Landgull: Thank you for the debate - I concede the point and I'm off to run errands. I am, however, still waiting for someone to claim and argue for their corner of meatspace, instead of against mine (of the moment.)

Landgull: I do hate Lincoln more than any other US president, though.

Landgull: Since you're right that I don't know who he is, I can't respond to that argument.

Landgull: But what I mean is this: your argument is a non-form because the goal posts can always be shifted. If they have a strategic advantage of any sort, it can be claimed as a wave. Some strategic advantage will always exist. So the only way a minority can organize against a majority without "just riding a wave" is if they ignore all of their strategic advantages - which would make your supreme good exceedingly foolish. It's like say

Landgull: If one recognizes the value of some asset, such as oil, and uses it to its fullest benefit to gain power, I'd find it hard to successfully argue that it's not a group coming to power by organizing its ascendency.

Landgull: So I take it you're a fan of the Assad government, then? Or the House of Saud?

Landgull: If a state of affairs is highly profitable for a minority at the expense of a majority, and is maintained via force, I tend to think it's not entirely self-organizing.

Landgull: I think the rise of the nation state has caused people to think that there are supposed to be hard lines between ethnicities and cultures.

Landgull: Mircea: out of curiosity, wouldn't Romania be culturally closer to Ukraine than to the USA? I'm curious which of the two you would prefer to live in (or, for that matter, if there's a place that's better in your mind.)

Landgull: But I still prefer people who steal from you because they're just stealing from you and they want your stuff to people who steal for you and ask you to say it's for your own good.

Landgull: Sure. And my response is that I expect to dry my laundry on a clothesline until fiat is dead.

Landgull: Meh - fair point, but I mean they have very limited ability to screw with people who are just trying to live their lives.

Landgull: Either way, a couple other people have caught onto similar ideas and have gotten pretty far ahead of me by now, but I put in a patent app a while back and with any luck I'll be able to license those out when I get done with it.

Landgull: I'd say if you're dating a girl who would allow you to not go to something like that, you're dating the wrong woman.

Landgull: It's for the best, the more I've learned about the "start up community" the more they make me want to gouge out my own eyes.

Landgull: Heh. Was a startup I was working on, using black soldier fly larvae to convert organic waste into biodiesel, fish feed, and fertilizer. Actually got it into Startup Chile, but my business partner refused to go to Chile and cost me the grant.

Landgull: I'm just some guy who found this place a few weeks ago, read the logs for a while, and decided that I'd like to join the community here, if it'll have me.

Landgull: I'm a newb.

Landgull: As for the rest: if you're in line at a slaughterhouse, your best move is always to try to get away, even if you risk being shot in the process. Uncertain success is better than certain failure, and life in the US has become so intolerable that I'd rather take my chances with an uncertain future than with a certain one.

Landgull: I wouldn't be in a bitcoin channel if I thought that assets a government can take from you easily were a good idea. XD

Landgull: I don't own real estate in Lviv and won't particularly recommend it as an investment. Though it's probably better than a US bank account, which I do have.

Landgull: I don't think they can keep fighting physics and math forever.

Landgull: It's definitely safer than the city I grew up in back in the US.

Landgull: Or the "I want your money" and then run away sort.

Landgull: I'm not trying to claim that this is some kind of paradise, it's absolutely not, and you have to give up a lot of the "first world" comforts.

Landgull: Which sounds like a bad thing, but I'd like to know why it is that chicken rots much faster in Ukraine than in the US...

Landgull: The food is better than anything I've ever had before.

Landgull: It was more of a quip than a serious comment - but I know a number of people who spend their time yelling at the box because of what obama/the republicans/the gays/the church did today.

Landgull: I'd rather there were a safe, sane, stable country where I could go, build a business, and have a normal life, but that's not going to exist until btc finishes what it has started. ☟︎

Landgull: Haha. I also like cheap vodka and cops you can bribe away from petty crimes.

Landgull: I like learning languages, and I like buying my food in an open air market from the person who grew it.

Landgull: I used to be running from.

Landgull: Decimation: I'm not running from, I'm running to.

Landgull: Ascii: I'm working, slowly, on my Ukrainian. My Spanish is much better.

Landgull: Sure. And it's why you do need to actually integrate. I.E. learn the language, get to know people, etc.

Landgull: Decimation: You're imagining that governments in the rest of the world work like the US government. I.E. the laws on the books matter. They can pass a law saying just about anything they want, but they don't have the means to enforce it and they have a population that is used to just ignoring government stupidity instead of bending over.

Landgull: Ascii: I won't disagree with you (decimation, you're wrong.) that most of the world is currently under the USgov thumb, to some degree. But you are still better off in an outlying part of it, where the control is less potent, and has much less influence on your daily life (like, in terms of being able to buy food that doesn't make you sick, and being able to date girls who aren't insane) than you are sitting in their back yard

Landgull: ...for the last time, I'm not saying "Hey guys, you should move to Ukraine." or that I'm moving to Ukraine for that matter - I prefer South America on the whole. I'm saying that if you want personal liberty, and to not live in an insane culture, you can actually leave and be better off.

Landgull: Decimation: It's not something I know enough about to make any comment on.

Landgull: I also think that Crimea and eastern UA shouldn't probably be part of the same country as western and central UA.

Landgull: ...except I can look at people and tell who is Russian and who is Ukrainian. And again: I'm not saying Ukraine is the mecca to run to, I'm saying that getting out of the US to somewhere that is saner, (and yes, UA is saner than the US) is worth the effort.