Serendipity Sundays is a (sometimes) weekly newsletter aimed at digesting ideas, concepts, and media relevant to my interests. Topics range from Bitcoin, Entrepreneurship, and Privacy to Art and Continuing Education... but it’s mostly Bitcoin. If you find this newsletter interesting, feel free to share it with a friend or read my most popular article Earning a bit of Bitcoin.
Book(s) I’ve Read Recently
Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future
I first heard about this book during an interview with author on the What Bitcoin Did podcast which you can listen to here. While I had initially expected a book on the history of taxation to be a bit dry, I was surprised at how entertaining and informative the contrarian read turned out to be. The book’s title derives from a tax on windows in England that led to unintended consequences by significantly reducing indoor air quality and causing evasive measures to avoid the oppressive tax. Frisby does an excellent job weaving historical interpretation alongside utopian ideas which expose many of the political and economic motives which underlie taxation. Frisby presents the idea of a “location usage tax” presently used in some form in Hong Kong, Denmark, New Zealand, and Estonia as way to capture a fair value for property that receives benefits from nearby development. After reading about how this properly aligns incentives and encourages active investment, I’m sold, along with his ideas on UBI as means to drastically simplify the bureaucracy of the welfare state.
Some selected highlights from the book. You can see all of them here on my Goodreads
As for actual money supply, at the turn of the twentieth century, there was some $7 billion in existence. In 1971, US money supply stood at $480 billion. Today it is $15.5 trillion, over 30 times higher than in 1971, and 2,200 times higher than in 1900.20 Yes, American GDP has grown by about 16 times since 1971, and the population has increased by 60% (from 207 million to 325 million), but money supply growth has far outstripped both
At the turn of the century, local government collected more tax than federal. Even on the eve of the Great Depression, local governments raised as much as half of the total US tax revenue, with property taxes alone – collected at the local level – accounting for 40%.11 The latter fell off a cliff during the Great Depression. By the end of the Second World War, they accounted for just 10% of all government revenue. In many cases, taxes are collected centrally and then distributed locally. By this process, power shifts to the central authority. He who has the tax revenue has the power. Government has become more centralised, more distant, less local and in many ways less accountable. Central authorities have become so much better at raising revenue than local authorities that the nature of government itself has changed as a result
You will spend a full 20 years of your life or more in obligatory service to the state.11 On a time basis, the state owns as much of your labour as the feudal lord did that of the medieval serf, who gave half his working week to farm the land of his lord in exchange for his protection. In exchange, you receive the protection of the state and its services: defence, healthcare, education and so on, for yourself and others
After reading the Martian, I was excited to pick up another book by Andy Weir. This sci-fi thriller is my favorite fiction read of the year thus far. The book starts as the main character, Ryland Grace, wakes up in a spaceship light years from Earth. The problem is he doesn't remember who he is or what he's supposed to do. But whatever it is, it must be important, or he wouldn't have been sent on this mission with two other astronauts. Unfortunately, neither of them survived the journey, so he is all alone. And he is Earth's last hope for survival. The book is packed with a mind-boggling amount of real science with actual explanations and enough edge-of-your-seat moments that on more than one occasion I had to stay up late to get through a section. Weir has a knack for making sci fi very accessible and emotionally stirring. Highly recommend!
What Else I’m Reading
Why is walking so good for the brain? Blame it on the “spontaneous fluctuations”
I’m religious about walking the dogs every morning and it’s by far one of the best routines I’ve developed. I typically walk in the morning sans any electronics, but I’ve noticed making some additional connections while listening to podcasts, especially those in German as I’ve been cramming prior to my trip.
Why have there been so few COVID deaths in Japan? Recent rhetoric about COVID has been so focused on the highly polarized vaccine situation that general health has been almost completely ignored. A combination of possible cross-immunity from previous coronaviruses exposure along with an overall healthier population may explain the difference. Especially when considering that Japan’s lockdown measures were relatively lax and in line with many other Western nations.
Closing Thoughts
I’m writing this from the Seattle airport during a long layover. I’m headed to Budapest first and then to see my family in Germany. Travelling during COVID is definitely a bureaucratic hassle and I’m a bit fearful this nonsense won’t end anytime soon. The PCR test travel requirement makes things a bit tricky as any insurance covered free test has a 48-72 hour waiting period while the option for a “rapid” test of 1-3 hours costs $200. That’s all you have to choose from. The simple solution to solving this since there isn’t a true sliding scale for test result priority would be to require all testing centers to post a rolling average of result times. Let the magic of the free market then determine winners and losers!
I’ll be doing some write-ups for my Europe trip over the next few weeks in Hungary and Germany so make sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter if you aren’t already.
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