Senior Managing Editor of The Freeport Society
That scathing Yelp review just made you unemployable.
Or at least it would in the unforgiving world of “Nosedive,” an episode from Netflix’s dystopian sci-fi series Black Mirror.
Ranked and rated by your community through social interactions, your survival is on the line… and it’s an episode that hits scarily close to home.
Our Freeport Society friend James Hickman recently emailed an essay talking about this. It caught my attention… at first because he spoke of Guy Fawkes, who was arrested, tortured, and executed for treason after his failed Gunpowder Plot. He tried to assassinate the entire English government during the King’s address to parliament… by blowing them all to hell.
In typical dry English humor, he’s now known as the last man to enter parliament with honorable intentions.
For the 32 years I lived in South Africa, November 5 was the night for fireworks that would rival anything exploded on July 4 in the U.S. So, for me, any mention of the man brings back fond memories and the chant, “remember, remember, the fifth of November.”
But as James continued writing, his message resonated in more disturbing ways. Essentially, he laments the perversion of our language to serve the fanatics of the day… who, as James so eloquently says, “hijack” our words.
For example, after his treason trial, the use of the term “guy” became a verbal slap in the face.
Another example he explains is how the word “violence” has come to mean something very different to how it’s defined in the dictionary. Now-a-days, misgendering a trans person is “literal violence.” The same distortion of the word “genocide” is underway as well.
What was perhaps the most terrifying take away from James’ essay was his talk of how our neighbor Canada is approaching all of this. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government recently passed the “Online Harms Act,” which has good intentions. But, the bill states that, “Every person who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life.”
As James points out, how the enforcer defines genocide is now open ended. It’s an interesting piece, if you’d like to read it.
That’s very Black Mirror Nosedive episode-like, if you ask me.
Perhaps the worst of it all is that our very own government is currently working on a project that will give them the literal power to enforce social conformity and anything else they want. Next week, Charles will reveal all. For your sake, I urge you to look out for that and watch it.
In the meantime, let’s look at the other perversions we covered this week in The Freeport Navigator…
The Fed Is About to Drop a Bomb on Us
In his guest piece, our friend Justice Litle of Tradesmith offers his take on the “casino run by clowns with a boardwalk in front and a used-car lot in the back.” Find out who he’s talking about here.
A Perversion of Finance
Charles dives into Japan’s world of negative interest rates in Wednesday’s article. And while trying to make sense of those wacky numbers, he also breaks down the fallout from central banker clowns. Get the full scoop here.
How to Buy Bitcoin… and Why You Need to NOW
Cryptocurrencies, along with gold and real estate, are valuable pieces of any crisis-proof portfolio. That’s why I recently recommended two crypto plays. This led to one subscriber posing a very useful question… Read the full story.
Looking Ahead
With the Easter weekend coming, next week should be relatively calm. However, we will be getting new data on building permits and new home sales. It will be interesting to see if the data confirms the strength we saw in existing home sales this week, which were up about 6% from the year before.
Could it be that we’ve adjusted to the reality of higher rates? And might this encourage the Federal Reserve to think twice before lowering rates in June? We’ll know soon enough.
Uncle Sam will also be having a bond auction for 5-year and 7-year notes. It will be interesting to see how eager Wall Street is to buy government bonds given that the supply is rising at a rate of $1 trillion every 100 days.
To life, liberty, and the pursuit of wealth.