Trading

Tiffany talks with Sammy again. Predictably he’s taken up trading mackerel packs, which are the modern prison equivalent of cigarettes.

When I was in the walls, cigarettes were the currency. Each pack had a “par value” of a quarter, though the actual price in the commissary was 40 cents. I bought my way out of a psychopath’s cell with cartons of Kools, and then moved further upscale after the new cellie turned out to be equally bad. Beasley’s Real Estate Service worked well.

Reminds me of an old stockbroker story:

There was a speculative mania in sardines. A shortage pushed up prices, and before long there was an enthusiastic trade in tinned sardines. Then one day a buyer decided to open a can and eat a sardine or two. He got food poisoning and complained to the seller. The seller responded: “Why would you open the can? These are not eating sardines, they are trading sardines.”

Sammy is a stockbroker above all, which is another name for Professional Criminal. He knows the difference between a Trading Fish and an Eating Fish. Bitcoin is the perfect Trading Fish for stockbrokers because it can’t be opened or eaten. There’s no risk that a sucker will try to use bitcoin for any real purpose. All “purposes” are bets and options on an imaginary future.

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Toward the end of the clip Tiffany gets deeply personal, discussing the purpose of punishment. I agree firmly on this point. Sammy is a money criminal. Unlike other tech tyrants like Altman he hasn’t deprived anyone of jobs, and hasn’t pushed governments toward eugenics and tyranny. He just steals money. In older systems of law, including both Sharia and early Euro law, forced restitution is the PRIMARY form of punishment. Balance the ledger, restore Equipoise. A dollar for a dollar, an eye for an eye, a limb for a limb. Sammy should be out in the world under strict orders to pay back his victims, perhaps double or triple. If he fails, then prison.

Using prison as the sole punishment is part of the narrowing-down game played by Soros and other “rights” monsters. All rational and BALANCED penalties are wiped out, leaving only variable amounts of prison time. Nice people don’t like to see prison as punishment, but when prison is the only punishment, total freedom is the only alternative.