CNN comparison of heavy lift, US rockets. Boeing’s SLS is not shown.
Blue Origin had its third New Glenn flight last week, and though it wasn’t quite successful, in that the satellite failed to reach proper orbit, it was successful in that it launched, reached space, and returned to a barge. It had a larger faring than even Falcon Heavy, and in terms of payload and price per ton, it beat SpaceX’s main vehicle, the Falcon 9. A SpaceX Falcon 9 flight will cost you $72 million with a weight limit to LEO of 17,400 kg. By contrast, New Glenn flights are priced at $80 million with more than double the weight limit to LEO, 45,000 kg. The price per Kg is less than half, and the faring is bigger. What’s not to like?
For now SpaceX products still retain an edge. The Falcon Heavy will lift more weight to LEO than the New Glenn (one launched today), at an even lower price per kg. Besides, SpaceX’s products are reliable, they’ve launched 240 commercial flights in the last 16 months alone, and all were successful. Blue Origin is still viable in that they’re relatively cheap and fill an important gap in SpaceX’s size portfolio, but they’re not a SpaceX killer. On the other hand they seem like a killer of Boeing’s two space projects, the CST Starliner, and the Boeing SLS that launched Artemis earlier this month.
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket pairs two Blue Origin engines in the lower stage with as many as six solid booster engines from Teledyne.
CST Starliner is Boeing’s space capsule. It was vastly over budget and behind schedule. And when the first semi-successful version reached the Space Station with Astronauts in 2024, it showed multiple malfunctions and was condemned to return to earth unmanned. The astronauts were rescued in a SpaceX Dragon. NASA will want an alternative to Dragon, but now Blue Origin provides one. It’s the same story with Boeing’s SLS. Like the capsule, it was vastly delayed and over budget. While it provided the lift for Artemis II, that was after a near four year delay since Artemis I, November, 2022. The price per kg to launch on SLA is $37,000/kg, about twenty times that of a launch on Falcon Heavy or New Glenn. The only justification for SLS, as I see it, is that it was the main alternative to SpaceX. Now it isn’t. For more on the comparison, see here.
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have newer versions for reusable heavy lifting due to debut within the year. SpaceX hopes to launch their Starship V3 next month. If it works as predicted, the throw weight will be triple that of New Glenn at a fraction of the cost per kg. Blue Origin has a larger version of New Glenn in the works, the 9×4 also reusable. Blue Origin has also started supplying high efficiency methane-burning engines for the Vulcan Centaur rockets made by ULA (United Launch Alliance). ULA continues to make the Atlas V rocket, but these are powered by Russian RD180 engines aided by Teledyne solid boosters. The Russian contract ended after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and ULA’s supply is almost exhausted. Since 2025 ULA has flown two missions successfully using Blue Origin’s, BE-4 engines instead, aided as before, by Teledyne boosters. The price per kg on these Vulcan Centaur rockets is well below that of the old Atlas V, because with BE-4 they can reuse the lift stage. For all of these, the price is far below a flight on Boeing SLS.
The French too have improved their Ariene line. They’re now reusable, and while they’re somewhat expensive, and can’t lift as much as the New Glenn, Falcon Heavy, or Vulcan, they’re cheaper than Atlas V, and are an alternative for deep space projects. With these alternatives I see little value in continuing with Boeing’s SLS. When I look for a path to the moon and beyond, I look to Starship and perhaps New Glenn.
Fifty years ago, when I was in college, black holes were treated as science fiction entities. According to Einstein and Summerfeld, time stopped at the event horizon, and information vanished, but they were not though to exist, except for a tantalizing theory that our universe could be one giant big black hole! A major problem back then, and today, is that the universe clearly contains a lot of “dark matter” (see here), but no one know what it was. The two theories, such were either Massive Astrophysical Objects (MACHOs) or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). In a blog some years back, I put forth a version of the WIMP theory here, with lighter particles. I now have a better thought, based black holes.
In the last 30 years we started seeing evidence that black holes were real. At first these were gravitational lenses, large mass concentrations that made distant galaxies seem close. Then, more recent evidence was gravitational waves, a jiggling of space-time, postulated by Einstein, but measured only ten years ago, in September, 2015. The apparent source of the jiggle, the combination of two black holes.
As our telescopes got better, we’ve found more and more black holes visually, including a particularly large black hole near our galactic center, in the constellation Sagittarius. It’s called Sgr A*, with a mass of roughly 4 million suns, and its discovery got the Nobel Prize, 2020. One of the stars that move around this spot travels at speeds up to 3% the speed of light, and it’s paired with a gas blob that moves much faster. See video here, with relativity shifts. You might think that our galaxy revolves around this black hole, but it doesn’t; it it did, we would not have galactic arms.
A recent explanation for dark matter has been proposed, saying that it is black holes, or neutron stars. To make this theory work, there would have to be many black holes in our galaxy and in others, and between them, and the laws of physics would have to change too, so it’s quite speculative. Still, we keep finding more black holes, including a large one near us, relatively, Gaia-BH3, with about 33 million suns mass. It emits no light, and is orbited every 11.6 years by a gas giant. What makes this model scary, and perhaps not true, is that a model like this would seem to suggest a chaotic dance of death that should tear the galaxy apart. Something like this happens in a recent, Chinese Science Fiction book, “Three Body Problem” (also a TV series).
If our galaxy had many many black holes could it be stable? Could it have lasted as long as it has. One thought is we’re doomed. The galaxy NGC6240 contains three large black holes rotating among themselves, see picture. Their dance seems to be destroying the galaxy as we watch. A possible way out of this appears in a recent video blog by Sabine Hossenfelder based on a paper saying the black holes may not be black holes at all, but clouds. I’m not sure that makes things any more stable, but I enjoyed the video content, so I linked to it.
One thing I like about this whole idea is that the existence of many black holes like this would solve a conundrum I presented in one of my earliest posts, that the universe could not be infinitely big and uniform. If it were, I argued, we’d be cooked by all the solar radiation. But if there were lots of black holes (they have to be real black holes) they would be a place for all that light to sink into, and the universe could be infinitely big and uniform. As for how that sort of universe starts or remains stable, or expands, it’s not clear. Maybe if you dark energy, something else that no one understands, but that lots of folks believe iin.
Robert Buxbaum, April 15, 2026. Three Body problem is decent Sci Fi, despite its strong political message and weak characters. We’re attacked by advanced aliens from a dying, 3 sun system, and earthlings help them. The message, emphasized by the author at the end of the book, is that you should not trust outsiders from a more high tech society (like the USA).
Our war with Iran is now a month old and the press is already calling it lost. They see Americans dead, and allies angry, but no value in the removal of a supreme leader who’d been trying to killing Americans for years, and who’d enriched enough uranium, at 60% to make 11 atom bombs. With our European and Chinese “allies” they see no pressing problem inIran’s space program where the missiles are emblazoned, “Death to USA”, or so they claim. Instead they claim our war is illegal, immoral and damaging. They call for a quick (immediate) end to the war (that is, we stop fighting) and refuse to cooperate in opening the straight of Hormuz, saying it’s not their war, though their ships, some 3200 of them are trapped in the Persian Gulf. Some “allies” have even closed their airspace in protest.
In fact, I suspect that the leadership in China and in Europe are glad to see Iran’s A-bomb project impeded, but who knows. They like to bee seen meeting with Iranian leaders, as Chairman Xi below in January 2026, then attacking the US as reactionary. Iran’s gulf neighbors are less happy with Iran because of the attacks. Even Shia Qatar has complained. Though they have not said so, I suspect most are against Iran’s proxy attacks in the Red Sea (straight of Mandab). China benefits from a non-nuclear war, and keeps sending Iran missile fuel and components in support of Iran’s proletarian government that enforces religion and kills Americans and Iranians, and that traps ships in the Persian Gulf. China benefitted from Iran’s sanctions, as they got cheaper oil, and I can see they’d like this to continue. European leaders just want cheap oil, and to be considered as tolerant, peace makers.
Chairman Xi visits Iran in January 2026, photo from the Independent.
My take, I feel bad for the sailors on these ships, some American, but to my mind, the current state of war is better than the state of peace before it, with continuous proxy attacks, and is far better than the atomic war that could follow. I like peace, but don’t see that happening quicker if we stop bombing Iran, nor quicker than a year from now, even with booming Iran. Iran’s mullahs have distributed power, allowing them to hang on indefinitely, if we let them, and our European friends seem intent to promote Iran’s mullah-leadership, such as it is, at least for now. In a year or so, I suspect that will change, but who knows?
So far, no one is suffering greatly. Gasoline is about 30% more expensive, about $3.95 per gallon today in Michigan, but that’s 50¢/gal cheaper than under Biden. European prices are up a similar percent, not welcome, but not high historically. They would go down if Europe would drill or reopen its nuclear and coal plants, or if European leaders would sign Trump’s trade deal that the UK rejected in the most embarrassing, demonstrative way. I don’t expect any signatures in the next few months — there even an anti conference. In a year they’ll sign, or decide to reopen nuclear plants, or maybe the war will be over. Supposedly this war will take 0.5% off of the GDP of the US, Europe, and China, a cheap price for peace IMHO, far less than the Ukraine war.
Trump has asked for European help opening the straight, in part because help is needed, but in part because it would be a sign to Europe’s citizens, that their leaders stand with us and NATO. Trump teases European leaders over their unwillingness to protect their own ships, and seems willing to let oil prices stay high to pressure Europe, China, and the Mid-east. For now, China does not seem ready for direct war, and seems wi, too seems willing to draw-down its oil reserves, as a way to blunt inflation at home, and promote cheap products abroad. All this is good, it’s a version of peace that should lead to a longer peace after the straight is open. Even poor Canada benefits, for now.
Robert E. Buxbaum, April 7, 2026. I don’t expect anything of an oil deal or a defense deal during King Charles’s visit in 3 weeks, nor during Trump’s visit to China, but who knows.
This is a short post, but useful. We had a moaning toilet. This was “our two-mode commode” described previously, but the same thing happens with one-mode commodes too. I cured it. At issue, the toilet moaned or wailed after it was flushed. Either the toilet was possessed by a tormented soul, as sometimes happens, or the moan was caused by a vibration in the fill diaphragm. That was the case here.
It’s usually toilets in social science university buildings that get inhabited by tormented souls, as these are typically social scientists who are forced to come back this way as punishment for passing themselves off as real scientists. Sometimes they show up making the heating pipes rattle and clang. You can cure this by bringing in a plumber or heating professional to encourage the soul to repent. The heating professional then adjusts some things and the soul moves on. In our case, a toilet in a private home, it required no exorcism, just an adjustment of the flow.
In our case, it became clear that the fill valve had become partially blocked resulting in a high flow against the diaphragm. This diaphragm, shown below, is in the valve that gets closed when the float in the toilet tank rises. At high flows the diaphragm begins to vibrate and moan, sounding just like a possessed toilet.
toilet diaphragm
For most toilets, replacing this diaphragm is an easy repair: buy a new diaphragm for about $4, (and typically, also a new flapper — it’s a good idea to change the flapper every 4-6 years), remove the old diaphragm. It’s behind a thumb-nut, typically, and do the necessary exchange. Remember, thumbnuts are better than others. Sorry to say, our toilet has a new-fangled float mechanism where the diaphragm is hidden inside, not easily replaced. A normal thing to do is to replace the float mechanism, but those cost $30 or more, and take a fair amount of work. Instead, I choose to reduce the flow speed of the water by partially closing the inlet valve sending fill water to the commode. It now fills slightly slower than before, but since there is less flow, there is no longer any audible vibration. A quick fix at zero cost.
If that hadn’t worked, I’d have called in the exorcist, an expensive proposition. You have to pay your the exorcist. If you don’t, you get repossessed.
Canada has long-standing economic problems relative to the US, and they have been growing since 2015 as the figure shows (figure from a conservative, Canadian politician, Ryan Williams). These problems infect most of Europe, and will soon extend to the US. They are largely due to a declining birthrate, bad management, and an aging population. The result is a declining Canadian dollar (CAD), rising housing prices, rising national health costs and rising government debt. In both countries, life feels less affordable than in previous years, but the effects hit harder in Canada. Consider, for example, that the average salary in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, is $62,050 CAD. that’s pretty low by US standards, the equivalent of $45,000 US, well below the average salary in Chicago or Houston, two comparable US cities. In those cities the average is ~$63,000 US. Meanwhile rent prices in Toronto are about the same as in Chicago in US dollars, and far above rent prices in Houston. If you wish to buy a home, the price in Chicago is about half that in Toronto. Even with healthcare, life is generally more affordable in the US, and home ownership, though difficult, is not out of reach, especially in Houston.
Image generated by (for) Ryan Williams, a Conservative Canadian politician. It overstates the problems caused by Trudeau. Canada first began falling behind in the 1980s, though problems increased in 2015.
A main reason that Canadian housing is so expensive is permitting is difficult. Canada has plenty of space for housing, but it’s hard to get a permit to build, and it’s hard to sell the home, too. To be a real-estate agent in Canada, for example, you have to take a year-long course, and pass several stages of permitting tests costing $6000 -$10,000 CAD. In the US, it’s cheaper, about $1000 US and generally it requires only a month-long course. These same regulations also cause salaries to be low, by decreasing productivity. It is hard to start a company in Canada, and hard to retain good workers, since low-productivity workers have rights to equal pay for equal work, with no regard to productivity.
Canadian salaries also suffer from high immigration, particularly of low skill labor. Canada accepts about 500,000 immigrants per year, offering free healthcare and social services. During the Biden years, we accepted 6x more, about 3 million per year, mostly illegally, but Canada has 1/8 the population of the US and more generous benefits. As a result the decrease in affordability has been far greater. In the US and Canada, immigrants have been low skill or unemployed, presenting tough competition for native-born, low-skill workers, and burdening the government welfare system. There has been a push-back in Canada, as in the US, and Canada has begun removing illegal immigrants, as have we in the US. It’s less unpopular in Canada because Canadians see themselves as good no matter what they do. The Canadian population shrank by 0.15% last year, while ours continued to grow. In both countries, lower immigration of unemployed individuals, should lower housing prices, and should protect the welfare system. Of course some businesses benefit from low wage immigrant, and from the unemployed, the social services industry for one, Janitorial services for another. Rich folks are alway s complaining for more immigration because they find it’s hard to get cleaning help, and because they rarely pay taxes at any meaningful rate.
As a band-aide to these economic problems, both in Canada and the US, we have caught to raise government income through a new tax, tariffs. We’ve each put 25% tariffs on automobiles produced in the neighboring country. But Canada has a twist, it can benefit bringing bringing in high-tariff and prohibited imports from China and Cuba hoping the imports cross the border to the US. For example, they import Cuban cigars, and sell them near the border at inflated prices to Americans (largely) who smuggle them to the US. It worked too during prohibition for whiskey. In the last month, Canadian PM Carney reduced the tariff on 50,000 China-made EVs to 6.1%. If large numbers find their way to the US as new or used vehicles, the hope is that Chinese companies will buy manufactured goods from Canada, or evenest up manufacturing. It might work, though Cuba never set up cigar manufacturing in Canada. Typically Chinese companies send abroad nearly finished items, allowing the host country to add finishing touches that involve no technology but that can be claimed to raise the value significantly to avoid taxes. As the chart above, China imports from Canada are virtual all raw goods: food, petroleum, iron ore, gold… Technological expertise stays at home. Canada will need a home grown engine to get out of its funk.
At this point, the most likely home-grown engine is likely to be oil. Canada has oil, and the world needs it, especially China. Currently the Straight of Hormuz is effectively closed because of the war. Many countries are being hurt by this, but particularly China because of troubles in three of its major, sanctioned suppliers, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. China will need a new source of oil, and will likely pay Canadian prices if the Canadian government can see through to provide infrastructure for export. Selling to China could also avoid a war.
Another thought, both to benefit Canada and the US, I’m pro-immigration, but suggest we target hard working, honest immigrants with usable skills: plumbers, cooks, programmers, cement workers … people who are unlikely to start out on welfare, and likely to provide a decent middle class lifestyle. The children from these immigrants integrate well in the US, and likely will into Canada. They integrate far better than the children of unskilled violent refugees. I also favor tariffs, especially on manufactured and luxury goods, like cars and wine. It provides government income, and promotes technical skill at home.
Jeff Bezos’s “Blue Alchemist” program recently got $25M from NASA to develop moon-based solar cell manufacturing on earth. See article here. The idea sort of makes sense to me: instead of transporting solar cells to the moon from earth, why not make them on the moon in bulk. Even light solar cells would weigh about 1kg/kW, making cells on the moon would reduce the effective weight per kW by a factor of 100 it is predicted, see figure. Given a need for megawatts of power, and the high cost to transport things to the moon, $1M/kg currently, this may make sense for the not super-distant future. Moon-made solar cells could reduce the cost per kW on the moon from $1million currently, to a mere $10,000/kW, cheap by moon prices, though super expensive by earth standards.
Elon Musk, perhaps out of envy or long-range vision, wants to go far further. He” recently’s posted’s proposed, at length a plan to launch moon-made solar cells into space along wit moon-made AI chips, with all this done to power AI centers in space, orbiting the earth or moon, see him discuss it here. He notes that “It’s always sunny in space”, so this electricity should be cheap. I don’t consider even moon-solar at $10,000/kW cheap, and power from these moon-launched cells will be pricer yet.
The reason all this makes sense to Musk is that he avoids the disruptions of solar power that come at night-time, and he avoids regulatory boards. He argues that there is no real alternative! given that power on earth is too hard and expensive, and complains that regulators oppose new power plants. I suspect there are some over-regulations, but some regulations are necessary, and I doubt he’ll avoid by going to space. As for the high cost of power, it’s really cheap in China, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran…Just look att he figure below showing the electric cost of bitcoin harvesting around the world. China runs on nuclear power or coal, delivering large-scale electricity at ~ 2¢/kWh. You can make power at a similar cost if you build your own plant, many of the bit-coin folks operate that way. It’s not exactly cheap, but a known technology, and cheaper than space solar amortized to less than 50 years.
AI chip-making is hard to do, even on earth, requiring water, chemicals, equipment and technical attention. Most companies can’t do it; China has barely cracked the technology. Doing it on the moon adds unnecessary difficulties: water and chemicals scarce, skilled servicing labor is hard to find. At some point, the moon and Mars community will want to make AI in space, but before that, they’ll want to make simpler things, like rice cookers. Until we have a fairly large community on the moon, why now make AI chips on earth. If he’s looking for practice, Musk could manufacture in a place that’s inhospitable, but more accessible than the moon: Greenland or Antarctica or the top of Everest. These locations are wam compared to the moon, and they have air and water, and I suspect electricity on Everest is cheaper than on the moon.
Operating AI centers in space is not particularly attractive, by the way. Chips have a tendency to flake-out in space because of cosmic radiation and stronger electromagnetic fields (EM). For this to work at all, chips have to be built specially robust, with correction software that must be particularly active, and you must shield everything from EM to a much greater extent than on earth.
I suspect the reason Musk wants to manufacture AI in space, and to operate there, is to over-shadow Bezos’s solar cell factory, and show off his own (Tesla) technology. Also to have a use for his Starships lifting heavy complicated things. It’s not a plan I would back.
I’ve written a fair amount about sewage over the years, including the benefits of small dams, and problems of combined sewers, but I thought I’d write here about something really fundamental: sewage has two components, poop and rain, and they should be kept separate. The poop and related liquids are known as sanitary sewage. Ideally it is the treated, saved and used as fertilizer. Rain, known as storm sewage, needs to go to the rivers at a controlled speed, unmixed with sanitary sewage. Sorry to say, in many counties, mine included, the two are mixed following every rain, costing us unnecessary money, and making swimming unsafe, and boating (sometimes) unpleasant.
Our system is not quite mixed, but is semi-separate. It only mixes in a “big” rain, more than 1/2″, something that happens once per month, on average. The Pipes are semi-connected as shown below.
Combined sewer system, like in our county, Oakland MI. We use little dams in the pipe system to semi-separate the flows. Here, showing a rain-induced overflow of combined sewage, a CSO.
The pipes of a sanitary sewage system can be relatively small in diameter as this flow is continuous, but never that large. The cost of treatment is high, per gallon though. Some of this cost can be recovered in fertilizer value.
Stormwater flow, by contrast, requires big pipes because the flow, while episodic and be 10,000 more than the sanitary flow. A city can go for weeks without storm flow as there’re is no rain. A storm will then drop more water in an hour than all the sanitary sewage of the last few weeks. You need large diameter stormwater pipes, and you typically want retention basins so that even these pipes are not overwhelmed, and to provide a little settling. The pipes should direct storm water to the nearest river. In our county we mixed the two for historical reasons. This adds tremendously to the cost of sewage treatment, and we find we regularly overwhelm the treatment facility. When this happens, as shown above, sanitary sewage is flushed into the riveras I described ten years ago in a post focussed on pollution from combined sewers. If the rains are really heavy, they back up “sanitary” sewage into basements as well. More commonly, once or twice a month where I live, we just pollute the river. Several cities with combined sewers have separated them recently. Paris, for example, ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
To get an idea of the relative size of the flows in our county, note that Oakland county is a square 30 miles by 30 miles. That’s 900 square miles, or 25.1 billion square feet. In th4e event of a, not uncommon, 2″ rain on this area, we must deal with 4.2 billion cubic feet of water or 33 billion gallons. Some of this absorbs into the ground, but much of it runs goes to pipes heading to the rivers. Ideally we retain some of it above ground for an hour or more because the pipes can’t handle this flow. Even with retention, our rivers rise some 10 feet typically and begin to flow at many miles per hour after a storm. They can be seen carrying trees along, and massively eroding the soil, even in areas that were prepared appropriately.
A home based approach to sewage. Many homes near me have this setup — with internal plumbing and a septic field for sewage treatment. Often, these homes are near a stream that flows at least temporarily.
Sanitary sewage flows are far less voluminous. Our county has roughly 1 million people who flush about 100 million gallons per day, generally sending this to our sanitary sewage treatment plants. That averages a mere 4 million gallons per hour, or 500,000 cubic feet. That’s roughly 8000 times less flow than the storm flow. If any significant fraction of the rainwater goes into our sanitary system, it will quickly overwhelm it and back up into our basements.
Many people try to get out of paying the high price for municipal sewage treatment by making their own small system with a septic tank an a septic field. I think this is a great idea, a benefit for them and the county. I will be happy to direct them to appropriate educational materials so that home waste flows to the septic tank where anaerobic bacteria break things down, it should then flow to a septic field that filters the nutrients and allows aerobic bacteria to break things down further. Nutrients in the sewage helps whatever you plant and, as we say, “the grass is always greenest over the septic tank.” As for the county on the whole, I wish we got real value from the fertilizer, as Milwaukee does, and wish we’d separate the sewers.
Some 8 years ago, 2018, I calculated that a fair price for Bitcoin was likely $11,000, with a maximum of perhaps 4x more, $44,000. I used Fischer’s formula from my economics textbook, perhaps the only useful formula there. It’s based on the idea that the total currency value times the speed of money has to match the value of the things people buy with it. See the analysis here. Based on this formula, you see that, if you print more money, you get inflation — a concept that seems forgotten today.
It’s eight years later, and while there has been some inflation in the price of everything, the price of bitcoin has outstripped most everything else. After years of Bitcoin staying in the price range I’d suggested, it jumped to over $120,000 in 2025 before dropping back to $70,500. I figured I should revisit my calculations, and again find about the same result corrected for normal inflation: a “true value”, of <$33,300. I show why I value it this much, and share why, I think the market is wrong.
A history of Bitcoin prices
Bitcoin has only one “legitimate” use, as best I can tell, and that’s for illegal activities, like paying $6 million dollar to ransom Nancy Guthrie. The problems preventing a high bitcoin valuation, IMHO, are that there is not that much illegal trade, and there are other ways to pay for illegal things. Suitcases of cash can be used, or gold coins, or artwork. These are just as safe as bitcoin, and almost as easy to ship. For legitimate business, almost any pay method is better: easier, faster, and more secure.
Most people, I suspect, don’t use their bitcoin at all. They buy it as an investment, or as a gambling speculation, but that’s a zero-sum gamble, somewhat worse than gold, since gold have value above trade. Having no value aside from trade, Bitcoins are only as valuable as their use is.
One of the main use of bitcoin transactions is to avoid tariffs on legitimate goods – I explained how that was done, previously. I estimate the magnitude of this business to be $500 billion or so per year. The US collected about $220 billion in tariffs last year on a trillion dollars of trade, and I find it hard to believe that Bitcoins cover more than another 50%. Add to this, bitcoin is likely also used to hide payment for illegal, sanctioned oil from Iran and Russia. There are other ways to do this, but let’s assume it’s all bitcoin-trades. Since this oil trade seems to be about 8 million barrels per day, and since oil costs ~ $70 barrel, I calculate a business of $200 billion in world oil. Add a few more items that you don’t want traced: drugs, weapons, for a total of maybe $200 billion, add $100 billion to over-throw countries and for a kidnapping or two, and I find a total bitcoin trade of $1 trillion, or $1000 billion. If a bitcoin trades 1.5 times per year (a fairly low rate) the total value of bitcoin is $1000 billion /1.5 = $667 billion. Divide by the total number of bitcoins, 20 million, and I calculate a value of $33,300 per bitcoin or less.
A lot more value in bitcoins trade per year, about $10.5 trillion. The average Bitcoin price is three times higher than I estimate and it is spent 7.5 times per year. Most of this is churn: investment, plus some legitimate purchases based on illegal activity, like when the drug dealer buys a new car in Panama, but these sales are consequences of the other, illegal sales. I figured that each Bitcoin was used for an illegal purchase only 1.5 times per year because normal money is used ~4.5 times per year.
I should note that some illegal activity is done in US dollars, including most drug deals, and when Obama bought back US soldiers kidnaped by Iran, using bales of € 500 notes, and some is done using gold or silver. Bitcoin is easier to move but large quantity moves can still be traced, and there are other crypto currencies too. Bitcoin transactions aren’t free, either, or particularly cheap. And it takes time to process the transfer of bitcoin numbers, milliseconds, but that’s slow in world commerce. As a result. I don’t see bitcoin being used for legitimate business, and unless it can break out of the black market, the value seems limited to $33,300, and probably less.
Robert Buxbaum, February 15, 2026. Gold, by the way, is similarly overvalued, in my opinion. Like bitcoin, it’s a non-dividend investment that’s expensive to trade, but at least it has some other uses, as jewelry, and in electronics. Besides, it’s relatively hard to steal a billion dollars in gold from a Swiss bank – harder than stealing $1B in bitcoin.
One of my favorite presidents is James K. Polk. While running for president he claimed we would do four major things –and do them as a one-term president. He then did them, and left office — and died 103 days later at the age of 53. Mr Polk’s four stated objectives were: a reduction in the tariff, an independent treasury, settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute, and acquisition of California. Acquisition of California required admission of Texas, plus a war with Mexico and a cash payment, but he was ready. Settling the Oregon border required a compromise and a cash payment. But he did it and more. Modern professors are not happy with Polk, ranking him far below Obama, Kennedy, or Adams, but his aims were good, and he got hem done. Few presidents do that, and even fewer left office if they had the power to stay. No professor I know has ever willingly left if he had the power to stay, and didn’t have a better job to go to.
News from Mexico, oil on canvas painting by Richard Caton Woodville Sr., Düsseldorf, 1848. Polk was a god-send for newspaper sales.
I believe that the clarity of Polk’s four objectives was the reason he was a candidate at all, and the reason he won the election, and also the reason he achieved the objectives. There is a magic in clear objectives, repeated often, I find. It’s a formula that got Trump elected that few seem to understand: “Make America Great Again.” “Build the Wall”, “Drill baby Drill” “Deport illegals” “Tariffs. ” Like these ideas or not, you know Trump’s aims. Also, you know that, if. you oppose them, you oppose him. Trump’s pastor, Norman Vincent Peale promoted this approach, one I’ve thought of trying myself. I suspect that Polk died so shortly after leaving office because he had no further goal beyond relaxing; bad water hurt him too.. I suspect that Trump will die shortly after leaving office too- from lack of purpose.
Polk wasn’t expected to be a candidate, but was a “dark horse”, ex-governor of Tennessee, who had lost his past two elections. Martin Van Burin was expected to be the Democrats’ candidate, but he opposed slavery, and most Democrats were for it. What’s more, he was opposing annexation of Texas, at least south of the Nueces River, and many Democrats were for, as were some Whigs.
Joseph Smith was shot multiple times while campaigning for president.
Polk was pro-slavery, as was the Whig candidate, Henry Clay. But Polk said repeatedly that he would annex Texas — all the way to the Rio Grande, “no matter what any Mexican said.” He also said he’d fight for California and all of Oregon too: “Fifty four forty or fight”. You might not agree with this, Grant did not, but you knew where he stood. And Polk said he’d serve only one term. Thus, if you didn’t like him, he’d be gone in four years. After a few ballots, Polk became the Democratic Party candidate, with George Dallas as his VP. Like Polk, Dallas was pro Texas – they eventually named a city after him. Clay was Polk’s main opposition, anti Texas, and more vague about everything else.
At first John Tyler, the incumbent, also ran against Polk, but when he saw he was losing, he dropped out to help Polk. Also running for president, 1844 was Joseph Smith, the Mormon founder-profit. he ran as an independent because God told him to. He was shot multiple times, and died while campaigning. Finally there was James G. Birney, the Liberty party candidate. He gained few votes running on an abolitionist ticket. It’s been speculated that Polk won because Birney split the Whig vote. My take is that’s unlikely: Clay was pro-slavery. Polk’s win, I think, was in the power of his clarity.
Map of the territory and war.
Once elected, Polk first moved to annex Texas, something he achieved with the help of expresident John Tyler. Tyler sent his Secretary of State, Abel Upsher to negotiat an annexation treaty with Sam Houston, but the Whig-controlled congress rejected it. After the election, Tyler resubmitted the treaty to the new, Democrat-controlled congress, and got two versions passed. The house passed a pro-slavery version, while the senate, pushed by Thomas Hart Benton (a favorite of mine) produced an annexation treaty that divided Texas in half, with a pro-slave and an anti-slave half. Polk liked the pro-slave, House version, returning it to Texas in his first week in office. He instructed the Texas legislature to accept it unconditionally, with no change so he could submit it directly to the Senate. The Texans did so, and congress approved this version later that year. Texas entered the union as one, large, slaveholder state.
With annexation not yet ratified by congress, Polk sent a diplomatic mission to buy California from Mexico along with all of the disputed Texas territory and everything in between for $25 million. Mexico refused, so Polk invited war. He sent 4000 soldiers into disputed Texas territory south of the Nueces River, under command of General Zachary Taylor. Mexican forces attacked them in April 1846, and Polk declared war. The war lasted to 1848, winning all the desired lands including California, and achieving a release of any rights Mexico might have on Oregon.
Polk, as governor of Tennessee
The next Polk goal was resolution of the Oregon dispute, ideally with us getting all of it: land that included the current states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, plus the Canadian Provence of British Columbia. Britain and Russia also claimed this land, so Polk’s first step was to buy off Russia. The British said they’d fight, noting that they had a larger army and navy and that the US was already at war with Mexico. Polk’s response was to back settlers going to Oregon. Americans had started migrating to Oregon in 1843. In his inaugural address, 1845, Polk said he would defend them “against the British and Indians.” By 1846 Britain recognized the difficulty of fighting US settlers so far from home. On June 15, they agreed to a deal that split the territory along the 49th parallel, giving the US the lower half, except for Vancouver Island, thus allowing Britain an opening to the sea. This deal had been proposed by Edward Everett, Tyler’s minister in London. Polk gave up nothing, beyond an informal agreement to lower tariffs on British goods, something he aimed to do anyway. It’s generally thought that Polk’s willingness for war allowed him to achieve so much without fighting. Polk said, in his inaugural, March 1845: “The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our government,” a statement that clearly means the opposite of what it claims to say.
Polk’s third goal was lowering the “Black Tariffs”. High and uneven, they were 32% on average, with cut-outs to help specific, northern businesses. Polk’s secretary of the treasury, Robert Walker negotiated a flat advalorum tariff of 25%, with luxury goods, tobacco and alcohol tariffed higher. The “Walker tariff” bill was passed July, 1846, one month after the Oregon agreement. The British, reduced their “corn tariffs” against US grain, benefitting both countries. Our tariffs average 17%, currently, with many cut-outs. I think our tariffs should be more like the Walker tariff, perhaps 20% and simpler.
Polk’s 4th campaign promise was establishing an independent treasury. This was done to weaken “pet” banks, and stabilize the economy. The treasury would now hold all US assets; they would issue most currency, and would pay people directly, either in specie (gold or silver) or notes of debt. Independent banks could still issue notes, but only in amounts over $20. Polk passed this bill August 6, 1846, one week after the Walker Tariff bill. With this, Polk had already achieved all of his goals except California by the mid-term elections, 1846.
Having achieved so much, Polk set out to buy Cuba, but Spain said no. Some other accomplishments: opening the U.S. Naval Academy and the Smithsonian Institution, overseeing the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and the issuance of the first United States postage stamp. By the summer of 1848 Polk confirmed that he was satisfied and would not run for re-election. In his address to congress, December 1848, he said, “Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world.” …. “I am heartily rejoiced that my term is so near its close. I will soon cease to be a servant and will become a sovereign.” I trust that was met with applause.
For the past few months, the US navy has been attacking drug-running boats from Venezuela. Videos show ships trying to run away with packages pushed overboard before the sailors are captured or killed. It’s claimed that the packages contained fentanyl, a deadly synthetic heroin. At the same time, there has been a dramatic drop in the rate of fentanyl deaths. Based on the graph above, it seems that some 1500 US lives were saved per month, from fentanyl death alone.
2023 from the Harlem Coalition. There are far more US drug overdose deaths than firearm or vehicle deaths/year.
Opioid overdose deaths have exceeded gun or vehicle deaths since 2005. But there has been a big uptick since the introduction of synthetic opioids, about 2014. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of overdose deaths, alone outpacing gun and vehicle deaths, see graph.
It’s not clear that the attacks on the boats is a primary reason for the drop in deaths, by the way. A lot of credit goes to seizures at the Mexico and Canada border, including the decrease in migrant passage. Some of those were “mules”, carrying drugs. Improved screening at the border seems to have help stop the mules. In 2025, the DEA seized over 47 million fentanyl-laced pills and nearly 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, some made in the US, some brought in, cross-border.
An other positive change is increased screening of small packages, of value under $800. They previously entered the US, tariff free, at reduced postage rates. Chinese companies could send 2 oz packages to customers here for 70¢, cheaper than Americans could ship cross town. The DEA reports that most of the precursor chemicals enter the US in packages from China. More checking, and help from China, means fewer of these chemicals get in.
Before we compliment ourselves, our drug numbers are still vastly too high, about 70,000 overdose deaths in 2025, a vastly higher rate than in Europe or Japan, see chart below. The reason is, in my opinion, that we are over-diagnosed and over-medicated. We see ads for drugs on TV, magazines telling us to ask for a pill for any pain or discomfort. They’re all addictive. Doctors are happy to comply, and when the prescription stops, or stops being effective, you’re a hooked customer for heroin or fentanyl.
Addiction has become a middle-aged problem affecting mostly those 25 to 45. It’s made US lifespan significantly shorter. Doctors are curing the pain and killing us patients. Magazines, TV, and drug companies, too. Europe has stricter regulations on pills with fewer prescriptions allowed, no drug ads, and no automatic refills. Does everyone over 50 need blood pressure meds, for example.
