoin, I generally spent about half of what I had when it had gone up a lot. I thought that if it became worthless tomorrow, I was still ahead. I don't regret doing that, since I couldn't have known the future. Although I occasionally think of what might have been... Now, I'm much more sparing when spending it.

I would be a little sad if it went to zero now and I hadn't taken advantage of it before that happened. I would still be far ahead, though.

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