Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live Not by Lies 1974

I get called cynical from time to time because I try to explain the sinister nature of our world to NPCs. I believe their lack of critical thinking as well as their unwarranted faith in institutions is misguided and dangerous. If someone is doing something immoral and egregious, I don’t think it’s cynical to acknowledge it. While it is unhealthy to obsess over it, it is vital to have at least a basic understanding of the way the world works.

I take the risk with certain people to explain things that may be difficult for them to accept because I believe that the truth matters and that lies have consequences. It’s very jarring to come to grips with how evil some people can be. I  was completely blindsided by the Covid Pandemic lockdowns, seeing the psychopathic pathology of control as well as the general populations compliance in response to it. I learned that much of what I grew up believing was a complete and utter lie. In response I felt depressed, angry, and isolated. Those feelings were incredibly important in my journey of self liberation and healing.

In medicine, if a doctor misdiagnoses a problem and prescribes the incorrect treatment, the patient will not be able to heal. Often times they even begin to get sicker and sicker. Understanding the problem is the first step towards helping a patient get better. Many doctors treat symptoms, but a good doctor is able to help the patient get to the root of the problem.

SAMHSA data for 2023 reports about 58.7 American million adults, equal to 22.8%, had a mental illness

We live in a sick society and very few people have the courage to ask, “why?” A lot of people just accept it as a reality and believe there is very little they can do about. Others spend their time rushing to try and treat the symptoms of the problem. Getting to the root of the issue is difficult because it means going against the grain of society by adopting a world view that is incompatible with the majority of people. More importantly, it means embracing facts that are so alarming it create a lot of emotional pain.

I believe the truth matters because lies have consequences so severe the consequences of ignoring reality are more dangerous than confronting it. You cannot hide from reality. If lies are allowed to fester, they will permeate and eventually find you. Lies will make you sick, your children sick, and your community sick. Truth is vital for healing.

Predators Rule The World

I’ve been trying to understand the core of the problem for a while and the best I have come up with is that predators rule the world. As a moral person, it is hard to understand the motivations of a predator who has no moral scruples and seeks power at any means necessary. To many people, perpetrating a cold blooded murder is unthinkable, but to the predator, it is just a. part of daily life. We often hear about criminal organizations and the horrific things that they do to each other and civilians, but the broader society overlooks the largest criminal organizations, governments.

The scale at which governments perpetrate crimes against humanity is unfathomable, and there are a few ways that normal individuals justify them. I won’t go into the breakdown of the anatomy of the state because Murray Rothbard has already broken it down masterfully and you can check out the audiobook in the following YouTube Video.

Normal people play mental gymnastics in order to justify their cooperation and compliance to tyrants because it is incredibly dangerous to confront them, and they want nice things. This is what the social contract actually is.

We are dealing with the consequences of living in a society that has been detached from reality for a very long time. They have accepted blatant lies. They at least to some level know they have been lied to, yet they choose to do nothing. This is because they either feel the costs of action are too high, or that in doing something they will lose the good things they have. This mentality has lead to and will lead to catastrophe. It’s difficult when confronted with evil to know what the correct course to take is, but inaction and apathy is obviously not the correct course of action.

Some Indisputable Examples of Lies: -Motivation for Iraq War and other wars

-Politicians and business leaders involvements with Jeffrey Epstein

-Central banking and inflation

-Justifications for central planning

-How taxes are used (black budget and other fraud)

-Origins of Covid19

-Mass Surveillance on US Citizens

-Covid19 Response (2 weeks to stop spread, Vaccines safe and effective)

I believe in order to be a healthy individual, you have to have some awareness of who your friends and enemies are. You have to have a basic understanding of the forces at work in world. You have to acknowledge the existence and depths of evil. We may never conclusively know the truth about any of the above, but if you moderately pay attention, it is clear to see the lies. The world is ran by war criminals, financial criminals, and pedophiles. They gaslight the general population to believe that they have to play by made up rules created by decree and subscribe to the system which protects the predators at the helm.

The predators come to agreements with each other via mutually assured destruction in order to preserve order, allowing the population to have some prosperity and the population accepts being ruled by predators because they want the newest iPhone. We are living in a time where the predators became way too overzealous and things are falling a part as a result. The population is losing their minds because it is harder to get nice things in exchange for compliance. They are struggling to realize that their compliance was actually more dangerous than courage, intellectual honesty, and facing inconvenient realities.

Consequences of Lies

The consequences of lies are horrific. All of us have been impacted in some way or another. Our society is sick and unless you are very intentional, it will make you sick as well. The food is trash, the culture is trash, the education is trash, and many people’s views of themselves is trash. There is a widespread issue of a general lack of self worth and self respect. Childhood suicide rates are rising. CDC website:https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html

Individuals are quick to oversimplify the issue and blame things like social media for being the problem. What is actually happening is very sophisticated and complicated. Children are facing adverse experiences (death of parents, sexual abuse, violence, etc), and instead of having a society capable of helping them understand these difficulties, they are fed into incredibly unhelpful institutions that in many ways normalize the problems. Why are traumatized children being given pills? Is the problem a chemical imbalance in their brains or is it the fact they faced something incredibly difficult?

One of the premiere books on trauma titled, “The Body Keeps the Score,” outlines how the professional community has faced difficulties when attempting to create guidelines on how to identify and treat trauma. The author describes how the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistic Manual), is missing some very clear diagnosis’ around trauma. The DSM is used almost universally to diagnosis and treat mental disorders. There are some conclusions that could be made which is that the predators running society are intentionally preventing a real discussion on how to heal. The incentives are clear. Predators do not want to empower their prey. In doing some research on the subject I found some alarming statistics which should make my case a bit more compelling.

Stats on Foster Care One study (“Girls in Foster Care: A Vulnerable and High-Risk Group”) found 81% of girls in foster care reported having been sexually abused at some point.PubMed

• In that same group, 68% had been abused by more than one individual.
• Mental health challenges: Up to 80% of children in foster care struggle with significant mental health issues, compared to 18-22% in the general population
• A 2025 prospective study found that nearly 30% of foster care youth had been incarcerated in young adulthood; by age 20, lifetime incarceration rates were 42%.ScienceDirect
• According to a working paper, close to one-fifth of the U.S. prison population are former foster children.NBER
• Some sources (e.g. the National Foster Youth Institute) state that 50% of the homeless population across the U.S. have spent time in foster care.The Annie E. Casey Foundation+2THE RIGHTWAY FOUNDATION+

These numbers are astounding and should be shocking, yet they are often never discussed. Individuals scream about the homelessness problem sweeping the country and the prescribes solutions never address the actual problem. Housing is expensive because the money is broken and people have mental health/substance abuse problems because they are being traumatized. The trauma is being ignored and normalized. Treatments are being prevented.

The consequences are clear. Trauma is wielded as a weapon to attack individual’s identities, break them down to be compliant, and prevent critical thinking. Younger people are anxious, committing suicide, and feeling hopeless. The financial system is breaking down and the predators are looting everyone they can because they are the only ones that actually understand how the game is being played. The consequences of accepting lies is devastating and will only continue to become more devastating if allowed to continue with it.

How to deal with it all?

This is a hard question to answer because everyone’s situation is different. If you are moral person, it is impossible to look around and not see that something is clearly wrong. The awareness of the problem is the first step in healing. I don’t know if it’s productive to try and directly confront all the predators in a direct confrontation because it’s dangerous but there are definitely circumstances where it is warranted.

Ultimately though, I believe one of the most productive ways to deal with it all is to do things in your own self interest. Be aware, use your brain and work to protect yourself as well as the people you love. Pursue a spiritual path and strive to find a sense of meaning and purpose in the things you do. Be very cognizant of the people you spend time with, their motivations and values. Work on things that matter to you.

One of the greatest lies people tell themselves is that, “This is only hurting me.” I don’t believe that we ever get to the point of being fully healed, but we can work through a lot of things that hold us back from connecting with others. This is why abuse is so horrible. People carry the impact of it with them their whole lives. When you decide to take on the process of healing, you become an example to others. Every interaction you have is informed by your experience. One of the things that makes it difficult for individuals to find hope is a lack of context in how things can be different.

In my own process of healing, I have found that I am capable of things that I previously had never thought was possible. Having a sense of confidence, conviction, and appreciation for who I am has radically changed my life for the better. I have been able to communicate, create, and connect like never before.

If horrible things have been done to you, you have the opportunity to not perpetuate them on others. You have the opportunity to break cycles of abuse. You have the opportunity to empathize with individuals who haven’t received empathy. Be kind to yourself because the way you treat yourself ultimately will inform the way you treat others.

I’m writing this not because I believe that everything is hopeless and we should all be black pilled. I am writing this because looking at the world this way has actually helped me a tremendous amount. When I realized that I wasn’t the problem and it was the sick society constantly attacking me, I actually began making some significant progress.

I don’t believe that humanity will ever eradicate evil and that we must learn how to live understanding how sinister people are but I do believe that you can live a fulfilled life by rejecting lies. There is hope for the future as long as there are people who are willing to reject living by lies.

The Bitcoin subculture is dying. It was always destined to die. If Bitcoin were to become a relevant and dominant global currency, it meant that it would inevitably morph into the mainstream culture. The idea that it would somehow  fix mainstream culture is rather silly and naive. We find ourselves facing a tremendous amount of conflict because those who follow mainstream culture are unwilling or incapable of coming to grips with reality. The expectation that they would have their minds changed by Bitcoin podcasters, books outlining the history of money, and influencers wielding ref links is silly.

That doesn’t mean that the Bitcoin subculture has not had an impact on larger society. It doesn’t mean that all the energy and excitement around Bitcoin was a waste of energy. But in the larger conversation, the cypherpunk ideals that many of us strongly believe in, will likely never be adopted by the masses. That is because the masses do not value self respect, thinking for themselves, and human dignity. Many of them have been sold the promise of convenience, comfort, and safety.

Most revolutionary movements are based on a collectivist set of ideals which are destined to fail. Michael Malice outlines this in masterful detail in his book, The White Pill. The book details the history of how idealists, such as Emma Goldman, aligned with the Bolsheviks in order to topple the Tzar, only to find that they had helped enable a monster to take power that was a thousand times worse than the system they had fought to replace.

In the west, the history of the Bolshevik revolution is rather fuzzy for some reason. Not only does the majority of historical discussion fail to mention the absolute carnage wrought by the Soviets, but it also fails to mention the good intentioned idealists who aligned with the Bolsheviks during the revolution.

The Krondstadt rebellion of 1921 is the perfect example of this. (link for context ) Russian sailors who had fought on the side of the Red army, for the ideals of empowering the working man, staged a protest as they saw the writing on the wall. They demanded elections, a restoration of civil rights, and more representation from other groups such as the anarchists and socialists in government. The Soviet’s response to their protest was to slaughter them with artillery.

What started as a revolution based on the ideals of equality for the worker, turned into one of the most oppressive and tyrannical forms of human organization ever created. This story is an important one for dissident groups to understand for multiple reasons. The first is the danger of disrupting existing power structures as the new one replacing it could and often does turn out to be significantly more destructive. The second is that no tyrannical power structure can last indefinitely because the human spirit cannot withstand it.

To be successful as a revolutionary, you have to be ruthless, which many of us aren’t. I’ll speak for myself here. I am not a murderer. I am not willing to kill in order to further my political aspirations. I am not willing to lie, cheat, and steal in order to conquer others. I am appalled by those who do these things and work to build my life in a way where I work as little with individuals like that as possible. If you are like me, that puts us at a serious disadvantage compared to those whose goal is to conquer the masses into believing our world view. I am not a pacifist and am willing to kill in self defense. I hope that never happens, but that is different than the belligerents who actively go on the attack in order to accomplish their goals.

Framing things in the terms of revolution is not helpful for peaceful and sane individuals. Many of us may become revolutionaries if the circumstances get dangerous enough though. I would argue that we are not there yet, though we still do live under many forms of tyranny. We may not be revolutionaries, yet find ourselves in conflict with mainstream culture, the institutions that dominate it, and often the state. There is something innate with us that cannot comply with the societal norms being force fed down our throats. We want to produce things of value, not focus on the nuances of microaggressions. We want to build a legacy, not focus on the intracies of compliance.

The idea of a revolution has been made to be seen as sexy in pop culture but the reality is that a real revolution requires the individuals participating in it to often to go to places as dark and depraved as the people they are fighting against. There is a likely chance of not living to see the end of it and facing immense amounts of danger. What many people opt in for instead are social movements larping as being a revolution because it’s safe. It can be cathartic to larp with others who are also frustrated with what’s going. But larping will likely do very little to change anything, as we are watching happen now with a good portion of the ecosystem interacting with Bitcoin.

Public perception is a mirage that is constantly getting manipulated by individuals who have incentives to try and lead the public in a certain direction. That is why it is important to mostly discard what the masses think. Much of their opinions are informed by news anchors, journalists, writers, statist pundits and philosophers who spew nonsensical garbage meant to elicit some sort of behavioral change. Whether it is to vote a certain way, behave a certain way, or purchase a product, most of the information presented to people by propagandists is not meant to empower the individual.

In today’s world, it is not a revolutionary action to join a social movement, use a certain technology, hate the shitcoins, run a bitaxe, buy a hardware wallet, or lobby a politician. Unless you have been able to achieve meaningful progress in your life for the better, becoming more confident in yourself and your abilities, you have not made any progress. The most effective thing you can do to create positive change in your life and the world around you to utilize your own brain. That action may lead you to buying a hardware wallet, but it is important to understand the order of operations here.

“Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.”

-Ayn Rand

To fix the symptoms, you have to first understand the malady. There has been a social movement that was created on the premise that if we “Fix the money, we will fix the world.” Now we watch as many of the podcasters, conference speakers, and authors that preached this concept to us are beginning to marry the establishment that they once railed against. Bitcoin is being adopted by governments and politicians. It is being accepted by the banks, by the biggest corporations in the world and it seems to be fixing very little. Privacy abuses by governments and corporations are only increasing. Taxation continues to be just as sinister as ever. Market manipulation due to central planning appears to only be accelerating. The social movement that appeared to have the most chance at disrupting all of this appears to be disappearing and morphing into the system that many of us had fought to replace.

If there is any chance that Bitcoin will have a positive impact on the world, it is not strictly because of it’s innate qualities. For Bitcoin to have a positive impact on the world, it must work to empower individuals with decency and self respect. Those individuals need to be active participants in their own lives, thinking critically about what is truly best for them and utilizing Bitcoin as a vehicle in order to be able to pursue the things they value.

My philosophy is that tyranny is impossible when individuals value themselves enough to use their own minds and are willing to fight to protect the right to do so. Bitcoin is an interesting technology because in many ways, it enables the ability to do that. The sad reality is that tyranny exists because the majority of people in our society do not value their minds. They value safety, compliance, and comfort. The choice of safety over thinking is why we are facing hard times and it will likely only get harder.

It can be discouraging when you look at the world around you. You see problems that seem self evident, but your peers fail to understand either due to ignorance or apathy. You may feel isolated and alone and likely will continue to as long as your have the belief that your duty is to change others minds. The information industrial complex wants people to focus entirely on things that they have no power over. The TV attempts to get people upset at everything outside of what is in their immediate control. Change fails to happen because individuals are so hyper focused on everything except for themselves.

You have the opportunity to change yourself despite what everyone around you is doing. Just because the general society is sick and has low self esteem does not mean that you also have to. When you change yourself and live with self respect, you become an example for others. So much of our culture is dominated by hollow influencers trying to influence how people think. They are often either blatantly full of shit, or exposed as being charlatans eventually. The goal of personal growth should not be for the purpose of trying to change other people or changing the world. It should be because you actually value yourself.

To think for yourself in modern society is a revolutionary act. It can be difficult and in many ways dangerous. Freedom is never safe. As we watch the Bitcoin subculture shift and morph into pop culture, it does not mean that we have to shift and morph with it. We will find each other and together we will build the world that we want to pass down to our children.

The Rust Belt, formerly known as “America’s Industrial Heartland,” reaches as far west as Milwaukee and Davenport, the western expanse carved by The Mississippi River’s mighty banks and the farm belt’s borders, the southern rust belt extends down the Mississippi to Evansville Indiana, and Owensboro, Kentucky. Travel east up the Ohio River to the gateway of the West, Pittsburgh at one time the largest manufacturer of steel in the world. Journey northeast up the Allegheny River and the western slopes of the Appalachians to New York State and the once great cities of Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. Made powerful first as a port for Mid-West food via the Erie Canal to eastern destinations and beyond, and then an epicenter for manufacturing, spurred by cheap and abundant energy from Niagara Falls.

The Rust Belt is an area in the United States that is known for its manufacturing and industrial heritage. The reasons the rust belt grew to be the economic powerhouse were first agriculture, but then a manufacturing and industry-based economy due to its abundant natural resources like coal, iron ore, and freshwater fed by the Great Lakes. Land that yielded its natural resources through toil and sacrifice. The rust belt is not isolated to the United States, our Canadian brothers enjoyed the same economic prosperity from its proximity to the freshwater of the Great Lakes, abundant natural resources, and a productive labor force. The northern banks of the great lakes create the rust belt’s true northern boundaries. You know the names of its other great cities. Chicago, Detroit, Windsor, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toronto.

The Decline

The Rust Belt’s decline began in the 1970s (WTF1971), but in some areas, earlier. A not uncommon story for western industrial powerhouses like the UK’s Industrial North, the Lusatia Region of Germany and Poland, Ostrava in the Czech Republic, Charleroi in Belgium, and many others; foreign competition, environmental regulations, and cost of labor along with Central Bank monetary manipulation, contributed to the decline of the areas. We could deep dive into the specifics of the decline, but at this point, no sense crying over spilled milk, what’s done is done. The factories have long since shuddered. The mines closed and abandoned. Once thriving and vibrant neighborhoods are now miles upon miles of urban blight. Filled with wretched social welfare pariahs who know no other way and have few options available to them to egress.

Small towns and communities that served as spokes of their greater urban hub are in sometimes worse shape than their large city counterparts. Further removed from the socialist money printer; they are down the rungs of the Cantillon ladder. If not for the fact that they have a post office and a nearly abandoned city center, there may be no reason for them to exist at all. Now they tout a bygone era of manufacturing heritage, the most they have to show for it, is a mediocre public school, a mass transit system that can whisk them away to a dilapidated city park, and a senior citizen community center. Their more educated, young, and mobile populace moving to warmer climes or areas with greater opportunities.

We don’t mind being referred to as the Rust Belt; hardly a pejorative, we wear it as a tarnished badge of honor, we are the Remnant. We have felt the loss of population, employment, and industry for the past 40-50 years, long before anyone felt the pain of the 2008 collapse. We know the pain of corporate greed, corrupt government, and a debased monetary system. Our region and the collective soul of all declining industrial regions gained wealth and success by being close to the source of production, innovation, and natural resources rather than the printing press. Our proof of work was in the vehicles you drove, the products that made modern life possible, and the food you ate. Proof-of-work is brought forth by creative tinkerers, farmers, entrepreneurs, machinists, chemists, and engineers. That spirit of hard work and innovation is still here, imbued in the steel and concrete. A spirit ground into the land as the Mississippi and Ohio rivers have carved the Rust Belt’s borders. That spirit of innovation, much like the Spirit of St. Louis is ready to fly high once again.

Empty Promises

A Rust Belt Renaissance has been proposed by every pandering politician from every frequency of the political spectrum. From corporate interests to populist presidential candidates, from grifter community organizers, and heads of organized labor. Right Wing Warhawks with the promise of weapons manufacturing. Left-wing communists offer the promise of a green utopia, yielding the saccharine fruit of “good jobs”. All grifters, panhandlers in suits. Platitude upon platitude, empty promise after empty promise, and a populace who continues to chase after the carrot of restoration, hopeful to win back the honor their blue-collar forebears earned.

We hear less often from real entrepreneurs who want to produce an actual good or service. When those entrepreneurs and innovators attempt to set up shop in the Rust Belt, they are met at the door by those same grifters. High tax and regulatory environments stifle innovation and chase capital and investment to where it’s treated best. Too many mouths to feed and not enough hands that work or have the skill or willingness to do so. I can tell you what’s been tried over the past 30 – 40 years with mixed results. Redevelopment authorities, community outreach, entrepreneurial grants, publicly funded parks, and transit systems, billions wasted with no recourse. Program after program, like Green Energy investment/initiatives and blighted community grants. Revitalization and rejuvenation. Constant vacuous claptrap like, “let’s build a park”, “we need more greenspaces”, “our educated youth are leaving, why”, and “let’s fund a study”. “What about our schools and Universities”? “We need infrastructure investment.” “We need more public transit.” I’m sorry, slews of young people with social justice degrees utilizing free public transit run on subsidized, inefficient green energy to transport them to their gigs as social workers and community organizers aren’t going to solve the problem.

That’s a lot of doom and sarcasm, eh? I understand, pardon me for coming off that way, consider the source. I’ve lived and worked in some of the most blighted, downtrodden neighborhoods and communities in the country. I am quite hopeful for the Rust Belt, as I am for all former industrial regions like the Industrial North in the U.K., Lusatia in Germany and Poland, and Ostrava, Czech Republic. How so? Because the same characteristics that enabled these regions to become powerhouses of industry and innovation can help restore them to their former glory and beyond. We can use those characteristics of fertile soil, abundant fresh water, a temperate climate, and plentiful natural resources. These elements can be utilized to their fullest potential through Bitcoin mining and regenerative agriculture to empower sovereign families and enable human flourishing.

8 Forms of Capital

I have dreamt about an economic and cultural revolution in this area all my life. My family is guilty of abandoning the Rust Belt for the Sunbelt, having left in the 80s, but something called me back. I’m not alone in that. My friend @HodlRev left his home in Michigan for some California dreamin’, he returned as well. He is a Bitcoiner and Regenerative/Permaculture farmer here in the Rust Belt. You’ll hear more from him during #PlebMinerMonth. I bring him up not only because I think his way of farming will heal the earth and provide its inhabitants with a better existence, but because he recently introduced me to the permaculture theory of, The 8 Forms of Capital. The eight from of capital are Social, Material, Financial, Living, Cultural, Experiential, Intellectual, and perhaps most importantly, Spiritual Capital.

Social Capital is the ability to wield influence and utilize a lifetime’s worth of connections and relations. Material Capital is raw and processed resources like stone, metal, timber, and fossil fuels used to create more sophisticated materials or structures. These can be turned into more complex forms of material capital like buildings, bridges, and other infrastructure and tools. Financial Capital, that’s easy, Bitcoin. Living Capital is made up of the animals, plants, water, and soil of our land. The life on this planet. Cultural Capital is a community of people who share the internal and external processes of their community. Their shared culture, their art, songs, and traditions. Experiential or Human Capital can be described as a graduate degree from the “School of Hard Knocks”. A human, family, or community’s lifetime of real-world education and experience is put to work. Intellectual Capital is your knowledge asset obtained through intentional study and research. Spiritual Capital is derived from those who practice their religion, spirituality, or other means of connection to a higher power. Rights are not granted by man to rule man, but rights are divine.

Mining the 8 forms of capital

This article is part of #PlebMinerMonth, a month of pods, articles, and resources to honor small-scale Bitcoin miners and encourage more Bitcoiners to become one. I recently drove to a thriving small Rust-Belt town to record with another Pleb Miner, @BingBong_BTC. On the drive to his home, I listened to a documentary on his hometown. You’ve never heard of it, but you may know a town just like it. It still has that community feel, they have an identity, and they have a shared culture, heritage, and history. They founded the community using the 8 forms of capital principle whether they knew it or not and still maintain the spirit. It all came together for me as I was driving to talk to BingBong and see his home mining setup and get a better understanding of who he is. The 8 Forms of Capital, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Mining, permaculture, regenerative agriculture. The Bitcoin ethos, building Pleb relationships, and low-time preference behaviors are all guiding us back on the path of healthy communities and therefore healthy regions. That’s it! That’s the solution to the woes of the Rustbelt and every other downtrodden manufacturing region.

Bitcoin, no not just the technology or the tool that is sound money, but the rabbit holes you jump down when you open yourself to its principles. We don’t need a centrally planned solution, we as Plebs are the solution. The farm that @HodlRev has built and his surrounding Bitcoin network that he sells maple syrup, meat, and vegetables to for Sats. BingBong and his HashHut, heating his home during the long cold winters, are an example to his community of how mining is not wasteful by nature, but regenerative. Moses (@urningushem) in Canada, working, designing, and proselytizing his dream to give the native tribes of Canada the ability to be sovereign by empowering them with Azolla and Bitcoin mining. The Rust Belt Renaissance is here, it exists in every Pleb that inhabits the area. The solution is the Plebs; working, building, and sacrificing. Mining not only Bitcoin but the 8 forms of capital and applying the lessons we learn as Bitcoin Plebs.

Hardwoods and Hard Money:A Vision for Forestry on The Bitcoin Standard

“A society grows great when old men plant treeswhose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

— Ancient Greek Proverb

Bitcoiners and land owners are pioneers, problem solvers, and thus natural allies. They are both subject to the stresses of a hostile and swiftly changing environment. Each is deeply concerned with the creeping limitations set on their individual freedom and autonomy, undermining their efforts and threatening their way of life. They are each the other’s equal across the digital and physical realm.

From my dual vantage point, I find myself fascinated and bemused with how one could possibly perceive the other as inferior or irrelevant, and not as they obviously are: two columns of the same arch, supporting as the connected whole, a bridge to lasting sovereignty. An expert in either field who cannot appreciate the relevance of the other, reveals a limited set of beliefs.

As there are no solutions to broken money from even the best example of a cattle ranch or forestry operation that still uses paper notes in trade, nor will there be resilient physical supply chains emerging from a developer’s studio that is supplied by a supermarket chain. I believe that to be detached from either “satoshi’s” or soil makes genuine autonomy a Sisyphean task.

I take heart in the early signs of cooperation between the early few, who acknowledge their inalterable mutual dependancy on one another, but a wide gap remains and it needs to close quickly. Their purpose and ambitions must be as one, as they cannot hope to thrive without one other.

In financial theory, the solution to uncertainty is said to be “long volatility”. For those unfamiliar with this term, it is – simplified – the buying of broad forms of insurance that generally benefit from a very wide range of unknown outcomes.

I see this governing concept of “positive exposure to future uncertainty” represented equally well in the Bitcoin and Homesteading/Ranching movements.. Both are “long volatility” professions, and owners of either are by default, masters of risk management in their own spheres.

In times of rapid change, in money and nature, it will always be the most adaptable that survive. Today, it has never been truer.

Here’s where I see the comparisons and overlaps in more detail, and how I plan to adopt the core tenets of Bitcoin on my own forest or further afield:

Decentralisation

Bitcoin holds most highly, the principle of decentralisation and it is embedded in the basic design. Operating as a decentralised ledger of independent nodes, means that no single entity has control over the entire network. Each node has the choice of what transactions it validates and which it doesn’t. This removes trust and adverse consequences of trusting, which eliminates single points of failure in the network as a whole.

Similarly, permaculture and silviculture represent a move away from the outsourced, trust based systems of agriculture and arboriculture, insourcing more of its dependent functions and input requirements at the lower expense of efficiency and short term growth.

On the land, this strategy focusses primarily and most obviously in a broader diversity of life. Once implemented, it requires lighter ongoing maintenance . Wildlife supports itself relatively autonomously, and is more balanced. Therefore is more adaptable to general pressure and change than industrial scale forest or farm management practices which assume greater certainty of the future, and are thus inherently “short volatility” and fragile.

A reduced requirement for specialised machinery in day to day operations means that expensive assets such as timber handling equipment built around a single function done efficiently at scale, can be rotated into smaller, versatile tools with broader uses and lower outputs.

Neighbouring estates (or nodes) stand ready to collaborate for any remaining specialised tasks, as Bitcoin does, in second layers of functionality built on top of the base, limiting the need to specialise at estate-level, for a tolerable and beneficial tradeoffs in trust and absolute ownership.

Use of log splitters, mobile sawmills, plant, and machinery could be negotiated for between smaller communities. For a small amount of joint-venture, this both allows individual holdings to go further down the value chain from their core products, adding value and variety and reduced cost in what they can do themselves or offer to the market, and by sharing their inventory, mitigate the outlay of their exclusive use. The same can be equally said of specialised skills and knowledge.

This fortified land network concept has been been coined “Meshtadels” and is already taking place, though still in its nascency.

The principle of diversification can be expanded further still. Land use can often be broadened further from its previously assumed single use. Silvicultural operations may still produce timber, and derivative materials, but also can produce food, water and even provide amenity incomes from such things as activities, events and hosting tourists, generating yet another flexible revenue stream, without relying solely on one.

In any system where single points of failure are removed, central governments and similar monopolies are denied their ability to coerce by means of structural dependency, and must fall back to tactics of direct enforcement. Being expensive, ineffective at scale and vastly more unpopular, this is not likely to last long if at all, and the likely outcome is reduced government influence and the greater freedom will inevitably follow.

Self Sovereignty

Building on these benefits of decentralisation, Bitcoin users enjoy absolute control over their funds, with neither the requirement for, or the permission of, intermediaries like banks and institutions. This is the essence of sovereignty.

Bitcoin doesn’t need permission to exist and cannot be pushed over with physical force. Landowners could do well to adopt this general approach. Resilient systems are harder to attack and to the degree that land is defensible and independent – it is sovereign.

It’s unlikely that land owners will achieve in the physical world, the level of sovereignty that Bitcoin achieves in cyberspace. In that abstract environment, the mathematical laws of cryptography rule, but the physical world remains inherently subject to the laws of violence.

Presently, ignorant public views prevail and clumsy, heavy handed laws persist both communities. While this currently restricts many of the possibilities and uses, regardless of any present trends, land owners and bitcoiners both stand to benefit from the broad changes that diminished central authority will inevitably lead to. And crucially, each cannot do so well in its own sphere that it makes the other redundant.

For as long as Bitcoiners exist in the physical world, they are subject to the laws of nature, even if their money is not. It is from this simple deduction, that Bitcoiners will never be able to completely abdicate their responsibilities of sovereignty to their money alone, and must attend seriously to where they live and how they sustain their mortal life.

You can’t live in a Bitcoin, and you can’t eat sats. Act accordingly. Exist within a productive citadel, supporting a Layer 2 Meshtadel – it will consolidate and compliment your sovereign digital wealth by keeping you safe through any future volatility, in a way your Bitcoin alone cannot.

Low time preference

Such system transformations do not often happen overnight, and where they do, we can never predict when with accuracy, and so it is only people who can appreciate the potential for substantial long term rewards that are drawn to Bitcoin or sustainable land management practices. In both cases, our time and near-term consumption are deferred into a growing and durable long-term value, and short-term risks are borne along the way, and counted as part of the process.

In my forest, having laboriously cleared the land of overstood conifers, I intend to restock in native hardwoods of better quality and value, otherwise made unattractive by their slower rates of growth and lower short term incomes. Despite the aforementioned benefits, planting in such a manner in today’s market actually reduces the near term value of the land, giving you a discouraging heuristic of wider investor sentiment and time horizons.

Under an ambitious end goal that supports your personal values, the ups and downs in the short run are acceptable. Pain becomes easy to bear. Bitcoiners care no more about short price fluctuations, or technical challenges, than the falling of tree across the road, or a tractor breakdown matters to me. It is nothing under the broader upward progress of the forest. Some days we catch fish, some days we mend the nets. For myself, the incentives offered by hard money flow naturally into the wish to establish hardwoods, or invest in deep, rich soil by equivalently motivated permaculturalists.

While an old man might not expect to sit in the shade of an oak they plant, as someone slightly younger, I do hope to see with my own eyes the early maturity of my forest, but not for a very long time, and that’s okay. Bitcoiners and naturalists both know that good things take time.

Then it is no coincidence that both communities feel deeply about passing down generational wealth and know-how, as a moral obligation to their children and grandchildren. On this point alone – they surely have much to discuss.

Striving for these long term goals mean we realise the importance of health, gain a greater appreciation of life, and an acceptance of death. If immortality is the concept of low time preference taken to its furthest limit, then it logically follows that those striving for results falling far outside of our natural lifespan, are definitionally on a Godly path.

Few may understand that this is hardly cheap altruism. Our real reward is to live forever in the fruits our noble deeds, and through our heirs and beneficiaries who start their life’s journey step closer to God than we did.

Proof of Work

Both Bitcoin and ranching/homesteading are rooted in the ethos and reality of hard work. The rules of the Bitcoin network make low energy attacks expensive and futile. Land is arguably harder to defend, but when the value of the output is inseparably connected to the work required to produce it, fewer people are interested in attempting to steal. This concept is what makes both hard to attack.

I often scoff at the notion that my land is captured – what thief would do what I must as the owner? Best of luck! Like Ellis Wyatt in Atlas Shrugged I say – “Take it – it’s yours”, just as Bitcoiners invite anyone to spend their energy fighting against the ‘Proof of Work’ design. It’s always easier to spend that energy obeying its rules than fighting them. So no-one does.

Relentless and Radical Innovation

In both permaculture and Bitcoin, being unafraid of positive change is another shared value. These communities exhibit a general openness to innovation that makes possible what wasn’t before, because they have no privileged position to protect, in how things are currently done.

This is not only a general principle, but a rare example of where the impact of Bitcoin can directly benefit land owners. I think of two small examples: waste methane produced on farming operations being used to generate power that directly serves Bitcoin miners, and in forestry, the use of waste wood in a pyrolysis system to do the same. The latter producing the additional side product of biochar as a marketable product, or better still, for use on the land to accelerate high quality soil structures. So you see, you can be a Bitcoiner and a land owner in the same task!

In other areas, technological innovations stand to benefit independent land ownership. Responsible use of AI to produce better analysis for decisions, or in emergencies to provide medical advice, or even just limit the costs of the administrative aspects of land ownership. In Bitcoin, mainly to ship projects faster and more efficiently.

Satellite internet systems stand to disinter-mediate many of the advantages of city life. Once remote places have the same scale and speed of communications, and yet another reason to take to rural life.

Lastly, NOSTR, a new decentralised communications protocol is now doing to information what Bitcoin has done in money: make it un-censorable. For landowners, decentralised public squares will become available, and most exciting: marketplaces with no middleman between you and your customer.

Limited Supply

Yet another example of a shared concept that landowners and bitcoiners can both intuitively understand is that of having limited supply. As with decentralisation and sovereignty, Bitcoin has captured the aspect of fixed supply totally in mathematics, where land is scarce but to a lesser extent.

At the time of writing, 19,527,443 of a total 21,000,000 have already been mined. And while it is true in general that most land has already fallen into the custody of someone, I’d rather consider the relative value of productive land to that of all other land, as being in an earlier stage of realising it’s true value, and in a similar position to Bitcoin in this respect. As both become more appreciated for their fundamental properties, its logically follows that fewer units of supply will become available over time.

Both appear to me as showing the same reward profile, that is to say producing lower ongoing yields than their fiat alternatives, but a vastly higher potential for increased capital appreciation and utility over time. Where land falls short in the absolute supply, it makes up for in producing stable income and produce. The combination of both under one owner creates a sovereign.

The third and final aspect of limited supply is of course our time on earth as human beings. Understanding that our time is valuable and scarce, it is no surprise to me that neither community cares much for procrastination or waste under the limited supply of life, land and hard money.

Community

I see healthy levels of voluntary cooperation, under an umbrella of mutually beneficial competitiveness in both my roles as a Bitcoiner, and land owner. Charity/voluntary work is active, and is focussed on more specific and manageable problems, with clear objectives, having a closer relevance and benefit to the donor in both spaces. Bitcoiners are well know to fund community projects, and provide funding and support for work that is to the general good of all on the network. I see much of the the same in local real-world communities.

Ranchers and homesteaders often rely more on community networks, sharing knowledge about sustainable practices, livestock care, and crop cultivation. Innovations are broadly adopted. Mistakes are collectively learned from. What is good for your neighbour is good for you – so it is amongst Bitcoiners and their projects. The networks grow in strength and value through good faith participation with fewer incentives to extort or show bad faith.

As a result, both also enjoy the increased value of personal integrity and reputation. While these 2 communities still show limited aspects of the same bad behaviour made normalised and institutionalised in the wider world, the effects of social shame and boycott are amplified in both of these tight-knit and connected spaces. There is simply less room for grift and stupidity. The requirement for prisons and courtroom processes, albeit still required, are often reduced or mitigated.

Personal Growth and Meaning

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

“You don’t change Bitcoin - Bitcoin changes you” AnonThere are personal and spiritual benefits to managing your own ecosystem, as there are from owning your own money. If you think starting a modest vegetable patch is satisfying, or a walk in a National Park, imagine what doing that at scale in a way that pays for itself must feel like. A diverse land strategy requires more varied job tasks and breadth of function than has become typical – this makes for a more enjoyable and interesting working day.

The physical benefits of outdoor life cannot be understated. Closed environments are inherently unhealthy, sitting in a crouched position for large parts of the day are very unhealthy, shortened hamstrings, weakened spines and feet, all while breathing recirculated air. It’s funny that Bitcoiners, who could be considered unhealthy laptop dwelling nerds (and some are!) and outdoorsmen would have an unknown connection over unprocessed food or the magic of sunlight as it relates to health and happiness.

So returning to meaning and purpose – happier, healthier, purposeful people make better decisions and are better people overall. I hope and pray if more widely adopted, we would see a reverse of the skyrocketing suicide rates and other ‘life sicknesses’ of the globalist economy and the spiritually anaemic existence it offers.

Lastly, and possibly too briefly, in matters of education, children living in a productive environment clearly benefit from that which goes on around them. Typically, education is more flexible and relevant. Like a higher order form of survival skills. Passing on more than money, but a durable means to exist in peace and happiness. This is something I know that Bitcoiners with families are interested in deeply, especially as the schools systems offer less and less. Perhaps being a landowner would assist such families in their broader aims?

Concluding thoughts

History may well come to judge the Baby Boomer generation as morally corrupt (collectively), but ultimately that point of view, compelling as it is, is self defeating and perilous to become lost in, like a Dark Wood of Error.

Just as my forestry contractor focussed solely on the immediate urgency and problems of the conifer forest, we as a society are hyper-focussed on the problems of a late stage debt backed system, often at the expense of appreciating the opportunity it presents for the long term future.

You can’t measure the value of a broadleaf woodland using the criteria of a softwood monocrop, anymore than you can value the potential of a Bitcoin economy from the limited perspective of a fiat worldview. What starts off as a narrow attempt to draw strained parallels between apparently unique and distinct scenarios, zooms out into a coherent and unifying governing principle for ALL scenarios.

Mathematics is the language of Bitcoin >Bitcoin is the language of Economics >Economics is the language of Resource Allocation >Resource Allocation is the language of Land Ownership.

They are neither separate from one another, nor exclusively able to offer true sovereignty to the individual who seeks it from one or the other.

In a derelict forest, or a misallocated economy, all matters dissolve into a simple principle of risk management. Focus must switch away from the desperation of the immediate scene, and who’s fault it is, and focus instead on a strategy of responsibly managing the risk you hold and can’t pass off. Any c**t can be right. It takes a sovereign man to turn the situation to his advantage and produce a better result.

Be critical of collective decisions, and hold the group collectively responsible. But hold no one individual responsible. A reader of a certain age taking personal and direct insult from my real-life observations about collective behaviour is surely immune to irony. However, as a generation, you screwed up and though you may never see the result of it, your kids certainly already are – and they may not be up to the task.

We may live in the late stages of a dying system, poorly and arrogantly defined from the beginning, destined to fail, with risk and wealth hanging at once invitingly and precipitously over our heads. I choose to see though the immediate problem, acknowledging that the end of one cycle is no less the start of another, and recognise the vast opportunity of what follows with direct intervention and a serving attitude.

Landowners and Bitcoiners stand to gain in whatever volatility lies ahead. My belief is that only those with an understanding and connection to both spheres can achieve true sovereignty in our lifetimes. Monetary security is nothing without physical safety, to ignore either is to be dependant, and to be dependent is folly. Hardwoods and hard money for the win.

I hope my own small article will help ‘close the canopy’ between these otherwise separate fields of interest, and not be any the weaker for spanning the gap.

May you never look at a forest (or your parents) the same again!

Very best,

Ben GunnStay humble and stack sats/saps “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.““The Road Not Taken” - by Robert Frost

Resource allocation was unnaturally skewed, so neither invested in a deep-rooted structure, being unnecessary and costly. Instead, they optimised around their numerical advantage, forming a temporary robustness, yet still engaging in subtle individual competition for a spot in the ever-rising canopy. In both wealth and woodland, it was a case of “sink or swim” for both populations.

Outliers, such as the solitary oaks standing as boundary markers amidst conifer blocks, or Baby Boomers who deployed a steadier strategy in life, found themselves quickly overshadowed and starved of sunlight or success. They withered, engulfed by the surrounding growth, exemplifying the brutal reality of inflationary natural & economic systems—pockets of limited deflation smothered by overarching capital growth.

Both the trees and the Boomers were locked in a relentless race skyward. Success, narrowly defined, was access to light or financial prosperity. Yet, this upward surge came with a hidden cost: an accumulating instability under their own weight, a liability grown too large to ignore by the time I entered the world, and entered the forest.

In these peculiar circumstances, the conifers and Boomers had adapted the only way they knew how, inflating in sync with their peers or facing isolation and decline. But beneath the single layer of prosperity, resources dwindled, and diversity suffered.

The understorey, whether of younger trees or upcoming generations, found itself in darkness, struggling for a share of what little was left. There were scarce few animals or insects. Bird populations drop. Bee populations collapse. Almost everything else is sacrificed to the unnatural, over-optimised plantation crop.Even slight laggards are strangled and die in place, almost as a warning to the others never to delay. No other roots systems stand ready to hold the soil in place. It becomes a barren and even slightly acidic substrate to anything but a large Douglas or Grand Fir. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.The more time you spend around either problem, the more the parallels between environmental and economic fragility become apparent. The dominance of a single species or generation, left unchecked, has led to a presently precarious situation.Past a certain undefined height, softwood monocrop trends towards fragility, which is to say they start to become negatively exposed to normal environmental pressures such as wind and rain. Over time, smaller and smaller pressures represent larger and larger risks to the system.Even if a small pocket of conifers are removed, the fragility of the remaining body of trees is equivalently weaker, conforming to an inverse power law. When these small open spaces emerge in a plantation or a debt based financial system, in a light storm, like the breaking phalanx structure of a Spartan infantry unit – they all at once lose their shared strength and calamitously fail on top of each other.Why? With the right combination of wet soil and high winds, neither cooperative system can support their own weight. Vast amounts of otherwise recoverable capital is lost. The cost and risk of clearing a site of already-windblown trees, vs that of an active harvesting operation while they stand in place, are simply colossal and cannot be understated. Just as a disorderly sale of distressed assets is far more damaging overall, than a managed and gradual disposal over time. Prices in nature and markets are both set at the margin.

How Things Stand and How They Fall

Whilst trees have no free will, human beings have the gift of sentience, and had this generation the wisdom and foresight to see the results of their collective behaviour in time to intervene and adopt a more sustainable and varied pattern of behaviour and wealth, we’d probably not be at the point we are today.Realise, that this is no mere metaphor. The corruption of money has led directly to the poor decisions made in my forest throughout its chain of custody, and the mess it has since developed into, as it has in our broader societal affairs. Paper money led literally to paper trees.Most other things have adapted around this fundamental distortion of money. It has diminished the landscapes of the countryside, just as it changed the fabric of our society. We see this everywhere.Both situations have culminated into an unnatural and dangerous present condition, with a shared destiny. So as debt-based currency invariably returns to it’s intrinsic value of zero – so must conifer plantations return to their original state, in one of only two ways: a clear fell harvesting operation by mortal men of steady hand, and if denied or ignored: a crescendo collapse brought about by Mother Nature.Forestry work is neither, regrettably, a simple matter of conducting an optimistic survey of the standing trees, and multiplying that unprocessed wet tonnage, by the roadside price of stacked sawlogs and concluding that you’re a multi-millionaire.Nor then Mr and Mrs Boomer, is it either, a matter of taking the inflated prices of your houses and paper assets, then multiplying it by the total volumes of both, and deciding that you can all simultaneously retire at 55 with a ‘golden pension’. Selling it into a non-existent rising market and passing the remaining burden of your healthcare and welfare rights on to your already depressed children and dysfunctional grandchildren, is a complete departure from reason.

When vast supply overwhelms minimal effective demand – prices will fall like 10 tonne firs in a light breeze (if you know of anyone who believes otherwise – I have an eight figure woodland to sell them).The apparently ‘priceless’ vertical tonnage of my own conifer stocks and the accumulated interconnected wealth of Baby Boomers are both increasingly fragile and erroneously valued. Every Baby Boomer will soon require liquidity from their stocks, bonds, and million-pound holiday homes, just to live, and are all going to hit the market in a very condensed timeframe, with predictable results.I too started off from borderline-criminal levels of ignorance in land management as the incoming custodian of my land, so it seems to be for the average investor and wider society going into the final phase of debt-based money.Until you grasp what is really going on, and realise your unavoidable personal exposure to it: day-to-day both systems look deceptively healthy. Something to preserve or even defend. But it is simply not so.“You can ignore reality – but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality”, in either structure.

Exile or Death?

“When life gives you Dougs – become a Doug dealer” – Ben Gunn, circa 2020

Reader, you might have concluded by now, as I once had to, that softwood timber, like Baby Boomer wealth, is a grievously inferior store of natural value than is widely accepted. But that also, on further reflection, it might not be completely worthless, depending on your mindset and response.

The woodland was certainly not the store of value I imagined I’d bought, anymore than tacky suburban mansions, government bonds, failing services, high taxes, and stubborn inflation are what we’d hoped to inherit. Less still, what we intend to pass on to our own children. But if left to collapse on its own, the liability will overwhelm us anyway and avoidably ruin our lives, regardless of who is ultimately at fault or to blame.

The instinct of all younger generations, which I openly share, might be to feel betrayed, even cheated by our supposed betters. That sentiment is as morally valid as it is practically irrelevant.

For better or ill – this flawed inheritance is what are being offered to us, and the offer is final and non-negotiable. Abandon all hopes of divine justice, or even passing sympathy – no-one is coming to help you, anymore than anyone ran towards my troubles and got me out of them after I met that fateful day with my smirking forestry contractor.

For those who seek to inherit, “two roads diverge in a wood”. On the one hand, there is a tempting amount of homogenous capital in our society. On the other, it is of dubious end-value and is fraught with risk and fragility. The responsibility of ownership, if abdicated, will consequentially result in systemic failure. If handled carefully, the opportunity surely presents itself to create a modest surplus to carry forward and into our own dreams for the future.

Even with total consensus and broad societal support, an organised dismantling of these forests and markets, results not in a perfect interim outcome, but a tolerable one.

The problem was in the planting of so many trees in the same place, at the same time, and letting them grow for too long, at the expense of everything else around them, on faulty assumptions. Debt and inflated assets cannot be unwound over short periods of time anymore than a tree can shrink back into the ground the way it came out in the last year of its life. All else is consequential and derivative of this first error.

The present choice left to the direct and indirect heirs of the Baby Boomer Estate is clear. If you decide cut and run, perhaps to other countries with better prospects, to live in exile, you must also leave behind the opportunity that remains, but more importantly the moral right to claim ownership of the land. To the victor comes the spoils, but first you need the victory.

We already know my personal decision was to stay and fight. But my own decision was not primarily one of principle or moral obligation. Had the conditions been any less favourable, or the fight judged at the time to be any less winnable – I may well have returned my land to the same sales listings I found it on and passed the predicament to another owner, at a large, but survivable loss.

Instead, I chose voluntarily to commit myself to the problem. I was pushed beyond my previous limits, went on to face enormous physical and financial risks, operational and legal setbacks, and huge levels of further investment.

As Elon Musk observed of running startups, most of the time you can expect to be “staring into the abyss and chewing glass”, as it was for me in long and lonely spells along my path out of Hell.

I can say in honest reflection that my decision was worth it spiritually, and to a far lesser extent, financially. A lawyer told me when I was the legal owner of the deed, but I feel strongly now that I only developed a sense of real ownership in the process of rescuing the woodland from it’s alternative fate.

We may have expected societal rights to whatever the Boomers leave behind, but until we are prepared to engage with the danger and overcome it – we will not have truly earned our bright futures. I bought my land with paper and ink, but I earned the moral right to define its future with sweat, diesel, adrenaline, a few good men, and no small amount of good fortune.

I stop far short of recommending to anyone what they must do in the face of their own particular challenges. I’m no more or less motivated to engage in the looming economic battle ahead, for experiencing a personal victory of my own. I stand here now as one amongst you, in the shadow of our larger war to come, in two minds.

For some, the loss of what is left behind is far more than the cost of staying. For others it will be trivially cheap and sensible to exit, and start again elsewhere. Ultimately it’s not what you walk away from – it’s what you leave with, and that will be a different calculation for each of us.

Take note that if you do decide, in the course of your own life, to pick up the sword and join the fray, you will likely do it to a symphony of screeching resentment and invalid criticism, from vastly limited perspectives and sometimes pure malice or spite (often as not, by the very same people who you are digging out of a problem of their own making, and yet could never hope to fully understand). You’ll be labelled a squirrel killer. A selfish profiteer. Seen as nuisance. A villain. A pleb.

We the living, are to be judged by the fruits of what we leave behind, not what we started with, nor by the passive observers and what they might say about us along the way. Be single minded in what you have control or influence over. Be indifferent and stoic in all other matters. They are not your concern. Make a conscious decision either way and commit to it, absolutely, and come what may.

The time for us do each decide our path through the fiat “Dark Forest of Error” is fast approaching, and though time is short, it’s not so short that we can’t at least contemplate what could be possible if you do decide to take the path less travelled, wherever that might take you. And if having survived, once the forest cleared and the skies bright, consider what we are to do in the wake our triumph.

A freshly felled commercial woodland is a sight to behold. A once dark and impenetrable mass disguised the true terrain of the land, and what was once starving the sere ground of sunshine is removed and what is left is a clean and fresh canvas on which to create your own masterpiece. Choose to look through the intermediate Hell and see beyond, into Paradise…

introduction

To the joyfully uninitiated, a forest is simply a forest.

Self maintaining, effortless, graceful. A silent army of timber sentries, standing guard over Mother Nature’s Kingdom. Lovely to view from a window, but lovelier still to explore on a long walk. After a restorative trek through the woods, you sling your muddy boots in the car and drive home for a cup of tea and a Sunday roast. This is what smart people do. Not me.

I reminisce occasionally about the time before my Hero’s Journey began, before my descent into Hell and back out again. And while it may be true for the majority of people, for the majority of the time, that “ignorance is bliss” very few people are stupid enough to buy a forest when they know nothing about them.

As a Blind Wanderer, that’s exactly what I did in the year of our Lord, 2018.

the blind wanderer

Prior to becoming a land owner, in a then-simpler but less rewarding existence, I was innocently pursuing a favourite pastime of mine: procrastinating aimlessly on the UK property websites, and enjoying Bitcoin’s spectacular rises and falls on the ticker tape. Fate, taking note of my idleness, dealt a spectacular card that transformed my life.

I stumbled upon an attractive sales listing for a suspiciously cheap woodland within comfortable driving distance of my family home. Owning a forest would be an interesting experience. And for what it is – that looks bloody cheap. Cheaper than the houses, dare I say affordable!

Without much consideration, I dialled the number and bought it. No warnings were sought or offered, by agent, seller or lawyers, from point of enquiry to completion.

The lessons I’ve since learned of woodland management and forestry, after that initial moment of heedless folly, are almost uncountable. Some of the more interesting, I’m about to share.

Moreover, as a Bitcoiner, I feel doubly duty-bound to impart my own first-hand observations, drawn from the apparently separate perspectives of both areas, that surely a scarce few would have the dubious ability to share.

I write for 4 audiences: General interest, Bitcoiners, Landowners; and especially land-owning Bitcoiners. Poor souls. I feel your pain! You have my highest respect. But some advice to the first 3:

– If you’re a Bitcoiner who doesn’t yet own land – go and meet someone who does. They provide your means to live.

– If you’re a Landowner who doesn’t yet have any Bitcoin – go and meet someone who does. They can help protect your way of life.

– If you’re neither – respectfully reconsider, but of the 2, Bitcoin is easier!

In Dante’s 14th century masterwork: The Divine Comedy, the author-protagonist starts off on his transformative journey to God, from a “Dark Forest of Error”.

I too found myself in a Dark Forest of Error, though the beasts I encountered in there were less literal than the dark forest, I nevertheless faced my own manifestations of malice, incontinence and violence between the tall trees, at the start of my own adventure.

In his epic poem, Dante escapes the Dark Forest, first by way of Hell, next into Purgatory, and only then beyond, into Paradise. I’ll leave it for you the reader, to conclude where I am in my own Comedy.

The parallels and real-world overlaps of forestry and Bitcoin are staggering. Enjoy.

Antecedents of Expensive Growth

The history of my woodland is the history of the United Kingdom.

At the start of the 20th century, it was a profitable granite and slate quarry, providing a livelihood to the area and value to the country as it developed economically over the course of the Second Industrial Revolution.

A quarryman was killed on-site during this time, and his mortal remains were brought through the local town, unceremoniously, on horse-drawn cart. His waiting son recognised the familiar hobnail boots protruding from the sheet that covered his father. A different time, and a memory I kept keenly in mind during my own operations over a century later. Responsibility for life is a heavy burden and a privilege (one I carried personally more than once on the more critical days of the work).

At the commencement of the Great War, the land has been planted in native hardwoods that had established well around the then-abandoned quarry. Strong oaks, planted by even stronger men, with dirty hands and clean money.

There, the vigorous forest stood in peace and harmony, at least for a while…

Decades later, as World War II raged abroad and overhead, the priorities of the nation overtook those of the woodlands, and sometime after falling into the ownership of the Liverpool Timber Company, the site was “clear felled” (cut down to stumps) to support the urgent war effort. What had been originally planted for the beams of new houses or for warmth in a nearby hearth, was requisitioned for barrels and planks. So it goes.

So it seems that as young men were being industrially destroyed in global conflict – so went the timber in the forest. What had existed for centuries, took mere weeks to destroy. When this horrendous era of history and economics concluded, the survivors came home and had babies. Lots and lots of babies.

Out of the level destruction of total war, the timber I work with today was planted as saplings in the bare earth between town and village, as their inhabitants were delivering a fresh wave of post-war children into this ‘brave new world’. Both were established at a time of cautious optimism, in the barren; fertile soils of each system, blissfully unaware of the unintended consequences of either experiment.

Samson posing near early 20th century mining equipment

The Bretton Woodlands Era

Regardless of the result for either side, the entire Western world had bankrupted itself to settle once and all, an entirely avoidable calamity. The scalded Corporal of the Kaiser’s vanquished army, Adolf Hitler and all his odious conspirators, were finally and utterly defeated.

All it took was the destruction of our global system of hard money, and the forfeited futures of a lost generation of men and boys.

As the UK and the wider world departed from monetary sobriety with its first reluctant sip of fractional reserve currency, decisions in my forest were being made with an apparent inherited drunkenness of the new Bretton Woods System. It was decided that the site was to be replanted experimentally in non-native conifer crops from North America.

In the face of overwhelming anticipated demand for industrial materials, quality was sacrificed for quantity, as it was shortly prior in the monetary system. The fundamentally inelastic supply curve of timber was stretched as far as anyone had dared go before.

Amongst post-war stumps of felled oak and beech and ash, planted in orderly rows and in rectangular blocks, the saplings of this new design of woodland promised to meet the needs of the next generation of citizens that grew alongside them.

Soft Money, Soft People & Softwood

As with all truly terrible ideas, the basic logic of fast rotating conifer crops had theoretical merit. And like all terrible ideas, particularly in matters of economics, planners failed to consider the long-term consequences or the effects on all groups, not just the short-term benefits for a specific group. The promised “free lunch” of faster timber supply was seemingly too much to resist at the time. So it goes.

The preferences of the average consumer had already begun to shrink to shorter time horizons. Over the early decades of this radical new planting strategy, global markets gradually opened up, offering cheaper and quicker substitutes to regional supplies. As a result, the domestic production economy started to hollow out and fall into secular stagnation.

The UK exported its inflation over to the developing world, and in exchange, imported their bountiful goods and raw materials. The early second-order effects came home to roost in the form of labour reform, political unrest and stagflation throughout the 1970’s and 80’s.

As the woodland conifers and the Baby Boomers approached maturity, the world quietly abandoned the Gold Standard of money entirely. Somewhere in the blur of disco and colour televisions, a flawed initial strategy had been irreversibly committed to, without formal discussion or informed consent. Forest and economy took the path of least resistance, and the path of no return.

On my own forest, 2 non-native crops had been planted together: Grand Fir and Douglas Fir. Although close cousins, aesthetically similar and both being fast growers, the Douglas was a proven and viable construction material, but the Grand Fir was planted to supply 2 post-war industries: matchsticks and paper pulp, having no tensile strength or durability for construction, and being an inferior firewood. All trees were equal – but under the bark, some were more equal than others.

Despite being a supposedly quicker route to market for the “savvy” modern landowner, by the time these trees reached an acceptable size for harvesting, the industries they were planted to supply had vanished from the economy of the modern United Kingdom. Matchsticks were replaced over the 1970’s with disposable lighters from factories in The Far East, and the paper mills went in the same direction. There was simply no market for Grand Fir to be absorbed into. So it goes.

grand fir windblown tree: so brittle it snapped around the ledge it fell on.

The “Dougies” would still sell, but the “Grandies” were worthless. Being inseparable from one another as a harvesting operation, ongoing maintenance operations were abandoned, the problem deferred, and the harvest left in place. The forest crept into disrepair and dereliction.

Running parallel to this minor tragedy, the Baby Boomers had been enjoying better luck. Surfing the economic wave of Globalism, they built their future with cheaper goods and by accumulating paper wealth, passing inflated; leveraged property deeds between each other in an intoxicating virtuous cycle of tight housing supply and monetary inflation. A service economy replaced the productive industries that had fled abroad, and life went on as houses and stocks replaced currency as the way to store value.

What was good for contemporary society, was bad for the forest. Around the access ways and major roads, new houses sprung up to meet rising demand. Extensions were built and populations consolidated. All helped along by innovations in technology, commuter friendly work; efficient cars; and other goods – from foreign factories. The nanny State grew greedily like a thirsty weed in a failing vegetable patch.

The connection between productive land and its requirement was being eroded alongside the meaning of money. The Public came to view the countryside less as the productive base for their society, and more as a nice place to visit and admire as a break from their increasingly sedentary, office based professions.

Mushy, grey rules formed around the once-clear law on forestry and agriculture, like the strangling ivy around a once immovable oak. The consultancy industry flourished. Sawmen became chainsaw instructors. The rest were absorbed into the burgeoning welfare state, or into other less meaningful work. Larger and larger machinery adapted to the narrower and narrower requirements and displaced the versatility and expense of skilled men.

By the turn of the millennium, now flush in comfort and wealth, the Baby Boomers developed a late-onset concern for the environment. After a productive lifetime of supplying landfills with disposable plastic in a sugar rush of consumerism—the Boomers started to worry ‘generally’ about the planet. But never at the expense of their own wants and needs.

An already dominant State took its chance to expand further still, rushing into the welcoming void of societal complacency, state dependency, and the existential dread of people who were getting older and knew it.

For this oblivious generation, any added costs along the way were bearable, and were simply pushed into the future, or taken out of their financial surpluses, but mostly onto the shoulders of everyone behind them in economics and demographics. The ladder was being pulled up behind them in the name of safety and the environment.

A little more time went on, and by then, my forest was reaching an advanced state of decline. Just in time for a Blind Wanderer, from 50 miles away, to innocuously click the link to an advertisement.

I bought eagerly and naively from a struggling local council who were using the woods infrequently for outdoor activities, and frankly more in need of the money than the land and it’s problems (all of this only after the local community, now approaching early retirement, were offered the land at deeply discounted rates, who chose wisely but selfishly to pass on the opportunity, and go on holiday instead).

The Call to Adventure

Everyone remembers their first day at work. But usually, they’re aware it’s their first day, and they understand their job – I didn’t!

Shortly after closing on the land deal, I’d thought it was about time that I jump in the car and visit my new luxury asset, and never one to be inefficient in the midst of catastrophe, I had also booked a meeting with a local forestry contractor to discuss the undoubted and limitless potential of my new purchase.

He walked up to me with a grin like a Cheshire Cat. The face of a man who is about to enjoy telling you that the zip on your fly is down just as you’ve walked out of church and shook the Vicar’s hand. He explained to me in one sentence what I’ve just taken all too long to describe:

“You’re f$£ked here mate, all this over-stood timber and no you’ve got no road access”.I certainly had no idea what I was being told. I had bought a beautiful woodland that I intended to do nothing with but walk in, and enjoy. What do I need roads for when I can park in the village and walk? A bit steep in places yes, and yes, now that he mentioned it the trees were awfully bloody tall, and there were a lot of them. But that’s what a forest is, right? RIGHT?

No Ben, no. You sweet summer child. On returning home, like any bad investor, I hastily performed some retrospective due diligence, and the weight of the problem fell across my chest like a 70 year old windblown conifer.

Apparently, I had purchased a serious liability. Worse still, where property rights had somewhat degraded over the decades, owner liability had remained loyally attached to the deed, and to me. So it goes.

However there were embers of hope in the fresh ashes of my personal finances. A relatively new industry has sprung up to accommodate these growing concerns for the environment: biomass woodchip.

a section of the conifers that was already collapsing

Above: Builder’s Merchant treated softwood below: a sample of douglas fir from my plantation

The softwood is a forgiving material to put through modern wood-chipping machinery, and high water content acted as a moderator for the combustion process of these new style boilers. That put a solid floor in the prices of ANY forms of timber, even branches, and has been a timely option for disposing of my Grand Fir ever since.

Better still, owing to the lack of care over the years – the Douglas Fir had grown amongst dying trees that on a better managed forest would have been “thinned” and removed to create space for the others. That caused reduced rates of growth and thus greater density which inadvertently created a rare timber stock of above average quality and marketable value.

The specifics of how I tamed the problem is perhaps a matter for later writing, but the situation was brought to a respectable and not-unsatisfactory interim conclusion. The full account of this will remain in my journals for another time, as the war rages on.

Remember reader, I promised you a Comedy – not a Tragedy, but not before we pass through Hell.

Author:

MR CROWN

We are lucky that life in the 21st century is easier than it has ever been, right? But convenience also has its price, and many people now want to go back to basics. But what are the basic needs for self-sufficient living? Food and shelter is the most obvious answer, but we are also looking for a good quality of life, and for that we need comfortable shelter, quality food and a good amount of enjoyment.

Live the dream

Most people have a dream where their life is very different from what it is now. There are so many things we would like to do, but time and/or money are often the biggest hurdles. You are tied to your job and so it is partly the problem but also partly the solution. The question is, should we live to work or work to live?

Practising your hobby and being able to sustain yourself with it, who wouldn’t want that? And if you were to continue doing it even if you were not paid for it? However, the vast majority of us have not yet found a way to realise this dream. But what stops them?

In our modern world, it is tempting to put convenience before quality. You just go to the shop, pick up new clothes because you feel like a new outfit. Your fridge is full of products that are far from fresh and a small compartment with fruit and vegetables that have travelled more kilometres than you drive in a whole year in your car.

Fresh, quality products, whether they are food or other items needed in a self-sufficient lifestyle are closer than you think. It is a matter of starting to form this lifestyle and, little by little, becoming self-sufficient. This includes, for example, buying or swapping quality food or other products in your neighbourhood, the community and local small farms and craft shops.

Discover local produce

Modern transport systems keep the supermarket stocked with a huge range of products, from long-life to fresh. It is easy to forget what is still seasonal and what is available locally at a farm shop.

The convenience of the supermarket serves mankind. A packet of muesli, a shelf full of variations, flavours and colours. Is this what we as consumers really want? This abundance of choices, but also the price we pay for them. Who actually asked for this? We the consumer or did the supermarket take the lead and do we now allow ourselves to be (mis)led by numerous offers, cheap and undefinable food?

It now seems so normal that food travels halfway around the world and is then stored and distributed in supermarkets before we finally buy and eat it. But with the same ease, you can buy fresh local seasonal, organic produce from your local farmer or baker.

Comfortable living

Our homes come in many shapes and sizes, but what exactly is the definition of “comfort”? We have been ” eco-shaping ” our homes for years, with or without coercion from governments and ” sustainable ” companies. As long as your aim is to create an environment that suits you, there is nothing wrong with that. And if you also have a low energy bill as a result, that’s a good thing. But how far do we ‘have’ to go in this, and how far does our shelter ‘have’ to comply with rules?

In a self-sufficient life, it is important to know that you discover what comfort means to you. A comfort in which you are controlled by the rules a house must satisfy? Or do you make it your own place, where you can be independent from utilities such as gas, water and electricity?

There are plenty of ways to save energy and convert it into heat, or to store it. This is also possible without subsidies or other forms of support. The power lies in making your own shelter where you can eventually be self-sufficient. Of course it is not bad to have a gas connection and other utilities. But it is also important to ensure comfort if these services are lost or if you simply have to pay too much for them. And it shouldn’t become an obligation; you should be able to choose what you do or don’t do.

The pleasure principle

The final requirement for a good quality of life is enjoyment. We are all different and we find happiness, peace, harmony (or whatever you want to call it) in our own way. We are easily put in a box (whether we want to be or not, whether we are aware of it or not) and we may lose sight of the essence of enjoyment in life. You can only discover your joy by trying these things.

It is also important to remember that you don’t have to wait until you find your ideal home to start living a more self-sufficient lifestyle. You can start right now! The experiences you gain and the fun you have can be the catalyst you need to realise your dream of a more self-sufficient life.