Reasons to be cheerful at the end of 2017 are several:
The “Conservative” government is weak and getting weaker. Cabinet ministers resigning; no Parliamentary (Commons) majority without DUP help; divisions in the MP ranks based on both personal antipathies and ideological differences, particularly over Brexit. This will make it very hard for Theresa May and Amber Rudd to destroy free speech even further by passing more repressive laws (criminalizing even such behaviour as reading online political tracts, or making criticism of Jewish Zionists, their behaviour etc).
The Labour Party, though still not firm enough against the Zionists, is attracting more and more anti-Zionists to its ranks. Corbyn seems to be the only game in town as far as leadership of the party is concerned. He is weak in that, while he opposes Israel and obvious Zionism, he still feels the need to pay lip-service to “holocaust” propaganda etc, which plays into the hands of the Jewish lobby of the UK. Still, better Corbyn than some evil enemy such as Yvette Cooper.
There is every chance that the next general election will be another hung Parliament. Weak System-party governments are good for social nationalism, because they accomplish little and feed a public hunger for different and firmer government.
There is a good chance that the EU will fall apart by 2022, putting the whole future of Europe into the hazard.
On social media, we have seen many pseudonymous Jewish-Zionist trolls either expelled, eg from Twitter, or forced to stop trolling much because they have been identified. More people (social-nationalists) now understand that the best way to deal with these pests in the short term is to block them, because they then have little chance to make false accusations to Twitter or to the police.
Offline, organizations such as “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism” have, for the most part, failed in their attempts to criminalize social-nationalists. The Alison Chabloz case is continuing (which restricts what I can say about it) but the Zionists thought that she would be in their bag by January 2017 and that never happened. The CPS took over the private prosecution brought by the “CAA” and dropped the original charges, though substituting others. Also, the attempts to have her charged with other matters failed. Several Zionists have now protected their Twitter accounts or are no longer tweeting. The “CAA” managed to have the CPS charge Jez Turner (Jeremy Bedford-Turner) with incitement to racial hatred, after taking judicial review application of the original decision not to charge (that particular offence cannot be brought privately). We await the trial in 2018, but I am optimistic. A number of other persons (including me) were subject to police investigation after the “CAA”, led in this respect by Essex-based Stephen Silverman (who was exposed in open court, in a pre-trial hearing, part of the Alison Chaboz case, as a sadistic and pseudonymous Internet troll) made malicious accusations against them [my experience: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/]. None of those CAA “cases” led to any criminal charge.
The “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism”, having mostly failed in its attempts to pervert the course of justice in respect of me and other private citizens, has started to run wild, trying to get Al Jazeera TV, David Icke and Palestinian demonstrators charged with various offences, often on various dodgy self-produced “evidence”. David Icke has informed his millions of fans about the “CAA” vendetta against him, Al Jazeera has swatted away the CAA nonsense and that seems to leave the three cases noted above (the Palestinian having been prosecuted privately, another CAA attempt to bypass the usual police/CPS process). This “loose cannon” activity by the “CAA” has led to criticism of it by other Jews and/or Jewish organizations, which will only intensify if the three trials in question end in acquittal.
I have noted that several of the Jewish Zionist trolls and plotters who have targeted me in recent years are now suffering from a variety of physical and mental diseases or impairments, which seem to be worsening. Karma, in a sense.
There is a chance that a real social-national movement and party will emerge in 2018. A real reason to be cheerful!
This evening, I watched a show called something like “The Real Marigold Hotel”, in which four elderly once-“celebrities” went to a country (in this case, Cuba) in order to see what facilities might be available for retired people. As such, as a “documentary”, it was very superficial and lacking depth, though entertaining. What interested me was the society in general.
The Cuba –actually just Havana– shown (and I have never been there, though I am quite well acquainted with its history of the past century and, in the manner of Sarah Palin, have glimpsed it from the air and from the sea) was in fact largely the stereotype: old American cars in pastel pink and blue, decrepit but charming colonial mansions, palm trees etc.
The old people went to cultural classes and talked to Cubans in parks. It struck me anew that any society is a package: Cuba has some culture (both European and its own mixture incorporating the Caribbean and African, as well as that of the USA.
The Havana shown was one where the parks were (on the face of it) safe to visit, the people well-educated (one or two Cubans carefully making the point that their good education had been free, as were the classes available to the elderly).
Most people know that the Cuban healthcare system is also very good, both in relative and absolute terms. On the other hand, and as the TV programme noted, the Internet is tightly controlled, requires a card (no doubt traceable..) and is mostly only available in “wi-fi” areas such as certain parks; not so many have home Internet connection.
It is perhaps pointless to reiterate what most of us know in terms of the Cuban police state (which –in all the documentary films I have ever seen– is so pervasive that it is invisible: you never see the hand of the State in plain sight, though it is there all right).
So there you have the Cuban package: low crime rate (supposedly), no obvious disorder, at least some rather polite, cultured citizens, good education and healthcare etc (one Cuban did say that it was better before the supportive Soviet Union collapsed), as well as a certain charm.
As against that, a socialist state which controls the news and Internet tightly, imprisons dissidents for years (not to mention the large number who, in the late 1950s and 1960s, were just shot); a socialized economy which (leaving aside the effect of American embargo) was and largely is hopelessly inefficient at providing consumer goods. Travel restrictions, too.
Let us take a different case. The German Reich in the 1930s was intolerant of dissidents too, though it was far more tolerant than was the Soviet Union under Stalin or, indeed, Cuba under Fidel.
The National Socialist state imprisoned some dissidents or placed them in concentration camps such as Dachau (though few now know that many served short sentences, such as 3 months, there, and were not there indefinitely). Others were encouraged or more or less forced out of the country. There was a generally militarized ethos. How could a state both German and quasi-socialist be anything else?
In the Reich, there was state interference in culture (though, again, far less than, say, in the Soviet Union). Consumer production was given a lower priority than rearmament (“Guns Before Butter”), though large projects for the benefit of the people were also pushed into the foreground: the Autobahnen; the VW “people’s car”; the 1936 Olympics; a huge programme of educational and cultural events; the Kraft durch Freude [“Strength through Joy”] programme of Canary Islands cruises and Baltic beach holidays for the people (at a time when, in the UK, most people who had a holiday at all were corralled into poky Blackpool guest houses…); better nutrition for young people, too.
The National Socialist Reich was hugely beneficial for most Germans, certainly compared to what existed in the Weimar period. The Reich solved the inflation problem, the unemployment problem, the decadence problem and, yes, what it termed “the Jewish question”.
In the UK at the same time, there was greater ostensible “freedom”: elections every 5 years, the freedom to eat daily at the Ritz or at the Savoy Grill (if one had the funds..), no obvious book censorship (though, behind the scenes, there was much, not least via the Jewish element, even then). There was officialtheatre and cinema censorship (via the Lord Chamberlain’s office) and there was also, of course, grinding poverty (especially outside the South East), and a very repressive justice and prison system; not to mention the pervasive class system and its inequities.
No state, no political system is “perfect”. All have flaws, and all (most, at least) have benefits (though what might be the benefits of living in, say, North Korea or the Congo might be disputed). The aim can only be to do the best with what is available at the material time. We take everything as a package, as a whole.
I am not an economist; neither am I, at least in terms of occupation and/or formal training, an historian. I say that from the outset simply because it may be objected that, especially in terms of economics, I have no intellectual locus standi, despite the fact that most predictions made by economists turn out to be inaccurate. Also, “two economists, three opinions”…
Bitcoin
So, Bitcoin. Bitcoin was invented in 2008, possibly in Japan, by someone (or a group) whose provenance and even real name or names remain unknown:
Money is an almost metaphysical thing. Different societies have used seashells, precious metals etc as money, the key characteristic being the relative rarity of the commodity used. In China (in the 7th Century under the Tang dynasty), paper currency was invented, and later more widely introduced in the 11th Century (Song Dynasty), where it was encountered by Marco Polo and others, who introduced the idea to Europe.
Paper currency was, at first and for a long time, backed or notionally backed by precious metals, notably gold. Paper money only became generally acceptable in Europe a thousand years after its invention in China. The natural scepticism of the people was overcome both by its convenience and by its credibility, that credibility not only bolstered by its supposed convertability into gold or silver but also by the draconian penalties visited upon those who counterfeited the notes.
These factors underpin all money, credibility or popular belief in its value being the core.
Speculative Bubbles
One could go wider and say that credibility and belief underpin all valuation of assets, whether money assets, real property or other property in which the population is impelled to invest. Time and again there have been speculative bubbles: in currencies, in shares, in housing, in undeveloped land, in metals and even in such things as tulip bulbs (17thC Holland).
A good history of these bubbles and other mass events of the sort was penned in 1841 after the South Sea Bubble and was reprinted after the Wall Street Crash of 1929: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (and reprinted since, eg in the early 1980s)..
Since that book came out, since its 1930s reprinting, other bubbles have come and gone. Among the more noteworthy was the “Silver Bears” bubble of the 1970s
and also many and various real property bubbles across the world.
Bitcoin Goes Viral
At first, back in 2008, Bitcoin was valueless, worth nothing at all. It was just electrical impulses on a machine, effectively. It was still of small value three years later:
“The price of bitcoins has gone through various cycles of appreciation and depreciation referred to by some as bubbles and busts.[129][130] In 2011, the value of one bitcoin rapidly rose from about US$0.30 to US$32 before returning to US$2.[131] In the latter half of 2012 and during the 2012–13 Cypriot financial crisis, the bitcoin price began to rise,[132]reaching a high of US$266 on 10 April 2013, before crashing to around US$50.[133] On 29 November 2013, the cost of one bitcoin rose to a peak of US$1,242.[134] In 2014, the price fell sharply, and as of April remained depressed at little more than half 2013 prices. As of August 2014 it was under US$600.” [Wikipedia]
Wikipedia continues:
“Ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme concerns
Various journalists,[79][144] economists,[145][146] and the central bank of Estonia[147] have voiced concerns that bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. In 2013, Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, stated that “a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems more like a collective delusion.”[148] A 2014 report by the World Bank concluded that bitcoin was not a ‘deliberate’ Ponzi scheme, but that it did thus far meet the “standard definition of a speculative bubble”.[149]:7 The Swiss Federal Council[150]:21 examined the concerns that bitcoin might be a pyramid scheme; it concluded that “Since in the case of bitcoin the typical promises of profits are lacking, it cannot be assumed that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme.” In July 2017, billionaire Howard Marks referred to bitcoin as a pyramid scheme.[151]
On 12 September 2017, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, called bitcoin a “fraud” and said he would fire anyone in his firm caught trading it. Zero Hedge claimed that the same day Dimon made his statement, JP Morgan also purchased a large amount of bitcoins for its clients.[152]
Speculative bubble dispute
Bitcoin has been labelled a speculative bubble by many including former Fed ChairmanAlan Greenspan[153] and economist John Quiggin.[154]Nobel Memorial Prize laureate Robert Shiller said that bitcoin “exhibited many of the characteristics of a speculative bubble”.[155] Journalist Matthew Boesler in 2013 rejected the speculative bubble label and saw bitcoin’s quick rise in price as nothing more than normal economic forces at work.[156] Timothy B. Lee, in a 2013 piece for The Washington Post pointed out that the observed cycles of appreciation and depreciation don’t correspond to the definition of speculative bubble.[131] On 14 March 2014, the American business magnate Warren Buffett said, “Stay away from it. It’s a mirage, basically.”[157]
Two lead software developers of bitcoin, Gavin Andresen[158] and Mike Hearn,[159] have warned that bubbles may occur. David Andolfatto, a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, stated, “Is bitcoin a bubble? Yes, if bubble is defined as a liquidity premium.” According to Andolfatto, the price of bitcoin “consists purely of a bubble,” but he concedes that many assets “have bubble component to their price”.[53]:21 Speculation in bitcoin has been compared to the tulip mania of seventeenth-century Holland. Comparisons have been made by the vice-president of the European Central Bank, Vítor Constâncio, by JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon,[160] by hedge fund manager Ken Griffin of Citadel,[161] and by former president of the Dutch Central Bank, Nout Wellink.[162] In 2013, Wellink remarked, “This is worse than the tulip mania […] At least then you got a tulip [at the end], now you get nothing.”[163] On 13 September 2017, Jamie Dimon compared bitcoin to a bubble, saying it was only useful for drug dealers and countries like North Korea.[164] On 22 September 2017, a hedge fund named Blockswater subsequently accused JP Morgan of market manipulation and filed a market abuse complaint with Financial Supervisory Authority (Sweden).[165]
Bitcoin started to reach escape velocity in late 2016, going from hundreds of U.S. dollars to thousands. At time of writing (December 2017), a single Bitcoin is valued at over $14,000 [USD], or £10,500 [Pounds Sterling]. People who “invested” less than £100 several years ago have seen their stock suddenly rise to be “worth” as much as £100,000. Those who have risked more (in some cases a million pounds or more) now find themselves in theory able to buy small or even medium-size nation-states lock, stock and barrel.
What Do We Know About Bitcoin?
Bitcoin’s origins are obscure, to the extent that journalists and others have researched, investigated and written about the names of possible founders and organizers without having come to a definite conclusion;
Bitcoin is almost useless as a popular currency: its explosion in “value” has made it unusable for any transaction not involving, at the least, tens of thousands of pounds;
Bitcoin, though supposedly limited in overall amount or number, has seen security breaches which, at the push of a button (putting it simply), have at least briefly increased the supply of Bitcoin.
Conclusion
Bitcoin is a classic speculative bubble or, alternatively and perhaps even better put, pyramid scheme. The people who got in early and stayed in are sitting on mirage-fortunes; those who have “invested” more recently will probably lose everything they put in. At the moment of writing, Bitcoin is probably nearing its peak. When it starts to fall rapidly, the panic will probably wipe it out entirely.
The surely inevitable collapse of Bitcoin will take down more than just Bitcoin itself. It may affect the stability of the economy more generally. Beyond that, if (as Bitcoin proponents and/or “investors” say–and their anger at any criticism is perhaps born of subconscious desperation), Bitcoin is as “credible” as any “ordinary” currency (and that is Bitcoin’s strongest point), then the upcoming crash of Bitcoin could take with it much public confidence in the value of the world’s major currencies too. Our major currencies are no longer backed by gold or silver and have only the value we put upon them. We exchange stones for bread. Our currencies are themselves castles in the air and “such things as dreams are made on”.
We recall the hyperinflation of early 1920s Germany, and I myself saw, on several visits to 1980s Poland, how the slide of the zloty affected that country politically and socially. The fate of Bitcoin is not just about Bitcoin.
At the time of writing of my own 2017 blog article, a single Bitcoin was “worth”, i.e, valued at, about £10,500 pounds sterling. At time of writing today, 1 Bitcoin is worth just over £2,853 pounds sterling, somewhat above a quarter of the former figure, and only about a sixth of the 2017 peak.
Update, 19 November 2020
I update my post purely because, in the uncertain conditions of 2020, I see that the article is receiving more hits. Sign of the times?
I have nothing to add to the article itself, but as of today, Bitcoin is trading at just under £13,398 (pound sterling) and at USD $17,730.
Radio 4 Today interviewed an expert in cryptocurrencies, who himself has made tens of millions of pounds from them. He expects a crash. I expected one three years ago. Never happened, though the value did plummet before recovering and climbing further.
As of today, 20th February 2021, 1 Bitcoin is valued at not far short of £40,000!
I notice that Alison Chabloz accepts Bitcoin donations; I hope that she got some before the price rocketed, and still has them. If so, she may have a windfall. https://alisonchabloz.com/how-to-donate/
Today, Bitcoin recovered from USD $44,000 to USD $46,000 after having fallen from USD $52,500. An indication of the underlying volatility.
All the same, I am wondering whether, so far from being somehow “anti” the international money system, Bitcoin might not in reality be controlled by it…
Certainly, the genesis of Bitcoin has the feeling of “legend” (in either sense) about it (supposedly created by a Japanese whose identity has never been confirmed. Perhaps…).
We should be aiming at a society which contains the good from the present (and, therefore, past) while being oriented toward the future. Humanity is a work in progress. Society is a work in progress.
The basic template for a future society, even in the short-term, can be found in the Threefold Social Order concept:
This is not some castle in the air. Many of the concepts within the overall concept of the Threefold Social Order are already part of UK society to a greater or lesser extent: religious freedom, freedom of thought, equal treatment under the law, the separation of the economic, political/legal and spiritual spheres or realms. Even since, say, 1989 (when old-style socialism died), there has come about a greater acceptance that, for example, the State should not monopolize education, that the State should not directly run business enterprises etc. There have been retrograde aspects too, though: increasing actual slavery, a huge increase in quasi-slavery or economic serfdom (including “welfare-to work” schemes, as well as diminution of employee rights and workplace conditions), the “National Curriculum” in State-run schools etc.
Necessary Changes and Structure
First of all, the migration invasion must be halted and a plan developed to remove as many non-Europeans as possible from the UK and Europe. There can be no decent future for UK citizens unless at least most are of British/European origin and culture. As Milton Friedman said, also, “You can have open borders or you can have a welfare state, but you cannot have both.” The Labour Corbynists have not all, by any means, awoken to this truth.
Special-interest groups, notably the Jewish Zionists, must not be allowed disproportionate influence or power. That applies to politics (eg Westminster seats), the Press and other mainstream media, professions, the ownership of business enterprises.
All citizens should receive a “Basic Income”. Robotics and computerization are advancing to the point where perhaps a third of the jobs in the UK might go. The choice will either be Basic Income or Iain Dunce Duncan Smith-style DWP snooping, bullying and serfdom, i.e. forced “make work” projects run by carpetbagging companies, validating payment of what is now often called “welfare” (social security).
The State will not run business enterprises, in general. However, it may be that the security of the State and of society requires the State to run or at least tightly to regulate some enterprises: railways, water supply, electricity supply. Having said that, technology may lessen those cases, as in individual electrical power generation via solar, wind, hydro.
Private business should not run what are, properly, State functions: prisons, the armed forces, social security provision overall.
There must be freedom of expression on political, social, historical matters.
The State can organize or fund some things without actually owning or, on ground level, running them: a UK-wide wildlife grid (possibly composed of land owned largely by non-State owners) is one example.
There is a necessity for improvement in several everyday areas: housing must be built or rebuilt to give everyone a decent home and garden space. No-one should own several and certainly not dozens or hundreds of dwelling-homes. There must be a minimum per-person amount of space within every new house or flat, a higher level than usually found at present.
Local transport should be free of charge.
Higher education should regain its credibility: standards must be improved. Grants can be given to the best students, but others may have to do without and perhaps not go to university. The corollary is that a university degree should not be necessary for most, perhaps all, occupations. Other means of selection can be worked out.
There should be huge expansion of branch rail lines using light, ultralight, narrow-gauge etc trains, mostly operated by robots.
A grid of new wide canals should be dug, for leisure, environmental and business use (freight and passengers).
The airship or Zeppelin can now come into its own as a UK-wide passenger-carrying form of transport. The tops of some high office buildings in cities such as London can become passenger hubs (while commuting exists as a lifestyle).
A New Society Needs New People
The aim must be to create a new people for the future. People create society; society creates people. It is symbiotic. This can be a “virtuous circle”: a highly-educated, highly-cultured people, which in turn will result in society being improved over time and so again. This is something worth struggling and fighting for.
Ian Robert Millard 