Current Events: Stop Drinking the Kool-Aid
El Presidente is a weird dude.
I still don't know what to make of him. He's clearly a dictator, but people love him. He's got a higher approval rating than pretty much any politician in the entire world (which has been confirmed by third parties who didn't believe it). It fluctuates between a 75% and 90% approval rating. Anyone familiar with politics knows that those are insane numbers, especially for someone who bends the law so they can run for a second term.
I hear that crime is down 95% in El Salvador, also an insane and unbelievable statistic. I hear that Bukele threatened active gangs by torturing (or threatening to torture) gang members that were already in prison. Apparently that strategy worked pretty well? Obviously that is shady as hell but the country seems to be on the rise.
Many media agencies have come forward declaring that El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin has been a complete and utter failure. After all, they bought a lot at $40k+ (and a tiny bit at $30k). Everyone is reporting that they are "down bad". But is that actually accurate? Nayib Bukele seems to have come forward and written his own blog post on this exact topic. I did not realize it was actually written by him personally (or at least by a ghost writer). You don't see that every day.
STOP DRINKING THE ELITE’S KOOL-AID
On September 7, 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the history of the world to adopt bitcoin, the world’s new currency.
Remember those words, as they will be engraved in the history of money.
Starting off strong BB.
It was the only obvious move, the only logical one. For those who understand, the real question is not if other countries are going to adopt bitcoin, but when.
Noice.
I've said as much myself, even before El Salvador adopted it.
On this occasion, I will not analyze the supporters, but the detractors. They can be separated into three groups:
- The ones who genuinely think it was the wrong decision.
- The ones who think it’s a good decision, but for the wrong reasons.
- The ones who are afraid of our decision.
Now, the interesting part is that the first and second groups exist mostly because of the third.
Because the most vocal detractors, the ones who are afraid and pressuring us to reverse our decision, are the world’s powerful elites and the people who work for or benefit from them.
Hm, based...
Again, none of this is new. We all understand the propaganda machine. First it was drug-dealers who used Bitcoin. Then "terrorists" (a word that now means nothing because of how often it is used). No longer does this propaganda work, so they've moved onto the energy FUD and the volatile nature of the asset. "By 2020, Bitcoin will use more energy than the entire world does today." Yeah, that one didn't age so well, but they are still pushing the false 'green' agenda.
And with that, of course, they also own the armies, the loans, the money supply, the credit ratings, the narrative, the propaganda, the factories, the food supply; they control international trade and international law. But their most powerful weapon is the control of the “truth”.
Too real.
And they are willing to fight, lie, smear, destroy, censor, confiscate, print, and do whatever it takes to maintain and increase their control over the “truth”, and everything, and everyone.
And as we all know, Bitcoin's ultimate product is truth on a financial baseline. It is no wonder that the powers that be would want to continue debasing the idea of a currency owned by no one.
Just think about the hundreds, if not thousands, of articles about how El Salvador’s economy was supposedly destroyed because of its “bitcoin gamble”, about how we are inevitably heading to default, that our economy has collapsed, and that our government is bankrupt.
Well, you just need to read their articles and listen to their “experts” saying that all of this happened after El Salvador lost around $50 million because of bitcoin’s plummeting price on exchanges. Since we are not selling any bitcoin, this statement is obviously false.
Oh shit did we just get '1 BTC = 1 BTC'ed from cool guy Mc'Caesar?
But for the sake of making a more profound analysis, let’s say it was entirely true, which of course it’s not, but bear with me.
Really? A whole country’s economy was destroyed by a $50 million loss?
Yes, El Salvador is a relatively poor country, but in 2021 alone, we produced $28 billion in products and services. Pushing the idea that a $50 million loss — less than 0.2% of our GDP — would destroy or even put our country’s economy in trouble is far more than stupid; it is revealing.
In fact, it is not stupid at all...
But rather an obvious lie spouted off by the most obvious liars.
You would think the economic geniuses at Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Financial Times, Deutsche Welle, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc., would have enough analysts and editors well versed in these topics to tell them not to publish that nonsense. You would think these absurd articles wouldn’t pass those editorial boards, but they do. And sometimes they even get a very large space, like a full-page spread in The New York Times.
Wow... called out hard...
So the argument that we have lost $50 million worth of bitcoin is false, because we simply have not sold any bitcoin.
1 BTC = 1 BTC confirmed
And even if you want to accept that absurd argument as true, which would mean you ignore math or basic logic, still, you will have yet to ask yourself why these worldwide media corporations would give so much time and space to such a small country like El Salvador.
Haha... damn right... wut?
Were they talking about El Salvador before? Did they care about what happened in our country? Did they report the $37 billion that the previous governments stole from our country’s treasury?
$37B didn't cripple them but $50M BTC sure did, amirite?
Ask yourself these questions; a few years ago, did you know where El Salvador was located on a map? Did you know the name of the previous president of El Salvador? Did you know about their failed economic policies?
no... no... no...
In 2021, our GDP rose 10.3%, income from tourism rose 52%, employment went up 7%, new businesses up 12%, exports up 17%, energy generation up 19%, energy exports went up 3,291%, and internal revenue went up 37%, all without raising any taxes. And this year, the crime and murder rate have gone down 95%.
Energy exports 3291%? Dat Volcano money.
They have also told you that there are huge anti-Bitcoin protests in El Salvador; they have been anything but huge. Furthermore, why would my government have a 85-90% approval rating according to every poll conducted in the last year, including several polls conducted by the opposition and several by independent international polling firms, if we were handling things so badly?
By the way, what’s your president’s approval rating?
Sick burn.
see how one of the poorest nations in the continent and the previous murder capital of the world is changing to rapidly become the best place it can be.
And then, ask yourself; why are the world’s most powerful forces against those exact transformations. And why should they even care?
GOT DAMN!
This kid really jacks you up!
It's basically impossible to argue against any of these points.
The propaganda machine is railing hard against El Salvador.
And even people on Hive are talking about how they've failed.
And yet, they haven't even sold at a loss.
While I do not agree with a lot of the tactics employed by Nayib, desperate times call for desperate measures. Look at how much pain they've already saved themselves by not having their own fiat currency. Look no further than Lebanon. I hear crypto adoption there is also at all time highs because the fiat currency is worthless and people have lost everything. Slowly, then all at once.
Conclusion
Don't believe everything you hear. The elite have El Salvador in their crosshairs because they don't approve of Bitcoin adoption, and it shows. Nayib may be a dictator, but he is also a benevolent one. Beloved even. I would prefer that scenario to what we have here in America today. It's a classic example of how centralized leadership is risky and prone to corruption, but they also can get shit done at a rate that is essentially impossible within a republic. We will continue to report on their progress. I get the feeling their will be much progress to report on in the years ahead. El Salvador is way ahead of the curve. Perhaps even on par with South Korea.
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Anyone that flaunts a flag with a gold trim around it is advertising that they are at war with the people.
Please note the spears on the top of them.
I would not so quickly conflate martial law with "at war with the citizens",
but I certainly can't fault you for it.
It is very obvious he is a dictator.
It is not so obvious if he is a bad one (although that is clearly the standard).
Of course given time all dictators would seem to backslide into absolute corruption.
Or stabbed 23 times on the senate floor.
Still, this situation is an interesting one, regardless of his problematic nature.
Anyone hiding the fact that their nation is under Martial Law is a Decepticon.
IMHO, he's pimpin' bitcoin so that his serfs get crucified, like the real El Salvador, when bitcoin plummets. This is so that the people become desperate enough to accept the future USDR slave token.
His mission is to leave them as destitute as possible. If he really wanted to help them he would be saying things like:
"Grow your own foods."
"It's better to barter than to use fiat."
"We're under Martial Law."
etc.
Yeah I mean look at how slick he is.
He legit looks like a snake in a nice suit.
When he's not wearing the backwards cap to be 'hip'.
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You could well be right that El Salvador is being ruled by a Machiavellian and malevolent dictator. However, presently the people of El Salvador are greatly benefiting from that dictatorship. That is the definition of a benevolent dictator.
He's not the designer of the El Salvador flag. Are you implying that if only he redesigned the flag with no gold trim, removed the spear point on the flagpole, and it had a picture of kittehs and duckys on it that would make El Salvador a proper democracy?
It's a meaningless issue. What does matter is that crime in El Salvador is down ~90% and his approval rating by the El Salvador people is ~90%.
I actually agree with you regarding BTC. It's not a privacy coin. It's centralized by PoW controlled by massively capitalized miners that are able to prevent transactions from occurring by charging as much as 25% for processing the transaction, as happened when BTC first mooned. People tried to sell at the top and could not get their transactions processed by miners.
Sadly, Hive is just as vulnerable to being centralized by capital, exactly as was demonstrated on Steem. Hive has not substantively improved governance because the largest stakeholders on the platform currently control governance through that mechanism, and intend to retain their control.
I disagree you are privy to knowledge of his mission. It is statistically likely you are right, but that is not certainty, and despite the likelihood of his dictatorship becoming as bad or worse as his predecessor's, the fact is that presently it is vastly better for the people of El Salvador, and other than biting the bullet and somehow acquiring decentralized means of production of modern blessings of civilization that destitute peasants simply do not have the financial means or education to do, a benevolent dictator is about the best they can hope for.
Contrast his administration's performance with Biden's, and Biden's blatant lies regarding the energy prices that are the result of his direct actions being the fault of Putin, corporate profiteers, or angry sky gods.
Any hope potential to the people of El Salvador to uplift them from the desperate poverty they have been afflicted with by generations of deceptive despots is dramatically better than the abject desperation that has been all they have known throughout the history of their plantation nation.
I would have recommended Monero, but BTC is better than CBDCs IMHO.
Are you familiar with Maritime law? Law of the flag? Postal mechanics?
This esoteric information goes back thousands of years. It's a lot for me to cover in a single comment.
If you want to dive deeper into this I recommend learning about quantum grammar.
Here's a video of what I mean:
Law of the Flag is mentioned @ 1:31:00
@valued-customer
Familiar with power of suggestion, FTG?
I actually heard of it for the first time two days ago while watching a testimony of someone that used to be an ex-hypnotherapist.
Why do you ask?
I'll start with this. I'm not accusing you of any wrongdoing.
The way your comment was delivered, with the included image, could be considered an example of power of suggestion. I wouldn't have thought about that version of reality had you not said it that way while suggesting what needs to looked at, and how it should be seen.
Power of suggestion is used in media all the time; tucked away in 'news' a lot, regardless of source. I've known about it for years from previous studies. When I read things, or listen, watch; I don't consume. I observe. I study it. Things like advertisements and hype; no effect on me. I'm not looking at it the way it's intended to be seen. Naturally picking it apart like it's a magic show.
I'm not saying you're full of crap. I'm saying I picked up on something in your delivery that you might not even be aware of; how it can be processed by others. Don't be offended. You asked. That's my answer, with respect.
Interesting.
We see what others have trained us to see, or what we have trained ourselves to see, or what we are led to see.
It is interesting twist on the frequent criticism of the news, it's not reporting the facts and allowing us to draw conclusion, it's reporting of the conclusions, and selective reporting the facts, so we agree with the conclusions.
They attempt to tell us how we should feel about the news, then only report the parts that support that feeling, instead of reporting the facts and allowing us to reach our own conclusion.
I think your saying we can do this with images by prefacing the image with a narrative or conclusion to be drawn from the imagine. And this can be unintentional or intentional. Which you quickly point out, and rightly so, we shouldn't assume ill intent or subterfuge. This can be accidental, unintentional and be a complete surprise to those we accuse of premeditated actions.
I think that's very fair, and very pre-emptive, which is always wise on the Good Ship Hive, where we don't have the benefit of facial expression and body language to tip us off to intent, so we can be misconstrued.
You have definately put in your time, and weathered more then the occaisional storm on the good ship Hive.
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Once you see it, you can't unsee it. The results can be observed simply by looking at the reactions. There are several layers and when combined lead to a form of hypnosis. Explaining is difficult. Most think they're immune and it could never happen to them. Every consumer of online news/information on the planet has been exposed to it. Spreads easily.
In everyday conversation it is far less likely to be intentional. Information intended to be for profit/views/consumption; far more likely to be intentional though when the thought is being spread by many, those folks passing it on would most likely be unaware since at that point, they've already been influenced, and most likely didn't know.
Yes, at times, I find communicating some ideas is far more strenuous than it needs to be, but that's what I get for being a freak and knowing it.
LOL my wife always says when you wear something you need to Own It .. and you do indeed own your persona.
Cheers 🍻
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~chuckles~
Haha, that is pretty cool. I have seen some of the articles in the past couple of weeks talking about how much of a failure it was. I pretty much chalked all of them up to FUD. You can usually tell where the author stands on the matter based on their wording.
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Really interesting about Bukele's blog post.
People talking about BTC falling since El Salvador bought are completely missing the point. It wasn't bought as an investment - it was bought to encourage adoption of the Chivo wallet and it has succeeded massively. At least 40% of the population that was previously unbanked now are connected to a global financial system.
Also if you are primarily using BTC as a medium of exchange (its original purpose) rather than a store of value then the ups and downs of the price don't matter.
People are receiving BTC from remittances and salaries and business revenue and spending the BTC quite quickly on expenses.
In a fully BTC economy the price vs dying fiat currencies is irrelevant.
A dictator doesn't have to be a bad person lol
In fact sometimes they just get shit done that needs to be done instead of all the BS
He sure doesn't look like a dictator and he's way way better than Biden at everything. I mean, even a 12 year old would do better than Biden.
not to mention retarded European leaders in Brussels.
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They're everywhere...
As long as El Salvador continues to produce, export, and stack sats, they will come out okay.
As long a country or any entity/person has various sources of income, market volatility is opportunity.
He's a switched-on dude - https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1587972883506151424 -
ES definitely on the shortlist now.
He doesn’t sounds like a leader of a country, he comes over like a realist, was a good interview (passed the sniff test)
well... also sounds very easy -_-#
--
You're very right, the propaganda machine has started. I even heard random news snippets, totally out of context in the german news cycle about this.
Goes a little bit like this:
Reminds me of "Carthago delenda est"
A politician having 90% approval means one thing - he had literally destroyed the opposition. The Salvadorans will suffer a lot before they get rid of him
I don't see how destroying the opposition can make your approval rating go up.
If anything it should go down.
I will agree that this is exactly what he did though.
Very simple - dead people cannot disapprove ;)
That's how all dictators have impossibly high approval ratings
There are worse dictators in the world. Many of the worst are do bad, they don't even get labelled as dictators.
Funny but true.
Not funny ha-ha
Worlds biggest criminals stay within the bounds of the law.
After all, they create the law.
Great post, although you get me thinking about an issue that I would say tests my ethics and my conviction of how unnecessary politicians are for societies, so the concept of "Benevolent Dictator" to refer to the Salvadoran president seems shocking to me but certainly serves as a topic for a great debate.
Bukele is a very intelligent man (something I find hard to say about the President of USA, Germany, France or Venezuela), I am convinced that he assumed the adoption of BTC after considering the absolute uselessness of the local fiat currency and the absence of control over the US dollar, the main cryptocurrency turns out to be the most important option to give some independence to his government, to implement all reforms he has in mind without the consequences of the possible economic sanctions that Republican and Democratic governments usually apply to any leader who deviates from their designs.
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el salvador is very unique in that they already had their banking crisis long ago, opting to replace their fiat with usd. that alone makes it much easier for them to adopt btc, as there is no conflict of interest.
Wowa. This is really happening in our precious world. What next? ...i will stay tuned!
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I can only say that in a country full of drug addicts and abusers; you need a strong person! An IRON HAND is required in order to fix the mess of the former leader of the country.
https://twitter.com/1415155663131402240/status/1589887909666385921
https://twitter.com/1459494815968620548/status/1589978306606424065
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @rzc24-nftbbg, @steemadi ) sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
If that was really him who wrote that, damn that was a scathing one and I love it lol. Pretty accurate though, a 50 million dollar loss is easy to deal with in the grand scheme of it all
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Awww, sad to hear about it that there are really countries that do not adopt to crypto currency adoption. Hoping that crypto will become massive worldwide.
what I don't understand is "why do many world economists refuse to adopt btc globally"? why the government doesn't realize that "Fiat" is rotten paper that has no value at all other times, while BTC will increase in value and continue to happen all the time.
I have a 1964 "fiat" and today I couldn't buy candy, yet our government still refuses to make btc a currency, that's really weird when you think about it.
The important question is, if BTC is made the currency for every country in the world, then who is the person who will lose the most?
I must say I was yet to see a dictator really concerned about the economic welfare of his people until Nayib Bukele came into the picture as the first president to adopt the use of bitcoin. I mean for a president to salvage any means possible to resurrect a crippling fiat economy by replacing with blockchain technology speaks so much volume of the insight he possesses.
I agree with the President of Salvador, that it's all about control and compliance.
Countries which toe the line get aid and favorable press. COuntries which attempt revolutionary ideas, especially ideas which reduce the power of the dollar get the full treatment of economic prerssure, news pressure and fake news.
It's absurd to say 55 million ruined a country.
It's absurd to look at a country whose fiat is dollars and accuse them of irresponsibility.
It is however very telling that the most prestigious news outlets in the US would publish such biased and slanted articles with false information.
You know that what he is doing is rattling the guilded cage banks live in when you see this degree of lies and fabrication.
I also find it a very interesting topic of discussion as to the existence of a benevolent dictator. We have been educated to lump them all into the same mold, but the reality is that dictators like presidents and prime ministers exist on a spectrum.
If you look at Canada's Trudeau using Terrorist Law to prosecute common citizens who dared to send money to their fellow Canadians protesting in the dead of winter so their families didn't starve or freeze to death... Who is the dangerous to the freedom of their people? The benevolent dictator or the prime minister depriving his own citizens of the rights guaranteed by their constitution?
Bitcoin is a very useful tool to develope economic freedom which is out of the breach and influence of corrupt governments.
It is actually an anti-fasicism tool.
It removes the ability of the gvernment to freeze and or seize your money and leave you hungry, thirsty and homeless. dangerous tool, in the handfs of the informed.
It is ironically a tool which could empower people to overthrow or defund the government of a dictator. So in a way the President is giving people the tools and means to be independent of the government economically.
A givernment empowering it's people economically is such a foreign conscept that even here on Hive.. what shold be a bastion of free thought and out of the box thinking, there are some citicizing his efforts to give real power, economic power to his people.
In a small country the things he is doing may have major impact. I always think of crime as an economic indicator, and a hope indicator. In the absence of economic development and opportunites people take from each other what they need to survive. But in an envirnment of economic empowerment, job creation, and the hope of economic freedom violence and crime towards each other normally goes down. El Salvador has this in spades.
I hope he continues on this path, and deviates only to preserve what he has built and continues to build, hope, jobs, businesses and a true belief in a better future.
@shortsegments
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Congrations @edicted! You've been featured in Cryptocracy. https://cryptocracy.substack.com/p/web3-wednesday-lbrys-lbc-ruled-a
One of the main problems with populism is the belief that people = always good, right, and noble. That is not the reality and history is full with examples of bad people, human stupidity and disgusting behaviors. Only because specific policies, persons and behaviours are "popular" does not mean that they are good in practice. Organized crime in El Salvador is a big problem and has been that for decades. But making hasty decisions, corrupted behaviors and killings of innocent individuals is not going to solve the problems. El Salvador needs a long-term strategy to reduce crime through more economic freedom, educational policies and hopefully with better welfare system as basic income. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/08/eviscerating-human-rights-el-salvador-gang-problem/