The man without a face

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1. trod1234Jul 2025
   Business cycles as a phrase have existed, but that definition has changed over time, and people conflate the modern meaning neglecting the older specific meaning which was limited to seasonal variability.

   The modern understanding of the boom bust bailout cycle is included in modern definitions, but this only occurred once non-reserve fiat was adopted; even back in Thomas Jefferson's day; the failures occurred when more was printed than was actually there and distortions aggregated until crisis. We're specifically talking about the over-subscription, mania, and bust that follows all money printing.

   Its impossible to rationally differentiate without having a good detailed reference which is why Adam Smith's 5 volume set (most sets ignore volume 5 but they shouldn't), and Thomas Jefferson's/Coopers related letters are also useful.

   Non-reserve fiat leads to collapse from a market economy to non-market socialism, through the assymetric feed from the money-printer driving state-apparatus (unconstrained) to run legitimate producers out of business (profit constrained), sieving resources into few hands. This has been happening since the 1970s, with additional bites at the apple taken during crisis when the banks hold everyone hostage facing systemic contagion from failures they created (perverse incentives).

   The connection to socialism/communism is that the plan of concentrating resources has been written about by such groups quite publicly, as the first step prior to crisis engineering and seizing the means of production. While some of these words I use are more modern terms, the meaning remained the same, back then.

   The first surviving reference I've found is the paper magazine published ~1895 by the Fabian's under the name "The American Fabian", in one of the first five publications they promote this plan with regards to the NYC real estate market coupled with rent-seeking behavior to create self-sustaining income until all real-estate over time would become under their control and 'could be passed into the common good', so it says,and their membership was tailored towards influential bankers and politicians at that time.

   Within a few years (at that time, 1900s) several things occurred, the adoption of the prussian model of centralized schooling, the backroom deals following Jekyl Island leading to the creation of the Fed, and the landmark decision to treat Federal Law as separate to common/state laws with regards to predence (Erie Railroad, 1930s-1940s). One of the historic copies of this magazine I had a chance to examine had writing mentioning the same group influencing the decision towards centralizing authority via the UCC (which first came out around 1870s-1880s iirc. It seemed to be written about the time of publication, but providence is unknown. A good knowledge of detailed history really comes in handy.

   The group itself ceased public publication in 1907, with splintering special interest groups forming under varying names since, continually change such names obscuring their origins like what we understand today as cells. 1917 (iirc) also had Lenin proclaiming the best way to destroy the West was through debasement of the currency.

   With regards to debasement, it doesn't matter how many entities it passes through, the debasement hits a point where oversubscription of the resources cause the bust cycle failures (which lag), opportunity costs become untethered, and personal property of the individual is stolen through such mechanisms. Demoralizing, Destabilizing, and Crisis, where a new normalization must be found regardless of the cost ("Its the end of the world" - Big Short).

   > Crooked handouts don't need fiat printing. A Crooked handout is fundamentally limited by the reserve of the stable store of value it has access to, when fiat printing is not available it has no rope in the economy to distort it beyond the initial value. You can't take what's not there, and you don't build things in places that will regularly be destroyed.

   The government does the money-printing, the crooked handouts induce growing amounts of money-printing, inflation rises. The lagging indicator of disruption leads to chaotic hysteresis requiring perfect-futuresight to plot a safe path forward as you end up being on a cliff where you can only step forward, and on each side you have cascading failure (hyper-inflation->deflation, or direct deflation). The bill always comes due.

   This issue is called the Economic Calculation Problem. Mathematical chaos is special, because it can't be predicted ahead of time, small changes dramatically affect the outcomes, and thus no wayfinding a safe path forward can occur since these aren't based on directly measurable indicators in realtime; the survival of those on your boat (which is everyone in the sphere of influence of said currency), depends on random chance heavily skewed against survival as the number of factors involved increase asymmetrically toward failure, similar to falsehoods vs. truth if one were to graph that.

   Corruption of those administrating inflationary monetary policy which grows with time, leads to collapse, always, and the scale of that collapse is determined by the underlying amount of resources involved, and the distortions created.

   Positive feedback systems are prone to run away with no warning about when that point of no return is. You have exponentially less control to resolve issues the longer you let it run. The baby boomers started this runaway experiment in the 70s.

   You can't borrow to spend dollars without any fiat and printing, non-fiat currency has implicit value unlike fiat and you don't see people borrowing gold/silver these days. You'll find proper definitions of the types of money in Mises Theory of Money and Credit (money/money-substitutes). At its core any ambiguous indirection must be followed back to its underlying base or identity that is one or the other; which some people are bad at.

   Inflation doesn't improve governmental debt, it creates slow moving distortions that accumulate over time culminating in a tsunami/crisis. Debt is borrowing against the future, or stealing from the future if you go the route of financial dominance. Eventually people will have no purchasing power to feed themselves, and stop having children.

   "Socialism", is formally defined by structure in Mises book on Socialism. That book is a worthwhile read, its a professional failure domain map for every way mainstream forms, and variants inevitably fail, even with employ owned/run companies (syndicalism). The mismatch that one often has to come to grips with is the word ownership has been misused in contradictory ways, so much that its lost meaning.

   If you've done an in-depth critical study of Communism and its history you'd recognize a number of common tactics used as well, such as the purposeful misuse of language corruption (orwellian doublespeak) which weaponize rhetoric and leverages psychological blindspots but ultimately fail rational/objective comparisons. In other words, the convincing lie.

   "If one cannot speak the word, one cannot convey the idea, and thus the idea based in harmful behavior doesn't exist. It is through making people better and more virtuous that the common good can be attained." - Who decides harmful behavior, and to whom, no one can do this objectively and thus *cough bullshit*.

   Needless to say, when talking of such things one does need to have a well rounded/working knowledge of the type of people involved to be able to come to sound conclusions.

   A lot of the articles are a quagmire of propaganda. If your looking for a good starting point historically on the Communist perspective, reading about the Stasi and then moving backwards from there might be beneficial. Markus Wolfe from the Communist Side (Man without a Face), and John O. Koehler on the American Side as a useful comparison.

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2. trod1234Nov 2024
   > Since about the 1960s, most of the damaging spies have been in it for the money, not ideology.

   That isn't true as a general statement. It is true that American's in particular are generally more open to the money than other motivators compared to other nationalities, but these differences are not that large and are very much based on the individual, so no real general statements can be made. Romeos and Ideology have played a big part in espionage and subversion over the years equally if not moreso.

   Mccarthyism was a response to a growing threat, one that has not subsided over the years. Those that lived through, or participated in some of these events often saw a correlation between the adoption of the elements derived from Marxism and its relatives, albeit they are almost always obscured by intention; and the progressing ruin of individual life and western society at the broad scales.

   Subversion works insofar as it is sufficient to cause regime change when you are unable to respond to it or stop it as a society. The next generation doesn't know any better and are developmentally vulnerable to such overtures. They lack the discernment to catch sophisticated lies and liars, and before they know it themselves they've joined the cause as an adversary.

   If you are interested in detailed accounts from this time period, and more specifically part of what prompted these movements. There's two books that are particularly good that cover in detail with regards to the East German Stasi which operated during this time frame internationally in conjunction with other red perils (Russia/China) often with terroristic aims.

   The first is written by an American, John O. Koehler "Stasi, the Untold Story of The East German Secret Police". The second is written by Markus Wolfe, who was a Spymaster for the Stasi, and it is called, "The man without a face".

   Both are particularly good as resources, and cover the time period in the various perspectives up until the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 90s (starting late 1989).

   The threats which sparked McCarthyism are still threats today and haven't diminished, in many respects they've increased with the level of technology, and progression of the related sciences, exponentially, but this type of threat is a cursed problem for open societies.

   There are many ways subversives can effectively brain wash the unsuspecting, induce delusional or schizophrenic-like behavior, and agitate others indirectly towards sedition and treason. Few working adults today are prepared sufficiently to recognize or defend themselves against many of these threats.

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3. atlasunshruggedAug 2020
   For those interested in trying to understand more of the context of modern day Russia, and more particularly, Putin's rise to power, I highly recommend 3 books.

   1) Catherine Belton: Putin's People https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VMZYK13/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

   2) Bill Browder: Red Notice https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O30HFT2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

   3) Masha Gessen: Several books, but I particularly liked Man without a Face https://www.amazon.com/Masha-Gessen/e/B001H6MBXK

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4. strictneinAug 2020
   I really enjoyed parts of Man Without a Face, especially the details on his early life and how/why he was chosen by Yeltsin.
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5. foxhedgehogJun 2015
   This is an understatement. Imagine if Obama had worked for the CIA his whole life, had come to power in a nondemocratic fashion mysteriously after Bill Clinton was forced to step down, had nationalized Chevron and put the CIA in charge, imprisoned the Koch brothers, invaded Mexico twice, held a series of sham elections, stayed in power for decades, and was rumored to be one of the richest people on the planet.

   "The Man Without a Face" by Masha Gessen is a great read on Putin's rise to power.

   http://smile.amazon.com/The-Man-Without-Face-Unlikely/dp/159...

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