My soul is criminal

We live in ever more hateful times. This ongoing prosecution, in which a suspended policeman is charged with the newly invented crime of reading erotic short stories, pushes the envelope of feminist sex-hostility another notch forward and inspired the following essay from me.

When words are criminal, so are thoughts. Whether thoughts are written down or not makes no moral difference, and any words that sexualize a minor are criminal. My opinions on "child" sexuality (referring to anyone under 18) are fundamentally criminal, and only technical and resource limitations (mind reading technology is not there yet) prevents the state from convicting and imprisoning me. Notice that the law covers every medium of thought currently accessible to the police, and if they could read our thoughts directly, they would surely do so and base their prosecution on it.

This is the feeling the Norwegian child porn law gives rise to. I fundamentally do not fit in. I seethe with roiling hatred against the state, and the hatred is mutual, because the spirit of the law means I belong in prison and not in society. This conflict cannot be resolved, because it is fundamental, unequivocal, mutual hatred. When all is said and done, we hate each other, society and I.

Let us meditate on what this means, and face the horror of the law. Whether you have any interest in breaking it or not, the atmosphere it creates is true horror. I don't particularly care about the specific short stories that incriminated this policeman, but I care very much about freedom of speech and thought. The Norwegian legislature has decided that your mind is meant to exist in a prison of criminality, shuddering in fear of thinking unclean thoughts, reading or hearing unclean words or, horror of horrors, seeing unclean images. The scumbags in law enforcement will even target their own for perceiving unclean information, for that is how fucking seriously this society takes mind control. This society has decided that not even thoughts are free, with all the horrifying consequences that entails, because we worship the mythical innocence of the child above all other considerations. An innocence which is entirely specious, but that doesn't matter, because it is the idea of childish innocence that these laws are meant to protect, and explicitly so since they also apply to fiction.

This society is incapable of being rational about "child" sexuality, because as soon as a sexual reference is made to anyone under 18, or even according to the law someone who merely appears to be under 18 (as in acting), and even a fictional one, all expression is forbidden and the only possible response is state-enforced violence. If the law is to be taken seriously, we must burn most books and imprison all men and throw our cultural heritage out the window. If a man keeps as much as a diary or a scrap sheet of paper where anyone under 18 is sexualized in any form, he must be surveillanced, hunted down and imprisoned. It is surreal that I am damn near the only one who hasn't internalized the charade, who speaks up against it, who feels seething hatred in the opposite direction than everyone else, whose hatred is directed squarely at me and anyone who transgresses their moronic taboos. Usually the transgressor will himself have internalized the taboos, so the most he will do is claim he "didn't do it" while obsequiously parroting the same sex-hostility.

There are very few living people I respect. It is almost impossible to find a person whose mind has not been captured by these taboos. Nearly everyone supports or at least condones child porn laws, probably more than 99 people out of 100, and if you are one of them I disrespect your puny intellect and hate your guts. You gullible fool who don't understand the monstrosity you enable, at best, or odious creep who has actually internalized the sex-hostility! I know some of you have thought these matters through as carefully as I have, and chosen the other side. In that case I have no illusions of convincing you otherwise, because I know we fundamentally hate each other and it is not based on any misunderstanding.

I ponder the law and realize that my soul is criminal. My country fundamentally wants to imprison me for who I am, a normal man, and other men don't want to stand up against it even though they are just as much targeted themselves. I do not fit in, and don't want to fit into this sick society. I had to pinch myself to check that I am not having a nightmare, because this is so batshit crazy that I didn't seriously expect it to be enforced, even though I knew the law has been intending it for years. As far as I can tell, the dystopia is real. I am literally living in a country where the police can and will persecute you for reading or writing fictional stories. And worse, I am just about the only one who sees anything wrong with it. It is deeply disturbing, and breaks down certain barriers that I thought would protect us. I have never been so scared of the government as I am now, because this is not only hateful, it is absurd. When I was arrested and accused of incitement, there was at least some logic to the prosecution's case, some potentially real evil they were investigating, but this is entirely unaccountable. When the government is capable of persecuting you for the content of your library and personal records/drafts -- including fiction, for God's sake! -- is there any refuge left? Is there any limit to what they might decide next? And when they even target one of their own for such an absurdly victimless reason, what makes you think you are safe?

Sex Difference Explained by Steve Moxon

I have been getting some stupid comments lately claiming that "Evo psych hasn't been taken seriously since around 2009." Well, that is nonsense, of course, and as luck would have it, now there is a brand new publication on the subject by Steve Moxon. An entire monograph, in fact, written from an MRA point of view and with an up-to-date bibliography:

Sex Difference Explained: From DNA to Society – Purging Gene Copy Errors

Abstract

This is a ‘layman’s guide’ – for, the interested rather than the merely general reader – to recent major scientific insights that together reveal a comprehensive, holistic understanding of the sexes: what actually distinguishes them and why. A much needed overview drawing together hitherto disparate topics outlining how several principles mutually relate; it’s a simplified distillation and update of the several topics that are the subject of other review papers, which provide more detailed and precise accounts and further sources.

No prior knowledge is assumed, so any other than common-knowledge scientific terms are either explained or replaced with less formal terms (where they are not too imprecise). Notably, instead of the formal, easily confused terms intra-sexual / inter-sexual, the terms within-sex / between-sex (or same-sex / cross-sex) are used. The word 'sociality', is also used despite its unfamiliarity; because it's useful shorthand for social system / dynamics. The term gender (sic) is specifically avoided - other than in 'scare' quotes since it is an ideological rather than scientific term.

And the blurb:

In SEX DIFFERENCE EXPLAINED: From DNA to Society – Purging Gene Copy Errors, Steve Moxon argues that all major aspects of male-female human sociality necessarily stem from biological principles; which all arise in solving the core problem faced by all life-forms: the relentless build-up of mistakes in the repeated copying of genes. The 'genetic filtering' to deal with this is the function of the male: why males came into being, and why men so fiercely compete with one another to form a hierarchy.

The female contribution is carefully to choose only the most dominant/prestigious males, cross-checking that indeed they do possess the best gene sets. This ensures genetic mutations and other errors that would seriously compromise reproduction are purged from the local gene pool.

Pair-bonding serves to exclude lower-ranked, whilst allowing access by still higher-ranked males; and to provide a serial father of children, thereby in effect projecting forward in time a woman's peak fertility, compensating for her deteriorating store of eggs, and consequent declining fertility and attractiveness.

With men tied to a hierarchy, women evolved to 'marry out' to avoid in-breeding. In preparation for this, girls have a very different social organisation, rehearsing for when later they have to make close bonds with non-kin, stranger-females for mutual child-care. This explains why female grouping is so tight and exclusionary, whereas males group all-inclusively.

Moxon sees the underlying sex dichotomy as being perfectly complementary, with the sexes of equal importance in what amounts to a symbiosis.

The book is not only available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions, but also open-access, with the full text downloadable at New Male Studies Publishing.

I will start reading it now and then post a review, and I encourage you all to do the same.

Norwegian readers should also check out this article by Terje Bongard:

Det menneskelige grunnfjell: Følelser som tilpasninger til et førhistorisk liv

And if anyone wants to argue that evolutionary psychology is wrong, please state some actual arguments, because it is plainly false that is not taken seriously by the scientific community.

The verdict

I won! The Gulating Court of Appeal has awarded me NOK 37,100 in compensation for wrongful imprisonment when I was accused of incitement in 2012. The full ruling is available here and highly recommended reading for all Norwegians, especially those who still feel I should have been convicted for expressing my political views here on this blog. The judges have considered my most offensive quotes for which the police tried to prosecute me, and opined that they didn't violate the law then and still don't after the legal reforms that many people mistakenly believe would have ensured my conviction for saying similar things now.

As anyone who reads the verdict is forced to admit, the criminal concept of incitement simply does not apply to my kind of rhetorics. And that is no accident either, because I had no intention of breaking the law when I wrote my blog posts and comments, certainly not in such a stupid manner as the accusations would have it. When it comes to expressing political disagreements, even very hateful and rebellious ones, freedom of speech is actually quite strong in Norway, so why would I do something like that? Unless you are incredibly rhetorically inept, there is no need to resort to criminal speech in order to get your point across. What you can't do is to publicly exhort specific people to carry out specific criminal acts, but you can glorify and generally advocate criminal behavior. It is not enough to wish to do harm; you have to actually break the law to be punished. The content of my character is admittedly such that I am the worst Norwegian enemy of the state since Quisling, because that is the extent of my hatred of feminist sex laws. Be that as it may, I am still legally protected from prosecution for incitement unless I commit incitement the way it is legally defined, which I don't.

I always thought people who make threats are some of the silliest criminals. Threats are a huge liability while causing almost no damage. Incitement is slightly more intelligent, and arguably a far more serious crime since the sky is the limit in terms of potential harm, but certainly not needed when freedom of speech is tolerably strong. So I always take great care not to run afoul of threat or incitement laws. Those who would like to see me punished are frustrated by the fact that I can be every bit as hateful as the silly people who make threats or incitement, if not more so, while remaining on the right side of the law. Whether you like it or not, that is how it is. You don't get to punish me for my opinions, only for actual crimes that I am too smart to commit. And let's get real, would you really want to live in a country where people can be punished for their character rather than their actions? To take an analogy everyone can understand, imagine if speed limits were based on how fast one wanted to drive instead of the actual speed. Just like you can't be fined for wanting to drive over the speed limit unless you actually do, it is of course legal to adjust one's behavior according to the law when it comes to speech crimes such as incitement as well. And that is what I have done, even if I may have evil intentions in my heart. The judges in the Gulating Court of Appeals are sane enough to acknowledge this fact, even if the lower court and much of the populace isn't. They even assert that my behavior was not only legal, but also not suspicious, which means the cops acted unreasonably and I am entitled to compensation for an attempted prosecution which shouldn't have happened.

If you have the power to lead, then simply existing and expressing your sentiments is enough, and if you don't, then no amount of incitement will make a difference for your cause. Criminal incitement is therefore a fool's errand, and I have no use for it. It is also a pointless prohibition which is rarely ever used anyway, at least not successfully. You have to choose -- either have arbitrary arrests and disappearances of unpopular influencers, or tolerate hateful opinions in public discourse, because it is the nature of language that hatred and rebelliousness can always be conveyed without breaking any law that isn't vague enough to be a travesty of justice. I am glad that Norway has chosen the latter option for now.

Finally going to trial

After several delays, my compensation suit for wrongful imprisonment for expressing my heartfelt political views is finally going to the court of appeal (Gulating lagmannsrett) on Thursday, October 13th.

I have blogged about it before all the delays, so I won't repeat all that.

Everyone is invited, and here are the details for those in Bergen who can make it:

Domstol:

	Gulating lagmannsrett
Rettsmøtetype:	Ankeforhandling
Saksnr:	15-026859ASD-GULA/AVD2
Sakstype:	Ankesum under 125.000,-
Saken gjelder:	Krav om oppreisningserstatning
Parter:	Eivind Berge - Justis og Beredskapsdepartementet
Advokater:	Henrik Birkeland - Jørgen Aandal Vangsnes
Rettens formann:	Voll, Rune
Start- sluttdato:	13.10.2016 - 13.10.2016

Dato	Tid	Sal	Adresse
13.10.2016	09:00 - 15:00	Bergen, Gulatings plass 1, 2. etg, rettssal 2 B

The Men's Movement has lost

The world has changed beyond my most dystopian nightmares. False rape has now been fully institutionalized. Ever since I started blogging, feminist corruption of rape law has been the most important issue, and now it has reached a level where women are literally handed a blank check to accuse rape for any sex that they have any bad feelings about whatsoever. The new panacea for accusing rape is called "emotional control," which of course is an element of all relationships. Men in feminist countries should be very afraid of relationships, because they all by definition involve some degree of emotional control. The fact that Norwegian law has reached this point is spectacularly evinced by the case against Julio Kopseng, who got convicted and sentenced to 21 years of preventative detention -- which means up to life in prison and is the maximum punishment under Norwegian law -- based on relationships redefined as rape. One woman claims he "raped" her hundreds of times, but she didn't bother to leave him. Yes, women are now fully empowered to regret entire relationships and redefine them as rape. A recent example from the UK also makes this clear. When this is now rape, not just in feminist theory but in practice, it has gone so far that my imagination fails me beyond this point: A woman "said she submitted to his unwanted sexual advances after he threatened to leave her if she did not have sex with him," and for that Ryan Kennedy is convicted as a rapist.

When the justice system goes along with these kinds of charades and presents them as rape with a straight face, and there is hardly anyone who even questions the underlying legal definitions, then it is time to declare complete defeat for the Men's Movement. We have lost completely and are left only with the rage in our hearts -- the few of us who still care, that is. Feminists have been granted everything they asked for and more, or shortly will be, to the tune of cheering manginas crowding out any real opposition from MRAs.

Ryan Kennedy and Julio Kopseng may well be assholes and narcissists, but these women CHOSE to be in relationships with them. They CHOSE to submit again and again, by their own admission, because they valued the relationships above not having sex. And for this they are now legally entitled to have a man convicted as a rapist because they feel bad about THEIR OWN decisions. When women find it worthwhile to stay with jerks for whatever reason, that is their CHOICE. It is not the men's fault that women are attracted to them, unless you believe women are like small children who are incapable of making their own decisions. Which is how the law now defines them. A man is such a worthless piece of shit under feminist justice that he goes to jail for women's choices. If you think this is justice, then you are a scumbag and a mangina and I hate your guts.

The feminist police state ensures that women can have their cake and eat it. Then can enjoy whatever it is that attracts them to bad boys and have state-enforced revenge for any emotional discomfort, too, even if it didn't rise to the level of making them want to get out of the relationship. This is so unspeakably unjust that I don't have words strong enough for the hatred in my heart against feminist rape law reform and all the manginas who enable and enforce it. If men don't revolt against this kind of "justice" system, they never will. The institutionalized hatred against men is now perpetrated all the way out in the open without any attempt to make up a remotely plausible rape story, because none is needed -- we simply get an explicit admission that women can submit to sex for their own selfish reasons and regret it later and have it redefined as rape with the full cooperation of the legal system. Feminists have won completely and the Men's Rights Movement is utterly and completely irrelevant. We are just a handful of men still speaking the voice of reason while the world has gone insane. I keep the flame of antifeminist hatred burning in my heart in the hope that I one day might inspire other men to feel the same way and fight back, but I realize that the chance of that happening is practically zero. The feminists and manginas have already inherited the earth.

Further evidence of how feckless we are is the degeneration of many former men's sites into white supremacism and other nonsense -- the so-called alt-right. For example, the blogger formerly known as Roissy in DC, now called Chateau Heartiste, when he isn't busy pushing racism or fat shaming women, promotes the feminist definition of rape. He has literally internalized feminist slogans about sex without consent as his normative definition of rape. Men like Ryan Kennedy and Julio Kopseng would be convicted under that definition, and we could all be, but he doesn't care. I left the following modest comment, but nobody paid attention to it:

This is a disappointing post which basically confuses feminist slogans with the law and doesn’t even question whether they should be the law.

Simply saying no to sex, no matter how sincerely, does not make it rape by any reasonable definition, and indeed not even legally so except in the most extreme feminist jurisdictions (such as the UK since the Sexual Offenses Act of 2003, but not most of the US or Scandinavia, for example). Contrary to feminist slogans, most jurisdictions still require an element of coercion or unconsciousness. Verbal resistance is not enough to make it rape, because rape isn’t defined in relation to consent at all, but as sex accomplished by coercion. After all the feminist reforms to rape law, that coercion can be very trivial indeed, such as threatening to break up a relationship, but sex against a woman’s will does still not constitute rape in itself. Rape is sex *accomplished* by force, not just sex without consent. This conceptual distinction is very important, at least in theory. Rape law has been corrupted, but it hasn’t been corrupted to the extent indicated by CH in most countries including his own. Instead of embracing a definition of rape more extreme than feminists have yet managed to receive, men should be fighting for the restoration of the traditional definition which necessitated force or threats at the level of serious violence to make it rape.

I must conclude that even in the former manosphere, most men are not seriously opposed to feminism anymore. What Roissy is doing is the equivalent of letting feminists win by walkover, and that sums up the current sorry state of the Men's Movement.

The insidious power of metaphors

Thanks to the hateful campaign to demonize Brock Turner as a rapist, I think I better understand how sexual hysterias work. Firstly, it needs to be pointed out that Brock Turner is not actually a rapist, even by the legal definition in California:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/stanford-rape-case-brock-turner-victims-statement-a7074246.html

He is guilty of digital penetration, and not even a violent one at that; just taking advantage of the woman's intoxicated state. So why are people so absurdly hysterical about this minor sexual assault? Why do they demand to punish it as if it were rape? I disagree that it should be criminal at all, since the woman got drunk willingly and went along with it, but even if you agree with the law, it was far removed from rape.

I think people react to the metaphor rather than reality. Feminist propaganda has been so successful that "sexual assault" is now synonymous with "rape" in the mind of the mob, and so rape is all they can see in their imagination. It was recently shown that the meaning of words are stored in the same place in the brain across individuals:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v532/n7600/abs/nature17637.html

Feminists have managed to hijack the semantic mapping of "rape" and meld it with "sexual assault," so now all it takes to create mass hysteria is to accuse sexual assault. This is also how statutory rape works, and how feminists have even managed the absurd feat of creating the concept of female rapists and female sex offenders. These are all about metaphors, and metaphors are all you need to create lynch mobs and criminal convictions alike, after legal reforms which are also based on metaphors rather than reality.

Because the meanings of words have so extreme consequences when they are enshrined in criminal law, and even when they aren't, it is important not to let the metaphors get out of hand. One thing we need to make absolutely clear is that rape can only be performed with a penis. A real penis. Brock Turner didn't use his penis -- just his fingers -- and women by definition don't have penises so they can't be rapists. If you don't see this, then you are in thrall of metaphors rather than reality and need to break the spell. And we need to turn back the feminist legal reforms which have already so unreasonably expanded the definition of rape in many jurisdictions.

Obscenity laws come roaring back

Traditionally in my culture, up until the mid 20th century, there was a ban on pornography in general. Then we had the Sexual Revolution and a brief period of freedom. Now anti-sex hysteria is manifesting itself again in more pernicious ways than we have seen in hundreds of years, and this includes the return of obscenity laws.

Society figured out that children couldn't handle nudity, so we got child porn laws starting in the 1990s -- and insanely draconian, hateful laws they are.

Society recently figured out that women can't handle nudity either, so now there is a scramble to enact draconian "revenge porn" laws applicable to any situation where women feel bad about the existence of nude images of themselves. When women do something and regret it, it is never their fault; our society has a sick need to blame a man every single time. Analogous to the regret rape laws, now women are to be given laws enabling them to blame a man and have him imprisoned whenever they regret posing nude, or even taking nude pictures of themselves and sharing them.

The now ubiquitous and relentless propaganda in Norway makes this quite explicit:

"Uansett om man selv har posert på et intimt bilde og sendt det til en person man stoler på, eller om man har vært utsatt for bildetyveri eller snikfotografering, så er ekspertene klare i sin tale: Det er aldri offeret sin skyld."

["Whether you have posed for an intimate picture and sent it to a person you trust, or if one has been subjected to image theft or candid photography, the experts all agree: It is never the victim's fault."]

Yes, our scumbag legislators explicitly want to blame and imprison men for women's choices! They don't even attempt to cover it up as anything else.

I can't stomach reading most of the ongoing barrage of propaganda or examining the laws sought (and some places already enacted) in detail, just wanted to exclaim my hatred. I shake and seethe with hatred against our legislators and law enforcers.

Wouldn't it be better to just bring back general obscenity laws on moral grounds than this insane proliferation of criminal laws to protect supposed "victims" defined in ever more expansive and creative ways? Women and children evidently can't handle freedom of expression, so it would be best for all, "victims" and criminals alike, to have widely enforced taboos preventing this "victimization" from readily existing in the first place. If women couldn't pose nude willingly or send nude selfies without running afoul of cultural taboos and hence rarely did so, there could be no revenge porn either. But no, that would not satisfy the feminist establishment's bloodlust against men; it would not satisfy the scumbags in law enforcement who make their living hunting men for their sexuality -- the feminist abuse industry is an insatiable beast that will always come up with more ways to imprison more men no matter what we give them. Feminists want to have their cake and eat it -- total freedom and total criminalization at the same time, violent blue thugs to coming to their rescue whenever they have their regrets or have their feelings hurt about anything at all.

My blood boils with hatred against the authorities which I express to the full extent permissible by law, which is just the tip of the iceberg, being confident that paralepsis is legal in Norway. If anyone wonders how I became so hateful, this is just another example in a long line of malicious propaganda and increasingly hateful laws against men -- and hate breeds hate in healthy men. The sickly and feeble-minded ones become brainwashed manginas and internalize these disgusting sexual taboos themselves, who along with the feminists now form the majority that we are up against.

So in summary, my position on revenge porn (and child porn) is this: We either take the wailing about victimization seriously and enact a blanket ban on obscenity, with cultural norms to go along with it to prevent the basis for this victimization, or we don't take it seriously and get rid of all these laws which single out men to be imprisoned whenever a woman has her feelings hurt. What I cannot accept is this reign of terror where everything is permissible until a woman has any regrets, and then the full force of state violence is brought down on some man or men for that sole reason. Personally I believe victimization by images is complete bullshit, sort of like Voodoo magic and homeopathy combined, but society needs to make up its mind and either stand behind its taboos comprehensively or get rid of them, because it is obscenely unfair to make men shoulder all the responsibility. The current approach does not nothing to prevent victimization, if that's really what it is. No matter how many men you imprison, it is the nature of digital information that it can and will be shared indefinitely once it is released, so the only effect is to expand the feminist police state.

If women and children are really so delicate as feminists claim they are, then perhaps we need to ban all images of children and never allow women to appear in public without a burka and police escort. I am willing to entertain the notion that any transgression of such norms are "abuse," but then you all better get with the program and share responsibility for enforcing these taboos. Then there will be little opportunity for men to become criminals and be imprisoned just for hurting a woman's feelings, and we can all live happily.

Can industrial civilization be saved?

Imagine if humanity realized that collapse was coming and wanted to do something about it. What, if anything, might work? Here is my suggestion.

Step 1: Admit that we have a problem with collapse! (Read Our Finite World.)

Step 2: Form a world government. Declare a summit, form a world alliance and neutralize all resistance immediately. If any major nuclear powers resist, our civilization will probably end right here, but let's assume they understood the gravity of collapse and went along. Perhaps not all minor countries need to participate -- the rest can be left to their own devices as long as they don't threaten anti-collapse efforts.

Step 3: With intertribal warfare ended, humanity shall declare war on collapse. Realize that collapse is more formidable and destructive than any other foe, so we need to set aside our cultural differences. What we are facing is just as bad as if an asteroid were on a collision course.

Step 4: Conscript people to fight in the anti-collapse army. For example, conscript Gail Tverberg as chief systems theorist and Keith Henson as chief engineer.

Step 5: Anti-collapse forces should control a minimum of all needed ingredients to have an industrial civilization, using violence to enforce operation (but preferably not more than needed). The goal is to allow the system to scale down without losing maximum complexity, so smart people need to figure out what we absolutely need to preserve and leave the rest alone.

Step 6: Free trade can still exist, but the anti-collapse army must be able to commandeer all resources as needed in order to preserve complexity. Pick some companies more or less randomly in every industry and see to it that they don't fail, and do the same throughout their entire supply lines. The entire oil industry might as well be nationalized immediately since it will never be profitable again anyway. Countries can also keep their laws and customs as long as they don't interfere with the war on collapse.

Step 7: Adopt more sustainable practices going forward. We need to lower our expectations and tolerate the fact that there will be many losers who will perish. Perhaps only soldiers in the anti-collapse army will have adequate nutrition and a good quality of life, but that's OK as long as we maintain maximum complexity. Stop population growth! All while keeping technological progress or at least not losing our ability to manufacture any amenity that we have now, the preservation of which is the whole point of the war effort to begin with. Nothing lasts forever, but if collapse is delayed beyond our lifetime, consider this plan successful.

There is no single dictator who can make this plan happen. It doesn't need happen democratically either, but a lot of important people need to understand collapse and desire to do something about it to put the plan in motion. It is a truism in doomer circles that our economy must grow or die, but I wonder if that is really true if something like this plan were implemented. It might be impossible for social reasons, but I can't see any thermodynamic reasons for why it can't work.

One might object that this will be some horrible dystopia comparable to the worst communist regimes in history, but I have my doubts. If collapse is really imminent due to resource depletion, there won't be enough resources to oppress people for frivolous reasons, so the only way industrial civilization can live on is if it is concerned with self-preservation rather than insane and wasteful projects of oppression. Having a police state micro-manage people's behavior complete with mass incarceration will be beyond the power of our civilization going forward. There will be exceptions, but I think most people would simply be left to fend for themselves or starve rather than be oppressed by the state, and that is no worse than what would happen during collapse anyway. The question is only if we want to use our remaining resources to preserve our technological capabilities and a good life for at least some people instead of letting collapse happen without a fight.

A Bitcoin postmortem

Two weeks into 2016, the Norwegian stock market is down 12% and the oil price has fallen below $30 a barrel. As Chris Martenson puts it, the deflation monster has arrived. And the one thing that could offer us some hope in the face of deflationary collapse, Bitcoin XT, has failed to gain enough support to impose bigger blocks on the blockchain. The Bitcoin network is already close to maxed out at the current blocksize, so it is not going to get much better than this. Now the best we can hope for is 2MB blocks if Bitcoin Classic is able to gain consensus, but that is far too little to offer any realistic alternative to the fiat banking system. This means Bitcoin is fated to die on the vine, and industrial civilization will sink with the financial system which is now at the end of its rope.

So, what went wrong? The one-megabyte blocksize limit was just a stopgap measure instituted by Satoshi to prevent spam transactions in Bitcoin's early days. It should have been removed or greatly increased by now, but that didn't happen because the limit is being exploited by people who either have a completely different vision of the purpose of Bitcoin than the peer-to-peer payment network it is meant to be or want to cripple the network for their own conflicting interests (Blockstream), all of whom are oblivious to the coming collapse. The Lighting Network under development by Blockstream is unappealing in many ways and would still fail to scale Bitcoin sufficiently without bigger blocks. Another partial solution is a possible soft fork known as segregated witness, but that only gives us an effective blocksize of 1.7 MB. Mike Hearn has written the most detailed and accurate account of what went wrong, concluding that the Bitcoin experiment has failed, and sadly I have to agree.

The Bitcoin exchange rate may go up in the short term and especially in the early stages of stock market collapse, but don't be fooled. Bitcoin will crash when it runs into major disruption thanks to the crippling blocksize limit, and if that doesn't kill it, the fallout from the ensuing forking attempts and escalated blocksize wars certainly will. There will be no useful alternative left standing as we enter the next global financial crisis, which may well put and end to our entire civilization. The more I learn about blocksize, the clearer it becomes that the blocksize war is a clash of two fundamentally irreconcilable ideologies. Either path will lead to the death of Bitcoin in the eyes of the opposing side. Each side has different definitions of centralization and success, so no amount of technical argument can resolve the controversy. The small-blockers are the new Luddites, and this time they are winning.

We had our one and only chance to bootstrap a decentralized digital currency for the world, an undisputed measure of value that everyone can use even when the banks shut down, and we failed. Now civilization will collapse due to low commodity prices and there will be no way to save it. Now there is no hope of any alternative payment system reaching sufficient adoption to keep the machine that is industrial civilization running after deflationary collapse has run its course.

Collapse is the sort of thing that sneaks up on us slowly and then suddenly. It looks like the slow part is almost over now.