Issue 71 – (Crypto) banks are not your friends
Celsius’ Alex Mashinsky pleads guilty to fraud, some Tornado Cash sanctions are overturned, and tech billionaires complain about “debanking”.
The trail isn’t just a path through the woods, it’s a society organized around some of the best and most characteristically American virtues: spontaneous helpfulness, neighborly concern for a stranger, collective work for the common good. These virtues aren’t restricted to the trail, I’ve seen them all over the country. I’ve lived in Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia, Washington, D.C., San Francisco. I’ve driven across the country several times. Everywhere, people are friendly. If you need help, someone will help you. I’m sure we can all think of exceptions, but they are exceptions—we’re famous around the world for our outgoing cheerfulness and willingness to drop everything to help someone we just met. These aren’t just “small town virtues.” I’ve watched half a dozen New Yorkers, all unknown to each other, convene an impromptu colloquy on a busy sidewalk to determine the optimum route for a lost tourist to reach his destination. In Union Station in D.C. I saw an elderly woman fall and cut her face, and a dozen passengers hurrying for their own trains stop to help her. Everywhere, as individuals, this is how Americans act. In Maine, there’s a lake camp just off the trail where the owner feeds hikers every morning. For $12, he’ll make you eggs, sausage, coffee, juice, and a stack of twelve pancakes, if you can eat them all. If you can’t eat them all he’ll give you a ziplock bag to take the leftovers. If you can’t pay, or don’t want to, he’ll feed you anyway. He has a fund of money from other hikers who’ve paid extra just for this purpose, but he says it never gets any smaller. He doesn’t do this for money. He doesn’t get anything out of it but extra work, along with a little company in the morning. He had a son in the military who died, but he doesn’t like to talk about it. When you go inside the camp building you pass a huge Trump 2024 flag hanging on the wall outside. It’s tempting to imagine that the person who would feed a group of strangers every morning just because they’re camped at his doorstep and hungry is somehow different than the person who would vote for concentration camps. But they’re the same person. We’re all the same people. How can we reconcile living our lives with such openness, such abundant kindness, but governing ourselves with such fear and hate? I don’t know. It’s another clear, chilly day in America. I guess I’ll keep walking.
