71 lines
4 KiB
Markdown
71 lines
4 KiB
Markdown
# Operation Saylor Episode - 3/120
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Hi again and welcome to another episode of the Operation Saylor. This is update number 3, corresponding to September
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2022.
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If you are reading this for first time, you might want to check [Episode 1](https://stacker.news/items/47539), where my
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plan and details are explained. That will get you in context.
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---
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## Stats
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- BTC stack: 0.6628 BTC
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- € stack: 17,327.60 €
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- Current total value in €: 30,185.92 €
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- € into BTC: 15,000 €
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- Paid back to bank: 732.40 €
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- Outstanding debt: 43,211.93 €
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- Installments to go: 118
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Charts
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- BTC churn chart
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- Value of stack vs Outstanding debt with the bank
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---
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## Log
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This past month I read through Jeff Booth's ["The Price of Tomorrow"](https://b-ok.xyz/book/5521985/be464d). It was an
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ok read. I must confess I was very hyped about it since Jeff's appeareances in different interviews and podcasts are
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great, and everyone and their mother swear that the book is brilliant, but I was not that impressed. I felt the book
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covered the idea that we are heading towards a tremendously deflationary era interestingly, but there were many other
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contents which felt like dull, average-business-magazine level ideas, like the section on AI. Furthermore, I also felt
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a bit disappointed because Jeff makes a great point on how deflation poses a societal challenge since our current
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distribution of wealth through salaried labour will break down and we don't have an alternative for that now, but he
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didn't really discuss much what could be done about that.
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Actively reading on ideas about deflation put the topic in the back on my mind and lately I kept on relating things in
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my daily life to deflation. A few days ago, I was watching TV news and they pulled some charts with the
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[demographic pyramids](https://www.populationpyramid.net/europe/2022/) of a few countries. As it tends to be with these
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sections, the message was rather alarmist, warning about how the pension systems of a few countries in Western Europe
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would become unsustainable as a result of the low fertility (_if only these demographic changes could be foreseen
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decades ahead, maybe then governments could have smoothly pivoted the pension systems to more adequate schemes instead
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of dooming future generations to be left holding the bag..._) and how the economy would stop growing.
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This desire for the population to grow constantly has always puzzled me. Why is it desirable _at all_? A friend of mine
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and I used to end up stuck at traffic jams every morning and we would joke about how our city would be so much livable
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if a plague came and we only had half the people around (_woops_). I guess there are many things nowadays which can
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only be sustained if the population growth rate stays positive, but is it truly negative if we lose those? Or is it
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just that sort of positive destruction that Austrian economics defends as healthy because it re-allocates resources
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into the right ventures?
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I decided to get my hands on another book that talked about it and ended up
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reading "[What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster"](https://b-ok.xyz/book/11698299/0914ef)
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. The book was rather naive, and the economics analysis was elementary-grade level (think of arguments such as "If the
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population declines, labor will be scarce, prices will go up, everything will be unaffordable", as if demand wouldn't
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decline as well). After reading the book, I was still left thinking that the only real trouble that I can attribute to
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a population decline is the unsustainability of certain pension models. Maybe I found the wrong book, or maybe I'm not
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crazy and there is really not so much to fuzz about. Perhaps some stacker can shed some light on the topic and
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recommend some interesting resources?
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That will be all for this month. Thanks for reading and see you in the next one.
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---
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## Previous episodes
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- Episode 1: [https://stacker.news/items/47539](https://stacker.news/items/47539)
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- Episode 2: [https://stacker.news/items/61708](https://stacker.news/items/61708)
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