Democracy

I’ve read an incredible statement by the idiot woman who is apparently German minister of foreign affairs:

Germany will back Ukraine ‘no matter what voters think’ – FM

Annalena Baerbock says supporting Kiev matters more than expected winter unrest

If I give the promise to people in Ukraine – ‘We stand with you, as long as you need us’ – then I want to deliver. No matter what my German voters think, but I want to deliver to the people of Ukraine,” Baerbock said at one point.

“I have to be clear that this holds on as long as Ukraine needs me,” she said, referring to the EU embargo against Russia.

“We are facing now wintertime, when we will be challenged as democratic politicians. People will go in the street and say ‘We cannot pay our energy prices’. And I will say ‘Yes I know, so we help you with social measures.’ But I don’t want to say ‘Ok then we stop the sanctions against Russia.’ We will stand with Ukraine, and this means the sanctions will stay also in wintertime, even if it gets really tough for politicians.”

Initially, I thought “how is it a democracy if politicians intentionally work against the interest of their own people, sacrificing them for the sake of helping a foreign country (which by the way is a Nazi cesspool of lies, corruption, theft and murder, and said country is actually an American puppet state that was used for killing its own citizens of Russian nationality and developing covid-based bioweapons designed for preferentially killing Russians; basically, it’s the worst country in Europe by far, and probably one of the worst in the world), and outright declare to work against the interest of their voters?”

And then I thought, silly me, why of course it’s democracy, by the only relevant definition. You see, non-democratic countries such as Russia think democracy is when political parties and politicians declare their agenda, and people go out to the polls to cast votes, and whoever wins most votes can govern the state and then if the people see that they work in their best interest, they keep electing them to power, or otherwise vote them out of office. But that’s not true democracy. True democracy is when the American embassy, State Department and the CIA pre-select the candidates, and tell the controlled press who is supposed to win so that they know whom to uncritically praise and whom to slander, so that the obedient people know who is the most democratic candidate that is supposed to win. If this candidate wins, the elections were free and democratic, and if said candidate loses and people actually elect someone they support (i.e. Trump), this was not democratic and the Russians did it.

Halfway between having the cake and eating it

I sold 55.13% of my precious metals holdings today, and bought a nice two-storey penthouse apartment and a plot of land.

This move is contrary to what I would consider smart, because the precious metals valuations are below what they should be, and real estate is greatly overvalued. However, I am very happy with my decision, for the following reasons.

First, this is the first real estate property I ever bought; I’ve been renting so far. The problem is, the very nice place I had rented since 2009 to 2021 lulled me into a false sense of complacency; I had a very unproblematic situation there (other than a humidity/mold problem) until the earthquake that damaged the structure so hard, the flat roof became porous to water, and the owners couldn’t fix it while I was inside, and probably can’t fix it at all due to the nature of the damage, and when water intrusion became so bad it flooded the central heating boiler and we lost both hot water and heating during the winter, I had to move in the most inopportune moment, with huge rental prices and incredibly poor choice. Renting no longer looks like a great idea, especially on the eve of a great geopolitical disaster that’s developing as we speak. Also, there is a problem with real estate that’s even worse than price, and that’s availability, The choice is poor, and when a good one appeared on the market, together with a piece of land I could later use for whatever purpose, I decided to halve both my risk and my potential earnings from metal growth; having no place that I can reliably depend on in this situation looked like something that’s far too dangerous in comparison with the possible reward in the best case scenario; the risk/reward ratio was poor. I have nothing against risk, but having so much money in form of metal, and not having a place of my own, in a situation where renting no longer feels like a good solution, that was foolhardy.

Also, my original reason for buying precious metals was to save for real estate, because money on a bank account is always too tempting to spend on some “lesser goal” that invariably appears; someone always “needs” a new car, or something along those lines. Also, I don’t trust banks as far as I can throw them, and keeping money there feels inherently dangerous. As I had a very strong “hint from above” to buy gold bullion, that’s what I eventually did, after initially dismissing the “hint” to my detriment. The problem is that I started thinking about precious metals then, and decided that they are hugely undervalued and a price revision is somewhere in the future, making it a very tempting prospect to just hold on to the gold until this comes to fruition, and only then solve the real estate problem. However, this is not the whole story, as I tried to buy real estate at several points before, and it turned out that either the houses were poorly built or inadequate, or the sellers were unreliable in some way; in any case, by trying to find something good for several years, I learned how hard it is to find that “unicorn” place, and so when one appeared, and passed several of my tests, I decided to just go for it and split my holdings just about straight in the middle, between real estate and precious metals.

Buying land was a spur of the moment thing; it felt like something that makes my situation less limited and allowed me to explore options in the future, if need arises, and although it increased the cost by a quarter, it increased potential benefits by an order of magnitude, so I just went for it.

It is good that I could do this and not enter the worst of the crisis with no money; that would be even worse than entering it without a place of my own, from which I can’t be arbitrarily thrown out when the landlord feels shit hit the fan too hard and he wants his house back. I remind you that laws and contracts are worth very little in a societal breakdown scenario. However, you can’t eat real estate, and being completely without money because I bought real estate was the reason why I missed out on a few previously available, and marginally acceptable places; buying them would dry me out completely. This, on the other hand, feels financially comfortable.

This recent drop in gold price did hurt me somewhat, but it only reduced my profits from gold by a fifth or so; it reduced my profits from 12% to 10.5%. As I said, it hurt, but not to the point where it would really compromise anything. I would be lying if I said I didn’t expect gold to grow more, but all in all, if I just left the money on the bank account, I would probably have spent it already, and it would also generate no interest if I didn’t. This way, I had moderate earnings, the kind you expect from a solid stock market investment, not from something that supposedly just sits there and makes you no money.

The nice thing is, nobody is going to ask me why I didn’t just invest money in crypto, because those who did are still nurturing their very tender nether regions. 🙂