Ta-Nehisi Coates: How Segregation and Violence Corrupt the Soul

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Ta-Nehisi Coats gave an interview with Democracy Now! on November 2, 2023.

  • Coats understands the anger that comes from a people that are oppressed and feel abandoned by the rest of the world
  • But Coats says he’s starting to understand the importance of nonviolence because violence corrupts the soul

I’ve highlighted parts of the transcript to make it quicker to digest:

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What is the US Debt Endgame? (Google AI Answers)

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Federal Debt

Economies run in cycles, both short and long-term.

With Debt levels running high, how will the long-term debt cycle be resolved? 1

I asked Google Bard’s AI 2 what it thought of 6 possible options I outlined for resolving high debt levels.

Upon receiving AI’s answers, I was reminded of a quote (incorrectly) ascribed to Winston Churchill:

Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing ..  after they have exhausted all other possibilities.

My base case estimate is a twist on this quote. It is not that America will attempt all other possibilities before finally settling on the “right thing,” but rather the resolution of high debt levels3 will likely involve pursuing nearly all available options together.  These options will not all be undertaken simultaneously, but all options will be attempted (except #5) before the cycle is resolved.

Trillion Dollar Coin

Here are the 6 options I presented to AI:

  1. “Debt Jubilee”
  2. Adoption of a hard money
  3. MMT : Modern Monetary Theory
  4. “Soft Default”
  5. “Hard default”
  6. Transition to a new system

Google Bard’s AI suggested another 4 other options:

  • spending cuts
  • tax increases
  • government asset sales
  • debt restructuring

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  1. I’m assuming both government, business, and private debt must be reduced through some means because at some point the interest on the debt will become generate unacceptable levels of inflation.↩

  2. (Google Bard is an AI, like Chat GPT)↩

  3. And likely also high debt levels in other parts of the world. ↩

Can Google Bard AI Translate Politically Polarized Statements Using the Braver Angels’ LAPP Technique?

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Braver Angels

This morning I attended a “Braver Angels” educational session about how to depolarize political conversations.

The acronym for the technique is “LAPP“:

  • Listen to understand, not reload
  • Acknowledge what you heard
  • Pivot by assessing whether it’s OK to offer your views
  • Offer your Perspective, rather the position that “they’re wrong.”

 

I wondered, can Google AI perform Braver Angels‘ depolarization technique?

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BRICS plan to be based on Keynes’ Bancorp idea

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Appears more viable than expected

It appears as though the BRICS plan is more viable than expected, as it is based on Keynes’ Bancorp idea (with unknown variances).  (Source: Jim Rickards: informed speculation)
 

BRICS PREVIOUSLY APPEARED UNWORKABLE:

  • Yesterday I talked to Bryan about the upcoming BRICS meeting in Johannesburg and I said that China will never want to back the new BRICS currency with gold because they won’t want to limit their “money printing.”
 

KEEP NATIONAL CURRENCIES:

  • Today I listened to a Jim Richards interview suggesting that Russia has developed a very smart plan in which each country keeps their own currencies, but the countries will use a common currency to settle international transactions between each other.

KEYNES’ BANCORP:

  • This plan is based on the Bancorp plan that Keynes proposed at Bretton Woods (with some possible tweaks).  There is not necessarily expected to be a large immediate effect, but Rickards said he expects the dollar to gradually lose value to gold over time and the demand for US Treasuries to decrease.
  • Rather than backing the currency with gold or commodities, the BRICS settlement currency (or whatever it is called) will be pegged to a reference weight of gold (rather than price). This means that no country has to own any actual gold – it’s just a reference value that is simpler to calculate than it would be if they used various commodities, including oil. 1
 
The BRICS Meeting in South Africa is scheduled for Tuesday August 22.
  • Victoria Nuland is expected to pay South Africa a visit to dissuade them from doing this.

  1. Rickards mentioned that Keynes initially wanted to use commodities in the Bancor, but the problem is that they are not fungible –there are many grades of things like wheat and oil. I recall Rickard saying: When people go down the path of a commodity-based unit of account, they eventually standardize on gold. It has more of the other properties of money than other commodities .↩