The Individual Mind

Great video and article that Glenn Greenwald put up on his substack yesterday. In them, he points out that society has heretofore been well-adapted at performing cost-benefit analyses when considering public policy. A very good analogy he uses is that of speed limits.

Auto accidents are a leading cause of death in the US, particularly among the young and middle aged. Why do we allow high speed limits? Or teenagers to drive? Why not set the limit at 25 mph? Or apply a limit of one vehicle per family? Of course, we do not because there are extensive trade-offs and benefits of efficient and abundant transportation – economic, social, personal,…. Why, in the current multi-year Viral Crisis is it unacceptable to have an open discourse about the negative externalities of lockdowns, or the potential limitations and risks of increasingly-mandated medical therapies? We’ve heard from the beginning, “if it saves one life…!” Stop driving, and you could save many, many lives.

“In virtually every realm of public policy, Americans embrace policies which they know will kill people, sometimes large numbers of people. They do so not because they are psychopaths but because they are rational: they assess that those deaths that will inevitably result from the policies they support are worth it in exchange for the benefits those policies provide. This rational cost-benefit analysis, even when not expressed in such explicit or crude terms, is foundational to public policy debates — except when it comes to COVID, where it has been bizarrely declared off-limits.”

Worth a read and/or watch!

The Covid thing just never ends. It’s almost as distressing as the political exploitation and associated mob hysteria. I ran across physicist Scott Locklin’s blog and his take on the errors and uncertainties that have been sold as unassailable doctrine by government and corporate controllers. His style is brash and offensive, and refreshing. His list of Things the Establishment Got Wrong About Wuhan Coof needs to be considered and preserved. We’re far from out of the wealth- and power-generating (for the select few) crisis. We’ll be sifting data and dealing with negative externalities of the interventions for years. Mr. Locklin’s take is a good mid-stream assessment.

I know, I know. EVERYBODY has to write about BTC these days. But, I get to offer my two cents on my own webpage,… so suck it. As of current writing, BTC to USD exchange is roughly $55,000. So, my two cents is only worth 0.0000003531 BTC.

I bought a depressingly small amount of BTC a few years back. Had I been more enlightened, I’d be retired with my gains. Ultimately, the message that I want to convey is that I am a BTC supporter by way of philosophy and free market economics, as opposed to investment, per se. I am not chasing a gain. I am looking for a life raft.

Like precious metals, BTC is a diversification strategy and an insurance policy. Of course, it could go to zero and fail. That’s fine. Compared with the trajectory of the US dollar, I’ll take those risks. In reality, my diversification across contrarian asset classes is merely a risk mitigation strategy.

BTC is admittedly a fiat currency – it is not tied to, based upon or backed by any asset. I’m okay with that. In that regard, it is no different from any world currency. The difference, which is its brilliance, is that it cannot be expanded ad infinitum, without limit, digitally diluted and devalued, printed up by a central bank or government to be used to pay its bills and unfunded obligations while destroying the savings and purchasing power of the currency. It is DECENTRALIZED. BTC has a finite and decreasing ability to expand. It has boundaries, rules, limits. The dollar does not. No world currency does. Maybe something better than BTC will come along. Wonderful. For now, it is useful to me for its potential.

Yes, BTC is very volatile, with extreme gains (and some losses) in recent months and years. It can bounce in exchange value by 10-20% in a very short amount of time. Again, I’m okay with that. I’m holding the digital asset for a longer term (as well as buying small amounts biweekly even at high valuations now) and taking a risk that it will retain some value in the future. I am taking a risk that BTC will be an exchangeable currency for the purchase of goods and services, as well as potentially a store of some value. As a caveat, I would never “invest” an amount of my earnings (and my family’s finances) into BTC or other risky asset that, were I to lose all of it, would result in financial hardship.

However, it is just that risk of the financial hardship brought about by dollar dependency that drives my interest in BTC. Given the fiat nature of national currencies, the extreme monetary expansion, the “money printing” (although now digital), the unfathomable national debt and stimulus and bailouts, the likelihood of negative interest rates for bank savings and checking accounts in the US (as is already the case elsewhere), the nosebleed over-valuations of stock market bubbles based on stagnant real valuations as corporations and individuals dump money there trying to chase a gain that can no longer be acquired by saving, the risk of inflation (dollar devaluation and declining purchasing power), the probability of government “digital currencies” which will only be “fiat on steroids” with the removal of ANY limiting factors for expansion mixed with the potential for some extreme controls on how/where that “money” might be tracked and spent,… I’m looking to de-dollarize where able. Most of this diversification is into precious metals which can be done with private storage in national and international depositories, rolling retirement funds into precious metals IRAs, cautiously investing in stock market funds which hold actual metals (do your due diligence to avoid “paper metals”), holding some metals in a safe deposit box.

I came across an insightful article that summarized my approach to BTC this week: Mark E. Jeftovic’s “We’re In A Bubble That’s Too Big To Fail.” One of the specific quotes Mr. Jeftovic lists from a prior article commentarian (unattributed to the anonymous but apparently brilliant author, unfortunately) was spot on for my view! [Unattributed Author, can we be friends? I like you very much.]

“I had the thought that Bitcoin is like a hole in the wall of a burning building. The burning building is the petrodollar. The Bitcoin hole in the wall doesn’t meet any standard definition of a door. It wouldn’t pass a building inspection and it may not last long. It will most certainly be replaced by something else in the long run. But in the short term, no one inside that burning building really cares about any of that and the ones that first smelled smoke are already pouring through it. Many more will follow and some, sadly, will die in the fire. There are other exits from the building too, some may be safer than others, but the most important thing is getting out of the burning building as quickly as possible.”

As time permits this morning, I’ll add a few extra thoughts and graphs on the financial trajectory of the dollar, but the above is enough to illustrate the point.

Here’s a graph from the Federal Reserve’s Economic Data (FRED), as shared by a seekingalpha article discussing inflation risks. M1 is the amount of readily spendable currency (cash and checking account balances, essentially. M2 would include M1+ other funding that can be quickly made liquid, like savings accounts and money markets… now, we’re not even going to get into Fractional Reserve Banking wherein banks only have about 3% of the funds that are claimed as balances… so don’t you all run out to get your non-existent money!… which, BTW, ZH quote: “The FDIC only has $109 billion to insure the entire $13 trillion US banking system. That’s less than 1%!” But, I digress.)

Note the massive increase in M1 recently. The ongoing argument is about why inflation (significant price increases, falls in purchasing power, devaluation) has not been a problem. Most answers seem to revolve around a declining “velocity” of money – in essence, people and corporations are parking, or sitting on, their cash. The money isn’t being used in the market, exchanging hands. Another time, we’ll have to analyze why it takes so much money printing to actually fend off “deflation.” If/when that parked money starts to be mobilized with velocity, and floods the market with trillions of dollars,….

Here’s a graph of the perpetually rising national debt of the US. That debt is now well above 100% of GNP (see that ratio trend here). Obviously, the debt cannot be repaid. That does not appear to be a goal, in the slightest, regardless of administration.

Can debt be “managed” forever?

At what point do interest payment obligations eat into the available funds?

What rate of money expansion is too much?

When do other countries decide that buying American bonds (Treasuries) will pay them less in stability and interest than the declining value of those bonds held over time (inflation adjusted return)?

What happens if/when enough Treasuries cannot be sold to keep supplying the rising debt requirements?

By continuing to digitally expand the dollar into an ever-increasing pool of M1, what are the devaluation/inflation risks when “velocity” changes?

If the government can increase M1 by trillions in a given year, as well as take on perpetual national debt, (exceeding total tax revenues from the public – estimated at $3.86T for 2021), then why not just eliminate taxation altogether and fund all of the government’s programs and expenditures through money expansion – which is argued by mainstream economists to have no negative economic effect?

When other countries tire of having to do business in dollars for oil (petrodollars) and for most other international trade, and tire of being held hostage or embargoed by coercive and extortionist international policy and threat, then create their own systems outside of the post-WWII Bretton Woods monetary system imposed upon the entire globe, what will happen to the demand for dollars?

What happens when the dollar is no longer the World Reserve Currency? (Russia, China and other countries have been developing financial escape systems for some time.) The dollar has only been the dominant currency since the late 1940s.

What happens when the US Empire joins the history books with every other previous empire throughout the millenia of world history? Will that shift happen within our lifetimes? Within coming years? Some might argue that the peak has already taken place, the trajectory is now retraction, and the bubble burst is upon us. The Soviets didn’t foresee the demise of their Empire in the late 1980s, but theirs fell apart very quickly – almost overnight.

With such a massive level of debt, global military occupation and policing effort, and untenable domestic and international liabilities, how quickly might the American Bubble burst, forcing us all into uncomfortable adjustments?

Prepare well, friends.

The coronavirus pandemic has been in play for over a year with over 500,000 deaths in the US being attributed to the virus, or associated with a positive test. (see worldometers.info data, and a number of other sites). Details of cases, deaths, lockdowns, vaccines, economic costs, social fallout, etc. will be teased out for years. Given the level of politicization and bias witnessed in official responses, data and debate, gaining a clear insight into reality will be difficult. “Following the Science” can apparently mean all kinds of contradictory claims these days. What should be one of the most objective fields of study, Medicine, has been politicized and emotionalized to the point of annoyance and abuse.

I have written several blogs along the timeline of this experience, here, here and here in an attempt to understand and document. My impression from the beginning has been that the lockdowns have been excessive and will have significant monetary and non-monetary costs to persons and society (unemployment, personal and national debt – into the many trillions of dollars, unsought or unavailable medical care, depression, social isolation) that could exceed the death toll from the virus. Again, this will be an ongoing debate for a long time to come.

Interestingly, I personally tested positive with COVID in early January 2021 via a PCR nasal swab. My symptoms were primarily mild headache, intermittent chills, low grade fever (less than 100.5 F), and muscle aches that lasted a week or so. I had about a week of greatly reduced taste and smell, which resolved completely. For a respiratory virus, oddly, I never had any significant respiratory symptoms: no shortness of breath, cough or runny nose. Anecdotally, I would classify my experience as a mild to moderate viral syndrome. I’ve certainly had much, much worse. I was able to walk the dogs every day (in the woods, away from people… so don’t have a conniption).

Viral case numbers and deaths looked to have peaked on/around January 8, 2021. Of note, at that point, roughly 6.7 million doses of vaccines had been administered. So, it looks like whatever impact the vaccines will have, the trend had peaked before a significant portion of the 330M American population received a dose,… or the two doses, which have been required to be considered immunized. (6.7M/330M = 2.03% of the population, if each single dose represented an immunized individual, although it may represent half that number of persons, receiving two doses, or 1% of the population.)

Of particular interest to me, now that there is more data, is to tease out what differences (or lack thereof) could be attributed to harsh lockdowns: forced business closures, closed schools, and social distancing mandates. Clearly, some US states took very different approaches. Georgia, for example, was ridiculed and shamed in The Atlantic back in April 2020, for not locking down… “An Experiment in Human Sacrifice.” Jeffrey Tucker wrote an insightful article in December 2020, at the American Institute for Economic Research which discusses how all of the horrible death and destruction did NOT happen in Georgia to the extent that it did in some locked down states. Potentially, as a direct result, that state’s economy is doing very well in comparison to its locked down counterparts.

DataUSA offers an interactive graphing tool to compare states’ data. I wanted to see how low to no lockdown states (e.g. FL, GA, TX) have done in comparison with strict lockdown states (e.g. CA, NY, MI, PA) with regard to deaths per 100,000 population. FL 147, GA 164, TX 149 – compared to CA 131, MI 165, PA 187, NY 196. For mortality, California did the best and New York did the worst. Following the graphs and numbers, I would have to outright reject anyone’s argument that locked down states showed any significant improvement in mortality over those that did not lock down. How much was (mis)spent financially, socially, politically in the endeavor?

Internationally, I’ve been interested in Sweden. Along the path, Sweden has been both a beacon and a pariah, depending on the time frame and the reporting outlet. At the year mark, however, Sweden appears to have done well in comparison to strict lockdown counterparts, like the UK, although Sweden’s neighbors did even better, with a mix of government interventions. From worldometers.info, Sweden’s deaths per 100K have been 123, and the UK 180 to date, following similar graphing trends.

There is much more to analyze. There will be ongoing debate about herd immunity, vaccine efficacies, immunity passports, masking, and on and on. From what I am seeing with the data here regarding lockdown severity vs mortality, my personal opinion is that I would prefer to be in a non-lockdown state in the future, where civil liberties and economic opportunities will not be trampled by state/government actors via destructive, emotional, politicized, and poorly-evidenced interventions.

We are drowning in it. There are printed and spoken words, images, and video crashing down upon us constantly. We control some of that flow, but to much of that input we are simply the passive recipients… if not victims. Inputs arrive in the forms of conversation, news, radio, internet, advertising, podcasts, articles, blogs, books, frequent and distracting text messages, and an endless array of entertainment platforms delivered across screens whose sizes vary from many thousand square feet stadium videoboards to IMAX to television to computer to handheld and wristband. Topics may be social messaging, politics, medicine, science, tech, history, finance, religion, popular culture and surely much more.

The external pressures to receive and be influenced by data are ridiculous. Regardless of source, each communication is sent with purpose – the origins of which may be healthy, productive and informative or which may have goals of persuasion, marketing, monetary gain, manipulation or control. All of these messages are sent (and received) through filters, bias, experience-determined and individualized perspective, beliefs, preferences, personality and world views. Some of us are more adept at crafting messages. Some are more skilled in processing them. Some are challenged as both sender and receiver. These processes are complex and may have far-reaching consequences.

To imagine a “Communication History of the World” timeline which chronologically plots the number of messages received by the average person on a daily basis, we could envision that very low, horizontal line starting in the era of grunting then proceeding to verbal speech to written language to the printing press to electronic telegraph to radio to television and to include internet communication today. That graph would show minimal change for millenia then a massive explosion of messaging which continues exponential growth today. It is now the norm for children in developed nations to practically be born with an electronic device in their hands, streaming incessant data and input to their brains.

How will humanity adapt to these constant external inputs? How do we appropriately filter these information flows to avoid drowning,… or deception? How do we determine which data has value? Which is accurate? Which is persuasive? How has it been sourced,… or biased? What is the purpose or agenda of its sender? Which flows should be turned off entirely, and which data summarily dismissed? How do we find a balance between appropriately being informed yet experiencing peace of mind, calmness and joy in life? How do we recognize our own and others’ (even “expert”) limitations to know what is real and true? Perhaps just recognizing all of this as background and challenge is a significant start towards awareness and improvement.

This topic recently re-surfaced for me as I listened to a Joe Rogan podcast with Tristan Harris as they discussed the latter’s social media and tech expertise which was showcased in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. There are many worthwhile topics in their conversation and the documentary, to include the psychological effects of social media, Big Data collection on users, and the manipulation of information.

Mr. Harris ended the podcast by reading from author Neil Postman’s introduction to his 1980s era book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Although Postman primarily took issue with the distractions culminating in television, his premises can only be found to be even better supported in the Age of the Internet, which would emerge in the following decade.

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we at least had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s Dark Vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief, even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will become overwhelmed, overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity or history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we’d be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.”

I have read, reflected on, and for years been familiar with, Aldous Huxley’s and George Orwell’s dystopian writings. The Rogan/Harris conversation led me to a new find, and to audiobook, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death… twice. Well worth the read or listen. Of course, he does better justice to these topics that I can. Rather than attempt to summarize the many points made throughout these books and conversations, I’ll just list some questions that I am pondering myself. I don’t have the solutions, which will be different for any of us as we all have different situations, value judgments and goals. Considering questions like these may be a good start to bringing the issues out of the subconscious background chatter and distraction, and into the foreground for a more transparent analysis. Grab that loud, obnoxious, distracting troll by the neck and pull it screaming and kicking into the light for a good look.

• How much of the data, images and “information” that we entertain is of no real use to us,… of no value to help us make decisions about important matters of interpersonal relationships, employment, useful learning, psychological and physical health, financial decisions, life purpose,….?
• How much of what we process, or of what consumes our time and attention, is empty distraction,… meaningless and low value entertainment,… simply time and resource-destroying drivel? How much of my time SHOULD I permit myself to be mindlessly entertained? How do I choose to allot my time?
• How much of what we see on television, social media and other sources has a clear bias,… or a hidden bias? How do we keep those likely biases and intentional persuasions in conscious view in order to appropriately filter information? How likely is it that I am unconsciously swayed and affected by external biases and intentions? How often do I fall into that trap? And how do my own biases and worldviews unintentionally filter how I receive realistic and truthful data?
• What are the sources of information for the sources of information that I see? Can those sources be traced back to reliable primary and principal data, or at least honest and transparent discussion? What does “reliable” mean? Does it require a course or degree in statistics to understand probabilities of accuracy, rates of error, random occurrence and how powerful data is, or is not? Are the “experts” truly non-biased experts with protected access to difficult to comprehend knowledge? Even in that case, does their expertise extend to anything beyond a very narrow field? How well can they contemplate and opine on the broader perspectives, costs and consequences of their recommendations?
• How much of what we receive, or even emit ourselves, is based more on emotion, subjective values, preferences, and anecdote rather than on logic, reason, and dispassionate analysis? Does a non-biased analysis tend to threaten our comfort level – psychologically, emotionally, financially, politically, religiously,…? Am I able to view a subject from a broader and less impartial perspective that offers greater context of consequences, history, economics, society and other individuals? Does my communication reflect that perspective?
• As a society, how is disinformation, unfavored opinion, and nonconformist communication best approached? Through anger, controls, censorship, cancel culture, threats, de-platforming, vengeful “doxing” (sharing an individual’s private documents and data on the internet in an attempt to shame and intimidate, if not character assassinate), or by designating truth dissemenators and fact checkers as information gatekeepers? Who checks the checkers? How likely is it that such gatekeepers will be immune to bias, groupthink or even purpose-driven agenda? How likely is it that an agenda-driven individual would seek just such a position,… as do politicians?
• In this Age of Information, would it not be an individually and societally enlightened approach to teach early and often how to deal with information, rather than to attempt to control its flow? As children are now practically born with electronic devices in their hands, continually bombarded with images and data into their brains, would it not be of extreme benefit to teach them very early and continually how to discern information, discriminate data, research assertions, investigate sources, filter information flows, teach themselves, forever learn, entertain nuanced topics, and communicate ideas in collaborative rather than confrontational ways? Could this be one of the most important subjects to be taught in formal education settings, as well as at home?
• Under what incentives and purposes do governments, corporations and individuals operate who prefer to control information and drive opinion rather than to facilitate open sources, transparency and broad discussion? What is the future of our world, if those Controllers dominate information flows and communication?

Were Orwell, Huxley and Postman very far off the mark? Are we already there?

It’s fun (and sometimes disturbing) to trace how you end up down some rabbit holes. I recently read Japan’s Infamous Unit 731: Firsthand Accounts of Japan’s Wartime Human Experimentation Program by Hal Gold. Illuminating and horrifying. Horrifying in the sense of mass murder and torture, not necessarily in the current vernacular that might depict the trauma of receiving the wrong flavor latte from your barista or even having been micro-aggressed against by a suspicious glance or an unkind word. (Yes, if you’re already triggered, then you may choose to move on to another blog that reinforces your preferred victim status and protects your hyper-sensitive, undeveloped ego – oblivious to the historical perspective and perpetrated atrocities that make our current civil discord and tantrums look petty, childish and imminently self-absorbed in comparison to millennia of misery throughout human history. Buckle up, because this is the real sh*t.)

As background to the Unit 731 pursuit, my brother-in-law, Nate, and I frequently engage in interesting (if not darker) conversations about history, cycles of Empire, economy, politico-social currents and the like… with more meaningful reach than your present-day circus performances of political theatrics, media hysteria and general societal psychopathology. In recent months he had loaned me his copy of John Toland’s The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. At 875 pages, however, I chose to audio-book that one on my commutes and dog walks. Well worth the time investment for the historically curious, particularly if imperial and military histories interest you. That book’s journey opened up other tangents of discussion and inquiry.

The path led me to read The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang. Now, I’m not hating on the maligned Japanese, per se. There’s plenty of disruption, death and destruction to be found at the hands and in the dark crevices of governments the world over – the US and her allies certainly being no exception. The Japanese history discussed here is just my most recent trail of exploration, particularly engaging to me because I knew nothing about either the destruction of Nanking and her population or biological warfare experimentation.

On the basis of victim count, the Nanking Chinese and their compatriots were far exceeded numerically by German atrocities of the era, however, the Japanese were no less brutal. In some aspects, perhaps the Asian counterparts, on a prisoner per capita basis, surpassed the racism, de-humanization, hatred, vengeance and blood-thirst perpetrated by the Germans upon their perceived lessers, the unclean, the “cockroaches.” While emaciating concentration camps and homicidal gas “showers” cannot be considered benevolent in any sense, the Japanese were arguably more skilled individually in personalized and ongoing violence, rape, torture and mass murder of their enemies. The Japanese soldiers were likely more directly involved in their nation’s atrocities, lacking the well-developed systems and machinery of their ally’s mass incarceration, starvation and murder, which may have permitted the German soldiers more of a depersonalized distancing from their deeds – both physical and psychological.

On to Unit 731. In the Japanese military’s quest to reduce its own soldiers’ battleground illnesses and wound complications, it sought to better understand pathogenic microorganisms, like the Vibrio species that spreads cholera in contaminated drinking water. In that endeavor, military leaders recognized the opportunity to turn those pathogens on its enemies – both civilian and military – by weaponizing these pathogens into biologic warfare (BW) systems. To scale these techniques to the genocidal levels necessary to have military impact required research. Accurate research on the pathogenicity, efficacy and delivery of deadly microorganisms apparently required human experimentation on a large scale. One of the primary investigative BW bodies of the Japanese military was the secret Unit 731.

Headed and populated by the nation’s top medical scientists and physicians, Unit 731’s research included using political and war prisoners, and at times entire unsuspecting Chinese villages, for experimentation, pathogen inoculation, gassing, water torture, bayonet practice, BW bombing, starvation, water and food contamination, vivisection (dissection of the living – with or without anesthesia – until dead), frostbite experiments until skin and tissue fell from the bone,….

The term that the staff used for their human study material referred to inanimate objects, specifically wood logs – “maruta.” Incinerators disposed of the logs after their usefulness was expended. Maruta were not permitted to survive. If they happened to live through an experiment, other research would be carried out on them until they did not.

Many of the experiments of Unit 731 centered on culturing bacteria and viruses for cholera (V. cholerae), typhoid fever (Salmonella typhi), plague (Yersinia pestis), Shigella dysenteriae, and viral hemorrhagic fevers (of multiple etiologies). Insects and rodents (particularly fleas and rats) were bred as pathogen vectors. For instance, plague was spread among some Chinese and Soviet areas by dropping bombs filled with plague-infested fleas. As another example, dogs fed with diseased pork were infected with cholera and unleashed in populated areas where they would vomit and expel diarrhea. Other dogs and animals would eat the vomit and spread the disease, ultimately contaminating people directly as well as infiltrating the human water supply.

The number of victims of these BW experiments and operations is unknown but can only be guessed to be well into the tens or hundreds of thousands. It has been claimed that as many as 20 million were killed in these programs and attacks. In a single account in the book, one army captain testified that a two-week cholera mission he was involved in resulted in the death of 20,000 Chinese.

The author, Hal Gold, estimated that the personnel involved in Unit 731 and its similar outfits numbered in the 20,000 range. These would include not only the well-trained medical and scientific staff, but many military and civilian support staff, to include university students and vocational trainees. Part of the servicing of these staff was providing the males with access to “comfort women” – usually of Chinese or Korean origin. These coerced, and typically prisoner status, prostitutes formed a well-established system of brothels, not only for keeping the staff satisfied, but they also served as sources of research for venereal disease – particularly syphilis. It is documented that the offspring of prisoner females were used in human research, as well.

In August 1945, as Japan surrendered to the WWII Allies who were at the cusp of physically occupying their island country, the facilities of experimentation units were destroyed in their retreat – along with any remaining prisoner-witnesses. The US government (including military leadership and the presidency) was aware of the war crimes committed by the Japanese military in its BW and torture programs. However, at the end of WWII, the US and the Soviets were already engaging in the developing Cold War, positioning themselves in this next power struggle.

The US was complicit in covering up these Japanese war crimes for its own benefit. Its leadership wanted the research knowledge from the experiments, as well as the secret intelligence that the Japanese held on the Soviets. It was also adamant in keeping this data and power out of the possession of the Soviets who wanted the Japanese military leaders to face war crimes tribunals. The US government denied the Soviets that information, publicity and justice in order to pursue its own interests. Those war criminals were granted immunity and were ultimately integrated into Japan’s medical, academic and government leadership.

For myself, my interest in this type of history is multi-fold. It is important to understand the mistakes, lies, abuses, power plays and victimizations of the past in order to recognize, expose and hopefully abort in early stages any similar trends in the present and future. Institutions of power and secrecy cannot be trusted to operate to the benefit of humanity. I appreciate this observation from the author: “Anyone familiar with life in a bureaucracy – especially a large and ponderous one – realizes that a large part of its total energy is expended to protect and enhance individual members’ own roles in the organizational machinery.” He might have added: “… to the detriment of human beings and society.”

Additionally, historical perspective SHOULD encourage today’s population to better appreciate the comforts, food, shelter and safety that few of our forebears could have known or imagined. While many today decry the injustices and inequalities of their existence, may we put into appropriate perspective our current state juxtaposed with the often miserable, tortured and murderous history of humankind. May we value, preserve and improve upon this progress through our own work, reading, self-education, demanded transparencies and civil discourse.

Put the COVID Lockdown hysteria in perspective. Cut through the hype, the pseudoscience, the voo doo, the cultism. Tom uses logic, data, science, and the opinions of expert immunologists and epidemiologists to enlighten on the broad, destructive and deadly consequences of the myopic political response to the virus.

Tom Woods is a Harvard trained historian who shares a daily podcast on topics across the spectrum of politico-economics, and really anything else of interest to him and his libertarian-leaning audience. He’s created over 1700 episodes since 2014. Without a doubt, you can find plenty to educate and enlighten there. This is his recent speech at the Mises Institute Supporters Conference. (Listening at 1.5x is just about right if you’re time-limited.)

The novel coronavirus 2019 pandemic was declared a national emergency in the U.S. by the President on March 13, 2020. Far along the timeline, we’re now just a few weeks away from the 6-month mark here. So much was unknown at that time. Fear and anxiety were the rule… and seem to be, yet. Models were estimating over 2 million US deaths without lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing. (These numbers were later shown to be based on Neil Ferguson’s “unreliable” computer code, although that’s been a hotly debated and politicized topic, as well.)

“Flatten the Curve!” became the crying call across media and politics. The argument was that via heavy interventions, the spread of the virus could potentially be slowed. A massive peak might be avoided. Otherwise, the nation’s health care capacity would be overwhelmed and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans would be left without care. Also, by slowing the spread and flattening the peak of cases, more time would be allowed in order to bring down the death toll from over 2 million to maybe 250,000. That would also allow time for herd immunity and vaccine development.

As the situation was looking better, perhaps by June, by July there was a “second wave” feared as virus numbers and deaths began to increase again. In retrospect, it doesn’t appear that this was another wave of a returning viral infection, but the movement of the virus from the coasts (especially New York) towards more central states. My home state of Texas, especially Houston, faced fears of overwhelmed hospital and ICU capacity. As Texas had done very little mandatory social distancing or masking, this was seen by the media and lockdown advocates as justified punishment for lax behaviors. I heard as much in talk from staff and doctors in my own hospital environments in Pittsburgh, PA. Fortunately, Texas had a quick peak at the end of July that lasted a week or two, and has slowly trended downward. Houston’s ICUs reached baseline capacity at that time, but never experienced stress on their Phase 2 overflows nor did Texas cities require use of any makeshift facilities for patients.

At the six month mark, the original calls and mandates for a few weeks of curve-flattening lockdowns have extended in many ways until today, with no foreseeable return to normalcy. The expectations of case flattening and hospital capacity preservation have morphed into a demand for zero positive tests. Masking mandates are the norm. Some schools are opening with hybrid online and in-person classes. Many classes are entirely online and/or remain in various stages of uncertainty. Parents are caught between figuring out child-care, education, their role in supervision or homeschooling, their own work options, and navigating new financial situations caused by the economic turmoil of lockdown.

Many will argue for the appropriateness of these measures, and potentially even call for stricter enforcement. There have been, after all, 180,000 deaths attributed to this virus in the US, to date. That’s a big number, and it isn’t over, yet. Bad flu seasons here may hit 60,000 to 70,000 deaths. People die from this – primarily the elderly and otherwise ill – but many young and healthy people are afraid of contracting or spreading the virus. The numbers, testing and risks can and have been debated everywhere, with little consensus anywhere. I’m still a proponent of Sweden’s low intervention model that isolated the sick and ill, leaving much of society to function with caution,… but that opinion is sure to ignite a heated debate!

What has been reinforced to me throughout this period is less about the behavior of viruses and more about the nature of humans. We all have different risk tolerances, reading affinities, personality traits, isolation tolerance, employment needs, life experiences, political and world views, sets of biases, vulnerabilities, baseline health status, levels of regard for experts and authority figures, tendencies towards logical fallacies, and different intelligence levels – although this last may be among the least influential. All of these factors, and certainly more, contribute to our personal attitudes and responses. I work with a lot of presumably intelligent physicians and professionals, and their opinions regarding the risks of the virus and the costs of the societal interventions are as polarized as those of the general public. Does that mean that we’re all seeing different data? Or that many are misinterpreting it? Or are too stupid to understand it? Or just that our personalized calculations and subjective value sets lead to us all to divergent opinions and choices?

In our increasingly polarized (or at least electronically amplified) society, some may believe that my comparatively reduced concern for viral risk is callous, cavalier, poorly reasoned, even perhaps “murderous.” Simultaneously, I may look at some of the die-hard lockdowners as simple-minded, automatons, catastrophists, incapable of broader perspective and cost analysis. Where is the consensus to be found? I think the answer is: there is none. Our views are often irreconcilable. And the more that enforcement, shaming and threats are utilized to coerce others to comply with our views, the greater the animosity, disregard and division. Of course, this dynamic is clearly extrapolated across political, cultural and religious spectra. So, what is to be done to find some peace and unity?

For one, self-aware adults can realize that we are often wrong in our assumptions and “certainties.” Our impressions and convictions can be (and often are) incorrect. We all have information biases and knowledge deficits. We misunderstand probabilities and likelihoods. We cannot humanly contemplate or predict the breadth of consequences for ourselves and others. We all have many individual factors that influence our opinions. Recognizing these imperfections and variations can provide room for understanding, or at least tolerating, others.

Of course, the entire role of politics and media is to exacerbate then exploit myriad differences towards emotionalized polar extremes, rather than to foster calm, discourse and understanding, which would do little to drive the machinery of ratings, money flows, votes and power distributions. So, secondly, maybe a healthy move that could save and value more lives than lockdowns (especially in the realm of foreign interventionism) would be to turn off the media and the political circus.

P.S. Of note, (pre-dating our most recent iteration of discord,… which really is nothing particularly new over the centuries) here are some interesting works that I’ve audiobooked this past month. These touch on the biases and the flaws in our thinking, which should make us all less certain of our “convictions.”

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis. “Forty years ago Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred systematically when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’ own work possible. Kahneman and Tversky are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms.”

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. “Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell…. Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains: System One is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System Two is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Examining how both systems function within the mind, Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities as well as the biases of fast thinking and the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and our choices.”