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Hey, welcome back to another Bitcoin Study Sessions.

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Lucas and I are here.

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We are discussing Lynn Alden's Broken Money,

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Why Our Financial System is Failing Us,

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and How We Can Make It Better.

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We're on the chapters 7 and 8 today.

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I'll do what I usually do and give a short summary

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of both the chapters that we read

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and also enough of the book leading up to the chapters

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so we see them in the appropriate context.

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And then Lucas and I will discuss chapters 7 and 8.

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the significance, what's important to us, and just kind of our observations.

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So part one of this book began with the question, the overarching question, what is money?

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And we got a short anthropology of money, two systems.

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Money began both as credit, like we exchanged favors for things instead of exchanging items.

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But also we did also have commodity money.

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We exchanged items for things.

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So we have those two systems of money, credit and commodity, that were kind of different ways of doing money.

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And we actually did both use both of them in our history and prehistory.

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From that, Alden determined that the commonality between those two is that money is a ledger for recording transactions and ownership.

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So it's this more abstract thing.

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Money is just the ledger that records who has what and the transactions between us.

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Here's a paragraph I've read a few times in my summaries.

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I want to read again. It's from the introduction because it does just present the whole book as an

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overarching project, and I think it's good to keep present. Quote, at its core, money is a ledger.

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Commodity money serves as a ledger governed by nature. Bank money serves as a ledger governed by

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nation states. Open source money serves as a ledger governed by users. As the book explores,

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the evolution of technology changes the prevailing power structures and incentives surrounding money

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from era to era. So we're going to see that last part from era to era here. We're in part two of

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the book now, The Birth of Banks. And in the first part of part two that we did last conversation,

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we saw kind of the deep history of banking, the emergence of like proto-banking systems like

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Koala, which was a system of specialized merchants that allowed commodity money to be turned into

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abstract forms of credit for easy transport over distance, kind of like an ancient form of a traveler's check or a wire transfer that was based on the communications between these specialized merchants and this wallet network.

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We saw how we actually do have the birth of modern forms of banking in Italy, in the city states there.

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So instead of commodity money transactions, two individuals could just go to the same banker, and that person using double entry bookkeeping could just manage the transactions between the two merchants on the ledger that that banker maintained, which was a lot easier than just them constantly doing gold coins between them.

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They just go to a shared banker.

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So today we're going to see the kind of the proliferation, growth, and centralization of that banking system.

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Chapter seven is free banking versus central banking.

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So this chapter kind of starts first with a quick overview between the difference of those two styles or forms of banking, free versus central banking.

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Free banking, the key is that there's no central bank.

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There's no overarching bank that controls the whole deal.

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Each bank holds the deposits, the gold for their depositors.

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Each bank can also even issue its own bank note, the bearer asset not assigned to a specific person,

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its own type of currency that goes into circulation.

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Each individual bank, these private banks, could be full reserve.

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They could maintain all gold deposits, or they could be fractional.

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Their business model could be to re-lend out some of the gold that was deposited to them.

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We learned last time how competition between banks will tend towards fractional reserve banking

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because the banks make money and therefore can pay people essentially to put deposits with them.

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It's more risky, but history kind of tends in that direction.

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With free banking, this is the question that Alvin, the recurring questions she's asking,

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who controls the ledger?

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There's kind of a three-way control of the ledger in the free banking system.

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First and foremost, the individual banks, obviously, they maintain their own sub-ledger

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of what's going on, the ledger of transactions with them.

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Um, nature, though, also because commodity money is still in play is kind of serving still as a constraint on the ledger in that it controls the scarcity of gold and imparts gold has certain physical characteristics that maintain its use as part of the ledger.

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government also even in a free banking system assuming we're not in this complete anarchy

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government has influence can take over or influence um individual free banks and historically that's

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kind of what happened we alden gives kind of a short history of free banking it had mixed record

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it was there were successes in certain countries the u.s in the 1830s and 60s it was more turbulent

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The banks, as I mentioned, there's this tendency to want to go into fractional reserve banking and then to decrease the fraction of reserves that a bank is actually maintaining in order to be able to lend out more risky.

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But they're getting a better return, and they can distribute some of that return amongst people to encourage more deposits.

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So U.S., 1830s, 1860s tended to lend out more and more, which is risky.

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There was also different – in the United States at that time, different states had their own regulatory schemes, which allowed for kind of corruption.

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Free banking is lucrative because you can kind of control this – the banknotes and whatnot.

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So there was corruption.

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There was also, because there were these different jurisdictions with their different regulations, like Massachusetts versus New York, there wasn't a lot of branching between states with banks. And so there was more risk because they couldn't diversify geographically. And so there were lots of bank failures. That's the mixed records of free banking.

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So let's talk about central banking. That's the other style of banking. In a central banking system, the central bank, recognized by the government, standardizes and centralizes and controls the ledger. The central bank is what holds the true reserve. Gold in a gold-based system, maybe bonds in a fiat-based system.

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individual banks in the central banking system don't have the gold they what they hold in reserve

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is actually just notations on a central bank ledger just liabilities of the central bank

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and people do their banking with these individual banks with individual banks just again basically

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their asset is an entry on the central bank's ledger um individual banks have no control then

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over the value of their reserves because they don't control it the underlying gold or fiat again

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And the underlying real asset value is with the central bank who controls the whole deal.

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The central bank, that's its role, in fact, is kind of to determine the amount of money in circulation and in crisis to serve as a lender of last resort, create more base money as needed.

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It does have that role to serve as kind of controlling the banking system.

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So that's a quick outline that Alden gives us of free versus central banking.

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She then goes through a quick run through of U.S. monetary system to show how free banking tends to central banking.

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We get this tend, maybe inevitable, towards centralization.

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She notes, in the Revolutionary War, we first had a currency called the Continental.

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It hyperinflated away.

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That's the inauspicious beginning of fiat currency.

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Then the Coinage Act of 1792, the U.S. establishes a mint and creates legal tender coinage, that layer of abstraction over coins where they're set in standardized units.

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That unitization, the standardization of the unit is kind of controlled by the government.

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They determine what the unit of the coin is, but it's still not central banking at that point.

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It's just the U.S. government setting standards on what the coins are going to be.

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The centralization really begins in the Civil War.

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The United States at that time establishes literally the strictly regulated national banks.

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In a national fiat currency, the first of its type, the greenback – well, not the first of its type.

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We had a continental I just mentioned.

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But the greenback establishes national currency.

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fiat in the sense that it kind of promises eventual repayment in coin, but it's not

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currently backed by any reserves. They also, at that time, in that Civil War era, ended

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states were no longer issuing their own banknotes. We have this national banknote. So the central

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government now has seniorage, the power to make money merely by printing money.

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The greenback did not hyperinflate away. It didn't disappear in that fashion. But the greenback did

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reveal something really kind of historically important. We didn't reveal it, but it shows to

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us now that the currency is a politicized abstraction. There's this post-war debate

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that shows that it's now a politicized thing that can be manipulated. There's this debate between

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creditors and debtors. How much should a claim be worth? Like a monetary, like a note, what should

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that claim be worth? How closely should it be pegged to metals? There's this debate between

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creditors who want to retire the greenback, limit these claims to gold, and really want to tighten

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the financial supply deflation, which maintains or increases the values of the debts that's owed

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to them. The debtors wanted a more inflationary setting to devalue their debts, make them more

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easy to pay. So keep the greenback, maybe keep both silver and gold, a larger money supply.

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Alden says, quote, this brought attention to an important issue. Dollars were merely an abstraction

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of value, redeemable for something of value, which meant that the definition of a dollar

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could change in a political group's favor by shrinking or expanding its supply.

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Savers and creditors of dollars will naturally want a stronger dollar.

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Debtors that owe dollars will naturally want a weaker dollar.

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In this politicized debate, at this historical moment at least, hard money wins, silver was

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demonetized, and the United States has a gold standard.

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But you can't step back from that.

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The value of money is now a central political question, and it's going to move towards centralization and debasement.

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So we get the first truly central bank.

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The Federal Reserve is created in 1913.

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Its ledger is now going to serve as the monetary base for the country.

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Individual banks, their reserves are just entries on the central bank's ledger.

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They're not commodities themselves.

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They have no value themselves, essentially, except for as the, you know, a deferred credit that is the central bank ledger notation.

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Further centralization. This is a story that I think Bitcoiners are savvy to.

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And Alden gives it here that further centralization occurs through gold seizure and centralization of its possession in two ways.

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the infamous Executive Order 6102 issued during the Great Depression, which made it a criminal

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offense for us Americans to even own gold anywhere in the world except for maybe like

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small gold rings or something like that.

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It ordered people to hand over gold to the U.S. government on some established redemption

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amount.

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And then, so that was like this grand seizure of gold in a sense, and then the centralization

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of its possession occurred with the Federal Reserve Act of 1934.

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Banks were prevented from redeeming dollars for gold, individual banks were.

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And gold was transferred to the U.S. Treasury, all concentrated with the centralized banking system here.

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So individuals and banks could not redeem for gold.

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And the final kind of nail in the coffin, final pull of the rug internationally is 1971.

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The U.S. defaults on allowing foreign central banks to redeem for gold.

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So this removal of ability to redeem for gold now is going to lead, Alden notes, to structural inflation.

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before we we talked about past chapter chat past chapters there was kind of a gradual debasement of

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currency when there's legal tender coinage there is an abstraction over the coin that provides for

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a layer of manipulation centralized authorities can change how much metal is in a coin the the

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size of the coin things like that but those debasements at least occur gradually over time

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because there's always existing coins in the system that need to be replaced gradually by

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the new coins introduced. But now there's just the bank note, there's just notes, pieces of paper.

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So debasement can occur much quicker. The government can just re-denominate the redemption

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value of the piece of paper. This structural inflation, people are now going to be basically

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required in a certain sense, impelled to protect their wealth by putting it in banks. I mean,

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if you put your money underneath the mattress in gold coins, it's going to retain it. Put your

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money under the mattress and paper notes, it's going to lose its value very quickly. If you put

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them paper notes with the bank, maybe it still loses value over time, but you're going to get

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some interest back. So you're going to cut into that. Alden says, quote, put simply, an inflationary

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money necessitates the use of counterparties and leverage to keep up with inflation by earning

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interest, which is not the case with the hard money. So the structural inflation is going to

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increase the power of banks. All this money is going into them. And when there's one central

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bank that is the ledger of those banks, controlled by the government, you're going to increase the

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power of the government. So that's the importance of the question that Alden's constantly asking,

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who controls the ledger? The government controls the ledger here. So when people put their money,

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when they're impelled by structural inflation to put their wealth value with the banking system,

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they're now giving up privacy and making themselves subject to surveillance.

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People's transactions are, of course, recorded on a government ledger, essentially, with the central bank, and so they can see who the transacting entities are.

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There's even this thing called the Bank Secrecy Act, where banks have to file reports with the government for transactions over $10,000, and that $10,000 is not kind of adjusted for inflation.

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So more and more transactions come under the purview of government surveillance.

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Also, the power of government increases because they can tax, we've talked about this in the past, in a non-transparent fashion simply by inflating the money supply.

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The ability to change the peg or value of the dollar is the ability to side with creditors or debtors and to, again, politicize value in that way.

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This brings us to Chapter A, the second chapter we talk about today, the speed of transactions versus the speed of settlements.

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So the last chapter gave us an outline of free banking versus central banking and described the historical events that took us into the central banking system. This chapter is going to give us a key technological development that made that centralization practically inevitable. And again, this is a book about how technology disrupts and changes the financial system. So this is really important in the context of Alden's book. This chapter, I think, is pivotal and very interesting.

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So the problem with gold is that it's relatively slow and inconvenient for transactions.

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You have to transport it.

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There's safety concerns.

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You get robbed if you hold it.

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You have to verify it.

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You have to assay it to make sure it's got the right composition of metals, that it actually

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is gold or whatever.

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Early banking mitigated some of this.

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Again, if you allow transactions to be easily recorded on a ledger and both people use the

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same ledger, they can just go to that person who maintains the ledger and note their transactions

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between them.

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banks that did transactions between many parties could then kind of batch the settlements and

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movement move less of the underlying asset so there's two things there's the transactions the

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commerce the kind of exchanging of the thing for the good either here's a gold coin you give me the

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um the spear that that transaction has occurred and it's also settled because i received the

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payment for the thing. It was a transaction that settled. But with banking, transaction

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separates from settlement. Settlement is the commerce, the exchanging for goods. Settlement

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is kind of the actual fulfillment of payment for that good. You just give someone a claim for

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a redemption of an asset held by the bank. So transaction is now separated from settlement.

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There's distance between them in time. Separation now of transaction and settlement

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allows for claims for gold that occur during the transaction. Here's the credit for the spear you're

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going to give me. Those claims can circulate faster than the actual gold itself. But even

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the circulation of credit, even when there is kind of that deferred payment between transaction

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and settlement, the credit, the speed at which it can circulate in the system is bound by the speed

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of humans or horses or whatever the fastest mechanical thing is until the mid 1800s.

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This is the technological key that breaks the old system or that enables a new system.

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The invention of the telegraph and the advent of telecommunications.

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A new communication mechanism is actually huge in the history of financial systems.

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So now bigger areas can be placed under the control of a central bank and yet still have near instantaneous access to that bank's ledger.

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And so to allow for these transactions and settlements to occur.

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So that kind of happens this way.

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First, individuals make transactions between them and then settle with a bank.

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But second, now these banks are communicating with each other in different areas via telegraph.

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And then they can do that also communication, not just between themselves, with a central bank.

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And so these central banks can then communicate if they need to with a financial house or a financial hub or like a clearinghouse.

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And so you can have these big elaborate structures. A financial system can become very elaborate and can become global in scope. Gold final settlement becomes rare because banks can now bunch a bunch of settlements or bunch a bunch of transactions that offset and then do settlements later between the banks and through this telecommunications based ledger.

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so gold is now turning into the abstraction that is credit that is going to allow for the separation

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of transactions from settlement you can make the purchase but just hand over the claim or credit

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commodity money would settle instantly the gold would instantly settle the transactions but with

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credit there's that distance between the transaction and the settlement more abstraction

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many millions of credit transactions can occur they can occur very fast with telecommunications

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and then later be settled.

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So the result of this, to quote Alden,

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monetary ledgers became increasingly detached

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from any sort of natural constraint

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or scarce unit of settlement

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because the only scarce monetary alternatives,

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such as gold, were too slow

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to present a complete alternative.

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So this is obviously like a huge tectonic social shift

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and technological shift.

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at the time, monetary theorists began to talk about this, the rise of credit theorists. So we

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talked about the credit theory of money earlier, where money is a claim for deferred payment,

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just a form of credit. Now we're actually seeing the credit theorists who are beginning to elaborate

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this. And we get a form of credit theory called chartalism that's prevalent at the time.

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The idea with chartalism is that money originates with the state's attempts to direct economic

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activity. It's not commodities that give money value. It's states giving money value by imposing

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taxes on a population payable in the stipulated form of money So it the fact that the state requires you to pay in dollars that makes dollars money not anything else The consequence of the rise of credit money this form of credit money controlled by the state that the charlatists are talking about is this to quote Alden

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This gave governments the power to instantaneously devalue a substantial part of their citizen savings literally overnight and funnel that purchasing power toward war or other government expenditures whenever they determine that the situation calls for it.

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Value is politicized.

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The government controls the ability to inflate or deflate currency.

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And so it has extreme power.

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So this sounds terrible, and I think most are all Bitcoiners and non-Bitcoiners even may lament this, but Alden says something very interesting. She says, really, don't take this as a moral tale. This is a tale about technology, not a moral story.

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so it's it's a you know any sort of technology have disruptive effects and here's the disruptive

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effect of telecommunications the speed of light versus the speed of gold obviously a huge um

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technological thing that occurred that's gonna have a huge impact and this is the impact it had

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on the financial system alvin tells us and it had this centralizing tendency so people again not

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moralizing people simply people prefer to pass around credit for example bank notes because

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they don't have to transport and authenticate gold and telecommunications enables this

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this is though going to have all these kind of perverse consequences enables banks gives them

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the irresistible opportunity to move into kind of lucrative fractional reserve banking more and more

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because they know people don't want to deal directly in cumbersome gold

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fractional reserve banking as we kind of talked about is unstable can require bailouts and can

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lead the government then to step in which tends towards more centralization also finance through

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the increasing speed of telecommunications based ledger is increasingly international it enables

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this international scope of the financial system gold then becomes even more inefficient in the

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face of credits transmitted through tele through telecommunications and begins to drop further out

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the loop. So all the notes that, I mean, just see it for what it is. Fiat money at this point

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is the demonstrated victor. There's two possible ledgers, essentially. Nature's ledger, gold,

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which is scarce and secure against debasement, but doesn't move or get verified quickly.

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And then mankind's ledger, the dollar, which moves and gets verified very quickly,

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but doesn't have security against debasement. One might have individual preferences for one

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or the other. But as Alden notes, at this point in history, in the broken money narrative,

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fiat is simply the best money. There's no country on the gold standard. And it's seemingly then just

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not fit for purpose demonstratively. The problem is the speed of transactions in a global economy.

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And Alden ends this chapter with this statement of the problem, which of course, I think Bitcoiners

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see as a sort of prophecy, quote, the only way to fix this speed gap in the long run would be to

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develop a way for a widely accepted, scarce monetary bearer asset itself to also be able to

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settle over long distances at the speed of light. We need teleporting gold. So that's chapter seven

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and eight. And Lucas, to pass it over to you, we've actually, if this sounds like some sort of

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echolocation is occurring. Lucas and I had this conversation once and it was lost due to

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insufficient or misused technology on our part, rather. So we're having it again, but it's

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interesting enough to do twice. And we talked about this last time, Lucas, but I want to pass

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this back to you. The emphasis, which I find very interesting, that technology is not a morality tale

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and that we can understand the rise of fiat currency, even central banking as about incentives

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and technology and not as, you know, even like evil central bankers or evil government.

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It's not about morality.

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It's about like a new technology occurred and then it interacted with human nature.

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And we get a system that even though, even though very imperfect, maybe it's the best

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situation that could have occurred at the time, fiat money, credit based, telecommunications

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based ledgers.

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What do you think?

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I like to view humans as good, like naturally inherently good.

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And so I think if you take that approach, then you can look at the systems that we have and you can, if you like, you can judge them based on the consequences that occur as a result of implementing them.

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And so I think that's a very good way to look at it, where fiat definitely won for the short term because a new variable was introduced.

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And that new variable was speed because speed previously had never been a question in commerce.

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It was always settled at the same time that business was conducted.

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You handed over the money.

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I wasn't going to give you the cow without you giving me the gold.

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I wasn't going to give you the house without you giving me the silver, whatever.

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So in that regard, yeah.

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When you were talking, I was thinking of plastics, which coincidentally kind of came about in, you know, a little bit after the rise of fiat money.

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But it's the same type of thing where we had an influx of this new thing that allowed us to be super flexible and super fast with creating things that were really useful.

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So but now we know that those plastics are contributing to landfills that are overflowing and you buy things that you can't you can't replace them once they're broken.

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They're they're just trash and and also they're damaging to people to the health.

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You know, you've got microplastics in your body and they're literally killing people.

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So I do love, again, the way that Lynn takes us through the technological journey of how, like, why did gold need to be centralized?

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Gold had to be centralized.

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It had to be centralized because it was too value dense.

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It was too hard to verify.

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It was too easy to steal.

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There's just so many faults of gold.

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it turns out that in retrospect like the the really only good thing about gold was that it

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was really hard to get there was just it was just difficult I mean yes it's a useful metal but

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as money the usefulness of metal contributes to nothing and and Lynn has done such a fantastic job

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of really hammering home the point that money is not a commodity it's not a dollar it's not

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anything other than a ledger. I heard Elon Musk in an interview get asked this question and he

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referred to money as a database. Ask what question? Like what is money? And he referred to it as a

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database, which is simply a ledger, right? And so, yes, so we've just been increasingly looking for

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a, well, we, we, we started by looking for a more efficient ledger because we had money that was

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hard. So you, you start with hard money and then you look for a way to make it more efficient. And

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it turns out by making gold more efficient, you make it easy. You make it soft. You make it, um,

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yeah, uh, you, you basically ruin the hard qualities of it by optimizing for speed.

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so yeah and yeah no go ahead no i think that's right it's like gold as a ledger

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i mean money has different characteristics as a medium of exchange and as a store of value and so

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like gold it loses out kind of as a medium of exchange but it's still all the notes like there's

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nature's ledger and mankind's ledger and they both have benefits if nature's ledger is scarce

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secure against debasement, but very, you know, slow, mankind's ledger is like very susceptible

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to debasement, but very fast. And so like, money bifurcates, kind of like we have gold still can be

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a store of value. For those who are savvy to the very rapid debasement of fiat currency. But it

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definitely loses out as this idea of money as even a ledger recording transactions or ownership

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between people because it can really now only serve as like a battery that stores the value

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that is O.G. or something like that.

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Yeah, I do.

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I would push back not necessarily on the idea that fiat is immoral, but that the consequences

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of fiat are right, have been immoral.

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Yeah, you look back through history and you look at the in the Renaissance period, you

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look at the great buildings and you look at the great art and the great music, the

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philosophers and, and, uh, the advance, I mean, the advances in mathematics and science during

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those times were incredible. And it was because there was a view towards the future that you had

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to work towards instead of using credit and expanding money supply to bring the future to

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the present. Um, and I was thinking about this, like in, in, in economics, one of the first things

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you learn is the present value equation where you can figure out, okay, this is what the money will

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buy today. It's buying power basically. And then this is what it'll be worth in the future. And

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that really is not a question when you have a absolutely scarce money like Bitcoin, because

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you still have the buying power question because the buying power changes, but the actual supply,

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It's like one Bitcoin now is still one Bitcoin 20 years from now.

321
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Right.

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So, yeah, it introduces all of these sort of, you know, pseudoscience type of justifications for using that type of a ledger that appear to be very real.

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They appear to be very justifiable.

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and in the end it turns out that they are merely a justification for concentrating power within a

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government because i was thinking about like you know governments want to inflate money they that

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like they want to inflate money because then they get to concentrate power it's not that they want

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to inflate the money it's that they want to be the first people to spend that money they want that

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seniors, right? And that canton on effect. And so last night, I was thinking, I was like,

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why is counterfeiting illegal? You know, it's helping, like, it's helping increase the money

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supply. And the only reason counterfeiting is illegal is because it takes away the opportunity

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for the government to be the first one to spend the money and benefit from that.

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So no, and I think you're very right to say that the consequences of the fiat system

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can be judged as immoral and bad.

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And so we can have a technological advancement

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and that itself can be neutral.

336
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It's just a thing that occurs in the world.

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But then the things that happen after that,

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the state's abuse of the fiat standard,

339
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we can make moral claims about whether that being right or wrong.

340
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And in fact, I think about this too,

341
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it kind of highlights the different styles of critique and analysis

342
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we can do on something like Bitcoin. So with Lowry's software thesis, Bitcoin as BitPower,

343
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a novel form of power projection in cyberspace, a form of defense technology rather than a form

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of monetary technology, his style of analysis was not moralized either. It was from the military

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perspective. And then also that was based on kind of an evolutionary perspective of the use of power

346
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projection for species as a form of fitness for survival and claiming of resources. Not a moralized

347
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perspective. Evolution is just a scientific thing that occurs. Military policy or military strategy

348
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is also just like an observation about the way that human groups interact. Not moralized.

349
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Alden's take about technology. Technology is also not a moral take. But then you have other people

350
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are thinking about like Gladstein's book, Check Your Financial Privilege. That's a very moralized

351
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take and that's a necessary one from the human rights angle and we could probably go through

352
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and categorize different kind of bitcoin theorizers bitcoin authors like is the style

353
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resistance money um i forget the authors of that but they're legitimate philosophy academic

354
00:33:21,354 --> 00:33:25,554
philosophers and i believe that's kind of a moralized take they justify it based on kind

355
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of a ralzian thesis of behind the veil of ignorance you should choose um bitcoin in to

356
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be in this world because that's the fair thing to choose.

357
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And so like you can have these different styles of observation about Bitcoin from a spectrum

358
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from the technical to like the judgmental morally.

359
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I think it's good.

360
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I think it's good that we like you point out the negative aspects of the fiat standard.

361
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And that's we definitely don't want to just shrug our shoulders and say, wow, it's technology.

362
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Yeah, it's the progression.

363
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If you read the credits in the beginning of Broken Money, Alden donates, I think, the

364
00:34:00,734 --> 00:34:06,614
first thousand or 10,000 book sales to the Human Rights Foundation, to Gladstein's foundation.

365
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Obviously, they're connected, but what Alden is doing as a systems engineer is looking at this as,

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you know, does this system work? And I keep thinking about when I first got kind of interested

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in sort of the macroeconomic look of the world and the overarching global economy,

368
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one of the things that I was introduced to as a concept that I'd never been familiar with was the velocity of money,

369
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which is basically how often is money changing hands?

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And the reason that that is important is because in this type of system, in a fiat system,

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if the velocity of money slows, it's like musical chairs and the music stops and everything comes crashing down.

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because if people just hoard money, if they just hang on to it and they don't spend it and they

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save it, which is arguably maybe what you are kind of morally incentivized to do is that you are,

374
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you know, maybe you probably should have some savings to prepare yourself and be responsible

375
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for difficult times ahead so that you're not dependent upon somebody else.

376
00:35:20,694 --> 00:35:38,634
But the nature of the system requires, as you accurately pointed out during the summary, it requires that since inflation occurs, you have to do something with that money in order to just attempt to try and quell the loss of buying power.

377
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And so you put it into a bank, you put it into a CD, you put it into an equity market, you put it into real estate. The term cash is trash becomes common within the parlance of economics where you're trying to get rid of this thing as fast as possible.

378
00:35:57,514 --> 00:36:02,674
and you're trying, you know, that's why we have people flipping, you know, we're flipping houses,

379
00:36:02,674 --> 00:36:08,434
we're flipping real estate, we're short, short-term trading, we're all of these things

380
00:36:08,434 --> 00:36:16,514
where it's shrunk the time horizon, um, to, you know, days, minutes, um, seconds, milliseconds,

381
00:36:16,514 --> 00:36:23,414
um, in terms of high frequency trading on the, on the stock exchange. Yeah. So it's like,

382
00:36:23,414 --> 00:36:37,574
Yeah, and that's where – the way that I envision it now is it's like strapping jet engines onto a paper airplane so that it's fine as long as the jet engines are running.

383
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But if you take some of that fuel out, if you slow it down, it just comes crashing down.

384
00:36:42,974 --> 00:36:46,214
So we traded time.

385
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We wanted convenience.

386
00:36:49,054 --> 00:36:58,794
We needed to optimize for convenience because we created a technology, the telegraph, that was effectively the first digital social network.

387
00:37:00,614 --> 00:37:01,514
You know, very low level.

388
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If you think about your own social network, it's primarily the first layer of your social network is the people that you do commerce with.

389
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Like those are the people you absolutely do know.

390
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You're a baker, you're a butcher, you're a tailor, et cetera.

391
00:37:15,274 --> 00:37:20,194
but then you extrapolate that to the entire world.

392
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And you have to keep up with the money.

393
00:37:24,354 --> 00:37:25,594
There's just no way around it.

394
00:37:25,674 --> 00:37:29,794
If I'm sending a telegraph from London to New York

395
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and saying I want to buy 100 bales of cotton,

396
00:37:34,034 --> 00:37:36,194
then the guy on the other end is going,

397
00:37:36,334 --> 00:37:37,694
okay, but I want the money.

398
00:37:37,954 --> 00:37:40,014
Like I'm not going to continue to house this.

399
00:37:40,094 --> 00:37:40,914
I'm not going to store it.

400
00:37:40,954 --> 00:37:41,894
I brought it to market.

401
00:37:42,014 --> 00:37:43,114
I'm not going to take it home

402
00:37:43,114 --> 00:37:48,714
and wait for you to send a ship across the, you know, take two months or six weeks or whatever.

403
00:37:48,894 --> 00:37:50,714
Yeah. Yeah. To get payment. And so.

404
00:37:51,354 --> 00:37:53,094
You're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah.

405
00:37:53,094 --> 00:37:55,994
I just, I just reflecting, I think you have more to say,

406
00:37:56,034 --> 00:37:59,054
because you're absolutely right that like velocity and speed or the defining,

407
00:37:59,474 --> 00:38:01,674
like Aldous Huxley has this quote that speed,

408
00:38:02,234 --> 00:38:05,114
something like speed is a defining characteristic of modernity.

409
00:38:05,474 --> 00:38:12,194
And you have the rise of the credit theorists at this time to justify credit as like moving much faster.

410
00:38:13,114 --> 00:38:20,234
It's just like that speed as a dominant paradigm, like as part of the nature of technology, that hasn't changed.

411
00:38:20,234 --> 00:38:22,594
We have accelerationists now.

412
00:38:22,734 --> 00:38:30,194
We moved into the epoch, maybe you might say, of speed squared, whereas the exponential age, it's not just that speed is increasing, but the speed of speed is increasing.

413
00:38:30,954 --> 00:38:32,834
And so that's the next step.

414
00:38:32,974 --> 00:38:38,154
It's not going to – humanity is going to want to keep on getting faster and faster.

415
00:38:38,154 --> 00:38:52,714
There's another quote, 1909, around the time the telecommunications-based ledger in Alvin's estimation kind of really gets going, 1860s with the laying of a cable on the ocean floor connecting different continents.

416
00:38:52,714 --> 00:39:00,914
1909 of course by that time telecommunications is more established um you have the italian

417
00:39:00,914 --> 00:39:05,934
futurist filippo marinetti has this thing called it's more kind of an aesthetic movement called

418
00:39:05,934 --> 00:39:11,334
futurism but he has his futurist manifesto and he's saying things like speed is our god a new

419
00:39:11,334 --> 00:39:16,734
canon of beauty and so you have almost like this idolatrous worship of speed and you mentioned

420
00:39:16,734 --> 00:39:23,134
earlier, even like the technology of plastics, that's a way to make material like disposable

421
00:39:23,134 --> 00:39:24,394
and quicker in a sense.

422
00:39:24,554 --> 00:39:26,574
And so like speed is the nature.

423
00:39:26,954 --> 00:39:31,254
We almost like internalize that technology is about speed.

424
00:39:31,794 --> 00:39:36,694
And as I mentioned, even with like the exponential age, that that's only getting quicker and

425
00:39:36,694 --> 00:39:36,934
quicker.

426
00:39:37,094 --> 00:39:37,894
And you're obviously right.

427
00:39:37,894 --> 00:39:42,474
It's like velocity is the nature of our age, unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know,

428
00:39:42,554 --> 00:39:43,414
but it is the case.

429
00:39:43,414 --> 00:39:49,394
I think you can also view it from the standpoint of it's not so much that we're continuously accelerating.

430
00:39:49,814 --> 00:39:54,194
It's that we're just getting back to the speed that we had before.

431
00:39:54,574 --> 00:40:01,314
When I walked across the street and I gave you the gold and you gave me the bread, that's instant settlement.

432
00:40:03,034 --> 00:40:11,734
And that's what Bitcoin allows is that it's still not – literally, it's still not quite as fast as that, but it's a very close approximation.

433
00:40:12,414 --> 00:40:41,788
But the final thing I was going to say on that was that what we realized when we started sending telegraph communications across oceans and doing business across continents was that that in itself is proof that money is a ledger because people were more than happy to accept credit You know they were more than happy to accept credit because that what they wanted

434
00:40:41,968 --> 00:40:47,908
If they didn't want that, then we wouldn't have progressed to it. Right. And so to me,

435
00:40:48,068 --> 00:40:53,368
one of the things that this book has really done for me, and it's not really anything that Alden

436
00:40:53,368 --> 00:41:01,727
necessarily focuses on, but just to continuously try and view different sorts of historical

437
00:41:01,727 --> 00:41:07,508
progression of money as instead of thinking them as gold and silver and all of these different

438
00:41:07,508 --> 00:41:12,108
characteristics and all of these different purposes, it's just thing one and thing two

439
00:41:12,108 --> 00:41:19,988
and thing three. Because if we ascribe this sort of, you know, there's so many people that

440
00:41:19,988 --> 00:41:28,948
this like godlike um quality to gold because of the characteristics that it has um and just because

441
00:41:28,948 --> 00:41:38,508
it did happen to serve as that settlement layer for so long but it's it's not it's it's just you

442
00:41:38,508 --> 00:41:47,248
know that was the stand-in for the way of enforcing the ledger and we're just trying to find better

443
00:41:47,248 --> 00:41:53,748
ways to enforce that ledger as we try and bring the speed back to the same sort of level that we

444
00:41:53,748 --> 00:42:01,227
had when we originally had instant settlement with a bare instrument. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

445
00:42:01,348 --> 00:42:08,288
No, when I was, when I was young, I had the naive idea that gold must have been valuable because it

446
00:42:08,288 --> 00:42:13,348
was shiny or something like that. And, you know, I think maybe even if you probed common men in the

447
00:42:13,348 --> 00:42:17,428
street some people would come back to that like oh humans just naturally want gold because for

448
00:42:17,428 --> 00:42:22,668
whatever like it's beautiful or something but you're right that like no abstractly thing one

449
00:42:22,668 --> 00:42:29,628
thing two thing three things have served as money and what they've served as better or worse is a way

450
00:42:29,628 --> 00:42:34,948
to enforce the ledger and like that that is what is important and you're right that that is something

451
00:42:34,948 --> 00:42:41,808
that i mean whatever else you take from alden's book the impact of technology these various

452
00:42:41,808 --> 00:42:47,548
histories of the progression of centralization money as a ledger is just it's really a really

453
00:42:47,548 --> 00:42:53,688
important concept and i mean i think about it even very abstractly like it is what we want

454
00:42:53,688 --> 00:43:01,668
to it's like when i do something for somebody else i want my recognition to the community to

455
00:43:01,668 --> 00:43:07,368
be recognized and i and i want that recognition to come back to me in some way and you know even

456
00:43:07,368 --> 00:43:12,028
the most abstract sense, like when we do a good deed for somebody that's not seen,

457
00:43:12,328 --> 00:43:17,608
people sometimes have like a divine ledger in their mind of like karma or something like that,

458
00:43:17,648 --> 00:43:21,968
or like the God, you know, in a Christian sense that someone's accounting for the good and the

459
00:43:21,968 --> 00:43:26,388
bad that is done in the world. And it's all going to pay out cash out in a fair way at the end of

460
00:43:26,388 --> 00:43:32,128
the day. And that's just like such an intrinsic way to humans view the world is as a ledger that

461
00:43:32,128 --> 00:43:37,727
perfectly accounts for their goodness and discounts for the badness of other people.

462
00:43:38,068 --> 00:43:43,528
And money then as a ledger is a way to approximate that, not in a moral sense,

463
00:43:43,608 --> 00:43:47,207
but in a way of like giving a value to others in the world.

464
00:43:47,207 --> 00:43:53,648
There's a quote, money is not the best way to value a man, but it's the best one that we have.

465
00:43:54,748 --> 00:43:54,808
Yeah.

466
00:43:54,908 --> 00:43:58,688
And it's, you know, you can argue about moral this and moral that.

467
00:43:58,688 --> 00:44:11,928
But if you look at money as a record of value added to the world, that's how you get money is you provide value to other people.

468
00:44:12,108 --> 00:44:23,168
If you don't do that, if all Elon Musk ever did was build himself an electric car and himself a rocket and himself a Neuralink, then he wouldn't have any money.

469
00:44:23,648 --> 00:44:26,748
He would just have an electric car and a rocket and a Neuralink.

470
00:44:26,748 --> 00:44:32,148
But because he does these things that provide value to the rest of the world, he's rewarded.

471
00:44:33,608 --> 00:44:49,168
In your summary, you talked about one of the things that a government can do when they do control the ledger is allows them in crisis to be able to alter the money supply as a lender of last resort.

472
00:44:49,888 --> 00:44:53,368
And that hits me because I used to work for Farm Credit.

473
00:44:53,368 --> 00:45:01,088
Farm credit was created literally as the lender of last resort for agriculture.

474
00:45:01,088 --> 00:45:12,468
It's based off of a German system called Landschaft, I think is the pronunciation, from like the 1700s.

475
00:45:12,808 --> 00:45:21,088
And it's created because agriculture, and this circles back to what you talked about, the debate in the 1860s,

476
00:45:21,088 --> 00:45:26,028
60s, the debate between the savers and the creditors or the same, sorry, the creditors

477
00:45:26,028 --> 00:45:31,588
and the debtors, you know, effectively the industrial of the North and the farmers of

478
00:45:31,588 --> 00:45:39,288
the South was that, um, those, uh, creditors, they wanted a hard money and the people in

479
00:45:39,288 --> 00:45:43,227
the South, they wanted an easy money because they needed that.

480
00:45:43,227 --> 00:45:49,908
Like you, if you're going to, if you're going to farm, you need to have, um, you know, like

481
00:45:49,908 --> 00:45:56,988
right now, if I was to go try and try to start farming a regular size farm in Kansas, 1500 acres,

482
00:45:56,988 --> 00:46:03,168
I would probably need close to minimum. If I was going to get the worst crappiest stuff I could

483
00:46:03,168 --> 00:46:09,928
find $500,000 worth of equipment, maybe a million. And, and obviously you're, you know, you're,

484
00:46:10,088 --> 00:46:15,928
you might make a hundred dollars an acre. So that's $150,000, right? So, uh, you're not going

485
00:46:15,928 --> 00:46:22,648
to pay that back today, tomorrow, next week, next year, a decade from now. And so you do create this

486
00:46:22,648 --> 00:46:30,768
need. But the thing that perked up my ears when you said in crisis was, I don't know that there

487
00:46:30,768 --> 00:46:38,008
are any crises that the government has come to the rescue of that they have not created.

488
00:46:38,008 --> 00:46:41,348
and the one that really pops to mind is

489
00:46:41,348 --> 00:46:44,988
and this is fantastic to look at

490
00:46:44,988 --> 00:46:47,727
if people want to go look at the pictures of this online

491
00:46:47,727 --> 00:46:51,688
was there was a farming crisis in the 80s

492
00:46:51,688 --> 00:46:55,108
when all of these farmers went broke

493
00:46:55,108 --> 00:46:59,188
because they were financed through farm credit

494
00:46:59,188 --> 00:47:02,308
it was almost entirely because they were financed through

495
00:47:02,308 --> 00:47:05,488
at that time it was called the Federal Land Bank

496
00:47:05,488 --> 00:47:09,828
and they're financed on variable rate notes.

497
00:47:10,227 --> 00:47:13,648
And during that time, we saw interest go to like 22%.

498
00:47:14,288 --> 00:47:17,528
And so if you're on a variable rate note,

499
00:47:17,588 --> 00:47:20,568
then your interest payment just gets more and more every year.

500
00:47:20,568 --> 00:47:27,268
You can't make the payment and they end up repossessing all the land.

501
00:47:27,428 --> 00:47:31,568
And it's a fantastic piece of, I think, Americana history

502
00:47:31,568 --> 00:47:35,727
history in that you can go back and you can read about like what are called nickel auctions

503
00:47:35,727 --> 00:47:42,588
where guys would come to the to the bankruptcy sale of a local farmer yeah and they would bid

504
00:47:42,588 --> 00:47:48,348
like a quarter a nickel a dollar they would all agree not to buy this person's stuff and they

505
00:47:48,348 --> 00:47:54,528
would just buy it for the tiniest amount and then give it back to them and there was a massive tractor

506
00:47:54,528 --> 00:48:01,248
brigade i think in like 1979 farmers from all across the entire country that drove their tractors

507
00:48:01,248 --> 00:48:05,908
to Washington, D.C., and there's just thousands of tractors there.

508
00:48:06,088 --> 00:48:09,628
And by the way, this is happening in Europe right now.

509
00:48:10,488 --> 00:48:10,707
Yeah.

510
00:48:10,707 --> 00:48:20,188
And I think it's in the Netherlands, and there might be somewhere else where they've broken

511
00:48:20,188 --> 00:48:26,328
this farming economy, and they've really started to struggle because of the crisis that was

512
00:48:26,328 --> 00:48:33,368
created by the government that the, they said that they were there to, it's like a, uh, it's,

513
00:48:33,468 --> 00:48:41,108
it's the, um, it's the arsonist that is also a fireman. Yeah. You know, like we started the fire,

514
00:48:41,207 --> 00:48:46,028
but we also want credit for putting it out. And so I kind of wanted to throw that question back

515
00:48:46,028 --> 00:48:52,508
at you as like, is, are there, are there crises that the government solves that they do not create?

516
00:48:52,508 --> 00:49:00,488
i like that cynical inversion of the question or not cynical realistic and before i go on to that

517
00:49:00,488 --> 00:49:07,128
i want to say i think that the subject of bitcoin and agriculture given that agriculture even going

518
00:49:07,128 --> 00:49:12,568
way back in the history we now see has a very special relationship with debt because the harvest

519
00:49:12,568 --> 00:49:19,108
all comes at one time so it's like necessary to have credit through the various stages of the

520
00:49:19,108 --> 00:49:24,428
production of this final thing, the harvest. And so if someone's listening, like there's been,

521
00:49:24,908 --> 00:49:28,528
you know, people talking about Bitcoin in real estate, commercial real estate,

522
00:49:28,808 --> 00:49:33,648
and regular real estate, you know, someone's listening and has special insight into agriculture,

523
00:49:33,648 --> 00:49:38,408
I'd love to see Lucas ask questions of that person and hear that conversation. That would be

524
00:49:38,408 --> 00:49:44,648
really fascinating. On the question you put to me, like, I mean, I think that you're very right,

525
00:49:44,648 --> 00:49:50,788
that democracy is like the worst system, except for all the other ones that exist.

526
00:49:51,008 --> 00:49:56,108
And one of the bad things about democracy is that it can lead to this, it depends on

527
00:49:56,108 --> 00:49:56,968
the public opinion.

528
00:49:56,968 --> 00:50:01,808
And so it can like preemptively drive the public opinion to where it wants to go.

529
00:50:02,268 --> 00:50:08,248
And so there's always, if you need to manage the public opinion, a crisis is a good way

530
00:50:08,248 --> 00:50:08,788
to do it.

531
00:50:09,028 --> 00:50:14,148
And in fact, if crisis is your mandate for action, you're going to find crises in a lot

532
00:50:14,148 --> 00:50:22,227
of different places um alden mentions this in an earlier chapter uh when she there was a credit

533
00:50:22,227 --> 00:50:29,908
theorist um michelinus and he noted that like the credit theory credit system works great the only

534
00:50:29,908 --> 00:50:35,648
like times it might have difficulty is like in sudden disruptions or whatever maybe exogenously

535
00:50:35,648 --> 00:50:41,628
causes the system like a war or something and alden's like hold up like war actually is a

536
00:50:41,628 --> 00:50:47,968
manifestation of the credit system. Because, you know, we get these wars through often opaque

537
00:50:47,968 --> 00:50:53,628
taxation to fund them. If you had to transparently tax people like, we're going to tax you so we can

538
00:50:53,628 --> 00:50:58,468
send your sons and daughters overseas to die, people would ask more questions. But because

539
00:50:58,468 --> 00:51:05,308
the taxes are opaque, they're hidden to the form of inflation, wars can occur more frequently and

540
00:51:05,308 --> 00:51:12,268
of longer duration. And so I agree with you, even though it sounds like a cynical thing to say that

541
00:51:12,268 --> 00:51:19,688
crisis happen more often when crisis are what the government needs to happen in order to do what

542
00:51:19,688 --> 00:51:26,128
they want to do in any case, which is centralized power. Yeah. And centralized power is, it's

543
00:51:26,128 --> 00:51:31,988
hierarchy, right? So you, this is, this is how we ended up where we are because we naturally need

544
00:51:31,988 --> 00:51:37,888
hierarchy. So this is the work of Jason Lowry. This is the work of Jordan Peterson. Um, we,

545
00:51:38,188 --> 00:51:43,788
and, and, and it's also taking into account what, what Elon Musk always says when he's talking

546
00:51:43,788 --> 00:51:48,088
about systems is you have to take it to the nth degree. You have to take it to the, think to the

547
00:51:48,088 --> 00:51:57,227
limit, which is if first I want the convenience of a bank, then I want the convenience of a bank

548
00:51:57,227 --> 00:52:03,748
with branches in neighboring towns. And then I want the convenience of a bank with branches in

549
00:52:03,748 --> 00:52:09,088
neighboring counties and then states and then international. And then I want a national clearing

550
00:52:09,088 --> 00:52:14,368
house. And then I want international clearing houses. And you just keep abstracting to this

551
00:52:14,368 --> 00:52:20,888
higher and higher level of authority for convenience because you're just trying to

552
00:52:20,888 --> 00:52:27,788
save time because time is the only resource that you can't create more of other than.

553
00:52:28,288 --> 00:52:28,468
Yeah.

554
00:52:29,788 --> 00:52:33,428
And so you're just trying to save time.

555
00:52:33,528 --> 00:52:42,128
And by trying to save time, you are giving up power to a authority in order to take away

556
00:52:42,128 --> 00:52:45,028
the responsibility of doing that.

557
00:52:45,028 --> 00:52:50,408
But by doing that, you're creating this rigid system that demands stability.

558
00:52:50,888 --> 00:52:57,568
And you think about it in terms of like, what are the most resilient structures?

559
00:52:57,828 --> 00:52:59,488
What are the most resilient systems?

560
00:52:59,788 --> 00:53:03,528
They're not the ones that are made of granite.

561
00:53:03,828 --> 00:53:07,528
They're not the ones that are made of 90 degree angles.

562
00:53:07,888 --> 00:53:17,528
They're the ones that can absorb, flex, and they can take in energy and disperse that throughout the system without collapsing.

563
00:53:17,528 --> 00:53:42,148
And I think that's very important because what we're trying to do by government invention into the monetary supply is trying to stabilize this. Nassim Taleb talks about this so much, which is we want stabilization. We don't want change. We're trying to make sure that we have constant, steady growth.

564
00:53:42,148 --> 00:53:43,808
and what that is like.

565
00:53:43,908 --> 00:53:48,207
It's like building a house out of just sticks or toothpicks.

566
00:53:48,848 --> 00:53:51,328
And anything can break that.

567
00:53:51,468 --> 00:53:52,868
Anything can knock that down.

568
00:53:53,108 --> 00:53:56,828
And this is what we're learning as Michael Saylor is teaching the world

569
00:53:56,828 --> 00:54:00,308
about volatility as a good thing.

570
00:54:00,727 --> 00:54:02,448
Like we want volatility.

571
00:54:02,788 --> 00:54:04,908
Volatility means that you're resilient.

572
00:54:05,268 --> 00:54:07,668
Volatility means that you can take change.

573
00:54:07,668 --> 00:54:20,828
If you can't take change, then you end up having these blow ups and these explosions and this collapse and catastrophe that were not possible in a different type of system.

574
00:54:21,248 --> 00:54:24,008
If you have that, if you have that sort of resilience.

575
00:54:24,008 --> 00:54:28,227
So and that's kind of what I think about Bitcoin is like it's not it's not rigid.

576
00:54:28,388 --> 00:54:32,828
It's not structurally structurally hard.

577
00:54:33,028 --> 00:54:36,508
It absorbs the attacks that come to it.

578
00:54:36,508 --> 00:54:45,727
If you're trying to do a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network, which for those people that are, there probably aren't a whole lot of new people to Bitcoin listening to this.

579
00:54:45,828 --> 00:55:02,128
But if you are unaware, this thing called a 51% attack, where if you were able to take 51% of the network's power, then you could theoretically rewrite the ledger in order to give yourself money, give yourself Bitcoin.

580
00:55:02,128 --> 00:55:13,348
But in reality, what happens is that as you continuously ramp up the power that you're imparting onto the network, you're making it stronger.

581
00:55:13,707 --> 00:55:25,668
Every bit of power that you put into that, every attack that you put into that, it's being absorbed and it's using that in order to make the network more defendable and more resilient.

582
00:55:25,668 --> 00:55:36,928
And so, again, this goes back to – I know I'm heavy on quoting Elon Musk, but I do just like a lot of the things that he says in this regard.

583
00:55:37,108 --> 00:55:44,928
And obviously he's fairly right about quite a few things, which is – oh, I lost my train of thought.

584
00:55:48,348 --> 00:55:48,828
Man.

585
00:55:50,148 --> 00:55:52,148
Oh, it bounced right out of my head.

586
00:55:52,348 --> 00:55:52,688
I'm sorry.

587
00:55:52,688 --> 00:56:08,028
Yeah, if that quote comes back to you. But I mean, what you're saying about centralization is interesting, because, I mean, again, centralization may have this rigidity, which is a sort of fragility.

588
00:56:08,028 --> 00:56:31,388
But historically, it has like concentration of power set by centralizing it has led to like victory over groups that did not centralize power going back to Lowry, like, you know, we're incentivized to cooperate to agglomerate to aggregate, because we then become more powerful than another group.

589
00:56:31,388 --> 00:56:37,828
we've hit maybe a ceiling or something on centralization and or at least maybe with

590
00:56:37,828 --> 00:56:44,528
technology we're beginning to see ways in which decentralized power as you pointed out can take on

591
00:56:44,528 --> 00:56:52,008
has a resiliency that centralized power does not and also has an ability a judo ability to redirect

592
00:56:52,008 --> 00:56:58,048
power to absorb power to absorb attack that centralized power does not and that's the really

593
00:56:58,048 --> 00:57:02,768
bright thing for the future is like maybe there were historical or technological tendencies

594
00:57:02,768 --> 00:57:09,128
inevitabilities that led to us having the system we have of extremely centralized power but it just

595
00:57:09,128 --> 00:57:13,848
augurs so well and beautifully for the future bitcoin is hope it is i think say i don't know

596
00:57:13,848 --> 00:57:19,248
sailor originated that but it's a common common enough sentiment and it is i mean absolutely true

597
00:57:19,248 --> 00:57:27,068
that if we do have a technology that allows us to decentralize power like that's it's it's

598
00:57:27,068 --> 00:57:27,908
It's phenomenal.

599
00:57:28,188 --> 00:57:33,707
Like that technological advance, telecommunications, these things in the past have pushed us towards centralization.

600
00:57:33,707 --> 00:57:50,308
And now with proof of work, strong cryptography, the mix of these technologies, we now get to decentralization as actually the alternative you want to get behind if you want to be part of the group that's going to have fitness for survival and push into the future.

601
00:57:50,308 --> 00:57:59,028
And so it's just and we see that maybe decentralization can be maybe not just as a metaphor.

602
00:57:59,348 --> 00:58:10,068
Maybe there's connections between these things, but we see decentralized media in the form of Twitter now breaking up and providing a better service, the more centralized mass mainstream media.

603
00:58:10,068 --> 00:58:18,048
decentralization in every sort of realm may be you know abetted at least by bitcoin as a

604
00:58:18,048 --> 00:58:24,988
non-censorable payment system that can't be held back by centralized power but at least provides

605
00:58:24,988 --> 00:58:29,788
like the metaphor for the future perhaps is decentralization i hope after so much centralization

606
00:58:29,788 --> 00:58:33,148
it just gives one incredible amount of hope to think that that might be the case that

607
00:58:33,148 --> 00:58:39,568
if marinetti said speed is our god new canada beauty maybe now we say we need a sexier word

608
00:58:39,568 --> 00:58:44,548
the decentralization, but is our, is our strength in numbers, you know, we've already got it. It's

609
00:58:44,548 --> 00:58:50,808
strength in numbers. It's, um, the, the problem with centralization and, and hierarchies has

610
00:58:50,808 --> 00:58:58,008
always been that it only works so long as the person or the power that is at the top is doing

611
00:58:58,008 --> 00:59:02,388
the things that align with what you want done. And that's always, you know, that was the, that

612
00:59:02,388 --> 00:59:08,808
was the argument over the last four years, eight years, 10 years with all this censorship that's

613
00:59:08,808 --> 00:59:15,288
been occurring at the international national every single level which is you've got the people that

614
00:59:15,288 --> 00:59:19,688
are being deplatformed and yeah they're upset about being deplatformed but they're also trying

615
00:59:19,688 --> 00:59:27,328
to point out like this only works as long as you are in charge like if your opponent gets in charge

616
00:59:27,328 --> 00:59:33,428
you've created this system that allows them to do the exact same thing to you and you don't want

617
00:59:33,428 --> 00:59:38,528
that. Like you, you have to think, Oh, what it's the, the Warren Buffett quote is like, I buy

618
00:59:38,528 --> 00:59:43,908
companies that only an idiot or I buy companies that an idiot can run because eventually one will.

619
00:59:44,748 --> 00:59:52,288
Right. It's like, yeah. Yeah. Like you, you want that, you want that, um, system to be

620
00:59:52,288 --> 01:00:00,988
safe from human intervention. James, James clear wrote the book, uh, atomic habits, um, which was

621
01:00:00,988 --> 01:00:07,188
this so foundational transformation for me about just creating solid habits and creating a routine

622
01:00:07,188 --> 01:00:13,328
and a ritual and staying within that because he has the quote that is, you don't rise to the level

623
01:00:13,328 --> 01:00:19,348
of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And it's like, yeah, we can all hope

624
01:00:19,348 --> 01:00:24,188
and we can want and we can wish and we can pray. But as they say, you know, you can wish in one

625
01:00:24,188 --> 01:00:29,988
hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled first. And that's so very true. Like

626
01:00:29,988 --> 01:00:34,928
hope oh this one of my favorite uh one of my favorite sayings when I was in lending

627
01:00:34,928 --> 01:00:41,288
was we had this this lender that um we would look at we review financials and we would see that this

628
01:00:41,288 --> 01:00:56,041
guy was had this plan that it like okay everything works and we going to make money as long as we have six and a half dollar corn and corn is trading at or as long as we have steers and steers

629
01:00:56,041 --> 01:01:01,802
are at $1.50 or whatever. And we just look at that and he goes, hope is not a strategy.

630
01:01:02,622 --> 01:01:09,002
Like, you know, hope is what you have for your strategy, but it is not the strategy.

631
01:01:09,002 --> 01:01:16,962
And so you do have to hope for the best and plan for the worst.

632
01:01:17,541 --> 01:01:19,782
And so what we're doing, yeah, we're planning for the worst.

633
01:01:19,842 --> 01:01:22,982
And you're talking about decentralizing technology and the power of it.

634
01:01:23,581 --> 01:01:36,222
You know, out here in Western Kansas, my dad is able to go see – he's able to visit a specialist at our local hospital because of decentralized technology.

635
01:01:36,222 --> 01:01:45,242
Like nowhere is he going to be able to find a world's leading expert on cancer in the middle of nowhere, Northwest Kansas.

636
01:01:45,402 --> 01:01:49,541
But because we have an Internet connection, he can go there and have his stuff sent off.

637
01:01:49,902 --> 01:01:58,662
And yeah, but is that actually, though, that's kind of the centralization of medicine, though, is what funnels us into hospitals for expertise.

638
01:01:58,662 --> 01:02:05,382
I wonder if decentralized medicine like Medicine 3.0 or whatever is if there's I see what you're saying.

639
01:02:05,382 --> 01:02:07,382
It's the intermediary step, really.

640
01:02:07,942 --> 01:02:08,242
Yeah.

641
01:02:08,622 --> 01:02:19,362
And I don't know what is going to decentralize medicine, maybe just like less government regulation, a different way of doing insurance, something like that.

642
01:02:19,362 --> 01:02:31,182
But I mean, I think that there is a viable way in which medicine is even like a commonality with a lot of forms of decentralization is the need for self-sovereignty.

643
01:02:31,182 --> 01:02:50,182
If something is decentralized, then you have to take responsibility to kind of navigate the thing for yourself or to be part of a system, a tribe, a clan, a network of people that can help you navigate it to trust, to develop networks of cooperation and a friend and kin again to operate within decentralized systems.

644
01:02:50,182 --> 01:02:58,262
systems. Um, but yeah, I, I mean, I hope concomitant with decentralization, there is that

645
01:02:58,262 --> 01:03:04,922
empowerment of the individual to realize that, you know, it's not a bad thing to not have big

646
01:03:04,922 --> 01:03:09,642
brother, you know, it's a good thing because you might rely on your actual brother to help you with

647
01:03:09,642 --> 01:03:14,862
something. And, you know, yeah, we, we created the food and drug administration in order to protect

648
01:03:14,862 --> 01:03:21,222
people from food and drugs. And now we have the fattest, sickest, most unhealthy, most drug

649
01:03:21,222 --> 01:03:26,742
addictive population. And it's the most fooded and drugged person. It's a direct result. And we

650
01:03:26,742 --> 01:03:34,521
created the, you know, we created the EPA and now we have plastics in everything. And we have

651
01:03:34,521 --> 01:03:41,862
chemicals everywhere. You know, we, we talk about around here, we talk about in the farm, again,

652
01:03:41,862 --> 01:03:48,202
a reference to farming, but we created all of these chemicals in order to do chemical tillage

653
01:03:48,202 --> 01:03:53,362
and chemical fallow so that we don't have to go mechanically through things. We abstracted the

654
01:03:53,362 --> 01:04:02,442
layer of killing weeds from a steel plow or a steel disc in order to replace that with a chemical

655
01:04:02,442 --> 01:04:09,322
interaction. And what we've done is like the town that I grew up in was known as the pheasant

656
01:04:09,322 --> 01:04:14,402
capital of Kansas and every single year, the size of the town would double during pheasant season.

657
01:04:15,122 --> 01:04:22,041
And for the last 20 years, if you saw more than five pheasants a day, that was a big day.

658
01:04:22,722 --> 01:04:31,962
Previously, you would see literally thousands. And so there's all these downstream negative effects

659
01:04:31,962 --> 01:04:38,162
of putting Big Brother in place. We created the Department of Education and now we have the

660
01:04:38,162 --> 01:04:48,662
dumbest people. Like it just, it's not, you can't, you can't just, you can't just stand in front of

661
01:04:48,662 --> 01:04:53,622
something and say, we're going to make this better. Um, because that's not the strategy.

662
01:04:53,622 --> 01:04:59,842
You actually have to open it up. Like what, what is the best test is to let everybody run their own

663
01:04:59,842 --> 01:05:06,041
test, you know, to be able to let somebody who has no other choice for a medical intervention

664
01:05:06,041 --> 01:05:23,382
to try something that's not approved by the FDA, to be able to let somebody who has no desire to rape and pillage the land with corn and soybeans that weren't designed to be planted there,

665
01:05:23,882 --> 01:05:25,722
to be able to plant something else.

666
01:05:25,822 --> 01:05:34,822
But you can't because the subsidies aren't available for it that allow farming to survive because we've nationalized the banking system.

667
01:05:34,822 --> 01:05:41,902
We've nationalized the farming system. We've done it in a cloaked way so that it still kind of appears to be capitalist.

668
01:05:41,902 --> 01:05:58,822
But in reality, and we're going through this exactly right now, this 1,597 page long continuing resolution posing as an omnibus bill posing as a continuous resolution that was just shut down.

669
01:05:58,822 --> 01:06:09,662
It had all these farming subsidies in it that the farming community on one hand thinks they need, but on the other hand, there's a lot of people farming that shouldn't be farming.

670
01:06:10,882 --> 01:06:18,902
And that's just the fact of the matter that because you want to doesn't, you know, like desire is not competence.

671
01:06:19,682 --> 01:06:27,122
Just because you want to be involved in something does not give you the inherent right, the God-given ability.

672
01:06:27,122 --> 01:06:33,222
You have the pursuit, you know, the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of desire is not competence.

673
01:06:33,362 --> 01:06:34,262
Hope is not a strategy.

674
01:06:34,262 --> 01:06:38,762
So we're getting our we need to get our carts and horses in the right the right order.

675
01:06:38,902 --> 01:06:40,302
Yes, moving that way.

676
01:06:40,482 --> 01:06:45,302
So I had another question for you, but I was trying to think where it went.

677
01:06:46,302 --> 01:06:56,142
Related to what you're saying, just on the point before we move on from decentralization, maybe here's an example you can put into practice after listening to this conversation.

678
01:06:56,142 --> 01:06:57,942
of decentralization.

679
01:06:58,322 --> 01:07:00,962
So maybe we can think of academic decentralization.

680
01:07:01,902 --> 01:07:05,782
Right now there are, you know, there's the Ivory Tower academia

681
01:07:05,782 --> 01:07:07,742
and they have kind of their cloistered discussions,

682
01:07:07,942 --> 01:07:09,182
their peer-reviewed journals and whatnot.

683
01:07:09,662 --> 01:07:12,001
Now we have Twitter where academics are on Twitter.

684
01:07:12,001 --> 01:07:18,442
And in fact, Alden in this chapter cites George Selgin in print on free banking

685
01:07:18,442 --> 01:07:24,242
and gives a hearty nod and his affirmation head nod and his direction saying great stuff.

686
01:07:24,242 --> 01:07:50,462
And she drew a lot from him on free banking. He has a Twitter account. He's active on Twitter. And I read his Wikipedia. If you weren't aware of who George Selgin is, Wikipedia article notes, quote, Selgin is considered a Bitcoin OG, original gangster, Wikipedia clarifies, having taken part in the original cypherpunk mailing list with Wei Dai and Nick Szabo that led to Bitcoin's invention, which Hal Finney and Nick Szabo say he helped to inspire.

687
01:07:50,462 --> 01:07:56,822
so it's really interesting that in the intellectual journey that was the creation of bitcoin we have

688
01:07:56,822 --> 01:08:02,602
an academic expert on free banking who wrote a history of free banking and not only that but now

689
01:08:02,602 --> 01:08:08,722
he's active on twitter and so in true decentralized knowledge accumulation fashion you can go and

690
01:08:08,722 --> 01:08:14,222
engage with him directly and from what i've read on his twitter he's he's a very he's a good faith

691
01:08:14,222 --> 01:08:19,102
right in this moment i haven't i don't know like what he's been on about for the past years or

692
01:08:19,102 --> 01:08:23,282
whatever. But in this moment, he's a good faith critic of the Bitcoin strategic reserve.

693
01:08:23,682 --> 01:08:27,342
Reading his critiques, you're like, okay, I see where you're coming from. And so he's someone

694
01:08:27,342 --> 01:08:33,662
that one could engage with and practice that decentralization of knowledge for sure.

695
01:08:33,662 --> 01:08:43,961
Yeah, the ivory tower barricade for education and for knowledge, it really served to kind of

696
01:08:43,961 --> 01:08:51,421
highlight the, the failure of that system where you see people that are intellectually curious,

697
01:08:51,421 --> 01:09:03,602
making themselves available and the, the old guard of academic, um, academic gods, I guess.

698
01:09:03,602 --> 01:09:09,862
Um, you know, all of their stuff is paywalled. Like you, you can't read, um, you can't read

699
01:09:09,862 --> 01:09:15,481
research papers just going on the internet unless you find them in, there's a few decentralized

700
01:09:15,481 --> 01:09:23,021
sources, but they're all behind journals and behind paywalls. And unless you're a student

701
01:09:23,021 --> 01:09:29,622
in a university and you're actively studying that stuff, then the research that's going to

702
01:09:29,622 --> 01:09:37,481
change your life is held away from you in such a way that makes you question why. Like, why is it

703
01:09:37,481 --> 01:09:44,021
important. And you can tell this so easily when you look at people like Twitter's a great

704
01:09:44,021 --> 01:09:50,622
sorting stick for this type of thing, because you look at these people and you'll see somebody that

705
01:09:50,622 --> 01:09:58,222
has no credentials listed on their profile and they're making sound arguments that people are

706
01:09:58,222 --> 01:10:04,682
listening to and they can agree with or disagree with based on the merit of the idea. And then the

707
01:10:04,682 --> 01:10:09,182
people that are disagreeing with them are the ones that have all the letters and all the credentials

708
01:10:09,182 --> 01:10:14,582
and the PhD in their name. And their first thing that they always say is like, who are you

709
01:10:14,582 --> 01:10:21,722
to question me? And, um, you know, because I'm, I'm at Harvard, I'm at Oxford, I'm,

710
01:10:22,061 --> 01:10:27,481
I'm a PhD, I'm a whatever author journalist. And it's like, yeah, but that doesn't make you not

711
01:10:27,481 --> 01:10:34,061
wrong. You know, you can, you know, it just makes you, it just makes you wrong with a whole lot of

712
01:10:34,061 --> 01:10:41,162
investment. Yeah. And a lot of these people, I think, though, you know, on Twitter, an aspect

713
01:10:41,162 --> 01:10:46,921
of the decentralization of knowledge dissemination is that with decentralization, often accompanying

714
01:10:46,921 --> 01:10:53,682
that is like anonymity or pseudonymity. And so you could have like Booger Toilet 420, like engaging

715
01:10:53,682 --> 01:10:58,582
with George Selgin, but Booger Toilet could, you don't know who that is, that could actually be

716
01:10:58,582 --> 01:11:03,722
some guy way up in the government who realizes that I can't talk to the people around me and say

717
01:11:03,722 --> 01:11:09,481
my actual ideas. I can only do that on Twitter. And so they go on there in pseudonymous fashion

718
01:11:09,481 --> 01:11:14,342
and disseminate information that within their social milieu, they maybe could not say without

719
01:11:14,342 --> 01:11:19,822
being excommunicated. I mean, you and I are absolute proof of that. We don't have background

720
01:11:19,822 --> 01:11:27,441
in Bitcoin. We weren't on the mailing list. But because of this and because we take ideas and we

721
01:11:27,441 --> 01:11:35,282
talk about them, we're able to have reasonable, productive, growth-oriented discourse around a

722
01:11:35,282 --> 01:11:44,722
subject that is arguably as vital to our survival and our ability to strive and move forward,

723
01:11:45,142 --> 01:11:51,981
arguably as anything else, you know, maybe health. But to be able to just converse with these people

724
01:11:51,981 --> 01:11:55,421
and reach out to these people, it is a rising tide.

725
01:11:55,602 --> 01:11:57,682
It is raising the level of public discourse.

726
01:11:57,961 --> 01:12:03,182
And there are still a lot of people that are either actively not engaging

727
01:12:03,182 --> 01:12:08,102
or they're just simply ignorant of the ability and the opportunity.

728
01:12:08,961 --> 01:12:12,481
And that's falling every day.

729
01:12:12,802 --> 01:12:16,401
Like that's, I don't know, like you orange pill people to Bitcoin.

730
01:12:16,401 --> 01:12:19,662
I don't know what the equivalent is to bring somebody over to Twitter,

731
01:12:19,662 --> 01:12:48,061
But I've done that a couple of times recently where I've talked to people and reasonable people, reasonable people that have a good approach for things and kind of talked to them about some things that maybe they had some, I would say, heavily censored base of information on such that they were only allowed and logically constrained to make certain assumptions based on that information.

732
01:12:48,061 --> 01:12:56,882
And just, you know, point them out to something on Twitter that's like, hey, this is actually where ground truth is happening.

733
01:12:57,061 --> 01:12:58,682
This is where the worst seeking is happening.

734
01:12:58,921 --> 01:13:01,342
And it's really cool to see people's eyes light up.

735
01:13:01,382 --> 01:13:12,042
And it does take you back to the time of when the veil was first lifted, when you first had the moment of, man, I don't want to, yeah.

736
01:13:12,042 --> 01:13:19,502
I don't love putting an explicit language label on our podcast, but I do think at times it's worth it.

737
01:13:20,042 --> 01:13:24,981
It takes you back to the time when you first started looking around and going, oh, there's a lot of horse shit.

738
01:13:25,342 --> 01:13:27,222
Like, there's a lot of horse shit here.

739
01:13:27,222 --> 01:13:42,421
There's a lot of bulls. John Verveke, who you can go online and listen to his awakening from the meaning crisis, I think, is what it's called.

740
01:13:42,421 --> 01:13:51,162
a lecture series, like 53 hours of lecture, walking you through, um, meaning and purpose and,

741
01:13:51,282 --> 01:13:58,882
and life. And, and, uh, he, in the very first one, he defines in a technical sense,

742
01:13:59,122 --> 01:14:04,682
bullshit, um, which is that thing that, yeah, there's a, there's an academic book on that on

743
01:14:04,682 --> 01:14:10,742
bullshit. It's by somebody. Yeah. There's a, it's within the philosophical discourse. It's a side,

744
01:14:10,742 --> 01:14:13,742
it's a well-cited book. I think you will like to cite it because of the fun title,

745
01:14:13,822 --> 01:14:17,122
but it's called on bullshit. Yeah. I love that. I mean, it just, yeah.

746
01:14:17,222 --> 01:14:21,421
It, and it's unfortunate that you, but, but then again,

747
01:14:21,502 --> 01:14:26,941
it's also probably we're probably the first people in history that were able to

748
01:14:26,941 --> 01:14:29,642
actually lift that veil. You know, previously there,

749
01:14:29,642 --> 01:14:32,361
there was no decentralized ability to do that. You know,

750
01:14:32,361 --> 01:14:34,802
there was still kind of ways, you know,

751
01:14:34,802 --> 01:14:37,901
when you had the printing press come along that you started to decentralize a

752
01:14:37,901 --> 01:14:40,262
little bit of information, but it was still very centralized.

753
01:14:40,742 --> 01:14:46,202
Um, and yeah, so I, I think we're just, we're moving in a very good direction.

754
01:14:46,202 --> 01:15:04,262
We've got, um, this rising tide, these technologies that are decentralizing everything from healthcare, um, health advice, financial advice, Tesla's decentralizing, um, vehicle safety where, you know, every time you make a turn in a Tesla, it learns something.

755
01:15:04,262 --> 01:15:07,042
And every other Tesla in the world learns that.

756
01:15:07,242 --> 01:15:09,342
And so it makes it better for everybody else.

757
01:15:09,342 --> 01:15:13,822
It's just this accumulation of power and power in data.

758
01:15:14,542 --> 01:15:19,222
But again, like those accumulation of information within a centralized network.

759
01:15:19,461 --> 01:15:22,082
I mean, because one could say that Facebook, right, right.

760
01:15:22,102 --> 01:15:26,842
Because Facebook is not decentralizing the accumulation of behavioral knowledge about us.

761
01:15:26,882 --> 01:15:32,222
It's like taking all of our behavioral knowledge and using it for Facebook to repackage that and sell products to us.

762
01:15:32,262 --> 01:15:33,961
I mean, it's good when Tesla does it, right?

763
01:15:33,981 --> 01:15:36,521
Because safety is, you know, unarguably a good thing.

764
01:15:36,521 --> 01:15:50,502
And maybe we could, through some sort of non-crypto-related shitcoin, decentralize AI's accumulation of real-world sensory input and then make that available to everybody or something.

765
01:15:50,822 --> 01:15:59,901
Maybe when Elon dies or maybe when he decides that he's just done dominating that industry, maybe he'll just open source all of that technology.

766
01:15:59,901 --> 01:16:04,582
I like how you stepped back from Elon's death. He's not going to die.

767
01:16:04,582 --> 01:16:07,802
He's maybe a postulate.

768
01:16:07,901 --> 01:16:08,401
We know with this,

769
01:16:08,441 --> 01:16:10,122
the technological age and level of wealthy.

770
01:16:10,302 --> 01:16:10,722
There are two,

771
01:16:10,802 --> 01:16:11,142
maybe,

772
01:16:11,302 --> 01:16:11,542
you know,

773
01:16:11,582 --> 01:16:13,441
there are two things about Elon Musk that,

774
01:16:13,441 --> 01:16:15,401
that kind of bother me a little bit.

775
01:16:15,401 --> 01:16:19,401
And one is that he's not a stranch advocate of Bitcoin,

776
01:16:19,762 --> 01:16:22,782
despite holding over 9,000 Bitcoin on the,

777
01:16:23,202 --> 01:16:25,421
I think it's a SpaceX balance sheet or might be Tesla.

778
01:16:25,542 --> 01:16:25,882
I'm not sure.

779
01:16:26,582 --> 01:16:28,642
That's what the other is his,

780
01:16:28,782 --> 01:16:29,622
like his,

781
01:16:30,002 --> 01:16:34,202
he has this very laissez-faire approach to like health and diet.

782
01:16:34,582 --> 01:16:36,722
He's like, eh, whatever.

783
01:16:37,142 --> 01:16:38,142
Have some drinks.

784
01:16:38,242 --> 01:16:38,921
Have some donuts.

785
01:16:39,441 --> 01:16:41,441
You don't need to work out that much, really.

786
01:16:41,602 --> 01:16:43,002
It's like, eh, I don't know.

787
01:16:43,061 --> 01:16:43,722
Maybe you do.

788
01:16:44,382 --> 01:16:45,202
It might be good.

789
01:16:45,202 --> 01:16:47,122
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

790
01:16:47,302 --> 01:16:48,981
Now there's people all – yeah.

791
01:16:50,861 --> 01:16:53,061
I won't go for it because I'm almost – yeah.

792
01:16:53,302 --> 01:16:54,242
So I'll just – I'll end it there.

793
01:16:54,682 --> 01:17:02,002
I'm just thinking like the changing faces of – the changing faces and body structure of Elon Musk is very reminiscent of Oprah.

794
01:17:02,002 --> 01:17:09,282
I don't know if you've ever seen, but there's like throughout the history of Oprah, there's like skinny Oprah, fat Oprah, fat Oprah, skinny Oprah, skinny Oprah, fat Oprah.

795
01:17:09,502 --> 01:17:11,302
Like it just goes like, whoa.

796
01:17:12,182 --> 01:17:15,582
And with Elon Musk, it's like, oh, balding guy, skinny guy.

797
01:17:15,702 --> 01:17:19,642
Now he looks like the emperor of North Korea.

798
01:17:19,782 --> 01:17:24,582
Now he looks like he's had Botox to the nth degree.

799
01:17:25,042 --> 01:17:26,901
He's on Ozempic and all this stuff.

800
01:17:27,382 --> 01:17:27,782
Right.

801
01:17:28,002 --> 01:17:28,182
Yeah.

802
01:17:28,322 --> 01:17:29,061
We're changing the face.

803
01:17:29,061 --> 01:17:29,722
To a certain degree, though.

804
01:17:29,722 --> 01:17:39,122
So I'm glad that nobody – like there has not been a constant camera plotting my biological, physical advancement from like junior high until now.

805
01:17:39,222 --> 01:17:43,082
There would have been some epochs in there that fashion-wise we would not want to revisit.

806
01:17:43,441 --> 01:17:45,842
And then I'm glad that that's been lost to history.

807
01:17:45,842 --> 01:18:01,202
Yeah, you and I lived through the time of JNCO jeans when people had 44-inch legs on jeans or the bell or whatever you call it at the bottom and the frosted tips of the hair.

808
01:18:01,242 --> 01:18:01,802
A lot of things happened.

809
01:18:01,802 --> 01:18:01,981
It was pretty rough.

810
01:18:02,202 --> 01:18:03,042
A lot of things happened.

811
01:18:03,182 --> 01:18:03,842
It was not great.

812
01:18:03,882 --> 01:18:04,182
Definitely.

813
01:18:04,542 --> 01:18:04,782
Not great.

814
01:18:05,602 --> 01:18:08,901
Pre-internet fashion dissemination was an interesting thing.

815
01:18:08,901 --> 01:18:09,782
Yeah, good.

816
01:18:10,162 --> 01:18:12,342
What was the thing we talked about?

817
01:18:12,662 --> 01:18:15,182
Oh, we talked about in the first time we did this.

818
01:18:15,182 --> 01:18:19,901
it was my favorite part. So I'm going to throw it back in was we talked about speed being introduced

819
01:18:19,901 --> 01:18:26,342
as a variable to money was a lot. Like when you're a kid in a small town and somebody new moves to

820
01:18:26,342 --> 01:18:31,542
town and they're like, they're like the cool kid of the entire grade for the first six or eight

821
01:18:31,542 --> 01:18:36,461
weeks of school, just because they're like, he's like, Oh, they got an Abercrombie shirt. Like

822
01:18:36,461 --> 01:18:41,441
who the hell? Nobody's ever seen that. Somebody came from Mars. Like, yeah. Coming bearing new

823
01:18:41,441 --> 01:18:45,262
or like i don't know or they had the haircut that they parted in the middle

824
01:18:45,262 --> 01:18:53,021
what are some like some spanish conquistador arriving at the shores of south america and

825
01:18:53,021 --> 01:18:57,202
like what is what are these four-legged things that they're riding like yeah it was

826
01:18:57,202 --> 01:19:05,922
yeah it wears off so it does well so i for to conclude for me um the the tenor of this

827
01:19:05,922 --> 01:19:14,441
conversation i would say is that into into so if speed was the characteristic of the last epoch

828
01:19:14,441 --> 01:19:19,242
and the last um kind of characterization of what is essential about technology is increasing speed

829
01:19:19,242 --> 01:19:26,642
that i would say to change the quote of filipo marionetti um decentralization is our god and

830
01:19:26,642 --> 01:19:31,102
new canon of beauty not an idolatrous fashion and in fact decentralization is what helps us bring

831
01:19:31,102 --> 01:19:37,481
down like the false gods that are centralized power right now. And so I think that talking

832
01:19:37,481 --> 01:19:41,821
about this chapter, like that's what I take away from it, that speed disrupted the financial

833
01:19:41,821 --> 01:19:46,882
system. And now there's a new disruption coming down the pipe, which is decentralization and

834
01:19:46,882 --> 01:19:52,182
the ramifications could spread well beyond the financial system. Yeah. And my takeaway from it

835
01:19:52,182 --> 01:19:58,682
is resilience, is that we learned that speed is a variable that we have to optimize for,

836
01:19:58,682 --> 01:20:03,321
but we can't optimize for it in a good fashion.

837
01:20:03,502 --> 01:20:12,762
We can't optimize for it to benefit the whole of humanity unless we first take efforts to make the system resilient and make it secure.

838
01:20:12,961 --> 01:20:17,782
So you have to start with a boat that doesn't sink before you start putting jet engines on it,

839
01:20:17,802 --> 01:20:21,922
because if you don't, then you're just going to drive it into the ground faster and faster.

840
01:20:22,961 --> 01:20:23,602
Right on.

841
01:20:23,941 --> 01:20:24,422
Fantastic.

842
01:20:24,722 --> 01:20:25,042
All right.

843
01:20:25,042 --> 01:20:27,682
Well, we'll catch you next time for chapters.

844
01:20:27,682 --> 01:20:29,861
it'll be eight and nine,

845
01:20:30,102 --> 01:20:31,662
nine and nine,

846
01:20:31,922 --> 01:20:32,961
10 and maybe,

847
01:20:33,061 --> 01:20:34,622
maybe nine through nine,

848
01:20:34,702 --> 01:20:35,561
10 and 11.

849
01:20:35,561 --> 01:20:38,722
Just given that part three is an odd number of chapters.

850
01:20:39,042 --> 01:20:40,021
I'll talk to you,

851
01:20:40,061 --> 01:20:40,262
Lucas,

852
01:20:40,342 --> 01:20:41,582
about that in a second,

853
01:20:41,722 --> 01:20:42,102
but yeah,

854
01:20:42,102 --> 01:20:42,742
maybe nine,

855
01:20:42,842 --> 01:20:42,861
10,

856
01:20:42,901 --> 01:20:43,082
11.

857
01:20:43,082 --> 01:20:43,242
No,

858
01:20:43,302 --> 01:20:44,262
we talked about that before.

859
01:20:44,361 --> 01:20:45,922
So we'll just make that decision right now.

860
01:20:46,002 --> 01:20:46,382
So nine,

861
01:20:46,461 --> 01:20:46,961
10 and 11,

862
01:20:47,021 --> 01:20:48,222
if you're reading along with us,

863
01:20:48,262 --> 01:20:49,262
go ahead and take that,

864
01:20:49,361 --> 01:20:51,162
take that and go forward with it.

865
01:20:51,861 --> 01:20:52,521
Once again,

866
01:20:52,602 --> 01:20:53,202
as always,

867
01:20:53,342 --> 01:20:55,961
Grant is at the whole frame on X.

868
01:20:56,061 --> 01:20:57,382
I am at Lucas Maddy.

869
01:20:57,382 --> 01:21:00,582
This is Bitcoin Study Sessions, and we appreciate you guys listening.

870
01:21:00,782 --> 01:21:01,222
Have a great day.