Indonesia's government also implemented this exact policy in 1950. The policy was called "Gunting Sjafruddin" or "Sjafruddin Cut" after the minister Sjafruddin Prawiranegara. Not sure about the impact though.

This article wrote about it: https://yohanesnuwara.medium.com/most-thought-provoking-mone...

I've been using hledger for two years now, and I don't use any exported data from my banks. Here's my workflow:

Everytime I make a transaction, I put a note on my phone. The note is a simplified version of hledger file format. Example:

24feb 12.5 cash food eating out at xx 6.5 bank1 phonebill 25feb ...

and so on. As you can see, each block is started with the date, and each line corresponds to a journal entry. In each entry, the first item is the dollar amount, the 2nd item is the credited account, the 3rd item is the debited account, and the rest will be taken as the entry description.

Every week end, I will parse this note with a Python script that I wrote, and put the output in the actual journal file. The shorthand account names in the note will be converted into actual account name (e.g. 'bank1' to 'assets:bank:bank1'), based on a dictionary file.

I'd then proceed to manually check that all ending balances in hledger match with the actual amount in the real world. (It's pretty satisfying to see the numbers match.)

After I've finished processing the note from my phone, that note will be archvied and I will start with a new note.

I used to do this. But now I only register cash expenses. The rest I rely on the bank to keep track of transactions and just use hledger csv rules to create ledger journals. I find it more convenient and since I deal with many bank accounts, I can check the balance on each bank report.

Oops I messed the formatting for the example. Here we go:

    24feb
    12.5 cash food eating out at xx
    6.5 bank1 phonebill
    25feb
    ...

I also just use Vim to write markdowns, but without any markdown plugins (beside the built-in markdown syntax highlighting in Vim) and I compile the document to pdf manually using Pandoc. I rarely need to write markdowns though, and my usage is not advanced at all (like to write simple writeups that sometimes require maths and code blocks, which I only use for myself). So Vim + Pandoc is enough for me.

Do you know how you can render the PDF to make it look like Github's HTML render?

I haven't checked the podcast, but the YouTube channel has uploaded some videos featuring him pretty recently, which I found to be very amusing.

Also IIRC much of the "trade" created by free trade agreements are not trade at all, but movements of goods internal to a company (e.g. US companies produce goods in a factory in Mexico and later move those goods back to US to be sold).

That's still perfect example of trade. Labor is a very important form of goods.

What if we require that every $1 spent by someone on a political ad must also be balanced by a $1 subsidy for the opponents' ads? Seems fair to me and would reduce the impact of money. (I'm sorry but I forgot who proposed this idea.)

How do you determine the ‘opponent’? If I want to argue against racism which racists do you give the money to? Just any racist in the street? Some organised racist group? Which one? What if my obvious opponent denies they’re racist are they still entitled to the money?

Okay, but wouldn't you consider an ad campaign "political" if it was about voting that oil refineries can't dump run off into a water supply? Would that mean that the same folks running the anti-dumping, environmentally friendly campaign also have to donate money to the oil companies for their pro-dumping initiatives?

I'm not trying to be mean, just pointing out an unintended consequence of such a system.

Politicians have more than one opponent (except in USA I guess...)

What about systems that are not strictly with two sides?

I'm not convinced, but there's a possible setup: a fund. Entities donate to the fund, and then the money would be distributed among the candidates (either equally, among a smaller number of qualifying candidates, or for all candidates, proportional to e.g. a party's representatives in the legislative branch)

(This would do nothing about money buying influence — as long as the donors are known, their wishes would be carried out by at least the major parties)

In addition, the market makers gain profit from this activity by buying at a slightly lower price than the selling price.

The first settlers of Madagascar are also Austronesians, came from Borneo between 350 BC and 550 AD [1]. If you look at a world map you can see just how far those two islands are.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar

If you read Wikipedia article

> The first archaeological evidence for human foraging on Madagascar may have occurred as much as 10,000 years ago.[10] Human settlement of Madagascar occurred between 350 BC and 550 AD by Austronesian peoples, arriving on outrigger canoes from Borneo

People lived in Madagascar 10 0000 years before arrival of proto-Malays.

That Madagascar remained unsettled for so long is the most puzzling of all. It's not that far off from Africa, where humanity came from.

Speaking for myself as an African. We can run and jump but swimming is not our forte.

The out of Africa theory has been overblown by the media. There are many other bits of evidence that point to other origins...