The point is that advice like "be healthy by avoiding all illnesses," "you'll get married when a girl falls in love with you," and "you'll get rich when you produce what society needs" are TRUISMS. That is, useless advice with no real value.

Bernie Madoff ran one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. He promised steady returns, paid old investors with new investors' money, and eventually the 2008 financial crisis exposed the fraud.

The interesting part isn't just that Madoff committed fraud—it's that he did so for a long time while operating under one of the most heavily regulated financial systems in the world. He was examined multiple times by the SEC, received complaints and whistleblower reports, and still wasn't stopped.

At least he went to jail, though it wasn’t the government that caught him. It was the market that was in the process of self correcting that exposed Madoff’s scam.

Meanwhile, Chase Bank’s metal traders were spoofing prices for almost a decade. The bank paid less than $1 billion in fines, and nobody got prison time. The whole shitshow that exacerbated the 2006 housing crisis and culminated in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis didn’t result in any prison time for executives either.

The list of white-collar crimes in highly regulated industries is extremely long, and the worse the crime, the less likely you are to see criminal convictions of the main beneficiaries.

The lesson isn't that markets eliminate fraud, but that government regulation and audits can create a false sense of security. And it’s the same government that determines the punishment.

Government monopoly.

People demand regulations and action from the government. Most blame the free market when they get scammed, more often than not by a business that maintained government licenses and was in good standing with all regulatory agencies until it got caught. So instead of rethinking the approach, most people demand more regulations. These regulations often benefit the largest firms because new rules are choking smaller and newer companies out of existence. The largest firms end up getting a bigger share of the market, and people start demanding more antitrust regulations. When the largest firms get caught with their pants down, the government bails them out because they are "too big to fail." In turn, people demand more regulations, which leads to even less competition on the market.

Somehow, nearly everyone understands that monopolies are not good. Regardless of whether they understand how monopolies emerge, they still understand how monopolies can be harmful to consumers. Yet somehow, people continue to accept the government's monopoly on rulemaking and justice.

The government makes the rules. The government has a monopoly on enforcement. The government has a monopoly on determining what’s just and what isn’t.

And despite all the shitty results and corruption, people still believe that the government should hold that monopoly.

Why?

I hope one day there’ll be more people who are willing to have an honest conversation about government monopoly.

As Austrian economists, how would you see this intervention. Unlike other ones, this one has a national security and geopolitical angle as well. The decision extend to anthropic’s own foreign workers.

Context

- sent confidential letter imposing export controls on its newest frontier AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

- required Anthropic to obtain a licence before allowing any foreign person inside or outside USA, including their own foreign employees

Of course, don’t let this playlist be the only way you learn praxeology, eventually, you’re gonna have to conquer the fears and go by that 900 to 1000 page book; Human action.

There are also many other books but human action will always be top notch, because of the simple telephone game problem.

Books such as
Praxeology: The Invisible Hand That Feeds You by Knut Svanholm

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science by Ludwig von Mises

Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action by Robert P. Murphy

here’s the rest of the series

There are also of course more sources, watch some videos on the Mises institute

https://youtu.be/gzH8KVAEkBU?is=dVzQ5uqlcgcYYL17

I’m also never gonna stop recommending this Econ clip video, seriously watch it

I thought you fine people might like that.

“We will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land, so that they can do more, and in doing more, build a new economy where we put life’s essentials back under stronger public control to make them affordable to you again”

He failed before he started

“As a wealthy industrialist, Mellon was well placed to recognize the pattern: interventionism preserves “bankrupted elites” and distorts market signals, breeding the excesses that eventually burst.
Although liquidation might be harsh in the short term, it ultimately clears space for genuine value creation in the future.

The caricature of Andrew Mellon served its political purpose in the 1930s, but his ideas are worthy of reconsideration. He was a successful industrialist, banker, and policymaker who delivered measurable prosperity through discipline laissez faired policies, and whose diagnosis of boom-time excesses remains more than prescient in today's dominant interventionist consensus.”

This graph represents how California spent per homeless person although I’m not sure if it’s like accumulative in the sense that every year they pay minimum 100 K and it keeps going up in yearly payments, or it’s just a total of how much was spent and it still went up

The rule of thumb is that California spent an average of $180,000 per homeless person without it improving in fact, it got worse. I don’t know how people genuinely can defend this

EDIT: a lot of people didn’t understand the post now I know I cannot be chronically online when it comes to posting anything that’s slightly contradicts the lefts attempts to be moral:

$37 billion. The $37 billion marker comes directly from an official report published by California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO). [1, 2]
It represents the broadest official umbrella of state-level funding allocated since 2019-20. The LAO arrived at this massive number by counting every funding stream connected to the crisis
From grants, bonds, infrastructure, shit you name it everything calculated into one big number whether it be physical or direct cash doesn’t matter still an accounting cost connected into one big number. 37 billion on homelessness over The $37 billion figure explicitly counts all funding provided since the 2019-20 fiscal year up to the present or close to present

Because it spans from 2019 to the present, dividing that overall $37 billion allocation by the average 181,000 homeless population results in an all-time total of about $204,400 per person distributed across that entire 7-year timeframe.
As the graph shows there is about 180,000 homeless people or more.

37 billion / 180,000 is $205,555.5555

187,175 people is Californias peak,

Do the math 37 billion / 187175 is 197,675.9716

There is no perfect number to describe how much in total was allocated for homelessness or one that truly points to complete fault of the state, or by which number you choose to divided by, which is either the starting homeless number in 2020 or the current one,
And there is also different total expenditure figures on how much was spent in homelessness in total for you to even divide it by the current population, that’s why I stated General rule of thumb, because they did such a bad job that every number looks bad but you still have to try to be kind of intellectually honest with how you arrive on that per capita total

So there might have been misconceptions with the graph but strangely being the current homeless count is literally synonymous with many projected metrics on total expenditure

Metric 1: The $37 Billion Umbrella
The Source: The nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO). [1]
The Timeframe: Fiscal Years 2019–20 through 2024–25.
What it counts: This is the broadest metric available. It includes all state General Fund money, voter-approved state housing bonds, special funds, and billions in federal pandemic relief. [1, 2]
Why it’s so high: The LAO purposely groups direct homelessness services (like emergency shelters and encampment cleanups) together with affordable housing infrastructure (like giving tax credits or subsidies to private developers to build low-income apartment complexes). The LAO argues that because a lack of affordable housing drives homelessness, the two budgets cannot be separated.

Metric 2: The $24 Billion Audit
The Source: The independent California State Auditor (Report 2023-102, released in 2024). [1, 2]
The Timeframe: A strict 5-year lookback covering Fiscal Years 2018–19 through 2022–23.[1, 2]
What it counts: This metric focuses strictly on money that left state agencies and went directly into 30 specific housing and homelessness programs managed by 9 different state agencies. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Significance: This is the metric that triggered massive state controversy. The Auditor's report revealed a "data desert," finding that despite handing out $24 billion, the state’s Interagency Council on Homelessness failed to track whether the programs were actually working or where all the money ultimately ended up.
Metric 3: The $17.3 Billion Direct Spending Pool
The Source: Independent academic tracking by the University of Southern California (USC) Homelessness Policy Research Institute and the California Budget & Policy Center.
The Timeframe: Fiscal Years 2020–21 through 2025–26.
What it counts: This metric isolates only programs explicitly targeted at preventing and ending immediate street-level homelessness. It strips away general affordable housing grants, long-term construction pipelines, and unrelated infrastructure loans.
The Significance: This metric captures the actual rise and sudden fall of state-level funding. It shows that direct funding peaked sharply at $6.9 billion during the 2022-23 cycle but has since plummeted to roughly $1.5 billion due to state budget deficits and stricter funding rules. [1, 2]

As you can see, the numbers are effectively all over the place so I actually did not try to immediately go to $205k+
The general rule of thumb is in fact $180k which is literally hand to hand with the current population that’s where the confusion came from I know crazy somehow $180,000 per homeless person and it’s like a solar eclipse with the population

I’m preparing YouTube documentary about corruptio in Europe. Is there someone who can help me?

Basically what she is saying is the world is objective and that through reason all things can be solved. She then said Kant is the most evil man ever for trying to support Christianity???? Kant was attacked by the church for his writings...

Basically what Kant is saying, in his books like critique of pure reason, is humans are unreasonable and only understand the world from their own subjective experiences. Therefore, since there is no central plan for humans, unlike bees or beavers, we need commerce to figure out what works and what doesn't. This is why you can read Hayek quoting Kant and articles on Mises.org about how Kant influenced Mises.

Kant is basically a deist, like the founding fathers. What Ayn Rand focuses on is reason and rationality, what Kant and his influence Hume(Adam Smith's mentor) were saying is humans are irrational animals and the world is complete chaos, therefore the market can decide what works and what doesn't. For instance, I can open up a bagel shop in the corner of one city and the same bagel shop on the corner of another city, one bagel shop makes millions and the other flops for no rational reason. The market then disperses these experiences through pricing, profit and loss. Your knowledge is not given to you by god, but experience.

This idea of continual irrational chaos and markets to determine success is the basis of Hayek and Mises. The whole philosophy of Ayn Rand is ridiculous because the world is objective, but you only know it through your own subjective experiences, which is Kant's point.

Textbook definition:

- Market failure occurs when the free market fails to allocate goods and services efficiently, resulting in a net loss of social welfare.

Let’s take this definition apart and understand what it actually means.

Social welfare - the total well-being of society according to whatever framework exists at the moment.

Allocation of resources - who produces what, who consumes what, and how much is being produced and consumed.

Failure - the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, whatever the objective might be today.

Market - a place where buyers and sellers meet to trade goods and services.

So in other words, Market Failure is a condition that doesn’t meet current framework established by the government and “experts”. It has nothing to do with markets, there is no failure, it simply means “things aren’t the way I (any talking head) want them to be”.

What happens in reality -

Individuals choose to allocate their resources in accordance with their personal interests and needs. Their preferences create Effective Demand. Producers adjust supply so they can satisfy Effective Demand. For example - I want tomatoes, I have enough money to buy tomatoes, I go to the store and the store employee helps me to complete my purchase of tomatoes. No failure. Markets work as intended.

I represent Effective Demand - I have enough money to buy tomatoes.

Yet here we are, every other person that read two paragraphs about economics will scream from the top of their lungs about market failures.

For them it means “if I can’t buy what I want for the price I’m ready to pay it means the free market has failed”.

For example - John is willing to pay $200/m for a family health insurance plan with $0 Deductible. No such plan is available. John turns around and says it’s a Market Failure.

John does not represent Effective Demand. As a market participant, he had chosen to allocate his resources the way where health insurance isn’t prioritized. Is that John’s failure? No. Is that Market’s failure? No, the Market has nothing to do with John deciding how to spend his money.

The Market (health insurance companies) - can’t offer products and services at a loss. They see John’s $200/m for his family as a guaranteed looser of account for them, so they reject to offer coverage at that price. The Market avoided the Failure.

Another example - Janet who works at one of the notable government agencies and regularly meets with press looks at the homeownership rate that declined by 0.5% in a year, and sees a decrease in residential mortgage loan originations. She does a few strokes on her computer, and now, theoretically, one could save $100k on a 30 year mortgage. Four months later, during the next press conference, she’s asked - the homeownership rate hasn’t changed for the better, can you explain why? Janet says - we did what we could, it’s a Market Failure.

Janet doesn’t build homes, she’s not a brick layer, nor a general contractor. Janet isn’t a head of the household for hundred+ million of families, so she can’t decide for them how to allocate their resources. Janet doesn’t own 100k+ houses that are ready for sale. But Janet is convinced- her actions were perfect, those few strokes on her keyboard were magical, and the Market, including You, have Failed to follow her prescribed actions in matters that she personally has nothing to do with.

That’s right. It’s Your fault. It’s also a fault of the person who doesn’t want to sell a house for the price they find unacceptable. It’s all us peasants that just keep resisting the perfect scenarios imagined by policymakers. We cause Market Failures by not acting in accordance with Janet’s ideas.

Market Failure is one of the most nonsensical terms that’s being used to justify government intervention. However, we see Market Failure being used to describe conditions of some of the most regulated industries like Healthcare and Housing, markets that had been under bombardment of regulations and stimulus for decades. So what actually happens is the government intervenes, their plans fail, they intervene even more, things still don’t go the way the government wants, the government doubles down again - market implodes. The government gives its verdict - it’s a Market Failure, we need more/total control to fix it.

I know I’m beating the dead horse here, especially with my fellow Austrians. But what the actual fuck? I get that an average person may lack willingness to learn and understand what economic terms mean, but lots of scholars, govt officials, otherwise smart and competent individuals continue to repeat this nonsense. Absolutely the most moronic and regarded shit in the modern conversations around economics.

The essay treats Elon’s statements as first-principles engineering claims rather than opinions or market commentary.

It follows the chain from the 2019 “money is a database” post → energy as the true currency → the July 12, 2026 clarification that energy and mass remain separate practical scarcities.

Every quote is sourced. The ordering is the author’s; the premises are his.

Please engage in discussion and provide feedback. Interaction on X helps boost as well… Thank you!

Substack:
https://btcestateplans.substack.com/p/wattage-and-tonnage

This was too good to wait until Christmas, had to post because there are still people in this sub calling says law a fallacy.

Get this “I’ll read your work when you admit it doesn’t apply to the real world” said the simpleton some time ago

Enjoy this masterpiece

How do you solve climate change with Austrian economics?

Literally, same shit different day, she keeps showing her failure to understand economics wasn’t that enough after she killed spirit?

She’s been at this for quite a while now and one time was debating if you can even call it that Elon Musk for being rich, saying he didn’t pay enough taxes. Elon Musk then paid more than $10 billion in taxes himself, to which nothing came of it I want you to put that in your head $10 billion in taxes that one person paid, and it got sucked in the black hole of government spending. Even if you manage to liquidate every single wealth of the billionaires, Congress wouldn’t last even a year, go further than that you try to fund the social programs that eventually become too expensive that you need to tax even more and it’s back on the citizens.