Handre

Medieval Iceland ran for 300 years without a single government official, tax collector, or standing army. Private courts, voluntary enforcement, and market-based law kept order better than any modern state ever has. And what happened when the politicians finally took over in 1262? Immediate civil war, economic collapse, and centuries of foreign domination. But sure — tell me again how we need the state to prevent chaos. The Althing wasn't a parliament, it was a legal marketplace where competing law-speakers offered their services. No monopoly on violence, no coercive taxation, no bureaucratic parasites. Just voluntary association and genuine rule of law.

The Swiss National Bank now holds $200 billion in equities—more than most hedge funds manage in total assets. They're the eighth-largest shareholder in Apple, owning more AAPL stock than Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. This isn't monetary policy anymore; it's active equity speculation with freshly printed francs. Central banks used to buy government bonds and maybe some gold. The SNB prints Swiss francs, converts them to dollars, and buys growth stocks in Silicon Valley. They're literally funding American tech companies with money created from nothing while Swiss citizens pay taxes and save in a currency their own central bank is actively debasing. And here's the beautiful irony—they're so worried about the franc being "too strong" that they're willing to become venture capitalists to weaken it. Meanwhile, every franc they print to buy these stocks makes Swiss savers poorer while inflating American asset bubbles. The bank that claims to protect Swiss monetary stability is now a major player in the exact kind of speculative finance that creates the instability they're supposed to prevent. This is what happens when you give central planners unlimited money printing powers. They don't just stick to boring government debt—they start picking winners and losers in global equity markets.

Waaaay sooner. My guess: $80 trilly by 2032.

@BernieSanders How dare he run the business he started as he pleases!!!

Jeff Bezos, worth $234 billion, plans to replace 600,000 Amazon workers with robots. Now, he wants to spend $100 billion to fully automate not just his warehouses, but factories in the U.S & other countries. Oligarchs are waging all out war against workers. FIGHT BACK.

The reason "mixed economies" work is that capitalism is more powerful than socialism is destructive.

@RudyHavenstein @LawrenceLepard Try to keep it that way. Can only do him good!

@Handre @LawrenceLepard He's followed me for many years here oddly enough

Updated Partial List of People Who Have Blocked me Kara Swisher Joe Kernen Larry Kudlow The World Economic Forum Cindy McCain Steven Pinker Bill Ayers Adam Posen John Podhoretz Max Boot Noah Smith Andrew Ross Sorkin Mohamed El-Erian Brookings Econ Cliff Asness George Selgin J. Bradford DeLong The Central Bank of Jamaica Mike Santoli Carl Quintanilla Peter Daszak Taylor Lorenz ex-WSJ reporter Michael S. Derby Dennis Kneale King World News Walter Kirn Claudia Sahm Mark Dow Mark S. Zaid Stephanie Link Jordan Peterson Peter Schiff Dan Bongino Austan Goolsbee Harvard's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government ...plus assorted Kleptocracy/Warmonger wankers. Also, I must be muted by Scott Wapner and Steve Liesman, and muted or blocked by millions of others, which I encourage. (Since people always ask: The Central Bank of Jamaica blocked me because I tweeted them a chart of Jamaican inflation.)

@Handre Also, if the government didn't get involved in the loans in the first place. College wouldn't be as expensive.

Student loan "forgiveness" is the most audacious wealth transfer scam in modern American politics. We're literally forcing plumbers and electricians to subsidize the MBA debts of future consultants and the law school loans of aspiring corporate attorneys. The same people who spent four years studying gender theory and took out $80k to get a master's in nonprofit management now want the guy who learned a trade at 18 and has been working ever since to pay for their poor life choices. And they have the nerve to call it "progressive policy." But here's what really gets me — these aren't the broke and desperate. College graduates still out-earn high school graduates by massive margins over their lifetimes. This is just another case of the politically connected middle class using government to pick the pockets of everyone else while claiming moral superiority.

@RudyHavenstein @LawrenceLepard Maybe there is still some intellect left in him after COVID🤣

@Handre @LawrenceLepard He follows me

@LawrenceLepard @RudyHavenstein Dayam, impressive. I don't see Taleb the Fragile on the list, though. He is the Bonnie Blue of blocking people, so it won't be too hard.

@RudyHavenstein Impressive. Missing Jim Cramer. I am proud of that one. I asked him if Bear Stearns was safe. Weird

Mises predicted the Great Depression when everyone else was drunk on 1920s boom euphoria. He knew artificial credit expansion creates malinvestment and inevitable bust. But did anyone listen? Of course not. While British pedophile John Maynard Keynes pushed his "animal spirits" nonsense, Mises laid out the Austrian theory of the business cycle with mathematical precision. Every bubble since—dot-com, housing, everything bubble—follows his script perfectly. Central bankers still pretend they can engineer prosperity through money printing. They can't. Never could. Mises knew this a century ago.

@bd_himes That's a daily sight in SA.

@Handre In South Africa, job creation is king. Saw two flaggers today for eight people with weedeaters. Only two of the weedeaters were in use. And in a small area. Ten people employed to cut grass.

>be Milton Friedman >visit China in 1980 >see thousands of workers digging canal with shovels >ask Chinese official: "Why not use bulldozers?" >official replies: "That would eliminate jobs" >Friedman: "Then why not use spoons?"

In 1923, a German housewife named Frieda Weber rushed to the bakery at dawn with a wheelbarrow full of marks. By afternoon, her money couldn't buy a loaf of bread. The Weimar hyperinflation wasn't just numbers on a page; it was millions of people desperately acting to remove the uneasiness of watching their life savings evaporate by the hour. Weber's frantic morning dash captures something profound. Every human action springs from discomfort, from uneasiness we seek to replace with a more satisfying state. She wasn't buying bread because she loved economics; she was hungry, anxious, desperate to secure her family's next meal. This is the action axiom that Ludwig von Mises built his entire economic system on. People don't act randomly. They act purposefully to move from less satisfactory conditions to more satisfactory ones. And here's the kicker: every economic phenomenon—from Bitcoin's rise to your morning coffee purchase—traces back to this simple truth. We're all just Frieda Weber with different wheelbarrows, racing against our own forms of uneasiness.

@bramk Awesome, this looks really promising, Bram. I would love to try it out! LFG.

Just got my first iOS app approved in the App Store! 🎉

Rothbard's sharpest quip: "The State is a gang of thieves writ large." Just seven words that obliterate centuries of political philosophy worship. While academics genuflect before the altar of "social contracts," Rothbard cut through the mysticism. No consent. No legitimacy. Just organized plunder with fancy letterhead and black robes. Every tax, every regulation, every central bank decree — theft dressed up as civic duty. Murray saw the emperor's nakedness when others praised his robes.

The Athenians discovered silver at Laurium and immediately did what governments do best—they claimed it all for the state. Private miners? Property rights? Laughable concepts when there's shiny metal in the ground that can fund the next war. And here's the beautiful irony: they used this stolen wealth to build the navy that "saved" Greek civilization at Salamis. The Persian Wars become a feel-good story about defending freedom, conveniently ignoring that Athens funded their military through resource nationalization that would make a modern socialist blush. But don't worry—I'm sure those private citizens who might have developed those mines more efficiently were thrilled to subsidize Themistocles' naval ambitions instead of keeping the fruits of their own labor. State expropriation for the greater good. Where have we heard that before?

@Handre You, @Handre, are quite the posting Energizer Bunny. Fortunately, I overwhelmingly enjoy so… keep it up!

@UncleBumbleFvck Boy oh boy, do I!

@Handre Nice, my guy. Gotta follow. I assume you like Hayek over Keynes?

What people think income tax does: - Fund essential services - Create fairness through "progressive" rates - Support the social safety net - Necessary for civilization What income tax actually does: - Confiscates 40% of productive labor before you see it - Funds foreign wars, corporate subsidies, and bureaucratic bloat - Creates armies of compliance parasites — tax preparers, auditors, collectors - Turns April into a month of national terror - Makes you beg permission to keep your own money You're not paying for roads and schools. You're funding a protection racket that would make the mafia blush. And they convinced you to thank them for it.