The Economics of Bitcoin

What is a real economic good?

Simply put, a real economic good is anything that is naturally scarce and in demand. Scarcity implies that you cannot get all of the good that you want freely from nature and there is nothing anyone can do to change that, therefore someone must employ resources and produce it and you must pay for it.

For example, on a sunny Floridian day you can get all the sunshine you want for free by just going outside. Someone doesn’t have to produce sunshine and you don’t have to pay anyone for it. On the other hand, you cannot get all the sun protection lotion you want freely from nature, someone must produce it and you must pay them for it. Therefore, sun lotion is a real economic good. The supply of a real economic good is determined in the market as a function of demand and price.

What is an artificial economic good?

An artificial economic good is a good that is artificially scarce. For example, sunshine on a sunny Floridian day is not scarce, but if someone is locked in a basement with a single window that is controlled by someone else, then sunshine becomes scarce for the basement dweller. If he wants sunshine he must pay someone to open the window and let the sun in.

In other words, a real economic good is a good that is scarce by its nature and always will be regardless of the influence of any outside forces. An artificial good is a good that is not scarce by its nature but because of the influence of outside forces. The supply of an artificial economic good is not determined in the market as a function of demand and price but rather by forces outside the market such as a central committee, a governing board or business rules in a software program. Therefore, supply is unaffected, completely insensitive to market forces.

What is a Bitcoin?

In realty a Bitcoin is nothing more than a text string in a text file that is part of a blockchain. A blockchain is a collection of text files that are related to and mathematically dependent upon one another in an attempt to initially solve the double expenditure problem of digital money.

By its nature, there’s no reason why a computer program couldn’t be written to create text string entries in a text file in a blockchain without end. It’s just a text string so the code could be written to produce bitcoins non-stop ad infinitum, there are no natural barriers to this. Text strings in text files are not scarce by their nature. The only way to prevent that from happening is by choosing to implement constraints in the code to make the supply of Bitcoins artificially scarce by using programmatic forces to influence how many Bitcoins are produced and when. Therefore, Bitcoin is an artificial economic good which is not scarce by its nature but artificially scarce by design. The supply of Bitcoin is not determined in the market by market forces but by business rules in the code and is therefore completely insensitive to changes in demand and price, perfectly inelastic.

As of today, 6.25 new Bitcoins are created every 10 minutes according to the business rules in the code controlling the supply of Bitcoin. But the programmers who wrote the code could have made that anything they wanted. They could have made it a million Bitcoins per minute or 10^-100 Bitcoin per year. The decisions they made for influencing the supply of Bitcoin were arbitrary and meaningless, a centrally planned artificial economic good.

A Bitcoin is a perfectly complementary artificial good with no substitutes

The Bitcoin blockchain is a payment network and a Bitcoin is a perfectly complementary artificial good to the Bitcoin blockchain. In the same sense that a lamp is of no use as a source of light without a lightbulb, you can’t make payments using the Bitcoin payment network without having Bitcoins. But a lamp is a real economic good and can have alternative forms of utility like being used decoratively so light bulbs are not necessarily needed for a consumer to value a lamp.  Contrarily, the Bitcoin payment network requires the consumer has Bitcoins and only Bitcoins in order to use it, it is useless without them and there are no alternative uses for it. You can’t send dollars or gold or anything else on the Bitcoin blockchain, only Bitcoins, Bitcoins have no substitutes.

It’s important to make the distinction between what one uses in trade to buy things and how they pay for those things. A blockchain and the entries in it called Bitcoins comprise the Bitcoin payment network. The Bitcoin payment network is a transaction medium that accounts for transactions between users but the price negotiation is always in fiat because goods are valued and priced in fiat, nothing is valued or priced in Bitcoin. Once the price is agreed on, the equivalent in Bitcoin at the moment is calculated and the buyer creates a transaction to the seller on the Bitcoin blockchain for the fiat equivalent of Bitcoins. Fiat was used in trade and the Bitcoin payment network is what is used to pay or send the value of the fiat to the seller. Bitcoins are used as a proxy or token that represent fiat value in order to account for the transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Key point: A payment medium is not the same thing as a medium of exchange.

What is a real medium of exchange?

First and foremost a real medium of exchange is a real economic good which eliminates Bitcoin immediately. Secondly, it’s a good that has emerged from the market a priori as a durable, highly saleable good due to its utility and value across markets. In other words producers and consumers have confidence that its physical nature will resist time and that it will be accepted in trade because it has a history of being traded for its utility and value across markets. Only then is it adopted as a standard measure of value across markets and a medium of exchange. If a good is easily destructible and/or has no history of its saleability across markets, then it won’t emerge from the market as a medium of exchange. Put another way: a real medium of exchange, a real standard measure of value cannot be declared by a central authority, it’s a naturally occurring market emergence phenomenon in which a durable good had utility and value across markets first, only then it emerged as a medium of exchange because of that durability and market utility.

Bitcoin has no utility except as a complementary good to the Bitcoin blockchain which appeared at the same time as Bitcoin. It has no history before the blockchain, it never had utility or value across markets because you can’t take a Bitcoin off the blockchain and use it for anything else.

A real medium of exchange serves as a standard measure of value which means that other goods are priced in terms of it. Nothing is priced in terms of Bitcoin because nothing is valued in terms of Bitcoin. All goods are valued and priced in terms of fiat. When someone agrees to pay using the Bitcoin payment network, the price is quoted in fiat and then converted to the equivalent amount of Bitcoin at that moment. The Bitcoin and the blockchain are the physical vehicle used to account for the transaction but the value of the sale was calculated and paid in fiat.

Opportunity Cost

Investors speculate on all kinds of real goods like gold, silver, land etc. But there's an opportunity cost associated with holding real goods for speculative purposes. If you buy land, for example, and just hold it hoping the price goes up, rather than farming it, leasing it out or developing it, then you are losing the potential profits from those alternative opportunities. You're hoping the price goes up enough so you can sell it to cover those opportunity costs plus some profit margin.

That's not the case with Bitcoin, you either use it to pay for something on the Bitcoin blockchain or you don't, that's it. And if you don't use it on the Bitcoin blockchain then you are holding it and you can sell it any time you want. Of course you want to sell it for at least what you paid if not more so you'll wait for the price to be right. When you buy something, hold it and then sell it at a later date for profit if possible, that's speculation whether that was the intention or not.

In other words, by its nature there are only two things you can do with a Bitcoin: use it on the blockchain or speculate with it and if you’re not using it on the blockchain you are speculating.

Key point: This “unintentional” speculative demand is therefore an innate characteristic of Bitcoin.

What is a store of value?

Whether a good is a store of value or not depends on its economic fundamentals since storing value is a long-run phenomenon. The short-run price of a store of value will vary but its fundamentals will ensure that it has value in the long-run that can be used in exchange whatever that value might be at the time.

Key point: a store of value doesn’t mean a high price in the long-run, it means that the good will have value that can be exchanged in the long-run regardless what the price is.

A store of value has to be durable so that regardless what happens to it physically, the nature of the good is difficult for the consumer to destroy so it can be used in exchange in the long-run. An ice cream cone doesn’t make a good store of value since the ice cream will melt and all you’ll be left with is the cone. But since gold and silver are fundamental elements, regardless what form or state they are in, they’re still gold and silver. That’s true for any precious metal so precious metals are durable.

A store of value has to have utility and value across markets so that even if it loses value in one market, it still has value that can be exchanged in others. This diversity of value is what insures that the good will be valued in the long-run. Although a bowling ball is durable and difficult for the consumer to destroy its value is limited to the context of bowling and doesn’t have diverse value in other markets. The long-run value of a bowling ball depends on the demand for bowling and bowling alone. If the demand for bowling dries up so does the value of bowling balls so bowling balls don’t make a good store of value.

Gold, silver and other precious metals are durable and have utility and value in a large number of markets: adorning furniture, adorning clothing, jewelry, electrical circuits, heat shielding etc. Precious metals have the sort of durability and market diversity that makes them a good store of value that can be exchanged in the long-run.

Is a Bitcoin a store of value?

Is a Bitcoin durable, is it difficult for the consumer to destroy the nature of it? Kind of an odd question for a text string in a text file but the answer is no. If you keep your Bitcoin wallet on any hardware device – computer, cellphone, memory stick, external hard-drive -- and they are damaged beyond repair then your Bitcoins have been destroyed. There are certain measures that can be taken to attempt to recover the wallet but nothing is guaranteed. If you live in an area where you lose electrical power and/or Internet, cellphone connectivity then your Bitcoins are virtually destroyed since you can’t do anything with them, they are worthless which is the antithesis of a store of value.

Does a Bitcoin have diverse market utility and value? No, the only use for a Bitcoin is on the Bitcoin blockchain to transact payments. The long-run exchangeable value of a Bitcoin depends on the demand for people to use the Bitcoin blockchain to transact business. If that demand dries up so does the exchangeable value of Bitcoins.

Speculative value is not the same as exchangeable value. In other words the fact that the price of Bitcoin fluctuates wildly – it lost 80% of its price in one year and 24% in one weekend -- isn’t a characteristic of a store of value. The speculative value depends on the speculator not using, not exchanging his Bitcoins on the blockchain but rather continuing to hold them in hopes of recovering from the wild price dips and the price climbing in order to profit from continued speculative demand. A store of value must have value that can be used in exchange at any time in the long-run regardless of the price.

The Supply of Bitcoins

As with all artificial goods Bitcoin has a deterministic, perfectly inelastic supply, determined outside the market which is completely insensitive to changes in demand and price. It’s programmatically determined so that there is always a discrete number of Bitcoins created every time period. The software is written to manipulate Bitcoin “mining” rates in order to ensure a fixed number of Bitcoins are created every 10 minutes regardless how many “miners” there are. This fixed amount is halved every four years or so. It started at 50, then halved in 2012 to 25, in 2016 it halved again to 12.5 and in 2020 it halved to 6.25. The same amount of Bitcoins are deterministically created every time period regardless of the demand and price. The supply is vertical, perfectly inelastic in both the short-run and the long-run. It also means that the rate of increase of the supply of Bitcoins is decreasing over time and there’s nothing the market can do to change that.

The Demand for Bitcoins

A blockchain is a real economic good, it’s a data store that must be specified, designed, built, tested etc. just like any software engineering product. There are many commercial uses for blockchain datastores. The utility in the Bitcoin payment network is the blockchain and the fact that all transactions are mathematically related to one another making it difficult to falsify. But since you can’t trade dollars on the blockchain, a perfectly complementary artificial good—a Bitcoin—was created. The original demand for a Bitcoin came from the demand to use the blockchain as a payment system rather than other payment systems like PayPal for transacting financial payments. Being a perfect complement with no substitutes, the fundamental demand for a Bitcoin represents one’s valuation of the blockchain as a payment network and so is a downward sloping curve.

Supply, Demand and Price of a Real Economic Good

In a market, price indicates the market’s valuation of a good or service. For a real good with an upward sloping supply curve, any increase in demand will result in an increase in price in the short-run for any given level of supply. The increase in price will signal those with unemployed resources that there is potential profit to be made and those resources will be reallocated to increase production and supply in the market. In the long-run this increase in supply will bring prices back down adding a price stabilizing effect to the market.

In other words:

Price^Goods = market valuation of the good or service

Short-run

Long-run

 

 

Supply, Demand and Price of Bitcoin

Since the supply curve for Bitcoins is vertical, perfectly inelastic and determined outside the market, it does not adjust in reaction to an increase in demand and price. The supply of Bitcoin is mutually exclusive from market forces, so the same increase in demand as with a real economic good will result in only an increase in the price of Bitcoins in the short-run with no stabilizing offset in supply in the long-run. In other words the price will go up and just stay there, there is no offset in supply to stabilize it. Part of the increase in price will represent the increase in demand and the rest is a dead weight loss that doesn’t represent value but simply a cost imposed due to the artificial nature of Bitcoins.

In other words: Price^Bitcoin = market valuation of Bitcoin + dead weight loss.

Therefore, Price^Bitcoin > Price^Goods  for the same increase in demand.

This deadweight loss incorporated into the price of Bitcoin accumulates over time reallocating productive resources to non-productive purposes. The price of Bitcoin therefore increases disproportionately to real economic goods due to its artificial nature and it’s this disproportionate increase in price relative to real economic goods that is the catalyst for speculative demand. 

 

 

 

Consumption Demand vs. Speculative Demand

The Federal Reserve has been engaging in what it called “Quantative Easing” since 2009 and in 2020 alone it created 21% of all US Dollars in circulation. When central banks inflate the money supply, the demand for all goods increases. Since the Bitcoin payment network is used to process payments for goods and Bitcoin is a perfect complement for that network, as the demand for goods increased due to the inflation of the money supply, so did the demand for Bitcoins in order use the Bitcoin payment network to pay for them.

Key point: At the same time that the demand for real goods was increasing and driving the increase in the demand for Bitcoins, the price of Bitcoins was increasing disproportionately to the price of the goods they were paying for.

Someone with Bitcoins will see the disproportionate increases in price relative to real goods and choose to hold their Bitcoins rather than trade them for goods with disproportionately lower value. This is because they can always trade for those real goods with cash or some other payment method without having to sell their Bitcoins which are disproportionately increasing in price. Eventually, consumers will substitute alternative payment methods for the Bitcoin payment network which means they’ll hold their Bitcoins which is speculative in nature. At some point speculative demand for Bitcoins becomes greater than consumption demand.

For example: if you have $100 worth of Bitcoin and someone is selling a guitar for $100 and will accept Bitcoin for the transaction then you can pay for the guitar on the Bitcoin blockchain payment network. Then you’ll have $0 in Bitcoin but you’ll have the guitar which you value at $100. If soon after that the price of Bitcoin doubles again as it’s done in the past then you lose out on the $100 profit you could have made if you hadn’t paid for the guitar with Bitcoin. Effectively, the guitar purchase cost you $200 = $100 price + $100 lost speculative profit. It’s more profitable to just pay for the guitar with cash and hold the Bitcoin, then the speculative profit from Bitcoin pays for the guitar.

This is obvious by the disproportionate increase in the price of Bitcoin over the years (figure 1) while daily transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain have remained relatively flat (figure 2) indicating that the overwhelming demand for Bitcoins is not a consumption demand but a speculative demand. People aren’t buying them to use them they are holding them for speculative gains.

 

Figure 1 Bitcoin Price History

Figure 2 Daily Bitcoin Transactions

 

Source: Coin Desk

 

Manipulating Demand and Price

In order to manipulate price in the market for a real good, one would have to be able to manipulate both supply and demand which is really impossible to do in any profitable way. But given the artificial nature of Bitcoin and the perfectly deterministic supply, all one needs to do in order to manipulate the price is to manipulate demand which is much easier and done regularly in other artificial markets such as stocks and bonds.

One of the best things about a Bitcoin wallet is that anyone can have one. One of the worst things about a Bitcoin wallet is that anyone can have one, and they do. Government agencies, central banks, corporations, financial whales etc. Those with the financial resources to ‘pump’ up the demand and price and then ‘dump’ their Bitcoins for profit.

Bitcoin exchanges also engage in ‘wash transactions’ where they effectively buy and sell Bitcoins to themselves in order to artificially stimulate demand and price.

Why is the current price of a Bitcoin so high?

As mentioned, the ongoing inflation of the money supply by the Federal Reserve increases demand and causes price inflation across all markets. Bitcoin is affected by the fact that the Bitcoin payment network is used to pay for goods which increases demand and the price for Bitcoins.

But, unlike the price of real goods which have price stabilizing mechanisms on the supply side, Bitcoin is a fixed supply which is completely unaffected by increases in demand and price. So for any given level of demand, when price goes up it just stays there, it has nowhere to go, there are no market forces to bring it back down. The price continues to go up as people switch more and more of their consumption demand for all goods to a speculative demand for Bitcoin, a classic financial bubble. That coupled with the demand manipulations leads to a highly risky and volatile long-run price. The price volatility is due to the disproportionate changes in price. Just as the price goes up disproportionately to real goods, that’s the way it comes back down leading to the wild swings in price over the years.

Conclusion

Bitcoin doesn’t possess any of the economic fundamentals to be a real economic good, a store of value or a medium of exchange. The dead weight loss associated with the price of Bitcoin is economic resources being transferred from productive endeavors in order to pay a tax imposed on the price of Bitcoin due to nothing but its artificial nature.

Social Distancing - Another Government Euphemism to Create Illusion

"Social Distancing" doesn't exist, it isn't real. It is something that was made up specifically to create the appearance of a problem when none exists. By taking measures, regardless how ridiculous and abusive, the illusion is given the appearance of legitimacy. There is no science behind it nor would any principled medical professional ingenuously say that it makes a difference one way or the other.

Political Genocide - The Crisis of 2020 That Never Was

Introduction

The first time I heard the joke “How do you know a politician is lying? His mouth is moving.” was as a kid in the 1970's on a variety TV show. Lying and conniving is an innate characteristic of politicians. Politics is a game, it’s horse trading in the shadows, deals being made in smoke filled back rooms, or on the golf course for political expedience. In my lifetime alone, politicians up to and including the president have been involved in nothing but continuous fraud, waste, scandal and abuse. Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, nonexistent WMD’s, the Fast and the Furious, Hillary’s emails – to make a short list. 

Given their long and dubious history of bullshit, I think it’s fair to reason that anything a politician says must be questioned, period. It cannot be taken at face value and certainly cannot be taken as fact – medical or otherwise. That includes any “medical professional” speaking on behalf of the government. They are politicians, too, including Fauci and Birx. 

Given the mainstream media’s long and dubious history of faking news and outright lying (CBS news was caught twice in the last two months fabricating hysteria) I think it’s also fair to reason that what they report must also be questioned, period. It cannot be taken at face value and certainly cannot be taken as fact – medical or otherwise.

Because of this, there is a tornado of information, misinformation, and outright lies swirling around the inter-webs regarding this Coronavirus. Is it more dangerous than other viruses? Is it safe to socialize? Should we wear protective masks? Should we #StayHome? Are the costs worth it? 

Unfortunately, the answers to those questions cannot be quantified, you can’t put a number on them. Anyone who does is just speculating in order to push an agenda.  The virus is new and models and random, unbiased data needed to produce a valid statistical analysis simply don’t exist. The best anyone can do is gather as much information as they can, apply some reason, rationale, logic, and common sense. And, using their experience, come up with a conclusion that is an intelligent, weighted average of sorts – an informed perspective given all the information available.

Military World Games

I never heard of the Military World Games but apparently, they are a real thing. As big as the Olympics except only for competitors from the world’s militaries. The opening ceremonies are huge, they rival the Olympics in every respect. Governments spend millions to host and participate in these games and yet most of us have never heard of them.

We've also never heard that in October of 2019, the Military World Games took place in Wuhan, China. At this point this is just coincidental but if you consider that this means all the world’s military leaders were under one roof for two weeks, it becomes far more interesting. Let’s just leave that right here for now. Stick it in your back pocket like a piece of beef jerky for later until we whet our appetites a little more.

Italian Coronavirus

The Coronavirus situation in Italy was said by the “experts” to be a global harbinger of what can happen if a society doesn’t take appropriate measures against this new virus and in a timely fashion. But when you consider the situation in Italy in more detail, it becomes clear that Italy is not a random sampling of people representative of the global population and their reporting methods are admittedly very ambiguous and questionable. 

Choose your favorite source and you’ll find that the demographics agree Italy contains the second largest elderly population, not just in Europe, but in the world after Japan. The elderly are always disproportionately affected by disease regardless what disease it is. Their immune systems simply aren’t strong enough anymore to fight off disease and this is perfectly normal. This is the way mother nature intended it. Old people die, new people are born, it has nothing to do with the Coronavirus.

According to the Italian Ministry of Heath’s website the average life expectancy in Italy is 82-years old and the average age of those characterized as having died of the virus is 78. Not significantly different than any other disease. It’s expected that people in that age range would also normally have comorbidity conditions and the Italian Minister of Health has confirmed this expectation. Nothing unusual about that either but it does not qualify as a random sample and cannot be considered a medical standard to be used for predicting outcomes in other societies. It is biased by the aging population relative to other countries. 

The Italian Ministry of Health has also made the guidelines on their website clear for characterizing a death as being because of the virus. If the doctor, given all the evidence available to him and his professional medical experience, assumes or believes that the cause of death was because of the virus even without any direct evidence of that being the case, then he is to enter COVID-19 on the death certificate. Or if the patient dies and has tested positive for the virus then COVID-19 is to be entered on the death certificate. 

Considering such vague and subjective guidelines biased towards a false positive, I think it’s fair to reason that people in Italy have been certified to have died because of the virus if a doctor “assumed” it to be the case or if they had tested positive for the virus. Dying with the virus translated to having died because of the virus on the death certificate. (Specific details to come.)

#StayHome

We’re told that “medical professionals” around the world – who erroneously used Italy as their benchmark – “advised” politicians to immediately implement “social distancing,” isolation, and other economic lock down measures to contain the spread of the virus. But regardless what measures they impose on society, it is impossible to guarantee any given individual will not catch a virus. Even social distancing and isolation won't guarantee it or mitigate it. 

Some simple probability reasoning can demonstrate why. Say there are 100 people in a room and 60 of them are infected. There is a 60% chance that any one of the other 40 will get infected. So let's randomly choose 10 of those 100 (this makes sense since people go out at random ) and the other 90 stay home. There is still a 60% chance on average of infection since you randomly chose a sample from a population of 60% infected. 

Regardless what you or I do, there is no way to prevent or mitigate the chances of someone catching a virus – they will most likely get it eventually. The majority of new cases as of May in New York City are people who stayed home all of March and April. So the only question that matters is whether they are healthy enough and their immune system strong enough to protect them. Or can they be helped with medical care? But regardless the answer, it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. 

On average, it is an impossibility for any given individual to affect any other individual outside of natural transmission rates one way or the other regardless what they do. If I stay home the chances of them being infected are the same as if I don't stay home. And if they get infected there is nothing anyone else can do to help so why is everyone being forced to stay home?

Some will say we live in a civilized society and sacrifice is required by everyone for the “Greater Good” in times of crisis. But the “at risk” in society are a small minority of the population. If restrictions are imposed on the majority of people who are not at risk for the illusion of security for the minority of the people, that’s not for the “Greater Good,” it does the greater harm and the minority will still most likely be infected. I don’t think “Greater Good” means what they think it means.

As more and more time passes, more and more information and studies are coming out explaining that unprecedented human isolation of healthy people is not scientifically justified and does nothing to prevent the spread of a virus and ultimately does more harm than good. A virus doesn't magically disappear from society as long as there are healthy hosts to entertain it. The only effective long-term solution is to get as close to herd immunity as possible. A state in which enough people have been infected and built immunity to the disease that the chances of infection across the board decrease including the at risk population. But in order to achieve that, healthy people need to get infected which means they need to interact, socialize, touch, kiss, hug etc. The virus will successfully run its course the fastest in societies with the least restrictions and the highest infection rates. It will linger for months in the societies with the most restrictions and the lowest infection rates. "Flattening the Curve" simply prolongs the stay of the disease, it doesn't eradicate it.

#StayHome is a political decision that makes no sense, not a medical one meant to protect people. Almost simultaneously all media outlets worldwide began running eerily similar commercials urging everyone to stay home and save lives, a shaming campaign making appeals to emotions rather than reason. The networks didn’t produce these commercials, they were commissioned by the respective governments and then those governments paid the networks to run them 24/7 until the narrative became planted in people’s minds whether they realized it or not. That’s how psychological conditioning is done, repetition, repetition, repetition. Ever find yourself repeating something you’ve heard on the TV or radio a million times even though you never made a conscience effort to learn it? That’s what has happened with the #StayHome campaign. Politics and its methodologies are not new, they've been around for thousands of years. They know exactly what they are doing and how to do it.

Health Care Systems

The first message to emerge from the government and the media, those two bastions of truth and integrity, was that we had to “flatten the curve.” We had to limit the number of infections which we now know is not possible, so the health care systems aren’t overwhelmed. How can any health care system not be prepared to handle a medical crisis? They are a health care system, what did they think they were supposed to do? And if they are not properly prepared then that is incompetence on their part and has nothing to do with anyone else so why must everyone else suffer through these draconian restrictions placed on them in order to accommodate the ineptness of the “health care system?” “Health Care Systems” are being run by politicians who are still receiving their full salaries and benefits throughout all this. Will they be held responsible for their incompetence? Of course not, they get all the credit and none of the blame. 

Therefore, in response to the projected “flood” of Coronavirus patients, hospitals took drastic measures by cancelling all elective, but necessary surgical procedures. Elective surgeries are a significant part of any hospital’s revenue. Additionally, the #StayHome campaign scared the shit out of everyone to the point that those suffering from other illnesses were too afraid to go to the hospital until it was too late. Those who are not afraid to go to the hospital or a doctor’s office are finding it difficult to find one that is open or will see them. Many hospitals also won't accept the elderly, and if they do, the nursing homes won't let them come back.  

The result is that hospitals are furloughing staff. Some are closing their doors and others are going bankrupt. Emergency rooms are eerily empty, beds are unused, and ventilators are being sent else where if needed. Not because of the virus, not because of a medical state of emergency, but because of the irresponsible and unjustified political reaction to it, because of the manufactured fear and draconian restrictions imposed on humanity. A virus never closed a business or arrested someone for walking in the park.

Inflated Cases and Deaths

Medicare is paying hospitals $13,000 for every patient classified as COVID-19 and $39,000 for every COVID-19 classified patient they put on a ventilator. This creates a moral hazard for hospital administrators. If even one hospital engages in questionable patient categorization in order to receive the federal funds then they all have to in order to stay competitive during the slow down in business. 

If a hospital administrator’s responsibility is to ensure the solvency of the hospital – and it is – then he would be negligent in his duties not to enforce the same legal, nonetheless unethical, policies.

National health agencies are redefining their guidelines on classifying causes of death. The CDC clearly states on their website that if, in a doctor’s professional opinion, taking all available information into account, someone could have possibly died of COVID-19 then it should be entered on the death certificate. From the CDC guidelines:

In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as “probable” or “presumed.” In these instances, certifiers should use their best clinical judgement in determining if a COVID–19 infection was likely. However, please note that testing for COVID–19 should be conducted whenever possible. 

This falsely leads to people being classified as dying because of the virus when in reality they might have only died with the virus or even without it. Similarly to the situation in Italy.

Given this information it seems fair to reason that hospitals are overstating the number of cases and overstating the number of deaths because of the virus.

Immune System

One of the oddest things among a bushel of absurdities in all this is the seemingly complete and utter ignorance of the human immune system. It’s being talked about almost as if it doesn’t even exist. We’re being told that the only hope for humanity is a political campaign – #StayHome and wait patiently for a vaccine that doesn’t exist yet. Because that’s how humanity has survived throughout the ages; political policy and funny pharmaceuticals. 

You don’t need to be a medical professional to understand the basics of the human immune system. There are thousands of resources available on the internet to educate yourself. The immune system is the first line of defense against disease and has been for 100,000 years. The overwhelming majority of humans throughout history have survived disease thanks to the immune system alone. Your immune system fights germs every day on your behalf without you even knowing it while strengthening itself at the same time.

But the immune system needs to be “seeded” with disease so it can build up the necessary defenses over time. We begin building these immunities as children and continue throughout the course of our lives. These infections are absolutely necessary for the immune system to be effective in fighting disease. Constant disinfection and isolation are diametrically opposed to the immune system’s needs. We need to be exposed, we need to get sick, we don’t need to disinfect and hide.

Isolation not only deprives the immune system of the necessary bacterial and viral stimulus, but also weakens parts of the immune system. An important part of the immune system is the bacteria in our gut. This gut biome evolves over time due to social interaction, even interaction with nature. It is affected when we hug, kiss, have sex, pet animals etc. Without those social interactions the gut biome becomes localized and any interaction outside of your locally developed gut biome can leave you susceptible to illness.

Stress, anxiety, depression from isolation, which, by the way, is used as punishment in prisons for a reason, also adversely affect the immune system’s ability to do its job. Poor diet, too much smoking and drinking, not enough exercise from isolation – all detrimentally affect the immune system.

When and if we ever do emerge from social isolation, there will be a wave of opportunistic illnesses due to the decreased capacity of our immune systems to defend us. Most likely, the empty set government policy makers will use it as another justification to impose additional restrictions on our movements and interactions. Rinse and repeat.

Empty Set Government Policy

Any statement about the empty set can neither be confirmed nor denied. It’s like the god fallacy. The claim  that there is a god can neither be confirmed nor denied. So is it because he is omnipotent and chooses not to be seen or is it because he doesn’t exist at all? Is his existence the empty set?

Ostensibly, the validity of an empty set argument comes from the fact that you cannot prove a negative. For example, if someone claims that unicorns exist, it’s impossible to prove they don’t exist. Those believing in unicorns will falsely claim that since you cannot prove they don’t exist, that proves that they do. If not being able to prove something isn’t true were sufficient evidence to prove something is true then anything can be proven to be true. You can’t prove Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy do not exist, therefore they do?

The religious faithful use this fallacy, the fact that it’s impossible to prove god doesn’t exist, as evidence that he does. They attribute anything positive that happens to god in support of their beliefs and blame anything bad that happens on evil forces. Voilà, empty set religious beliefs. 

The Coronavirus is the same. A virus is a microscopic pathogen that – like god and unicorns – the man on the street cannot see, hear, smell, taste or feel. Viruses are a mystery of nature to the average person who knows nothing about the nature of viruses – what they are, where they come from, or how they are treated. Most people know that medical professionals tell them viruses can be spread from one person to another and they can be deadly. 

Now the government and the media are telling humanity there is a new virus that was projected to be the deadliest since the Spanish Flu or the Black Plague and the only way to keep themselves and others safe is to #StayHome. Don’t go to work, restaurants, bars, sporting events, concerts, weddings funerals, schools, graduations, hair salons, spas, gyms, or aerobics classes.

Being a new virus, there was no real data at the beginning so government policy was based on what they called scientific models. Now, after humanity has been locked down for over two months, the reality of the situation is showing that it is no more dangerous than any of the other thousands of viruses that already exist and which we encounter every day. 

The politicians, however, are saying that the reason more people haven’t died is thanks to their lock down policies and since we can’t prove that the low mortality rates aren’t due to their policies, then it must be true that they are. A correlation and causation fallacy that naturally emerges from any empty set analysis. And due to the prolonged lock downs, a number of medical professionals are predicting a second wave of infections of all kinds when we begin socializing again. We haven’t been sufficiently exposed and immunized to the virus and our immune systems are weakened so we can expect more flu and cold infections as well. 

The politicians have already begun the narrative that increased infections among those who stayed home is due to the virulent nature of the virus and since we can’t prove it’s not, then it must be true that it is. Voilà, empty set government policies. 

Given this virus is an empty set, the politicians can formulate any ridiculous argument they want and it cannot be confirmed nor denied. The negative cannot be proven and they can ostensibly justify their actions ad infinitum.

Non-Essential Jobs

There’s no such thing as a non-essential job. Every human being needs to produce in order to eat, house himself, and take care of his family. It doesn't matter what he produces, he must produce to survive. Without that productivity he is impoverished. To say that a job, any job that is in demand, is non-essential is to say some people are not essential and can be justifiably impoverished. How is that not a crime against humanity?

Politicians, however, produce nothing and yet through all this they are continuing to receive their full salaries and benefits while their policies put tens of millions, hundreds of millions worldwide, out of work. They are not wearing masks, not social distancing and they go wherever they want, whenever they want, with whomever they want. The level of hubris for people who produce nothing to say that those who do are non-essential is beyond comprehension.

Medical Professionals

A doctor refusing to treat a patient because of political orders is a doctor who has sold his/her professional integrity, character and honor for political expedience. They have decided it is better to do what they know is professionally and medically wrong, rather than do what is professionally and medically right for no reason other than the politicians say they can't. 

They are a dishonor to their Hippocratic oath and their profession. They should have been the first ones on the true front lines refusing to compromise their patients well-being and their oath at the arbitrary whims of the politicians.

As doctors who took a Hippocratic oath to do no harm to others, for them to have closed their offices for no medically justified reason was a clear and conscience violation of that oath. How many people have suffered at home with medical problems and nobody to treat them because of that violation? And if they do see patients, to treat them as if they have the plague, as a legal liability, to strip them of their pride and dignity, to try and dress them up like a fool when they come for help only because, admittedly, the politicians said to.

Logical Fallacies

The same logical fallacies are being used to justify masks, gloves and social distancing, that are used to justify vaccines. If vaccines work and you get vaccinated then you are protected regardless what I do. If they don't work then why would I get it?

If masks and gloves and social distancing work then you should wear a mask, gloves and stay away from people and you are protected regardless what I do. If they don't work then why should I do it?

Private medical professionals diagnose every patient individually and then give their medical advice. The patient is not treated the same as other patients and he is not forced to obey the doctor's advice. Hundreds of millions of people are treated successfully every day in this way.

Government treats everyone as if they are exactly the same and the advice of their government paid "medical professionals" is forced on everyone whether they want it or not. If such government force were the solution to medical problems then there would be no need for private medical professionals. Yet they are always in high demand, government is not.

Secondary Consequences

I don’t think people comprehend the magnitude of the economic depression we are currently in and the devastating consequences coming their way. You can’t just shut down the world’s largest economy for months at a time and not expect it to be catastrophic. Forty-two million unemployed in just the last 8 weeks. Another estimated 95 million who are not even in the work force anymore. That's about 137 million Americans not working. How many working age Americans are there? Let's say out of 320 million 250 million are between the ages of 18 and 65, roughly. That's about 52% real unemployment rate. In other words, more than half of the working age people are unemployed, not producing anything, only consuming what the other 48% produce. Then figure in that we live in a global economy and the other largest economies are also shut down, the impact on a global scale is unprecedented and will be felt for years to come. There’s no real recovery from that.

Small business will not, have not survived. Thousands of business will have gone out of business. Businesses that have been around for decades have been destroyed in two months by these policies although their existence has nothing to do with this virus. They were simply destroyed because.

The US economy already had a $600 billion trade deficit because Americans don’t produce what Americans need and want. That deficit will now explode as Americans will have to import even more just to survive. The government was already $22 trillion in debt, a number that is mathematically impossible to pay back with interest. In other words, they are already bankrupt and now borrowing trillions more from the federal reserve to artificially prop up the economy while they simultaneously destroy it.

While locked down people are eating too much and not able to exercise as much. They are smoking too much, drinking too much and taking too many drugs. Isolation is causing stress, anxiety, loneliness, depression, and hopelessness. While hospitals have not been flooded with patients, suicide hotlines have been flooded with calls. A virus might affect some people, but the devastating economic effects caused by the unjustified government shutdowns will affect everyone for years to come.

Censorship

YouTube, Facebook, and other social media sites have engaged in a concerted campaign to censor dissenting voices including doctors, nurses, PhD's – anyone who disagrees with the “official” narrative. Why? They use the usual clichés and ad hominems like “conspiracy theorist,” “crackpot,” “tin foil hat," without ever addressing the message, in an attempt to discredit learned voices for no reason other than the fact that the message is different.

But if dissenting voices are just nut-jobs spouting nonsense, why do they need to be censored? Intelligent people won’t believe them and there’s no protecting stupid people from themselves so why not just ignore them? Problem solved. The truth will prevail and the nonsense will be filtered out. And why do they only attack the messenger and not the message? That’s tantamount to children on the playground saying “I know I am but what are you?”

The truth is that censorship is only necessary when the message threatens the censors. Ironically, attempts to silence dissenting voices and discredit them lends credibility to the people being censored. Every dissenting video on YouTube that has been blocked has garnered millions of views on other sites. People can’t wait to watch them now and watch them with concern since they seem to contain information that the powers that be are trying to hide. It's been my experience that when people start firing back at you, you know you're over the target.

Contact Tracing

A number of governments around the world are pushing the narrative of “contact tracing.” They want to force everyone to download an app on their phones that tracks their movement and their health status. If they have supposedly been diagnosed with Coronavirus – but no other virus interestingly enough – then they will notify everyone they have come in contact with and those people will be forced into quarantine. 

Here’s the problem if you don’t already see it: there’s no such thing as “contact tracing.” It’s a made up thing that’s being used as a euphemism for the surveillance state and human rights violations –that’s it. Where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing. If the state says you must be quarantined and you refuse, they will come to your house and harass you, fine you, or arrest you. I have no doubt they will setup “containment areas” for those to be quarantined based on “contact tracing”.

Freedom as a Solution

Even the most educated, intelligent doctors ignore free will when dealing with disease. There is no "we", that is the root cause of the problem. Human beings are individuals with individual rights and free will. When people are stripped of their individuality and treated as part of a herd and subjected to herd mentality they are stripped of their dignity and their humanity. They are stripped of their ability to make the best individual choices for themselves and their families. When politicians are given control of people's lives, people always suffer. "We" are not all in this together. "We" do not have a duty to sacrifice for the greater good -- whatever that means.

If someone is concerned about a disease then they should be free to take any measures they feel necessary to protect themselves. They can  #StayHome if they choose or wear a hazmat suit in public, it’s their decision. Nobody knows what’s best for someone better than that person. To say otherwise is to imply everyone is stupid and somehow the politicians know better and we know that’s just not the case.

So, if someone is free to make their own decisions and they die, then how is that anyone else's fault? They die with their dignity. But if "we" force someone to adhere to a particular protocol, against their will, and then they die then it is most definitely "our" fault isn't it? "We" stripped them of their dignity to make their own choices and they died because of it. That is by definition undignified and criminal. How is this so difficult to understand?

Part of the shaming campaign is to accuse people of threatening and even killing people simply by being in their presence. It's impossible to threaten someone's health or kill them just by being next to them in public. They have chosen to be there of their own free will knowing the risks, they have consented to the risk. To threaten or kill someone means taking action against their will, without their consent using force or the threat of force to cause harm. What intelligent person doesn't understand that consensual sex is not rape?

The Swedish non-lock down policy demonstrates no significant differences in mortality rates from countries that implemented  #StayHome. This isn’t because of anything the Swedish government did, it was because the Swedish government did nothing. The same outcome if the Swedish government didn't exist at all. See how freedom solves social problems? It's laughable to believe politicians are smarter than everyone else including mother nature.

Conclusion

So, what do we know for sure?

• Politicians and the media cannot be trusted at face value and must be questioned.
• All the world's military leaders were under one roof in October 2019 in Wuhan, China.
• Deaths in Italy are not a random sample of global societies and cannot be used as a benchmark.
• There is no medical precedence for #StayHome and no scientific justification for it.
• Health care systems have an economic incentive to inflate viral deaths.
• Our immune systems are being damaged by #StayHome.
• People’s physical and psychological health are being damaged by #StayHome.
• Tens of millions of workers are being unjustifiably forced into unemployment.
• Medical professionals are dishonoring their Hippocratic oaths.
• The economic consequences will be devastating for years to come.
• Dissenting voices are being censored.
• The government can characterize this virus anyway it wants for as long as it wants.
• The societies that left people free to make their own decisions and haven’t destroyed their economies do not have significantly different outcomes than the countries which imposed #StayHome.

It’s clear that there is no reason to believe this virus is anymore dangerous than any other virus that is already circulating in the world, yet the politicians are not letting up on the narrative. They are determined to die with the lie, the conman's credo. They continue to push #StayHome and if you do go out, you must adhere to absurd, humiliating restrictions like plexiglass between tables in restaurants, people in elevators facing the wall like children being punished, and no prepared foods in bars, only packaged items. You must still social distance and curfews are still imposed. Senior citizens are punished simply due to their age and are the ones who will suffer the most in the long run. They are making people look like fools, surrendering their dignity. Why don't they put pointy hats on them too while they’re at it? I’m sure it will come to something like that eventually. 

Considering the collateral human damage from these political policies and their enforcement, how are they not considered crimes against humanity? If they are not, then what is? We are being pushed into a dark period of Orwellian existence and being conditioned to believe that we are selfish, irresponsible, irrational and hateful if we don’t go willingly. People are literally being fined, beaten, arrested for nothing more than disobeying the #StayHome orders. And at the same time being told that #StayHome is for their own good. Prisons have furloughed prisoners ostensibly to prevent the spread of the virus in jail, while mom and pop are being arrested and put in jail for wanting to work so they can feed their families. But #StayHome is for their own good. I don’t think “for their own good” means what they think it means. Rinse and repeat.