Lex Friedman Podcast - Robert Breedlove

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,080 The following is a conversation with Robert Breedlove,
00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:04,920 someone who caught my attention
00:00:04,920 --> 00:00:08,040 and was recommended highly as a rigorous scholar
00:00:08,040 --> 00:00:10,920 and thinker in the space of decentralized finance
00:00:10,920 --> 00:00:12,160 and Bitcoin.
00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:15,200 His podcast titled, What is Money?
00:00:15,200 --> 00:00:18,240 is a good representation of the way his mind works.
00:00:18,240 --> 00:00:21,600 He's willing to talk through ideas for many hours,
00:00:21,600 --> 00:00:24,080 willing to listen, willing to think,
00:00:24,080 --> 00:00:26,800 which makes him a great companion in conversation
00:00:26,800 --> 00:00:31,060 to explore the history, philosophy, and future of money.
00:00:31,980 --> 00:00:33,760 Quick mention of our sponsors,
00:00:33,760 --> 00:00:38,240 Fundrise, Element, MonkPak, and BetterHelp.
00:00:38,240 --> 00:00:41,800 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
00:00:41,800 --> 00:00:43,960 As a side note, let me say that I'll have
00:00:43,960 --> 00:00:46,040 a number of conversations in the coming months
00:00:46,040 --> 00:00:49,360 on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
00:00:49,360 --> 00:00:52,320 None of these conversations are financial advice.
00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:53,640 That's not a legal warning.
00:00:53,640 --> 00:00:55,400 That's a genuine description of my goals
00:00:55,400 --> 00:00:57,480 and approach with these chats.
00:00:57,480 --> 00:01:00,560 At least for a while, I personally won't actively invest
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:03,360 in Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies,
00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:06,480 except to learn about the technology itself.
00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:08,920 I don't think this should be a journalistic standard
00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:11,320 like the New York Times trying to establish,
00:01:11,320 --> 00:01:13,120 which I very much disagree with.
00:01:13,120 --> 00:01:16,660 In my humble opinion, I think journalists should be free
00:01:16,660 --> 00:01:19,240 to invest in Bitcoin if they want to.
00:01:19,240 --> 00:01:21,460 Luckily, I'm not a journalist.
00:01:21,460 --> 00:01:24,560 I just know my own psychology and I feel that my thinking
00:01:24,560 --> 00:01:26,400 will be muddled by excitement
00:01:26,400 --> 00:01:29,040 if I invest before I understand.
00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:31,360 I feel the same way about Tesla, for example.
00:01:31,360 --> 00:01:33,840 I still don't own any Tesla stock
00:01:33,840 --> 00:01:37,380 and I am still indeed fascinated by Tesla Autopilot
00:01:37,380 --> 00:01:39,520 as an artificial intelligence system.
00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:42,640 I work hard to be cognizant of the biases
00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:47,320 that arise in my mind and always try to choose the path
00:01:47,320 --> 00:01:52,080 that maximizes or maintains a freedom of thought
00:01:52,080 --> 00:01:53,760 as much as possible.
00:01:53,760 --> 00:01:56,240 Also, let me say that I try to be very careful
00:01:56,240 --> 00:01:59,460 in selecting guests based not only on the contents
00:01:59,460 --> 00:02:03,040 of their ideas, but the richness, complexity, music,
00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:05,180 style of their mind and character.
00:02:05,180 --> 00:02:08,060 Yes, I will talk with people with whom you
00:02:08,060 --> 00:02:12,120 and I may disagree, people who some may call bad
00:02:12,120 --> 00:02:14,860 or even evil human beings.
00:02:14,860 --> 00:02:18,140 I want to understand them because I believe that,
00:02:18,140 --> 00:02:22,560 as Solzhenitsyn said, the battle line between good and evil
00:02:22,560 --> 00:02:25,180 runs through the heart of every man.
00:02:25,180 --> 00:02:27,060 I think if you always run from evil,
00:02:27,060 --> 00:02:30,480 you become blind to the truth of human nature.
00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:32,820 This is the Lex Friedman Podcast
00:02:32,820 --> 00:02:36,380 and here is my conversation with Robert Breedlove.
00:02:37,320 --> 00:02:40,080 Rousseau opens his 1762 book,
00:02:40,080 --> 00:02:43,420 The Social Contract with the following statement.
00:02:43,420 --> 00:02:47,480 "'Man is born free and everywhere he's in chains.'"
00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:50,840 So you talk about freedom and sovereignty quite a bit.
00:02:50,840 --> 00:02:54,680 What do these ideas mean to you, the idea of sovereignty?
00:02:54,680 --> 00:02:57,880 Freedom and sovereignty, I think they're very
00:02:57,880 --> 00:02:59,060 closely related.
00:03:00,020 --> 00:03:01,760 Let's start just focusing on sovereignty,
00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:04,860 which is a word I don't think we talk about enough.
00:03:04,860 --> 00:03:07,160 And the general definition of that I would give
00:03:07,160 --> 00:03:10,140 is the authority to act as you see fit.
00:03:12,800 --> 00:03:15,880 And it's a word that's etymologically associated
00:03:15,880 --> 00:03:19,320 with words like monarchy, money, reign.
00:03:19,320 --> 00:03:23,560 So historically, it's referred to whatever the locus
00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:26,280 of supreme power is in the sphere of human action.
00:03:26,280 --> 00:03:30,160 So whether, if you go like back in ancient Egypt,
00:03:30,160 --> 00:03:32,440 the Pharaoh had absolute sovereignty
00:03:32,440 --> 00:03:34,840 and everyone else was pretty much operating
00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:36,840 according to his interest.
00:03:36,840 --> 00:03:40,220 You fast forward to today, modern Western democracy,
00:03:40,220 --> 00:03:43,400 we have more decentralized sovereignty
00:03:43,400 --> 00:03:45,400 and that we all get to go vote and elect officials
00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:47,720 that make decisions on our behalf.
00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:51,020 So the theme of sovereignty across history
00:03:51,020 --> 00:03:52,800 is that it's been gradually decentralizing
00:03:52,800 --> 00:03:55,440 across our different models of socioeconomics.
00:03:56,840 --> 00:04:01,140 And it's largely, you could say it's rooted heavily
00:04:01,140 --> 00:04:03,120 in the money, I would argue,
00:04:03,120 --> 00:04:04,720 which is something we'll get a lot into here,
00:04:04,720 --> 00:04:08,360 where if you have money, you have the authority
00:04:08,360 --> 00:04:10,080 to act as you see fit in the world.
00:04:11,460 --> 00:04:14,200 And even in our current political sphere,
00:04:14,200 --> 00:04:17,040 if you have enough money, you can actually reshape the rules.
00:04:17,040 --> 00:04:19,240 You can reshape laws, you can lobby Congress.
00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:24,700 If you're in a certain situation, like many billionaires,
00:04:24,700 --> 00:04:26,720 you can negotiate your own tax treaty
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:28,600 such that you can get favorable tax treatment
00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:30,520 with certain jurisdictions in the world.
00:04:30,520 --> 00:04:35,440 So this concept of sovereignty, which today we call,
00:04:35,440 --> 00:04:39,520 it's common to call states or nation states
00:04:39,520 --> 00:04:41,160 or government sovereign,
00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:43,200 meaning that they have power over people.
00:04:44,660 --> 00:04:46,120 But as I argue in a lot of my writing,
00:04:46,120 --> 00:04:48,080 I actually think that sovereignty
00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:50,020 and here's within the individual
00:04:50,020 --> 00:04:54,760 and that we each have our own interiorized space of choice,
00:04:54,760 --> 00:04:56,620 which is something like Viktor Frankl called
00:04:56,620 --> 00:04:58,160 the final human freedom.
00:04:58,160 --> 00:05:00,520 And that we, no matter what our circumstances are,
00:05:00,520 --> 00:05:03,420 no matter what exogenous situation we face,
00:05:03,420 --> 00:05:05,440 we always have this endogenous power
00:05:05,440 --> 00:05:07,720 to choose how we respond to it.
00:05:07,720 --> 00:05:11,200 That's one of my favorite books is a Man Search for Meaning.
00:05:11,200 --> 00:05:13,440 Maybe we can break that apart a little bit.
00:05:13,440 --> 00:05:16,880 So you've kind of spoken about sovereignty
00:05:16,880 --> 00:05:20,040 as a closely linked to power,
00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:22,280 but is there something about your own mind
00:05:22,280 --> 00:05:25,440 being able to achieve sovereignty
00:05:25,440 --> 00:05:27,280 no matter what the monetary system is,
00:05:27,280 --> 00:05:30,280 no matter what, who has the control over centralized power,
00:05:30,280 --> 00:05:34,080 the money or whatever the mechanisms of sovereignty
00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:35,320 and the societal level?
00:05:35,320 --> 00:05:39,240 You as an individual, isn't ultimately all boiled down
00:05:39,240 --> 00:05:42,600 to what you can do with your mind, how you see the world?
00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:43,640 How you interpret it.
00:05:43,640 --> 00:05:45,080 Yeah, I agree.
00:05:45,080 --> 00:05:47,560 And as we get a little bit deeper into this,
00:05:47,560 --> 00:05:48,720 I think we'll come to see money
00:05:48,720 --> 00:05:50,620 as an extension of your mind.
00:05:50,620 --> 00:05:52,600 So there's a feedback between money and mind.
00:05:52,600 --> 00:05:54,880 For instance, you think in dollars today,
00:05:54,880 --> 00:05:57,480 almost guarantee it, most of us do here in the US.
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:00,240 And it's a tool, right?
00:06:00,240 --> 00:06:03,340 It's a tool we're using to decomplexify the world around us,
00:06:03,340 --> 00:06:08,340 to deal with it, to understand the sacrifices and successes
00:06:08,740 --> 00:06:10,880 across an entire history of economic transactions.
00:06:10,880 --> 00:06:12,440 We can boil that all down to the price.
00:06:12,440 --> 00:06:14,400 So it's data compression.
00:06:14,400 --> 00:06:19,400 And if you can change, if there's a central body
00:06:19,600 --> 00:06:20,820 or central governance mechanism
00:06:20,820 --> 00:06:21,920 that can manipulate that money,
00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:23,680 it can have an impact on your mind.
00:06:25,520 --> 00:06:28,240 For instance, today, so I agree with you on the firsthand,
00:06:28,240 --> 00:06:32,160 say that I do believe in free will.
00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:34,880 I do believe in individual autonomy,
00:06:34,880 --> 00:06:39,200 but I also think that there are certain devices and powers
00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:40,760 in the world around us that can actually
00:06:40,760 --> 00:06:42,160 influence how we think.
00:06:42,160 --> 00:06:44,300 And it's fascinating to think about the fact
00:06:44,300 --> 00:06:46,960 that money might be actually deeply integrated
00:06:46,960 --> 00:06:49,920 into the way we think and into our mind.
00:06:49,920 --> 00:06:53,160 Like this is, you think about what are the core aspects
00:06:53,160 --> 00:06:54,160 of the human mind?
00:06:54,160 --> 00:06:56,000 What influences cognition,
00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:58,360 the way you reason about the world?
00:06:58,360 --> 00:07:00,200 You have the Chomsky like languages
00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:02,120 at the core of everything.
00:07:02,120 --> 00:07:06,920 But you're kind of placing money as pretty close
00:07:06,920 --> 00:07:09,680 to the core of what it means to be
00:07:09,680 --> 00:07:12,000 an intelligent reasoning human.
00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:14,480 I think money is a direct derivation
00:07:14,480 --> 00:07:16,160 of action and speech, actually.
00:07:16,160 --> 00:07:18,120 It's another expression of the logos.
00:07:19,200 --> 00:07:22,120 If we even think of what it means to think
00:07:23,040 --> 00:07:26,920 is that we are generating two different courses of action,
00:07:26,920 --> 00:07:28,640 potential courses of action,
00:07:28,640 --> 00:07:31,160 and we're populating them with avatars, right?
00:07:31,160 --> 00:07:32,720 Maybe ourselves or others.
00:07:32,720 --> 00:07:36,040 And then we're comparing how we may act in each situation
00:07:36,040 --> 00:07:37,440 and what we think the result would be.
00:07:37,440 --> 00:07:40,280 So actually it's comparison.
00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:41,920 Basically it's comparison and contrasting
00:07:41,920 --> 00:07:44,320 of possible courses of action.
00:07:44,320 --> 00:07:47,320 And that's the same thing with words themselves.
00:07:47,320 --> 00:07:52,320 Like most words, the vast majority of words
00:07:53,240 --> 00:07:55,800 only have meaning in relationship to other words, right?
00:07:55,800 --> 00:07:59,560 It's all contextual definitions of a word or more words.
00:07:59,560 --> 00:08:01,160 Now people have argued with me about this
00:08:01,160 --> 00:08:02,840 because there is a first word, right?
00:08:02,840 --> 00:08:04,960 Where you pick up rock and say rock.
00:08:04,960 --> 00:08:08,360 But most other words in higher abstraction
00:08:08,360 --> 00:08:10,480 tend to be relative.
00:08:10,480 --> 00:08:15,480 And what's funny about action and speech,
00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:18,480 and this gets, I got into a bit of this in our paper here,
00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:21,840 is that it's linked to evolutionary biology
00:08:21,840 --> 00:08:26,520 and that once human beings adopted upright stance,
00:08:26,520 --> 00:08:28,040 we freed our hands.
00:08:28,040 --> 00:08:30,400 We no longer needed our hands for locomotion.
00:08:30,400 --> 00:08:33,120 So we started to evolve more dexterity
00:08:34,360 --> 00:08:36,040 and notably we have opposable thumbs.
00:08:36,040 --> 00:08:38,600 So this gives us an ability to manipulate
00:08:38,600 --> 00:08:40,040 and particularize the environment
00:08:40,040 --> 00:08:42,440 in a way that most other animals cannot.
00:08:42,440 --> 00:08:44,200 And what's interesting about this is that
00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:49,080 as we gain this ability to manipulate natural resources
00:08:49,080 --> 00:08:52,120 and count, point, pointing was a big deal
00:08:52,120 --> 00:08:54,720 and that we could indicate a prey
00:08:54,720 --> 00:08:56,680 or items that are far off distance
00:08:56,680 --> 00:08:58,280 and we could organize ourselves.
00:09:00,640 --> 00:09:04,320 At the same time, we co-evolved this fine musculature
00:09:04,320 --> 00:09:06,040 in the face and tongue.
00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:08,000 So it's as if speech developed,
00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:10,040 co-evolved really with our dexterity.
00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:15,920 And as a natural extension of that came us making tools.
00:09:17,360 --> 00:09:18,480 We started to create things
00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:21,360 to better satisfy our wants over time.
00:09:21,360 --> 00:09:25,000 And the most tradable tool in any society
00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:26,760 or the most tradable thing is money.
00:09:26,760 --> 00:09:31,320 So I really, I argue that action and speech
00:09:31,320 --> 00:09:35,280 are quintessential modes of self-sovereign expression.
00:09:35,280 --> 00:09:37,320 And the money is just sort of a tech layer
00:09:37,320 --> 00:09:38,920 we've put right on top of that.
00:09:38,920 --> 00:09:42,320 And that it's a natural derivation of action and speech.
00:09:42,320 --> 00:09:45,000 Okay, that's fascinating to think about sovereignty
00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:47,280 from the evolutionary perspective.
00:09:47,280 --> 00:09:50,240 And then ultimately money is the technology layer
00:09:50,240 --> 00:09:52,040 that enables sovereignty.
00:09:52,040 --> 00:09:57,040 So, it's really fascinating to think about
00:09:57,360 --> 00:09:59,720 our modern human society
00:09:59,720 --> 00:10:03,280 as deeply rooted in these like evolutionary roots
00:10:03,280 --> 00:10:05,400 from the very origins of life on earth.
00:10:05,400 --> 00:10:09,800 So what, you know, some of the ideas you just mentioned,
00:10:09,800 --> 00:10:13,120 what do you see are some interesting characteristics
00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:17,160 of just life on earth that propagated to us humans?
00:10:18,360 --> 00:10:20,960 Like what ideas propagated through,
00:10:20,960 --> 00:10:23,560 have roots in the evolution?
00:10:23,560 --> 00:10:28,080 Yeah, I think one of the deepest impulsions in life
00:10:28,080 --> 00:10:29,920 is the territorial imperative.
00:10:30,800 --> 00:10:35,280 So all life is seeking to expand its dominion
00:10:35,280 --> 00:10:37,240 over space and time.
00:10:37,240 --> 00:10:40,960 And we think about, you know, again, physically with space,
00:10:40,960 --> 00:10:43,760 it's advantageous to an animal or an organism
00:10:43,760 --> 00:10:45,960 to have more territory under its control
00:10:45,960 --> 00:10:47,960 to raise offspring.
00:10:47,960 --> 00:10:49,680 So it's all about reproductive fitness
00:10:49,680 --> 00:10:50,920 at the end of the day.
00:10:50,920 --> 00:10:53,880 And then we'd also think of reproduction itself
00:10:53,880 --> 00:10:57,040 as the genetic impulse to have more,
00:10:57,040 --> 00:10:58,920 to replicate oneself across time.
00:10:58,920 --> 00:11:02,040 So it's territoriality across time in a way.
00:11:02,040 --> 00:11:04,080 And this is very common in most animals.
00:11:04,080 --> 00:11:06,440 Not all animals are territorial, but many are.
00:11:07,600 --> 00:11:10,040 And you see very interesting behaviors
00:11:10,040 --> 00:11:11,600 resulting from territoriality.
00:11:11,600 --> 00:11:14,000 This is like animal combat, you know,
00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:16,680 the reason birds sing is territoriality,
00:11:17,960 --> 00:11:19,680 a number of other things.
00:11:19,680 --> 00:11:23,640 And it's my hypothesis and others have shared
00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:28,120 this hypothesis as well, that mankind is clearly,
00:11:28,120 --> 00:11:30,320 I think, would argue a territorial species
00:11:30,320 --> 00:11:34,200 and that he expresses this territoriality in property rights.
00:11:35,040 --> 00:11:38,240 So property, when that word, we hear that word,
00:11:38,240 --> 00:11:39,520 we typically think of an asset.
00:11:39,520 --> 00:11:42,280 We think of, oh, this house or this stock or whatever.
00:11:42,280 --> 00:11:45,120 But property is actually the socially acknowledged
00:11:45,120 --> 00:11:48,200 relationship between a human and an asset,
00:11:48,200 --> 00:11:51,120 such that you have exclusive rights and responsibilities
00:11:51,120 --> 00:11:53,880 to a particular asset.
00:11:53,880 --> 00:11:55,520 It is not the asset itself.
00:11:55,520 --> 00:11:59,520 So property, it's information, it's a relationship.
00:11:59,520 --> 00:12:01,160 By the way, my mind was just blown.
00:12:01,160 --> 00:12:04,240 Property is information, it's not the actual asset.
00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:05,600 That's really important.
00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:06,600 Very important.
00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:07,560 That's really interesting.
00:12:07,560 --> 00:12:12,520 Yeah, and then it comes down to how do we organize ourselves
00:12:12,520 --> 00:12:17,520 such that property, that the contributions people are making
00:12:17,520 --> 00:12:20,200 are commensurate with the consideration they're receiving?
00:12:20,200 --> 00:12:22,720 So if you're adding value to a piece of property,
00:12:22,720 --> 00:12:26,000 you're developing a piece of land for use.
00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:29,840 In theory, to be fair, you should have the rights
00:12:29,840 --> 00:12:30,920 to that fruit, right?
00:12:30,920 --> 00:12:33,520 If you go out and plant a garden or whatever it may be.
00:12:36,280 --> 00:12:39,600 And this is rooted in natural law,
00:12:39,600 --> 00:12:42,400 where we have rights to life, liberty, and property.
00:12:42,400 --> 00:12:44,040 Those are kind of just the base,
00:12:44,040 --> 00:12:46,000 the fundamental layer of morality,
00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:49,920 the fundamental layer of morality and capitalism, frankly.
00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:54,320 And you could think of, to get really primordial with it,
00:12:54,320 --> 00:12:58,000 the first capitalist in the world,
00:12:58,000 --> 00:12:59,720 just to kind of get some definitions out here,
00:12:59,720 --> 00:13:04,000 I'll say capitalism versus communism or socialism
00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:06,080 as the spectrum I'll speak on.
00:13:06,080 --> 00:13:09,440 The first capitalist in the world would be the guy,
00:13:09,440 --> 00:13:12,400 the caveman that maybe dug a little hole for himself
00:13:12,400 --> 00:13:14,960 to shield himself from the elements, right?
00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:17,280 Maybe there was a rainstorm or a snowstorm
00:13:17,280 --> 00:13:20,640 and he dug a little enclave and he protected himself.
00:13:20,640 --> 00:13:22,960 I thought you were gonna go, because you said primordial,
00:13:22,960 --> 00:13:23,840 I thought you were gonna go back
00:13:23,840 --> 00:13:26,160 to earlier biological systems.
00:13:26,160 --> 00:13:29,160 I guess primordial for human, perhaps.
00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:31,240 For humans, yeah, okay.
00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:34,080 And then the first communist or socialist
00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:37,360 would be someone that decided the fruits of his labor
00:13:37,360 --> 00:13:38,800 belonged to him.
00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:41,280 So he would have violently encroached on that individual
00:13:41,280 --> 00:13:45,200 and taken his plot for himself, for his own use.
00:13:45,200 --> 00:13:50,200 And that's the spectrum across which capitalism
00:13:51,200 --> 00:13:53,600 in the pure sense and communism in the pure sense operate
00:13:53,600 --> 00:13:57,680 in that capitalism, each individual has the exclusive rights
00:13:57,680 --> 00:13:59,240 to the fruits of their labor.
00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:02,200 So anything they spend their time, effort, energy
00:14:02,200 --> 00:14:05,000 creating in the world, they own the rights to that
00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:07,120 and they can trade those rights with others,
00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:10,440 other self-owned people that have done similar things.
00:14:10,440 --> 00:14:13,800 Communism or socialism would imply that other people,
00:14:13,800 --> 00:14:17,080 typically the state, have the rights, at least some rights
00:14:17,080 --> 00:14:19,640 to the value you've created.
00:14:19,640 --> 00:14:22,560 So there's this interesting moment when that first caveman,
00:14:22,560 --> 00:14:27,480 that first capitalist drew a line, a circle in this cave
00:14:27,480 --> 00:14:30,000 and said, this is mine.
00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:32,320 You could say it was free to be claimed
00:14:32,320 --> 00:14:33,720 at the time he claimed it.
00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:41,400 But it's an interesting moment when asset becomes an asset,
00:14:41,400 --> 00:14:43,280 when space-time, as you were referring to,
00:14:43,280 --> 00:14:45,760 it becomes something that's now,
00:14:45,760 --> 00:14:47,720 can be possessed by a human being.
00:14:48,680 --> 00:14:50,880 Is there something special about this moment?
00:14:50,880 --> 00:14:53,600 Because it feels like, first of all,
00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:55,080 in terms of space and time,
00:14:56,160 --> 00:15:00,840 it feels like there's a lot of available space-time
00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:02,480 yet to be claimed.
00:15:02,480 --> 00:15:05,280 So if we just look at like the universe, right?
00:15:05,280 --> 00:15:06,840 We're talking about, there's a funny thing
00:15:06,840 --> 00:15:08,800 with Elon Musk and Mars.
00:15:08,800 --> 00:15:12,600 I think they sneaked in there for SpaceX
00:15:12,600 --> 00:15:17,440 that nobody on earth has any authority on Mars or any.
00:15:17,440 --> 00:15:18,880 This is a very interesting question.
00:15:18,880 --> 00:15:20,880 It seems almost like humorous at this time,
00:15:20,880 --> 00:15:22,480 but perhaps not.
00:15:22,480 --> 00:15:25,080 Perhaps there'll be sections of space,
00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:28,920 not just on planets, that are gonna be even fought over.
00:15:28,920 --> 00:15:30,880 So is there something special about this moment?
00:15:30,880 --> 00:15:35,000 Because in discussing sort of violence
00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:36,560 and respect for property,
00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:39,120 it feels like this is a special moment,
00:15:39,120 --> 00:15:42,600 because ultimately conflict arises
00:15:42,600 --> 00:15:46,560 when you make claims on a particular territory.
00:15:46,560 --> 00:15:50,080 It's not always in conflict where people say,
00:15:50,080 --> 00:15:52,680 when you look at Hitler or something, for example,
00:15:52,680 --> 00:15:55,520 his claim would be in many of the lands
00:15:55,520 --> 00:15:58,120 that he attacked and invaded,
00:15:58,120 --> 00:16:02,600 that this is ultimately, this has always belonged to Germany.
00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:04,760 So is there something you could say
00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:09,360 as to like what it means to own an asset or a property?
00:16:09,360 --> 00:16:13,880 Yeah, so in the ancient days of hunters and gatherers,
00:16:13,880 --> 00:16:18,880 we could say that property was mostly a loyal title,
00:16:19,160 --> 00:16:22,240 which meant it's just whatever you can defend, right?
00:16:22,240 --> 00:16:25,520 So if you've got knives and daggers and satchels
00:16:25,520 --> 00:16:28,680 and maybe some pelts you've hunted,
00:16:28,680 --> 00:16:32,080 whatever you can hold and defend is yours.
00:16:32,080 --> 00:16:35,240 And there's not like, there's a government to appeal to.
00:16:35,240 --> 00:16:39,040 You're just sort of a free agent operating in the wild,
00:16:39,040 --> 00:16:42,600 defending the assets you can protect on you, more or less.
00:16:44,360 --> 00:16:48,280 And what really changed the nature of property
00:16:48,280 --> 00:16:50,680 is when we get into the agricultural age.
00:16:50,680 --> 00:16:55,160 So there's a big flip where we went from just foraging
00:16:55,160 --> 00:16:57,200 and hunting all the time, constantly moving,
00:16:57,200 --> 00:17:00,320 trying to stay alive to deciding we're gonna settle here.
00:17:00,320 --> 00:17:03,080 We figured out how to cultivate crops.
00:17:03,080 --> 00:17:05,960 We can create, we can increase the population
00:17:05,960 --> 00:17:08,360 because we can harvest more energy from the sun
00:17:08,360 --> 00:17:11,160 and we can establish a longer term civilization.
00:17:11,160 --> 00:17:13,480 What happens in that transition
00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:16,360 is that we begin creating economic surplus.
00:17:16,360 --> 00:17:17,560 So for the first time in history,
00:17:17,560 --> 00:17:21,920 we have stock houses of grain to defend
00:17:21,920 --> 00:17:24,360 or maybe meat or cattle or whatever it is
00:17:24,360 --> 00:17:26,920 we're creating, we now have savings.
00:17:27,880 --> 00:17:32,880 And it's at that time when government emerges as well,
00:17:33,320 --> 00:17:35,040 because once you have savings
00:17:35,040 --> 00:17:36,240 or you have an economic surplus,
00:17:36,240 --> 00:17:39,200 you have something that other people want to steal.
00:17:39,200 --> 00:17:41,680 This one thing we'll touch on a lot today
00:17:41,680 --> 00:17:44,200 is people always want something for nothing.
00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:47,360 People are always seeking the path
00:17:47,360 --> 00:17:48,280 to get something for nothing.
00:17:48,280 --> 00:17:51,520 And I think that drives a lot of our decision-making
00:17:51,520 --> 00:17:53,600 and it actually encourages us to be innovative
00:17:53,600 --> 00:17:54,440 in a lot of ways, right?
00:17:54,440 --> 00:17:57,960 We're trying to, you could say it's our laziness
00:17:57,960 --> 00:17:59,680 that's helping us be inventive in a way.
00:17:59,680 --> 00:18:01,320 We're trying to accomplish greater results
00:18:01,320 --> 00:18:02,840 with less efforts over time,
00:18:02,840 --> 00:18:07,320 but we can cross that line in seeking something for nothing
00:18:07,320 --> 00:18:09,160 where we start to violate the life, liberty
00:18:09,160 --> 00:18:10,200 and property of others.
00:18:10,200 --> 00:18:13,080 And that's where we shift from kind of capitalistic society
00:18:13,080 --> 00:18:15,480 to something more communistic.
00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:18,760 And so that's what government is.
00:18:18,760 --> 00:18:21,600 It's a protection producing enterprise
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:25,760 for the economic surplus generated by a trading society.
00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:28,360 So when people begin to trade,
00:18:28,360 --> 00:18:30,840 they create what's called the division of labor,
00:18:30,840 --> 00:18:32,920 which is a very common economics term,
00:18:32,920 --> 00:18:35,320 basically means you're better at making hats,
00:18:35,320 --> 00:18:37,320 I'm better at making boots.
00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:38,920 If you and I, you specialize in hats,
00:18:38,920 --> 00:18:40,480 I specialize in boots and we trade,
00:18:40,480 --> 00:18:42,480 we've created a positive sum game
00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:43,720 where you and I both benefit.
00:18:43,720 --> 00:18:46,880 So we become collectively more than the sum of our parts
00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:48,200 through trade.
00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:51,240 And that's why human beings do trade,
00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:53,880 because we become more energy efficient as a result.
00:18:53,880 --> 00:18:56,400 We create more outputs per unit of input.
00:18:56,400 --> 00:18:59,120 And you can think of government in that respect,
00:18:59,120 --> 00:19:01,080 if we're looking at it, maybe in a tech sense
00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:05,080 that the economy is the trade network that generates wealth,
00:19:05,080 --> 00:19:07,040 generates innovation, generates all,
00:19:07,040 --> 00:19:08,960 this whole lap of luxury we live in today
00:19:08,960 --> 00:19:12,560 that we've inherited from our forebears is from the market.
00:19:12,560 --> 00:19:14,000 It's not from a government.
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:17,360 The government is the network security, if you will.
00:19:17,360 --> 00:19:20,200 So we're paying expenses to a vendor
00:19:20,200 --> 00:19:22,680 to protect peace, to preserve life, liberty,
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:24,320 and property in that network,
00:19:24,320 --> 00:19:25,600 so that we can have,
00:19:25,600 --> 00:19:27,960 when there's inevitably disputes over private property,
00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:30,560 we can have nonviolent dispute resolution
00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:31,840 in the rule of law.
00:19:33,120 --> 00:19:35,880 And we can have a reasonable expectation
00:19:35,880 --> 00:19:39,280 of being able to conduct commerce without violence.
00:19:39,280 --> 00:19:43,800 The problem has been that the protector tends to,
00:19:43,800 --> 00:19:45,920 they're in a monopolistic position, we would say,
00:19:45,920 --> 00:19:49,120 they tend to start abusing that position
00:19:49,120 --> 00:19:52,920 to obtain property for themselves.
00:19:52,920 --> 00:19:55,720 Again, trying to get that something for nothing.
00:19:55,720 --> 00:20:00,200 When you control, you are the security guard
00:20:00,200 --> 00:20:02,080 for the economy.
00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:04,560 The first thing they tend to monopolize is money,
00:20:04,560 --> 00:20:05,720 because if you can control the money,
00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:07,960 you're effectively controlling people, their energy,
00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:09,120 their perceptions.
00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:14,440 And that becomes a, particularly through inflation,
00:20:14,440 --> 00:20:17,400 becomes an avenue to get something for nothing.
00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:19,920 And that you can just print more money
00:20:19,920 --> 00:20:22,280 that everyone else is forced to sacrifice
00:20:22,280 --> 00:20:24,000 their time and energy to obtain.
00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:27,480 What are your thoughts about anarchism?
00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:30,840 So I talk quite a bit, he'll be here in a few days,
00:20:30,840 --> 00:20:35,360 actually, Michael Malice, about ideas of anarchy.
00:20:35,360 --> 00:20:38,040 And his idea, or the idea of anarchists,
00:20:38,040 --> 00:20:40,800 is that any amount of government
00:20:40,800 --> 00:20:44,080 will eventually become the very kind of thing
00:20:44,080 --> 00:20:45,560 that you're referring to.
00:20:45,560 --> 00:20:48,360 So there's almost no way to have a government
00:20:48,360 --> 00:20:52,640 that doesn't then try to monopolize power, money,
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:54,240 and all those kinds of things.
00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:56,800 Do you think it's possible to have a government
00:20:56,800 --> 00:20:59,640 sort of on that spectrum of like anarchy,
00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:01,920 maybe libertarianism?
00:21:01,920 --> 00:21:04,520 I'm not sure how exactly the spectrum goes,
00:21:04,520 --> 00:21:07,040 but where you have a small government
00:21:07,040 --> 00:21:08,920 that protects the liberty and property rights
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:10,600 and those kinds of things,
00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:15,320 and doesn't expand to then also control the monetary system
00:21:15,320 --> 00:21:18,440 and all those other things, is it possible?
00:21:18,440 --> 00:21:19,800 Agreed completely.
00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:23,000 It was not possible until Satoshi Nakamoto.
00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:25,520 So for the first time in history,
00:21:25,520 --> 00:21:29,080 we have a money that cannot be monopolized,
00:21:29,080 --> 00:21:31,920 cannot be corrupted, cannot be changed,
00:21:32,840 --> 00:21:34,360 cannot be weaponized, frankly.
00:21:34,360 --> 00:21:36,600 Our current monetary system is weaponized
00:21:36,600 --> 00:21:39,320 by those who can print money against those who cannot.
00:21:39,320 --> 00:21:43,320 And I think when you have, you know,
00:21:43,320 --> 00:21:45,000 at the heart of every modern economy,
00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:46,840 which even we could say the US,
00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:49,440 we pride ourselves as free market capitalists.
00:21:49,440 --> 00:21:52,440 You know, we out competed communism in the 20th century.
00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:54,440 We think that this is the superior model.
00:21:56,080 --> 00:21:59,520 Most business people will tell you that the free market
00:21:59,520 --> 00:22:03,400 is the best allocator of resources, all of these things.
00:22:03,400 --> 00:22:05,600 But what we have at the heart of every modern economy,
00:22:05,600 --> 00:22:08,760 including the US, is an anti-capitalist model.
00:22:08,760 --> 00:22:10,920 It is an anti-capitalistic institution,
00:22:10,920 --> 00:22:12,200 which is the central bank.
00:22:13,760 --> 00:22:16,520 The temptation to monopolize money throughout all of history
00:22:16,520 --> 00:22:18,840 has been too strong for anyone to resist.
00:22:18,840 --> 00:22:22,200 So any, even benevolent quote unquote dictators
00:22:22,200 --> 00:22:25,040 that have taken over, many dictators have inherited,
00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:28,440 say an inflationary regime, where society's coming apart
00:22:28,440 --> 00:22:29,760 because someone was clipping the coins
00:22:29,760 --> 00:22:31,400 or someone was printing too much money,
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,320 and they'll commit to going back to a hard money standard.
00:22:34,320 --> 00:22:38,000 So they'll keep society on a gold standard, for instance,
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:40,920 such that they cannot violate the money
00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:42,160 to benefit themselves.
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:44,440 But inevitably over time,
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:48,760 because it is a political institution,
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:50,720 there's an incentive there, right?
00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:53,200 For, again, to get something for nothing,
00:22:53,200 --> 00:22:57,320 to spend more than you're making through tax revenues.
00:22:57,320 --> 00:23:00,360 And with that incentive, people typically ultimately
00:23:00,360 --> 00:23:02,600 end up pursuing that inflationary path.
00:23:03,480 --> 00:23:06,760 So we can get deeper into that about,
00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:09,480 inflation is a term that we've been conditioned
00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:11,040 to think today is just something normal.
00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:12,200 The prices just go up,
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:16,640 and then it's pertinent to a healthy economy,
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:18,880 but it's actually,
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:20,360 if you look at it from real first principles,
00:23:20,360 --> 00:23:22,600 it is just theft integrated into the money.
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:24,040 It's a technology backdoor,
00:23:24,040 --> 00:23:25,480 is another way to think about it.
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:27,000 You wouldn't buy a cell phone
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:29,520 knowing that someone could siphon your data
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:32,080 off of your private calls and sell it into the market.
00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:33,760 Now, I know we do that with a lot of social media stuff
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:35,280 today, and that's something else we can get into,
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:37,360 but you wouldn't do it willingly, right?
00:23:37,360 --> 00:23:40,360 You would prefer that your cell phone and your data
00:23:40,360 --> 00:23:43,200 was monetized by you, or if you're gonna sell it,
00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:45,480 you would be able to selectively sell it.
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:49,160 Inflation is that it's similar, it's a tech backdoor.
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:53,560 So it's a money that only a few people
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:56,320 can siphon value off of surreptitiously,
00:23:57,200 --> 00:23:59,160 typically slowly, but eventually,
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:00,160 as we've seen throughout history,
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:02,640 that slowly builds up into a rapidly
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,880 and then causes the monetary system to collapse.
00:24:05,880 --> 00:24:08,480 Do you think there's a benefit to inflation, possibly?
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:12,440 So when you have perfect information,
00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:14,360 but perhaps you don't need inflation,
00:24:14,360 --> 00:24:16,120 perhaps it is purely theft,
00:24:16,120 --> 00:24:18,640 but I think of inflation as like the snooze button
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:19,600 on the alarm.
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:23,560 So if you have a hard standard,
00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:25,920 you better wake up when the alarm rings,
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:29,440 but all of us kind of like probably shouldn't,
00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:30,800 but use the snooze button.
00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:33,240 It's like, okay, well, five more minutes or 10 more minutes.
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:37,040 And then you're saying there's naturally a slippery slope
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:40,200 where it becomes a drug that you fall in love with
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:41,880 in your abuse.
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:46,320 But nevertheless, the usefulness of the snooze button
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:48,880 is that you don't know how you'll be actually feeling
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:50,360 when the alarm rings.
00:24:50,360 --> 00:24:52,240 You might be able to ready to pop up,
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:55,480 or you might be like, you really need those few more minutes
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:57,600 to psychologically get yourself out of bed.
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:00,560 This metaphor is just not working at all.
00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:05,000 But do you think there's a use to inflation sometimes
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:07,040 from like an economics perspective?
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:09,800 I think the drug metaphor is a little more apt
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:12,440 in that inflation does provide
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:17,440 an immediately stimulative effect when used early on.
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:23,160 But what it's doing is it's, again,
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:26,320 we talk about the balance between incentives
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:27,520 and disincentives, right?
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:31,080 That being necessary for a system to function properly.
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:34,160 With inflation, you're essentially giving
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:37,360 the people that can print money
00:25:37,360 --> 00:25:40,840 a way to dampen the disincentives they face.
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:45,840 So it destroys feedback loops, I guess you might say.
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:49,440 And another way to look at this is when you,
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:52,360 so using inflation, using quantitative easing,
00:25:52,360 --> 00:25:56,960 you can decrease short-term volatility in the marketplace.
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:01,160 So the market is basically this idea,
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:03,320 this form of free exchange that's trying to zero in
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:04,520 on the best ideas.
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:07,080 And the ideas are those that are most fit to reality,
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:08,840 to satisfying the most wants.
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:10,400 It's gonna overshoot, it's gonna undershoot,
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:12,040 you have these little business cycles.
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:13,560 But when it's undershooting
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:16,880 and you're experiencing a business recession,
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:19,200 in a capitalist environment,
00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:22,000 the market needs to clear that malinvestment,
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:23,320 that misallocation of capital.
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:25,440 That means someone made a bet on a certain idea
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:27,840 that it would satisfy wants in a particular way,
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:29,480 and that bet did not pan out.
00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:31,480 If you then paper over the losses
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:33,040 that business is creating,
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:36,880 you're now delaying and exacerbating the volatility
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:39,200 that that idea created.
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:41,440 So this is kind of a Tel Aviv concept
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:46,120 where you can dampen short-run volatility,
00:26:46,120 --> 00:26:48,360 but volatility is truth.
00:26:48,360 --> 00:26:53,360 Volatility is us matching our ideas to reality, right?
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:55,240 We're constantly, again, overshooting and undershooting.
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:58,920 So you delay volatility, you're just amplifying it
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:01,200 and exacerbating it in the long run.
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:02,760 And that's what Central Bank is doing.
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:06,880 The Central Bank mandate is low unemployment
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:11,280 and low unexpected inflation, basically.
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:16,840 And so they're trying to achieve economic growth
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:19,520 in a stable way, quote unquote, stable way.
00:27:19,520 --> 00:27:21,200 This is their ostensible purpose.
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:23,960 And that's just not possible.
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:26,720 Growth is an inherently unstable process.
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,400 Can you elaborate a little bit about
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:33,360 the nature of volatility?
00:27:33,360 --> 00:27:35,840 Why is it communicating truth?
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:39,040 That's something that a lot of people are afraid of
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:44,040 is the volatility, almost like it's a sign of chaos.
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:48,240 And so they want to escape chaos.
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:51,760 But you're saying that that's actually,
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:53,640 whether it's chaos or not, I don't know,
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:57,600 but it's getting us closer to the fundamental reality
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:00,080 that we should not be trying to escape.
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:04,960 Yeah, so if we consider that the universe
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:06,960 is pervaded by entropy, right?
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:08,760 This is the second law of thermodynamics
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:10,080 is that every closed system
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:12,600 tends towards greater disorder over time.
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:15,880 And that life itself, again, I would argue,
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:17,760 expressed through the logos,
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:22,160 we, life, is the anti-entropic principle.
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:24,720 It's the only thing that's converting entropy into order,
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:26,520 chaos into order.
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,960 And that's what entrepreneurs are doing, right?
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:32,720 We're living at the edges of the known
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:34,720 and we're trying to,
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,240 we're testing ourselves against the entropy of nature,
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:38,920 trying to figure out new and better ways
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:41,040 of saying, doing, or making things.
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:44,280 And then if we do crack a code or figure something out,
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:45,680 we then have a big incentive,
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:47,160 the incentive is to get rich, right?
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:48,400 Because then you have a new idea
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:50,920 that you could then sell back into the marketplace.
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:55,920 So it's this sequence of courageously confronting
00:28:57,360 --> 00:28:58,720 the entropy of nature
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:00,840 and converting it into good and useful order,
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:04,120 which by the way is like the ancient idea of God and Genesis,
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:05,600 which I think is interesting,
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:10,120 that actually enables us to construct civilization
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:14,920 in these layers of anti-entropy or order, you might say.
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:20,920 So today we live in a bubble of anti-entropy or order.
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,320 Like the coastlines are guarded by the nation
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,360 and the city has a certain police force
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:27,680 that keeps it in order.
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:31,640 Even the way we talk,
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:34,040 clearly the words matter, but also the nonverbal cues,
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:36,400 all these things are like order that has been established
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:40,800 over many, many, many thousands of years of human evolution.
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:45,800 And I think that's, when I say volatility is truth,
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:49,400 what I'm saying is that the experience of uncertainty
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,680 is something that's ineradicable from life, right?
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:56,240 Uncertainty, like it's kind of a paradox
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:58,200 because we're fighting against it, right?
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:00,680 We're trying to innovate our way away from uncertainty
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:02,840 to create more capital,
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:07,840 which capital is very simply a way of mitigating uncertainty.
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:10,640 So this is why you might have like a stash of food
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:12,920 in case the power goes out or a generator,
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:15,600 like it helps you overcome uncertainty over time.
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:19,600 But uncertainty is also where all the sweetness of life is.
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:20,880 So there's gotta be this balance
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:22,680 with one foot in, one foot out.
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:23,520 And-
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:25,800 So human society is this kind of bubble of order
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:28,680 that we've constructed and slowly expanding,
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:31,440 but at the edges, you're always going to have that chaos,
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:34,440 that volatility, and that the entrepreneurs
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,600 are kind of like jumping in and out of the bubble.
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:39,520 Jumping into that chaos,
00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:42,040 and some of them die and some of them succeed.
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:46,400 And so like, if you wanna grow this bubble of order,
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:51,400 you have to be embracing the volatility at the edges.
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:52,280 Yes.
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:55,120 And reverence for entrepreneurship,
00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:58,960 because these are the people putting their neck out,
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,320 so to speak, risking themselves.
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:03,240 And they're gonna contribute to society, by the way,
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:05,120 whether they go up in flames or not.
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:07,760 If they go up in flames, society has witnessed
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:09,640 their experience as something not to do
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:10,680 or something that doesn't work
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:12,400 in a particular time and place,
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:14,840 so that you could say them going up in flames
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:16,840 is a way of enlightening the rest of us.
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:19,000 Or if they figure something out,
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,800 Steve Jobs creates the iPhone, changes the world forever.
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:25,800 So enlightening the rest of us, okay.
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:26,960 And Taleb would say-
00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:28,640 The fire of their failure, okay.
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:30,040 Yeah, exactly.
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:35,040 Taleb would say individual fragility
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:38,600 is inseparable from ensemble anti-fragility.
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:40,640 So this means that, again,
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:42,760 every time that entrepreneur goes up in flames,
00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:46,040 or say a restaurant goes out of business,
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:47,400 when a restaurant goes out of business,
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:50,240 that particular cuisine strategy they were implementing
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:51,600 in that particular time and place,
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:53,520 that's a signal to all the other restaurants in the area
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:54,920 that that doesn't work.
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:59,680 So restaurant food improves from bankruptcy to bankruptcy.
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:02,440 So it's this death of the individual components
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:05,480 that contributes to the growth of the ensemble.
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:07,880 As a small aside, maybe you can guide me through it.
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:09,320 I don't know if you're paying attention,
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:13,800 but there was some chaos around Taleb
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:15,600 and the Bitcoin community.
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:17,960 I wasn't quite paying attention,
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:20,200 but from my outsider's perspective,
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:24,520 I thought Nassim Taleb was a supporter of Bitcoin.
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:26,880 And then a lot of people were very upset about something.
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:28,240 I'm sorry if I don't know the details,
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:33,040 but can you pull out some profound philosophical ideas
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:34,880 from the disagreement of the chaos?
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:37,960 I admittedly don't know too much about it either.
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:40,160 I'm a big fan of his writing.
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:45,760 He's always been a little different in person.
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:47,520 Like I actually, he signed one of my books.
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:48,360 I met him in person.
00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:50,640 He's got a very abrasive personality.
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:52,320 He's kind of known for it.
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:54,120 I don't think I'm passing any judgment here.
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:56,000 He sort of embraces it.
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,000 But he had written the forward
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:00,720 to a really important book in Bitcoin
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:03,840 called the Bitcoin Standard for Safedean Amoose.
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:06,920 And then I think they had a little Twitter beef
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:10,920 because Safedean is very much against COVID mask
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:12,760 and state intervention,
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:15,400 whereas Taleb's on the other side of the fence.
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:17,960 And so, and then after that beef,
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:19,720 Taleb came out against Bitcoiners saying,
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:21,880 oh, Bitcoiners are crazy and wrong.
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:24,760 I think the great mask debate of the 2020
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:26,720 will probably be the thing that ultimately leads
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:28,440 to World War III.
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:31,440 I've been very surprised how tense,
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:36,440 how much like division this one little arguably silly thing
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:39,200 has led to.
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:41,640 I think a lot of people sort of project their,
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:44,080 like it's almost like not wearing a mask
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:46,560 is a statement of sovereignty of freedom
00:33:46,560 --> 00:33:48,920 of like saying fuck you to the man,
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:51,000 the government, the centralized power,
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:55,240 or the dishonesty or in the scientific community,
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:56,320 all those kinds of things.
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,600 And then wearing a mask is a sort of kind of signaling
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,680 of various kind of social aspects.
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:05,600 I don't know, I'm not paying attention to it.
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:06,920 I actually tuned out.
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:08,560 I was part of a group of scientists
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:10,640 that were looking into like do masks work?
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:12,080 This very interesting question.
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:13,960 To me, it was an interesting question.
00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:17,680 I sort of roll in to ask that very interesting question
00:34:17,680 --> 00:34:20,560 because I think it is an interesting scientific question,
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:23,880 but then I quickly realized that just as I was doing this
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:27,600 like scientific exploration of this very interesting question
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:30,360 about Viron particles, like what kind of things,
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:32,360 like from a scientific perspective,
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:34,440 how do we prevent the spread of a pandemic?
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:38,080 Forget COVID, any pandemic, super deadly or not deadly.
00:34:38,080 --> 00:34:40,720 Like there's tools, there's testing, there's masks,
00:34:40,720 --> 00:34:43,240 there's all these tools, how well do they work?
00:34:43,240 --> 00:34:46,760 And then I realized in April or so,
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:50,040 it became a tool of politics, a tool of philosophy.
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:51,960 And that's when I sort of pulled out.
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:52,800 So it's fascinating.
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:56,760 I think it's a canvas on which people project
00:34:56,760 --> 00:34:59,960 their emotions and I guess Tillam got caught up
00:34:59,960 --> 00:35:02,520 in that kind of, so there's nothing fundamental,
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:04,560 I suppose, to their disagreement.
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:09,560 Not that I'm aware of, but he's written some about
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:13,240 in his books, the problem with centralization.
00:35:13,240 --> 00:35:15,880 I mean, a lot of his writing addresses that.
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:18,640 And he actually points to, I think Switzerland
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:20,320 is the best government in the world
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:21,720 because it's decentralized.
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:25,120 So there's that.
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,440 I don't think he has any, not to speak for him,
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:32,880 but I don't think he's voiced any specific critiques
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:34,680 on Bitcoin per se.
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:35,760 Could be wrong about that.
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:37,840 It's just maybe his flavorful language
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:39,600 and the way he likes to communicate.
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:42,320 And the other theory is that maybe he's playing 4D chess
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:44,640 and having a Twitter boating accident.
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:48,160 So I don't believe in Bitcoin, I've sold all my Bitcoin.
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:49,080 Oh, I see.
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:53,800 Sorry, the boating accident in Bitcoin is this,
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:56,760 I guess it's proverbial by this point
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,400 where it's the way you lose your Bitcoin.
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:00,920 So if someone comes after you and says,
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,560 hey, whether it's a government or an individual
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:05,240 is coming after you saying, give me all your Bitcoin
00:36:05,240 --> 00:36:06,920 or pay these taxes in Bitcoin, you go,
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:09,080 oh, I had a boating accident and lost them all.
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:09,920 Lost them all.
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,520 But back to the fundamental nature of space-time.
00:36:16,520 --> 00:36:20,200 Let me ask you, because we're kind of left it.
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:24,920 I'd like to go back to this idea of that you said
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:27,360 that everything we think, say or do occurs
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:29,120 within the bounds of space-time.
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:33,600 So first of all, maybe you can comment on
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:37,120 what do you mean in this context about space-time,
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:40,680 but also about the nature of truth,
00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:43,480 like how much of all of this is knowable?
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:46,400 How much of this is accessible to us humans?
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:49,160 How much uncertainty like we're talking about
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:50,720 is there in the world?
00:36:50,720 --> 00:36:52,280 Are you, do you fall in a place
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:56,040 where we can reason deeply about this world
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:58,520 and it's knowable or is it mostly chaos
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:01,360 and we're just holding on for dear life?
00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:04,200 Yeah, I think I said that all action occurs
00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:05,520 within the bounds of space-time.
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:08,160 The other thing, everything we say do or make,
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,360 the other thing is that everything we say do or make
00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:12,440 starts out as an idea.
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:15,480 So there's this concept of universal Darwinism,
00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:20,040 which basically applies Darwinian principles,
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:21,920 but outside of the biological sphere.
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:23,600 So we could say that this kind of gets
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:25,120 into Richard Dawkins memetics,
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:29,160 that even ideas are competing, reproducing, recombining.
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:30,840 That idea is so powerful, by the way.
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:33,880 I don't think it's been understood fully.
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:38,880 I think in the digital, in the 21st century
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:40,560 in the digital world, from my perspective
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:42,480 in artificial intelligence,
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:45,200 there's yet to be some profound things to be discovered
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:47,200 about this whole construct.
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:48,840 Agreed completely.
00:37:48,840 --> 00:37:51,480 It's been called an acid, actually,
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:55,560 in that it strips away all of the non-informational
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:56,440 components of something,
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:58,360 just strips it down to its bare bones.
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,160 I have a quote in here somewhere about that, but-
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:04,120 I'm sorry, which is called an acid, the ideas?
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:05,840 The universal Darwinism.
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,200 Darwinism applied broadly outside of the-
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:12,720 Applied broadly, and I'll condition all of this
00:38:12,720 --> 00:38:14,480 with saying that a lot, most of my thinking
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,240 is shaped by a book I read recently
00:38:16,240 --> 00:38:17,840 called The Case Against Reality,
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:20,600 which introduced me to this concept,
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:22,800 but it tied into Darwinism
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:24,200 that I've used more broadly in the past,
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:26,280 looking at things like money and economics.
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:30,600 So the book, The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman,
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:32,800 he has a quote in the book
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,720 that describes universal Darwinism.
00:38:35,720 --> 00:38:37,600 It says, quote, universal Darwinism can,
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:41,480 without risk of refuting itself, address our key question.
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,840 Does natural selection favor true perceptions?
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:46,760 If the answer happens to be no,
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:49,160 then it hasn't shot itself in the foot.
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:51,280 The uncanny power of universal Darwinism
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,120 has been likened by the philosopher Dan Dennett
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:55,680 to a universal acid.
00:38:56,720 --> 00:38:57,960 And Dan Dennett says, quote,
00:38:57,960 --> 00:38:59,920 there is no denying at this point
00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:02,400 that Darwin's idea is a universal solvent
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:04,000 capable of cutting right to the heart
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:05,720 of everything in sight.
00:39:05,720 --> 00:39:08,520 The question is, what does it leave behind?
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:10,880 I have tried to show that once it passes through everything,
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:13,120 we are left with stronger, sounder versions
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,800 of our most important ideas.
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:17,920 Some of the traditional details perish,
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:20,400 and some of these are losses to be regretted,
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:22,240 but good riddance to the rest of them.
00:39:22,240 --> 00:39:25,200 What remains is more than enough to build on, unquote.
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:31,360 So the way I would interpret that is that life itself,
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:33,080 I've come to view life
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:35,600 as information propagating through flesh,
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:40,600 and that we are, I guess, DNA is a quadratic code.
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:43,200 I think it's four letters maybe
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:45,440 versus a binary zeros and ones.
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:48,080 And we are ideas, we are strategies
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:49,720 competing with each other.
00:39:49,720 --> 00:39:53,280 And nature is that which selects,
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:55,400 it's what selects the winning ideas,
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:56,760 the ones that are most fit
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:00,600 to environmental conditions, frankly.
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:04,760 Talking about sovereignty and individualism,
00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:08,640 there might need to be some rethinking here
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:11,800 about what is actually the basic individual entity
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:13,640 that is to be sovereign.
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:18,640 Like maybe our biological meat vehicles
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:21,280 were like way overly attached to them.
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:25,920 Like maybe, especially with genetics
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:26,920 and all those kinds of things,
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:29,280 or artificial intelligence, or living things,
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:31,160 artificial intelligence, or living more and more
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:34,240 in virtual worlds will become detached
00:40:34,240 --> 00:40:35,920 from that kind of idea.
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:37,960 So for example, if I can clone you,
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:41,960 make 1 million robbers,
00:40:44,240 --> 00:40:46,200 but you all have the same idea,
00:40:46,200 --> 00:40:48,920 what is your real value as the,
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:50,040 like I could just shoot you
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:52,880 and there'll still be 999 of you,
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:55,200 but the idea is the important thing,
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:57,160 the things you believe, so.
00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:00,200 I would argue that I don't know,
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:02,080 even if you clone someone perfectly,
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:03,840 I don't think you can reproduce
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:05,480 the individual themselves,
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:09,000 because we're all a product of nature and nurture, right?
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,360 So my particular concourse of experiences,
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,800 the path dependence that I represent cannot be replicated,
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:17,560 nor can anyone's for that matter.
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:19,240 Well, that's a hypothesis.
00:41:19,240 --> 00:41:27,240 So that's of course a human meat bag would say, so.
00:41:27,240 --> 00:41:28,080 Good point.
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:31,920 So like desperately trying to preserve himself,
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:33,960 you know, I think it reduces
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:36,440 to some fundamental questions about what is consciousness
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:38,000 and whether that can be cloned,
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:39,200 all those kinds, you know,
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:41,880 it gets to the core of what it is to be human.
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:45,160 What are the things that make you particularly you?
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:46,880 Yeah, I think it would assume
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:49,200 kind of a materialist viewpoint on reality,
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:52,160 and that if you could reproduce every atom of an individual
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:55,160 that you would have their experience encapsulated in that.
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:58,640 And you know, Hoffman's, which is the book is very radical.
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:03,640 He argues that space and time is not an objective reality,
00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:06,080 it's a biological interface.
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:11,080 So we are scanning our environment for fitness payoffs,
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:13,520 and this space and time is the rendering
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:16,880 specific to human beings that allows us to navigate reality
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:18,960 effectively.
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:21,880 So the further argument would be that we all have
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:23,240 pretty similar interfaces,
00:42:23,240 --> 00:42:25,000 but they're all slightly different too,
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:27,120 because we're all, you know, adapting in different ways
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:30,320 and that different animals have their own unique interfaces.
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,800 So we have a certain amount of photoreceptors in our eye,
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:35,920 whereas I think the number is three, might be five,
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:39,320 or something like the mantis shrimp has like seven or nine.
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:44,320 So they can see, and we only see one 10 trillionth
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:46,040 of the light spectrum.
00:42:47,000 --> 00:42:48,680 So talk about a tiny fraction.
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:51,680 I mean, one 10 trillionth is a very minuscule number,
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:53,360 and that makes up all of the light
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:55,360 that we can interpret with our eyes,
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:57,040 but it's something like a mantis shrimp could see,
00:42:57,040 --> 00:42:58,800 you know, much more of that.
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:01,920 So I think there's this,
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:06,040 we're very conditioned to have a fully materialist viewpoint
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:07,320 on reality today,
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:10,320 where we think, you know,
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:13,000 the atomic clockwork kind of universe.
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:16,520 But I think there's, I don't think that's true exactly.
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:19,800 And another school that goes into that
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:22,040 is actually Austrian economics,
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:24,680 where we could say that, you know,
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:27,640 we mentioned earlier that an asset is not property.
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:29,160 It's actually based on the relationship
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:31,160 between the individual and the property.
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:35,720 There's this whole realm of relevance
00:43:35,720 --> 00:43:40,720 associated with, we're all moving through life
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:43,560 in the course of a goal-directed action.
00:43:43,560 --> 00:43:47,440 So when we walk across a room, I go from A to B,
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:50,200 it's because I valued B more than A.
00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:52,960 So value is inseparable from human action.
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:56,200 We have a rank ordered value system in our mind,
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:58,400 each of us, and we're constantly taking action
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:00,480 in accordance with those rank values.
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:03,520 Anything that accelerates us
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:05,840 on the course of our goal-directed action
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:08,480 towards our goal is useful.
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:12,720 Anything that impedes us, or we could say is valuable,
00:44:12,720 --> 00:44:16,200 anything that impedes us is actually obstructing to value.
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:19,160 And anything that's irrelevant is just valueless.
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:23,880 So this table that we're using right now,
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:26,360 like this is an accessory to UNI
00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:27,480 because it's holding this paper
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:28,480 that's holding the information
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:30,320 that's guiding our conversation.
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:34,320 But we could pay someone $100 to jump over this table.
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:36,520 And this table could simultaneously be an accessory
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:39,480 to UNI and an obstacle to someone else.
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:43,880 So it's this domain, this silent contention of willpower
00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:46,760 and agendas occurring across the face of the earth
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:50,040 that is what Austrian economics really looks at.
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:54,040 It's the realm of human action, as they call it.
00:44:54,040 --> 00:44:55,560 It's called praxeology.
00:44:55,560 --> 00:44:58,560 So it's a non-materialist viewpoint on reality
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:03,240 and that things, we think in terms of matter being reality,
00:45:03,240 --> 00:45:06,160 but it's often more so in the sphere of human action,
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:08,640 what matters, that is reality.
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:10,240 It's the relevance of a thing
00:45:10,240 --> 00:45:12,440 to the course of one's goal-directed action.
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:16,000 And that's ultimately exists in the space of ideas.
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:16,960 Yes.
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:19,080 Not in the space of physical matter.
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:20,440 And just to jump back to this line here,
00:45:20,440 --> 00:45:24,640 I think his fundamental line here is the question is,
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:26,920 talking about universal Darwinism as an asset,
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:28,400 what does it leave behind?
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:30,800 I've tried to show that once it passes through everything,
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:32,960 we're left with stronger, sounder versions
00:45:32,960 --> 00:45:35,360 of our most useful ideas.
00:45:35,360 --> 00:45:36,560 That's the key point to me.
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:40,440 And that ideas and information, so far as we can tell,
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:43,280 are the most fundamental substrate of reality.
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:47,600 And information itself, back to entropy,
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:50,360 information is the resolution of entropy.
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:51,600 That's what the bit is, right?
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:52,480 It's a one or zero.
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:55,080 Whatever reduces your entropy by half is a bit.
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:57,520 And we measure information in bits.
00:45:57,520 --> 00:46:00,880 So, and you're right, people don't have ideas.
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:02,000 Ideas have people.
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:05,840 Honestly, it's a really profound idea
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:11,640 or a statement about reality, a reframing of reality.
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:15,360 If we're actually being deeply honest about it,
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:17,240 it's quite painful.
00:46:17,240 --> 00:46:19,320 I do appreciate that you defended
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:21,760 your biological meatbag earlier,
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:26,040 but it seems like ideas are the things that have power.
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:31,040 That me, Lex, for example, is worthless.
00:46:31,080 --> 00:46:35,840 And relative to the ideas that used my brain
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:37,640 for a bit of a time.
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:39,800 But so far as we know,
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,440 only human beings can generate and share ideas.
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:44,480 So you can't say Lex is worthless.
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:47,960 Like you are the node of the idea sphere.
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:49,120 I'm like the newest sphere.
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:52,080 So I'm, what is it?
00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:55,200 From a Bitcoin perspective, I'm like, I'm mining,
00:46:55,200 --> 00:46:57,400 I'm solving the cryptographic problem
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:02,400 and generating, in that sense, I'm a useful node.
00:47:03,240 --> 00:47:06,920 Yeah, you're competing to solve the puzzle of entropy, right?
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:09,640 And when you do solve it, it benefits the entire network.
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:13,400 But I guess from my perspective,
00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:15,440 just because just working in AI,
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:17,640 I'm looking at the long-term vision.
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:22,560 I see us humans and AI systems as really the same
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:25,040 and AI systems ultimately as something
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:27,160 that supersedes humans.
00:47:27,160 --> 00:47:28,640 So what is intelligence?
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,800 So in the context of our current discussion,
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:41,120 I think intelligence is very closely linked
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:45,360 to this notion of ideas.
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:48,600 And it's the ability to generate ideas,
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:53,600 to mold ideas, to compress seeming chaos
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:57,960 into some model, into some theory
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:00,680 that efficiently compresses the chaos
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,160 in a way where you can then integrate it with other ideas
00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:06,400 and they can play and all those kinds of things.
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:11,160 So in that sense, it's the turning chaos into order.
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:15,080 It's the molding of ideas such that our human brains
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:17,160 can work with it.
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:18,920 And it just, from my perspective,
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,240 I don't see any reason why they cannot be algorithmatized,
00:48:22,240 --> 00:48:25,640 just converted into computational systems.
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:27,280 I would agree.
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:28,280 Which is scary.
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:33,480 Scary or potentially really promising, right?
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:34,880 It's kind of the case of all novelty.
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:37,240 It's terrifying as much as it is promising.
00:48:37,240 --> 00:48:39,520 That's why you're pursuing it so heavily.
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:42,600 I would maybe take it a step further
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:44,800 and say that intelligence,
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:48,320 in maybe its most simplistic form is error correction.
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:53,320 So we, humans have wants.
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:56,320 Again, we're constantly expressing our value through action.
00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:58,040 There's no other way to express it, by the way.
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:00,440 It's whatever you choose to do in any moment,
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:02,320 you are expressing the values you hold
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:03,720 in your mind and your heart.
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:09,640 As we move from less valued A to more valued B,
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:16,200 entropy happens, uncertainty happens, we fall off course.
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:19,360 And it is intelligence that enables us
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:21,720 to render information from that experience
00:49:21,720 --> 00:49:23,760 and error correct, right?
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:25,960 So that we can move slightly,
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:29,160 shift our trajectory slightly more towards B
00:49:29,160 --> 00:49:30,920 that we're trying to move towards.
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:35,640 So I think that there's something there
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:40,640 that I don't know that we can make synthetically.
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:45,840 And that if we define intelligence as error correction,
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:47,520 it's like error correction to what?
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:50,640 Error correction towards what we find is valuable.
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:52,560 So we're trying to satisfy human wants.
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:54,240 Might not just be our own, could be others as well.
00:49:54,240 --> 00:49:55,080 If I'm an entrepreneur,
00:49:55,080 --> 00:49:57,560 I'm trying to solve the wants of others, not just myself.
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:00,400 And I'm trying to error correct myself towards that goal,
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:04,680 using intelligence and processing environmental feedback
00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:06,560 through intelligence to error correct.
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:08,040 So I don't know how,
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:12,440 if you eliminate the human element completely,
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:13,960 who's doing the wanting, right?
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:15,320 Where does the value come from?
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:18,160 I know the machine learning people who are listening
00:50:18,160 --> 00:50:20,200 are saying that's exactly what machine learning is,
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:21,440 which is error correction
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:24,000 because you have a loss function, objective function
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:28,280 that measures how wrong your thing is
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:30,200 and you wanna make it less wrong next time.
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:32,000 That's the whole process of machine learning.
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:35,520 But you're saying what humans are able to do
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:40,520 is in a world where there's no maybe objective values,
00:50:40,520 --> 00:50:44,520 absolute values, you're generating that very loss function,
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:46,560 that objective function that you're,
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:49,280 that function that measures the error
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:51,560 comes from the human mind.
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:55,240 Some aliens might disagree with you
00:50:55,240 --> 00:50:58,040 because they might have a different objective function.
00:50:58,040 --> 00:51:00,800 But the purpose comes from consciousness, I think.
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:03,560 And without purpose, there's not error correction.
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:06,040 Yeah, I mean, this is again, a hypothesis,
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:07,640 like where does purpose come from?
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:09,440 It seems to come from the mind.
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:11,840 It seems to come from consciousness, you're right.
00:51:13,040 --> 00:51:15,040 That's where suffering comes from
00:51:15,040 --> 00:51:16,960 and you want to lessen suffering.
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:20,000 That's where pleasure comes from.
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:21,800 It seems like it's consciousness.
00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:25,080 Maybe there is something to this biological meat bag.
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:27,240 So to take it one layer deeper on this,
00:51:27,240 --> 00:51:29,040 and the reason I like this book so much,
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:30,640 again, The Case Against Reality.
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:33,520 So he's making the case that space and time
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:35,120 are not fundamental.
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:35,960 Yes.
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:38,600 Which I started my intellectual explorations
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:40,120 in physics, actually astrophysics.
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:42,600 So for the longest time, even the way I describe money
00:51:42,600 --> 00:51:44,800 as I talk about space and time.
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:46,480 So that blew my mind.
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:49,880 But this dovetailed nicely with another book called Leela.
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:53,320 The author is Robert Persig.
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:55,520 So he wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:57,200 which is a very popular book.
00:51:57,200 --> 00:51:58,680 20 years later, he wrote Leela,
00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:01,320 which no one's heard of, which is crazy.
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:03,840 And he basically says he was wrong about his first book.
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:08,360 And he lays out this entire other metaphysics of quality.
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:09,200 He calls it.
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:10,160 So it's the metaphysics.
00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:12,440 I think it's metaphysics of quality.
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:17,440 But his supposition is that it's not physical reality
00:52:18,040 --> 00:52:19,000 that's fundamental.
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:22,200 It's not informational information that's fundamental.
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:23,200 It's value.
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:26,920 So he actually, and it's a beautiful book.
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:29,160 I highly recommend it.
00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:33,120 He essentially is refuting causality itself.
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:34,920 We think A causes B.
00:52:34,920 --> 00:52:39,920 This book makes the case that B values precondition A
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:46,000 so that we are actually creating our future
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:48,480 through our value systems.
00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:50,960 And this goes back to something,
00:52:50,960 --> 00:52:52,280 I think Solzhenitsyn said this,
00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:54,320 that the line between good and evil
00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:56,240 runs down the heart of every man.
00:52:56,240 --> 00:52:58,960 So it's as if our moral decisions
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:01,560 are actually what's creating the outcomes
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:03,320 in reality over time.
00:53:03,320 --> 00:53:05,600 And then that gets into all the wisdom traditions
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:06,720 related to religion,
00:53:06,720 --> 00:53:10,240 where it's always talking about loving thy neighbor
00:53:10,240 --> 00:53:12,440 and loving God and all of these other things
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:15,320 that are good morally to create the best outcomes.
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:17,920 So values are fundamental.
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:19,320 Value, yes.
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:21,400 Value is fundamental.
00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:24,200 Oh boy, yeah, that's interesting.
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:30,200 It does feel like physics is not capturing something.
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:35,200 There's some people, panpsychists argue
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:38,280 that consciousness might be one of the fundamental
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:39,600 properties of nature,
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:42,800 like from which emerges everything we see.
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:46,440 So that could be just other words
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:49,400 for this same notion of value.
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:51,720 And then the basic laws of physics
00:53:51,720 --> 00:53:54,040 are not capturing that currently.
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:56,520 So maybe humans, in order to understand
00:53:56,520 --> 00:53:57,840 from where humans came from,
00:53:57,840 --> 00:54:00,600 we have to understand these other properties of nature,
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:03,520 which are yet to be discovered at the physics level.
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:08,160 And we contend with that underlying nature,
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:10,800 whatever it is, with the logos, right?
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:15,800 So we're looking at uncategorized nature
00:54:16,240 --> 00:54:18,560 and then we're assigning a word to it.
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:23,320 So we're slicing up chaos into little boxes of order.
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:25,760 And then we're establishing this social consensus
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:28,920 as to those labels, which we'd call words.
00:54:28,920 --> 00:54:30,840 And we're using that to communicate.
00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:32,200 And when we communicate,
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:35,280 we can start to build these other things.
00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:38,040 This is like the Yuval Harari imagined orders.
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:41,120 So we can create these useful fictions, right?
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:44,080 Whether it's the nation state or human rights or money.
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:48,600 And that allows us to cooperate flexibly in large numbers
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:50,520 so that we can better contend with reality.
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:53,760 We can produce more complicated things.
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:58,400 We can enlarge that bubble of civilization against entropy.
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:01,120 And that's what capitalism is all about.
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:04,560 It's about further specializing knowledge,
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:07,520 further enriching mankind's treasury of knowledge
00:55:08,720 --> 00:55:09,600 and doing it.
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:14,280 But to do that, the communication media that we're using,
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:16,800 the words have to have stable meaning.
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:21,560 The money needs to have value that's dependable, right?
00:55:21,560 --> 00:55:24,280 It needs to be something that's,
00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:26,960 it's not dictated by any one group.
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:30,680 It's reached by consensus of the entire group.
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:35,600 That's how, so you could think it's like optimizing
00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:36,800 for error correction again,
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:40,000 where a free market would be harnessing the intelligence
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:43,880 of all market actors and a central planning
00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:46,040 or essentially planned market would be harnessing
00:55:46,040 --> 00:55:49,880 just the intelligence of a small group of bureaucrats.
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:51,640 And it's not obvious how to achieve this kind
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:53,480 of consensus mechanism.
00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:56,800 I mean, there's obviously we'll talk about sort of Bitcoin
00:55:56,800 --> 00:55:57,920 as an idea.
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:01,920 Ultimately, the idea of Bitcoin is connecting it to physics.
00:56:02,880 --> 00:56:07,760 So like you can trust that physical matter won't change,
00:56:09,080 --> 00:56:12,960 but there could be other ideas that we get.
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:14,720 Maybe physics could be changed.
00:56:14,720 --> 00:56:17,480 If Eric Weinstein has anything to say about it.
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:20,560 Like it's, we right now believe that physics
00:56:20,560 --> 00:56:23,200 can't be changed, the physical matter of the world,
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:25,720 but maybe it can in a way that we're totally
00:56:25,720 --> 00:56:26,560 not understanding.
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:28,480 You mentioned sort of reality
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:32,520 from Donald Hoffman's perspective.
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:35,480 Like if we don't have even close to direct access
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:38,200 to the fabric of reality,
00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:40,780 maybe we're living in a world that's very
00:56:40,780 --> 00:56:43,640 like many dimensions that the notions of space
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:46,560 and time is just like a silly, useful construct.
00:56:46,560 --> 00:56:48,520 It's not at all connected.
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:51,080 You're starting to look at like Stephen Wolfram's,
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:53,560 I don't know if you're familiar with this view
00:56:53,560 --> 00:56:57,200 of the world that it's like hypergraphs underneath it all,
00:56:57,200 --> 00:56:58,880 like these mathematical structures from
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:00,520 which everything emerges.
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:05,520 Like they're like many, many, many orders of magnitude
00:57:07,400 --> 00:57:11,160 smaller than what we think of as they're even smaller
00:57:11,160 --> 00:57:13,280 than like strings and string theory.
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:15,340 So like those are the basic mathematical objects
00:57:15,340 --> 00:57:16,600 from which it emerges.
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:18,640 I don't, I think that's an interesting
00:57:18,640 --> 00:57:20,600 philosophical framework.
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:25,400 It's also, people should check out a cool way to play
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:27,760 with beautiful hypergraph mathematical structures.
00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:30,120 So he has, I don't know if you know who Stephen Wolfram is,
00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:34,320 but he created Wolfram Alpha and all these tools
00:57:34,320 --> 00:57:36,440 that you can actually visualize and play with.
00:57:36,440 --> 00:57:39,360 So you can play with physics in a visual way,
00:57:39,360 --> 00:57:43,600 which or at least discrete mathematics,
00:57:43,600 --> 00:57:45,120 which I think is incredible.
00:57:45,120 --> 00:57:46,880 He doesn't get enough love.
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:50,500 One of the reasons he, I think doesn't get enough love
00:57:50,500 --> 00:57:53,440 is because of this little quirk of human nature,
00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:54,840 which is the ego.
00:57:55,800 --> 00:57:59,920 And he sometimes frustrates a few folks
00:57:59,920 --> 00:58:04,040 because he's very, let's say proud of his work.
00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:04,880 I guess.
00:58:05,840 --> 00:58:10,460 But it's interesting to think about a world
00:58:10,460 --> 00:58:13,640 where we don't have direct access to reality
00:58:13,640 --> 00:58:15,040 as Hoffman argues.
00:58:15,040 --> 00:58:17,360 And maybe, I don't know if you can comment,
00:58:17,360 --> 00:58:19,400 I don't know if you're familiar with Ayn Rand's work
00:58:19,400 --> 00:58:22,000 and her whole philosophy of objectivism
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:27,000 or her whole contention is that we do have access.
00:58:28,400 --> 00:58:30,560 I don't wanna misstate it, but at least
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:37,560 she would claim that it's not useful
00:58:39,160 --> 00:58:41,600 or I think she would probably say it's not correct
00:58:41,600 --> 00:58:44,240 to argue that we don't have access to reality.
00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:46,080 We have the hence objectivism.
00:58:46,080 --> 00:58:49,140 We have direct access to reality.
00:58:49,140 --> 00:58:52,400 That's the only thing we can reason about.
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:55,120 And the only way to live life morally
00:58:55,120 --> 00:58:57,760 is to reason through everything,
00:58:57,760 --> 00:58:59,600 starting with the axioms of reality,
00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:02,080 which we do have direct access to.
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:04,600 You have thoughts about her work?
00:59:04,600 --> 00:59:08,920 I am slightly ashamed to say I have not read Ayn Rand yet.
00:59:08,920 --> 00:59:10,500 So she is high on my list
00:59:10,500 --> 00:59:13,300 and she's been recommended a number of times.
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:16,280 So I don't know a lot specifically
00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:18,280 about her philosophy or objectivism,
00:59:18,280 --> 00:59:21,640 but to me, it resonates closely
00:59:21,640 --> 00:59:25,760 with what the American pragmatist commented on truth.
00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:29,720 And they distinguished what you could say is absolute truth,
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:31,300 which is at the bottom of reality,
00:59:31,300 --> 00:59:34,320 whether it's Mr. Wolfram's mathematical formulas or value,
00:59:34,320 --> 00:59:37,000 whatever it may be, it's something ineffable,
00:59:37,000 --> 00:59:41,420 something beyond the reach of epistemology, perhaps even.
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:45,560 And maybe that's why religion just sort of points to it.
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:46,740 It's trying to use,
00:59:47,720 --> 00:59:50,680 I think Joseph Campbell said something like,
00:59:50,680 --> 00:59:55,680 religion is using stories
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:58,460 to point towards the same transcendental mystery
00:59:58,460 --> 01:00:01,240 we all experience but cannot articulate.
01:00:01,240 --> 01:00:03,200 So something like the artist,
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:06,840 the artist uses lies to point to the truth.
01:00:06,840 --> 01:00:09,000 Something like that, that kind of thing.
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:11,000 That's really good.
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:13,740 But the American pragmatist said that,
01:00:13,740 --> 01:00:16,320 because at the end of the day, this is all about,
01:00:16,320 --> 01:00:17,680 when we say truth,
01:00:17,680 --> 01:00:22,680 we need something that is close to social consensus
01:00:23,480 --> 01:00:26,040 and is not shakable by political action.
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:28,440 So that's what physics and mathematics are.
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:33,440 It's an unshakable point of reference, I guess you might say.
01:00:33,440 --> 01:00:37,560 So, the American pragmatist has defined truth
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:39,480 as the end of inquiry.
01:00:40,680 --> 01:00:45,680 And in markets, we could say that the market itself
01:00:46,560 --> 01:00:48,800 is a forum that generates truth.
01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:50,080 We call this pragmatic truth
01:00:50,080 --> 01:00:52,040 to separate pure objective truth
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:54,760 that we can't even talk about without polluting it
01:00:54,760 --> 01:00:57,600 versus pragmatic truth, which is something that's useful.
01:00:57,600 --> 01:01:00,120 So the example here would be,
01:01:00,120 --> 01:01:01,560 if I give you a map,
01:01:01,560 --> 01:01:04,640 and you're trying to go from your house
01:01:04,640 --> 01:01:07,120 to the local brisket restaurant,
01:01:07,120 --> 01:01:08,720 and the map gets you from your house
01:01:08,720 --> 01:01:10,480 to the brisket restaurant,
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:11,920 is that because the map is true
01:01:11,920 --> 01:01:13,720 or is that because the map is useful?
01:01:14,680 --> 01:01:16,480 They're very hard to disentangle
01:01:16,480 --> 01:01:18,680 when you're just looking at it pragmatically.
01:01:19,520 --> 01:01:21,200 And in markets,
01:01:21,200 --> 01:01:24,400 markets, I argue, generate three forms of pragmatic truth.
01:01:24,400 --> 01:01:26,560 One is the price.
01:01:26,560 --> 01:01:30,600 So this is the collective truth
01:01:30,600 --> 01:01:33,320 collective subjective demand
01:01:33,320 --> 01:01:35,720 and purchasing power of humanity
01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:39,720 running up against the objective supply of capital
01:01:39,720 --> 01:01:41,680 and resources in the marketplace.
01:01:41,680 --> 01:01:44,240 So there's demand overlaid on supply.
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:45,920 The result of that is the price.
01:01:45,920 --> 01:01:50,920 So that is the most truthful exchange ratio,
01:01:51,120 --> 01:01:54,040 which is the closest approximation to the value
01:01:54,040 --> 01:01:55,960 of any good in the marketplace.
01:01:55,960 --> 01:01:58,520 So it gives us a data point on which we can operate.
01:01:58,520 --> 01:02:01,320 It's compressing all known market realities
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:03,760 down into a single actionable number.
01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:05,840 You know, based on the price of bread or copper,
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:07,440 whether you wanna buy more of it,
01:02:07,440 --> 01:02:08,920 you wanna abstain from buying it,
01:02:08,920 --> 01:02:11,280 or maybe you wanna try and find substitutes.
01:02:11,280 --> 01:02:13,840 And you can think of that price signal,
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:15,480 it's like an economic nerve signal
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:17,520 that's coordinating human action across time.
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:22,520 So if we're one socioeconomic superorganism or collective,
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:24,520 that the price signal is the nerve.
01:02:24,520 --> 01:02:26,960 And that's the first form of pragmatic truth
01:02:26,960 --> 01:02:28,360 that markets generate.
01:02:28,360 --> 01:02:32,200 The second form would be tools and innovations themselves.
01:02:32,200 --> 01:02:35,600 So entrepreneurs are experimenting across time.
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:37,600 They're trying to satisfy the wants of consumers.
01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:40,440 Consumers are sovereign in the marketplace.
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:43,840 Whatever the consumer wants, the consumer gets, right?
01:02:43,840 --> 01:02:44,880 I'm trying to satisfy that.
01:02:44,880 --> 01:02:46,360 I'm trying to do it at a profit.
01:02:46,360 --> 01:02:49,640 So I'm trying to take viewing the existing price signals
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:50,600 of goods in the marketplace.
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:53,160 I'm trying to assemble those in a way
01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:55,680 at a cost lower than the final solution
01:02:55,680 --> 01:02:57,320 I'm delivering to my customer.
01:02:57,320 --> 01:02:58,640 I'm selling it at a price higher
01:02:58,640 --> 01:03:01,280 than the productive factors I combined to create it.
01:03:02,720 --> 01:03:05,040 And in that iterative process,
01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:08,920 we're constantly discovering new and better ways
01:03:08,920 --> 01:03:11,360 of solving problems or satisfying wants.
01:03:11,360 --> 01:03:14,840 So we could say to go out and dig a hole, right?
01:03:14,840 --> 01:03:16,480 Someone wants a hole dug,
01:03:16,480 --> 01:03:20,200 that a shovel is gonna let you do it much faster per hour
01:03:20,200 --> 01:03:22,360 than you would with your bare hands.
01:03:22,360 --> 01:03:24,840 So what is the pragmatic truth of digging holes?
01:03:24,840 --> 01:03:27,360 It's a shovel, right?
01:03:27,360 --> 01:03:29,960 It's the best way we know how to solve
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:31,600 any particular problem
01:03:31,600 --> 01:03:35,280 based on the existing treasury of knowledge.
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:39,080 So every tool, again, we're back to ideas being fundamental.
01:03:39,080 --> 01:03:42,920 The shovel itself is just a knowledge structure.
01:03:42,920 --> 01:03:45,560 We've figured out a way to create this particular implement
01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:47,720 and then we've indexed the raw materials
01:03:47,720 --> 01:03:49,920 we found in nature to this knowledge structure
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:51,160 to create a shovel,
01:03:51,160 --> 01:03:54,760 which allows us to better satisfy human wants
01:03:54,760 --> 01:03:57,280 faster, cheaper, better, effectively.
01:03:57,280 --> 01:03:59,480 I'm trying to generalize,
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:01,200 you're blowing my mind a little bit here.
01:04:01,200 --> 01:04:03,680 I'm trying to generalize the idea of tool
01:04:03,680 --> 01:04:04,800 to how to think about it.
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:07,800 Cause I keep just, when you say tool,
01:04:07,800 --> 01:04:09,560 I keep imagining different tools,
01:04:09,560 --> 01:04:12,240 like specific instantiations of a tool.
01:04:12,240 --> 01:04:16,120 I'm trying to see, so the price is a pragmatic truth
01:04:17,080 --> 01:04:21,800 that's communicating value in this network.
01:04:21,800 --> 01:04:26,680 Subjective demands against objective supply.
01:04:26,680 --> 01:04:27,520 Subjective.
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:29,320 So it's an economic democracy.
01:04:29,320 --> 01:04:30,160 Got it.
01:04:30,160 --> 01:04:32,320 So that's the demand supply.
01:04:32,320 --> 01:04:35,520 And then the tools are the ways of extracting
01:04:36,400 --> 01:04:39,560 or solving problems is the more general kind of thing.
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:40,920 Or satisfying wants.
01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:42,800 Satisfying wants.
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:45,520 So wants are somehow,
01:04:45,520 --> 01:04:48,120 that's part of the supply and the demand.
01:04:48,120 --> 01:04:49,960 And wants are back to value, right?
01:04:49,960 --> 01:04:53,280 Cause everything someone wants are expressing their value.
01:04:53,280 --> 01:04:54,120 Okay. Yeah.
01:04:54,120 --> 01:04:57,520 So the shovel is a pragmatic truth.
01:04:57,520 --> 01:04:58,920 The shovel is truth.
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:00,640 It feels like a good book title.
01:05:00,640 --> 01:05:01,480 Okay, sorry.
01:05:01,480 --> 01:05:03,320 So what other pragma, what is the third one?
01:05:03,320 --> 01:05:08,320 And then the third one I would argue is virtue actually.
01:05:08,600 --> 01:05:09,800 Oh wow.
01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:13,400 And another way to maybe think about this
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:14,760 is competitive competency,
01:05:14,760 --> 01:05:17,200 but it's also cooperative competency.
01:05:17,200 --> 01:05:19,360 So we're learning over time
01:05:19,360 --> 01:05:23,480 what characteristics, what patterns of action,
01:05:23,480 --> 01:05:26,040 what mindsets, what mental tools,
01:05:26,040 --> 01:05:28,000 what heuristics are most useful
01:05:28,000 --> 01:05:30,680 to satisfying customer wants.
01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:32,800 So I think that becomes over time,
01:05:32,800 --> 01:05:34,400 becomes sharpened into virtue, right?
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:36,520 Like we know it's best to be honest
01:05:36,520 --> 01:05:39,360 because if you lie, it's very energy inefficient, right?
01:05:39,360 --> 01:05:41,720 You're creating this little fork of reality.
01:05:41,720 --> 01:05:43,480 And then if someone else asks you about that lie again,
01:05:43,480 --> 01:05:46,160 you have to put another layer of lies on top of it.
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:47,240 Where if you just tell the truth,
01:05:47,240 --> 01:05:49,320 you're just recollecting what happened.
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:50,880 And so that sort of keeps,
01:05:52,840 --> 01:05:55,640 again, when we're talking about delaying volatility, right?
01:05:55,640 --> 01:05:59,240 If you lie, you're delaying short-term volatility,
01:05:59,240 --> 01:06:00,880 but you're increasing long-term volatility.
01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:01,720 What about murder?
01:06:01,720 --> 01:06:04,160 I haven't been able to figure out why murder is bad
01:06:04,160 --> 01:06:07,160 because I just keep wanting to murder people.
01:06:07,160 --> 01:06:08,320 And I've murdered many.
01:06:08,320 --> 01:06:10,600 You should see someone for that.
01:06:10,600 --> 01:06:11,840 Well, that's why I'm trying to get an interview
01:06:11,840 --> 01:06:13,400 with Vladimir Putin.
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:17,000 So that's fascinating, virtue in this market
01:06:17,000 --> 01:06:19,760 with the supplies and demands, and there's the tools,
01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:23,320 which is also a pragmatic truth, and there's virtue.
01:06:23,320 --> 01:06:25,000 It's a pragmatic truth.
01:06:25,000 --> 01:06:28,240 Yeah, and if we interfere with that free market process,
01:06:28,240 --> 01:06:31,360 again, if we overstep, which this maybe ties into murder,
01:06:31,360 --> 01:06:35,080 if you start to be coercive against life, liberty,
01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:38,920 or property, so if you're forcibly taking someone's life,
01:06:38,920 --> 01:06:41,400 you're breaking down the trust in that market
01:06:41,400 --> 01:06:44,120 that generates these pragmatic truths.
01:06:44,120 --> 01:06:46,960 If you forcibly infringe on someone's liberty,
01:06:46,960 --> 01:06:51,960 right, for any reason other than them originally breaking
01:06:53,280 --> 01:06:55,120 or infringing on life, liberty, or property,
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:56,920 then that's not gonna work either.
01:06:56,920 --> 01:06:59,400 And then if you violate private property rights,
01:06:59,400 --> 01:07:01,200 if you steal property from others,
01:07:01,200 --> 01:07:04,400 you're breaking down the trust
01:07:04,400 --> 01:07:08,840 that the intersubjective fabric of money and markets
01:07:08,840 --> 01:07:11,200 and the rule of law, all of these useful fictions
01:07:11,200 --> 01:07:13,400 are meant to preserve, you're corrupting it
01:07:13,400 --> 01:07:14,840 and breaking it down.
01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:16,560 What's kind of interesting to think about the market
01:07:16,560 --> 01:07:21,560 as helping evolve the virtues, it's sharpened into virtues.
01:07:23,040 --> 01:07:24,760 And then these virtues can then go
01:07:24,760 --> 01:07:28,720 into motivational posters or like in books
01:07:28,720 --> 01:07:32,800 that we all agree on and then eventually take for granted
01:07:32,800 --> 01:07:35,400 as if they were somehow fundamental to human nature,
01:07:35,400 --> 01:07:37,760 but they're not perhaps fundamental,
01:07:37,760 --> 01:07:39,480 they're just pragmatic truths.
01:07:40,520 --> 01:07:45,520 Yeah, it's another way to consider competition itself
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:48,280 is that it is a discovery process.
01:07:48,280 --> 01:07:52,560 So, you know, entrepreneurs are competing with one another
01:07:52,560 --> 01:07:56,360 and they're trying to best satisfy consumer wants
01:07:56,360 --> 01:07:57,600 at the lowest possible price.
01:07:57,600 --> 01:08:00,400 So they're placing bets of time, energy and capital
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:03,640 on themselves, on their idea, their business plan.
01:08:03,640 --> 01:08:06,320 And then the market decides, right?
01:08:06,320 --> 01:08:08,920 The collect, the consensus of market actors decide
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:11,680 which one was better, one lives, one dies.
01:08:11,680 --> 01:08:16,680 So competition itself is helping us get closer to truth,
01:08:16,880 --> 01:08:18,040 to pragmatic truth.
01:08:18,040 --> 01:08:21,360 So we're discovering what is the right price for this asset.
01:08:21,360 --> 01:08:24,440 And that price, by the way, it's derived again
01:08:24,440 --> 01:08:26,480 in the sense of data compression.
01:08:26,480 --> 01:08:28,920 Everyone in the world can see that price.
01:08:28,920 --> 01:08:31,560 Everyone in the world can then put their skin in the game
01:08:31,560 --> 01:08:34,280 by choosing to buy or sell or short or go long
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:37,360 or do any number of financial actions on that price.
01:08:38,200 --> 01:08:40,400 And that information is then propagated back out
01:08:40,400 --> 01:08:41,240 to everyone else.
01:08:41,240 --> 01:08:45,000 So it's this feedback loop between market actor and price
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:48,160 that makes it so useful.
01:08:48,160 --> 01:08:52,560 And that's what carries us,
01:08:52,560 --> 01:08:56,120 so it's these collisions of interest that carry us,
01:08:56,120 --> 01:09:00,920 it removes the unuseful aspects of ourselves
01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:02,960 or of our tools or of a price
01:09:02,960 --> 01:09:05,480 and reveals pragmatic truth to us.
01:09:05,480 --> 01:09:08,280 Can you play my therapist for a second?
01:09:08,280 --> 01:09:11,360 And if we talk about creative destruction,
01:09:11,360 --> 01:09:13,400 I think, not Bukowski,
01:09:15,280 --> 01:09:17,480 Hunter S. Thompson has a quote,
01:09:17,480 --> 01:09:20,960 something like, for all instances of beauty,
01:09:20,960 --> 01:09:22,880 many souls must be trampled.
01:09:24,080 --> 01:09:24,920 Wow.
01:09:27,280 --> 01:09:32,280 But there does seem to be an aspect of competition
01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:36,480 that destroys, you were talking about entrepreneurs
01:09:36,480 --> 01:09:40,600 sort of on the outside of the circle of order,
01:09:40,600 --> 01:09:42,600 striving to make sense,
01:09:42,600 --> 01:09:47,600 to compress volatility of the chaos of the universe.
01:09:49,360 --> 01:09:53,480 Is there some way to protect a little bit
01:09:53,480 --> 01:09:55,440 against the pain of that destruction,
01:09:55,440 --> 01:09:57,160 of that creative destruction,
01:09:57,160 --> 01:10:00,400 that entrepreneur screaming on fire
01:10:00,400 --> 01:10:03,720 as he enlightens the rest of us,
01:10:03,720 --> 01:10:06,800 is there some role for us humans together
01:10:06,800 --> 01:10:08,320 in the togetherness of it?
01:10:10,280 --> 01:10:15,120 Also government, but any kind of collectives
01:10:15,120 --> 01:10:18,280 in helping that entrepreneur who's on fire
01:10:18,280 --> 01:10:22,920 to maybe after a few minutes to spray him with some water
01:10:22,920 --> 01:10:25,160 and put him out of his misery.
01:10:25,160 --> 01:10:34,160 I would say that pain is the inarguable basis of being.
01:10:34,160 --> 01:10:39,960 Pain is, no matter how you try to explain it away
01:10:39,960 --> 01:10:41,440 or describe it,
01:10:41,440 --> 01:10:46,440 or it's not something you can rationalize away.
01:10:47,080 --> 01:10:50,720 No one, I think ever,
01:10:50,720 --> 01:10:52,360 like someone may want to cut themselves
01:10:52,360 --> 01:10:53,280 to have an endorphin high,
01:10:53,280 --> 01:10:55,120 but no one wants to suffer, we'd say.
01:10:55,120 --> 01:10:57,040 So pain in that sense,
01:10:57,040 --> 01:10:59,680 it is what we're constantly trying to deal with
01:11:00,600 --> 01:11:03,520 and to move away from,
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:05,960 or create buffers between us and potential pain
01:11:05,960 --> 01:11:07,720 or potential uncertainty.
01:11:08,600 --> 01:11:11,920 And that pain is information.
01:11:11,920 --> 01:11:15,160 When we experience something that is misfit
01:11:15,160 --> 01:11:17,120 to the outcome we desired,
01:11:17,120 --> 01:11:18,720 that pain is what puts us,
01:11:18,720 --> 01:11:21,840 it encourages us to change our trajectory,
01:11:21,840 --> 01:11:25,040 to get back on course towards our valued aim.
01:11:25,040 --> 01:11:28,640 So as far as, you know,
01:11:28,640 --> 01:11:31,960 you need entrepreneurs that are exploring
01:11:31,960 --> 01:11:33,280 and you're trying to do something new.
01:11:33,280 --> 01:11:34,760 If you're a pioneer of any kind,
01:11:34,760 --> 01:11:37,080 you are courageously facing pain.
01:11:37,080 --> 01:11:38,960 You're willfully confronting it.
01:11:38,960 --> 01:11:41,760 So I don't think it's avoidable in that sense.
01:11:41,760 --> 01:11:45,360 It's not like we can have pain free economic growth,
01:11:45,360 --> 01:11:48,840 like the central bank would maybe have us lend to believe
01:11:48,840 --> 01:11:51,040 that we can just run these experiments
01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:51,880 and when they fail,
01:11:51,880 --> 01:11:53,720 we'll just paper over all the losses and continue.
01:11:53,720 --> 01:11:56,920 Or you're just delaying and exacerbating
01:11:56,920 --> 01:11:59,040 the inevitable volatility back to reality.
01:12:00,440 --> 01:12:03,400 But what I would say is that capitalism,
01:12:03,400 --> 01:12:04,600 because we're building,
01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:07,400 we're increasing the capital stock of the world,
01:12:07,400 --> 01:12:09,880 which again, capital is the mitigation of risk.
01:12:09,880 --> 01:12:12,240 So we're reducing the overall risk of existence
01:12:12,240 --> 01:12:14,400 by accumulating more capital in the world.
01:12:14,400 --> 01:12:16,800 And that's what protects that entrepreneur
01:12:16,800 --> 01:12:19,480 that's deciding, hey, I saved up a million bucks.
01:12:19,480 --> 01:12:21,920 I'm gonna go try this business idea.
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:24,160 I'm gonna put all my money on the line.
01:12:24,160 --> 01:12:26,280 And if he goes up in flames,
01:12:26,280 --> 01:12:29,000 then his cost of living when he comes back to reality
01:12:29,000 --> 01:12:30,160 and he's starting over from zero,
01:12:30,160 --> 01:12:32,880 his cost of living is substantially lower
01:12:32,880 --> 01:12:33,840 starting over from zero
01:12:33,840 --> 01:12:37,040 than he would be out in the wilderness on his own.
01:12:37,040 --> 01:12:40,040 So it's the accumulation of capital stock
01:12:40,040 --> 01:12:43,320 is the buffer against uncertainty for everyone.
01:12:43,320 --> 01:12:47,080 And it gives you actually more potential
01:12:47,080 --> 01:12:48,440 to go out and experiment,
01:12:48,440 --> 01:12:51,200 to go out and confront the chaos of nature
01:12:51,200 --> 01:12:53,960 because you are better healed effectively.
01:12:55,000 --> 01:12:56,520 So I think we're speaking
01:12:59,000 --> 01:13:03,120 in sort of idealistic terms about the power of capitalism
01:13:03,120 --> 01:13:04,760 when it works well.
01:13:04,760 --> 01:13:07,080 Is there any aspects that you think
01:13:07,080 --> 01:13:10,560 that don't work well in a free market
01:13:10,560 --> 01:13:12,480 in all the basic pragmatic truths
01:13:12,480 --> 01:13:13,640 that we were talking about?
01:13:13,640 --> 01:13:15,560 Is there ways it can go wrong?
01:13:15,560 --> 01:13:20,560 So, I would first argue that we have never seen
01:13:21,480 --> 01:13:24,120 an actual purely free market.
01:13:27,120 --> 01:13:29,480 Closest example would be,
01:13:31,960 --> 01:13:34,440 you know, kind of geopolitically we have a free market
01:13:34,440 --> 01:13:37,440 and that governments are not necessarily governed.
01:13:40,360 --> 01:13:43,200 But they are premised on
01:13:43,200 --> 01:13:47,520 governing large groups of individuals.
01:13:47,520 --> 01:13:49,960 So that's not, doesn't exactly.
01:13:49,960 --> 01:13:52,120 You mean between governments?
01:13:52,120 --> 01:13:53,160 Yes.
01:13:53,160 --> 01:13:54,640 See, but isn't there still,
01:13:54,640 --> 01:13:57,760 so a free market, maybe you can correct me,
01:13:57,760 --> 01:14:00,440 is the free market still grounded in the ideas
01:14:00,440 --> 01:14:04,000 of property rights and all those kinds of things, right?
01:14:04,000 --> 01:14:06,280 So governments tend to also sometimes
01:14:06,280 --> 01:14:07,840 be violent towards each other.
01:14:07,840 --> 01:14:08,680 That's right.
01:14:08,680 --> 01:14:11,840 So they don't respect all the basic aspects of capitalism.
01:14:11,840 --> 01:14:12,680 That's right.
01:14:12,680 --> 01:14:15,040 So maybe another way to look at this is that
01:14:15,040 --> 01:14:20,040 gold is the original governor of government, actually.
01:14:20,840 --> 01:14:24,120 And this is the reason governments have abused
01:14:24,120 --> 01:14:26,960 and gone off of the gold standard.
01:14:26,960 --> 01:14:31,960 So historically, if you are a bank or a nation state
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:37,840 and you produce more currency
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:40,080 than your gold reserves can justify,
01:14:40,080 --> 01:14:43,840 then people, then gold will flow out of your bank
01:14:43,840 --> 01:14:44,960 or out of your country.
01:14:44,960 --> 01:14:46,800 So there's this natural check
01:14:49,120 --> 01:14:51,680 via the money that,
01:14:51,680 --> 01:14:54,320 via capitalistic money, which is gold, right?
01:14:54,320 --> 01:14:56,040 Gold was selected by the free market.
01:14:56,040 --> 01:14:58,360 It's not decreed by government.
01:14:58,360 --> 01:15:02,480 It provided this natural check on government action.
01:15:02,480 --> 01:15:07,480 So my, I guess to get back to the original question is
01:15:07,480 --> 01:15:11,520 we've never seen a pure free market
01:15:11,520 --> 01:15:14,520 because money has always been monopolized
01:15:16,000 --> 01:15:17,920 and coerced, frankly.
01:15:17,920 --> 01:15:21,840 So to try and answer what goes wrong with a free market
01:15:21,840 --> 01:15:24,640 is really difficult because we've never actually seen it.
01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:28,720 And I would define free market is one
01:15:28,720 --> 01:15:31,640 in which government only protects life, liberty,
01:15:31,640 --> 01:15:32,640 and property.
01:15:32,640 --> 01:15:35,920 And so that has a very minimal role in society.
01:15:35,920 --> 01:15:38,320 Again, just as network security
01:15:38,320 --> 01:15:40,800 for the economic trade network.
01:15:40,800 --> 01:15:44,480 And anything that, any government function
01:15:44,480 --> 01:15:47,320 that goes beyond those three core functions,
01:15:47,320 --> 01:15:49,280 which by the way are pretty much the core tenets
01:15:49,280 --> 01:15:50,400 of morality as well.
01:15:50,400 --> 01:15:53,000 So government's just really intended to preserve
01:15:54,080 --> 01:15:55,960 natural law, if you will.
01:15:55,960 --> 01:15:58,920 Anything that goes beyond that is,
01:15:58,920 --> 01:16:01,480 moves us closer to an unfree market.
01:16:01,480 --> 01:16:06,160 So every regulation, every act of coercion
01:16:06,160 --> 01:16:11,160 is actually a gradation closer to a purely unfree market,
01:16:11,560 --> 01:16:13,160 which would be a monopoly.
01:16:13,160 --> 01:16:15,920 So in terms of what I guess theoretically
01:16:15,920 --> 01:16:17,880 we could say goes wrong in the free market
01:16:17,880 --> 01:16:20,800 is that it's volatile.
01:16:20,800 --> 01:16:25,720 It's trading off, it's accepting short-term volatility
01:16:27,080 --> 01:16:29,400 in exchange for less long-run volatility.
01:16:29,400 --> 01:16:32,880 And this tends to be the way of nature, by the way.
01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:37,880 So if we look at something like there's a region
01:16:37,880 --> 01:16:40,880 in North America called Baja, California,
01:16:40,880 --> 01:16:43,720 and it runs into the United States
01:16:43,720 --> 01:16:45,480 and it runs down into Mexico as well.
01:16:45,480 --> 01:16:49,440 So the same topology, but two different jurisdictions.
01:16:50,440 --> 01:16:55,440 In the US, we very heavily manage forest fires.
01:16:55,680 --> 01:16:57,960 We're trying to manage nature effectively.
01:16:57,960 --> 01:17:00,040 Whereas in Mexico is much more unregulated.
01:17:00,040 --> 01:17:04,320 It just, when wildfires spring up, they let them burn off.
01:17:04,320 --> 01:17:06,280 North America, when wildfires spring up,
01:17:06,280 --> 01:17:08,240 we're actually extinguishing them.
01:17:08,240 --> 01:17:09,720 So we're constantly trying to dampen
01:17:09,720 --> 01:17:12,320 the short-run volatility of these small brush fires.
01:17:12,320 --> 01:17:13,720 Whereas in Mexico, we just let them burn.
01:17:13,720 --> 01:17:15,600 We let nature do its thing.
01:17:15,600 --> 01:17:18,920 The consequence of this is that the wildfires
01:17:18,920 --> 01:17:21,320 still occur eventually, but they're much larger
01:17:21,320 --> 01:17:23,200 and much more devastating in North America
01:17:23,200 --> 01:17:25,240 where human intervention has occurred
01:17:25,240 --> 01:17:30,240 because it's dampening nature's natural corrective mechanism
01:17:31,880 --> 01:17:34,680 of clearing this underbrush with these more frequent
01:17:34,680 --> 01:17:38,080 and smaller fires at the cost of much larger fires.
01:17:38,080 --> 01:17:39,920 So again, we're delaying short-term volatility
01:17:39,920 --> 01:17:42,600 and exacerbating long-run volatility.
01:17:42,600 --> 01:17:44,360 And in Mexico, it's the opposite, right?
01:17:44,360 --> 01:17:46,520 Just these wildfires burn much smaller
01:17:46,520 --> 01:17:49,360 and more continuously over time.
01:17:49,360 --> 01:17:51,040 The further effect of that in North America
01:17:51,040 --> 01:17:53,200 is that the fires can get so big and so hot
01:17:53,200 --> 01:17:55,120 that it burns away the topsoil.
01:17:55,120 --> 01:17:58,480 So it actually destroys the fertility of the soil itself.
01:17:58,480 --> 01:18:03,000 So the point of this is that human intervention, right?
01:18:03,000 --> 01:18:06,600 Even the intention behind North American authorities
01:18:06,600 --> 01:18:10,320 managing that forest fire is to create less destruction.
01:18:10,320 --> 01:18:11,960 That is the intention.
01:18:11,960 --> 01:18:15,360 But the intention is divergent from the outcome.
01:18:15,360 --> 01:18:18,960 So in Tlaibian speak, he would say that human intervention
01:18:18,960 --> 01:18:23,960 moves us from mediocrestan into extremistan.
01:18:23,960 --> 01:18:27,360 So mediocrestan would be something much more like nature
01:18:27,360 --> 01:18:30,160 where, for instance, you can't double your body weight
01:18:30,160 --> 01:18:33,720 in a day, probably can't even do it in a year, right?
01:18:33,720 --> 01:18:34,760 But in extremistan,
01:18:34,760 --> 01:18:37,160 which is something much more information-based,
01:18:37,160 --> 01:18:41,880 you can double or send your net worth to zero
01:18:41,880 --> 01:18:44,760 in a single trade, in a single moment, right?
01:18:44,760 --> 01:18:48,640 So when we try and intervene with natural biological systems
01:18:48,640 --> 01:18:51,760 that have these feedback loops,
01:18:51,760 --> 01:18:53,840 we actually start to push the system more
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:56,280 to behave more like an extremistan system
01:18:57,360 --> 01:18:59,920 that has less short-run volatility
01:18:59,920 --> 01:19:03,600 but more extreme long-run volatility.
01:19:03,600 --> 01:19:07,120 But the question is where you look at capitalism
01:19:07,120 --> 01:19:10,600 or communism, for example, and by the way, yes,
01:19:10,600 --> 01:19:13,280 I will talk to somebody who's a Marxist or a communist.
01:19:13,280 --> 01:19:16,600 Gretchen Wolf is a pretty eloquent defender of these ideas
01:19:16,600 --> 01:19:19,960 because it's always good to really understand ideas
01:19:19,960 --> 01:19:24,120 as opposed to just reject them offhand.
01:19:24,120 --> 01:19:26,280 When you look at the system of capitalism
01:19:26,280 --> 01:19:30,960 or the system of communism, there's ideals,
01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:34,000 and a lot of people argue in this perfect form
01:19:34,000 --> 01:19:35,760 would actually be good for the world.
01:19:35,760 --> 01:19:38,600 The question is how resilient are they
01:19:38,600 --> 01:19:42,240 to the corruption of human nature?
01:19:42,240 --> 01:19:45,880 And I mean, you're saying that there's never been
01:19:45,880 --> 01:19:48,800 a free market, it's a very true statement.
01:19:48,800 --> 01:19:52,960 The question is how resilient is capitalism
01:19:52,960 --> 01:19:54,720 or whatever implementations of capitalism
01:19:54,720 --> 01:19:57,360 we had up to this point to human nature
01:19:57,360 --> 01:19:59,360 where one person will become successful
01:20:01,240 --> 01:20:03,200 through legitimate means,
01:20:03,200 --> 01:20:06,080 then starts to try to manipulate the system
01:20:06,080 --> 01:20:07,760 that takes it away from a free market
01:20:07,760 --> 01:20:11,080 or takes it away from the things
01:20:11,080 --> 01:20:14,080 that gave them the riches in the first place,
01:20:14,080 --> 01:20:17,400 and then try to, through corruption, get more.
01:20:17,400 --> 01:20:20,960 That's the thing you said, the lazy human ways.
01:20:20,960 --> 01:20:23,160 Now I try to figure out how to get something for nothing.
01:20:23,160 --> 01:20:24,440 That's right.
01:20:24,440 --> 01:20:27,080 So how resilient do you think is capitalism to that?
01:20:28,000 --> 01:20:31,520 Well, the best implementation we've had of it
01:20:31,520 --> 01:20:35,760 really has been the United States, I think,
01:20:35,760 --> 01:20:39,680 up until this point, but it's still,
01:20:40,720 --> 01:20:42,480 the central banking itself,
01:20:42,480 --> 01:20:45,880 this was in the 1848 Manifesto to the Communist Party.
01:20:45,880 --> 01:20:49,800 Measure number five reads an exclusive state monopoly
01:20:49,800 --> 01:20:51,920 and centralized control over cash and credit.
01:20:51,920 --> 01:20:56,680 So the central bank is a Marxist or communist institution.
01:20:56,680 --> 01:20:58,800 It is antithetical to the free market principles
01:20:58,800 --> 01:21:00,640 on which the United States was founded.
01:21:00,640 --> 01:21:02,160 And indeed, the United States resisted
01:21:02,160 --> 01:21:04,520 the implementation of a central bank.
01:21:04,520 --> 01:21:06,560 I think it was Andrew Jackson.
01:21:06,560 --> 01:21:08,480 I know there was the first national bank,
01:21:08,480 --> 01:21:10,880 the second national bank were both disbanded.
01:21:10,880 --> 01:21:14,160 And then Andrew Jackson, which is my favorite Tennessean,
01:21:14,160 --> 01:21:18,240 he has some famous quotes about routing out the bankers
01:21:18,240 --> 01:21:19,760 like a den of vipers.
01:21:19,760 --> 01:21:23,120 I think he punched one of the central bankers in the face.
01:21:23,120 --> 01:21:27,000 Back when our leaders were a bit more bad-ass,
01:21:27,000 --> 01:21:28,880 I guess you might say.
01:21:28,880 --> 01:21:33,880 And finally in 1913, the Federal Reserve was implemented
01:21:35,440 --> 01:21:39,520 and it's been kind of all downhill from there.
01:21:39,520 --> 01:21:42,000 So what is, can you, oh, sorry, go ahead.
01:21:42,000 --> 01:21:45,680 I was just gonna say that communism and capitalism,
01:21:45,680 --> 01:21:47,280 it's also a matter of scale.
01:21:48,760 --> 01:21:51,960 The ideal behind communism is from each according
01:21:51,960 --> 01:21:54,160 to their ability to each according to their need.
01:21:54,160 --> 01:21:55,520 Sounds beautiful, right?
01:21:55,520 --> 01:21:57,440 Sounds like a great, peaceful,
01:21:57,440 --> 01:22:00,080 harmonious way to organize ourselves.
01:22:00,080 --> 01:22:02,760 The problem is, and by the way,
01:22:02,760 --> 01:22:05,560 I am a communist in my family, in my home, right?
01:22:05,560 --> 01:22:07,240 At that very smallest of scales.
01:22:07,240 --> 01:22:10,280 Yes, in your very small circles of trust,
01:22:10,280 --> 01:22:14,000 you're much more likely to behave selflessly
01:22:14,000 --> 01:22:14,840 towards one another.
01:22:14,840 --> 01:22:17,320 By the way, I look forward to the Bitcoin community
01:22:17,320 --> 01:22:20,960 clipping out that part saying that Robert Breedlove
01:22:20,960 --> 01:22:24,000 is a communist and the ideals of communism are beautiful.
01:22:24,000 --> 01:22:25,600 Yeah, context matters, people.
01:22:27,600 --> 01:22:28,440 Sorry, go ahead.
01:22:29,480 --> 01:22:32,960 But to your point, it does not scale, right?
01:22:32,960 --> 01:22:37,920 As we move into this larger system
01:22:37,920 --> 01:22:39,720 of socioeconomic cooperation,
01:22:39,720 --> 01:22:43,400 which is necessary to deepen the division of labor,
01:22:43,400 --> 01:22:44,960 to generate more wealth, right?
01:22:44,960 --> 01:22:48,600 We need to interact with one another on much larger scales
01:22:48,600 --> 01:22:52,240 than this communistic utopian ideal.
01:22:52,240 --> 01:22:54,360 We get into the realm of capitalism
01:22:54,360 --> 01:22:58,040 where we need really sound rules, hard rules,
01:22:58,040 --> 01:23:03,040 consensus, verifiability, and frankly, prices.
01:23:03,680 --> 01:23:06,400 Because the other thing in Soviet Russia
01:23:06,400 --> 01:23:08,840 is they tried to replace the profit motive
01:23:08,840 --> 01:23:12,440 or the price signal with this devotion
01:23:12,440 --> 01:23:15,440 to this nationalistic faith and devotion.
01:23:15,440 --> 01:23:18,360 Where it's like, you don't need self-interest anymore.
01:23:18,360 --> 01:23:20,320 You don't need prices or profits.
01:23:20,320 --> 01:23:23,240 You can just protect Mother Russia, right?
01:23:23,240 --> 01:23:26,440 And serve Mother Russia and that would create wealth.
01:23:26,440 --> 01:23:28,080 And what happened, right?
01:23:28,080 --> 01:23:29,800 They destroyed price signals.
01:23:29,800 --> 01:23:32,200 There were shortages, there were famines.
01:23:32,200 --> 01:23:36,000 There's all levels of corruption.
01:23:36,000 --> 01:23:41,000 Because to your point, people have to run the system
01:23:41,160 --> 01:23:42,520 no matter what.
01:23:42,520 --> 01:23:45,440 So when people are always pursuing something for nothing
01:23:45,440 --> 01:23:46,680 and you put someone in a seat
01:23:46,680 --> 01:23:49,240 of much closer to absolute power,
01:23:49,240 --> 01:23:51,400 where they're making all the pricing decisions,
01:23:51,400 --> 01:23:54,800 they own all of the productive factors in the economy,
01:23:54,800 --> 01:23:57,800 they're not beholden to any market force.
01:23:57,800 --> 01:24:01,680 There's no market check on their action
01:24:01,680 --> 01:24:04,800 that that institution tends to become more corrupt.
01:24:04,800 --> 01:24:08,880 And further, it's an inferior resource strategy.
01:24:10,680 --> 01:24:11,720 I alluded to this earlier,
01:24:11,720 --> 01:24:14,720 where the other way to think about free market
01:24:14,720 --> 01:24:19,040 versus central planning is it's decentralized
01:24:19,040 --> 01:24:21,960 or distributed computing versus centralized computing.
01:24:22,800 --> 01:24:26,160 So each one of us, I think that the number
01:24:26,160 --> 01:24:29,480 is 120 bits per second of active awareness.
01:24:29,480 --> 01:24:32,280 So we can take in, clearly we process a lot more than that,
01:24:32,280 --> 01:24:35,120 but our active awareness, I think is 120 bits per second.
01:24:37,560 --> 01:24:40,680 In a centralized planning body, like in Soviet Russia,
01:24:40,680 --> 01:24:41,920 they had the pricing czar.
01:24:41,920 --> 01:24:44,720 Maybe they had 10, 20,000 people deciding the prices
01:24:44,720 --> 01:24:46,120 for the entire country.
01:24:46,120 --> 01:24:48,960 You're only getting that much data throughput, right?
01:24:48,960 --> 01:24:52,360 20,000 people times 120 bits per second.
01:24:52,360 --> 01:24:56,160 Whereas in a free market, if everyone is free to interact
01:24:56,160 --> 01:24:59,080 with deep capital markets based on an accurate price,
01:24:59,080 --> 01:25:00,480 you're getting the data throughput
01:25:00,480 --> 01:25:04,520 of 120 bits per second times the entire economy, right?
01:25:04,520 --> 01:25:08,840 So you're getting, it's a more efficient means
01:25:08,840 --> 01:25:11,840 for disseminating knowledge effectively.
01:25:11,840 --> 01:25:14,080 And then again, knowledge is just,
01:25:14,080 --> 01:25:17,360 the more knowledge a socioeconomic structure can contain,
01:25:17,360 --> 01:25:19,240 the more wealthy it is, right?
01:25:19,240 --> 01:25:21,840 Prices, tools, all these things are just knowledge.
01:25:21,840 --> 01:25:26,840 So in that respect, that's why something like capitalism,
01:25:26,840 --> 01:25:30,760 even in its marginalized form, state capitalism,
01:25:30,760 --> 01:25:33,160 out-competes communism.
01:25:33,160 --> 01:25:36,440 It's distributed computing versus centralized computing.
01:25:38,560 --> 01:25:43,200 We kind of brought up religion and Joseph Campbell and myth
01:25:43,200 --> 01:25:46,120 and the propagation of ideas.
01:25:46,120 --> 01:25:49,720 And before I forget, I wanted to ask your thoughts
01:25:49,720 --> 01:25:50,560 about this.
01:25:51,480 --> 01:25:56,240 Jordan Peterson, I haven't really understood exactly
01:25:56,240 --> 01:25:59,360 be able to pin him down exactly what he sees
01:25:59,360 --> 01:26:03,800 as the role of religion in human society,
01:26:03,800 --> 01:26:08,640 but it feels like he's describing it
01:26:08,640 --> 01:26:11,440 as having value for us.
01:26:11,440 --> 01:26:15,520 This, the ideas of myth are valuable.
01:26:15,520 --> 01:26:18,720 They're valuable mechanisms toward,
01:26:18,720 --> 01:26:21,600 I think you mentioned kind of directing us
01:26:21,600 --> 01:26:23,880 in this world as a human society.
01:26:23,880 --> 01:26:26,320 Do you think about myth?
01:26:26,320 --> 01:26:27,720 Do you think about religion?
01:26:27,720 --> 01:26:32,080 What's the use of it in this construct of markets
01:26:32,080 --> 01:26:37,080 in this framework of where ideas are ultimately
01:26:38,120 --> 01:26:43,120 the fundamental thing that makes societies work?
01:26:44,760 --> 01:26:49,760 Yeah, I think Jordan Peterson, who I'm a huge fan of,
01:26:50,000 --> 01:26:52,120 he's been very influential in my thinking
01:26:52,120 --> 01:26:56,440 and influential on my own religious views as well.
01:26:58,840 --> 01:27:02,840 I think his position would be, and he's said this before,
01:27:02,840 --> 01:27:06,520 that he acts as if God exists.
01:27:07,800 --> 01:27:11,120 And I've had some arguments about this before,
01:27:11,120 --> 01:27:15,320 but to me that points towards the preeminence of action
01:27:15,320 --> 01:27:16,800 and how important action is
01:27:16,800 --> 01:27:20,280 versus your cognitive beliefs necessarily.
01:27:20,280 --> 01:27:23,440 And I think there is a lot of utility in that,
01:27:23,440 --> 01:27:25,920 that if you follow the moral code
01:27:25,920 --> 01:27:27,360 of something like the Bible,
01:27:28,440 --> 01:27:30,520 you do reap benefits from that,
01:27:30,520 --> 01:27:32,520 society reaps benefits from that.
01:27:34,520 --> 01:27:37,080 And this is not, and sometimes I bring up this point
01:27:37,080 --> 01:27:38,600 and people are like, oh my God, are you kidding me?
01:27:38,600 --> 01:27:39,760 Have you read the Old Testament?
01:27:39,760 --> 01:27:41,680 They're clobbering people with rocks
01:27:41,680 --> 01:27:43,600 when they do the wrong thing.
01:27:43,600 --> 01:27:46,600 The Bible doesn't claim to be this,
01:27:46,600 --> 01:27:48,560 like do everything that was done in the Bible.
01:27:48,560 --> 01:27:50,960 It's more like charting this moral progression
01:27:50,960 --> 01:27:53,640 where we came from this very barbaric society
01:27:53,640 --> 01:27:56,080 into something more like the New Testament
01:27:56,080 --> 01:27:59,360 where we're honoring individual sovereignty above the state
01:27:59,360 --> 01:28:00,200 and things like that.
01:28:00,200 --> 01:28:04,960 So I think that mythology itself
01:28:04,960 --> 01:28:07,480 is another form of data compression.
01:28:07,480 --> 01:28:10,160 If you look at these stories,
01:28:10,160 --> 01:28:11,920 Cain and Abel is a good example,
01:28:11,920 --> 01:28:14,960 or Peterson makes the point that it's a tiny story.
01:28:14,960 --> 01:28:17,920 It's a paragraph-ish long,
01:28:17,920 --> 01:28:20,200 but it contains so many layers of meaning
01:28:21,120 --> 01:28:24,720 in regards to violence, to evil, betrayal, work,
01:28:26,640 --> 01:28:29,280 the divergence between intention and result,
01:28:29,280 --> 01:28:31,600 because I think Cain is actually making,
01:28:33,160 --> 01:28:36,360 he's making the effort to sacrifice for God,
01:28:36,360 --> 01:28:38,720 but the sacrifices he's making are not,
01:28:38,720 --> 01:28:41,160 God doesn't find them useful, right?
01:28:41,160 --> 01:28:43,480 And so he sort of rejects them.
01:28:43,480 --> 01:28:48,480 So for a, again, if we're organized
01:28:49,040 --> 01:28:50,480 by these useful fictions, right?
01:28:50,480 --> 01:28:53,400 These Hararean imagined orders,
01:28:53,400 --> 01:28:56,800 I think mythology is kind of the original version of that,
01:28:56,800 --> 01:29:01,800 where we were learning to organize ourselves around stories
01:29:03,320 --> 01:29:08,320 to best coordinate our action across space and time.
01:29:08,320 --> 01:29:12,840 And so I think it's very foundational,
01:29:12,840 --> 01:29:15,400 and back to what we were saying in the beginning,
01:29:15,400 --> 01:29:17,680 that if value truly is fundamental,
01:29:17,680 --> 01:29:20,160 I think it's interesting that all these stories
01:29:20,160 --> 01:29:23,920 point towards often common moral values.
01:29:23,920 --> 01:29:25,680 They're not perfectly aligned,
01:29:27,000 --> 01:29:31,520 but it does speak to just the evolutionary importance
01:29:31,520 --> 01:29:33,920 of morality and the subjectivity of morality,
01:29:33,920 --> 01:29:36,440 where morality sort of evolves over time
01:29:36,440 --> 01:29:40,200 based on, frankly, the capital stock we've accumulated.
01:29:40,200 --> 01:29:41,920 The more capital stock we've accumulated,
01:29:41,920 --> 01:29:45,040 the easier life is, the less barbaric we have to be.
01:29:45,040 --> 01:29:48,880 Whereas if we're living in conditions of true scarcity,
01:29:50,480 --> 01:29:53,520 then we tend to be a bit more barbaric towards one another.
01:29:54,640 --> 01:29:56,560 And that too, to dovetail this
01:29:56,560 --> 01:29:58,760 into something largely unrelated,
01:29:58,760 --> 01:30:01,480 but I think is really important, is inflation.
01:30:02,480 --> 01:30:05,560 Inflation, by artificially increasing
01:30:05,560 --> 01:30:08,880 the prices of goods and services in the world,
01:30:08,880 --> 01:30:11,480 we're injecting more dollars,
01:30:11,480 --> 01:30:14,440 chasing the same level of goods and services.
01:30:14,440 --> 01:30:17,400 We are artificially increasing scarcity,
01:30:18,880 --> 01:30:20,160 perceived scarcity.
01:30:21,160 --> 01:30:24,240 And when you increase perceived scarcity,
01:30:24,240 --> 01:30:27,080 you are amplifying divisiveness.
01:30:29,520 --> 01:30:32,720 The natural state of man is when everything is scarce
01:30:32,720 --> 01:30:34,160 and you really have to fight hard
01:30:34,160 --> 01:30:37,120 just to eat or drink water that day.
01:30:37,120 --> 01:30:40,080 So it's de-civilizing in a way
01:30:40,080 --> 01:30:42,080 by artificially amplifying
01:30:42,080 --> 01:30:44,120 the perceived scarcity in the world.
01:30:44,120 --> 01:30:46,360 Can you elaborate, how does inflation
01:30:46,360 --> 01:30:48,800 increase the perceived scarcity in the world?
01:30:48,800 --> 01:30:52,560 So we could think the price itself is an indication,
01:30:52,560 --> 01:30:54,200 it's a data packet, if you will.
01:30:54,200 --> 01:30:57,360 The price is a data packet on supply and demand, right?
01:30:57,360 --> 01:31:00,040 It's telling you how much supply there is
01:31:00,040 --> 01:31:03,120 of something in the world relative to the demand.
01:31:03,120 --> 01:31:06,480 So when you print money
01:31:06,480 --> 01:31:08,600 and artificially increase that price,
01:31:08,600 --> 01:31:10,840 it's diverging away from supply and demand.
01:31:10,840 --> 01:31:13,840 It's becoming just more of a product of policy
01:31:13,840 --> 01:31:16,200 than it is of free market fundamentals.
01:31:17,880 --> 01:31:19,960 The more expensive something is,
01:31:19,960 --> 01:31:21,880 that is a signal to the marketplace
01:31:21,880 --> 01:31:24,720 and to market actors that it is scarce, right?
01:31:24,720 --> 01:31:29,720 That's why a Leonardo painting might sell for $16 million.
01:31:30,080 --> 01:31:32,960 There's only one, there's a lot of demand for it.
01:31:32,960 --> 01:31:36,000 Maybe my numbers are off, but you get the point.
01:31:36,000 --> 01:31:38,400 It's the reason mask spiked in price
01:31:38,400 --> 01:31:39,920 after the COVID announcement, right?
01:31:39,920 --> 01:31:41,920 There was not enough supply,
01:31:41,920 --> 01:31:43,640 toilet paper, et cetera, et cetera.
01:31:43,640 --> 01:31:47,720 So inflation, and by inflation,
01:31:47,720 --> 01:31:52,240 I specifically mean arbitrary fiat currency supply inflation
01:31:52,240 --> 01:31:53,680 by a legal monopoly.
01:31:54,760 --> 01:31:57,360 Inflation is a commonly misunderstood word.
01:31:57,360 --> 01:32:01,400 That is amplifying the perception of scarcity
01:32:01,400 --> 01:32:03,560 among market actors in the world.
01:32:03,560 --> 01:32:07,880 And I would argue that it actually amplifies divisiveness.
01:32:07,880 --> 01:32:12,080 I think this is the key maybe to looking at
01:32:12,080 --> 01:32:15,160 the connection between the monopolization of money
01:32:15,160 --> 01:32:17,200 and things like cancel culture,
01:32:17,200 --> 01:32:22,200 because it's increasing our natural predilection
01:32:22,840 --> 01:32:24,360 to be combative with one another,
01:32:24,360 --> 01:32:26,760 because we think there's more scarcity in the world
01:32:26,760 --> 01:32:28,000 than there actually is.
01:32:28,000 --> 01:32:29,960 Versus in a world where you're not increasing
01:32:29,960 --> 01:32:33,280 the money supply, prices are declining every year.
01:32:33,280 --> 01:32:36,480 As prices decline, this is a signal to market actors
01:32:36,480 --> 01:32:39,080 and the market that scarcity is declining.
01:32:39,080 --> 01:32:42,000 There's less need to fight over things.
01:32:42,000 --> 01:32:46,240 And all of this ties back into the old Bastiat saying
01:32:46,240 --> 01:32:50,320 that if goods don't cross borders, soldiers will.
01:32:50,320 --> 01:32:52,080 So if we're not trading with one another,
01:32:52,080 --> 01:32:54,000 if we're not acting interdependently
01:32:54,000 --> 01:33:00,160 and we're not becoming more intelligent as a market,
01:33:00,160 --> 01:33:03,840 and that increased intelligence or increased knowledge
01:33:03,840 --> 01:33:06,640 is reflected in decreased prices,
01:33:06,640 --> 01:33:11,040 because prices are just the exchange ratios of things.
01:33:11,040 --> 01:33:13,000 So the smarter we can solve problems,
01:33:13,000 --> 01:33:15,920 the better we can solve problems, the less prices would be.
01:33:15,920 --> 01:33:18,840 So it induces more cooperation.
01:33:18,840 --> 01:33:21,680 I love how you tie inflation and cancel culture together
01:33:21,680 --> 01:33:28,400 as essentially artificial creation of increase of conflict.
01:33:28,400 --> 01:33:30,440 Increasing, artificially increasing scarcity
01:33:30,440 --> 01:33:33,440 and thereby artificially increasing conflict.
01:33:33,440 --> 01:33:35,840 That's really fascinating.
01:33:35,840 --> 01:33:39,040 You're short circuiting my brain many times
01:33:39,040 --> 01:33:40,600 throughout this conversation.
01:33:40,600 --> 01:33:45,400 OK, this robot is struggling to keep up.
01:33:45,400 --> 01:33:50,960 OK, maybe to step back at the useful fictions
01:33:50,960 --> 01:33:53,960 or pragmatic truths.
01:33:53,960 --> 01:33:55,760 Let me ask the question that you've
01:33:55,760 --> 01:33:59,240 answered in many ways already, but let's explicitly
01:33:59,240 --> 01:34:02,000 look at what is money?
01:34:02,000 --> 01:34:04,000 Oh, as you know, that's my favorite question.
01:34:04,000 --> 01:34:04,500 Yes.
01:34:04,500 --> 01:34:06,520 Yes.
01:34:06,520 --> 01:34:10,000 That is the name of the show I just launched,
01:34:10,000 --> 01:34:13,520 the What Is Money show.
01:34:13,520 --> 01:34:17,400 Clearly, we could say that the Bitcoin rabbit hole is what's
01:34:17,400 --> 01:34:22,160 led me to explore a lot of these ideas in depth.
01:34:22,160 --> 01:34:23,920 And I think as we've demonstrated today,
01:34:23,920 --> 01:34:26,720 it goes well beyond just the economic sphere
01:34:26,720 --> 01:34:28,840 when you start to think about things like exchange
01:34:28,840 --> 01:34:33,280 and morality and time preference and civilization.
01:34:33,280 --> 01:34:36,040 So I love the question, what is money?
01:34:36,040 --> 01:34:40,000 I think it is the key to incepting a deeper
01:34:40,000 --> 01:34:41,640 understanding of the world into people
01:34:41,640 --> 01:34:44,760 that if you actually just start to ask
01:34:44,760 --> 01:34:48,720 the seemingly simple question, it
01:34:48,720 --> 01:34:51,440 surfaces more and more layers of truth.
01:34:51,440 --> 01:34:55,880 And I recently, I just wrote a piece,
01:34:55,880 --> 01:35:00,720 I think I have 30 something answers to this question.
01:35:00,720 --> 01:35:03,440 So sometimes it's actually a more systematic way
01:35:03,440 --> 01:35:06,640 of asking the question of what is the meaning of life.
01:35:06,640 --> 01:35:11,240 There's some questions that are almost unanswerable,
01:35:11,240 --> 01:35:17,680 but in their asking allow you to deeply get closer to truth,
01:35:17,680 --> 01:35:21,560 deeply understand the nature of our human existence.
01:35:21,560 --> 01:35:23,000 And the meaning of life is almost
01:35:23,000 --> 01:35:29,040 like this initial philosophers striving towards that.
01:35:29,040 --> 01:35:33,960 If money is indeed as fundamental as you've
01:35:33,960 --> 01:35:36,240 described, especially in the context of value
01:35:36,240 --> 01:35:39,640 being fundamental, then that is a really,
01:35:39,640 --> 01:35:41,960 that's a more, let's take a 21st century way
01:35:41,960 --> 01:35:45,040 of asking the same question about what is the meaning of life.
01:35:45,040 --> 01:35:47,880 You mentioned that it's a meta property out
01:35:47,880 --> 01:35:51,080 of the list of many ways to answer that question.
01:35:51,080 --> 01:35:53,240 How would you help people to think about that?
01:35:53,240 --> 01:35:58,600 Yeah, the first most serious answer
01:35:58,600 --> 01:36:01,440 comes from the School of Austrian Economics
01:36:01,440 --> 01:36:06,520 and it defines money as a universal medium of exchange.
01:36:06,520 --> 01:36:12,480 So this would be any good that is used,
01:36:12,480 --> 01:36:15,120 held and used purely for purposes
01:36:15,120 --> 01:36:17,520 of facilitating exchange.
01:36:17,520 --> 01:36:21,520 So in the configuration of demand
01:36:21,520 --> 01:36:24,960 for any particular asset, it's bifurcated
01:36:24,960 --> 01:36:27,480 between its utility, which is something,
01:36:27,480 --> 01:36:31,000 a service that it can render to you in real time.
01:36:31,000 --> 01:36:35,000 Whether it's, if it's water, you're thirsty.
01:36:35,000 --> 01:36:39,080 That's the utility of water is that it can quench your thirst.
01:36:39,080 --> 01:36:41,080 Whereas the marketability would be
01:36:41,080 --> 01:36:43,000 the expectation of future exchange,
01:36:43,000 --> 01:36:45,560 that other people would want this asset in the future
01:36:45,560 --> 01:36:49,080 to trade it for whatever they may have.
01:36:49,080 --> 01:36:52,920 Money is just going to be the good in any trading
01:36:52,920 --> 01:36:56,000 economy that has the highest proportion of marketability
01:36:56,000 --> 01:36:57,840 relative to utility.
01:36:57,840 --> 01:37:00,520 So today, that would be gold.
01:37:00,520 --> 01:37:03,400 Gold has utility, it's used in electronics,
01:37:03,400 --> 01:37:06,480 it's used in dental dentistry and whatnot,
01:37:06,480 --> 01:37:09,840 but it's largely used as a store of value across time
01:37:09,840 --> 01:37:12,240 and that's what it's been used for for 5,000 years.
01:37:12,240 --> 01:37:16,640 So if we say gold has a $10 trillion market cap,
01:37:16,640 --> 01:37:19,320 maybe $2 trillion of that is its utility value
01:37:19,320 --> 01:37:22,520 or it's actually demand for use in computers and dentistry
01:37:22,520 --> 01:37:24,480 and an $8 trillion of that is demand
01:37:24,480 --> 01:37:26,080 for its use as a store of value.
01:37:26,080 --> 01:37:30,000 The marketability aspects of money
01:37:30,000 --> 01:37:34,160 boils down to five services that money can render.
01:37:34,160 --> 01:37:37,640 Money needs to be divisible, it needs to be durable,
01:37:37,640 --> 01:37:40,120 it needs to be recognizable, it needs to be portable,
01:37:40,120 --> 01:37:43,000 and it needs to be scarce.
01:37:43,000 --> 01:37:44,680 So I'll gloss over a lot of history with this
01:37:44,680 --> 01:37:48,240 and just say that historically, money's always
01:37:48,240 --> 01:37:51,080 been a technology, still is a technology or a tool.
01:37:51,080 --> 01:37:52,600 I use these terms interchangeably
01:37:52,600 --> 01:37:54,840 and if you think about it, it's a tool.
01:37:54,840 --> 01:37:57,360 It's a tool interchangeably and if you think of a technology
01:37:57,360 --> 01:37:59,600 as just a more sophisticated tool effectively.
01:38:03,160 --> 01:38:04,520 To best satisfy those properties,
01:38:04,520 --> 01:38:06,160 monetary metals were determined
01:38:06,160 --> 01:38:08,880 to be the most satisfactory tool,
01:38:08,880 --> 01:38:10,600 the most divisible, most durable, most recognizable,
01:38:10,600 --> 01:38:13,720 most portable tool in the marketplace.
01:38:13,720 --> 01:38:17,600 Of the monetary metals, gold was the most scarce
01:38:17,600 --> 01:38:21,200 as quantified by either its stock to flow ratio
01:38:21,200 --> 01:38:22,840 or its inflation resistance.
01:38:22,840 --> 01:38:25,560 Simple way to say this is that people always prefer
01:38:25,560 --> 01:38:27,920 the money most resistant to inflation.
01:38:27,920 --> 01:38:30,720 That's a nice definition of scarcity in the context
01:38:30,720 --> 01:38:33,960 of money is if you were to measure it,
01:38:33,960 --> 01:38:36,120 the resistance to inflation.
01:38:36,120 --> 01:38:38,920 So how hard is it to artificially increase the supply?
01:38:38,920 --> 01:38:39,920 That's right.
01:38:39,920 --> 01:38:41,840 That is the hardness of money.
01:38:41,840 --> 01:38:43,360 And that's why gold is hard money.
01:38:43,360 --> 01:38:44,840 Because the alchemy is hard.
01:38:44,840 --> 01:38:46,080 That's right.
01:38:46,080 --> 01:38:48,800 Because no one cracked the alchemy, so gold became money.
01:38:48,800 --> 01:38:53,800 So that's such a nice, clean explanation
01:38:54,640 --> 01:38:57,280 of what is money with the five elements
01:38:57,280 --> 01:38:59,280 and gold ultimately won out
01:38:59,280 --> 01:39:01,680 because of the last piece of scarcity.
01:39:01,680 --> 01:39:02,520 That's right.
01:39:02,520 --> 01:39:04,600 And to get to maybe dig a little deeper there.
01:39:04,600 --> 01:39:08,400 So scarcity, we commonly think of scarcity
01:39:08,400 --> 01:39:12,400 as strictly a supply property
01:39:12,400 --> 01:39:15,200 where if there's not much of something, then it's scarce.
01:39:15,200 --> 01:39:16,520 But it's not actually true.
01:39:16,520 --> 01:39:20,720 Scarcity occurs when demand exceeds supply.
01:39:20,720 --> 01:39:24,320 So when there's more demand than the supply can justify,
01:39:24,320 --> 01:39:26,240 the thing becomes an economic good
01:39:26,240 --> 01:39:30,000 and it establishes itself a market price.
01:39:30,000 --> 01:39:31,520 So there's more demand for the thing
01:39:31,520 --> 01:39:33,720 than the supply can satisfy.
01:39:33,720 --> 01:39:37,000 The unique thing about money as a concept at least
01:39:37,000 --> 01:39:40,720 is that demand always exceeds supply.
01:39:40,720 --> 01:39:43,440 There's never enough money to satisfy everyone, right?
01:39:43,440 --> 01:39:46,320 Because another definition for money,
01:39:46,320 --> 01:39:48,520 it's the most marketable good.
01:39:48,520 --> 01:39:53,000 So it can be traded for any other good service,
01:39:53,000 --> 01:39:55,080 piece of knowledge in the marketplace.
01:39:55,080 --> 01:39:58,160 So humans being what we are, we're never satisfied, right?
01:39:58,160 --> 01:40:01,160 We always want more of something, whatever it may be.
01:40:01,160 --> 01:40:04,920 So money as the ultimate token of obtaining that something
01:40:04,920 --> 01:40:07,200 is always scarce as a concept.
01:40:08,960 --> 01:40:12,520 But the problem with money is that if you can,
01:40:12,520 --> 01:40:15,440 as you alluded to, easily increase its supply,
01:40:15,440 --> 01:40:17,040 then all of a sudden you can compromise
01:40:17,040 --> 01:40:18,520 the scarcity of it over time
01:40:19,960 --> 01:40:22,160 and you can rob people through inflation.
01:40:23,200 --> 01:40:26,560 So that's why the market settled on gold as money.
01:40:26,560 --> 01:40:31,480 And robbing is reallocating the value that I,
01:40:31,480 --> 01:40:34,320 so essentially the one property,
01:40:34,320 --> 01:40:37,640 like why scarcity is important
01:40:37,640 --> 01:40:42,520 is it adds a lot more friction to the reallocation.
01:40:42,520 --> 01:40:47,520 Like through essentially violence or implied violence.
01:40:48,880 --> 01:40:51,360 Well, it prevents it through cost of extraction too.
01:40:51,360 --> 01:40:54,440 So if you want to go out and dilute gold holders today,
01:40:54,440 --> 01:40:57,400 you have to go out into the world and mine gold.
01:40:57,400 --> 01:40:59,680 It's a very expensive process.
01:40:59,680 --> 01:41:02,680 That process tends to find equilibrium
01:41:02,680 --> 01:41:05,160 where production cost equals the market value of gold.
01:41:05,160 --> 01:41:08,480 So if market value is $2,000 an ounce today of gold,
01:41:08,480 --> 01:41:10,920 its production cost is gonna be around there.
01:41:10,920 --> 01:41:12,360 That's the natural market equilibrium.
01:41:12,360 --> 01:41:16,800 So that way gold miners cannot just dilute people over time.
01:41:16,800 --> 01:41:19,680 Whereas if you look at something like fiat currency,
01:41:19,680 --> 01:41:21,120 which we're jumping ahead a little bit,
01:41:21,120 --> 01:41:23,800 but its production cost is zero.
01:41:23,800 --> 01:41:26,520 So there's a reason the market value of fiat currency
01:41:26,520 --> 01:41:29,480 historically has always converged to zero
01:41:29,480 --> 01:41:31,440 because its production cost is near zero.
01:41:31,440 --> 01:41:34,040 So the extension to that question might be
01:41:34,040 --> 01:41:37,680 how did we get from gold to paper currency?
01:41:37,680 --> 01:41:40,440 And again, this is rooted in the properties of money.
01:41:40,440 --> 01:41:43,440 As good as monetary metals were and as good as gold is
01:41:43,440 --> 01:41:46,680 as money at holding value across time,
01:41:46,680 --> 01:41:49,800 it's rather limited in terms of portability.
01:41:49,800 --> 01:41:53,160 It is not as useful for moving value across space.
01:41:53,160 --> 01:41:54,920 This is another definition of money, by the way,
01:41:54,920 --> 01:41:58,120 a social device for moving value across space and time.
01:41:59,480 --> 01:42:03,960 So to rectify this technological shortcoming of gold,
01:42:03,960 --> 01:42:07,320 we introduced, first of all,
01:42:07,320 --> 01:42:09,840 the custody of gold was gradually centralized
01:42:09,840 --> 01:42:14,840 into fewer and fewer warehousing operations.
01:42:14,840 --> 01:42:16,920 This is because there are economies of scale
01:42:16,920 --> 01:42:20,200 associated with using gold as money
01:42:20,200 --> 01:42:22,320 and that if you centralize the custody,
01:42:22,320 --> 01:42:25,720 the warehouse owner can then issue a paper receipt
01:42:25,720 --> 01:42:27,800 called a warehouse receipt for that gold.
01:42:27,800 --> 01:42:30,360 And then market participants can trade that paper
01:42:30,360 --> 01:42:31,760 as if it's good as gold.
01:42:31,760 --> 01:42:33,440 And everyone has an option at any time
01:42:33,440 --> 01:42:36,120 to go and redeem real gold from the warehouse.
01:42:36,120 --> 01:42:38,520 So that system works.
01:42:38,520 --> 01:42:42,680 Until the problem with it is that it introduces the need
01:42:42,680 --> 01:42:44,160 to trust the custodian.
01:42:44,160 --> 01:42:45,880 So it's introducing counterparty risk
01:42:45,880 --> 01:42:47,680 in the form of the custodian.
01:42:47,680 --> 01:42:52,120 And now should that warehouse choose to increase the supply
01:42:52,120 --> 01:42:55,440 of paper notes to gold beyond its supply.
01:42:55,440 --> 01:42:57,600 So if it's got three tons of gold
01:42:57,600 --> 01:43:00,920 and it issues six tons worth of paper receipts,
01:43:00,920 --> 01:43:03,480 all of a sudden it's participating in a fraud.
01:43:03,480 --> 01:43:04,560 It's basically lying.
01:43:04,560 --> 01:43:06,200 It's representing that it has more gold
01:43:06,200 --> 01:43:08,560 than it actually does.
01:43:08,560 --> 01:43:12,840 And that is the pathway that we got into banking
01:43:12,840 --> 01:43:14,040 and central banking.
01:43:14,040 --> 01:43:16,600 Is we needed a convenience mechanism
01:43:16,600 --> 01:43:19,480 to rectify the portability shortcomings of gold.
01:43:19,480 --> 01:43:22,240 We needed to be able to move value across space, right?
01:43:22,240 --> 01:43:24,680 Gold was doing a great job at moving value over time,
01:43:24,680 --> 01:43:26,080 but not space.
01:43:26,080 --> 01:43:27,440 Paper currency gave us the ability
01:43:27,440 --> 01:43:29,160 to move value across space,
01:43:29,160 --> 01:43:31,600 but it introduced this attack vector
01:43:31,600 --> 01:43:34,240 for warehouse operators, which became banks,
01:43:34,240 --> 01:43:38,440 which became central banks to modify the supply
01:43:38,440 --> 01:43:40,000 to suit their own political agendas.
01:43:40,000 --> 01:43:41,440 Added the snooze button.
01:43:42,360 --> 01:43:45,920 That allows you to just do a little fraud.
01:43:45,920 --> 01:43:47,320 To get something for nothing.
01:43:47,320 --> 01:43:49,520 Something, just a little bit at first.
01:43:49,520 --> 01:43:52,920 Just this one morning, just a little bit.
01:43:53,840 --> 01:43:58,560 I mean, I don't know if you can speak to the birth
01:43:58,560 --> 01:44:00,160 of a fiat currency.
01:44:00,160 --> 01:44:05,000 Is there some interesting characteristics to that,
01:44:05,000 --> 01:44:07,640 those early steps that created it?
01:44:07,640 --> 01:44:10,000 Like, could it have been averted?
01:44:10,000 --> 01:44:15,000 Or is this the natural progression of governments?
01:44:15,960 --> 01:44:19,240 You know, what's funny is that central banking
01:44:19,240 --> 01:44:23,520 was initially designed to be the custodian of gold, right?
01:44:23,520 --> 01:44:26,600 So they were going to custody the gold,
01:44:26,600 --> 01:44:28,680 issue paper on top of it.
01:44:28,680 --> 01:44:31,440 And then they would maintain,
01:44:31,440 --> 01:44:33,400 you could trust the public stamp effectively.
01:44:33,400 --> 01:44:34,800 You could trust that the central bank
01:44:34,800 --> 01:44:37,400 had as much gold on reserve as they said they had.
01:44:37,400 --> 01:44:39,240 And they were supposed to be the trustworthy institution.
01:44:39,240 --> 01:44:42,120 So we went from placing our trust
01:44:42,120 --> 01:44:44,680 in a free market game theoretic process,
01:44:44,680 --> 01:44:45,920 or trusting gold,
01:44:45,920 --> 01:44:48,240 and we began trusting this institution instead.
01:44:51,600 --> 01:44:54,400 That institution would not have arisen
01:44:54,400 --> 01:44:58,120 if the portability of gold was really high.
01:44:58,120 --> 01:45:00,360 If we could have somehow sent gold
01:45:00,360 --> 01:45:02,280 across a telecommunications channel,
01:45:02,280 --> 01:45:05,040 there would have been no need for a central bank.
01:45:05,040 --> 01:45:07,520 Everyone could have custodied their gold
01:45:07,520 --> 01:45:10,720 in any information bearing medium, frankly,
01:45:10,720 --> 01:45:13,720 and they could beam it around the world at any time.
01:45:13,720 --> 01:45:16,880 So this whole institution itself
01:45:16,880 --> 01:45:21,040 is rooted in a technological shortcoming of gold.
01:45:21,040 --> 01:45:24,120 So I think it's, another way to think about that
01:45:24,120 --> 01:45:28,600 is maybe had there been all the gold in the world today
01:45:28,600 --> 01:45:31,000 fills two Olympic sized swimming pools,
01:45:31,000 --> 01:45:32,960 all the gold mined throughout all of human history.
01:45:32,960 --> 01:45:34,800 So there's not a lot, right?
01:45:36,000 --> 01:45:38,760 What if there had been just like way more?
01:45:38,760 --> 01:45:39,600 There'd just been, I don't know,
01:45:39,600 --> 01:45:41,840 20,000 Olympic swimming pools worth.
01:45:42,880 --> 01:45:45,320 Portability wouldn't have been as much of an issue, right?
01:45:45,320 --> 01:45:47,000 We could have, and this is to say,
01:45:47,000 --> 01:45:48,960 assuming gold was still the most scarce metal
01:45:48,960 --> 01:45:50,040 in all these things,
01:45:52,160 --> 01:45:53,480 portability would have been less of an issue.
01:45:53,480 --> 01:45:56,000 We would have had less dependence
01:45:56,000 --> 01:45:58,000 or need for a central bank.
01:45:58,000 --> 01:46:00,240 So I think it's kind of idiosyncratic
01:46:00,240 --> 01:46:03,760 in that we just happened to end up here on this planet
01:46:03,760 --> 01:46:05,160 with a certain amount of gold,
01:46:05,160 --> 01:46:07,440 it best satisfied the properties of money.
01:46:07,440 --> 01:46:09,120 And a certain amount of humans,
01:46:09,120 --> 01:46:12,160 geographically dispersed such that portability
01:46:12,160 --> 01:46:14,320 had certain properties that you want to achieve
01:46:14,320 --> 01:46:16,120 for humans in a geographical space
01:46:16,120 --> 01:46:18,760 to be able to be a exchange value.
01:46:18,760 --> 01:46:20,960 It became more of an issue as we globalized, right?
01:46:20,960 --> 01:46:22,600 As we became more of a global society,
01:46:22,600 --> 01:46:26,240 we needed money that could move across space really fast,
01:46:26,240 --> 01:46:27,080 right?
01:46:27,080 --> 01:46:29,680 So we could trade in international capital markets.
01:46:29,680 --> 01:46:33,560 So that drove the central bank
01:46:33,560 --> 01:46:35,720 to become the dominant institution of the world.
01:46:35,720 --> 01:46:39,120 And if you follow the flows of gold throughout history,
01:46:39,120 --> 01:46:41,240 you know, I've been watching this documentary
01:46:41,240 --> 01:46:43,680 on World War I and World War II on Netflix.
01:46:43,680 --> 01:46:45,880 I think it's called World War II and Color.
01:46:45,880 --> 01:46:47,720 Oh yeah, that's really good.
01:46:47,720 --> 01:46:48,560 So good.
01:46:48,560 --> 01:46:53,560 And when I say gold has been the governor of governments
01:46:53,560 --> 01:46:55,160 or gold is geopolitical money,
01:46:55,160 --> 01:46:59,200 like it is the base layer operating system,
01:46:59,200 --> 01:47:00,720 has been the base layer operating system
01:47:00,720 --> 01:47:02,200 for analog society.
01:47:02,200 --> 01:47:04,600 So it's always been about who controls the gold,
01:47:05,720 --> 01:47:07,800 is who makes the rules.
01:47:07,800 --> 01:47:11,240 And that's, in that context,
01:47:11,240 --> 01:47:12,760 is why Bitcoin is so interesting
01:47:12,760 --> 01:47:16,320 because it is the disruptor to
01:47:16,320 --> 01:47:18,800 this base level operating system
01:47:18,800 --> 01:47:22,000 that's functioned for all of human history.
01:47:22,000 --> 01:47:24,400 I think this is a good place to ask,
01:47:24,400 --> 01:47:26,280 we asked the what is money question.
01:47:27,840 --> 01:47:29,040 What is Bitcoin?
01:47:31,880 --> 01:47:35,120 That's a question as complicated as what is money.
01:47:35,120 --> 01:47:39,480 I think if you get a general understanding of money
01:47:39,480 --> 01:47:42,800 from a number of angles,
01:47:42,800 --> 01:47:47,800 that we could say Bitcoin is the most superior
01:47:47,880 --> 01:47:50,480 monetary technology that has ever existed.
01:47:51,560 --> 01:47:54,760 So one of the most superior implementation
01:47:54,760 --> 01:47:56,720 of the ideas of money that you talked about,
01:47:56,720 --> 01:47:58,320 you talked about money as speech,
01:47:58,320 --> 01:48:00,080 you talked about money as an idea,
01:48:00,960 --> 01:48:04,000 we talked about money as sovereignty.
01:48:04,000 --> 01:48:06,480 Yeah, so we're attaching the concept of money
01:48:06,480 --> 01:48:11,480 to your point, to whatever tool best satisfies
01:48:11,480 --> 01:48:13,760 those properties of money
01:48:13,760 --> 01:48:16,840 or best renders those services we need for money.
01:48:16,840 --> 01:48:19,320 And as you said, you're using the word tool
01:48:19,320 --> 01:48:20,720 and technology interchangeably here.
01:48:20,720 --> 01:48:22,320 Yes, yes.
01:48:22,320 --> 01:48:24,840 And another thing to think about here is that
01:48:24,840 --> 01:48:28,480 we think often in terms of goods or services,
01:48:28,480 --> 01:48:31,880 but actually everything is a service.
01:48:31,880 --> 01:48:35,520 So it's not the physical properties of this pen
01:48:35,520 --> 01:48:36,800 that I find valuable,
01:48:36,800 --> 01:48:38,800 it's the services that it renders to me,
01:48:38,800 --> 01:48:40,440 that I want to write a letter,
01:48:40,440 --> 01:48:45,440 this serves me by allowing me to lay ink on paper
01:48:45,800 --> 01:48:47,880 and communicate information.
01:48:47,880 --> 01:48:52,480 So value, humans attach value,
01:48:52,480 --> 01:48:56,400 as we alluded to earlier, to services, not goods.
01:48:56,400 --> 01:48:58,960 So the properties or the services that money renders
01:48:58,960 --> 01:49:01,600 that human beings value are those five properties,
01:49:01,600 --> 01:49:03,640 divisibility, durability, recognizability,
01:49:03,640 --> 01:49:05,120 portability, scarcity.
01:49:06,040 --> 01:49:10,120 Metals best satisfied those services historically,
01:49:10,120 --> 01:49:13,120 but Bitcoin as the most superior monetary technology
01:49:13,120 --> 01:49:17,400 in human history, essentially perfects them.
01:49:17,400 --> 01:49:19,200 It's as close to perfection as we've ever been.
01:49:19,200 --> 01:49:21,800 So in terms of divisibility,
01:49:21,800 --> 01:49:25,160 each Bitcoin can be broken down into 100 million subunits
01:49:25,160 --> 01:49:26,240 called a Satoshi.
01:49:29,280 --> 01:49:31,520 If that divisibility were ever a problem,
01:49:31,520 --> 01:49:35,160 which actually there was a question that came up recently,
01:49:35,160 --> 01:49:37,480 if you divide the world population
01:49:37,480 --> 01:49:38,800 by the total supply of Bitcoin,
01:49:38,800 --> 01:49:42,040 you end up at like 0.3 Bitcoin per person,
01:49:42,040 --> 01:49:46,080 call it 300,000 Satoshis per person.
01:49:46,080 --> 01:49:50,600 What if that was not enough to facilitate economic activity?
01:49:50,600 --> 01:49:53,240 And the answer to that is Bitcoin can soft fork
01:49:53,240 --> 01:49:54,600 into further divisibility.
01:49:54,600 --> 01:49:57,040 So if Bitcoin ate all the money in the world
01:49:58,160 --> 01:50:00,520 and the average Bitcoin or wealth
01:50:00,520 --> 01:50:02,120 will say 300,000 Satoshis each,
01:50:02,120 --> 01:50:06,200 but that wasn't divisible enough maybe to buy coffee
01:50:06,200 --> 01:50:07,600 and do all these day-to-day transactions,
01:50:07,600 --> 01:50:08,440 what would happen?
01:50:08,440 --> 01:50:09,800 It would increase its divisibility.
01:50:09,800 --> 01:50:12,480 So Bitcoin's perfected divisibility.
01:50:12,480 --> 01:50:16,440 The divisibility of money lets us transact across scales.
01:50:16,440 --> 01:50:18,440 We can buy coffee or we can buy a house.
01:50:21,200 --> 01:50:23,120 Durability is an interesting one.
01:50:23,120 --> 01:50:25,360 So clearly something like gold is very durable.
01:50:25,360 --> 01:50:28,240 It's resistant to degradation over time.
01:50:28,240 --> 01:50:30,240 Bitcoin is just pure information,
01:50:30,240 --> 01:50:33,520 but it's stored in a distributed format.
01:50:33,520 --> 01:50:36,960 So information stored in a distributed fashion
01:50:36,960 --> 01:50:40,800 tends to be virtually infinitely durable.
01:50:40,800 --> 01:50:41,760 The example I'd like to give here
01:50:41,760 --> 01:50:43,560 is something like the Bible.
01:50:43,560 --> 01:50:46,080 The Bible is just distributed information.
01:50:46,080 --> 01:50:49,200 It's stored everywhere and nowhere, so to speak.
01:50:49,200 --> 01:50:52,040 And for that reason, it has outlasted empires.
01:50:53,120 --> 01:50:54,320 And Bitcoin's similar, right?
01:50:54,320 --> 01:50:57,040 You can't make changes to it unilaterally.
01:50:57,040 --> 01:51:01,920 But to make explicit the ways in which it is not durable
01:51:01,920 --> 01:51:05,400 is the fact that it relies on computing infrastructure.
01:51:05,400 --> 01:51:08,320 Like it needs computers.
01:51:08,320 --> 01:51:11,280 So if you were to destroy all the computers in the world,
01:51:11,280 --> 01:51:15,400 yes, it needs mechanisms that store
01:51:15,400 --> 01:51:16,680 and transfer information.
01:51:16,680 --> 01:51:17,600 That's right.
01:51:17,600 --> 01:51:20,080 And so you could attack it.
01:51:20,080 --> 01:51:22,080 I mean, you could attack gold in the same kind of way,
01:51:22,080 --> 01:51:23,800 I suppose, through the physics,
01:51:23,800 --> 01:51:26,960 but it's probably easier to destroy all the computers
01:51:26,960 --> 01:51:30,320 in the world than it is destroy all the gold in the world.
01:51:30,320 --> 01:51:31,280 Maybe not.
01:51:31,280 --> 01:51:32,360 I don't know.
01:51:32,360 --> 01:51:33,200 Anyway.
01:51:33,200 --> 01:51:35,640 Yeah, you're right.
01:51:35,640 --> 01:51:38,440 Maybe, I'm not sure which one would be harder to destroy.
01:51:38,440 --> 01:51:41,880 But the other thing is there's a dynamic incentive.
01:51:41,880 --> 01:51:44,800 So every time you destroy Bitcoin miners,
01:51:44,800 --> 01:51:46,560 you're creating incentives for anyone else
01:51:46,560 --> 01:51:48,880 with access to electricity to mine
01:51:48,880 --> 01:51:50,680 because you're making the algorithm easier.
01:51:50,680 --> 01:51:54,080 Yeah, so the destruction is difficult
01:51:54,080 --> 01:51:56,560 because of the decentralized nature of the whole thing.
01:51:56,560 --> 01:51:57,880 And the difficulty adjustment.
01:51:57,880 --> 01:52:00,480 Yeah, so you're gonna have to use nuclear weapons
01:52:00,480 --> 01:52:02,040 and cover the whole globe.
01:52:02,040 --> 01:52:02,880 But anyway.
01:52:02,880 --> 01:52:05,000 Yeah, and by then we've got much bigger problems
01:52:05,000 --> 01:52:05,840 than money, right?
01:52:05,840 --> 01:52:08,080 That's right.
01:52:08,080 --> 01:52:09,680 So, okay, so that's durability.
01:52:09,680 --> 01:52:12,320 So portability, Bitcoin's pure information,
01:52:12,320 --> 01:52:13,680 it can move at the speed of light,
01:52:13,680 --> 01:52:15,920 can't get much faster than that.
01:52:15,920 --> 01:52:20,600 Recognizability refers to the ability to verify
01:52:20,600 --> 01:52:23,400 the veracity of the money or its authenticity.
01:52:23,400 --> 01:52:27,360 So you can actually, when we used to transact gold,
01:52:27,360 --> 01:52:28,680 there were time-honored techniques
01:52:28,680 --> 01:52:31,040 for verifying that it was gold
01:52:31,040 --> 01:52:33,000 and not gold-plated lead, for instance.
01:52:33,000 --> 01:52:34,880 This is where we get the term sound money.
01:52:34,880 --> 01:52:36,800 A gold coin made a very particular sound
01:52:36,800 --> 01:52:38,320 when dropped from a certain height.
01:52:38,320 --> 01:52:40,240 You know, you've seen people biting coins.
01:52:40,240 --> 01:52:41,120 These are all techniques
01:52:41,120 --> 01:52:44,120 for testing the authenticity of gold.
01:52:44,120 --> 01:52:46,480 And with Bitcoin, we have something unique
01:52:46,480 --> 01:52:48,320 in that if you're running a full node,
01:52:48,320 --> 01:52:51,200 you can verify that the Bitcoin is Bitcoin, right?
01:52:51,200 --> 01:52:54,920 It cannot be tampered with, it cannot be faked.
01:52:54,920 --> 01:52:57,280 And in addition to that, as a node operator,
01:52:57,280 --> 01:53:00,040 you can audit the total supply of Bitcoin at any time,
01:53:00,040 --> 01:53:01,600 which is unlike any money in history.
01:53:01,600 --> 01:53:04,200 So you know with full certainty,
01:53:04,200 --> 01:53:06,840 if you're holding 1,000 Bitcoin,
01:53:06,840 --> 01:53:10,440 you have 1,000 out of a possible 21 million forever.
01:53:10,440 --> 01:53:13,080 You have a guaranteed fraction of the total supply.
01:53:13,080 --> 01:53:14,800 Yeah, so a full node contains information
01:53:14,800 --> 01:53:16,640 about every transaction that's ever been had,
01:53:16,640 --> 01:53:19,240 so you can figure out, yeah, I mean,
01:53:19,240 --> 01:53:23,880 all the truth of this money is all right there.
01:53:23,880 --> 01:53:25,840 Yeah, it's like a fractal constituent
01:53:25,840 --> 01:53:27,160 of the whole network, right?
01:53:27,160 --> 01:53:30,840 The whole Bitcoin blockchain is comprised in a node too.
01:53:30,840 --> 01:53:32,200 Not the proof of work piece,
01:53:32,200 --> 01:53:34,000 but the entire transaction history.
01:53:35,920 --> 01:53:37,080 And so that's unique as well.
01:53:37,080 --> 01:53:40,000 And that's what makes Bitcoin the ultimate store of value
01:53:40,000 --> 01:53:43,840 is that you know with certainty what the total supply is
01:53:43,840 --> 01:53:45,120 and will ever be.
01:53:45,120 --> 01:53:49,480 And you know that your share of that supply is fixed.
01:53:49,480 --> 01:53:50,520 It cannot change.
01:53:50,520 --> 01:53:51,920 It can only improve, actually.
01:53:51,920 --> 01:53:53,760 If someone loses, you know,
01:53:53,760 --> 01:53:56,040 if the Satoshi stash is truly gone forever,
01:53:56,040 --> 01:53:58,000 the million Bitcoin never moves,
01:53:58,000 --> 01:53:59,960 then we're talking about 1,000 Bitcoin
01:53:59,960 --> 01:54:03,160 out of 20 million instead, and so on and so forth.
01:54:03,160 --> 01:54:05,760 As more people lose access to their Bitcoin,
01:54:05,760 --> 01:54:08,080 they're basically making a contribution to everyone else.
01:54:08,080 --> 01:54:09,560 It's anti-dilutive.
01:54:10,440 --> 01:54:13,200 And there's certain properties of Bitcoin
01:54:13,200 --> 01:54:15,520 that are sort of a little bit more into the details
01:54:15,520 --> 01:54:19,080 that ensure that the full nodes,
01:54:19,080 --> 01:54:22,880 like the size of all the transactions that ever happened,
01:54:22,880 --> 01:54:24,320 at least currently can be stored
01:54:24,320 --> 01:54:25,720 in a single computer, for example.
01:54:25,720 --> 01:54:28,040 So it doesn't blow up too quickly.
01:54:28,040 --> 01:54:28,880 That's right.
01:54:28,880 --> 01:54:32,080 But you know, there's arguments that that's not necessarily,
01:54:32,080 --> 01:54:35,640 you can make arguments for that to be a very nice property,
01:54:35,640 --> 01:54:38,240 but you can also say that there's like drawbacks to it.
01:54:38,240 --> 01:54:41,520 That's hence the block size debates
01:54:41,520 --> 01:54:42,520 and all those kinds of things.
01:54:42,520 --> 01:54:45,280 Yeah, that was the Bitcoin Cash Civil War, right,
01:54:45,280 --> 01:54:47,560 was that particular piece.
01:54:47,560 --> 01:54:48,400 Yeah.
01:54:48,400 --> 01:54:50,760 And you know, ostensibly they were saying,
01:54:50,760 --> 01:54:52,840 oh, we need more transaction throughput
01:54:52,840 --> 01:54:55,360 to buy more coffee and do more transactions.
01:54:55,360 --> 01:54:59,760 But what they were actually doing was increasing the size,
01:55:00,840 --> 01:55:03,040 computing power necessary to run a full node,
01:55:03,040 --> 01:55:06,800 which would have theoretically compromised decentralization.
01:55:06,800 --> 01:55:09,520 So yeah, but it would in theory,
01:55:09,520 --> 01:55:11,640 and this is, you know, in theory,
01:55:11,640 --> 01:55:15,120 it would allow you to have much more transactions.
01:55:15,120 --> 01:55:16,000 That's right.
01:55:16,000 --> 01:55:18,560 But the drawback, it would,
01:55:18,560 --> 01:55:20,680 because of no longer can be stored
01:55:20,680 --> 01:55:22,440 in a single computer, personal computer,
01:55:22,440 --> 01:55:26,120 then it naturally leads to the centralization.
01:55:26,120 --> 01:55:28,040 Same kind of thing we see with gold.
01:55:28,040 --> 01:55:30,640 Which would have compromised its survivability.
01:55:30,640 --> 01:55:31,760 Right.
01:55:31,760 --> 01:55:34,280 So what else is there?
01:55:34,280 --> 01:55:36,280 The last one, which leads straight into this one,
01:55:36,280 --> 01:55:38,400 actually is the most important one of money,
01:55:38,400 --> 01:55:39,960 which is scarcity.
01:55:39,960 --> 01:55:44,960 And that you need to know the supply is fixed
01:55:45,200 --> 01:55:49,440 and safeguarded from counterfeiting and inflation,
01:55:49,440 --> 01:55:52,600 which counterfeiting and inflation are the same thing,
01:55:52,600 --> 01:55:53,720 by the way.
01:55:53,720 --> 01:55:57,480 Counterfeiting is criminalized inflation.
01:55:57,480 --> 01:56:00,120 Inflation is legalized counterfeiting.
01:56:00,120 --> 01:56:01,760 So central banks today,
01:56:01,760 --> 01:56:03,200 when they say they're printing money, they're not.
01:56:03,200 --> 01:56:05,480 They're counterfeiting currency.
01:56:05,480 --> 01:56:07,120 That's a very important part.
01:56:07,120 --> 01:56:10,400 And Bitcoin, as I've argued in some of my writing,
01:56:11,360 --> 01:56:13,560 is more than just an invention.
01:56:13,560 --> 01:56:16,840 It's actually the discovery of absolute scarcity
01:56:16,840 --> 01:56:20,040 and that we have unveiled a property of money
01:56:20,040 --> 01:56:22,080 that we will only discover once.
01:56:23,800 --> 01:56:27,160 And it's got really major ramifications
01:56:27,160 --> 01:56:28,720 for the world at large.
01:56:28,720 --> 01:56:33,640 So with gold, for instance, as we've covered,
01:56:33,640 --> 01:56:35,440 it became money because it was
01:56:35,440 --> 01:56:38,000 the most relatively scarce monetary metal, right?
01:56:38,000 --> 01:56:41,120 Its supply was hardest to increase over time.
01:56:41,120 --> 01:56:44,200 However, if we could somehow flip a switch today
01:56:44,200 --> 01:56:46,920 and make everyone in the world go out and start mining gold,
01:56:46,920 --> 01:56:49,080 we could increase the supply much more quickly.
01:56:49,080 --> 01:56:50,960 We could, you know, its historic inflation rate's
01:56:50,960 --> 01:56:53,480 about 2%, we could double that pretty quickly.
01:56:54,960 --> 01:56:58,600 Bitcoin, with Bitcoin, it is not possible.
01:56:58,600 --> 01:57:02,520 So no matter how much effort and energy and capital
01:57:02,520 --> 01:57:05,520 and operational expenditure we pour into the mining network,
01:57:05,520 --> 01:57:08,320 we cannot deviate from its fixed
01:57:08,320 --> 01:57:11,000 and diminishing supply curve from between now
01:57:11,000 --> 01:57:13,600 and the last Bitcoin being mined in 2140
01:57:13,600 --> 01:57:15,040 because of the difficulty adjustment.
01:57:15,040 --> 01:57:18,400 It's constantly, it's adapting to human action, actually.
01:57:18,400 --> 01:57:21,920 So the harder we pursue it, the more that it recedes,
01:57:21,920 --> 01:57:23,320 and then the less we pursue it,
01:57:23,320 --> 01:57:26,000 the more available it makes itself.
01:57:26,000 --> 01:57:30,320 And this is, it's a real major breakthrough
01:57:30,320 --> 01:57:34,640 because it's the closest thing to perfect information
01:57:34,640 --> 01:57:37,320 we've ever had in an economy.
01:57:37,320 --> 01:57:40,280 And perfect information is this,
01:57:40,280 --> 01:57:44,440 it's a theoretical but unattainable state of the market
01:57:44,440 --> 01:57:48,400 where all market actors have all the relevant information
01:57:48,400 --> 01:57:51,360 about everything so that they can compete
01:57:51,360 --> 01:57:53,080 as efficiently as possible.
01:57:53,080 --> 01:57:55,440 And in the state of pure information,
01:57:55,440 --> 01:57:57,280 we have, I'm sorry, perfect information,
01:57:57,280 --> 01:57:59,040 we have perfect competition.
01:57:59,040 --> 01:58:03,120 And in perfect competition, we maximize wealth generation.
01:58:03,120 --> 01:58:06,440 So we're competing as freely as possible
01:58:06,440 --> 01:58:10,120 from coercive and violent impediments.
01:58:10,120 --> 01:58:13,200 And so I think Bitcoin in that sense
01:58:13,200 --> 01:58:17,240 is going to pull the world closer to a state
01:58:18,360 --> 01:58:21,720 of perfect competition than we've ever been before,
01:58:21,720 --> 01:58:24,560 which would increase wealth generation
01:58:24,560 --> 01:58:26,400 to an extent we've never seen before.
01:58:27,560 --> 01:58:30,440 Many of the things you said about Bitcoin
01:58:30,440 --> 01:58:32,840 also hold for other cryptocurrency technologies
01:58:32,840 --> 01:58:34,320 that followed after.
01:58:34,320 --> 01:58:39,320 Can you say something to why you think Bitcoin
01:58:40,680 --> 01:58:43,880 is the superior technology
01:58:43,880 --> 01:58:48,880 from a pragmatic truth perspective than say Ethereum,
01:58:49,200 --> 01:58:52,640 but also other crypto like Bitcoin Cash,
01:58:52,640 --> 01:58:55,360 like other hard forks of Bitcoin
01:58:55,360 --> 01:58:59,760 and maybe things that might yet to be invented,
01:58:59,760 --> 01:59:01,400 tools yet to be invented?
01:59:01,400 --> 01:59:05,080 Yeah, so this is a good point of argument
01:59:05,080 --> 01:59:08,440 because a lot of people have countered me and said,
01:59:08,440 --> 01:59:11,280 Bitcoin cannot be absolute scarcity
01:59:11,280 --> 01:59:13,240 because you can fork it and create something
01:59:13,240 --> 01:59:15,520 with the same properties as Bitcoin
01:59:15,520 --> 01:59:17,720 or potentially even better properties, right?
01:59:17,720 --> 01:59:20,520 You create something with a deflationary monetary policy.
01:59:21,640 --> 01:59:23,640 That's what Bitcoin Cash was actually.
01:59:23,640 --> 01:59:26,240 It forked Bitcoin with all of the same properties
01:59:26,240 --> 01:59:29,280 except for the block size that we alluded to earlier.
01:59:29,280 --> 01:59:33,000 The problem is that money is valued.
01:59:33,000 --> 01:59:36,600 Again, it's the good with a configuration of demand
01:59:36,600 --> 01:59:40,400 that is predominantly marketability.
01:59:40,400 --> 01:59:43,560 So it is valued based on its liquidity.
01:59:43,560 --> 01:59:46,640 That is how many other trading partners are there
01:59:46,640 --> 01:59:48,800 in that monetary network.
01:59:48,800 --> 01:59:52,520 So it is a network valued
01:59:52,520 --> 01:59:54,800 because of its liquidity and network effects.
01:59:54,800 --> 01:59:58,640 So any new entrant into the market for money
01:59:58,640 --> 02:00:02,800 is incentivized to always choose the money
02:00:02,800 --> 02:00:06,520 with the deepest liquidity and the most network effects.
02:00:06,520 --> 02:00:10,600 This is why money has tended to be a winner take all market
02:00:10,600 --> 02:00:13,520 because it's essentially a single purpose tool, right?
02:00:13,520 --> 02:00:15,680 It is a tool for,
02:00:16,640 --> 02:00:19,720 if we consider that tools are time-saving devices, right?
02:00:19,720 --> 02:00:21,720 The shovel that you dig more holes per man hour
02:00:21,720 --> 02:00:23,200 than you can with your bare hands.
02:00:23,200 --> 02:00:26,320 Money is a tool, there's yet another definition of money
02:00:26,320 --> 02:00:28,600 that lets us calculate, negotiate,
02:00:28,600 --> 02:00:30,560 and execute trades more quickly.
02:00:31,560 --> 02:00:36,560 So that function tends to coalesce towards one solution.
02:00:38,520 --> 02:00:40,920 And so the short answer would be that
02:00:40,920 --> 02:00:44,640 for the same reasons, quantifiable reasons, right?
02:00:44,640 --> 02:00:46,120 Like inflation resistance
02:00:46,120 --> 02:00:48,520 and liquidity and network effects,
02:00:48,520 --> 02:00:50,680 that we have one analog gold,
02:00:50,680 --> 02:00:53,600 we're only likely to have one digital gold.
02:00:53,600 --> 02:00:57,240 And I think the Bitcoin Cash Fork proves that out empirically.
02:00:57,240 --> 02:00:59,560 It's a good case study because-
02:00:59,560 --> 02:01:00,880 What for case study, right?
02:01:00,880 --> 02:01:03,000 But okay, so that's really well put.
02:01:03,000 --> 02:01:04,600 So like gold was sticky.
02:01:05,960 --> 02:01:08,480 Once it was accepted the network effects,
02:01:08,480 --> 02:01:11,040 the winner take all took over.
02:01:11,040 --> 02:01:15,400 And here's a fundamentally different kind of like
02:01:15,400 --> 02:01:18,720 analog versus digital is a leap in technologies.
02:01:18,720 --> 02:01:19,920 That's right.
02:01:19,920 --> 02:01:24,080 And you're suggesting that there may not be,
02:01:25,320 --> 02:01:29,120 there's unlikely to be other leaps of that kind
02:01:29,120 --> 02:01:32,280 into a whole nother kind of space of technologies.
02:01:32,280 --> 02:01:34,720 I would argue that Bitcoin,
02:01:34,720 --> 02:01:38,040 it's kind of like the ideological synthesis of gold,
02:01:38,040 --> 02:01:39,400 taking the monetary properties of gold
02:01:39,400 --> 02:01:41,880 and combining them with the internet itself.
02:01:41,880 --> 02:01:43,240 And in doing so,
02:01:43,240 --> 02:01:47,160 it has essentially perfected the properties of money, right?
02:01:47,160 --> 02:01:49,120 You can't get more divisible, durable,
02:01:49,120 --> 02:01:51,800 recognizable, portable, or scarce than Bitcoin.
02:01:51,800 --> 02:01:54,240 So Satoshi has kind of,
02:01:54,240 --> 02:01:58,360 he left no design space for a superior technology
02:01:58,360 --> 02:02:01,320 to intercede and out-compete Bitcoin at this point,
02:02:01,320 --> 02:02:02,880 now that it's established liquidity in the network.
02:02:02,880 --> 02:02:04,760 Far superior technology, right?
02:02:04,760 --> 02:02:07,360 Yeah, but it's a combination of the tech itself
02:02:07,360 --> 02:02:08,680 and the social layer.
02:02:08,680 --> 02:02:09,520 And the social layer.
02:02:09,520 --> 02:02:10,360 That is coalesced to it.
02:02:10,360 --> 02:02:11,760 You can't separate those two out.
02:02:11,760 --> 02:02:12,600 That's right.
02:02:12,600 --> 02:02:15,400 They're all connected and then the political as well.
02:02:15,400 --> 02:02:17,480 But the portability, for example,
02:02:17,480 --> 02:02:20,080 that's another way to phrase that is the,
02:02:20,080 --> 02:02:20,920 what is it?
02:02:20,920 --> 02:02:22,040 The scaling.
02:02:22,040 --> 02:02:24,440 So the number of transactions,
02:02:24,440 --> 02:02:27,120 that's a limitation for Bitcoin
02:02:27,120 --> 02:02:29,560 that many argue is a feature,
02:02:29,560 --> 02:02:30,920 many argue is a bug.
02:02:30,920 --> 02:02:33,520 You have a bunch of cryptocurrency technologies
02:02:33,520 --> 02:02:37,080 that are able to achieve much higher,
02:02:37,080 --> 02:02:40,440 much faster frequency of transactions,
02:02:40,440 --> 02:02:42,440 much more transactions, you know,
02:02:42,440 --> 02:02:43,600 all that kind of stuff.
02:02:44,760 --> 02:02:46,440 What are your thoughts on that?
02:02:46,440 --> 02:02:49,640 You know, the low level of transactions
02:02:49,640 --> 02:02:51,760 that's possible with Bitcoin,
02:02:51,760 --> 02:02:52,880 do you think that's a feature?
02:02:52,880 --> 02:02:54,480 Do you think that's a bug?
02:02:54,480 --> 02:02:56,880 Necessary for security, actually.
02:02:56,880 --> 02:02:59,000 And even these other crypto assets
02:02:59,000 --> 02:03:00,280 that settle more quickly,
02:03:00,280 --> 02:03:03,640 they settle with less assurance of finality.
02:03:03,640 --> 02:03:06,560 So Nick Carter has a great piece on this actually called,
02:03:06,560 --> 02:03:09,280 it's the settlement assurance is stupid.
02:03:09,280 --> 02:03:10,120 It's really good.
02:03:10,120 --> 02:03:14,040 Where the gist of it is that there is more work
02:03:14,040 --> 02:03:16,800 being done in each block of Bitcoin
02:03:16,800 --> 02:03:20,720 that it is less vulnerable to reversion.
02:03:20,720 --> 02:03:23,920 So it's giving you higher degrees of assurance
02:03:23,920 --> 02:03:25,480 that your settlement or your trade
02:03:25,480 --> 02:03:27,400 has occurred with finality.
02:03:27,400 --> 02:03:30,160 Whereas other blockchains are much more vulnerable.
02:03:31,320 --> 02:03:32,840 And again, with Bitcoin,
02:03:34,240 --> 02:03:36,760 the evolutionary path of money with gold
02:03:36,760 --> 02:03:40,640 is that it was first used as a collectible.
02:03:40,640 --> 02:03:43,160 It then became used as a store value.
02:03:43,160 --> 02:03:44,760 After it had stored enough value,
02:03:44,760 --> 02:03:48,760 it began to be used as a medium of exchange.
02:03:48,760 --> 02:03:50,280 And then finally, when it was used widely enough
02:03:50,280 --> 02:03:52,600 as a medium of exchange, it becomes a unit of account.
02:03:52,600 --> 02:03:54,960 We actually start to think in the money.
02:03:54,960 --> 02:03:57,720 Bitcoin's following a similar path.
02:03:57,720 --> 02:04:00,440 So started out as kind of a collectible.
02:04:00,440 --> 02:04:02,280 Today, I would argue it's a store value,
02:04:02,280 --> 02:04:05,640 one of the most effective store value we've ever seen.
02:04:05,640 --> 02:04:08,600 So that evolutionary path that Bitcoin's following
02:04:08,600 --> 02:04:10,280 is similar to gold.
02:04:10,280 --> 02:04:12,280 First a collectible, today is store value.
02:04:12,280 --> 02:04:13,960 To be an effective store value,
02:04:13,960 --> 02:04:18,560 it has to optimize for supply cap.
02:04:18,560 --> 02:04:19,920 That has to be the first,
02:04:19,920 --> 02:04:22,320 and this is all Bitcoin really needs to do
02:04:22,320 --> 02:04:23,800 to be successful, by the way.
02:04:23,800 --> 02:04:25,880 Exactly what it's been doing for 12 years,
02:04:25,880 --> 02:04:27,440 virtually flawlessly,
02:04:27,440 --> 02:04:30,360 which is keep creating a block every 10 minutes
02:04:30,360 --> 02:04:33,160 and keep enforcing a supply cap of 21 million.
02:04:34,040 --> 02:04:35,880 As long as those two things hold,
02:04:36,880 --> 02:04:40,640 it is sound money, the ultimate sound money.
02:04:40,640 --> 02:04:44,680 The most inflation resistant money there's ever been.
02:04:44,680 --> 02:04:47,840 It's actually completely immune.
02:04:47,840 --> 02:04:50,360 It's taken unexpected inflation to 0%.
02:04:50,360 --> 02:04:51,680 We know with perfect certainty
02:04:51,680 --> 02:04:53,440 what Bitcoin supply will ever be.
02:04:55,000 --> 02:04:59,600 For it to be used more broadly as a medium of exchange,
02:04:59,600 --> 02:05:02,280 it can't make trade-offs at the base layer
02:05:02,280 --> 02:05:05,360 to increase its portability, for instance.
02:05:05,360 --> 02:05:08,040 Even though portability is maybe kind of a misnomer,
02:05:08,040 --> 02:05:10,680 because Bitcoin has extremely high portability,
02:05:10,680 --> 02:05:13,560 just doesn't have extremely high transaction throughput.
02:05:13,560 --> 02:05:16,760 So we could say you can move it pretty quickly
02:05:16,760 --> 02:05:17,600 anywhere in the world,
02:05:17,600 --> 02:05:21,040 as long as you're willing to bid up for the block space,
02:05:21,040 --> 02:05:25,040 but you can't satisfy all the world's economic volume.
02:05:25,040 --> 02:05:27,160 You can't do 300 million transactions per second
02:05:27,160 --> 02:05:29,640 like you can on a centralized database like Visa.
02:05:30,760 --> 02:05:34,800 But Bitcoin needs to be this,
02:05:34,800 --> 02:05:36,440 it has to be a store value first
02:05:36,440 --> 02:05:38,800 before it can be a medium of exchange.
02:05:38,800 --> 02:05:42,680 So it has to protect the supply cap first
02:05:42,680 --> 02:05:44,400 before making any trade-offs for that.
02:05:44,400 --> 02:05:48,400 And I would argue that that's why Bitcoin is so rigid,
02:05:48,400 --> 02:05:50,200 is that it's optimized for survivability
02:05:50,200 --> 02:05:51,800 and optimized for that supply cap.
02:05:51,800 --> 02:05:56,160 And it's pushing experimentation and other features
02:05:56,160 --> 02:05:57,840 that would increase its transaction throughput
02:05:57,840 --> 02:05:59,480 to higher layers.
02:05:59,480 --> 02:06:01,480 So I think Lightning Network
02:06:01,480 --> 02:06:03,520 is something that's very interesting.
02:06:03,520 --> 02:06:07,640 It's still early, but there's a lot of throughput
02:06:07,640 --> 02:06:10,600 already being used on the Lightning Network.
02:06:10,600 --> 02:06:14,320 And it makes some slight trade-offs
02:06:14,320 --> 02:06:16,160 in terms of the trust minimization of Bitcoin.
02:06:16,160 --> 02:06:18,240 You end up trusting these smart contracts
02:06:18,240 --> 02:06:19,600 instead to move the Bitcoin,
02:06:19,600 --> 02:06:23,000 but you pick up nearly unlimited transaction throughput.
02:06:23,000 --> 02:06:25,680 So that's how, and that's how biology evolves.
02:06:25,680 --> 02:06:26,840 That's how the internet evolved.
02:06:26,840 --> 02:06:27,920 It evolves in layers.
02:06:27,920 --> 02:06:31,120 So I think Bitcoin, you can sort of conceive of it
02:06:31,120 --> 02:06:33,880 as the latest layer to the internet.
02:06:33,880 --> 02:06:36,920 And it's one that preserves this store value property
02:06:36,920 --> 02:06:39,000 better than any asset we've ever had.
02:06:39,000 --> 02:06:41,880 Let me ask sort of a critical question of,
02:06:41,880 --> 02:06:46,120 if you're wrong about your statements about Bitcoin,
02:06:48,800 --> 02:06:51,960 you find out years from now that you were wrong,
02:06:51,960 --> 02:06:54,080 what would that look like?
02:06:54,080 --> 02:06:55,360 What would be the things
02:06:55,360 --> 02:06:57,600 that make you realize you were wrong?
02:06:57,600 --> 02:07:01,360 Likely ideas or crazy out there ideas?
02:07:01,360 --> 02:07:03,200 Do you think about this kind of stuff?
02:07:03,200 --> 02:07:04,040 All the time.
02:07:05,880 --> 02:07:08,520 Cause you speak very confidently about Bitcoin.
02:07:08,520 --> 02:07:11,640 And one of the things, let me put it this way.
02:07:11,640 --> 02:07:16,640 I think certainty, I feel like that's like a stoic statement
02:07:16,640 --> 02:07:19,840 certainty leads to ruin or something like that.
02:07:19,840 --> 02:07:24,840 Like certainty I think is an antithesis to progress often.
02:07:24,840 --> 02:07:28,280 And especially in your writing,
02:07:28,280 --> 02:07:29,960 but this is true for the Bitcoin community.
02:07:29,960 --> 02:07:34,960 There's a certainty about the Bitcoin.
02:07:35,000 --> 02:07:36,880 And that makes me very skeptical,
02:07:36,880 --> 02:07:38,880 no matter how good the ideas are.
02:07:38,880 --> 02:07:42,240 Whenever things are good, this might be the Russian in me.
02:07:42,240 --> 02:07:46,200 I think like, what are the ways this is gonna go wrong?
02:07:46,200 --> 02:07:48,840 So what do you think are the ways this might go wrong
02:07:48,840 --> 02:07:53,080 or you're wrong in your conception of what Bitcoin is?
02:07:53,080 --> 02:07:58,080 Yeah, so science evolves via negativa,
02:07:59,840 --> 02:08:04,240 meaning that we're not proving hypotheses
02:08:04,240 --> 02:08:07,000 and that's what becomes the body of science.
02:08:07,840 --> 02:08:12,560 Science is whatever is left over as we disprove hypotheses.
02:08:12,560 --> 02:08:17,560 Whatever we can empirically through experimentation disprove
02:08:18,680 --> 02:08:21,080 gets discarded and whatever remains,
02:08:21,080 --> 02:08:24,280 whatever theory remains it hasn't been disproven
02:08:24,280 --> 02:08:26,640 is science effectively.
02:08:28,480 --> 02:08:33,480 This process is similar to market actors zeroing in
02:08:33,560 --> 02:08:35,120 on a store value, right?
02:08:35,120 --> 02:08:37,720 They're experimenting with different forms
02:08:37,720 --> 02:08:41,160 of storing wealth across time.
02:08:41,160 --> 02:08:42,520 Some do better than others.
02:08:42,520 --> 02:08:45,520 And eventually everyone ends up on the one that is best.
02:08:45,520 --> 02:08:46,760 That's what gold was.
02:08:46,760 --> 02:08:50,280 In terms of understanding Bitcoin,
02:08:50,280 --> 02:08:52,440 I look at it as a similar approach.
02:08:52,440 --> 02:08:54,960 And that is the main question I'm asking myself is,
02:08:54,960 --> 02:08:56,600 how do you stop this thing?
02:08:56,600 --> 02:08:58,320 How do you turn it off?
02:08:58,320 --> 02:08:59,160 How do you end it?
02:08:59,160 --> 02:09:01,240 If you're a nation state particularly
02:09:01,240 --> 02:09:04,080 who has the most to lose in this transition,
02:09:04,080 --> 02:09:07,480 what is the attack vector by which they neutralize Bitcoin?
02:09:07,480 --> 02:09:11,080 I mean, that is the $250 trillion question.
02:09:11,080 --> 02:09:15,560 And I've spent five years thinking about this thing,
02:09:15,560 --> 02:09:16,920 very deeply.
02:09:16,920 --> 02:09:19,440 I've read everything on monetary history.
02:09:19,440 --> 02:09:20,800 I can get my hands on.
02:09:23,680 --> 02:09:27,880 The general thought of how it is stopped.
02:09:27,880 --> 02:09:31,360 And this is the snag point that a lot of people get to
02:09:31,360 --> 02:09:32,840 in their explorations down the rabbit hole
02:09:32,840 --> 02:09:35,200 is they just say the government will never allow it.
02:09:35,200 --> 02:09:36,560 And that becomes kind of their bottom.
02:09:36,560 --> 02:09:37,800 It's like, all right, Bitcoin's interesting.
02:09:37,800 --> 02:09:39,160 It's superior money, blah, blah, blah.
02:09:39,160 --> 02:09:41,120 But the government will never allow it.
02:09:41,120 --> 02:09:43,320 Was Ray Dalio, did he say that?
02:09:43,320 --> 02:09:45,800 Ray Dalio was currently stuck there, yeah.
02:09:45,800 --> 02:09:50,800 So Ray Dalio said that Bitcoin seems to be too promising.
02:09:52,600 --> 02:09:55,880 If it is in fact as promising as it looks,
02:09:56,760 --> 02:09:58,280 governments are going to,
02:09:59,240 --> 02:10:02,280 I don't forget what the exact quote is, but not allowed.
02:10:02,280 --> 02:10:03,640 Ban it.
02:10:03,640 --> 02:10:05,320 Governments will ban it.
02:10:05,320 --> 02:10:09,600 So how do you get Ray Dalio unstuck from your perspective?
02:10:10,520 --> 02:10:12,760 And how do you get unstuck from that idea
02:10:12,760 --> 02:10:14,880 that governments, will governments,
02:10:14,880 --> 02:10:18,480 how do you prevent governments from stopping a thing
02:10:18,480 --> 02:10:21,320 that threatens centralized power?
02:10:22,600 --> 02:10:24,520 Well, Bitcoin is an idea.
02:10:26,080 --> 02:10:30,320 So governments that are really good
02:10:30,320 --> 02:10:35,120 at fighting centralized threats to their power, right?
02:10:35,120 --> 02:10:36,720 Whether that's a currency counterfeiter
02:10:36,720 --> 02:10:40,440 or a competing nation state or business they don't like
02:10:40,440 --> 02:10:42,880 or an individual they don't like,
02:10:42,880 --> 02:10:45,000 they can kill them, they can throw them in jail.
02:10:45,000 --> 02:10:46,720 They can use any number of course
02:10:46,720 --> 02:10:49,360 of a violent tactics to suppress it.
02:10:49,360 --> 02:10:52,640 But how do you point a gun at an idea?
02:10:52,640 --> 02:10:56,600 How do you coerce an idea?
02:10:58,720 --> 02:11:03,440 And that's, there's some anecdotal history here
02:11:03,440 --> 02:11:08,440 where there's the PGP case, which in the United States,
02:11:08,440 --> 02:11:12,360 the court was trying to classify it as munitions.
02:11:12,360 --> 02:11:15,920 When we were shipping this pretty good privacy software
02:11:15,920 --> 02:11:18,920 over overseas, government wanted to classify it
02:11:18,920 --> 02:11:21,200 as munitions and restrict that exportation.
02:11:22,400 --> 02:11:25,360 But, and this was a circuit court case precedent.
02:11:25,360 --> 02:11:30,040 When the PGP attorneys actually printed out the source code
02:11:30,040 --> 02:11:33,600 on paper and presented it as evidence in the court,
02:11:33,600 --> 02:11:36,440 all of a sudden it became protected under freedom of speech
02:11:36,440 --> 02:11:40,400 and that it's just code is speech, code is language.
02:11:40,400 --> 02:11:43,120 And therefore, at least in the United States,
02:11:43,120 --> 02:11:45,120 it's protected under the first amendment.
02:11:47,960 --> 02:11:52,800 I think a government ban would be largely unenforceable,
02:11:52,800 --> 02:11:54,600 frankly, on Bitcoin.
02:11:54,600 --> 02:11:56,960 Being that it's pure information,
02:11:56,960 --> 02:12:01,080 if you suppress market actors from using it
02:12:01,080 --> 02:12:03,480 in one jurisdiction, you're just creating incentives
02:12:03,480 --> 02:12:05,880 for them to go elsewhere.
02:12:05,880 --> 02:12:07,480 And you're actually increasing the incentives
02:12:07,480 --> 02:12:11,360 for other jurisdictions to be favorable towards it
02:12:11,360 --> 02:12:12,920 because then they can create,
02:12:12,920 --> 02:12:14,480 they get to benefit from the tax revenue
02:12:14,480 --> 02:12:16,440 and the businesses and the innovation
02:12:16,440 --> 02:12:19,400 that's occurring in and around Bitcoin as a result.
02:12:19,400 --> 02:12:21,840 So you don't think if a particular central bank
02:12:22,880 --> 02:12:25,960 like in Europe or United States bans it,
02:12:26,880 --> 02:12:30,480 not maybe using those terms, but in some kind of way,
02:12:30,480 --> 02:12:32,800 you think that provides a really strong incentive
02:12:32,800 --> 02:12:36,400 for the other big players to enable it.
02:12:36,400 --> 02:12:37,240 That's right.
02:12:38,640 --> 02:12:40,680 And that they're more likely, by the way, since,
02:12:40,680 --> 02:12:42,600 and the governments know this, by the way, too.
02:12:42,600 --> 02:12:46,240 The other thing that causes a government
02:12:46,240 --> 02:12:48,400 to shoot itself in the foot is that if they ban something,
02:12:48,400 --> 02:12:50,600 they draw a lot of attention to it.
02:12:50,600 --> 02:12:51,600 People are smart.
02:12:51,600 --> 02:12:54,000 I mean, people ask why, why would a government ban it?
02:12:54,000 --> 02:12:55,280 Why can't I use this?
02:12:55,280 --> 02:12:57,720 So that's kind of typically be the last arrow
02:12:57,720 --> 02:12:58,560 in their quiver.
02:12:59,840 --> 02:13:02,360 They may try to ban it if Bitcoin, you know,
02:13:02,360 --> 02:13:04,160 really starts to monetize very quickly.
02:13:04,160 --> 02:13:06,720 And this, the power structures that they impose today
02:13:06,720 --> 02:13:11,160 start to dissolve faster than I, you know,
02:13:11,160 --> 02:13:12,320 others might think they will,
02:13:12,320 --> 02:13:13,480 then they might try and ban it.
02:13:13,480 --> 02:13:16,720 But I think that ban will be largely unenforceable.
02:13:17,840 --> 02:13:19,560 They're more likely to tax it,
02:13:19,560 --> 02:13:21,560 which they already do tax it.
02:13:21,560 --> 02:13:23,680 They're likely to increase taxation of it.
02:13:25,080 --> 02:13:27,400 They would, they're likely to try and make it
02:13:27,400 --> 02:13:30,920 more white market by actually tracing Bitcoin,
02:13:30,920 --> 02:13:35,040 seeing who has it, attaching identities to Bitcoin ownership
02:13:36,120 --> 02:13:38,360 and making sure that they're getting their pound of flesh
02:13:38,360 --> 02:13:41,680 on all the transactions it results in.
02:13:41,680 --> 02:13:45,840 But I don't think, the other thing about this is,
02:13:47,440 --> 02:13:50,440 so we saw the internet out-compete intranets
02:13:53,040 --> 02:13:55,240 in that we'd say that open source networks
02:13:55,240 --> 02:13:57,120 tend to out-compete closed source networks.
02:13:57,120 --> 02:13:59,360 And there's a really good reason for this.
02:13:59,360 --> 02:14:02,280 And it's because in a closed source network,
02:14:03,560 --> 02:14:05,960 there are costs associated with defending
02:14:05,960 --> 02:14:07,000 the network itself.
02:14:08,200 --> 02:14:12,200 So you have to, the network owners,
02:14:12,200 --> 02:14:13,480 the owners of the closed source network
02:14:13,480 --> 02:14:17,600 have to expend resources protecting it from competitors.
02:14:17,600 --> 02:14:21,040 And they have to expend resources imposing its rules
02:14:21,040 --> 02:14:23,240 because people, they're not voluntarily adopted rules.
02:14:23,240 --> 02:14:25,400 So you actually have to impose these rule sets.
02:14:25,400 --> 02:14:26,880 Whereas an open source network,
02:14:26,880 --> 02:14:28,920 which is something much more akin to capitalism,
02:14:28,920 --> 02:14:33,040 in its pure sense, these are voluntarily adopted rules.
02:14:33,040 --> 02:14:34,920 So all market participants have agreed
02:14:34,920 --> 02:14:36,760 and consented to this rule set.
02:14:36,760 --> 02:14:38,440 So there's no enforcement costs
02:14:38,440 --> 02:14:39,640 and there's no turf protection
02:14:39,640 --> 02:14:43,040 because anyone can freely enter or exit the open network.
02:14:43,040 --> 02:14:45,080 For that energetic reason,
02:14:45,080 --> 02:14:50,080 I think open networks out-compete close networks typically.
02:14:50,600 --> 02:14:53,640 And in the digital age, that's why I think open,
02:14:53,640 --> 02:14:55,280 that's why internet out-competes intranet
02:14:55,280 --> 02:14:57,320 and that's why open source networks
02:14:57,320 --> 02:14:58,920 are gonna eat closed source networks.
02:14:58,920 --> 02:15:01,240 So what Bitcoin would be in that lens
02:15:01,240 --> 02:15:04,280 is the ultimate open source monetary network,
02:15:04,280 --> 02:15:08,520 devouring closed source central bank monetary networks.
02:15:08,520 --> 02:15:13,520 And I just don't see how there's no possibility
02:15:14,320 --> 02:15:17,640 of unilaterally stopping Bitcoin or destroying it.
02:15:17,640 --> 02:15:21,560 So then they're more likely to regulate or tax it.
02:15:23,440 --> 02:15:25,240 And again, the other fallacy here
02:15:25,240 --> 02:15:26,840 is that a lot of people tend to think of governments
02:15:26,840 --> 02:15:30,800 as these singular indivisible entities
02:15:30,800 --> 02:15:32,960 like they just move under one plan.
02:15:32,960 --> 02:15:35,000 But in reality, it's a lot of people, right?
02:15:35,000 --> 02:15:36,920 And a lot of people with loosely coupled interests
02:15:36,920 --> 02:15:38,160 and agendas and whatnot.
02:15:39,720 --> 02:15:44,720 Regulators and others wearing their citizen hat,
02:15:45,680 --> 02:15:47,360 they're gonna see this thing monetizing.
02:15:47,360 --> 02:15:48,680 They're gonna be on the front lines
02:15:48,680 --> 02:15:52,160 of trying to regulate it, trying to control it.
02:15:52,160 --> 02:15:53,520 And I think what's likely to happen
02:15:53,520 --> 02:15:55,640 is they're gonna start to adopt it,
02:15:55,640 --> 02:15:59,520 to buy some of it even as an individual
02:15:59,520 --> 02:16:02,080 or possibly even ultimately at a central bank
02:16:02,080 --> 02:16:03,800 or sovereign wealth fund level
02:16:03,800 --> 02:16:06,080 as an insurance policy against its success.
02:16:07,240 --> 02:16:09,680 And once you start to acquire something
02:16:09,680 --> 02:16:12,800 and then you have a vested economic interest
02:16:12,800 --> 02:16:14,400 in its monetization,
02:16:14,400 --> 02:16:17,600 I think it kind of dissolves any of the power structures
02:16:17,600 --> 02:16:20,560 that are arrayed against it from the inside.
02:16:20,560 --> 02:16:22,760 So I've written a lot about this
02:16:22,760 --> 02:16:24,520 in a new series called Sovereignism,
02:16:24,520 --> 02:16:26,680 which is based loosely on a book
02:16:26,680 --> 02:16:28,800 called The Sovereign Individual.
02:16:28,800 --> 02:16:30,280 And that's the general thesis
02:16:30,280 --> 02:16:33,000 is that microprocessing technology
02:16:33,000 --> 02:16:35,800 would devour our organizational models,
02:16:35,800 --> 02:16:38,320 the most important of which is the nation state.
02:16:38,320 --> 02:16:40,000 So I think we're going into this world
02:16:40,000 --> 02:16:44,460 where coercion and violence is just much less rewarding.
02:16:47,640 --> 02:16:50,400 The economics of violence are declining
02:16:50,400 --> 02:16:54,520 because of the low cost of protecting property, right?
02:16:54,520 --> 02:16:59,520 You can now protect your monetary property in Bitcoin
02:16:59,740 --> 02:17:02,060 at orders of magnitude less cost
02:17:02,060 --> 02:17:04,280 than is necessary to run a banking network.
02:17:04,280 --> 02:17:09,280 So it changes the way we organize ourselves.
02:17:09,800 --> 02:17:12,520 And again, zooming back to gold
02:17:12,520 --> 02:17:15,000 as kind of the original governor to governments,
02:17:15,000 --> 02:17:16,460 where if they manipulated the money,
02:17:16,460 --> 02:17:18,320 gold would leave their country.
02:17:18,320 --> 02:17:21,920 That's why governments have taken
02:17:21,920 --> 02:17:25,580 relatively concerted action to go off of the gold standard.
02:17:25,580 --> 02:17:28,080 There's a great book on this called The Gold Wars
02:17:28,940 --> 02:17:32,160 that outlines how governments have been waging
02:17:32,160 --> 02:17:34,880 a cold war against gold for the past 50 years.
02:17:35,880 --> 02:17:39,280 Bitcoin sort of renews hope
02:17:39,280 --> 02:17:41,640 for that free market governor of governments.
02:17:41,640 --> 02:17:42,900 And that is this digital gold
02:17:42,900 --> 02:17:45,560 that governments cannot stop or co-opt.
02:17:45,560 --> 02:17:47,720 So I think it's something,
02:17:47,720 --> 02:17:49,520 that's why I think it's such a big deal
02:17:49,520 --> 02:17:54,520 is that it is changing,
02:17:54,520 --> 02:17:56,840 it's a new useful fiction, you might say,
02:17:56,840 --> 02:17:58,600 a useful fiction that's superordinate
02:17:58,600 --> 02:18:02,280 to the mythology of the nation state and government
02:18:02,280 --> 02:18:04,280 as the dominant institution in the world.
02:18:04,280 --> 02:18:05,440 Well, I hope you're right
02:18:05,440 --> 02:18:08,960 that all forms of centralized power
02:18:10,440 --> 02:18:12,700 start breaking apart naturally.
02:18:12,700 --> 02:18:15,000 So governments, the more and more power
02:18:15,000 --> 02:18:16,560 is given to the individual,
02:18:16,560 --> 02:18:18,440 whatever the technology is,
02:18:18,440 --> 02:18:20,760 and Bitcoin seems to be a promising technology
02:18:20,760 --> 02:18:22,880 that empowers that, enables that,
02:18:22,880 --> 02:18:24,720 that seems to be the trend.
02:18:24,720 --> 02:18:26,360 And that's a promising trend
02:18:26,360 --> 02:18:29,180 from at least from a perspective of somebody
02:18:29,180 --> 02:18:33,440 who values this particular biological meat bag
02:18:33,440 --> 02:18:34,800 that's full of consciousness.
02:18:34,800 --> 02:18:37,720 I think Bitcoin is exposing the greatest scam
02:18:37,720 --> 02:18:40,760 in human history, which is political authority.
02:18:40,760 --> 02:18:43,880 Like who gives anyone the right to be politically,
02:18:43,880 --> 02:18:46,120 have political authority over anyone else?
02:18:46,120 --> 02:18:49,560 People should be free to adopt the rules and systems
02:18:49,560 --> 02:18:52,080 and tools that best suit their needs.
02:18:52,080 --> 02:18:56,200 And that arc of history we covered earlier
02:18:56,200 --> 02:19:01,200 where as socioeconomic systems have become more favorable
02:19:01,920 --> 02:19:03,440 towards individual sovereignty,
02:19:03,440 --> 02:19:06,100 the more wealthy we have become,
02:19:06,100 --> 02:19:07,880 the more we have given the individual,
02:19:07,880 --> 02:19:10,520 we've maximized individual choice,
02:19:10,520 --> 02:19:12,440 the more wealth that society has created
02:19:12,440 --> 02:19:14,460 and the more it has out competed
02:19:14,460 --> 02:19:15,840 the systems that have come before it.
02:19:15,840 --> 02:19:19,360 The latest would be capitalism triumphing over socialism.
02:19:21,040 --> 02:19:23,920 Before maybe we eat, you are in Texas,
02:19:23,920 --> 02:19:25,720 you brought over some brisket.
02:19:25,720 --> 02:19:28,000 Before we maybe indulge in that,
02:19:28,000 --> 02:19:31,680 let me bring up one quick topic and then we'll take a break.
02:19:31,680 --> 02:19:35,720 And the topic of what some may term
02:19:35,720 --> 02:19:37,720 the toxicity of the Bitcoin community.
02:19:40,480 --> 02:19:43,200 You've written that Bitcoin toxicity is tough love.
02:19:43,200 --> 02:19:46,640 Do you wanna break that apart a little bit,
02:19:46,640 --> 02:19:51,640 sort of the idea, the philosophy of the toxicity
02:19:52,320 --> 02:19:57,320 that seems to be present in part in the Bitcoin community?
02:19:58,660 --> 02:20:01,420 Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit
02:20:01,420 --> 02:20:04,840 before we recorded and I've been through the gauntlet
02:20:04,840 --> 02:20:06,720 with Bitcoin toxicity as well.
02:20:07,600 --> 02:20:12,600 I came into this space professionally in 2017.
02:20:12,600 --> 02:20:14,160 I was originally running
02:20:14,160 --> 02:20:17,200 a multi-strategy crypto asset hedge fund.
02:20:17,200 --> 02:20:22,200 And my initial investment thesis on the world was that,
02:20:22,400 --> 02:20:23,300 Bitcoin was a big deal,
02:20:23,300 --> 02:20:25,960 but there were all these other exciting coins and projects
02:20:25,960 --> 02:20:28,920 and ways the technology was going to be used.
02:20:28,920 --> 02:20:33,920 And that view of reality met this immune,
02:20:35,460 --> 02:20:38,000 I guess you could say as an ideological immune system,
02:20:38,000 --> 02:20:41,000 this Bitcoin toxicity and that it's kind of a filter
02:20:41,000 --> 02:20:45,520 that's trying to catch bad or useless
02:20:45,520 --> 02:20:47,800 or even scamming ideas
02:20:47,800 --> 02:20:51,100 that this space is very well known for.
02:20:52,880 --> 02:20:55,200 As we've touched on today, Bitcoin, in my opinion,
02:20:55,200 --> 02:20:57,960 is this world shattering innovation,
02:20:57,960 --> 02:21:01,520 but it's in a sea of the most scammy stuff ever, right?
02:21:01,520 --> 02:21:04,400 People, anybody can go and create a coin.
02:21:05,520 --> 02:21:08,400 So you can go and launch one immediately online
02:21:08,400 --> 02:21:12,900 and you can throw up a website, an advisor page,
02:21:14,080 --> 02:21:15,120 post a white paper talking about
02:21:15,120 --> 02:21:16,560 how great your technology is gonna be
02:21:16,560 --> 02:21:17,680 and how it's gonna change the world.
02:21:17,680 --> 02:21:20,280 And then you can raise $30 million in Bitcoin
02:21:20,280 --> 02:21:22,700 or Ethereum in 30 seconds kind of thing.
02:21:22,700 --> 02:21:27,520 So it's drawn in a lot of this scam artistry, you might say.
02:21:27,520 --> 02:21:31,200 And I think people living through that,
02:21:31,200 --> 02:21:33,560 because there is this natural predilection for people
02:21:33,560 --> 02:21:35,960 when they first come into Bitcoin, you're excited about it,
02:21:35,960 --> 02:21:39,520 then you get lost in the shit coin universe.
02:21:39,520 --> 02:21:43,400 And then just looking at the market success
02:21:43,400 --> 02:21:46,160 of Bitcoin versus, and when I use the word shit coin,
02:21:46,160 --> 02:21:47,120 I'm just-
02:21:47,120 --> 02:21:49,120 You say with all the love in the world.
02:21:49,120 --> 02:21:50,720 All the love in the world.
02:21:50,720 --> 02:21:53,280 I guess you could call me a toxic maximalist in some ways.
02:21:53,280 --> 02:21:55,480 Although I consider myself a freedom maximalist,
02:21:55,480 --> 02:21:56,320 not a Bitcoin maximalist.
02:21:56,320 --> 02:21:57,240 Yeah, I saw that line.
02:21:57,240 --> 02:21:59,800 That's a good line.
02:21:59,800 --> 02:22:03,200 Bitcoin, tracking the market success of Bitcoin
02:22:03,200 --> 02:22:07,480 versus alternative crypto assets, the signal is very clear
02:22:07,480 --> 02:22:09,560 that Bitcoin has out competed all of them.
02:22:09,560 --> 02:22:13,200 So I think that Bitcoin cultural toxicity has evolved
02:22:13,200 --> 02:22:15,720 as an immune response to those bad ideas,
02:22:15,720 --> 02:22:17,880 which is actually, if you think about it,
02:22:17,880 --> 02:22:19,200 kind of is a tough love, right?
02:22:19,200 --> 02:22:22,820 You don't want new entrance to the space to get lost
02:22:22,820 --> 02:22:26,200 in shit coin jungle and learn the hard way,
02:22:26,200 --> 02:22:28,120 the way many Bitcoin maximalists have
02:22:28,120 --> 02:22:31,400 that the real innovation is Bitcoin.
02:22:31,400 --> 02:22:36,400 But like an immune system, I think it can also go too far.
02:22:36,560 --> 02:22:40,920 And so I think it's useful when it is defending the space
02:22:40,920 --> 02:22:43,520 from false narratives, we might say,
02:22:43,520 --> 02:22:48,240 but it becomes detrimental when it's attacking people
02:22:48,240 --> 02:22:50,160 that are inquiring about Bitcoin
02:22:50,160 --> 02:22:52,320 or people that are approaching Bitcoin
02:22:52,320 --> 02:22:54,960 with a good spirit and good intention
02:22:54,960 --> 02:22:57,520 and a desire to learn.
02:22:57,520 --> 02:22:58,440 Because then at that point,
02:22:58,440 --> 02:23:01,760 it's actually impeding the free flow of ideas,
02:23:01,760 --> 02:23:04,620 which the example and your clip
02:23:04,620 --> 02:23:06,520 that was totally taken out of context.
02:23:06,520 --> 02:23:08,000 And then you're literally just saying,
02:23:08,000 --> 02:23:09,280 I'm here to learn and contribute.
02:23:09,280 --> 02:23:10,840 I think I've got some stuff to do.
02:23:10,840 --> 02:23:11,920 And then people attack that.
02:23:11,920 --> 02:23:13,960 Like that doesn't make any fucking sense.
02:23:13,960 --> 02:23:16,200 So you're attacking someone who's approaching it
02:23:16,200 --> 02:23:18,440 in a good spirit and asking questions.
02:23:18,440 --> 02:23:21,560 Yeah, and I think sometimes talking about it,
02:23:22,720 --> 02:23:25,640 the toxicity in the Bitcoin community as an immune response
02:23:25,640 --> 02:23:29,600 has a negative effect of giving it a pass
02:23:30,840 --> 02:23:33,800 because like it almost says, look,
02:23:33,800 --> 02:23:36,040 it equates it with the human immune system,
02:23:36,040 --> 02:23:38,720 which seems to do a really good job.
02:23:38,720 --> 02:23:42,600 And so you could say that the toxicity has a lot of features
02:23:42,600 --> 02:23:47,600 in the sea of fraudulent projects
02:23:47,880 --> 02:23:52,280 that steal money from people.
02:23:52,280 --> 02:23:55,840 It's really useful to make sure that you give people
02:23:55,840 --> 02:23:58,640 the harsh truth about who is and isn't a scammer.
02:24:00,120 --> 02:24:02,360 You have to take it apart,
02:24:02,360 --> 02:24:04,560 take it away from that metaphor of the immune system
02:24:04,560 --> 02:24:06,720 and look at basic human nature.
02:24:06,720 --> 02:24:09,280 And human nature can go to some dark places,
02:24:09,280 --> 02:24:14,200 which is, it's sad to say that some people,
02:24:15,320 --> 02:24:20,320 maybe many of us can enjoy for its own sake, the toxicity,
02:24:20,320 --> 02:24:23,360 the toxicity, the mockery, the derision.
02:24:23,360 --> 02:24:28,000 And you stop being part of the immune system
02:24:28,000 --> 02:24:31,080 that makes a successful idea propagate
02:24:31,080 --> 02:24:35,200 and start being a sort of a destructive virus yourself.
02:24:35,200 --> 02:24:37,760 And that's something I think about
02:24:37,760 --> 02:24:42,760 because I am new to this particular immune system,
02:24:43,200 --> 02:24:46,040 but I've explored other immune systems
02:24:46,040 --> 02:24:51,040 and I think you understand this world much better than me,
02:24:54,840 --> 02:24:57,760 but I tend to prefer sort of love
02:24:57,760 --> 02:25:00,320 as a mechanism for spreading ideas,
02:25:01,680 --> 02:25:06,200 to err on the side of love and kindness
02:25:06,200 --> 02:25:09,720 and almost like the open-mindedness in a way
02:25:09,720 --> 02:25:13,160 where you're constantly lowering yourself
02:25:13,160 --> 02:25:15,040 in the face of other ideas,
02:25:15,040 --> 02:25:16,840 constantly questioning yourself.
02:25:17,760 --> 02:25:22,760 But I think I understand that that might be more applicable
02:25:24,160 --> 02:25:25,120 in certain contexts,
02:25:25,120 --> 02:25:28,040 like maybe in the space of science or something like that.
02:25:28,040 --> 02:25:31,240 But in the space of Bitcoin, as it currently stands,
02:25:31,240 --> 02:25:33,160 there's so many people that are trying
02:25:33,160 --> 02:25:35,520 to scam others out of their money
02:25:35,520 --> 02:25:38,240 that the kind of harshness required is different.
02:25:39,080 --> 02:25:44,080 Nevertheless, I do want to put it on people like yourself
02:25:44,080 --> 02:25:47,200 and others who I know you wouldn't consider yourself this,
02:25:47,200 --> 02:25:50,400 but you're one of the faces or leaders in this space
02:25:50,400 --> 02:25:52,680 to call people out a little bit,
02:25:52,680 --> 02:25:56,280 to inspire them to be more loving, I suppose.
02:25:56,280 --> 02:25:57,120 But it's difficult
02:25:57,120 --> 02:25:59,400 because you want to walk that line carefully.
02:25:59,400 --> 02:26:02,400 You don't want to be too loving and open-minded.
02:26:02,400 --> 02:26:03,640 Otherwise your brain falls out.
02:26:03,640 --> 02:26:04,480 I get it.
02:26:04,480 --> 02:26:06,120 It's a difficult balance to walk.
02:26:06,120 --> 02:26:10,240 It is subtle and it's nuanced and it is difficult to walk.
02:26:10,240 --> 02:26:13,320 And I think that that's why I try to say tough love
02:26:13,320 --> 02:26:18,320 because when we're young, we may have certain ideas
02:26:18,320 --> 02:26:20,840 about how we, the way we want our life to go,
02:26:20,840 --> 02:26:22,200 but then maybe our parents
02:26:22,200 --> 02:26:24,560 are not letting us do certain things.
02:26:24,560 --> 02:26:26,560 And we think they're, I know when I was a kid,
02:26:26,560 --> 02:26:27,880 I wanted to get my, when I was in fifth grade,
02:26:27,880 --> 02:26:29,480 I wanted to get my ear pierced.
02:26:29,480 --> 02:26:30,840 My mom wouldn't let me do it.
02:26:30,840 --> 02:26:33,720 And I was, oh, come on, mom, I thought it was so cool.
02:26:33,720 --> 02:26:36,000 And then two years later, I'm like, thank you, mom,
02:26:36,000 --> 02:26:37,640 for letting me get my ear pierced.
02:26:37,640 --> 02:26:40,840 I think it comes from a place of good intention
02:26:40,840 --> 02:26:45,200 that they are actually, they have asked themselves
02:26:45,200 --> 02:26:46,040 that question, right?
02:26:46,040 --> 02:26:47,920 That they've been inquiring
02:26:47,920 --> 02:26:51,240 and why not this crypto asset or this crypto asset?
02:26:51,240 --> 02:26:52,640 And they've done the exploration.
02:26:52,640 --> 02:26:54,240 They keep coming back to Bitcoin
02:26:54,240 --> 02:26:57,000 and they've seen people being taken advantage of.
02:26:58,800 --> 02:27:03,160 But to your point, it's like, it can,
02:27:03,160 --> 02:27:06,080 this tough love can become detrimental,
02:27:06,080 --> 02:27:08,280 just like the immune system can become detrimental, right?
02:27:08,280 --> 02:27:11,760 It can overreact and it can actually harm the human body.
02:27:11,760 --> 02:27:15,560 So I would say that it's such a tricky and nuanced topic
02:27:15,560 --> 02:27:17,520 that even biology hasn't figured it out, right?
02:27:17,520 --> 02:27:19,360 A lot of people have autoimmune diseases.
02:27:21,360 --> 02:27:24,040 And then there's the other thing that we have this natural,
02:27:24,040 --> 02:27:25,160 I agree with you about love.
02:27:25,160 --> 02:27:28,040 I think love is like the deepest value.
02:27:28,040 --> 02:27:29,920 That's a whole nother philosophical thing,
02:27:29,920 --> 02:27:33,840 but it's, we're biologically programmed
02:27:33,840 --> 02:27:37,080 to pay more attention to things that are adversarial
02:27:37,080 --> 02:27:38,560 or harmful, right?
02:27:38,560 --> 02:27:41,120 That's part of the us protecting the meat suit,
02:27:41,120 --> 02:27:41,960 so to speak.
02:27:41,960 --> 02:27:46,960 So there is some maybe better delivery method
02:27:47,640 --> 02:27:50,600 by being a little bit toxic to really get the point across,
02:27:50,600 --> 02:27:53,200 like, hey, don't get lost over here.
02:27:53,200 --> 02:27:55,200 These things can hurt you.
02:27:55,200 --> 02:27:56,760 Really try to focus on Bitcoin,
02:27:56,760 --> 02:27:59,240 but the toxicity of that message,
02:27:59,240 --> 02:28:00,720 I guess it increases its ability
02:28:00,720 --> 02:28:03,760 to penetrate the individual, but it can also go too far.
02:28:03,760 --> 02:28:04,600 So it is-
02:28:04,600 --> 02:28:08,840 It's interesting, but I almost to push back a little bit,
02:28:08,840 --> 02:28:11,160 toxicity is a funny word.
02:28:11,160 --> 02:28:16,160 I think maybe another way to say it is I brought up
02:28:16,680 --> 02:28:21,040 like Christopher Hitchens is somebody who like, okay,
02:28:21,040 --> 02:28:23,720 you might say it's toxic or something like that,
02:28:23,720 --> 02:28:27,160 because he's basically a intellectual powerhouse
02:28:27,160 --> 02:28:28,800 who's also a troll.
02:28:28,800 --> 02:28:31,240 So he's constantly, it's like guerrilla warfare
02:28:31,240 --> 02:28:33,400 in the space of ideas.
02:28:33,400 --> 02:28:37,040 He's very harsh in his disagreements and criticisms,
02:28:37,040 --> 02:28:42,040 but it's done with incredible grace and skill and poetry.
02:28:42,320 --> 02:28:43,240 So-
02:28:43,240 --> 02:28:44,440 We could use more of that.
02:28:44,440 --> 02:28:45,800 We could use more of that.
02:28:45,800 --> 02:28:48,960 So toxicity just like,
02:28:52,520 --> 02:28:53,560 these are just words.
02:28:53,560 --> 02:28:55,200 They can mean a lot of different things,
02:28:55,200 --> 02:28:59,080 but disagreement doesn't have to be done with love,
02:28:59,920 --> 02:29:02,720 but it should be done with skill
02:29:02,720 --> 02:29:04,360 if it's to be effective.
02:29:04,360 --> 02:29:08,440 So there's a lot of ways to be effective in guerrilla warfare,
02:29:08,440 --> 02:29:10,160 but you want to learn how to shoot
02:29:10,160 --> 02:29:12,840 or whatever the weapon you're using and to do it well.
02:29:12,840 --> 02:29:14,560 Some people do better than others,
02:29:14,560 --> 02:29:17,800 and it's worthwhile to learn to do it well.
02:29:17,800 --> 02:29:20,120 Again, I prefer love, but even love,
02:29:21,200 --> 02:29:25,400 just because you think you're communicating a good idea
02:29:25,400 --> 02:29:26,720 and you very well may be,
02:29:26,720 --> 02:29:28,840 doesn't mean it also doesn't require skill
02:29:28,840 --> 02:29:30,280 to do the communication well.
02:29:30,280 --> 02:29:33,240 Whether it's disagreement and harsh
02:29:33,240 --> 02:29:36,880 or more agreement and loving and so on.
02:29:36,880 --> 02:29:39,880 Yeah, I think very fundamentally
02:29:39,880 --> 02:29:42,160 that all of our decisions,
02:29:42,160 --> 02:29:43,440 you know, we alluded to earlier
02:29:43,440 --> 02:29:45,840 that every decision is an expression of value,
02:29:45,840 --> 02:29:47,160 or every action we take.
02:29:47,160 --> 02:29:49,440 They ultimately come from fear or love.
02:29:49,440 --> 02:29:53,720 Fear would be something much more in the biological domain
02:29:53,720 --> 02:29:56,880 where it's like we're trying to protect ego.
02:29:56,880 --> 02:29:58,480 We're trying to behave selfishly.
02:29:58,480 --> 02:30:01,360 This is the domain of sin, you know?
02:30:01,360 --> 02:30:03,080 I don't know all the sins, gluttony, greed,
02:30:03,080 --> 02:30:05,200 sloth, wrath, lust, pride, envy.
02:30:05,200 --> 02:30:07,720 Like these are all selfish behaviors.
02:30:07,720 --> 02:30:10,960 Whereas something like love is much,
02:30:10,960 --> 02:30:14,520 it's morally superior in that it's more selfless.
02:30:14,520 --> 02:30:16,400 I don't know that we can properly define love
02:30:16,400 --> 02:30:18,520 with words at all, but I would say maybe like
02:30:18,520 --> 02:30:22,720 selfless action could be kind of a generalization of it.
02:30:22,720 --> 02:30:25,680 And that way it is really hard to your point.
02:30:25,680 --> 02:30:30,440 It's hard to love in a world
02:30:30,440 --> 02:30:34,680 that has a lot of conflict that might make you fearful
02:30:34,680 --> 02:30:36,240 if you're really focused on your meat suit.
02:30:36,240 --> 02:30:37,960 But if you're focused on the bigger picture
02:30:37,960 --> 02:30:41,120 and you're focused on others and legacy and life,
02:30:41,120 --> 02:30:43,240 that there is a way to do it.
02:30:43,240 --> 02:30:45,040 And that's why I actually think Christ,
02:30:45,040 --> 02:30:46,800 that is the highest moral aim, right?
02:30:46,800 --> 02:30:50,240 He met all of the vitriol in life, you know,
02:30:50,240 --> 02:30:54,000 betrayal, hate, violence, he met it all with love
02:30:54,000 --> 02:30:55,920 and he met it with compassion.
02:30:55,920 --> 02:30:58,440 And that's why, like, regardless of if you believe
02:30:58,440 --> 02:31:01,040 that he actually lived or any of this,
02:31:01,040 --> 02:31:06,040 he is symbolic of the highest moral consciousness possible.
02:31:07,720 --> 02:31:10,240 And, you know, Carl Jung would say that
02:31:10,240 --> 02:31:14,520 that was a suitable alternative to psychoanalysis,
02:31:14,520 --> 02:31:17,000 was actually setting your moral aim higher
02:31:17,000 --> 02:31:19,200 and striving towards it diligently.
02:31:19,200 --> 02:31:22,440 So, I mean, I agree completely.
02:31:22,440 --> 02:31:24,960 We need more of that in the Bitcoin space.
02:31:24,960 --> 02:31:26,440 We need more of that in the world, frankly.
02:31:26,440 --> 02:31:27,440 In the world, yeah.
02:31:28,840 --> 02:31:31,960 And these things, they're all intertwined, you know.
02:31:31,960 --> 02:31:34,320 We touched on the beginning, all of us get to decide,
02:31:34,320 --> 02:31:36,320 but the world does influence kind of
02:31:36,320 --> 02:31:38,080 if we adopt fear or love.
02:31:39,960 --> 02:31:42,200 But it takes, I don't know, it takes good systems
02:31:42,200 --> 02:31:45,520 and it takes, I guess, good leaders to set an example.
02:31:45,520 --> 02:31:48,920 Yeah, I do believe that there's like individual people
02:31:48,920 --> 02:31:50,720 can have a ripple effect.
02:31:50,720 --> 02:31:53,480 That's what I try to do, sort of embody the,
02:31:53,480 --> 02:31:55,040 I'm just one ant.
02:31:55,040 --> 02:31:57,520 But one of the things I have faith in
02:31:57,520 --> 02:32:02,360 is I'm trying to do that more.
02:32:03,360 --> 02:32:04,680 I know this is a podcast,
02:32:04,680 --> 02:32:07,960 but I'm trying to do less talking and more doing.
02:32:10,920 --> 02:32:13,320 I've been disappointed in myself, if I'm being honest,
02:32:13,320 --> 02:32:16,000 how much talking I've been doing, you know,
02:32:16,000 --> 02:32:20,200 as opposed to, like in my own private life,
02:32:20,200 --> 02:32:22,160 I live the thing I talk about,
02:32:22,160 --> 02:32:26,200 but I also haven't created much, you know.
02:32:26,200 --> 02:32:30,720 And I believe in the power of individuals that create stuff,
02:32:30,720 --> 02:32:33,520 like create an idea through those individuals
02:32:33,520 --> 02:32:35,760 that try to create something new, the world progresses.
02:32:35,760 --> 02:32:37,160 And hopefully there's more and more,
02:32:37,160 --> 02:32:39,320 more and more of those people.
02:32:39,320 --> 02:32:41,640 So you mentioned kind of people who,
02:32:42,600 --> 02:32:45,080 what the Bitcoin community might call scammers.
02:32:45,080 --> 02:32:50,080 I have a lot of passions in my life
02:32:50,480 --> 02:32:52,760 that I focus a lot of my attention to.
02:32:53,840 --> 02:32:58,840 You know, Bitcoin doesn't happen to be yet one of them.
02:32:59,840 --> 02:33:01,560 Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, you know.
02:33:01,560 --> 02:33:06,560 I'm always looking for things to really fall in love with.
02:33:08,520 --> 02:33:12,880 So how is a person like me supposed to figure out,
02:33:12,880 --> 02:33:16,320 I also happen to have a platform a little bit,
02:33:16,320 --> 02:33:21,320 and how am I supposed to figure out who is interesting,
02:33:21,480 --> 02:33:25,080 what is an interesting set of ideas and what are not?
02:33:25,080 --> 02:33:27,040 Because people are financially tied
02:33:27,040 --> 02:33:28,680 into a lot of the cryptocurrencies
02:33:28,680 --> 02:33:32,040 that we're talking about, certainly with Bitcoin,
02:33:32,040 --> 02:33:35,360 you know, their livelihood, their wellbeing is tied up to it.
02:33:35,360 --> 02:33:37,960 So it becomes much more emotional, much more personal.
02:33:37,960 --> 02:33:41,520 It's no longer purely an exploration of ideas.
02:33:41,520 --> 02:33:44,080 It's really almost like a threat on your property.
02:33:44,080 --> 02:33:45,960 Like it's a personal threat.
02:33:45,960 --> 02:33:47,960 It makes it very difficult to explore those ideas.
02:33:47,960 --> 02:33:50,440 So I understand it, but it makes it very difficult
02:33:50,440 --> 02:33:55,440 for somebody like me to just walk in and be curious.
02:33:55,600 --> 02:33:59,720 So how do I proceed in this difficult world
02:33:59,720 --> 02:34:01,200 in exploring this landscape
02:34:02,280 --> 02:34:07,280 and not give a platform to ideas that may harm others?
02:34:07,280 --> 02:34:12,280 I guess first I'd like to commend your forthrightness
02:34:12,280 --> 02:34:14,520 about this, because I don't think many people
02:34:14,520 --> 02:34:16,480 try to walk that line necessarily.
02:34:16,480 --> 02:34:20,000 People, again, kind of the territorial imperative,
02:34:20,000 --> 02:34:23,200 they'll put whoever on, they'll help expand their reach.
02:34:23,200 --> 02:34:24,520 Oh yeah, that's true.
02:34:24,520 --> 02:34:26,920 Or say whatever needs to be said to expand their reach.
02:34:26,920 --> 02:34:29,720 So I think you're coming from a good place, I'll say that.
02:34:31,040 --> 02:34:34,720 There's a great piece written on the topic of scammers
02:34:34,720 --> 02:34:37,640 and scamming, I think it was by Goldstein.
02:34:37,640 --> 02:34:39,920 He wrote a piece called, Everyone's a Scammer.
02:34:39,920 --> 02:34:43,720 And it's sort of back to this general human proclivity
02:34:43,720 --> 02:34:46,000 to try and get something for nothing always.
02:34:46,000 --> 02:34:49,280 Which again, it can be positive, it can be innovative,
02:34:49,280 --> 02:34:50,280 or it can be negative.
02:34:50,280 --> 02:34:52,280 It can be trying to steal from people.
02:34:55,480 --> 02:34:59,040 I think that's a useful piece just to kind of see
02:34:59,040 --> 02:35:00,760 the crypto world through that lens.
02:35:00,760 --> 02:35:03,600 And that's how Bitcoiners are able to do that.
02:35:03,600 --> 02:35:06,400 That's how Bitcoiners are thinking all the time.
02:35:06,400 --> 02:35:09,240 They are by nature adversarial thinkers.
02:35:09,240 --> 02:35:12,120 So they're trying to minimize the need for trust
02:35:12,120 --> 02:35:14,920 in any situation and maximize verification.
02:35:17,200 --> 02:35:21,480 As far as sifting through the ideas,
02:35:21,480 --> 02:35:26,400 I guess this is back where the cultural immune system
02:35:26,400 --> 02:35:28,480 has some utility.
02:35:28,480 --> 02:35:30,680 Because there were times when I thought
02:35:30,680 --> 02:35:34,200 this particular crypto asset, Augur was one
02:35:34,200 --> 02:35:36,400 I was really into, that it could facilitate
02:35:36,400 --> 02:35:38,080 prediction markets and prediction markets
02:35:38,080 --> 02:35:41,720 could make markets more efficient, et cetera, et cetera.
02:35:41,720 --> 02:35:46,000 But when that investment thesis basically met
02:35:46,000 --> 02:35:49,600 the cultural filter or immune system,
02:35:49,600 --> 02:35:51,800 it forced me to reevaluate my position,
02:35:51,800 --> 02:35:54,320 forced me to really look into it more deeply.
02:35:54,320 --> 02:35:57,360 And through that exploration, I realized that it would need
02:35:57,360 --> 02:36:00,040 to be built on Bitcoin to work basically.
02:36:00,040 --> 02:36:02,760 So, but it really comes down to like you doing
02:36:02,760 --> 02:36:06,000 your homework, but we can't all deeply evaluate
02:36:06,000 --> 02:36:08,120 every idea out there, right?
02:36:08,120 --> 02:36:11,520 One of the things I struggle with is Alex Jones,
02:36:11,520 --> 02:36:13,800 for example, had dinner with him.
02:36:16,520 --> 02:36:19,120 I could tell that would be a very fun conversation,
02:36:19,120 --> 02:36:22,920 but like then I also understand that there's
02:36:24,200 --> 02:36:27,880 like consequences to that conversation
02:36:27,880 --> 02:36:30,760 that should be explored with care.
02:36:30,760 --> 02:36:34,120 And so you need to take on the responsibility
02:36:34,120 --> 02:36:35,840 of being a chef or the puffer fish
02:36:35,840 --> 02:36:37,600 and all those kinds of things.
02:36:37,600 --> 02:36:39,600 That said, just like you said,
02:36:39,600 --> 02:36:42,120 it's very difficult to know this ahead of time
02:36:43,400 --> 02:36:46,680 and I will probably make mistakes.
02:36:46,680 --> 02:36:49,920 And that's a shitty thing to have to live with
02:36:49,920 --> 02:36:51,320 that I'm going to make mistakes
02:36:51,320 --> 02:36:52,960 and some of them very large.
02:36:52,960 --> 02:36:57,600 Like, yeah, I mean, I can imagine a bunch of different ways
02:36:57,600 --> 02:36:59,120 but all we can do in this world
02:36:59,120 --> 02:37:00,920 is once we make the mistakes,
02:37:00,920 --> 02:37:02,360 we acknowledge those mistakes.
02:37:02,360 --> 02:37:04,120 Yes, learn.
02:37:04,120 --> 02:37:05,040 And learn.
02:37:05,040 --> 02:37:09,760 And also, I have to put this on the rest of us
02:37:09,760 --> 02:37:14,760 that you don't take one thing that a person did
02:37:15,280 --> 02:37:17,880 and then burn them at the stake for it.
02:37:17,880 --> 02:37:20,640 That you realize that we all make mistakes
02:37:20,640 --> 02:37:23,280 that a particular mistake does not make the person.
02:37:23,280 --> 02:37:27,680 And this applies to taking stuff out of context
02:37:27,680 --> 02:37:30,680 over hundreds of hours of talking,
02:37:30,680 --> 02:37:35,680 but it applies to actual, in context, big mistake.
02:37:37,440 --> 02:37:39,280 So what if I murdered somebody at some point?
02:37:39,280 --> 02:37:40,120 Just give me a break.
02:37:40,120 --> 02:37:42,400 No, there are some things that are too far, of course,
02:37:42,400 --> 02:37:47,160 but in general, we need to give each other a chance.
02:37:47,160 --> 02:37:48,600 Yeah, but I'm still,
02:37:50,480 --> 02:37:52,000 I walk with a heavy heart
02:37:52,000 --> 02:37:54,200 knowing that I'll probably make a mistake,
02:37:54,200 --> 02:37:56,600 especially one that I didn't mean to.
02:37:56,600 --> 02:37:58,360 That's the one that worries me most.
02:37:58,360 --> 02:38:00,000 Well, this is human nature.
02:38:00,000 --> 02:38:03,960 Like, hamartia, to miss the mark,
02:38:03,960 --> 02:38:05,520 that's the root word of sin.
02:38:05,520 --> 02:38:07,320 We are sinful by nature.
02:38:07,320 --> 02:38:08,360 We can't help it.
02:38:08,360 --> 02:38:11,040 There's no way, again, pain is information, right?
02:38:11,040 --> 02:38:14,580 There's no way to learn other than trying, failing,
02:38:15,480 --> 02:38:19,640 learning, and then you put yourself in better formation,
02:38:19,640 --> 02:38:22,920 right, in formation to better deal with it next time.
02:38:22,920 --> 02:38:26,360 So I hope, I don't get the sense
02:38:26,360 --> 02:38:30,440 that you're actually afraid of making a misstep.
02:38:30,440 --> 02:38:35,080 Like, I think you're just maybe disappointed,
02:38:35,080 --> 02:38:35,920 is a better word.
02:38:35,920 --> 02:38:36,920 Like, you know you're gonna make the mistakes.
02:38:36,920 --> 02:38:39,400 Yeah, that's exactly, that's a much, much better word.
02:38:39,400 --> 02:38:41,120 But we have to embrace that.
02:38:41,120 --> 02:38:41,960 That's the only way anything,
02:38:41,960 --> 02:38:43,920 that's the only way we can advance,
02:38:43,920 --> 02:38:46,720 is that we're dealing with an incomprehensible reality.
02:38:46,720 --> 02:38:48,520 All we can do is throw spaghetti at the wall
02:38:48,520 --> 02:38:49,800 and see what sticks.
02:38:49,800 --> 02:38:50,640 Yeah.
02:38:50,640 --> 02:38:53,080 And in that process, we're all inherently gonna hurt
02:38:53,080 --> 02:38:54,160 ourselves and hurt others,
02:38:54,160 --> 02:38:57,800 and that's where love and forgiveness come into play, right?
02:38:57,800 --> 02:39:02,600 And yeah, I think the other thing is that this culture
02:39:02,600 --> 02:39:05,440 of reducing people down to a label, right?
02:39:05,440 --> 02:39:07,840 Whether it's racism or whether you're calling them a scammer
02:39:07,840 --> 02:39:11,120 or any number of terms,
02:39:11,120 --> 02:39:14,840 you're discounting their sovereignty to zero, right?
02:39:14,840 --> 02:39:19,040 You're taking a super complex human that is vast,
02:39:19,040 --> 02:39:21,960 contains multitudes, is changing over time,
02:39:21,960 --> 02:39:24,560 and you're trying to put them in a bucket of a word.
02:39:25,680 --> 02:39:28,760 And that is just, I think, a cognitive fallacy.
02:39:28,760 --> 02:39:31,200 Like, it's not only gonna hurt the person that you're,
02:39:31,200 --> 02:39:33,040 you know, winnowing down to a word,
02:39:33,040 --> 02:39:34,480 it's also gonna hurt you.
02:39:34,480 --> 02:39:38,920 And it's gonna, in your attempt to decomplexify reality
02:39:38,920 --> 02:39:40,320 by assigning this person to a term,
02:39:40,320 --> 02:39:42,960 you're actually gonna create bad outcomes for yourself
02:39:42,960 --> 02:39:45,240 because you're not gonna understand that person.
02:39:45,240 --> 02:39:46,920 I do also think there's a failure
02:39:46,920 --> 02:39:50,680 of our social media technology that incentivizes
02:39:50,680 --> 02:39:53,160 that kind of reduction to a label.
02:39:53,160 --> 02:39:56,840 It's just the viral nature of that reduction.
02:39:56,840 --> 02:39:59,440 So not only do we humans naturally do that,
02:40:01,160 --> 02:40:06,160 our social media platforms make that easier, more fun,
02:40:07,280 --> 02:40:11,360 more effective to do that at scale, the mass hysteria.
02:40:11,360 --> 02:40:15,600 So I think there's actually, like, technological ways
02:40:15,600 --> 02:40:18,200 of adding friction to that.
02:40:18,200 --> 02:40:20,280 Yeah, I wonder, I mean, I agree with you
02:40:20,280 --> 02:40:22,840 that it's social media is an amplifier
02:40:22,840 --> 02:40:25,880 to our natural, this natural way
02:40:25,880 --> 02:40:27,200 of dealing with one another.
02:40:27,200 --> 02:40:30,520 But I wonder, and my thinking has evolved a lot on this,
02:40:30,520 --> 02:40:32,680 that there's something below the way
02:40:32,680 --> 02:40:35,160 we're treating each other too, right?
02:40:35,160 --> 02:40:37,840 We could say civilization sort of advances
02:40:37,840 --> 02:40:40,120 in the tools we make and the way we treat each other.
02:40:40,120 --> 02:40:42,800 We tend to have better tools, better quality of life,
02:40:42,800 --> 02:40:46,280 and better morality, better quality of living
02:40:46,280 --> 02:40:49,200 and ways of dealing with one another.
02:40:49,200 --> 02:40:53,600 And I think that when you corrupt the money,
02:40:53,600 --> 02:40:56,600 that it really does push us the negative direction,
02:40:56,600 --> 02:41:01,600 pushes us away from, again, encouraging
02:41:02,320 --> 02:41:05,600 or amplifying scarcity artificially
02:41:05,600 --> 02:41:07,520 causes us to be more divisive.
02:41:07,520 --> 02:41:08,720 When things are more divisive,
02:41:08,720 --> 02:41:11,640 we tend to be less civilized, less nuanced,
02:41:11,640 --> 02:41:14,520 more black or white, or this or that,
02:41:14,520 --> 02:41:17,960 or you're this, or you're label A or label B.
02:41:17,960 --> 02:41:20,640 So I really think, and this is a harder one to unravel,
02:41:20,640 --> 02:41:24,000 but I think if we can fix the money, right,
02:41:24,000 --> 02:41:26,920 which again is the base layer operating system
02:41:26,920 --> 02:41:29,240 for human moral action in the world,
02:41:30,240 --> 02:41:32,560 that it has downstream effects.
02:41:32,560 --> 02:41:34,440 So we'd actually maybe start to treat each other
02:41:34,440 --> 02:41:36,320 a little better on social media,
02:41:36,320 --> 02:41:41,200 despite the fact that it enables this faster communication.
02:41:41,200 --> 02:41:42,040 That's interesting.
02:41:42,040 --> 02:41:46,560 So perhaps fixing social media, as I've been thinking about,
02:41:46,560 --> 02:41:49,600 is treating the symptom, not the cause.
02:41:49,600 --> 02:41:52,840 Yeah, that is the Bitcoin rabbit hole in a nutshell,
02:41:52,840 --> 02:41:55,000 is that they say fix the money, fix the world.
02:41:55,000 --> 02:41:58,800 You keep tracing these different social malaises
02:41:58,800 --> 02:42:03,800 or technological difficulties, lack of innovation.
02:42:03,840 --> 02:42:06,160 Weinstein's entire Portal podcast,
02:42:06,160 --> 02:42:08,560 something went wrong in the early 70s.
02:42:08,560 --> 02:42:11,200 We went off the gold standard in 1971.
02:42:11,200 --> 02:42:16,000 And there's a great website, wtfhappat1971.com,
02:42:16,000 --> 02:42:18,400 goes through this whole gamut of socioeconomic data
02:42:18,400 --> 02:42:22,880 that's completely gone askew since the early 70s.
02:42:22,880 --> 02:42:24,560 Yeah, you had this whole video.
02:42:24,560 --> 02:42:28,520 What do you think about Eric Weinstein and Bitcoin
02:42:29,480 --> 02:42:31,600 and the gold standard?
02:42:31,600 --> 02:42:35,600 Does he, I actually haven't heard him talk about his thesis
02:42:35,600 --> 02:42:38,160 about the 70s in connection
02:42:38,160 --> 02:42:42,080 to the going off of the gold standard.
02:42:42,080 --> 02:42:43,560 Yeah, what are your thoughts there?
02:42:43,560 --> 02:42:46,080 What are your thoughts about his general relationship
02:42:46,080 --> 02:42:49,760 with the Bitcoin idea and the community?
02:42:49,760 --> 02:42:52,940 Yeah, the first exposure I had to Eric was his,
02:42:52,940 --> 02:42:55,440 I think it was his first episode with Peter Thiel.
02:42:55,440 --> 02:42:57,120 And they're going through that thesis
02:42:57,120 --> 02:43:00,980 that there's been this general institutional rot
02:43:00,980 --> 02:43:03,880 and suppression of innovation since the early 70s.
02:43:03,880 --> 02:43:06,000 And he's trying to identify what it is.
02:43:06,000 --> 02:43:08,120 I don't think they ever pended on the money
02:43:09,320 --> 02:43:11,300 on going off the gold standard.
02:43:11,300 --> 02:43:14,640 But in recent interactions with Eric,
02:43:14,640 --> 02:43:16,680 I've interacted with him on Clubhouse.
02:43:17,560 --> 02:43:19,960 We recently released an episode of the show
02:43:19,960 --> 02:43:22,080 I did with Chris Espley,
02:43:22,080 --> 02:43:24,320 and it was titled Dear Eric Weinstein.
02:43:24,320 --> 02:43:26,800 So we're going through his worldview
02:43:26,800 --> 02:43:28,000 that he's expressed in the portal
02:43:28,000 --> 02:43:31,800 and tying it back to the money in different ways.
02:43:31,800 --> 02:43:33,360 And he's been, he's engaged.
02:43:33,360 --> 02:43:35,240 Eric retweeted the show.
02:43:35,240 --> 02:43:36,760 We've exchanged some messages.
02:43:36,760 --> 02:43:38,380 He's been very open-minded.
02:43:38,380 --> 02:43:40,460 He's asked some really good questions.
02:43:40,460 --> 02:43:42,680 So I get the sense that he's approaching this
02:43:43,740 --> 02:43:45,960 very wholeheartedly.
02:43:45,960 --> 02:43:48,960 He does bring with him his existing worldview
02:43:48,960 --> 02:43:50,280 and his existing theory.
02:43:50,280 --> 02:43:52,160 The one that really blew up was gauge theory.
02:43:52,160 --> 02:43:53,360 They got really popular.
02:43:53,360 --> 02:43:54,880 I don't know a lot about gauge theory.
02:43:54,880 --> 02:43:56,720 I actually messaged Eric and said,
02:43:56,720 --> 02:43:58,160 I want to learn more genuinely,
02:43:58,160 --> 02:44:01,320 because he seems to be serious
02:44:01,320 --> 02:44:04,000 that that needs to be considered in the sphere of money.
02:44:04,000 --> 02:44:05,840 And so I want to learn more about it.
02:44:06,840 --> 02:44:08,260 But I think overall it's great.
02:44:08,260 --> 02:44:10,900 It's great to see an intellectual heavyweight
02:44:10,900 --> 02:44:13,740 of his caliber gravitating towards Bitcoin.
02:44:14,760 --> 02:44:19,000 Yeah, he has some gauge theoretic conceptions
02:44:19,000 --> 02:44:23,920 about the world broadly, but also about economics,
02:44:23,920 --> 02:44:27,200 which ultimately boils down to just a set of mathematics,
02:44:27,200 --> 02:44:30,760 which allows you to more effectively reason about the world.
02:44:30,760 --> 02:44:32,780 And he has a certain set of views there.
02:44:33,720 --> 02:44:37,160 So it's fascinating to see him grapple with it.
02:44:37,160 --> 02:44:42,160 I think he's also kind of actually kind of like all of us,
02:44:42,400 --> 02:44:45,840 grappling with the idea of what is Bitcoin in this world.
02:44:45,840 --> 02:44:47,720 It's a very young technology,
02:44:47,720 --> 02:44:52,720 and it's unclear exactly how the ideas of the past
02:44:52,880 --> 02:44:57,520 fit with it and integrate, how the two integrate together.
02:44:57,520 --> 02:44:59,920 And so it's interesting to explore,
02:44:59,920 --> 02:45:01,480 not just Bitcoin in particular.
02:45:01,480 --> 02:45:06,480 So for me, what I've always saw Bitcoin as
02:45:06,880 --> 02:45:11,120 from the beginning, from a narrow worldview
02:45:11,120 --> 02:45:14,560 is computer science, which is where I come from.
02:45:14,560 --> 02:45:16,800 And so I wasn't almost aware
02:45:16,800 --> 02:45:21,680 in the social, political, financial aspects of Bitcoin.
02:45:21,680 --> 02:45:26,480 But now I see that there's not just power,
02:45:26,480 --> 02:45:29,960 but there's fascinating ideas to explore on that side
02:45:29,960 --> 02:45:31,560 of things, not just the computer science,
02:45:31,560 --> 02:45:35,520 not just the technical details, but the political,
02:45:35,520 --> 02:45:38,640 the socioeconomic, the philosophical.
02:45:39,640 --> 02:45:43,040 That's where I find all the fascination in the world,
02:45:43,040 --> 02:45:43,880 frankly.
02:45:45,240 --> 02:45:49,560 One other thing about Weinstein and intellectuals
02:45:49,560 --> 02:45:52,360 more generally that are skeptical of Bitcoin,
02:45:52,360 --> 02:45:54,380 I would challenge them to read the book,
02:45:54,380 --> 02:45:57,520 Human Action, written by Mises.
02:45:57,520 --> 02:46:00,320 I think in 1949, he published the English version.
02:46:01,420 --> 02:46:04,860 It's essentially the Bible of Austrian economics.
02:46:04,860 --> 02:46:09,660 And I think Austrian economics is a noticeable gap
02:46:09,660 --> 02:46:13,800 in most modern intellectuals' worldviews,
02:46:13,800 --> 02:46:15,280 that it's not taught in school.
02:46:15,280 --> 02:46:17,600 I mean, I have a master's degree in accounting and finance,
02:46:17,600 --> 02:46:19,300 studied a lot of economics in school.
02:46:19,300 --> 02:46:21,400 There's not one peep of Austrian econ.
02:46:21,400 --> 02:46:26,400 The least we'd love talking about all the degrees he has.
02:46:26,520 --> 02:46:28,720 I was a CPA, all these things.
02:46:30,280 --> 02:46:35,280 But that curriculum that we get in college
02:46:35,580 --> 02:46:38,720 is noticeably deficient in Austrian economics.
02:46:38,720 --> 02:46:40,520 And I think there's a reason why, right?
02:46:40,520 --> 02:46:43,320 It's heavily government-influenced.
02:46:45,240 --> 02:46:46,680 Again, master's degree in accounting,
02:46:46,680 --> 02:46:48,720 they never taught me about what money is
02:46:48,720 --> 02:46:50,040 or where money comes from.
02:46:50,040 --> 02:46:53,840 All you learn is that the central bank issues money
02:46:53,840 --> 02:46:56,040 and the central bank takes money away.
02:46:56,040 --> 02:46:58,820 So it's conceived of in the textbooks
02:46:58,820 --> 02:47:00,600 quite literally as God, right?
02:47:00,600 --> 02:47:03,760 An entity that suffers no opportunity cost,
02:47:03,760 --> 02:47:06,840 that basically is the foundation
02:47:06,840 --> 02:47:09,120 of the entire Keynesian worldview
02:47:09,120 --> 02:47:10,940 that you're taught in economics.
02:47:10,940 --> 02:47:14,880 And Austrian economics is the opposite end
02:47:14,880 --> 02:47:16,120 of the spectrum of that, right?
02:47:16,120 --> 02:47:18,460 It's actually the culmination,
02:47:18,460 --> 02:47:20,780 which economics is the youngest science in the world,
02:47:20,780 --> 02:47:21,620 by the way.
02:47:21,620 --> 02:47:25,000 So it is kind of the front,
02:47:25,000 --> 02:47:27,040 it's the frontiers of science in many ways,
02:47:27,040 --> 02:47:29,520 like to actually, when I say praxeology,
02:47:29,520 --> 02:47:31,320 many people have never even heard of that.
02:47:31,320 --> 02:47:35,880 But it's something, it's an a priori study
02:47:35,880 --> 02:47:37,400 equivalent to something like mathematics,
02:47:37,400 --> 02:47:39,600 that you're building things from first principles
02:47:39,600 --> 02:47:42,440 to reason about economic reality.
02:47:42,440 --> 02:47:46,420 And I think that book, it's a very difficult book
02:47:46,420 --> 02:47:49,840 written by Mises, 1200 pages, translated from German.
02:47:49,840 --> 02:47:52,880 The way he wields English is fascinating and terrifying
02:47:52,880 --> 02:47:54,000 all at the same time.
02:47:54,960 --> 02:47:56,560 It'd probably take you six months to read it
02:47:56,560 --> 02:47:58,120 if you read it daily, seriously.
02:47:58,120 --> 02:48:00,500 Like it's a beast of a book.
02:48:00,500 --> 02:48:04,420 But that will plug the gap, I think in most,
02:48:04,420 --> 02:48:06,160 any intellectual that's skeptical about Bitcoin,
02:48:06,160 --> 02:48:07,400 I think that will plug the gap
02:48:07,400 --> 02:48:10,380 that's necessary for you to see it in a new light.
02:48:10,380 --> 02:48:12,640 Well, I'll take that as a challenge.
02:48:12,640 --> 02:48:14,480 Now that we took a little bit of a break,
02:48:14,480 --> 02:48:16,520 ate some good Texas brisket, thank you for that,
02:48:16,520 --> 02:48:17,720 by the way, for passing over.
02:48:17,720 --> 02:48:18,920 Quite welcome.
02:48:18,920 --> 02:48:21,600 Let me ask the ridiculous question.
02:48:21,600 --> 02:48:25,480 At the core of the idea of Bitcoin is this guy
02:48:25,480 --> 02:48:28,400 or this entity named Satoshi Nakamoto.
02:48:28,400 --> 02:48:32,280 So the ridiculous question is who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
02:48:32,280 --> 02:48:33,800 And first of all, is it you?
02:48:35,160 --> 02:48:36,000 It's not me.
02:48:37,460 --> 02:48:38,300 I wish.
02:48:38,300 --> 02:48:41,800 And is this an interesting question?
02:48:41,800 --> 02:48:43,500 Or is it just something about our human nature
02:48:43,500 --> 02:48:47,160 that wants to, that always tends towards mystery?
02:48:47,160 --> 02:48:50,620 Well, as we've touched on a bit today,
02:48:51,640 --> 02:48:53,820 you know, mythology, in my opinion,
02:48:53,820 --> 02:48:57,400 is something that is intrinsic to how we see the world
02:48:57,400 --> 02:48:58,240 in a lot of ways.
02:48:58,240 --> 02:49:00,800 Like it's how, it's kind of the structure
02:49:02,240 --> 02:49:04,440 by which we build these useful fictions.
02:49:05,480 --> 02:49:08,280 And so in that way, you could just say that
02:49:08,280 --> 02:49:11,840 Satoshi is the godhead of Bitcoin, effectively.
02:49:11,840 --> 02:49:15,560 And I think a compelling argument could be made
02:49:15,560 --> 02:49:18,040 that his disappearance is what really solidifies
02:49:18,040 --> 02:49:20,160 Bitcoin's decentralization.
02:49:20,160 --> 02:49:25,160 Because if there were one individual to personally vilify
02:49:25,440 --> 02:49:30,380 or denigrate or attack, you know, to disparage
02:49:30,380 --> 02:49:33,560 or question the motives of, you know,
02:49:33,560 --> 02:49:37,780 if he's out on the Hollywood Hills partying,
02:49:37,780 --> 02:49:40,520 everyone knows he's got a million Bitcoin, you know,
02:49:40,520 --> 02:49:43,520 it would just kind of tarnish the entire project
02:49:43,520 --> 02:49:44,360 in a lot of ways.
02:49:44,360 --> 02:49:48,140 But the fact that on that theme, something for nothing,
02:49:48,140 --> 02:49:51,160 this guy actually gave humanity something for nothing.
02:49:51,160 --> 02:49:56,160 And it appears that he didn't profit in any way.
02:49:56,800 --> 02:49:58,260 He, she, or they.
02:49:59,440 --> 02:50:01,840 I actually heard recently that he identified as a he
02:50:01,840 --> 02:50:03,120 in some of his communications.
02:50:03,120 --> 02:50:04,740 So it sounds like it is a he.
02:50:04,740 --> 02:50:09,740 So like his communication is being like studied,
02:50:11,100 --> 02:50:14,500 like almost like exactly as if he is a religious.
02:50:14,500 --> 02:50:15,600 That's right.
02:50:15,600 --> 02:50:16,640 Like a prophet.
02:50:18,460 --> 02:50:23,460 It's fascinating to imagine that he's still alive
02:50:24,440 --> 02:50:27,300 and living in this world.
02:50:27,300 --> 02:50:29,180 And it's even more fascinating to imagine
02:50:29,180 --> 02:50:32,260 that he's perhaps participating in the Bitcoin community
02:50:32,260 --> 02:50:36,820 because I mean, that takes a special human being
02:50:36,820 --> 02:50:41,460 to out of principle do that, to do, to remain anonymous.
02:50:41,460 --> 02:50:43,500 That's very much the George Washington.
02:50:43,500 --> 02:50:46,500 I always wonder like how many people are like that?
02:50:46,500 --> 02:50:48,920 There's a cliche that like absolute power corrupts,
02:50:48,920 --> 02:50:51,420 absolutely, like power corrupts.
02:50:51,420 --> 02:50:55,020 But it seems like the progress of humanity depends
02:50:55,020 --> 02:50:57,940 on the people whom power doesn't corrupt.
02:50:57,940 --> 02:51:02,780 And it's enough to have just a small selection of those.
02:51:04,380 --> 02:51:09,380 And even if most of us are too weak, we're given to power.
02:51:09,540 --> 02:51:14,060 If given the chance, all it takes is a few.
02:51:14,060 --> 02:51:15,580 That's, I've never thought of it like that,
02:51:15,580 --> 02:51:18,340 but Marcus Aurelius immediately came to mind.
02:51:18,340 --> 02:51:21,820 You know, the guy that he had the keys to the kingdom
02:51:21,820 --> 02:51:26,320 and he apparently adhered to the stoic virtues
02:51:26,320 --> 02:51:30,140 until the end, but yeah, I agree with Satoshi.
02:51:30,140 --> 02:51:35,140 The other thing that's interesting is he would be by far
02:51:35,500 --> 02:51:39,980 the most wealthy person in the world on a liquid asset basis
02:51:39,980 --> 02:51:42,220 because he has a million Bitcoin,
02:51:42,220 --> 02:51:47,220 which is 60 billion liquid net worth at current prices.
02:51:47,860 --> 02:51:51,620 So if he is still alive and just operating in the world,
02:51:51,620 --> 02:51:56,180 he is daily and moment to moment resisting massive
02:51:56,180 --> 02:52:01,180 incentives to go and just be the richest guy in the world.
02:52:01,180 --> 02:52:02,740 He's the ultimate hodler.
02:52:02,740 --> 02:52:03,580 Yeah.
02:52:03,580 --> 02:52:05,060 Yeah.
02:52:05,060 --> 02:52:07,740 I mean, so it's, I mean, it's turning down
02:52:07,740 --> 02:52:12,280 not just financial success, but also fame.
02:52:12,280 --> 02:52:14,140 I mean, fame is another drug.
02:52:14,140 --> 02:52:17,340 It's kind of power, but it's in itself is also a drug,
02:52:17,340 --> 02:52:20,540 especially in this modern society, in this attention.
02:52:20,540 --> 02:52:21,660 And he would have both.
02:52:21,660 --> 02:52:22,900 He would have both.
02:52:22,900 --> 02:52:25,780 It's fun to imagine who it could be.
02:52:25,780 --> 02:52:27,900 It's fascinating if it's somebody like you
02:52:27,900 --> 02:52:30,620 or somebody like Elon or somebody like that.
02:52:30,620 --> 02:52:31,940 That's fascinating to think about.
02:52:31,940 --> 02:52:34,660 I think Elon would be hilarious if he came out
02:52:34,660 --> 02:52:37,320 and he was Satoshi, like, hey guys,
02:52:37,320 --> 02:52:38,920 I know I'm already the richest guy in the world,
02:52:38,920 --> 02:52:41,500 but I gotta go ahead and double my lead here.
02:52:42,500 --> 02:52:46,460 What do you make of Elon Musk investing with Tesla,
02:52:46,460 --> 02:52:50,420 investing in Bitcoin and maybe broaden it out
02:52:50,420 --> 02:52:54,700 in some of these other, you know,
02:52:54,700 --> 02:52:58,020 big billionaires, but also people tied to major companies
02:52:58,020 --> 02:52:59,980 investing in Bitcoin?
02:52:59,980 --> 02:53:04,080 Yeah, I think Michael Saylor really led the charge on that.
02:53:04,940 --> 02:53:08,940 He's the CEO of MicroStrategy that I think they've acquired
02:53:08,940 --> 02:53:11,080 upwards of $2 billion in Bitcoin now,
02:53:11,080 --> 02:53:14,860 sort of acquiring August, maybe of 2020.
02:53:16,000 --> 02:53:19,100 And he's, you know, personally bought a lot of it.
02:53:19,100 --> 02:53:22,560 He bought a lot as a treasury reserve asset
02:53:22,560 --> 02:53:24,220 for his company, MicroStrategy.
02:53:24,220 --> 02:53:27,540 Then they leveraged up on a convertible note
02:53:27,540 --> 02:53:28,380 and bought more.
02:53:28,380 --> 02:53:32,400 So he's really gone, really leading the charge
02:53:32,400 --> 02:53:36,020 in this Bitcoin institutional adoption.
02:53:36,020 --> 02:53:38,180 Your conversation with him is a really interesting one.
02:53:38,180 --> 02:53:41,860 Your series of, I mean, series of episodes I suppose,
02:53:41,860 --> 02:53:44,300 but it's only a couple of conversations, I guess.
02:53:44,300 --> 02:53:48,260 Yeah, we recorded twice, five and a half hours each.
02:53:48,260 --> 02:53:50,220 So it's about 11 hours of content.
02:53:50,220 --> 02:53:51,060 Yeah, thank you.
02:53:51,060 --> 02:53:55,220 A lot of people have said that it's the best
02:53:55,220 --> 02:53:57,380 first principle thing they've ever seen on Bitcoin,
02:53:57,380 --> 02:53:59,360 which I take no credit for that at all.
02:53:59,360 --> 02:54:02,620 I mean, I just sat down with a guy and unleashed him.
02:54:02,620 --> 02:54:04,100 He's just a beast.
02:54:04,100 --> 02:54:09,100 Yeah, but it's fascinating that his long-term vision
02:54:10,640 --> 02:54:14,800 with it, I mean, I'm not sure I'm all philosophically
02:54:14,800 --> 02:54:19,800 bought in, but if he's right, if this set of ideas
02:54:19,800 --> 02:54:24,160 are as powerful as he describes, as you describe,
02:54:24,160 --> 02:54:27,600 that this would change the world, which as you say,
02:54:27,600 --> 02:54:29,880 it's funny that a company like MicroStrategy
02:54:31,300 --> 02:54:36,300 might be the company that has the biggest macro effect
02:54:38,100 --> 02:54:40,200 on our economy, on our world.
02:54:40,200 --> 02:54:44,440 Yeah, the conversation reshaped my worldview a lot too
02:54:44,440 --> 02:54:48,160 because he framed money as energy,
02:54:48,160 --> 02:54:50,980 which I had often thought of money as time.
02:54:50,980 --> 02:54:53,520 And it explored those connections a lot in my writing,
02:54:53,520 --> 02:54:57,320 but looking at it as energy, and then his supposition
02:54:57,320 --> 02:55:02,040 that the purpose of life is to basically channel energy
02:55:02,040 --> 02:55:03,160 across space and time.
02:55:03,160 --> 02:55:05,160 So we're just trying to figure out how to channel
02:55:05,160 --> 02:55:07,160 more energy across space and time
02:55:07,160 --> 02:55:08,920 toward the satisfaction of aims.
02:55:09,960 --> 02:55:12,680 And his definition, or his answer to that question,
02:55:12,680 --> 02:55:15,360 what is money, is that money is the highest form of energy
02:55:15,360 --> 02:55:17,160 a human being can channel.
02:55:17,160 --> 02:55:19,480 So it's a claim to all other forms of energy
02:55:19,480 --> 02:55:20,840 we can manifest in the world.
02:55:20,840 --> 02:55:24,960 And that just completely reshaped how I see it,
02:55:24,960 --> 02:55:26,320 brought in this whole other side
02:55:26,320 --> 02:55:30,840 to my intellectual explorations of money.
02:55:30,840 --> 02:55:32,200 Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
02:55:32,200 --> 02:55:34,320 So I understand money is time,
02:55:34,320 --> 02:55:37,140 which in itself is a really powerful idea,
02:55:37,140 --> 02:55:40,000 but money is energy, and channeling energy,
02:55:40,000 --> 02:55:40,840 can you break that apart?
02:55:40,840 --> 02:55:45,000 Yeah, so I guess I definitely have to check out
02:55:45,000 --> 02:55:47,040 the whole series to really get his perspective,
02:55:47,040 --> 02:55:49,480 but I'll do my best to condense it.
02:55:51,360 --> 02:55:55,020 Life itself, all forms of life are,
02:55:55,020 --> 02:55:56,540 they're dependent on energy, right?
02:55:56,540 --> 02:56:00,560 Energy fuels everything, fuels life in action and motion
02:56:00,560 --> 02:56:01,400 and all of that.
02:56:02,400 --> 02:56:05,080 And we could say that maybe like a plant
02:56:06,240 --> 02:56:09,040 is harnessing solar energy
02:56:09,040 --> 02:56:11,880 and then reallocating that into growth.
02:56:11,880 --> 02:56:15,280 So its aim is to grow towards the sun, right?
02:56:15,280 --> 02:56:17,680 So it's allocating energy towards its goal
02:56:17,680 --> 02:56:20,800 of harnessing more solar energy kind of thing.
02:56:20,800 --> 02:56:25,800 So, and humans too have evolved
02:56:27,260 --> 02:56:30,600 to figure out how to harness energy in different ways
02:56:30,600 --> 02:56:35,200 to satisfy higher and more complicated aims.
02:56:35,200 --> 02:56:37,600 So the original energy network
02:56:38,720 --> 02:56:41,240 that he referenced was fire, right?
02:56:41,240 --> 02:56:45,720 We actually learned to wield fire as a tool in and of itself.
02:56:45,720 --> 02:56:48,160 So not only are we learning to channel energy,
02:56:48,160 --> 02:56:51,380 but we're actually learning how to isolate energy
02:56:51,380 --> 02:56:53,840 as a tool in and of itself.
02:56:53,840 --> 02:56:55,000 And so we went into that,
02:56:55,000 --> 02:56:59,680 how harnessing fire had changed human beings.
02:56:59,680 --> 02:57:04,120 And actually, this is one of the earliest examples too
02:57:04,120 --> 02:57:07,640 of a co-evolution between tool and our biology,
02:57:07,640 --> 02:57:11,520 because when we developed fire, we developed cooking
02:57:11,520 --> 02:57:13,120 and cooking is, you can kind of think of it
02:57:13,120 --> 02:57:14,480 as pre-digestion in a way.
02:57:14,480 --> 02:57:16,260 We're liberating these macronutrients
02:57:16,260 --> 02:57:18,380 or making things that otherwise
02:57:18,380 --> 02:57:20,960 would not be digestible, edible.
02:57:21,960 --> 02:57:23,280 And it increases the efficiency
02:57:23,280 --> 02:57:26,160 by which we extract nutrients from food.
02:57:26,160 --> 02:57:27,500 That's what cooking does.
02:57:27,500 --> 02:57:29,860 So when we figured out cooking,
02:57:29,860 --> 02:57:33,600 we liberated all these digestive resources
02:57:33,600 --> 02:57:36,620 that were reallocated towards higher cognitive development.
02:57:36,620 --> 02:57:39,640 So there's this evolutionary path
02:57:39,640 --> 02:57:42,820 between figuring out fire and us becoming smarter,
02:57:42,820 --> 02:57:44,060 which is interesting.
02:57:45,880 --> 02:57:47,720 Some other early examples he gave,
02:57:47,720 --> 02:57:50,360 he went into were missiles and hydraulics.
02:57:51,700 --> 02:57:56,660 So missiles being, we learned to hunt at a distance.
02:57:56,660 --> 02:57:58,920 We can't bring down a wooly mammoth,
02:57:58,920 --> 02:58:03,920 maybe with spears and up close and personal force,
02:58:03,920 --> 02:58:06,360 but we could with spears and javelins
02:58:06,360 --> 02:58:07,880 and slings and whatnot.
02:58:07,880 --> 02:58:11,900 And then he went into how we've used water
02:58:11,900 --> 02:58:13,280 to channel hydraulic energy.
02:58:13,280 --> 02:58:14,920 So we can basically overcome gravity.
02:58:14,920 --> 02:58:19,920 We can move, there's theories that the pyramids
02:58:20,320 --> 02:58:22,680 were constructed using the blocks removed
02:58:22,680 --> 02:58:25,600 using hydraulic energy or using water.
02:58:25,600 --> 02:58:28,040 Clearly we use like cargo ships and whatnot
02:58:28,040 --> 02:58:30,280 to move things much more efficiently across water
02:58:30,280 --> 02:58:32,440 than we could the land.
02:58:32,440 --> 02:58:37,440 So his whole view is how we keep figuring out better ways
02:58:37,600 --> 02:58:40,600 and more efficient ways to harness energy and channel it.
02:58:40,600 --> 02:58:45,600 And in that perspective, money has always represented
02:58:46,880 --> 02:58:49,040 a claim on all other forms of energy.
02:58:49,040 --> 02:58:51,960 So whatever energy couldn't be channeled
02:58:51,960 --> 02:58:54,880 towards something useful in the economy historically
02:58:54,880 --> 02:58:56,260 would go into gold mining.
02:58:56,260 --> 02:58:59,640 So gold became this residual, this economic,
02:58:59,640 --> 02:59:04,120 this token of the excess energy created
02:59:04,120 --> 02:59:05,560 by the market economy.
02:59:05,560 --> 02:59:07,480 And then you could take that token of energy
02:59:07,480 --> 02:59:10,680 and use it to redeem for any other form of energy
02:59:10,680 --> 02:59:13,600 or any other products of energy itself.
02:59:13,600 --> 02:59:18,080 So it's, I guess it's my best approximation of it.
02:59:18,080 --> 02:59:22,320 And it just really shattered my worldview again,
02:59:22,320 --> 02:59:23,800 because I'd always thought about it as time.
02:59:23,800 --> 02:59:26,620 Like we spend time sacrificing to obtain money
02:59:26,620 --> 02:59:28,680 that we then redeem for commencement sacrifices
02:59:28,680 --> 02:59:32,440 from others, but I'd never considered it purely as energy.
02:59:32,440 --> 02:59:34,300 And then it also ties back into gold
02:59:35,300 --> 02:59:38,980 where there was an energy expenditure necessary
02:59:38,980 --> 02:59:40,280 to obtain gold.
02:59:40,280 --> 02:59:43,720 So there's a proof of work associated with obtaining gold
02:59:43,720 --> 02:59:46,120 that protected its market value, right?
02:59:46,120 --> 02:59:47,840 So you had to expend, again,
02:59:47,840 --> 02:59:50,240 if market value of gold's 2000 an ounce,
02:59:50,240 --> 02:59:53,200 you had to expend 1900 an ounce mining.
02:59:53,200 --> 02:59:56,600 So it kept producers honest in a way.
02:59:56,600 --> 02:59:59,000 So do you think something like proof of stake
02:59:59,000 --> 03:00:02,000 that's more about reputation
03:00:02,000 --> 03:00:07,000 than actual exertion, like energy can work?
03:00:10,240 --> 03:00:13,700 No, I think proof of stake is inherently centralizing.
03:00:15,520 --> 03:00:18,400 It's like the old Matthew principle,
03:00:18,400 --> 03:00:20,960 from those who have to those who have,
03:00:20,960 --> 03:00:22,920 more will be given from those who have not,
03:00:22,920 --> 03:00:24,160 everything will be taken.
03:00:24,160 --> 03:00:26,480 That's what proof of stake is.
03:00:26,480 --> 03:00:29,920 You need proof of work to embody skin in the game
03:00:29,920 --> 03:00:33,640 in the marketplace, such that contributions
03:00:33,640 --> 03:00:36,480 are commensurate with consideration received.
03:00:36,480 --> 03:00:37,960 That's how systems work.
03:00:39,460 --> 03:00:42,880 What's the idea why proof of work might
03:00:44,960 --> 03:00:47,040 incentivize decentralization?
03:00:49,660 --> 03:00:53,280 Do you worry that as Bitcoin becomes more powerful,
03:00:53,280 --> 03:00:56,840 it may become, again, more centralized?
03:00:56,840 --> 03:00:59,600 Well, the decentralization of Bitcoin
03:01:01,000 --> 03:01:03,800 is largely driven by the nodes, actually,
03:01:03,800 --> 03:01:05,320 which aren't actually mining.
03:01:05,320 --> 03:01:07,880 They're just choosing which rule set to implement.
03:01:10,680 --> 03:01:12,120 And then the mining network
03:01:12,120 --> 03:01:14,600 is actually enforcing that rule set.
03:01:14,600 --> 03:01:17,680 So I think the mining network
03:01:19,600 --> 03:01:22,200 is inherently decentralized in that
03:01:22,200 --> 03:01:24,600 really anyone with access to cheap energy
03:01:24,600 --> 03:01:25,640 can become a miner.
03:01:25,640 --> 03:01:27,920 You can freely enter or exit the market
03:01:27,920 --> 03:01:29,360 or the network at any time.
03:01:30,920 --> 03:01:34,840 But maintaining the block size at a manageable level
03:01:34,840 --> 03:01:38,080 is what's key to maintaining node decentralization.
03:01:38,080 --> 03:01:39,640 That's an interesting question.
03:01:40,600 --> 03:01:41,720 Who do you think has more power,
03:01:41,720 --> 03:01:43,180 the miners or the nodes?
03:01:44,360 --> 03:01:49,360 Because the nodes carry the idea of the protocol,
03:01:49,360 --> 03:01:53,760 like the specifics, so in some sense,
03:01:53,760 --> 03:01:56,980 they have more power if Bitcoin is an idea.
03:01:58,560 --> 03:02:00,760 They're kind of mutually indispensable though
03:02:00,760 --> 03:02:01,980 because you can't have,
03:02:03,820 --> 03:02:06,000 there's no security without the miners.
03:02:06,000 --> 03:02:08,520 So without the miners, Bitcoin is just an idea.
03:02:08,520 --> 03:02:12,220 And the idea of Bitcoin is maybe existed
03:02:12,220 --> 03:02:13,320 even before Bitcoin, right?
03:02:13,320 --> 03:02:14,140 Just sound money.
03:02:14,140 --> 03:02:15,900 We just say sound money as an idea.
03:02:15,900 --> 03:02:19,000 But there was no way to root that
03:02:19,000 --> 03:02:20,720 into thermodynamic reality
03:02:20,720 --> 03:02:25,160 without Satoshi figuring out not just proof of work,
03:02:25,160 --> 03:02:28,480 it's the entire composite of the difficulty adjustment,
03:02:28,480 --> 03:02:32,820 proof of work, one-way hashing, et cetera.
03:02:32,820 --> 03:02:34,200 So I don't know.
03:02:34,200 --> 03:02:37,380 That's hard to say, hard to disentangle the two.
03:02:37,380 --> 03:02:40,220 You've talked about money as morality too.
03:02:41,440 --> 03:02:44,600 How do you think about moral and immoral action
03:02:44,600 --> 03:02:45,860 in the context of money?
03:02:47,400 --> 03:02:51,080 There's this great quote by Rothbard,
03:02:51,080 --> 03:02:53,800 who's a famous Austrian economist.
03:02:53,800 --> 03:02:54,640 And he says, quote,
03:02:54,640 --> 03:02:59,640 to be moral, an act must be free, unquote.
03:03:00,920 --> 03:03:05,920 And I think morality, it changes over time
03:03:05,920 --> 03:03:12,920 and it has its roots in biology.
03:03:12,920 --> 03:03:14,320 Jordan Peterson makes the point
03:03:14,320 --> 03:03:18,320 that even animals have their own sort of pseudo morality,
03:03:18,320 --> 03:03:21,800 where like with wolf packs, for instance,
03:03:21,800 --> 03:03:24,400 if there's a dispute between the alpha males,
03:03:24,400 --> 03:03:28,280 or I guess between an alpha male and a incumbent,
03:03:28,280 --> 03:03:33,040 the two males will have a fight basically.
03:03:33,040 --> 03:03:34,840 And then when the alpha male is killed,
03:03:34,840 --> 03:03:39,520 basically, and then when it's decided that one has won,
03:03:39,520 --> 03:03:40,920 the loser will basically roll over
03:03:40,920 --> 03:03:45,040 and give up his neck to the alpha male.
03:03:45,040 --> 03:03:47,840 And they do this instead of fighting to the death,
03:03:47,840 --> 03:03:51,080 because in a wolf pack, they need every wolf
03:03:51,080 --> 03:03:52,680 so they can go out and bring down,
03:03:52,680 --> 03:03:55,000 you never know when you're gonna need the 20th wolf
03:03:55,000 --> 03:03:57,040 to bring down the big Buffalo the next day or whatever.
03:03:57,040 --> 03:04:01,360 So they've developed this less than fight to the death,
03:04:01,360 --> 03:04:05,680 social morality to optimize their effectiveness as a wolf pack.
03:04:07,920 --> 03:04:12,080 And similarly for humans, our morality sort of emerges
03:04:13,240 --> 03:04:16,200 through competition and play even.
03:04:16,200 --> 03:04:19,960 There are these implicit rules that come into place
03:04:19,960 --> 03:04:22,840 based on how we're organizing ourselves over time.
03:04:26,920 --> 03:04:29,440 So with money, it's interesting
03:04:29,440 --> 03:04:33,560 because most tools we would consider to be amoral,
03:04:34,480 --> 03:04:38,160 as in a hammer can be used to build a house,
03:04:38,160 --> 03:04:39,400 which could be seen to be good,
03:04:39,400 --> 03:04:40,880 like a good constructive purpose,
03:04:40,880 --> 03:04:43,160 or it could be used to bash someone's skull,
03:04:43,160 --> 03:04:44,720 which could be something evil.
03:04:46,040 --> 03:04:49,480 And that the tool itself is amoral,
03:04:49,480 --> 03:04:51,600 doesn't have any independent morality of its own.
03:04:51,600 --> 03:04:54,120 All of the morality is associated
03:04:54,120 --> 03:04:55,480 with the wielder of the tool.
03:04:55,480 --> 03:04:57,440 So what's the quote?
03:04:57,440 --> 03:04:59,640 Like any tool can be a weapon if you hold it right,
03:04:59,640 --> 03:05:00,480 sort of thing.
03:05:01,520 --> 03:05:05,040 But money's maybe a little bit different
03:05:05,040 --> 03:05:10,040 in that when you monopolize money,
03:05:11,920 --> 03:05:15,320 it's only useful as a tool for one thing.
03:05:15,320 --> 03:05:17,880 And that's for allocating wealth away from some
03:05:17,880 --> 03:05:19,480 and to others.
03:05:19,480 --> 03:05:23,680 So it is the only utility of monopolized money is theft.
03:05:23,680 --> 03:05:28,280 There's no other, there's a lot of propaganda out there
03:05:28,280 --> 03:05:29,720 that will say, oh, we need to print money
03:05:29,720 --> 03:05:34,400 to get out of this disaster or to give to the poor,
03:05:34,400 --> 03:05:39,400 whatever moralistically camouflaged political aim
03:05:40,320 --> 03:05:44,360 is being discussed, the base layer of monopolized money
03:05:44,360 --> 03:05:46,400 is that it's only useful for taking from some
03:05:46,400 --> 03:05:47,880 and giving to others.
03:05:47,880 --> 03:05:51,560 So another way to think about this is that money
03:05:51,560 --> 03:05:55,200 is a paper claim on the savings of society.
03:05:55,200 --> 03:05:58,200 So it is just a ticket for redeeming savings,
03:05:58,200 --> 03:06:00,920 which could be time, could be capital,
03:06:00,920 --> 03:06:03,640 could be knowledge from any market actor in the world.
03:06:04,640 --> 03:06:06,880 So it's kind of a list of who owns what,
03:06:06,880 --> 03:06:08,160 if you will, it's a proxy list.
03:06:08,160 --> 03:06:11,240 If there's one group that can amend that list
03:06:11,240 --> 03:06:14,760 and others cannot, then they're basically able
03:06:14,760 --> 03:06:18,960 and incented to modify that list to their own benefit.
03:06:18,960 --> 03:06:23,080 And that's effectively what a central bank is doing.
03:06:23,080 --> 03:06:27,120 So a central bank is determining how much money to create.
03:06:27,120 --> 03:06:28,760 They're also determining who gets to receive
03:06:28,760 --> 03:06:30,520 that money first.
03:06:30,520 --> 03:06:33,120 And the first recipients of that money
03:06:33,120 --> 03:06:37,320 are gonna be the beneficiaries in an inflationary regime.
03:06:37,320 --> 03:06:39,080 So those that receive the money last
03:06:39,080 --> 03:06:40,640 are the ones being robbed.
03:06:40,640 --> 03:06:41,800 Those that receive the money first
03:06:41,800 --> 03:06:46,600 are the ones that are receiving the stolen proceeds,
03:06:46,600 --> 03:06:47,440 let's say.
03:06:47,440 --> 03:06:52,440 And this has a really corrosive effect on social morality
03:06:54,320 --> 03:06:59,320 because if we consider that people's time horizon,
03:07:00,800 --> 03:07:02,800 which the Austrians call the time preference,
03:07:03,840 --> 03:07:06,880 the more short-term thinking you are,
03:07:06,880 --> 03:07:11,640 the more likely you are to engage in selfish behavior.
03:07:11,640 --> 03:07:15,480 All right, if you know that it's all over tomorrow,
03:07:15,480 --> 03:07:16,680 and you've been working your whole life
03:07:16,680 --> 03:07:20,240 to develop this business or create this reputation
03:07:20,240 --> 03:07:21,080 or whatever your thing is,
03:07:21,080 --> 03:07:22,800 but you just are given the foreknowledge
03:07:22,800 --> 03:07:24,720 that tomorrow it's all gonna end,
03:07:24,720 --> 03:07:26,400 you're much more likely to go out
03:07:26,400 --> 03:07:28,400 and just maybe get drunk and party that night
03:07:28,400 --> 03:07:30,800 because there's no more repercussions, right?
03:07:32,000 --> 03:07:35,360 Whereas if you know that you're gonna live
03:07:35,360 --> 03:07:37,800 for a very long time,
03:07:37,800 --> 03:07:40,200 you're much more likely to plan for the future.
03:07:40,200 --> 03:07:44,560 And money's very, so we just say that your time horizon
03:07:44,560 --> 03:07:47,160 is closely related to your morality, right?
03:07:47,160 --> 03:07:48,720 The longer term thinking you are,
03:07:48,720 --> 03:07:50,560 the more moral you would tend to behave,
03:07:50,560 --> 03:07:53,080 the more you would care about long-term relationship building
03:07:53,080 --> 03:07:55,560 versus going out and getting wasted.
03:07:55,560 --> 03:08:00,560 And money too impinges very closely on our time preference.
03:08:01,640 --> 03:08:03,280 And again, time preference is the Austrian term.
03:08:03,280 --> 03:08:07,040 So low time preference means you're long-term oriented,
03:08:07,040 --> 03:08:10,160 high time preference means you're short-term oriented,
03:08:10,160 --> 03:08:11,880 which can be a little trippy for some people
03:08:11,880 --> 03:08:13,000 because it sounds backwards.
03:08:13,000 --> 03:08:18,000 But if your money constantly loses value,
03:08:19,920 --> 03:08:24,160 you are incentivized to become more short-term oriented.
03:08:24,160 --> 03:08:28,520 You are handicapped in your ability to plan for the future
03:08:28,520 --> 03:08:32,720 because your money, which is intended to be,
03:08:32,720 --> 03:08:34,000 here's another definition of money,
03:08:34,000 --> 03:08:36,920 as an insurance policy against uncertainty.
03:08:36,920 --> 03:08:39,080 So no matter what problems you encounter in the world,
03:08:39,080 --> 03:08:42,480 this money will best help you deal with those problems.
03:08:43,520 --> 03:08:45,720 When that insurance policy against uncertainty
03:08:45,720 --> 03:08:48,040 is injected with uncertainty,
03:08:48,040 --> 03:08:50,560 it's polluted with the uncertainty of inflation,
03:08:50,560 --> 03:08:52,040 your time horizon shrinks,
03:08:52,040 --> 03:08:54,240 your ability to plan long-term shrinks.
03:08:55,240 --> 03:08:57,240 And this impinges on social morality.
03:08:57,240 --> 03:09:00,480 So there's a great book on this called Honest Money
03:09:00,480 --> 03:09:01,320 by Gary North,
03:09:01,320 --> 03:09:05,160 and in that book, he gives the parable of the wine maker.
03:09:06,360 --> 03:09:09,480 And the wine maker, if we just imagine
03:09:09,480 --> 03:09:12,400 the hypothetical wine maker operating a business
03:09:12,400 --> 03:09:14,440 in a centrally banked economy,
03:09:14,440 --> 03:09:17,240 and let's say his central bank just doubled the money supply
03:09:17,240 --> 03:09:19,320 to quote unquote, save the economy,
03:09:20,440 --> 03:09:23,440 say an increase in money supply from one to $2 trillion.
03:09:23,440 --> 03:09:25,760 This wine maker that's accustomed to selling wine
03:09:25,760 --> 03:09:28,920 at $20 a bottle is now faced with the same problem
03:09:28,920 --> 03:09:31,840 that the wine maker that's accustomed to selling wine
03:09:31,840 --> 03:09:35,240 at $20 a bottle is now faced with basically three choices.
03:09:39,160 --> 03:09:40,720 And an important point here too,
03:09:40,720 --> 03:09:42,160 before we get into his three choices,
03:09:42,160 --> 03:09:44,000 are what prices are themselves.
03:09:44,000 --> 03:09:48,720 Prices are the most visible aspect of any service.
03:09:48,720 --> 03:09:50,680 So when you increase prices,
03:09:51,680 --> 03:09:54,840 you are incentivizing your customers to look elsewhere.
03:09:54,840 --> 03:09:56,080 They're gonna look at your competition.
03:09:56,080 --> 03:09:57,840 When you decrease prices,
03:09:57,840 --> 03:09:59,200 closer at your product, right?
03:09:59,200 --> 03:10:02,120 You're delivering a solution at a lower price.
03:10:02,120 --> 03:10:04,440 So this wine maker that's accustomed to selling his wine
03:10:04,440 --> 03:10:07,280 at a $20 price point, all of a sudden,
03:10:07,280 --> 03:10:09,920 because of a central bank has tripled the money supply,
03:10:09,920 --> 03:10:11,080 he has three choices.
03:10:12,120 --> 03:10:16,520 He can either keep selling his bottle at $20,
03:10:16,520 --> 03:10:19,520 and all of his inputs will increase due to inflation
03:10:19,520 --> 03:10:23,920 by 50%, so he will lose 50% of his profit margin
03:10:23,920 --> 03:10:24,800 as a result.
03:10:24,800 --> 03:10:26,760 So he can choose to eat that loss.
03:10:26,760 --> 03:10:29,040 He can choose to double the selling price
03:10:29,040 --> 03:10:32,040 of his bottle of wine from $20 to $40,
03:10:32,040 --> 03:10:34,400 because all of the price of his inputs doubled,
03:10:34,400 --> 03:10:36,600 so then he would maintain his profit margin.
03:10:37,720 --> 03:10:41,120 Or the third one is that he could choose
03:10:41,120 --> 03:10:45,800 to water down his wine or use inferior ingredients.
03:10:45,800 --> 03:10:47,800 So he could use cheaper inputs
03:10:47,800 --> 03:10:50,440 and maintain the output at the same price.
03:10:52,120 --> 03:10:54,320 So he could basically start selling at $20
03:10:54,320 --> 03:10:56,920 and basically start selling his customers
03:10:56,920 --> 03:10:58,480 an inferior product for the same price
03:10:58,480 --> 03:11:00,040 to preserve his profit margin.
03:11:01,040 --> 03:11:04,560 Now again, case number one, it's not very palatable.
03:11:04,560 --> 03:11:06,400 He doesn't wanna eat the economic loss.
03:11:06,400 --> 03:11:08,720 Case number two, it's not very good either,
03:11:08,720 --> 03:11:11,040 because he's then incentivizing all of his customers
03:11:11,040 --> 03:11:14,600 to go shop other winemakers if he doubles his price.
03:11:14,600 --> 03:11:16,960 So human nature being what it is,
03:11:16,960 --> 03:11:18,960 trying to get something for nothing,
03:11:18,960 --> 03:11:21,720 inflation actually seeps into other industries
03:11:21,720 --> 03:11:24,840 encouraging producers into option three,
03:11:24,840 --> 03:11:28,200 which is to deceive your customer in the short run.
03:11:28,200 --> 03:11:31,120 And again, this would be done initially at the margins.
03:11:31,120 --> 03:11:32,560 Maybe it's just a few drops of water.
03:11:32,560 --> 03:11:35,360 Maybe it's just some cheaper grapes.
03:11:35,360 --> 03:11:40,360 But over time, this inflation is actually inducing producers
03:11:42,640 --> 03:11:45,440 to weigh their financial wellbeing
03:11:45,440 --> 03:11:47,440 against their moral integrity.
03:11:47,440 --> 03:11:49,840 So it's forcing them into this dilemma
03:11:49,840 --> 03:11:52,440 that would not exist in a free market economy.
03:11:53,320 --> 03:11:58,320 And as they charge more money for wine that is inferior,
03:11:59,040 --> 03:12:01,640 the buyers of that wine also living
03:12:01,640 --> 03:12:04,280 in a central banked economy are also getting scammed
03:12:04,280 --> 03:12:06,560 by not only the inflation, but also the wine.
03:12:06,560 --> 03:12:09,240 So it becomes this kind of corrosive,
03:12:09,240 --> 03:12:11,080 contagious moral effect
03:12:12,400 --> 03:12:14,960 that propagates throughout an economy.
03:12:14,960 --> 03:12:18,640 And that's why I've argued in a lot of my writing
03:12:18,640 --> 03:12:23,360 that inflation is this infectious moral cancer on the world.
03:12:24,240 --> 03:12:29,240 I think it is tied back to a lot of the social strangeness
03:12:31,000 --> 03:12:32,600 we've seen in modern times,
03:12:32,600 --> 03:12:36,000 where there seems to be a lot of fake people
03:12:36,000 --> 03:12:38,160 and a lot of fake businesses and a lot of scams,
03:12:38,160 --> 03:12:39,000 all of these things.
03:12:39,000 --> 03:12:41,080 I think it really is rooted in the money.
03:12:41,080 --> 03:12:45,240 And Bitcoin as the first money in history
03:12:45,240 --> 03:12:47,480 that has a 0% terminal inflation rate,
03:12:47,480 --> 03:12:50,520 or said differently, zero unexpected inflation.
03:12:50,520 --> 03:12:54,360 There's no theft integrated into Bitcoin.
03:12:54,360 --> 03:12:56,040 You can only earn it through work
03:12:56,040 --> 03:12:58,320 or sacrificing resources to obtain it.
03:12:59,760 --> 03:13:03,800 It is the antidote to this moral cancer
03:13:03,800 --> 03:13:06,160 that inflation riddles our society with.
03:13:07,080 --> 03:13:08,840 Again, you're blowing my mind a little bit
03:13:08,840 --> 03:13:11,880 to think about the ripple effects of inflation,
03:13:11,880 --> 03:13:15,160 the way it seeps through with our interactions.
03:13:15,160 --> 03:13:18,600 So at the very, the early ripples
03:13:18,600 --> 03:13:20,440 is the effect it has on the products,
03:13:20,440 --> 03:13:23,120 on the dilution of the wine.
03:13:23,120 --> 03:13:27,200 But also it might have ripple effects on the character,
03:13:27,200 --> 03:13:28,720 on the behavior of people.
03:13:30,240 --> 03:13:33,360 That's interesting, artificial creation of scarcity,
03:13:33,360 --> 03:13:38,360 creating, having effects on society at the social,
03:13:38,680 --> 03:13:40,240 like the social fabric.
03:13:40,240 --> 03:13:42,280 And I guess you're arguing the morality.
03:13:42,280 --> 03:13:45,920 Yeah, it's perverting free market dynamics,
03:13:45,920 --> 03:13:48,960 which again, we said free markets generate pragmatic truth.
03:13:48,960 --> 03:13:51,960 So inflation distorts price signals,
03:13:51,960 --> 03:13:54,920 which means it confuses capital allocation.
03:13:54,920 --> 03:13:56,240 So we're trying to solve problems,
03:13:56,240 --> 03:13:58,080 but all of a sudden we can't tell
03:13:58,080 --> 03:13:59,520 if this price increase is a matter
03:13:59,520 --> 03:14:01,600 of true supply and demand change
03:14:01,600 --> 03:14:03,480 or a matter of policy change.
03:14:03,480 --> 03:14:07,160 So it clouds our economic perceptions.
03:14:07,160 --> 03:14:09,360 It suppresses innovation,
03:14:09,360 --> 03:14:11,080 because now you've exacerbated
03:14:11,080 --> 03:14:12,480 the boom and bust business cycle.
03:14:12,480 --> 03:14:14,920 People are gonna overborrow and go into projects
03:14:14,920 --> 03:14:16,800 that they can't profitably sustain.
03:14:16,800 --> 03:14:18,320 So then there'll be a huge collapse.
03:14:18,320 --> 03:14:22,240 So that actually breaks the market's function
03:14:22,240 --> 03:14:24,040 of generating innovation.
03:14:24,040 --> 03:14:25,200 And then, yeah, I would argue too,
03:14:25,200 --> 03:14:29,560 that it pollutes our pursuit of virtue, let's say.
03:14:29,560 --> 03:14:33,280 Maybe it's pushing back, but I don't think so.
03:14:33,280 --> 03:14:34,840 It's not as clear to me,
03:14:34,840 --> 03:14:36,840 perhaps because I haven't thought about it deeply,
03:14:36,840 --> 03:14:41,840 that money is core to life and human interaction,
03:14:43,320 --> 03:14:45,640 because there might be other forces,
03:14:45,640 --> 03:14:47,240 other fraudulent forces,
03:14:47,240 --> 03:14:48,920 other things in human nature
03:14:48,920 --> 03:14:51,240 that are creating these effects as well.
03:14:51,240 --> 03:14:53,360 So it's clear, I think you're articulating really well
03:14:53,360 --> 03:14:56,240 that there's these negative effects from inflation.
03:14:56,240 --> 03:14:59,080 I wonder if there's other undiscovered,
03:14:59,080 --> 03:15:02,360 not undiscovered, but ones we're not making explicit now,
03:15:02,360 --> 03:15:07,360 forces that are creating all the things we're seeing now
03:15:08,640 --> 03:15:11,520 with, like you said, cancel culture and all those things,
03:15:11,520 --> 03:15:16,520 but also the negative effects on the quality of products,
03:15:16,960 --> 03:15:20,400 on the excellence of the creativity and the innovation,
03:15:20,400 --> 03:15:21,240 all those kinds of things.
03:15:21,240 --> 03:15:23,200 I wonder if there's other factors.
03:15:23,200 --> 03:15:26,800 It's kind of, listen, it's compelling to think money's
03:15:26,800 --> 03:15:28,400 at the core of it all.
03:15:28,400 --> 03:15:30,560 Like if you fix, I forgot what the phrase was.
03:15:30,560 --> 03:15:32,440 Fix the money, fix the world.
03:15:32,440 --> 03:15:33,520 Yeah, fix the money, fix the world.
03:15:33,520 --> 03:15:37,720 That, again, things that sound good,
03:15:37,720 --> 03:15:40,520 I'm skeptical of by nature.
03:15:40,520 --> 03:15:44,480 So I wonder if there's other things that are beyond money
03:15:44,480 --> 03:15:47,320 that are somehow deeply integrated into our human nature.
03:15:47,320 --> 03:15:51,640 Another one related to money is social cohesion itself.
03:15:51,640 --> 03:15:56,640 So very simple anecdote for this was the more you increase
03:15:56,640 --> 03:16:01,120 the inflation rate, social cohesion is inversely
03:16:01,120 --> 03:16:02,120 proportionate to that.
03:16:02,120 --> 03:16:04,640 So the extreme example would be hyperinflation, right?
03:16:04,640 --> 03:16:07,280 Where the money is produced in such excess
03:16:07,280 --> 03:16:09,800 that it loses all meaning and relevance.
03:16:09,800 --> 03:16:14,400 So today in Venezuela, there is cash clogging the gutters,
03:16:14,400 --> 03:16:16,680 clogging the streets, clogging the sewer system
03:16:17,680 --> 03:16:21,160 because the cash has lost all relevance.
03:16:21,160 --> 03:16:23,960 And so anecdotally, we would suspect that, okay,
03:16:23,960 --> 03:16:27,080 if there's a inverse relationship
03:16:27,080 --> 03:16:29,960 between inflation and social cohesion,
03:16:29,960 --> 03:16:32,680 if we could then take inflation to zero,
03:16:32,680 --> 03:16:34,520 couldn't we theoretically increase
03:16:34,520 --> 03:16:36,960 social cohesion to its maximum?
03:16:38,640 --> 03:16:40,600 So another way to say that is inflation
03:16:40,600 --> 03:16:44,000 is a de-civilizing force.
03:16:44,000 --> 03:16:45,760 Whereas natural price deflation,
03:16:45,760 --> 03:16:48,600 which would occur in a hard money economy
03:16:48,600 --> 03:16:51,040 where there's either a fixed supply of Bitcoin
03:16:51,040 --> 03:16:56,040 or a relatively scarce supply of gold, for instance,
03:16:56,200 --> 03:17:00,280 that lays claim to an increasing capital stock
03:17:00,280 --> 03:17:01,920 of goods and services,
03:17:01,920 --> 03:17:04,080 prices would naturally decline every year
03:17:04,080 --> 03:17:06,120 as we became smarter.
03:17:06,120 --> 03:17:07,840 So the market price becomes a reflection
03:17:07,840 --> 03:17:09,840 of our collective knowledge.
03:17:09,840 --> 03:17:12,680 So by letting prices decline naturally over time,
03:17:12,680 --> 03:17:16,120 we can actually induce civilization.
03:17:16,120 --> 03:17:18,640 But by trying to force prices higher all the time
03:17:18,640 --> 03:17:21,920 via the central bank, we're creating the opposite effect.
03:17:21,920 --> 03:17:24,200 So we talked a little bit about the Soviet Union
03:17:24,200 --> 03:17:26,400 and I happened to have lived through the collapse
03:17:26,400 --> 03:17:27,520 of the Soviet Union.
03:17:28,800 --> 03:17:33,800 And so what are the factors, the causes in your mind
03:17:34,680 --> 03:17:36,920 to why the Soviet Union collapsed?
03:17:38,320 --> 03:17:42,960 So definitely a multivariate situation.
03:17:42,960 --> 03:17:45,200 I think there's a lot of factors.
03:17:45,200 --> 03:17:48,920 One that jumped out to me recently,
03:17:48,920 --> 03:17:51,480 again, from that documentary that I didn't note before
03:17:51,480 --> 03:17:54,120 was that at one point Stalin eliminated,
03:17:54,120 --> 03:17:56,960 I think 75% of his intelligence force,
03:17:59,440 --> 03:18:01,320 which I think when you're competing
03:18:01,320 --> 03:18:05,240 with another nation state and intelligence
03:18:05,240 --> 03:18:08,840 and covert operations are very integral to your survival,
03:18:08,840 --> 03:18:13,600 I think that was definitely a shot in the foot.
03:18:13,600 --> 03:18:18,600 But at a higher level, I would say that capitalism
03:18:19,840 --> 03:18:23,680 and communism were each resource strategies
03:18:23,680 --> 03:18:25,640 of the 20th century nation state.
03:18:27,760 --> 03:18:30,120 And they seem, we commonly consider them
03:18:30,120 --> 03:18:31,480 to be diametrically opposed,
03:18:31,480 --> 03:18:34,800 but there's actually a lot of commonality between the two.
03:18:34,800 --> 03:18:38,280 The difference would be that in Soviet Russia,
03:18:39,320 --> 03:18:40,480 as we alluded to earlier,
03:18:40,480 --> 03:18:43,560 they tried to completely replace price signals
03:18:44,720 --> 03:18:46,840 with this nationalistic faith and devotion.
03:18:46,840 --> 03:18:50,640 So they removed the economic nerve signal,
03:18:50,640 --> 03:18:53,720 which coordinated the allocation of capital over time.
03:18:53,720 --> 03:18:57,000 So this inhibited their ability to generate wealth.
03:18:57,000 --> 03:18:58,240 Whereas in the United States,
03:18:58,240 --> 03:19:02,360 we left most markets open to free enterprise.
03:19:02,360 --> 03:19:06,080 So we honored the integrity of price signals
03:19:06,080 --> 03:19:11,080 and we allowed people to trade and accumulate wealth.
03:19:11,680 --> 03:19:14,600 So in every market, except the market for money,
03:19:14,600 --> 03:19:18,280 both markets maintained a central bank as we've gotten to.
03:19:18,280 --> 03:19:23,080 So I think in a really big picture standpoint,
03:19:23,080 --> 03:19:27,560 that's why capitalism out competes communism
03:19:27,560 --> 03:19:31,240 is because it is able to generate more wealth
03:19:31,240 --> 03:19:32,960 than communism was,
03:19:32,960 --> 03:19:35,600 and therefore was able to put financial pressure
03:19:35,600 --> 03:19:39,320 on the USSR until it reached the point of bankruptcy,
03:19:39,320 --> 03:19:40,160 essentially.
03:19:41,160 --> 03:19:44,120 A similar model, I would argue,
03:19:44,120 --> 03:19:48,560 is that for the same reasons we saw
03:19:48,560 --> 03:19:50,080 capitalism out compete communism,
03:19:50,080 --> 03:19:53,880 which I think the data that I recall
03:19:53,880 --> 03:19:56,600 was that the USSR's economy was valued
03:19:56,600 --> 03:19:59,640 at close to one third of its inputs.
03:19:59,640 --> 03:20:02,840 So if you just didn't do anything inside the USSR
03:20:02,840 --> 03:20:05,360 and just sold all the raw materials that were going into it,
03:20:05,360 --> 03:20:07,920 it would have been worth three times as much
03:20:07,920 --> 03:20:09,800 as sending the materials in,
03:20:09,800 --> 03:20:10,920 running it through the efforts,
03:20:10,920 --> 03:20:12,320 and then shipping things back out.
03:20:12,320 --> 03:20:16,240 It was value destructive versus value creative.
03:20:16,240 --> 03:20:18,560 And I would argue this is because,
03:20:18,560 --> 03:20:21,440 again, the centralized computing model
03:20:21,440 --> 03:20:23,360 versus decentralized computing model,
03:20:23,360 --> 03:20:26,160 it just became more and more corrupt over time.
03:20:27,800 --> 03:20:30,920 It got to the point where I think most of the occupations
03:20:30,920 --> 03:20:34,200 in USSR towards the end were as informants, right?
03:20:34,200 --> 03:20:35,800 They were working for the state.
03:20:37,200 --> 03:20:38,520 Jordan Peterson makes this point too,
03:20:38,520 --> 03:20:40,600 that at some point it was actually illegal
03:20:40,600 --> 03:20:43,160 to be sad in Soviet Russia.
03:20:43,160 --> 03:20:45,000 Because if you were sad,
03:20:45,000 --> 03:20:48,920 you were contradicting the utopian view of the state.
03:20:48,920 --> 03:20:49,760 So if you were sad,
03:20:49,760 --> 03:20:52,000 you're implying the state's not doing something wrong.
03:20:52,000 --> 03:20:53,720 But by the way, this does remind me,
03:20:53,720 --> 03:20:57,200 do you know what Jordan Peterson thinks about Bitcoin
03:20:57,200 --> 03:21:02,200 and about the future impact of Bitcoin on the society?
03:21:02,200 --> 03:21:04,160 No, I don't, actually.
03:21:05,560 --> 03:21:09,200 We're hopefully gonna be talking to him soon about that.
03:21:09,200 --> 03:21:12,760 We did a book club on his book, Maps of Meaning,
03:21:12,760 --> 03:21:14,720 and he engaged with us about it.
03:21:14,720 --> 03:21:17,760 So we're hoping to deliver the orange bill to Mr. Peterson.
03:21:17,760 --> 03:21:18,600 The orange bill.
03:21:18,600 --> 03:21:22,600 I think his audience is one of the most important audiences
03:21:22,600 --> 03:21:23,960 in the world to understand Bitcoin.
03:21:23,960 --> 03:21:27,920 These people that are conscientious and responsible.
03:21:27,920 --> 03:21:31,640 I think they'll quickly understand Bitcoin's
03:21:31,640 --> 03:21:35,440 value proposition and help elucidate it to the world.
03:21:35,440 --> 03:21:38,160 I'm trying to remember what he said about it.
03:21:38,160 --> 03:21:41,160 Basically, I think his support of Bitcoin
03:21:41,160 --> 03:21:45,720 is grounded in the kind of people who are opposing Bitcoin.
03:21:46,960 --> 03:21:49,600 So without understanding Bitcoin,
03:21:49,600 --> 03:21:51,240 he starts to like Bitcoin
03:21:51,240 --> 03:21:53,280 because of the people who are opposing it.
03:21:53,280 --> 03:21:56,080 He's not a big fan of Bitcoin.
03:21:56,080 --> 03:22:01,080 I mean, that's partially why I am interested in Bitcoin.
03:22:03,680 --> 03:22:08,560 It's like all the people in power
03:22:08,560 --> 03:22:13,560 and all the kind of shady, fraudulent, non-genuine people
03:22:14,240 --> 03:22:19,240 who are dismissing Bitcoin are making me think, hmm.
03:22:19,240 --> 03:22:23,520 One of Jordan's definitions of God is,
03:22:23,520 --> 03:22:26,760 he says, God is found in the truthful speech
03:22:26,760 --> 03:22:29,160 that rectifies pathological hierarchies.
03:22:30,320 --> 03:22:34,680 And I think that is a beautiful definition
03:22:34,680 --> 03:22:36,680 of what Bitcoin is doing in the world.
03:22:36,680 --> 03:22:39,080 And that we have this pathological hierarchy
03:22:39,080 --> 03:22:40,840 called central banking,
03:22:40,840 --> 03:22:43,600 by which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,
03:22:45,040 --> 03:22:48,280 that is used as a mechanism for perpetual theft
03:22:48,280 --> 03:22:51,320 and funding warfare at a global scale.
03:22:51,320 --> 03:22:53,640 Like Ron Paul said, it's no coincidence
03:22:53,640 --> 03:22:56,080 that the 20th century of total war
03:22:56,080 --> 03:22:58,080 was also the century of central banking.
03:22:59,560 --> 03:23:04,560 When you have an institution of currency counterfeiting,
03:23:04,600 --> 03:23:06,680 which the central bank is,
03:23:06,680 --> 03:23:09,360 you are no longer bounded by your own balance sheet
03:23:09,360 --> 03:23:10,320 when you go to war.
03:23:10,320 --> 03:23:12,360 You don't have to just go to war on your own resources.
03:23:12,360 --> 03:23:15,200 You can now pillage the commonwealth
03:23:15,200 --> 03:23:18,960 and pull for the savings of society as a whole
03:23:18,960 --> 03:23:20,480 before you go bankrupt.
03:23:20,480 --> 03:23:22,920 And indeed, this is what Hitler did, right?
03:23:22,920 --> 03:23:27,360 Hitler hyperinflated in the Weimar Republic
03:23:27,360 --> 03:23:29,440 to fund his war efforts.
03:23:30,880 --> 03:23:34,720 And frankly, every dictator, every world war,
03:23:34,720 --> 03:23:37,600 every internment camp in history
03:23:37,600 --> 03:23:41,040 was made possible by the weaponization of money
03:23:41,040 --> 03:23:42,520 in fiat currency.
03:23:42,520 --> 03:23:45,920 So I hope, I know Jordan Peterson
03:23:45,920 --> 03:23:48,440 is a huge proponent of free speech.
03:23:48,440 --> 03:23:51,760 And I think that's ultimately at its deepest essence
03:23:51,760 --> 03:23:53,160 that's what Bitcoin really is, right?
03:23:53,160 --> 03:23:56,800 It is just the purest form of monetary speech
03:23:56,800 --> 03:23:58,520 we've ever had.
03:23:58,520 --> 03:24:02,920 And by purifying that primary operating system
03:24:02,920 --> 03:24:03,800 of human action,
03:24:03,800 --> 03:24:07,880 I think we can eliminate this pathological hierarchy
03:24:07,880 --> 03:24:10,240 that is unfortunately the dominant institution
03:24:10,240 --> 03:24:11,760 in the world today.
03:24:11,760 --> 03:24:13,360 Yeah, I'm definitely,
03:24:13,360 --> 03:24:16,320 especially with these explorations of Bitcoin,
03:24:16,320 --> 03:24:18,040 this journey I've been on,
03:24:18,040 --> 03:24:21,360 I'll revisit some of the aspects of human history
03:24:21,360 --> 03:24:22,520 that I've been looking at,
03:24:22,520 --> 03:24:26,440 like Stalin and Hitler from a perspective
03:24:26,440 --> 03:24:28,840 of a monetary perspective.
03:24:28,840 --> 03:24:33,120 Like what are the effects of inflation?
03:24:33,120 --> 03:24:38,000 How was it used as a tool in gaining power
03:24:38,000 --> 03:24:43,000 and maintaining power and manipulating the populace
03:24:43,040 --> 03:24:47,880 in doing, in inflicting suffering
03:24:47,880 --> 03:24:51,440 and I would say evil onto the world.
03:24:51,440 --> 03:24:52,360 It's interesting.
03:24:53,680 --> 03:24:54,760 It's interesting.
03:24:54,760 --> 03:24:56,920 I'm gonna have to sort of go back into the hole.
03:24:56,920 --> 03:25:01,760 So I tend to focus more on the human nature
03:25:02,840 --> 03:25:07,400 and less about the tools that human nature leverages
03:25:07,400 --> 03:25:08,880 to effect change.
03:25:08,880 --> 03:25:11,160 But you're right that in some sense,
03:25:11,160 --> 03:25:16,160 money is a tool which can be effectively used
03:25:16,160 --> 03:25:21,160 to perform moral and immoral actions
03:25:21,840 --> 03:25:23,600 depending on how it's used.
03:25:23,600 --> 03:25:25,800 There's a feedback between the two, right?
03:25:25,800 --> 03:25:30,800 There's specifically with money itself,
03:25:31,800 --> 03:25:36,800 it's the, here's the way I've been posing it lately
03:25:39,640 --> 03:25:41,400 is that I actually think,
03:25:41,400 --> 03:25:43,600 we typically think of people as good or bad
03:25:43,600 --> 03:25:45,880 or again, trying to label people all the time.
03:25:45,880 --> 03:25:48,160 But I think people and their characters
03:25:48,160 --> 03:25:51,080 are emergent properties of the incentive structures
03:25:51,080 --> 03:25:52,000 they inhabit.
03:25:52,000 --> 03:25:52,840 Yeah.
03:25:52,840 --> 03:25:55,680 So what does Charlie Munger say?
03:25:55,680 --> 03:25:56,960 Don't show me the incentives,
03:25:56,960 --> 03:25:59,520 I'll show you the outcome kind of thing.
03:25:59,520 --> 03:26:01,840 This is a flawed incentive structure
03:26:01,840 --> 03:26:03,600 we've been operating within.
03:26:03,600 --> 03:26:05,800 Now I'm not speaking to the intention,
03:26:05,800 --> 03:26:07,160 people wanna argue with me all the time.
03:26:07,160 --> 03:26:09,680 Like Jerome Powell's not a bad guy.
03:26:09,680 --> 03:26:11,240 He's doing his best at the central bank.
03:26:11,240 --> 03:26:12,600 He's doing what he thinks is right.
03:26:12,600 --> 03:26:13,440 That's fine.
03:26:14,600 --> 03:26:15,440 Well, that's true or not,
03:26:15,440 --> 03:26:16,320 it actually doesn't matter.
03:26:16,320 --> 03:26:19,000 The intention is divergent from the outcome.
03:26:19,000 --> 03:26:20,600 The institution that they are running
03:26:20,600 --> 03:26:22,960 is premised on deception and theft
03:26:22,960 --> 03:26:25,600 and it is handicapping the productive economy.
03:26:25,600 --> 03:26:28,960 So when we're, even the terms we use, printing money,
03:26:28,960 --> 03:26:30,520 you're not creating any new value.
03:26:30,520 --> 03:26:32,440 You're not infusing the economy with anything,
03:26:32,440 --> 03:26:34,480 any new productive factors whatsoever.
03:26:34,480 --> 03:26:36,760 You're just harvesting the economic surplus
03:26:36,760 --> 03:26:39,640 created by entrepreneurs in the marketplace.
03:26:39,640 --> 03:26:42,520 It's impossible to add any value to an economy
03:26:42,520 --> 03:26:45,720 by increasing the paper claims on its savings.
03:26:45,720 --> 03:26:50,720 So there's a feedback loop between man and tool,
03:26:51,680 --> 03:26:53,320 between creator and created.
03:26:53,320 --> 03:26:57,000 And I think we have to honor the relationship
03:26:57,000 --> 03:26:58,600 above either one, right?
03:26:58,600 --> 03:27:00,560 Trying to put the right people in the system
03:27:00,560 --> 03:27:01,760 or just build the right system.
03:27:01,760 --> 03:27:03,320 We need both.
03:27:03,320 --> 03:27:05,200 Do you think the interesting question
03:27:05,200 --> 03:27:10,200 of whether the people that are in control of central banks
03:27:10,200 --> 03:27:13,720 or in positions of power there,
03:27:13,720 --> 03:27:16,280 if they themselves are malevolent,
03:27:16,280 --> 03:27:18,880 if they themselves are bad actors,
03:27:18,880 --> 03:27:23,880 or they're simply like leaves floating along the river,
03:27:24,400 --> 03:27:29,400 sort of just the cog in the machine,
03:27:29,840 --> 03:27:31,400 an ant in an ant colony
03:27:31,400 --> 03:27:33,960 that operates in a certain kind of way.
03:27:33,960 --> 03:27:36,720 Like where do you put the blame?
03:27:36,720 --> 03:27:39,400 Do you put the blame on the way
03:27:39,400 --> 03:27:42,680 things are operating onto the individuals
03:27:42,680 --> 03:27:46,960 or onto the system itself, the idea behind the system?
03:27:46,960 --> 03:27:50,840 Where, and is it useful to place the blame somewhere?
03:27:50,840 --> 03:27:53,360 Because for me, it might be useful to understand that
03:27:53,360 --> 03:27:57,080 in order to figure out what the solution is.
03:27:57,080 --> 03:27:59,840 I tend to not put the blame on the individual.
03:27:59,840 --> 03:28:02,320 Like I tend to believe most people are good
03:28:02,320 --> 03:28:04,320 and want to see themselves as good.
03:28:05,320 --> 03:28:07,760 And so in that case, it's very difficult
03:28:07,760 --> 03:28:11,120 to be truly malevolent as you would need to be to control,
03:28:11,120 --> 03:28:13,880 to gain centralized power at the large scale.
03:28:14,840 --> 03:28:18,160 But I know a lot of conspiracy theorists
03:28:19,120 --> 03:28:22,720 and just a lot of people think that there is evil
03:28:22,720 --> 03:28:25,720 humans in the world that seek power,
03:28:25,720 --> 03:28:27,680 maintain that power, and then use that power
03:28:27,680 --> 03:28:28,880 for bad purposes.
03:28:30,760 --> 03:28:32,360 I think they're just people.
03:28:32,360 --> 03:28:34,440 And they're just trying to get something for nothing,
03:28:34,440 --> 03:28:36,280 like all of us do.
03:28:36,280 --> 03:28:38,800 I like this framework of thought that you have.
03:28:38,800 --> 03:28:42,160 Honestly, and that's what the central bank is,
03:28:42,160 --> 03:28:45,000 is the ultimate institution to get something for nothing.
03:28:45,000 --> 03:28:49,720 You get a perpetual income stream,
03:28:49,720 --> 03:28:52,480 the ability to acquire more and more territory
03:28:52,480 --> 03:28:56,520 in the world through monopolizing the supply of money.
03:28:57,440 --> 03:29:00,080 And you can literally print money.
03:29:00,080 --> 03:29:02,080 You can buy your way out of anything
03:29:02,080 --> 03:29:04,520 and buy your way into anything in the world.
03:29:04,520 --> 03:29:06,960 So it is, I think the most,
03:29:08,800 --> 03:29:11,560 not say the most, but a group of very intelligent people
03:29:11,560 --> 03:29:13,480 put this thing together and figured out
03:29:13,480 --> 03:29:15,720 how to get something for nothing in perpetuity
03:29:18,560 --> 03:29:21,280 by clouding people's conception of money.
03:29:21,280 --> 03:29:24,800 And if we look at the central bank,
03:29:24,800 --> 03:29:25,720 it's been around for a while,
03:29:25,720 --> 03:29:29,440 but the latest implementation here in the US is the Fed.
03:29:29,440 --> 03:29:30,560 It's about a hundred years old.
03:29:30,560 --> 03:29:32,200 It's an analog age institution
03:29:32,200 --> 03:29:36,200 that I think has lost a lot of its relevance
03:29:36,200 --> 03:29:37,960 in the modern age.
03:29:37,960 --> 03:29:40,200 And I don't think it will survive
03:29:40,200 --> 03:29:43,040 the ever-galvanizing gaze of the digital age.
03:29:43,040 --> 03:29:44,600 There's just too much sunlight,
03:29:45,680 --> 03:29:47,040 too much transparency today.
03:29:47,040 --> 03:29:49,440 Ideas move too quickly for something like this
03:29:49,440 --> 03:29:51,360 to remain relevant.
03:29:51,360 --> 03:29:54,000 But they are just people.
03:29:54,000 --> 03:29:55,800 They are just seeking something for nothing.
03:29:55,800 --> 03:29:58,240 But I think when you concentrate that much power
03:29:58,240 --> 03:29:59,480 and that much control,
03:29:59,480 --> 03:30:02,360 that much wealth into the hands of few,
03:30:02,360 --> 03:30:05,000 it does change.
03:30:05,000 --> 03:30:07,800 Hayek argued that the nature of power,
03:30:09,320 --> 03:30:11,600 again, it's something that we all sort of desire.
03:30:11,600 --> 03:30:14,120 To be completely powerless, you're really unhappy, right?
03:30:14,120 --> 03:30:16,360 If you're totally powerless, you're a slave.
03:30:16,360 --> 03:30:17,720 Someone else tells you what to do.
03:30:17,720 --> 03:30:19,000 You have no autonomy.
03:30:19,000 --> 03:30:20,600 It's miserable, right?
03:30:20,600 --> 03:30:21,880 So there's this,
03:30:21,880 --> 03:30:24,600 it makes the consolidation of power alluring
03:30:24,600 --> 03:30:25,920 in that we want to protect ourselves
03:30:25,920 --> 03:30:28,400 from that slave state, let's say.
03:30:28,400 --> 03:30:30,760 But like many things, it can be taken too far.
03:30:31,720 --> 03:30:35,520 And when you concentrate power into too few hands,
03:30:35,520 --> 03:30:38,520 Hayek argues that it actually transforms.
03:30:38,520 --> 03:30:41,080 It becomes something much more intoxicating
03:30:41,080 --> 03:30:44,200 than it would be if it was held in a more distributed way.
03:30:44,200 --> 03:30:47,400 And I think that gets into a lot of these,
03:30:48,680 --> 03:30:50,240 I don't know if they call themselves elites
03:30:50,240 --> 03:30:51,760 or people call them elites or whatever,
03:30:51,760 --> 03:30:54,960 like let's say shareholders of central banks,
03:30:54,960 --> 03:30:56,800 people participating in the World Economic Forum,
03:30:56,800 --> 03:31:01,720 things like this, they come, I guess the incentives, right?
03:31:01,720 --> 03:31:05,440 The incentive schema they're in is rewarding them constantly,
03:31:05,440 --> 03:31:06,720 telling them everything they're doing,
03:31:06,720 --> 03:31:08,040 seeing and thinking is correct
03:31:08,040 --> 03:31:10,920 because they just keep getting richer all the time.
03:31:10,920 --> 03:31:15,160 And it leads you closer to this definition of evil,
03:31:15,160 --> 03:31:19,920 which in the book, Paradise Lost, Friedman said,
03:31:19,920 --> 03:31:22,120 "'Evil is the force which believes its knowledge
03:31:22,120 --> 03:31:23,800 is complete.'"
03:31:23,800 --> 03:31:27,440 So these people become more and more convinced
03:31:27,440 --> 03:31:32,240 that they have the plan or they have the course of action
03:31:32,240 --> 03:31:33,320 that will save the world,
03:31:33,320 --> 03:31:35,680 that if everyone would just listen to them,
03:31:35,680 --> 03:31:38,040 that they would lead us to the promised land, right?
03:31:38,040 --> 03:31:41,200 Whether this is Bill Gates saving us from a climate crisis
03:31:41,200 --> 03:31:44,600 or any of these other economic policies
03:31:44,600 --> 03:31:46,440 that are targeted at a certain outcome,
03:31:46,440 --> 03:31:50,080 but almost always diverge almost perfectly from that outcome,
03:31:50,080 --> 03:31:51,480 creating its opposite effect.
03:31:51,480 --> 03:31:56,480 I think that's the problem, that we have this mechanism
03:31:56,920 --> 03:31:59,120 that can concentrate wealth and power
03:31:59,120 --> 03:32:01,480 into the hands of so few,
03:32:01,480 --> 03:32:04,440 that it leads to the proliferation of evil,
03:32:05,680 --> 03:32:07,000 meaning that it convinces people
03:32:07,000 --> 03:32:08,320 that their knowledge is complete.
03:32:08,320 --> 03:32:12,800 Whereas something like a Bitcoin
03:32:12,800 --> 03:32:14,680 almost forces the opposite outcome.
03:32:14,680 --> 03:32:19,680 In a Bitcoin denominated world,
03:32:19,800 --> 03:32:24,280 in a pure free market, the consumer is sovereign.
03:32:24,280 --> 03:32:27,800 So you cannot earn value in the world
03:32:27,800 --> 03:32:30,320 unless you are serving your fellow man,
03:32:30,320 --> 03:32:33,880 unless they have expressed through their buy and sell
03:32:33,880 --> 03:32:35,600 decisions in the marketplace, right?
03:32:35,600 --> 03:32:39,360 You've created a satisfaction of a particular want
03:32:39,360 --> 03:32:41,320 that they value so much,
03:32:41,320 --> 03:32:42,960 they've acquired so much of your good or service
03:32:42,960 --> 03:32:45,000 that you've become rich.
03:32:45,000 --> 03:32:47,000 You can only maintain that position of wealth
03:32:47,000 --> 03:32:49,800 so long as you continue to serve your fellow man.
03:32:49,800 --> 03:32:54,040 So it changes the incentives such that dominance
03:32:54,040 --> 03:32:56,760 in the world is no longer,
03:32:56,760 --> 03:32:58,920 can no longer be paired with coercion.
03:32:58,920 --> 03:33:01,480 It has to be paired with competence.
03:33:01,480 --> 03:33:05,280 And that's how this, when we say Bitcoin fixes this,
03:33:05,280 --> 03:33:06,120 that's what we mean.
03:33:06,120 --> 03:33:09,120 Like it restores that skin in the game,
03:33:09,120 --> 03:33:11,200 that balance of incentives and disincentives
03:33:11,200 --> 03:33:13,760 that help us properly navigate reality.
03:33:13,760 --> 03:33:17,120 And it prevents the buildup of systemic rot
03:33:17,120 --> 03:33:18,960 like we see with the central bank.
03:33:20,080 --> 03:33:22,960 What books, people love this question
03:33:22,960 --> 03:33:25,680 and you're exceptionally well-read,
03:33:25,680 --> 03:33:28,040 you've explored all kinds of ideas.
03:33:28,040 --> 03:33:30,320 Is there some books, technical fiction,
03:33:30,320 --> 03:33:34,240 philosophical, coloring books, children's books
03:33:34,240 --> 03:33:37,960 had an impact on your life and you would maybe recommend
03:33:37,960 --> 03:33:39,560 to others that they should read?
03:33:39,560 --> 03:33:43,200 I think we mentioned a couple of them here today,
03:33:43,200 --> 03:33:47,800 but I think a really useful triplet of books
03:33:49,200 --> 03:33:50,800 that I've been recommending recently
03:33:50,800 --> 03:33:55,800 to help diffuse this materialist worldview of reality
03:33:56,120 --> 03:33:58,960 where we still think in kind of the Newtonian model
03:33:58,960 --> 03:34:01,240 that it's atoms and cause and effect.
03:34:03,480 --> 03:34:05,200 I'd first recommend Jordan Peterson's book,
03:34:05,200 --> 03:34:06,200 Maps of Meaning.
03:34:06,200 --> 03:34:11,200 And it's a deep dive into mythology
03:34:11,280 --> 03:34:14,120 and how it's developed over the course of history
03:34:14,120 --> 03:34:17,280 and how it's reflected both in our social structures
03:34:17,280 --> 03:34:21,360 and our intra-psychic nature really,
03:34:21,360 --> 03:34:23,320 and how they come to reflect one another in a way,
03:34:23,320 --> 03:34:25,800 like the way we think again shapes the world
03:34:25,800 --> 03:34:26,960 and then the way the world is shaped,
03:34:26,960 --> 03:34:28,160 shapes the way we think.
03:34:29,800 --> 03:34:30,800 That's an excellent book.
03:34:30,800 --> 03:34:33,520 It's very dense and difficult read.
03:34:33,520 --> 03:34:35,360 Actually this trilogy is pretty brutal,
03:34:35,360 --> 03:34:38,560 it'll probably take you a year to read, hours a day.
03:34:39,480 --> 03:34:40,680 The second one I mentioned earlier
03:34:40,680 --> 03:34:42,440 was Human Action by Mises.
03:34:44,360 --> 03:34:46,600 The ultimate tome on Austrian economics
03:34:46,600 --> 03:34:50,280 will help explicate this realm of relevance,
03:34:50,280 --> 03:34:52,200 I think that economics truly is,
03:34:52,200 --> 03:34:57,040 where again, there are things
03:34:57,040 --> 03:35:00,120 and then these things become means or ends
03:35:00,120 --> 03:35:03,240 once we channel our purpose through them.
03:35:03,240 --> 03:35:07,560 So this realm of non-materialist relevance
03:35:07,560 --> 03:35:10,520 that I think is really important to grasping economics
03:35:10,520 --> 03:35:11,760 at a first principles level,
03:35:11,760 --> 03:35:14,080 I think that book lays it out tremendously.
03:35:15,440 --> 03:35:16,520 And then the last one would be,
03:35:16,520 --> 03:35:17,600 I think I mentioned this at the beginning,
03:35:17,600 --> 03:35:19,960 was that book Lila by Robert Persig,
03:35:19,960 --> 03:35:23,840 where he's making the case that value is fundamental.
03:35:23,840 --> 03:35:25,680 And all of these books,
03:35:25,680 --> 03:35:27,600 they kinda all point to that actually.
03:35:27,600 --> 03:35:31,120 They're pointing back to value being the fundamental thing,
03:35:31,120 --> 03:35:35,360 values expressed through moral action
03:35:35,360 --> 03:35:37,960 as being the fundamental substrate of reality.
03:35:37,960 --> 03:35:42,080 So if you're like me, I grew up quite scientific minded,
03:35:42,080 --> 03:35:43,360 it'll help diffuse some of that
03:35:43,360 --> 03:35:45,960 and maybe retrain you to the other side of reality.
03:35:47,560 --> 03:35:49,240 So you said these books are difficult,
03:35:49,240 --> 03:35:52,840 maybe you can comment on which aspect is difficult.
03:35:52,840 --> 03:35:55,360 Is it just the technical nature, is it the length,
03:35:55,360 --> 03:35:56,920 is it the depth of the ideas
03:35:56,920 --> 03:35:58,920 or how long it takes to integrate them?
03:35:58,920 --> 03:36:01,760 And more sort of importantly,
03:36:01,760 --> 03:36:04,240 is there recommendation advice you can give
03:36:04,240 --> 03:36:09,240 on how to integrate these ideas,
03:36:09,520 --> 03:36:13,880 how to read, how to learn in the spaces there
03:36:13,880 --> 03:36:15,240 from your own life?
03:36:15,240 --> 03:36:17,040 Like how do you enjoy taking an ideas?
03:36:17,040 --> 03:36:18,200 And this could be for these books,
03:36:18,200 --> 03:36:21,160 but also in the Bitcoin world
03:36:21,160 --> 03:36:24,560 and reading a bunch of different ideas written by others,
03:36:24,560 --> 03:36:28,240 just integrating stuff, even watching podcasts
03:36:28,240 --> 03:36:29,720 and all those kinds of things.
03:36:29,720 --> 03:36:32,520 Yeah, I'm a reader, I love to read.
03:36:33,760 --> 03:36:36,000 One of the most useful things I've ever done
03:36:36,000 --> 03:36:37,720 was take a speed reading course.
03:36:38,960 --> 03:36:40,160 I actually think there's a version of this
03:36:40,160 --> 03:36:41,680 available on Tim Ferriss's website.
03:36:41,680 --> 03:36:44,320 It's like a 30 minute speed reading course.
03:36:44,320 --> 03:36:45,760 It's all about eye movement.
03:36:45,760 --> 03:36:48,600 Instead of moving your eye continuously line over line,
03:36:48,600 --> 03:36:50,600 it's more about jumping in your brain.
03:36:50,600 --> 03:36:53,600 You can train your brain to just absorb words
03:36:53,600 --> 03:36:56,960 in their totality versus kind of reading word by word.
03:36:56,960 --> 03:37:00,800 And also not, I haven't fully taken that journey actually,
03:37:00,800 --> 03:37:05,440 but I remember taking a few steps on that journey,
03:37:05,440 --> 03:37:08,680 realizing that I'm speaking inside my head.
03:37:08,680 --> 03:37:09,520 Yeah.
03:37:09,520 --> 03:37:10,880 I'm saying the words inside my head
03:37:10,880 --> 03:37:12,240 and that's actually getting in the way.
03:37:12,240 --> 03:37:13,080 That's right.
03:37:13,080 --> 03:37:15,120 So there's a lot of little hacks like that.
03:37:15,120 --> 03:37:17,120 I maybe lazily, I'll have to,
03:37:17,120 --> 03:37:19,360 now that you mentioned I'll have to revisit this,
03:37:19,360 --> 03:37:23,720 but I have convinced myself that I don't need to read faster
03:37:23,720 --> 03:37:25,480 because that's not ultimately the bottleneck.
03:37:25,480 --> 03:37:28,400 The bottleneck is in the me thinking about stuff.
03:37:28,400 --> 03:37:30,480 In fact, I like reading really slowly
03:37:30,480 --> 03:37:31,960 or so I convinced myself.
03:37:32,840 --> 03:37:35,560 Because ultimately it's not about gaining more information.
03:37:35,560 --> 03:37:39,280 It's about time spent thinking deeply.
03:37:39,280 --> 03:37:40,320 Yes.
03:37:40,320 --> 03:37:43,320 But maybe that's just me being very lazy
03:37:43,320 --> 03:37:44,240 because yes, it's true.
03:37:44,240 --> 03:37:45,480 It's important to think deeply,
03:37:45,480 --> 03:37:49,400 but maybe I could speed up the consumption of information.
03:37:49,400 --> 03:37:50,480 It's fine.
03:37:50,480 --> 03:37:51,920 I like to be dynamic actually.
03:37:51,920 --> 03:37:55,360 So usually speed reading initially
03:37:55,360 --> 03:37:58,440 and that diffused that internal dialogue for me
03:37:58,440 --> 03:37:59,760 because when I was reading one word at a time,
03:37:59,760 --> 03:38:00,600 I was having that too.
03:38:00,600 --> 03:38:02,120 You almost get a feedback in your own head
03:38:02,120 --> 03:38:03,280 when you're reading the word out loud
03:38:03,280 --> 03:38:04,680 and it's clouding your thoughts.
03:38:04,680 --> 03:38:06,600 And if you're speed reading, you can't do that.
03:38:06,600 --> 03:38:08,680 You're taking in groups of words at a time
03:38:08,680 --> 03:38:13,120 so you can't internally verbalize it, I guess.
03:38:13,120 --> 03:38:15,600 And then I also am really big on annotating,
03:38:15,600 --> 03:38:17,760 underlining, writing in the margins.
03:38:17,760 --> 03:38:20,040 I prefer a physical book,
03:38:20,040 --> 03:38:21,440 but I also read the Kindle a lot
03:38:21,440 --> 03:38:23,160 because it's just so convenient.
03:38:23,160 --> 03:38:25,480 Anywhere you're waiting in line or every night before bed,
03:38:25,480 --> 03:38:27,120 I'm reading my Kindle.
03:38:27,120 --> 03:38:30,160 And I also advocate rereading a lot.
03:38:30,160 --> 03:38:34,640 So if you found something that struck you at a deep level,
03:38:34,640 --> 03:38:36,120 you found particularly fascinating,
03:38:36,120 --> 03:38:37,560 like you have to listen to that.
03:38:37,560 --> 03:38:41,400 That's your, I don't know, your mind or your spirit signal
03:38:41,400 --> 03:38:43,560 that that is something meaningful to you.
03:38:43,560 --> 03:38:46,400 And you should, to your point, reread it,
03:38:46,400 --> 03:38:49,240 sit with it for a long time, write about it.
03:38:49,240 --> 03:38:53,400 And that becomes the ultimate triumvirate
03:38:53,400 --> 03:38:55,240 of synthesizing an idea, actually.
03:38:55,240 --> 03:38:58,720 If you can read about it and then write about it
03:38:59,680 --> 03:39:01,200 and then go and talk about it,
03:39:01,200 --> 03:39:03,280 you get this crystallization of understanding
03:39:03,280 --> 03:39:05,720 that's just not possible doing any one of the three
03:39:05,720 --> 03:39:06,920 or any two of the three.
03:39:08,320 --> 03:39:12,680 So I definitely highly recommend people to do that.
03:39:12,680 --> 03:39:16,480 And in terms of how are those books difficult?
03:39:16,480 --> 03:39:17,800 I mean, in any case,
03:39:17,800 --> 03:39:19,880 are those books difficult, I mean, in every way,
03:39:19,880 --> 03:39:21,440 they're all long books.
03:39:22,720 --> 03:39:26,800 In terms of density, I would say Lila is the less,
03:39:26,800 --> 03:39:30,760 the least dense, maybe Maps of Meaning.
03:39:32,320 --> 03:39:33,480 I don't know, but Maps of Meaning
03:39:33,480 --> 03:39:35,960 and Human Action are both extremely dense.
03:39:35,960 --> 03:39:40,360 But they're just, I had to read those books very slow.
03:39:40,360 --> 03:39:42,800 You just have to take your time with them.
03:39:42,800 --> 03:39:44,240 To give you an idea with Jordan Peterson,
03:39:44,240 --> 03:39:47,160 he's said this a lot with Maps of Meaning.
03:39:47,160 --> 03:39:50,480 He spent three hours a day writing for 15 years
03:39:50,480 --> 03:39:51,400 to write that book.
03:39:51,400 --> 03:39:53,920 It's probably, I think it's a 600-page book.
03:39:53,920 --> 03:39:55,960 He said he estimates he rewrote every sentence
03:39:55,960 --> 03:39:59,160 in the book 50 times, five, zero,
03:39:59,160 --> 03:40:02,080 to try and get it just perfected.
03:40:02,080 --> 03:40:04,320 And when you read these sentences,
03:40:05,240 --> 03:40:07,800 you can tell that he rewrote it 50 times.
03:40:08,880 --> 03:40:12,760 I've used actually Anki for space repetition.
03:40:14,000 --> 03:40:15,800 It's like a piece of, it's an app.
03:40:15,800 --> 03:40:17,280 I'm not sure if you're familiar with it,
03:40:17,280 --> 03:40:22,280 but it allows you to load in facts or terms
03:40:22,280 --> 03:40:24,440 or entire paragraphs.
03:40:24,440 --> 03:40:29,440 And then it brings them, you review them every day,
03:40:29,840 --> 03:40:33,800 and then it brings them up less and less often over time
03:40:33,800 --> 03:40:36,400 as you show yourself being able to remember
03:40:36,400 --> 03:40:39,680 the thing that you wanted to memorize.
03:40:39,680 --> 03:40:41,560 And oftentimes when I'm reading,
03:40:41,560 --> 03:40:44,160 what I want to memorize is the key idea.
03:40:44,160 --> 03:40:47,160 But also I use it for, I'm terrible with names,
03:40:47,160 --> 03:40:49,200 so I started to use it for names too,
03:40:49,200 --> 03:40:53,560 names of people, names of people that I want to remember.
03:40:53,560 --> 03:40:56,560 And also throughout history and also in my personal life,
03:40:56,560 --> 03:40:58,160 but also events.
03:40:58,160 --> 03:41:00,200 Dates to me are usually not important,
03:41:00,200 --> 03:41:03,040 but sometimes dates are really important.
03:41:03,040 --> 03:41:04,400 And so it's really useful.
03:41:04,400 --> 03:41:05,320 I recommend it highly.
03:41:05,320 --> 03:41:08,680 Naval, I think, mentioned a piece of software
03:41:08,680 --> 03:41:11,560 called Readwise or something like that,
03:41:11,560 --> 03:41:14,680 that I hope I'm saying that correctly.
03:41:14,680 --> 03:41:16,320 It's something like that.
03:41:16,320 --> 03:41:18,960 And what it does is it goes to your highlights
03:41:18,960 --> 03:41:23,040 from your Kindle or the various places
03:41:23,040 --> 03:41:27,800 where you highlight stuff that integrates with Goodreads.
03:41:27,800 --> 03:41:30,000 And it does the same kind of spaced repetition,
03:41:30,000 --> 03:41:31,680 but for things you've highlighted.
03:41:31,680 --> 03:41:34,800 So it sends an email every day.
03:41:36,000 --> 03:41:38,400 It's been really, I recommend it highly
03:41:38,400 --> 03:41:43,400 because it sends, to me, an email form,
03:41:43,480 --> 03:41:45,400 a selection of the things I've highlighted
03:41:45,400 --> 03:41:47,160 and previous things I've read.
03:41:47,160 --> 03:41:52,160 And it's like this weird shock to your memory
03:41:52,400 --> 03:41:57,400 that sprinkles, I have probably way too much Orwell in there.
03:41:57,560 --> 03:42:00,280 And it just kind of like, it brings you back.
03:42:00,280 --> 03:42:03,280 And these ideas are, because what you realize,
03:42:03,280 --> 03:42:07,320 depending on how you highlight, but at least for me,
03:42:07,320 --> 03:42:08,960 and I think it's probably true for a lot of people,
03:42:08,960 --> 03:42:11,640 the things you've highlighted had, at that moment,
03:42:11,640 --> 03:42:13,920 an emotional impact on you.
03:42:13,920 --> 03:42:17,160 And so these things are just hitting you hard again.
03:42:17,160 --> 03:42:19,600 It's like, whoa, it might not be meaningful
03:42:19,600 --> 03:42:20,800 to anyone else except you.
03:42:20,800 --> 03:42:23,320 And it's something I recommend.
03:42:23,320 --> 03:42:26,120 You never know with these hacks or tools and so on
03:42:26,120 --> 03:42:29,520 what's actually BS and what is amazing.
03:42:29,520 --> 03:42:31,440 And that one is kind of amazing.
03:42:31,440 --> 03:42:34,680 So at least for me, it works for me and Naval.
03:42:34,680 --> 03:42:35,800 I think he's the one that-
03:42:35,800 --> 03:42:37,960 Read wise, you said. Read wise.
03:42:37,960 --> 03:42:39,960 Or something close to that.
03:42:39,960 --> 03:42:41,480 It could be read something else,
03:42:41,480 --> 03:42:43,680 like read wealth or something.
03:42:43,680 --> 03:42:46,840 The one other thing I really like,
03:42:46,840 --> 03:42:48,080 and this is more of a new one,
03:42:48,080 --> 03:42:50,920 is I used to always listen to music at the gym,
03:42:50,920 --> 03:42:54,600 but now I've just, because I'm so backlogged on podcasts,
03:42:54,600 --> 03:42:59,160 there's so many, I exclusively listen to podcasts
03:42:59,160 --> 03:43:00,440 when I'm walking or when I'm at the gym,
03:43:00,440 --> 03:43:03,840 anytime I'm doing something that I can't read basically.
03:43:03,840 --> 03:43:07,040 And I think there's something really special
03:43:07,040 --> 03:43:09,360 about exercise and ideation.
03:43:09,360 --> 03:43:12,400 I mean, I don't know if this happens to everyone,
03:43:12,400 --> 03:43:14,520 but my creative juices just go ballistic.
03:43:14,520 --> 03:43:17,560 When I'm at the gym, I hit a certain point of,
03:43:17,560 --> 03:43:19,520 I guess, heart rate and you're sweating enough,
03:43:19,520 --> 03:43:21,800 then the ideas just start to flow.
03:43:21,800 --> 03:43:25,480 So I'm basically at the gym now listening to podcasts,
03:43:25,480 --> 03:43:29,000 exercising as fast as I can to try to get to that state of,
03:43:31,160 --> 03:43:33,480 where you're just straining, you're strenuous exercise,
03:43:33,480 --> 03:43:34,360 I guess you would say.
03:43:34,360 --> 03:43:36,360 And then I'm end up typing notes into my phone
03:43:36,360 --> 03:43:39,200 as fast as I can with all these ideas that are flowing.
03:43:39,200 --> 03:43:42,560 So I've created a lot of good writing out of that.
03:43:42,560 --> 03:43:43,600 Yeah, it's kind of work.
03:43:43,600 --> 03:43:47,920 So I do running quite a bit, so running outside,
03:43:47,920 --> 03:43:52,440 and I'll listen to, okay, I told myself
03:43:52,440 --> 03:43:55,040 this has been going on for about a year,
03:43:55,040 --> 03:44:00,040 is I only listen to stuff that's either World War II
03:44:00,800 --> 03:44:01,880 or World War I related.
03:44:01,880 --> 03:44:06,880 So Hitler, Stalin, like difficult historical stuff.
03:44:09,840 --> 03:44:13,200 And also listen to brown noise.
03:44:13,200 --> 03:44:14,520 So those are the two modes.
03:44:14,520 --> 03:44:18,480 So brown noise helps me, it's like white noise,
03:44:18,480 --> 03:44:20,120 but like deeper, I guess.
03:44:20,120 --> 03:44:22,600 It helps me remove the world.
03:44:22,600 --> 03:44:24,880 And at the gym, there's a lot of distractions.
03:44:24,880 --> 03:44:26,640 When you're running, there's a lot of distractions.
03:44:26,640 --> 03:44:27,720 It helps me remove the world.
03:44:27,720 --> 03:44:32,440 So one, I'll be listening to difficult historical ideas.
03:44:32,440 --> 03:44:34,280 And then when my mind is all of a sudden
03:44:34,280 --> 03:44:36,520 starting to generate ideas,
03:44:36,520 --> 03:44:40,120 I'll listen to brown noise and then force myself to think.
03:44:40,120 --> 03:44:44,440 It's kind of, it's meditative in a sense,
03:44:44,440 --> 03:44:46,480 and your mind wants to be lazy.
03:44:46,480 --> 03:44:51,480 You want to, it's hard, man, like running and thinking
03:44:51,640 --> 03:44:53,760 in the sense that some of the ideas
03:44:53,760 --> 03:44:56,280 that come into your head are pretty heavy.
03:44:56,280 --> 03:44:57,440 It's about your own life.
03:44:57,440 --> 03:44:59,600 It's your own demons come in there,
03:44:59,600 --> 03:45:01,640 but also just difficult ideas
03:45:01,640 --> 03:45:02,960 that require you thinking through
03:45:02,960 --> 03:45:05,480 and persevering through that,
03:45:05,480 --> 03:45:07,160 like not letting yourself get lazy
03:45:07,160 --> 03:45:10,520 and thinking through it has been really for me rewarding
03:45:10,520 --> 03:45:13,960 in the same way that you're saying it is for you.
03:45:13,960 --> 03:45:16,840 It's true that like podcasts and music,
03:45:16,840 --> 03:45:20,960 like shallow, like funny podcasts or music
03:45:20,960 --> 03:45:23,400 have been a kind of filler distraction.
03:45:24,520 --> 03:45:26,440 But informational podcasts,
03:45:26,440 --> 03:45:31,000 like podcasts that have some depths of ideas or audio books
03:45:31,000 --> 03:45:32,680 have been truly rewarding.
03:45:32,680 --> 03:45:35,000 I try to listen now less and less to podcasts
03:45:35,000 --> 03:45:35,960 that are just fun,
03:45:37,840 --> 03:45:39,680 because I feel like I enjoy it too much
03:45:39,680 --> 03:45:41,920 and I don't allow my mind to get bored
03:45:41,920 --> 03:45:45,040 and to think through stuff, to explore ideas.
03:45:45,040 --> 03:45:48,240 It's so easy to fill the space
03:45:49,320 --> 03:45:52,760 that usually would be filled with thought
03:45:52,760 --> 03:45:55,760 and instead fill it with fun podcasts.
03:45:55,760 --> 03:45:58,360 Like there's a bunch of comedy podcasts I really enjoy.
03:45:58,360 --> 03:46:00,360 So there's value to that, of course,
03:46:00,360 --> 03:46:02,360 but you have to realize it's entertainment.
03:46:05,280 --> 03:46:07,400 You don't get much value except entertainment.
03:46:07,400 --> 03:46:08,240 Right, right.
03:46:08,240 --> 03:46:11,000 And there's utility to the boredom too, I think,
03:46:12,440 --> 03:46:15,480 to give your mind the space,
03:46:15,480 --> 03:46:17,360 I guess your subconscious maybe the space
03:46:17,360 --> 03:46:19,200 to chew on some of these problems, right?
03:46:19,200 --> 03:46:22,080 Where you've imbibed so much knowledge,
03:46:22,080 --> 03:46:23,480 you've highlighted and thought about something,
03:46:23,480 --> 03:46:25,760 but then you need to stop thinking about it for a while
03:46:25,760 --> 03:46:27,960 and let it marinate in the subconscious.
03:46:27,960 --> 03:46:30,920 And then these flashes of insight
03:46:30,920 --> 03:46:32,120 that people have described,
03:46:32,120 --> 03:46:33,480 sometimes I get them in the middle of the night,
03:46:33,480 --> 03:46:35,080 like I just wake up from a dream and have them
03:46:35,080 --> 03:46:35,920 and I got to write it down
03:46:35,920 --> 03:46:38,800 or sometimes just in nature taking a walk.
03:46:38,800 --> 03:46:40,480 But I think that's very important too.
03:46:40,480 --> 03:46:43,920 We can't just brute force our way into understanding.
03:46:43,920 --> 03:46:45,560 You know, there's this interplay
03:46:45,560 --> 03:46:47,720 between kind of the brute force reading intake
03:46:47,720 --> 03:46:51,240 and then just relaxing, meditating, sleeping, being bored,
03:46:51,240 --> 03:46:56,160 letting your subconscious do the heavy lifting.
03:46:56,160 --> 03:46:59,240 And there's, I think you should be aware of the fact
03:46:59,240 --> 03:47:01,160 that there's a war for your attention going on.
03:47:01,160 --> 03:47:02,760 So there's a lot of,
03:47:02,760 --> 03:47:05,560 there's been better and better and better mechanisms
03:47:05,560 --> 03:47:08,520 that are designed to steal your attention.
03:47:08,520 --> 03:47:10,880 So I kind of see it as a war zone
03:47:10,880 --> 03:47:14,120 between my right for boredom
03:47:15,280 --> 03:47:17,280 and the internet wanting your attention.
03:47:17,280 --> 03:47:22,000 In fact, Clubhouse as an app has been,
03:47:22,000 --> 03:47:24,600 I'm probably not gonna use Clubhouse much anymore.
03:47:24,600 --> 03:47:27,800 There's some aspect of my own inner loneliness
03:47:27,800 --> 03:47:31,160 and whatever it is that pulled me into Clubhouse
03:47:31,160 --> 03:47:33,520 a little bit too much to where it robbed me
03:47:33,520 --> 03:47:36,440 from that lonely time alone
03:47:36,440 --> 03:47:38,120 where I sit and listen to Bruce Springsteen
03:47:38,120 --> 03:47:39,680 and think about life, right?
03:47:39,680 --> 03:47:40,680 So I wanna-
03:47:40,680 --> 03:47:41,720 That's way more important.
03:47:41,720 --> 03:47:44,560 That's way, well, yeah, at least it's all in balance
03:47:44,560 --> 03:47:47,400 because there is a Clubhouse like a lot of these
03:47:47,400 --> 03:47:48,800 social networks when you use right
03:47:48,800 --> 03:47:52,160 can be a way to discover new ideas, new people.
03:47:52,160 --> 03:47:55,920 But the boredom is just being alone with your thoughts
03:47:55,920 --> 03:47:57,320 is priceless.
03:47:57,320 --> 03:47:58,200 Absolutely.
03:47:58,200 --> 03:47:59,560 And you gotta know yourself, right?
03:47:59,560 --> 03:48:03,240 Like it took me a long time to realize I need solitude.
03:48:03,240 --> 03:48:05,360 Like just how I'm wired, how I'm built.
03:48:05,360 --> 03:48:07,440 I need like an hour a day solitude.
03:48:07,440 --> 03:48:08,880 So you gotta listen to that part of yourself.
03:48:08,880 --> 03:48:11,760 You might be compromising something like that
03:48:11,760 --> 03:48:13,000 where you feel like you always need to be
03:48:13,000 --> 03:48:14,600 with your girlfriend or whatever it may be,
03:48:14,600 --> 03:48:18,160 but I would suggest listening to that voice.
03:48:18,160 --> 03:48:20,880 Yeah, I try to remember things
03:48:20,880 --> 03:48:23,040 that made me feel good over time.
03:48:23,040 --> 03:48:25,440 Like long-term had positive impact
03:48:25,440 --> 03:48:27,720 and long-term had negative impact
03:48:27,720 --> 03:48:31,160 and do more of the former and less of the latter.
03:48:31,160 --> 03:48:33,200 We don't often think like that.
03:48:33,200 --> 03:48:35,600 You know, we talked offline about like carnivore diets,
03:48:35,600 --> 03:48:38,920 for example, I try to remember
03:48:38,920 --> 03:48:40,760 that carbs don't make me feel good.
03:48:40,760 --> 03:48:42,000 Yeah.
03:48:42,000 --> 03:48:45,040 In the moment, it's hard to remember that.
03:48:45,040 --> 03:48:47,960 But you have to remember that that's the case.
03:48:47,960 --> 03:48:51,920 And in the same way, exercise,
03:48:51,920 --> 03:48:54,920 it's hard to remember that exercise makes me feel good.
03:48:56,560 --> 03:48:58,040 Especially when it's time to go to the gym.
03:48:58,040 --> 03:48:59,400 Especially when it's time to go to the gym,
03:48:59,400 --> 03:49:00,600 but you should remember that
03:49:00,600 --> 03:49:03,880 because the kind of person you are without exercise,
03:49:03,880 --> 03:49:06,400 for me, just like you beautifully said
03:49:06,400 --> 03:49:07,440 that you have to know yourself.
03:49:07,440 --> 03:49:10,600 The kind of person I am without exercise
03:49:10,600 --> 03:49:15,600 is a less good person, a person I'm less proud of.
03:49:15,680 --> 03:49:16,960 The food thing is so hard.
03:49:16,960 --> 03:49:19,880 By the way, I still, you know,
03:49:19,880 --> 03:49:21,880 I can't tell you how many times I've learned the lesson,
03:49:21,880 --> 03:49:23,560 like don't eat that.
03:49:23,560 --> 03:49:25,200 But then, you know, you go a few weeks
03:49:25,200 --> 03:49:27,000 of not eating whatever that is,
03:49:27,000 --> 03:49:28,320 and you're feeling good.
03:49:28,320 --> 03:49:29,880 And then you're, I don't know,
03:49:29,880 --> 03:49:30,920 something creeps up inside you,
03:49:30,920 --> 03:49:32,240 like, ah, you could just have one,
03:49:32,240 --> 03:49:33,120 or you could just do this.
03:49:33,120 --> 03:49:34,200 But for me, it's sugar.
03:49:34,200 --> 03:49:36,920 Like sugar just makes me feel terrible.
03:49:36,920 --> 03:49:40,080 But I always, not always, but if it's been a long time,
03:49:40,080 --> 03:49:41,600 I start to make that exception in my mind.
03:49:41,600 --> 03:49:43,040 Like, oh, you can have a little bit.
03:49:43,040 --> 03:49:44,160 And then I eat it and I feel terrible.
03:49:44,160 --> 03:49:45,920 So I don't know how many times I've done that dance,
03:49:45,920 --> 03:49:47,440 but it's not cool.
03:49:47,440 --> 03:49:48,800 Well, it depends on how painful it is,
03:49:48,800 --> 03:49:50,000 and then you learn the lesson.
03:49:50,000 --> 03:49:51,840 I actually embraced the fact
03:49:51,840 --> 03:49:54,600 that I'll never learn the lesson with vodka.
03:49:54,600 --> 03:49:57,760 Every time I drink, especially with Russians,
03:49:57,760 --> 03:50:00,320 is like, I quit drinking every time.
03:50:00,320 --> 03:50:02,920 And then I forget, there's like a slow drop-off.
03:50:02,920 --> 03:50:05,040 It'll be like two weeks, and then-
03:50:05,040 --> 03:50:06,120 Na zdorovie.
03:50:06,120 --> 03:50:07,560 Na zdorovie.
03:50:07,560 --> 03:50:08,600 Very good.
03:50:08,600 --> 03:50:12,080 So it never makes you feel good.
03:50:12,080 --> 03:50:13,920 It never results in anything good,
03:50:15,240 --> 03:50:20,080 except the beautiful social chaos,
03:50:20,080 --> 03:50:22,560 which is ultimately somehow,
03:50:22,560 --> 03:50:24,480 there's value to chaos too, you know?
03:50:24,480 --> 03:50:25,760 There's value to that.
03:50:25,760 --> 03:50:27,280 Whatever the hell stupid stuff you do
03:50:27,280 --> 03:50:31,360 when you get trashed, the over-the-top emotion
03:50:31,360 --> 03:50:34,880 of love usually or whatever, camaraderie,
03:50:34,880 --> 03:50:36,200 there's value to that too.
03:50:36,200 --> 03:50:39,600 Like, as I get older, I realize,
03:50:39,600 --> 03:50:43,480 because the world, sometimes,
03:50:43,480 --> 03:50:44,440 especially when you get older
03:50:44,440 --> 03:50:46,320 and the world wants you to be an adult,
03:50:47,560 --> 03:50:49,480 in order to maintain the youthful spirit,
03:50:49,480 --> 03:50:51,440 you have to use all the tools you can.
03:50:51,440 --> 03:50:52,280 Yeah.
03:50:52,280 --> 03:50:53,120 And alcohol is one of them.
03:50:53,120 --> 03:50:53,960 Right.
03:50:53,960 --> 03:50:55,520 To do all the stupid shit you can,
03:50:55,520 --> 03:50:57,960 even if you're like getting older.
03:50:57,960 --> 03:50:59,600 To lower the inhibitions and-
03:50:59,600 --> 03:51:00,440 Lower the inhibitions.
03:51:00,440 --> 03:51:01,960 Again, it's that taste of uncertainty
03:51:01,960 --> 03:51:03,440 that is the sweetness of life, right?
03:51:03,440 --> 03:51:06,520 To be able to go out and be a flaneur at a party
03:51:06,520 --> 03:51:08,160 and not really know what you're gonna do.
03:51:08,160 --> 03:51:12,800 And we have this draw to the wild side of life.
03:51:12,800 --> 03:51:15,400 As much as we try and build up order around ourselves,
03:51:15,400 --> 03:51:18,520 I think there's always gonna be an appetite for that.
03:51:18,520 --> 03:51:21,080 I've always, most of my life,
03:51:21,080 --> 03:51:23,000 I've always been a social drinker,
03:51:23,000 --> 03:51:25,240 but I actually gave up alcohol a year ago.
03:51:25,240 --> 03:51:29,360 And I would add that to the idea,
03:51:30,880 --> 03:51:33,160 the repertoire for dealing with bigger ideas,
03:51:33,160 --> 03:51:35,560 because alcohol is fun.
03:51:35,560 --> 03:51:37,720 It's amazing, good times.
03:51:39,240 --> 03:51:40,640 It can be analgesic.
03:51:40,640 --> 03:51:42,320 It can give you all these benefits
03:51:42,320 --> 03:51:43,880 if you use the right amounts.
03:51:43,880 --> 03:51:46,520 But I got to the point personally
03:51:46,520 --> 03:51:48,400 where I was trying to wrestle with these ideas
03:51:48,400 --> 03:51:50,280 that are just so much bigger than me.
03:51:50,280 --> 03:51:52,400 And I have this backlog of books
03:51:52,400 --> 03:51:55,160 that was growing faster than I could read them
03:51:55,160 --> 03:51:57,320 that I just reached a point where I decided
03:51:58,400 --> 03:52:01,520 I wanted to start making sacrifices toward attaining that.
03:52:01,520 --> 03:52:03,440 And alcohol was just an easy one.
03:52:05,960 --> 03:52:08,160 Even if you just drink socially on the weekends,
03:52:08,160 --> 03:52:12,280 you're probably spending five to 10 hours drinking
03:52:12,280 --> 03:52:13,560 and then maybe another, what,
03:52:13,560 --> 03:52:17,120 five to 10 hours recovering perhaps on the day after.
03:52:19,120 --> 03:52:23,000 So it was a difficult transition initially,
03:52:23,000 --> 03:52:25,880 but once you get through a couple of months,
03:52:25,880 --> 03:52:27,200 I feel amazing without it.
03:52:27,200 --> 03:52:28,760 I sleep better than ever.
03:52:28,760 --> 03:52:30,680 My workouts are better than ever.
03:52:30,680 --> 03:52:31,720 I'm sharper than ever.
03:52:31,720 --> 03:52:33,120 I'm more lucid.
03:52:33,120 --> 03:52:35,920 So I'm not trying to be a proponent for not drinking,
03:52:35,920 --> 03:52:36,760 but I just want to say-
03:52:36,760 --> 03:52:38,320 But you're a proponent for sacrifice in some-
03:52:38,320 --> 03:52:40,920 I am a big proponent for sacrifice, yes.
03:52:40,920 --> 03:52:43,720 Is there advice you would give to a young person today
03:52:43,720 --> 03:52:45,320 curious about Bitcoin,
03:52:45,320 --> 03:52:49,440 curious about how they succeed in the world
03:52:50,640 --> 03:52:55,480 or both career-wise and just in life in general?
03:52:55,480 --> 03:52:58,400 I mean, the strongest piece of advice I have for,
03:52:58,400 --> 03:53:01,080 this is beyond just Bitcoin.
03:53:01,080 --> 03:53:05,880 This is you managing your own personal and financial affairs
03:53:05,880 --> 03:53:09,880 is that you need to invest in knowledge first.
03:53:11,600 --> 03:53:15,640 It's not good enough to just follow the crowd
03:53:15,640 --> 03:53:19,960 and buy a 60-40 portfolio and put it in a Roth RA
03:53:19,960 --> 03:53:22,040 and plan on social security.
03:53:22,040 --> 03:53:25,560 I mean, the world's changing much faster
03:53:25,560 --> 03:53:28,840 than any existing institution
03:53:28,840 --> 03:53:31,040 is going to be able to keep up with.
03:53:31,040 --> 03:53:33,320 So that's why I like,
03:53:33,320 --> 03:53:34,480 I mean, that's why I named the show
03:53:34,480 --> 03:53:35,520 the question, what is money?
03:53:35,520 --> 03:53:38,880 Like, I think that to me is the rabbit
03:53:38,880 --> 03:53:40,080 that took me down the rabbit hole.
03:53:40,080 --> 03:53:42,320 It's like just asking that question
03:53:42,320 --> 03:53:44,920 naturally progressed to these other questions.
03:53:44,920 --> 03:53:46,080 Like what is value?
03:53:46,080 --> 03:53:47,080 What is government?
03:53:47,080 --> 03:53:50,240 What is the purpose of society?
03:53:50,240 --> 03:53:52,240 Speech, all of these things.
03:53:52,240 --> 03:53:57,240 So I would encourage people to arm yourself
03:53:57,360 --> 03:53:58,480 with knowledge and study.
03:53:58,480 --> 03:54:01,480 And like that, a lot of financial people
03:54:01,480 --> 03:54:04,080 always give you a line of advice
03:54:04,080 --> 03:54:05,880 and then say, this is not financial advice.
03:54:05,880 --> 03:54:07,480 Or like, this is financial advice.
03:54:07,480 --> 03:54:10,400 Like study, study, learn.
03:54:11,960 --> 03:54:13,080 Knowledge is power.
03:54:13,080 --> 03:54:13,920 Yeah.
03:54:13,920 --> 03:54:14,920 This is official financial advice.
03:54:14,920 --> 03:54:15,920 Yes.
03:54:15,920 --> 03:54:19,000 And you're exercising your divine trait,
03:54:19,000 --> 03:54:22,200 which is the logos, right?
03:54:22,200 --> 03:54:24,800 That we are these animals
03:54:24,800 --> 03:54:26,320 that can tell and believe stories.
03:54:26,320 --> 03:54:28,800 So it feels like almost a sacred duty
03:54:28,800 --> 03:54:31,520 to really sharpen that part of ourselves
03:54:31,520 --> 03:54:34,000 and use it to create the best world possible.
03:54:36,800 --> 03:54:38,840 And then the second one was the,
03:54:38,840 --> 03:54:40,440 I think, health and fitness stuff.
03:54:40,440 --> 03:54:45,440 I was, maybe everyone does this in their 20s.
03:54:45,800 --> 03:54:47,240 They just live a little fast
03:54:47,240 --> 03:54:49,320 and beat themselves up.
03:54:51,200 --> 03:54:54,000 Not that I wasn't, like I was living well
03:54:54,000 --> 03:54:58,160 and successful by a lot of measures,
03:54:58,160 --> 03:55:00,240 but I wish I had maybe gotten my act together
03:55:00,240 --> 03:55:01,240 a little bit sooner.
03:55:04,280 --> 03:55:05,120 I just think-
03:55:05,120 --> 03:55:07,360 Health-wise, morality-wise.
03:55:07,360 --> 03:55:11,200 Yeah, drinking, I think morality and eating.
03:55:11,200 --> 03:55:13,320 I just was kind of doing whatever I wanted
03:55:13,320 --> 03:55:16,400 in some ways, let's say.
03:55:16,400 --> 03:55:18,040 Is there a value to a trajectory
03:55:18,040 --> 03:55:19,920 that includes a lot of mistakes?
03:55:19,920 --> 03:55:21,840 So maybe you're supposed to make the mistakes
03:55:21,840 --> 03:55:22,680 in your 20s.
03:55:22,680 --> 03:55:23,520 That's a great point, too.
03:55:23,520 --> 03:55:25,520 Maybe the 20s are all about the mistakes.
03:55:25,520 --> 03:55:27,080 Accumulate the most mistakes possible.
03:55:27,080 --> 03:55:28,040 Yeah, I don't-
03:55:28,040 --> 03:55:30,680 As quickly as possible.
03:55:30,680 --> 03:55:32,280 I don't regret any of it,
03:55:32,280 --> 03:55:34,400 but now that I'm kind of in this place
03:55:34,400 --> 03:55:36,680 where I feel good and I know the value
03:55:36,680 --> 03:55:39,200 of a good night's sleep and just,
03:55:39,200 --> 03:55:42,280 I've more deeply explored my own potential
03:55:42,280 --> 03:55:44,160 that I feel maybe a little regretful
03:55:44,160 --> 03:55:46,200 that I didn't do this earlier is all I'm saying.
03:55:46,200 --> 03:55:50,600 So maybe just exploring different sides of yourself.
03:55:50,600 --> 03:55:52,680 See what it's like to go and make a bunch of mistakes
03:55:52,680 --> 03:55:53,960 and be wild and crazy,
03:55:53,960 --> 03:55:55,400 and then maybe try to walk the straight and narrow
03:55:55,400 --> 03:55:58,400 for a few months and just see what it's like.
03:55:58,400 --> 03:56:02,160 There's probably a guy doing vodka shots right now
03:56:02,160 --> 03:56:04,000 listening to this podcast with his buddies,
03:56:04,000 --> 03:56:07,560 and if you are, please take a shot for us
03:56:07,560 --> 03:56:11,240 for all the mistakes you should make in your 20s.
03:56:11,240 --> 03:56:15,640 And what about love?
03:56:18,040 --> 03:56:21,920 We talked about money is ultimately a mechanism
03:56:21,920 --> 03:56:26,920 by which you can pave a moral path through life.
03:56:29,680 --> 03:56:31,760 To me, one of the purest expressions
03:56:31,760 --> 03:56:34,560 that is love broadly defined for a family,
03:56:34,560 --> 03:56:38,120 for others, for knowledge, for the world,
03:56:38,120 --> 03:56:40,880 is basically an optimistic open view to the world
03:56:40,880 --> 03:56:44,840 that embraces all that is beautiful about this world.
03:56:44,840 --> 03:56:49,280 So do you think about love often?
03:56:49,280 --> 03:56:52,880 In a personal sense, romantic, family, friendship,
03:56:52,880 --> 03:56:54,960 and in the broad sense,
03:56:54,960 --> 03:56:58,440 about its value in a successful life?
03:56:59,920 --> 03:57:01,480 Yeah, of course.
03:57:01,480 --> 03:57:04,640 I'm blessed to have a two and a half year old daughter,
03:57:04,640 --> 03:57:09,200 and love is a word we throw around.
03:57:09,200 --> 03:57:11,440 I love these potato chips, I love you, man.
03:57:11,440 --> 03:57:12,800 I love you, my daughter.
03:57:12,800 --> 03:57:15,600 It's got so many different intensities,
03:57:15,600 --> 03:57:16,640 I guess you might say.
03:57:19,880 --> 03:57:21,960 I don't know, my intuition is that
03:57:23,520 --> 03:57:27,240 it is something very fundamental to the universe.
03:57:27,240 --> 03:57:29,160 Again, I know words don't do it justice,
03:57:29,160 --> 03:57:33,320 but if we just proxy love with selfless action,
03:57:34,360 --> 03:57:38,440 the whole damn universe is selflessly acting, right?
03:57:38,440 --> 03:57:39,800 It's just unfolding.
03:57:39,800 --> 03:57:43,760 And it may sound a bit hippy dippy,
03:57:43,760 --> 03:57:45,200 but my intuition is just that love
03:57:45,200 --> 03:57:47,520 is the core of it somehow.
03:57:48,920 --> 03:57:51,960 I don't have anything to back that up, really, it's just.
03:57:51,960 --> 03:57:55,160 In the way you're framing it, it's making me think
03:57:55,160 --> 03:57:59,680 that love, we talked about sort of meditation,
03:58:02,800 --> 03:58:05,720 as opposed to thinking from an egocentric perspective
03:58:05,720 --> 03:58:08,280 of you, the individual operating in this world,
03:58:08,280 --> 03:58:11,000 is allowing you to be empathetic towards the world
03:58:11,000 --> 03:58:13,480 and thereby think of the universe,
03:58:13,480 --> 03:58:15,880 think of the world acting through you.
03:58:15,880 --> 03:58:20,720 Almost like accepting this notion that ideas have you,
03:58:20,720 --> 03:58:21,840 you don't have ideas,
03:58:22,840 --> 03:58:25,280 that you're not existing in the universe,
03:58:25,280 --> 03:58:27,280 the universe is existing through you.
03:58:27,280 --> 03:58:32,280 It's sort of like, that's what selfless in that context means,
03:58:32,440 --> 03:58:34,640 is like embracing that thought.
03:58:34,640 --> 03:58:36,600 That's a weird thought.
03:58:36,600 --> 03:58:38,200 It's a weird thought that we're just here
03:58:38,200 --> 03:58:43,200 for a little bit of time, these meat vehicles, receptacles,
03:58:45,160 --> 03:58:50,160 and this much bigger thing is just using us,
03:58:51,600 --> 03:58:56,040 not in a malevolent way, but just like a river flows,
03:58:56,040 --> 03:58:59,240 is using us to create more and more beautiful things.
03:58:59,240 --> 03:59:02,000 Yes, yes, more and more beautiful things.
03:59:02,000 --> 03:59:06,160 We are the universe experiencing itself, frankly, right?
03:59:06,160 --> 03:59:07,000 So-
03:59:07,000 --> 03:59:08,200 That's a trippy thought, man.
03:59:08,200 --> 03:59:09,520 Yeah.
03:59:09,520 --> 03:59:12,240 That in some sense, the universe created us
03:59:12,240 --> 03:59:13,840 to experience itself.
03:59:13,840 --> 03:59:17,840 And we are one of the highest forms of beauty
03:59:17,840 --> 03:59:19,320 that nature has created, right?
03:59:19,320 --> 03:59:24,320 If we just think one of the most complex and adaptive thing,
03:59:25,200 --> 03:59:26,680 we're a reflection of nature.
03:59:26,680 --> 03:59:30,480 And another thing that comes to mind here is that
03:59:30,480 --> 03:59:35,480 Dalio has this quote where he says, truth or more accurately,
03:59:36,440 --> 03:59:39,640 an accurate depiction of reality is necessary
03:59:39,640 --> 03:59:41,240 for any good outcome.
03:59:42,440 --> 03:59:47,440 So when we think that love or value is primary,
03:59:47,440 --> 03:59:49,920 I think that too reinforces this thesis
03:59:49,920 --> 03:59:54,880 that acting out of love or acting out of proper moral action,
03:59:54,880 --> 03:59:58,360 you're best reflecting the fundamental nature of reality.
03:59:58,360 --> 04:00:01,080 Therefore, you're best creating the best possible outcomes
04:00:01,080 --> 04:00:02,280 or the things of the most beauty,
04:00:02,280 --> 04:00:05,000 whether that's your artistic expression, your children,
04:00:05,000 --> 04:00:06,560 your business, whatever it is.
04:00:08,040 --> 04:00:09,680 And Jordan Peterson goes deep into that
04:00:09,680 --> 04:00:12,720 where you have to listen to that sense of meaning
04:00:12,720 --> 04:00:15,320 in your life, or you might have some decision on paper
04:00:15,320 --> 04:00:18,360 that's so great this way, but your heart says no,
04:00:18,360 --> 04:00:19,640 your heart says otherwise.
04:00:22,080 --> 04:00:24,240 I've tried to listen to my heart throughout
04:00:24,240 --> 04:00:26,520 and I think that creates the best outcomes.
04:00:26,520 --> 04:00:30,280 But nevertheless, does it make you sad
04:00:30,280 --> 04:00:34,440 that you in particular, Robert,
04:00:34,440 --> 04:00:36,120 are gonna be dead pretty soon?
04:00:38,200 --> 04:00:42,280 As we talk about scarcity, one of the certain things
04:00:42,280 --> 04:00:45,960 that ensure the scarcity of the human experience
04:00:45,960 --> 04:00:48,480 is the fact that you and your consciousness
04:00:48,480 --> 04:00:51,520 are gonna be done, they have a deadline.
04:00:51,520 --> 04:00:54,360 Only time and Bitcoin are absolutely scarce.
04:00:54,360 --> 04:00:59,360 I'm fortunate, I guess I got started
04:01:03,280 --> 04:01:05,560 on this philosophical journey a bit when I was younger,
04:01:05,560 --> 04:01:09,880 but I got into Musashi and Sun Tzu quite a bit,
04:01:11,360 --> 04:01:13,880 who wrote, Musashi wrote the book of five rings,
04:01:16,240 --> 04:01:17,440 Sun Tzu wrote the art of war.
04:01:17,440 --> 04:01:19,960 And one of the things that, I mean,
04:01:19,960 --> 04:01:22,920 these guys were just absolute beasts,
04:01:22,920 --> 04:01:24,480 they lived and died by the sword
04:01:24,480 --> 04:01:28,920 and they were just very great equanimity
04:01:28,920 --> 04:01:30,280 about all things in life.
04:01:30,280 --> 04:01:32,920 And I also found this kind of in the stoic philosophy
04:01:32,920 --> 04:01:37,480 where they just are very cool with everything.
04:01:37,480 --> 04:01:40,600 And one of the lines there is that the way of the warrior
04:01:40,600 --> 04:01:42,480 is the resolute acceptance of death.
04:01:43,600 --> 04:01:45,160 And so I've always tried to think about that.
04:01:45,160 --> 04:01:46,960 Like, of course I experienced fear,
04:01:46,960 --> 04:01:51,840 I experienced everything that you do in a meat suit, right?
04:01:51,840 --> 04:01:53,320 Like anxiety and all the things,
04:01:53,320 --> 04:01:58,320 but I always try to have that higher order view of myself
04:01:58,360 --> 04:02:02,680 and that it's just a certain experience occurring
04:02:02,680 --> 04:02:03,720 at a certain level,
04:02:03,720 --> 04:02:07,000 but it shouldn't override your kind of highest order self.
04:02:07,000 --> 04:02:09,760 That's just resolutely accepted death
04:02:09,760 --> 04:02:13,560 and that this is your one play in life.
04:02:13,560 --> 04:02:18,560 So hopefully that propels me towards proper action.
04:02:18,560 --> 04:02:23,560 I think scarcity cannot help, but lead to something good.
04:02:25,080 --> 04:02:26,800 Just like with this conversation,
04:02:26,800 --> 04:02:29,320 sadly must come to an end.
04:02:29,320 --> 04:02:31,440 The scarcity of it is what makes it beautiful.
04:02:31,440 --> 04:02:34,920 So Robert, this was one of my favorite conversations
04:02:35,960 --> 04:02:40,080 philosophically and in every other level,
04:02:40,080 --> 04:02:44,400 just the ideas and the way you express them around Bitcoin,
04:02:44,400 --> 04:02:47,140 around morality, around money.
04:02:47,140 --> 04:02:51,300 Has been really inspiring and really educational.
04:02:51,300 --> 04:02:54,140 And I'm glad you're out there fighting the good fight.
04:02:54,140 --> 04:02:57,060 And I'm glad you wasting all of this time with me.
04:02:57,060 --> 04:02:58,380 It was really fun.
04:02:58,380 --> 04:03:01,700 And thank you for coming down to Texas
04:03:01,700 --> 04:03:05,060 and having some good old brisket together.
04:03:05,060 --> 04:03:06,620 This was really fun then.
04:03:06,620 --> 04:03:07,940 This was awesome.
04:03:07,940 --> 04:03:10,020 Thanks for having me, man.
04:03:10,020 --> 04:03:11,700 Thanks for listening to this conversation
04:03:11,700 --> 04:03:13,060 with Robert Breedlove.
04:03:13,060 --> 04:03:18,060 And thank you to Fundrise, Element, Mugpack and BetterHelp.
04:03:18,540 --> 04:03:21,980 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
04:03:21,980 --> 04:03:24,060 And now let me leave you with some words
04:03:24,060 --> 04:03:26,500 from Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
04:03:26,500 --> 04:03:30,020 Anti-fragility is beyond resilience and robustness.
04:03:30,020 --> 04:03:33,700 The resilient resists shocks and stay the same.
04:03:33,700 --> 04:03:36,300 The anti-fragile gets better.
04:03:36,300 --> 04:03:42,300 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.