Walker, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity show. Nice to have you here.
It is great to be on the Infinity Divided by 21 million show.
Oh, yeah.
I'm stoked to do it. Big fan, of course, so it's always nice, you know, when we can have Bitcoin podcasters together podcasting about Bitcoin podcasts.
It's a beautifully virtuous cycle.
Yes, it's fantastic. Yes, the circle jerk is complete.
What the circle is complete and the circle jerk is something else.
Yeah.
Anyway, we would just before we started, we were talking about your wonderful voice.
It's like talking to Darth Vader and I love it.
This is not, Walker does not have a filter on as a disclaimer, like this is his actual
voice.
And yeah, have you been chain smoking early in an earlier life?
I mean, I used to smoke cigarettes many years ago, you know, but I have not for some years.
It turns out that I guess, uh, I didn't really know I had a voice that people enjoyed listening
to until like more recently.
And it was, I think it was actually after speaking at a conference or something.
And somebody was like, they came up to me afterwards.
It was Lugano 2022.
They came up to me and they were like, Walker, like, would you record a voice message for
my girlfriend?
Like, and I'm like, this, this is getting weird.
This is getting weird in a hurry, but yeah, why not?
you know so yeah then i then i realized that uh because you know i think everybody has a weird
thing about their voice right like you i mean some people genuinely like the sound of their
own voice i'm like not one of those people i kind of tolerate it but like we we all hear our own
voices differently than everybody else hears them though it's it's it's important to remember that
yeah and you you first experienced that the first time you record your voice like and
when i grew up like it wasn't that easy to record your voice as it is today like we have
everyone has a device to record their own voice every day but uh when when i grew up that wasn't
the case and like when you heard your own voice for the first time it's like oh fuck i sound
completely different and kind of dorky like yeah because you have this resonance in your skull
that that other people don't hear uh so you sound better to yourself when you don't hear yourself or
or something like that but you get used you've got those deep bone vibrations when you hear your
own voice. It's like, it's right there, you know?
Yeah. So for you, it must be like being Batman in a Gothic cathedral or something.
That sounds, that sounds like a, like an AI image prompt, you know, but Batman in a
Gothic cathedral sounds pretty sweet actually.
Yeah, no, these are all compliments. I think you should, um, come and sing like,
what a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong with, with us in a rock a motor someday.
You know, I, I can, I can actually mimic Louis Armstrong decently.
I'm not a good singer
I am a good mimic
so Carla is the talented singer
did you get a chance
to see the Christmas music video
she just put out yesterday?
Yes but I thought it was a rerun
so I only watched snippets of it
because I thought it was
but I thought it was the
da da da da da da da da
that thing right?
No no no she did the Grinch
this time so like
you're a mean one Mr. Grinch
it's a scathing critique
of both central bankers and EU bureaucrats all rolled into one. So we don't discriminate. It's
not just against US or EU or not just politicians. It's central bankers too. Janet Yellen makes an
appearance as the ghost of QE past. It's quite nice. And Carla has, again, a beautiful singing
voice. So I highly recommend you check it out. She basically comes out of retirement now once a year
to make a political monetary Christmas tune.
So this is the one we get this year.
I mean, I've loved those things
since the first time I saw them.
I just adore them.
I think this is embracing the cringe
in the exact right way.
Like, this is how you do it.
Don't be afraid of it.
Just embrace it.
And they're funny as hell.
And I'm a huge fan of those videos.
And I have been for a long time.
it means a lot like for us it was we realized even like after putting this one out yesterday
i was just telling carla i was saying you know nobody else makes this kind of content
like no monetary political musical satire like nobody else is like that's that's a niche within
a niche within a niche you know and it's just funny because she's always very uh not self-conscious
per se just she like she mostly cares if she loves it but she also obviously wants the message
to get out there.
And so it's that fine balance
between making something that's,
you know, again,
a niche within a niche within a niche,
but also giving it some broad appeal.
But it's interesting because it's like,
I mean, you know this,
on any of these centralized
social media platforms,
like you are,
the majority of what people are served up
and what they go after is just slop.
It's just slop.
Whether it's AI or human generated slop,
it's just slop.
Dem slop, pleb slop,
it could be anything.
The worst kind of slop
is the politis slop,
you know, the politics slop.
Yeah.
It's just like the lowest of the low, but, but it's so hard.
There's just, there's so much noise out there.
So much noise more than ever.
The amount of the signals noise ratio is growing, you know, uh, it's going in the wrong direction
constantly as it gets noisier and noisier.
And so it's hard to break outside of that, I think.
And it's, it's hard to get people to, to pay attention in this goldfish attention span,
you know, world that we live in.
It's, but sometimes you do.
And even if it reaches a couple people, it makes a couple people laugh or a couple people think differently.
Like that's, you know, that's still a win.
And I mean, every social media platform has its niche, right?
So Facebook quite quickly became for boomers and like that's the boomer platform.
It's like for people who don't really understand the internet.
So it's convenient and kind of tame.
And there's a lot of pictures of food still like stuff like that.
five-year-old memes and X the reason I fell in love with Twitter back in the day was the fact
that you had to boil down your thoughts to 144 characters because that made me such a much sharper
writer like so it was a sharpening my mind and that that's the thing I loved about it and that
it was fast and all this uh yeah i do wonder how much of of that because i i agree like i like
i liked uh or i still like a forcing function on like that forces you to be brief that forces you
to be concise i think so much was kind of like lost when they expanded it so it's like now you
can just write long form for anything like you don't have to be concise anymore i think still
the most still you don't you you only see the top part of it it's true and the and i think still the
tweets that perform the best you know perform the best are the ones that are concise distillations
like it's i mean it's the reason that memes broadly are such an effective information
distribution mechanism because they are concise they can they uh convey a massive amount of
information cultural information in a really really bite-sized form and you know a short tweet
does the same it's like it's why uh it's why vine too and i'm not sure if you've been tracking this
but rabble he's one of the you know the early guys that was working with on twitter with jack
he just released uh divine like spelled like divine but uh for anyone that doesn't know maybe
for like if the young folks out there mine was awesome but i remember i remember specifically
because i posted a meme about it on instagram at the time i went back and found this uh i remember
when like people may not know this but instagram didn't always have video like it wasn't always
just a video you know first platform like not everything was just shorts vine was the original
short form video platform you were constrained to like seven seconds yeah and it was beautiful
like force like making a video in seven seconds and try to convey so much information that short
amount of time that takes like it takes some real thought or it takes just creativity it was yeah
it was just a beautiful culture and now they're bringing that back and a huge thing they're doing
is filtering out ai slop which i think is great it's like you want to see you don't you don't want
all the ai slop you don't want to have to filter that noise like i think it's nice to have a a human
first uh platform you know what i mean yeah yeah absolutely uh i mean i uh i i spend a lot of time
on youtube unfortunately i don't really want to but it's one of those things i'm trying to move
away from but i haven't even gotten a premium account yet so i see all these ads now it's
ads for making ai slop made made by ai slop so there's ais telling me to install ais to make ai
slop and i'm like no i'm not going there like fuck you i use a ai daily but for completely
different things. I use it to be more creative, not less. No, it's slop all the way, which
is unfortunate. There was a Kurzgesagt video, I believe. I don't always like their videos,
but sometimes they're pretty decent. And one of them was about how scientific research
is now like peer reviewed research.
Like the papers being reviewed are a product of AI slop.
And AI slop is very good at lying and sounding like the truthful
because they don't really have that function, the truth filter.
So everything is getting worse because of this slop.
And it's slop built on slop built on slop.
There's layers of slop, right?
So, yeah.
It is crazy.
Two comments on AI slop.
One related to boomers on Facebook.
I find this hilarious irony.
I remember when Facebook was first coming out,
and my parents were telling me,
like, oh, this is, you know.
Of course, with every new unfamiliar technology, right,
the older generation is like,
I don't know about this.
Like, it's going to rot your brain, whatever it is.
uh you know but the boomers were super anti-facebook now they're the only ones left on
facebook i've also noticed that the boomers they have no like their ability to distinguish what's
ai slop is like zilch they are super bad at determining what is real and what is ai generated
they just they don't have the defense mechanism they're used to seeing seeing things where it's
like oh that oh that's a video of something so it must be real i can see the video it's jesus
riding a unicorn over a rainbow to a pot of gold of course it's real where did this happen was this
ireland this is amazing like wow you know no and even i like in comparison to my kids i'm bad at
detecting ai slot like they detect it instantly they know exactly the difference between uh and
like i feel like the boomer i'm but yeah you but but you you one you're not but then you know
No, this is a borderline.
Yeah.
But you've got, I think you have a much, you have obviously a discernment about you that you're not, you're not lured into the same.
Like you don't see Jesus riding a uniform and think, when did this happen?
Wow.
I can't believe I made it.
Why isn't this on the news?
No, no, no.
But even, uh, uh, more realistic videos, like, uh, they can instantly tell if it's AR or not in a way that I can't.
Like the more, the most realistic ones.
And it can be anything.
So that's interesting, I think, that the younger generation actually have a...
Because I think they're fed with so much more content from an earlier age that they learn the difference.
They have a more fine-tuned AI slop gaydar or whatever you call it.
I like that.
It's interesting because obviously we're still...
The timeline of this is wild.
If you think about when ChatGPT came out.
and how quickly things have advanced in just a couple of years the proliferation is wild and
even like grok now grok imagine it's gotten so good like i can you know either with grok or with
sora generate a very realistic looking video of richard nixon you know at the in the oval office
saying like i really fucked up here guys like we never should have left the gold standard like i've
done it looks really good and the voice is right and even the crackle of the static of the tv is
is per like it's incredible to see it's going to be wild to see where we go like what does it look
like 10 years from now how good is that you know and a thing i noticed uh today even is like this
backlash of uh actually started yesterday but the the um uh the backlash elon got uh or the backlash
the eu got rather or both of them because the eu decided to fine elon for this and that uh a lot
of accusations and you can have your opinions on whether the accusations were valid or not i think
it's all invalid because i'm an anarcho-capitalist but anyway even if you so i'm gonna argue like for
argument's sake that even if you're the if you subscribe to these things uh there may or may not
have been an underlying agenda but the thing that happened on x which is the platform that got fined
And it one which is also the number one downloaded app in every single country in the EU at the moment Not only in the EU by the way in Europe uh regardless of what they do and how much they fine musk uh or his company they are not in charge anymore it just and you can see like the instant
backlash from you eu bureaucrat pundits that that uh uh posted europe flags uh and i'm proud and i'm
a free person and blah blah blah this government mandated what do you what we call it like
politicians sucking up to politicians sloth yeah and the funny thing is that they do it on x so
they don't see the irony of of saying haha we sort of won uh uh the the only reason that they can
say that is because it's actually a free speech platform.
He does not censor, uh, opinion, negative opinions about himself.
Like it's, it's just a testament to them being dinosaurs.
Like, and I find that insanely fascinating.
The irony is just baffling.
It's been incredible to watch this saga lay out.
This is one of the reasons why Carla, what we were initially going to
released this Christmas video that she did in a week or so, or maybe two weeks, closer to Christmas.
And then this happened. And we already had Keir Starmer and some EU bureaucrats featured in the
video prior to all this going down. And then this went down and we were like, oh, wow, this is
how serendipitous and perfect. We got to get this out now. So she crunched it out and it was very
good but the the point being you're right about the irony and and they're they're not seeing it i
mean perhaps they should use noster you know then they could at least be uh walking the walk but no
except no one's there yeah we're all there and we were all there yes we're hanging the vibes are
still good on those yeah yeah but that's but that's also why we don't use it because no one's
wrong on noster then you want to point out when people are wrong well exactly yeah i'm a much
nicer person on Noster than I am on X on, on X. I just can't help myself there. I mean,
and it's my own fault, right. For engaging. I've seen recently just my feed gets my free
page just gets flooded with just communist idiocy, like really just dumb commies. Uh,
and I mean, as a communist, you're either dumb or evil. Like that's basically what it is.
Cause if you actually understand what you're doing, then like you must be evil. And if you
actually think communism is good, then you're just dumb. Same as true for shit corners, by the way.
exactly exactly yeah well said and that's the thing i've seen so much of this and why because
i engage with it and because i can't help but engage with it but it is the it's the global
town square and it is a i mean it's an incredible tool yes it is centralized yes you know it's
centrally controlled yeah elon owns the thing it's not an open protocol yes that being said
no relatively speaking it is a really great option for the disseminate you know the relatively free
dissemination of information. Again, the problem there though, is finding signal, right? Make it,
you know, actually finding signal amidst the slop. That's the difficulty, but that's, that's the
same. It's the same everywhere, right? It's the same on any platform. Like Noster, there's maybe
less slop, but it's just because it's a much smaller cohort of people who are over there,
generally more ideologically aligned, you know, because it's a small, a small in-group,
but yeah it's this eu thing is just it's just fascinating when i saw people saying things like
look the eu the you know european union has more of it's more free speech than the united states
of america i'm like you can get thrown in jail for germany for calling someone a fuck yeah yeah
like or like the guy in switzerland who was just uh you never had free speech like that's the irony
that we never held it as like sure orwell was british but he had nothing to do with the state
yeah like it's crazy to see this because i think that again they they tell on themselves a little
bit this is the great thing about politicians having these accounts is they get to kind of
they get to show for everyone just how ridiculous they are like it's not every time because it used
to be, they could just go on one of the few news stations. They could give their one to many
broadcast and there's no feedback loop. There's nothing, there's nothing coming back to them.
There's nothing checking them on it. Now they can get ratioed in real time. Like I ratioed multiple
EU bureaucrats just in the space of the last 24 hours. And it's like, that's amazing. That's me,
a random American from, you know, the other side of the world who granted I have a, I have a European
wife. Um, you know, she's, she's Romanian though. Right. Because they're like, this is the other
thing and i i'd love your opinion on this do you think there's a european identity or do you think
there's a national national identities within europe like i think both okay so i'd say in the
us it's more uh there is definitely an american identity and less so a separate state entity i
I mean, you're not very specifically Utahan because you're from Utah, right?
Some are like, I still consider myself a Wisconsinite because that's where I'm from.
Texans, I think, are some of the most proud about it.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I would know what a Texan is, but I would not know what a Wisconsinite is like.
A lot of beer and cheese.
Yeah.
We have a lot of Germans and Scandinavians.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That sounds good.
Sounds like a place I'd like.
You would, you would.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's your point stands though.
It's a different level.
Yes.
And I think if it's like this in the US, it's like that in Europe, because I do think we feel like a common European identity.
And I like that.
But the national identities are stronger, of course, especially in these old colonial countries.
So I think national identity in France, for instance, is never going to go away.
they're proud of not speaking English there.
So, so, so, um, and no, I shouldn't bash on France only,
but I think natural identities are very strong in, in France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, you name it.
Yeah.
Even in the Nordic countries.
So certain extent, but not, not in the same way.
I think Northern Europe is a bit different than Southern Europe.
I think.
But regardless that that's, that's kind of, uh, outside of any,
like the EU doesn't create the European identity, right?
It's absolutely not.
That identity, I think, preceded the formation of an extra bureaucratic layer, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I feel, and I think many people hate the EU because they feel European.
And they think the EU is destroying Europe, more or less.
And oh, did you see that? The other thing on Twitter was that Reporters Without Borders poll about the most trustworthy. And I looked it up. It's super simple to find the data. 65% state funded. That organization that made that. And I bet you that's direct taxes.
the other stuff is funded by
people who benefit
from state subsidies
like why else
would you support that organization
if you know it's 65% state funded
it's propaganda
all of it
it's like in North Korea
they can very easily have
show you data that shows you that North Korea
is the freest, most happiest, most prosperous
country on earth where people are definitely not starving
and everybody loves their supreme
leader so so so much there's a hundred percent approval like of course you can any state sponsored
media is going to say that the state is great like that's their whole raison d'etre right you
know to yeah the friend that's why they exist is to be mouthpieces of the state they are just an arm
of it and if if if i learned anything from these two latest wars that have popped up ukraine russia
and israel palestine it's the insight that you can't trust anything from any side
like at all like how could you and if you want to actually figure something out about it it's
super complex and you don't know at the end of the day you don't know which state man didn't get
to bang the other state man's wife which is probably the true motive between all of these
things like uh behind all of these things but somehow it's it's just it's senseless and a waste
of resources on a fucking massive scale enabled by taxes and inflation at the end of the day that's
why they happen that's why we have wars because we still fall for taxes and inflation and we think
they're natural and the only way to do things and that's the lesson not learned from the world wars
yeah a quick something that was in my head when you were talking about just
european versus national identities and america a quote that my my father-in-law
who's a very very brilliant guy and he was a communist defector right he came to america
uh before before the fall of communism and he he loves america he's a he now says he sees a lot of
the same hallmarks that he saw during communism that's a whole different story right yeah but he
sees them everywhere not just in america but like in a lot of western europe as well eastern europe
I think has more of an immune system built up because they, they just went through this not so
long ago. They're kind of like, Oh no, no, no guys, we've seen this before. It's not good. It's not
good. But he told me, he basically, he, he said this to me a few times and it's always stuck with
me. He said, fucker, America is unique because if you move to France, we'll pick on the French again,
but you know, you move to France, you marry a French woman, you become a French citizen, you,
you pay French taxes, you assimilate. I mean, you're eating your baguettes and, and you know,
And you are becoming as French as you can be.
And maybe you have kids.
You have kids born in France.
You love France.
You're living in France, paying taxes, married, all of that.
You'll never be French.
You go to Russia.
You marry a Russian woman.
You have Russian babies.
You drink Russian vodka.
You pay Russian taxes.
You assimilate into the Russian culture.
It doesn't matter.
You'll never be Russian.
And this is the same for almost every country in the world, except the United States of
America.
He said to me, you come to America, you assimilate, you really like live by the American ideals and you pay your taxes and you, you know, you try to create value here.
You become American.
You're like, he's like, you know, I'm an American.
I just wasn't born here.
And I just thought that's, and it's true, right?
That it's a beautiful, beautiful thing that you can truly become American.
Like it's, it's, and it's, it is unique.
and it's not a bad thing again that like the national identities uh in europe like i mean
another extreme example but just more obvious from a skin color perspective is japan you can
move to japan you can pay japanese marry a japanese woman have japanese kids all this you
will never be japanese like that you can't you can't do it you'll always be a gaijin or whatever
the the expression is and i i think that that's it's just always stuck with me because as an
sometimes somebody was born in america you take these things for granted a little you take for
granted that this is a special place that you can come to where you can become american yeah yeah
just wanted to throw that out there because it's something that's always really stuck with me and
and isn't a way i'd thought about it before no and it's it's a good insight and i i think uh the
american dream uh is applicable to everyone in the world though and and it's achievable and from
anywhere in the world uh if you if you dedicate your life to to to to actually living the dream
it's just that most people don't realize that it's not only for americans and that they could
like not give a fuck about what the state tells them and live life on their own terms you can be
american wherever you are if if you have the american dream in your heart and i would say
that I fit into that category now.
Like it took me half a life to figure it out, but yeah,
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sit back and let others decide
what I can and cannot do.
Like it's retarded.
Why would I, uh, I want more.
I have, I have one life.
I'm not gonna wait.
Like why it's not like I have anything, anything better to do than,
than live life on my own terms.
Yeah.
so not it's so it's it's funny you said it because my father-in-law has also said that
exact same thing and in talking you know with people from all over it's like there's americans
that are or there's americans in russia there's americans in france yeah they're just maybe they've
never even been to america but they have that idea in their hearts because that's you know the
american idea is something that is very powerful and i think who was i talking to the other day
about this i think it was nico uh from simply bitcoin yeah and and he he put forward basically
that like at its fundamental level,
Bitcoin allows anyone anywhere to actually realize the American dream in a
meaningful way.
Cause it something that more so than just theoretically feeling that you are able to have this this freedom it actually enables you to take that freedom And this is something that I I been trying to harp on a lot lately
and remind people, because I think we often forget that governments are not there to give you rights.
They're not there to give you freedoms. The government can, they can take them away.
They can, they can codify, they can enshrine those rights in formal documents, legal documents,
that those rights are protected by the law, but they do not give you any rights. Individuals take
rights for themselves. We need to remember this. And when we take those rights together,
we are more powerful, but people have this idea in their head. And I think it comes down to like,
people don't understand money. They also don't understand the state. And I think that those two
things are very much intertwined. And the reason that they, if they're so hard to, for people to
actually wrap their minds around is because you don't, it's the water we swim in, right? It's the
air we breathe. It's something that we become so accustomed to. Like, yes, the state just exists
and always exists in varying degrees. And, and it's just, it is what it is. And we've got to pay
our taxes and we've got to do this and this and that, and we've got to listen to whatever they say
and money, money just is just there. And a print and stuff just gets more expensive forever because
that's just the way things work. And I haven't really thought about it more than that. But the
second you do and the second you actually, and I used to be that, that person, right? I, I think
all of us, some people were extremely based before Bitcoin and Bitcoin just made them more based.
I was not as based as I could be before Bitcoin. And I think that-
Me neither.
That journey sends you down, when you go down the rabbit hole and you start exploring,
well, if money is a lie, as I know it, as I've been taught it, which I never really was taught
it, because they don't want to teach it, right? But if money is a lie, money is this base layer
of all the societal coordination what else is a lot and that's when you really start to go
whoa okay well then what what the fuck is the purpose of the state at all and that's what you
maybe you do a little reading of bastia and you're like yeah dear lord this guy's a genius how he
lived how many years ago like wait he they've had this figured out since then yeah parallel
he lived at the same time as marx which is so ironic i know because one is famous completely
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And, no, when we're touching on this specific rabbit hole here, I would say that in line with all the other Austrian economics insights and praxeological insights, that rights in plural is actually wrong.
There's only one human right that can be universal and timeless, and it's the right to be left alone.
in other words the non-aggression principle there's every other right uh by necessitates a
breaking or is necessitates the right word uh you can't have any other rights without violating the
non-aggression principle and the right to be left alone if you have a right to housing for for
instance someone has to build the house how can you build a house without consent you have to break
So in that sense, laws are actually things that can and ought to be discovered rather than man-made.
Because, yeah, what's the goal for humans interacting?
Like, why do humans have conflicts?
And should we resolve conflicts?
Should we strive to resolve conflicts?
Yeah, of course we should.
like that's what everyone does even an animal attacking another animal does so because he wants
to resolve the conflict by killing the other animal right and then when we apply that to
humanity we quite quickly figure out that it's probably not a good idea if we just go around and
kill each other and take each other's stuff that that's not what led us here that's not what
invented the automobile like this is we can do things in another way that is more productive for
all of us and better for all of us and so uh conflict resolution through non-aggressive means
is better than aggressive means and from those principles alone you can derive you can quite
quickly come to the conclusion that the state is bullshit and that when i say we can be all be
americans i mean the american values that everyone strives for i i don't think we should all be
governed by Donald Trump or Joe Biden or anyone else.
Like, I think that's retarded.
What we do want, though, is the right to be left alone.
And America upheld that value the longest of existing countries.
I mean, sure, there's the Free Cities Project, which is kind of interesting.
Places like Prospera and Roatan in Honduras, for instance, where there's an actual private
free city and stuff.
you can claim that there are some other smaller places on earth where freedom is even
more achievable than in the u.s but but yeah in principle uh that's what we should strive for and
it takes guts and it takes like you actually reclaiming the driver's wheel of your life
and responsibility is the flip side of the freedom coin you have to you have to be willing to face
the consequences uh because some asshole might not like what you're doing and say that you belong
in jail or that you should be fined or have a giant tax bill to pay but just be ready for it
maybe all the above yeah yeah maybe all of the above another thing i like about america by the
way when we're talking about it is uh a tradition that we don't really have over here that's
thanksgiving because i i think humans ought to be more grateful for shit like we are i can i can
have this video call with you i can travel to the us whenever i want it's fucking amazing i can fly
in a steel tube up in the sky like there are so many things to be grateful for and people forget
that all the time and focus on negatives instead and i think that leads to shitty shitty lives
so i like thanksgiving i like it too it's funny with thanksgiving because even a lot of americans
take take that holiday for granted and instead of using it as an opportunity to be thankful
use it as an excuse to argue with their racist uncle jim you know or you know racist uncle jim
you know and then not speak to their family until you know until christmas or whatever
obviously not everybody does that but i do think that that that uh practice of being grateful
and realizing as you said like what this is insane we're across the world from each other
we've got we're somehow beaming this conversation in real time with with you know imperceptible delay
in 4k resolution yeah across the world we're able to talk about these things we're able to then go
and publish them on various platforms, some of which are controlled by centralized corporations.
Others are open protocols that some anonymous developer in Latin America built, you know,
as a, as a cool project, like all of these things, like we can fly around the earth in metal tubes.
We've got, you know, this, this awful billionaire, Elon Musk built fucking a reusable rockets,
like reusable rockets. And now another, another awful billionaire who makes sure that I can
order a, you know, I can order a pack of Mason jars and have them delivered within four hours
to my doorstep, Jeff Bezos. He also is building reusable rockets and we're doing all this
incredible shit. And so much of it just gets taken for granted. And it's tough. I'm guilty
of this too, but it's important to remind yourself sometimes just to slow down and be like, wow,
this is what a, what an incredible time to be alive. What an amazing thing. I'm, I'm so grateful.
the more i learn about bitcoin the longer that i've been in bitcoin and also i i have still to
this day from the first time i heard about bitcoin till i started stacking has still been longer than
i've been stacking so i've ignored bitcoin for longer than i've been stacking after another
little over another year they'll finally equal out but i'm so grateful that i exist to see
before bitcoin and after bitcoin yeah we're at a very unique time like my son
you know about two years old now you will only know after bitcoin yeah which which is great too
yeah but i'm just glad that i i was aware of bitcoin or you know i i existed before bitcoin
i am now seeing bitcoin come to life and i mean that's just incredible it's another reason whenever
people say oh i'm too late for it it's like you're too late there's people that haven't even been
born yet how can you possibly be late to bitcoin yeah yeah think about the untold billions who are
yet to be born think about the kids that are gonna be born in 2140 and that are gonna be saying wow
well or you know they're born in 2139 well at least we were born before the block the block
subsidy completely ran out you know and bitcoin security budget obviously collapsed and by the
way you should use my shitcoin uh oh it's it's wild what a what an amazing thing that we get to
get to see this happening jeff said this to me the other day he was like i'm just so happy that
i get to bend reality with such amazing people and i was like wow that's that's me that's that's
making me think but it's what we're doing like we're seeing everything change in real time in
front of our eyes and are actively we're active participants in that bending of reality yeah how
fucking cool is that no it's it's amazing he's he said that many times to me too and and i i frame
it as uh um i have a front row seat to the future of humanity like i like that i just get i get to
sit in the front row at the theme park and just enjoy the ride it's it's amazing and the the
craziest thing and this is sort of a tldr on all the talks i do and whatnot in the books uh it is
that when you really think about it so what is bitcoin and my shortest answer to that is that
it's an agreement on a fixed set of rules and the the slightly longer answer is that the reason we
agree on this set of rules rather than other sets of rules is that these are the only rules known to
man that are more expensive to try to break than to follow meaning that we are all incentivized to
help one another instead of aggress against one another. And also when you think about what a
Bitcoin is, is it possible to possess a Bitcoin? Is it possible to own a Bitcoin? No, it's not
because it's just information and it's information you keep from everyone else. So it's a secret.
Every single, the Satoshis are on the time chain in the sense that you can see them there,
But the ability to move them, which is the important aspect of them, are all in people's heads. Every single one of them is in someone's head. And the reason we can act as if we own them is A, because we think that no one else knows the same secret that we do.
And B, we don't believe that the rules will change to such an extent that it will endanger the value of the token, mainly that the 21 million cap will not be broken.
We can argue about nuances about that and other detrimental things too. But the reason that we act as if we own them is just that we believe in the system because we understand the system to the extent of being convinced that it works.
either we understand praxeology or game theory or both or mathematics regardless of why you
understand it you when you do there's no way back and all of a sudden you're in this
the thing where you realize that uh everyone in this it it was all in our heads like all the time we had the ability the computers involved the ASICs the nodes everything It just a fancy abacus It just a we orangutans with a very fancy stick to put in the termite mound to get more termites per second
Like that's what a computer is.
It just saves us time.
Like every tool and every technology is just there to save a human being time to reach their ends faster.
and here we have this abstract system that's just beautiful that all of a sudden
unlocks the ability to just be awesome to one another instead of aggress and it's it's so
obvious that oh human beings are better off if we don't aggress against one another who would have
known like boom and it's so obvious but it's fucking and what it has done to me and i know
it has done this to you too is like inject you with this enormous uh newly found self-conscious
self-confidence and and like just a ability to and willingness to just do things and not be ashamed
of it and just embrace everything and embrace life in a way that we couldn't do before this
and the thing is we had it within us all the time all along it was just impossible to tap into
because we hadn't found the equation for it yet.
So the cliche thing I say in all my talks is like,
the Beatles were right, all you need is love,
they just hadn't found the equation for it.
I love that though.
No, no, I absolutely love it.
I think it's interesting.
The deeper into this we get,
and Bitcoin is still again,
uh i heard about bitcoin for the first time in 2014 it was the silk road days i had a friend who
was using the silk road for some things and he was a finance guy i was an engineering guy so for
some reason he you know he came to me he was a quaker have you you know i'm getting things off of
the this website called the silk road uh have you heard of these this bitcoin bitcoins something like
that. I need to, I need to use them or I need to buy them so that I can pay for stuff on this
website. It's the only way that you can, you can pay on this website. I'm like, dude, I don't know
what you're talking about. I've never heard of this. Um, I like just, you know, whatever nerd,
like you're on, on, on with my fiat stuff ignored. Uh, I've, I actually, I bumped into him at the
Bitcoin conference in Vegas, uh, which was, which is very cool. Uh, you know, after, after some
years, but I heard about it again, 2017, right at that blow off top. I didn't, I'd spent still
exactly zero time looking into Bitcoin and thought, well, I can't afford a full Bitcoin at whatever it
was, you know, $17,000. I'll just get one of a couple of these light coins. They're, they're
cheaper. And you know, maybe they'll be worth as much as a Bitcoin is. I mean, still, I bought like
the Pico top. It was like $500 a light coin. I think, I think light coin is still, I don't know
what it is. I think it's a couple hundred less than that now to this day. Uh, so, you know,
I have empathy for people who, you know, say, well, I can't afford a full Bitcoin. It's like,
it's okay. You can buy a fraction called a Satoshi. I was once retarded too. I didn't look
into this at all, but you know, my point being once I finally started going down that rabbit hole
and started really looking into this, that, that journey of discovery and realizing that
every, the way you've been told the world works or the way that you assume the world works,
or must work, needs to work, has to work, whatever.
It doesn't have to be that way.
And just because we've never seen a system like this before,
we've never seen anything like this before.
We come up with all these analogies, right?
It's digital gold or gold is analog Bitcoin or whatever.
But, you know, all these different analogies for it,
but they all fall flat, right?
Because it's not just digital gold.
That's a nice convenient way to package it to boomers, but it's not actually, that's not what it is. It's something so much more than that. And what it allows us to do, and I think what it will enable for us in the long run, is to, as you've said, have a way of interacting with each other that is purely, there's no incentive for violence anymore.
you're disincentivized to use coercion and that's just something we've never ever ever seen if it
was just purely digital gold with all the other properties of gold being the same then it wouldn't
have that effect right no it's still like you would still be incentivized to coerce and even
if it was something bigger here here's a thought like even if it was informational gold so it's
still like this informational element or element zero as i like to call it uh but it had inflation
just like gold does so it's if you look harder for it you'll find more of them then it wouldn't
work then it would still incentivize violence because it would incentivize uh getting a a
artificial monopoly on mining and then mining more than everyone else
So it wouldn't work without the difficulty adjustment.
And the funny thing about that is like, yeah, this is also from the clown world book.
I ask, or we ask, me and Luke ask, uh, uh, if human beings practice doing things, do they usually get better or worse at doing those things?
And the answer is obvious.
It's yes.
But the follow up question everyone forgets to ask themselves is so why aren't all prices falling forever?
and the in real bitcoin is the only thing that gives you the ability to see that they actually do
and that that is true if you look at the world from a bitcoiner lens you see that happening
and it's it rewrites everything everything you uh thought was true about human society
is backwards uh it's it's it's based on ginormous lies and a giant funnel and life-sucking
vampiric machine just funneling wealth from the masses to the one percent uh at all times
and idiots think we can fix it with more politics yeah yeah maybe if we just vote harder you know
the, the, like, oh my God.
Like, that's the thing that people can't conceptualize that we all want to believe that our actions
matter and they do, but certain actions do not have the effect that you think they do.
Like for instance, you voting is just voting for who's going to, you know, give you more
favors and manipulate the money printer more and manipulate the legal system more. It's not,
it's not a vote for actual meaningful changes. Just, it's still just a vote for the status quo.
Now, I think there are some, obviously some, there are some votes where this, uh, there is
a difference. Like El Salvador is an example of where that was actually, that was a change
in the status quo, a very, very distinct change in the status quo. So that's, but when we talk
about the average you know election it's like yeah in the u.s do i think that kamala harris would
have been far far worse than donald trump absolutely but ultimately like you know to
use a linaldin meme like nothing stops this train right the government needs to continue spending the
amount of expenditures that it must continue to have are so great that no actual meaningful
decrease in spending can be can be had it's just not going to happen and so you know and elon
realized this very quickly with doge and you got to love him for going in there bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed and thinking i'm just gonna i'm just gonna run this like a business and i'll just cut
the waste i'll trim the fat i'll get rid of all the the excess spending and it'll be great and then
you know it's like the uh the meme uh from like the incredibles you know with mr incredible where
he's like smiling then the next one's like the black like like that's basically what he had
where it's like oh shit there's there's no there's no fixing this thing that it's it's and this is why
these parallel systems that we build and that we engage in and that we put more of our time and
energy and monetary value into are so important because i don't think that the systems that we
have the fiat based systems that we have are fixable neither from like they're not fixable
from the inside out the only way for them to change is by external parallel systems being a
forcing function upon them to either suck them of their you know bleed them dry of their energy
or to maybe uh to get have those fiat systems eventually get subsumed by the growing parallel
system but i just don't think the fiat systems that are in place fix themselves from the inside
out i just i don't think it's possible you know no i totally agree i the lifeboats on the titanic
analogy is is 100 literally true like because what does it mean that the fiat systems are unfixable
it means that they are leading to disaster like real disaster the real titanic level disaster
There is no saving them, and therefore they are going to lead to civil war.
At some point, there will be a civil war because of them.
Or even worse, there won't be a civil war, which means we're all enslaved.
And that is the which way Western man thing comes to mind, and it's absolutely true.
One system leads to more and more involuntary things, and the other leads to more and more voluntary things.
it's super the choice is it's not a choice at all sadly most people most people don't want to
make a choice i think and i don't mean to over generalize like uh but sometimes it's it's useful
and there there's a quote i'm forgetting forgetting who it was may have been one of the stoic but it's
very maybe it was seneca very few people are born slaves the majority enslave themselves
and I think that it's it's very poignant because most people don't want to take responsibility
because that's scary this goes back to your your earlier point of like because when you take
responsibility you have to deal with the consequences they're yours there's no you know
there's there's no bailout right there's nobody to come in and save you in a very real sense with
in bitcoins like you lose your private key like you lose that that seed phrase you have no back
of that, like it's gone. There's no customer support. There's no government that's going to
come in. You know, well, now you can at least like get an insurance policy on it. So like you can do
that. But again, that's something that you have to do yourself as well. Right. All of these things
have to be done. And so it's, it's, it's scary for people because that requires again, a complete
reframing of how you interact with the world to say, I do have agency. I'm not just some passive
observer in my own life. I have to be the one at the driver's seat. I have to be the one steering
this vehicle of my existence. But when you do that, then that means also if you accept that,
if you accept that you have agencies, if you accept that through your human action,
you can make changes in your life that are meaningful, that are beneficial,
that will change the course of your existence and your families.
That means accepting that up until that point, you also had agents.
that at any point you could have made those changes and you did not.
And it's a lot easier to just, again, like inertia, right?
Maintain the status quo.
Don't rock the boat.
Whatever you want to say, it's easier to do that than it is to completely have a kind of
an ego death and rebirth to have a Phoenix rise from the ashes and say, wow, okay, I am
in control here.
but me being in control means that I am also responsible if and when I fail and I surely
will at certain things I surely will but then how will I you know how will I get back up
but that's hard like we know this this is why most people would rather just that most people
don't want to leave the matrix right it's cozy the the beef tastes just like real beef I know
it's not real but it still tastes good you know it's it's wild most people are cypher
yeah yeah it reminds me of the first time i was ever promoted to skipper on one of the
the yachts i was sailing or like big ones with a lot of people on board and once i was promoted
to skipper people came and asked me all these questions that like when are we when are we going
to eat for instance and i'm like uh can't you ask someone who knows and like oh i'm supposed to
decide something and like it's uh uh and you're supposed to decide all sorts of things that you
never realize that anyone decided for you before you and it's the same with uh breaking out of
the government spell it's it's it feels the same um because you're reclaiming something that you
ought to always have had
I think the other difficulties, it's, it's a lot of work to do that. Like it's a lot of, even just something as basic as, you know, uh, like your digital footprint and trying to be a good steward of that, trying not to, you know, uh, make your information easily accessible.
to a bunch of hackers out there, right?
Just trying to have like general good,
like digital operational security practices.
Like that's really hard.
It's a lot of work.
There's a reason that most people use the same email
and the same password and the same for everything, right?
And there's a reason that there's any single hack
is a cascading effect for most individuals.
Yeah.
Because it's like, oh, I shouldn't have used,
you know, dog's name 123 as my password
with like the same email for literally every single,
for my bank and for, you know, my Facebook
and for everything else.
Do you know that's how they hacked Hillary Clinton?
Is it really?
Yeah.
No way.
What's the name of my first dog?
And Wikipedia, Hillary Clinton's first dog.
Oh my God.
And that's how they hacked her.
That's wild.
I did that.
I did not know that.
Hillary is short for hilarious.
Oh my God.
She is a, boy, just a creature of the swamp, huh?
And imagine that that woman was this close to having nuclear launch codes.
It's hilarious.
What's the launch code again?
One, two, three, four.
Oh, geez.
It's crazy, but wow.
Okay, I'm going to need to go back and look at that hack again.
because there's so many things about that too.
Yeah, that's a whole other rabbit hole right there.
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advisor.com to find out more and brush your teeth yeah it's it's funny though i think how how
obvious buffoons end up on top like sure you can you can say that trump is a good negotiator
and and this and that and no one else would have been able to negotiate with certain people
but he is he's a buffoon like and all of them are like since since at least bush
they're all
G.W. Bush
no St. Clinton
yeah
I don't know too much about Bush
Sr.
before I started paying attention
I guess I like Reagan a lot
though like in hindsight
but if we
just look at American presidents
and when George W. Bush was doing
his thing and being
ATI Cube Lab
people thought like what the fuck is this guy especially from europe with european eyes is like
this guy is a moron like he's he's like is he retarded like what's going on over there
and then there's just the next the next guy is just worse and then there's biden and kamala which
are just like what the fuck is going on here and the and trump is the other like like it's it's such
it's
yeah I don't know
I don't even know where to start like it's
so
yeah and then
you get a well-spoken guy Obama
and he's the worst one in his
in like ages because he
bombs people like fucking mad
and no one notices. They gave him a Nobel Peace Prize
for just bombing the
ever-loving shit out of
brown people. No they gave him the Peace Prize before he got the
presidency. Yeah yeah I mean
just so he basically got it for being black there i said that this this is such a an important point
because people think oh well he was such a great or you know he was such a good speaker and he made
he was he was so nice and he and he was like obama was an incredible politician and i mean that as an
insult not as a compliment exactly i mean that exactly he was psychopath i'm i mean the the
the definition of just talking out of both sides of your mouth right like where yeah he's you know
He's saying all these nice things and he says them in a certain way with a cadence that makes you know that he's got your best interest at heart.
And then meanwhile, he's like, bomb, bomb, drone strike, drone strike, drone strike.
Like, I mean, just insanity.
But honestly, it's wild how many people are still like, oh, I wish we could just go back to the Obama.
That's when things were, everything was nice.
And if you also look like, when did the kind of racial tensions in the U.S. really start to get polarizing again?
It was during Obama, which is weird.
Yeah, it should have been the other way around.
Yeah, and it's-
According to theory.
Maybe it has something to do with, yeah, it was just insane to me.
But that's the thing, we do live in this crazy clown world.
you know uh you've literally written a book about this and when i don't even know if orwellian
describes it you know but it's something it's i mean i guess it's just clown world right yeah yeah
it's and everything is so absurd everything is so absurd and you're told to just or you're meant
to just kind of take it as it is and like yeah that's just that's it's just everything's just
fucking crazy and stupid and just yeah yeah that's just the way it is and it's like no it doesn't
have to be like that it shouldn't be like that trump the phenomenon is absurd like it's absurd
that that's the only guy that manages to stir the stir the pot like that that they and i mean uh
the things he's said over the years i mean don't get me wrong i love that he irritates the left as
much as he does but i don't think like never a tribute to 5d chess what can be explained by
retardation because some of it is just like it's pulling stuff out of his ass.
It doesn't give a shit and it's the doesn't give a shit part that is good for
humanity, but if you look at it objectively, it's just a fucking shit show.
All of it, isn't it?
And you had the choice between the actual commie and a crony capitalist
meme coiner, like who doesn't give a shit about anything but making money.
I mean, that's who he is like at heart.
And he's obviously not a good guy, but it's like, yeah, I prefer pneumonia to bone cancer, so I'm going to vote for him.
Because that's the comparison.
They're all on the bad scale.
What I would say about Trump is that I think that he's actually been, it's been very good to have Trump as president because it completely pierces the veil of like the Obama type of politician.
He's the antithesis of that.
he's he's coarse he's he's crass he you know i mean he literally you know call like calls you
know tim waltz retarded like you know he's like there's no there's no filter there there's no
political veneer i love that's a good thing because it take it takes the mask off but then
you also see i mean you know in this first term it was all about drain the swamp right drain the
swamp it's like well the swamp's still there the swamp's gotten worse it has not drained it has
it's not trained there's additional swampiness in there now um i mean he's like i will say he is
i think he's a hilarious stand-up comic the dude has incredible comedic timing it's like it's insane
absolutely his un speech was hilarious but my point is not that like someone can be a good
entertainer and like as you say that the swamp is still not fucking drain and what's exhausting to
me is seeing Bitcoin or simp for the guy.
Like, why?
Like, so let me ask you an honest question.
What would you prefer, uh, uh, uh, uh, a pro Bitcoin, uh, politician or an
anti-Bitcoin one?
And I think this is a bit of a trick question because, uh, so let me lay it
out for you, like, uh, on, on the face of it, it's, it's awesome to have a pro
Bitcoin president, but when you have a pro Bitcoin president that
shills meme coins and says the crypto industry and stuff like that and has his son go to Abu
Dhabi to have oil shakes by paper Bitcoin. Is that really a good thing? If you have an
anti-Bitcoin president, on the other hand, people are forced to run their own nodes on
their own terms and actually do their fucking homework and do shit for real. So what's better?
I don't know.
It's a fair question.
I've often said I would rather have a government full of Senator Lemmises than Senator Warren's.
Like Cynthia Lemmise has been a vocal proponent of Bitcoin.
She hasn't launched her own meme coin.
She hasn't done any shit like that.
You know, she's been rock solid.
Neither has Bukele.
Correct.
And that's the thing.
And then contrasting that with, uh, with Elizabeth Warren, somebody like that, who would, is very happy to say that, you know, anyone, uh, she, she would love to lock up even more software developers for writing open source code, you know, because they're money launderers and helping the terrorists.
So I think that I'll, I'll take the bad with the good. Does that make sense? Even with regard to
Trump, because I think that I would still rather have people in power who are not openly antagonistic
to Bitcoin. I would still rather have that. Now, granted, would I rather that Trump wasn't a
massive shit coin or two? Yeah. Like, yeah, I would, I would like it if the president of the
United States and his wife hadn't launched shit coins right, right before, you know,
right after the election and right right before you know getting into office But also I wasn surprised at this and anyone who was surprised or trying to be like well you know we all knew this was coming because he had already launched multiple NFTs
He'd already launched multiple NFTs guys.
This was on, on, on Ethereum.
And I think on Solana, maybe he did on ordinals too.
I don't know.
But like this, this was par for the course.
Like, of course he was going to, was going to shit coin.
Like this was natural.
I'm just surprised Baron Trump hasn't launched, you know, his own shit coin yet.
Um, but maybe Baron's actually the toxic maxi of the family.
Yeah.
Maybe he's the heart.
Like he's, he's like, guys, what are you doing here?
Yeah.
And I love his demeanor.
Like his, uh, a Harkonnen.
Yes.
Yeah.
Exactly.
But no, I think again, I, I, what I will agree with you on 100% is, is the simping side of
things.
Yeah.
If, if you, and again, do whatever you want people, right?
But I'm going to do whatever I want, which is call you out for when you are ideologically inconsistent.
The people who are basically, they're saying, well, don't criticize Trump for anything, right?
It's Bitcoiners who are also super Trumpers, which is, again, fine.
I've got no problem with Trump.
When he does something good, like freeing Ross, pardoning Ross, full presidential pardon, I think that's amazing.
He should be applauded for it.
But don't forget that he didn't free Ross for three years during his last bucking.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no.
I know, absolutely.
And then Ross comes up and licks his ass.
And I'm like, dude, have you forgotten what this guy did to you?
Like, he could have pardoned you back then, but it wasn't in his interest.
So he didn't.
I'm not disagreeing with you there.
What I'm saying is when a politician does something that I think is good, I'm going to say, I think that's good.
and when they do something that i think is bad i'm gonna say i think that's bad i'm not gonna
try to equivocate and moralize about how well actually you know he just he needed to launch
this shit coin because you know he's that's how he's gonna own the libs like no that's shit coining
that's bad yeah i think that's scammy scammy fucking behavior and people end up getting
wrecked and insiders get enriched shit coining is just fiat on steroids yeah it's the end state
of fiat it's not not just the central bank is the counterfeiter it's everybody's a counterfeiter and
everybody's a fucking scammer yeah and like you know everybody's a scammer period right but like
i'm not going to in any way excuse that and like honestly shame on shame on anyone who who does we
should call out bad behavior yeah especially in america and i'd be curious how you see this uh
you know in the glorious european union but in america because we have a coca-cola pepsi-cola
democracy we have a duopoly right it's it's you know it's it's red versus blue right yeah that's
that's all it is you don't like coke it's okay because you can have pepsi you don't like pepsi
no mountain dew no fanta none of that um certainly no you can't just have good old plain water either
you got to have this sugary beverage that's you have to be good if you stop drinking mountain dew
i think yeah yeah i agree agreed a mountain dew now that's the green party they never get elected
but but because we have this duopoly there's a tendency for people when their guy is in power
or their gal or kamala folks you know if she never made it but you know if she would have
there's a tendency when people have their party in power to absolutely paper over and excuse any
of the stupid things their party does because admitting that their party did something stupid
would be viewed as giving the other side ammunition yeah yeah and so but but then both
sides are just their hypocrisy is laid bare because they're not actually operating from any
sort of a principled stance at all it's all just tribal politics it's all identity politics
you know it's fake the difference with trump there is that he blatantly lies but he has no
moral quarrels about it he just does it because it's part of his job and he doesn't give it no
no but the others at least they try to look like they're not lying he doesn't give a shit it just
says the lie because it needs to be said right then and and sometimes i don't know which is worse
though trying to hide the lie don't get me wrong no no i i like that that's one of the great things
he did because he he sort of uh showed everyone the man behind the curtain in that sense right
so uh or the emperor is still naked like all the emperors yeah no but but the as a european
i mean we also have this two-party system in a way because there's always a a red side and a blue
side and it's always even between them in all of the european countries it's all the same
and the left side always have to uh get the support of the actual commies to get into power
and the the right side have to get the support of the the nationalists to get into power
and that's the dichotomy but but at the end of the day all democracies tend towards that
towards a two-party system where there's two two uh and if you look at the budgets it's all the
same like no one wants to actually change things so so it's the statist quo exists everywhere and
like all the parties they always talk about what the state should do about this and that
no one ever says this the state should stop caring about this and that they should not do anything
about this and that they should remove this and that it's always where do we put the more state
control that we're gonna it's all so where are we gonna aim this being an asshole gun that we've got
like it's it's all it's all wrong um that's the insane part to me is that it's never
nobody is ever talking about wherever you are in the world no one's ever talking about
how well you know what how do we actually shrink the government how do we take power away from the
well bitcoin us do well bitcoin no but i mean uh the the you know people running for political
office and maybe we do need more bitcoiners doing this from a localized standpoint first
and then run that on all the way up but but my point being it's always just well here we're going
to give the government more power no matter which side it is or ever it's red blue left right we're
going to give the government more power but it's okay because we're going to be the ones deciding
how to use that power.
It's okay.
And we're better
than the other guys.
So you don't have to worry.
Unfortunately,
I think it's impossible
to be like all politicians
or not all.
There are a lot
of career politicians,
but there are politicians
that this is a better way
of phrasing it.
There are politicians
that start out as good guys
and they're really fighting
for a cause
that they believe in.
But they get captured
by the system
because the system
does not reward them
for sticking to their guns.
The system rewards them for adapting
to whatever the current thing is.
That's what's rewarded.
So they get rewarded
not for being honest in principle,
they get rewarded for going
with whatever direction they can go
to get more votes.
And this is how the system works.
And it's flawed from the get-go.
Democracy is not what you think it is.
And a popularity contest does not make theft more ethical.
It never has.
It is an extremely flawed system.
And it's sort of taboo to criticize it because it's always described as the worst system except all others that have been tried.
Well, how about trying a fucking new one without this crap?
Why do we need any of it?
or at least shrinking it or trying to remove most of it.
But that never happens because everyone has a survival instinct.
No one working at any of these institutions is ever going to vote against the hand that feeds them.
So the more time that passes, the more the cancer grows because it has to.
It cannot not grow.
So the only way is to opt out and bypass all of it.
There is no other way.
that is the lifeboat
and the other shit
is the Titanic
and everyone's going
COVID was fun
let's try that again
wake the fuck up people
yeah
but again this gets back
to the fact that most people
most people are cozy
and comfortable
just kind of following
following the directives
that they're given
most people don't want to
most people are not
leaders
and most people certainly aren't even leaders of themselves, right?
They're just, it's easier to be a follower.
Not making decisions is easier.
That's the easier path.
That's the path of least resistance.
It's the maintaining of the status quo.
It's moving with inertia.
It is much more difficult to say,
no, no, I'm going to step, you know,
you're all fucking wrong.
I'm going to step over here and I'm going to chart my own path.
That's why most people don't do it.
But therein is the opportunity as well, right?
therein is the chance
there is where optimistic, hopeful
driven people who
actually give a shit can rise
above everything. And optimism
is a rational choice because you can
choose to live either optimistic
or pessimistic. This is the last
chapter from the Praxeology book. It has
this Shawshank redemption
analogy. So
Morgan Freeman
warns Andy
Dufresne, the main character, that
hope is a dangerous thing
because you're going to die in here
and having hope is only going to give you
it's only going to disappoint you ever
and then
a 90 year old inmate
gets released and he hangs
himself two weeks later because he's totally
institutionalized
institutionalized three free meals
per day
he knows his routines he cannot function
on the outside as a free man
but as
Andy points out to Red
morgan freeman's character that hope guess what you're gonna die anyway so you might as well live
as as if hope exists and that's what gets him out that and low time preference and digging that
tunnel over 10 years and and so i choose to live with hope because why wouldn't i it would be
retarded and that's how the soviet union ended by the way uh it ended the day that they started
believing in that it was all that the emperor didn't have any clothes like
sooner or later it resist is all we can do and laugh about these things and more
and more people are waking up i see i see it uh not every day but i see it quite often norm is actually waking up and realizing that something is fucked with the like seeing through the propaganda because it it
getting more and more ridiculous by the by the fucking day you know and this trump eu thing
it should wake up a whole a whole bunch of other people don't you think because it's so ridiculous
us and you may think that it's wrong that a billionaire gets to do whatever but at least
this guy had to work for his fucking billions he didn't get them from nothing sure he got some of
it from the state because of goddamn electric car subsidies that shouldn't have been there
but i bet he would have been successful anyway and at least now he's he's trying to stand up for
free speech what what what's wrong with you why why are you against that like uh i don't get it
it's not like no one's no one is silenced on twitter have you when was the last time you
heard about anyone like complaining that their post didn't get any attention and they had five
million followers that just doesn't happen like people see these things and they yeah well of
course like the main reason for all of this uh eu bureaucrat backlash against musk is is because
he's not censoring to a meaningful degree anywhere and that's what it comes down to right that's how
you defang the system you defend the system by by speaking freely by by saying like nobody will say
the emperor has no clothes until you know the little boy says look he's naked obviously he's
naked but if the little boy is censored and it's like nope shut me can't sit then then nobody says
it right but as soon as one person is able to speak freely as soon as one person is able to
speak and somebody else hears it that person is then emboldened that's a that's a that's paying
it forward it's a cascading effect right information wants to be free it wants to be free it longs to
be free information is rumors younger swifter cousin is that the is that uh yeah some something
something to that effect uh but but but this is what it comes down to is the totalitarian state
needs a complete absence of privacy and needs complete control over the, uh, the, the memes
of production, you know, the memes of production, the, the modes of communication. It needs both of
those things because if you can be production, that's great. I wish I came up with it. Yeah.
That's, I don't remember where I heard it, but somebody more clever than I, but, but if you have
either, if you have both of those things, first of all, if you have both privacy, you know, if you
You have anonymity or pseudonymity online, and you have the ability to speak freely and disseminate a message.
That is what thwarts the totalitarian state, because then you can speak the truth.
Because without privacy, without some meaningful degree of privacy, true free speech is impossible.
Because if you are worried, they're like, oh yeah, you can say whatever you want, but we know where you live, and we'll come and break your knees.
then you know you need to be able to say things with a degree of anonymity or pseudonymity
to actually be able to exercise true free speech no and if you have those if you have that and
that's why the totalitarian state that's why any authoritarian they they they clamp down on speech
they clamp down on your money and they and they make sure you have no privacy and because they
need and then then they can twist right then they can twist the thumbscrews in but if they don't
have that ability, then you can break them. Then they, they cannot last for long because again,
information wants to be free. The truth will out. And the totalitarians ultimately are left
fangless because they cannot keep up the illusion of their, like they don't have total control.
They don't have total control. And people can speak freely and say, I hate this. I don't want
this. I reject this. And that's what the head is, what gives us our power. That is why privacy
is so fucking important and again because what is privacy it comes back to the first principles
you were speaking of which is the right to be left alone yeah that's what it is that that's
what it comes down to yeah so important to to uh uh like uh define the concepts here there's a great
rothbard book called the ethics of liberty in which he explains like why free speech is like the
the wrong term to begin with uh because where the the question that people forget to ask themselves
is free speech where and you know on my property here in my house i get to decide who can who gets
to say what and i can discriminate as much as i want discrimination is one of the most beautiful
things we have on this planet like because that's what everyone does in their own homes and like i
invite people I like I don't invite people I don't like and if if they talk about things that bore me
I will not invite them again and so on and if they offend me I might even kick them out
then again where is free speech applicable then if there's only private property you don't need
free speech laws because every property owner gets to decide who gets to say what on their property
so free speech laws have to be preceded by property violations by expropriation
in order for there to be a public space that needs to be taken from someone first
so that's the first thing and the same thing is true on social media for instance
not your platform not your rules so whoever sets the rules on the platform
is and should be the owner of the platform unfortunately the state meddles with the
platforms in a very mafia style way and say that you have to censor this or that person
it's just that mr musk is so rich so it takes a lot to pressure him to do shit because he can buy
himself out all the time and this is why people who are shit rich are actually better defenders
of free speech than politicians could ever dream of being because that means you have some kind of
resistance against this pressure to censor and and do all this stuff things so uh right now that is
the very thing they're trying to use against him that he's shit rich is the thing that actually
saves him from all this and that you know i believe in free markets i believe if there's a
free market between social media platforms people will want to be on the one with the highest free
speech in it like or with the most free speech the most free speechy platform if you will because
there's a demand for that a natural demand for it because people want to hear what other people
have to say it's that simple uh so in a perfect world yeah there wouldn't be any coercion that's
that's it and then you wouldn't need any free speech laws because whoever whoever owns it
dictates the rules it's that simple well yeah and that's that's the exact you're you're 100
correct and that's the exact problem right with it goes back to what we were talking about
initially which is the government doesn't give you rights they can they can only restrict them
they can only take them away and that's the thing when the government is the one that is the uh
uh, uh, in control of whatever, you know, insert area you are in. Yes. That's why like,
it's insane that any sort of centralized bureaucratic body has basically any, uh,
any authority to say, no, you're, you're not allowed to say that. And now, okay. If like,
you're, uh, you know, even in America, right. If you make a specific targeted time-based
actionable threat against somebody that's different. Like if you're saying you're going to
do like, I'm going to go to this person's house at this time. Oh, and we should, by the way,
we should all go there to this person's house this time. Here's where they live.
And we should, you know, like string them up. Right. That is obviously a different thing,
right? Like this is something where you're now talking about violating that person's private
property. You're now talking about violating the ultimate form of their private property,
which is themselves, their body, right? You're talking about coercion. You're talking
about violence but like the idea of hate speech like if i just say like i think that guy's a
fucking retarded idiot no no no that's that's not violence violence is violence yeah calls to
violence are not violence they're the silence is not violence and silence is 100 not violence that
is just absolute lunacy i mean that's basically that that's just a classic like communist communist
technique right like that's just that's what's the thing the sentence i put in one of the books
was hate speech is a term obviously coined by someone who hated speech that's good because it is
it is obvious you have to hate speech in order to be pro hate speech laws and ultimately what it
comes down to is you and i both know this it's the people who want to restrict speech the most
like if, or I should say, let me put it a different way. This is a good heuristic for people
to be able to analyze the, uh, the worthiness of the opinions of those around them.
If somebody seeks to restrict the speech of other people, it's a pretty good chance. Just like,
just work this one out in your own brain. You can do it. There's a pretty good chance that that
person who seeks to restrict, restrict the speech of others does not have a very strong argument for
whatever they're peddling because if they did that argument would stand on its own they wouldn't have
to suppress dissenting opinions again this is why communists socialists totalitarians all want to
restrict speech because they don't have a good argument because their systems fucking suck that's
they have to restrict speech because otherwise everyone will go hey you guys this this fucking
sucks like this is terrible i don't like this 100 again anyone who is restricting speech
doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Their own arguments for whatever they're peddling
are shit. They're scared of speech.
And guess
what? What is
speech on a technical
level? It's
small changes in air pressure.
It's not going to hurt you.
Like, you choose
how to
react to it. That is what
will hurt you if you react in the
wrong way.
You choose to be offended or not.
It like no Yeah Fuck you Free speech Fuck you Hate speech uh uh you uh hate speech laws proponents it it it insane like again
we've gotten to this point where it's like i posted this clip uh maybe yesterday of the three
germans who are going there they're on 60 minutes in the us and like it's just an insane i've seen
it i've seen it the worst part is when they start laughing it's weird like i mean it's just like
like this sickening laughter where it's like you're laughing about locking people up for memes
yeah you like you're not on the like you are you are in the wrong here you're laughing about taking
away somebody's somebody's freedom and locking them in a cage because you were offended by what
they said that's fucking i got such a letter in in germany once like this is like uh 15 years ago
maybe uh when we were working on a wind farm site so i was the skipper of a small crew transfer
a vessel to wind farm outside a town in germany uh and former former eastern germany and we rented
a um some apartment complex for the cruise and uh we had wi-fi in there and i used the pirate bay
and downloaded a couple of movies and or or or someone else in the building did or many people
could have been anyone and we got got no but it wasn't only me it was a lot of us did and then we
got this letter or rather was sent to our employer they to the office from a german prosecutor
like pay this or we will sue you and they they that's their industry is like sending these warning
letters is basically blackmail like they're sending it to to thousands and thousands of people
uh like there's a 99 chance that if you don't pay it they won't they won't sue anyone because
they don't have a case and it's pretty expensive for them to start up a whole new case against a
simple file sharer so but for the most part like they only need a small percentile of people to be
to to be afraid of the consequences to get them to pay and of course our company paid
because they for them it was a small sum and it's like yeah yeah it's like paying a
a speeding ticket or something yeah yeah exactly so but but it's such a it's such a vile phenomenon
uh and you know you know what copying a file is not stealing the file because the original owner
of the file still has the file and this is why intellectual property laws are fucking retarded
and just detrimental to everyone they can only be artificially scarce all data can be copied
that is why the satoshi is not data by the way but it within us and this is the thing i never
had a shitcoin period because the thing that fascinated me from the get-go with bitcoin was
the notion of something on computers that couldn't be copied that was just outlandish to me like i
couldn't wrap my head around that as like what do you mean it can't be copied it's information
and it took me
till now to articulate
properly
or till a couple of years ago
and figured out that
holy shit it's because
they're not on the internet
they're in our heads
and it's wild when you think about it
but yeah
it is
I mean
I hope
I hope that the absurdity
of the world
and of these
control structures
and those who operate within the frame of these control structures.
I hope that the absurdity is reaching such a level where it's like escape velocity absurdity.
Where again, people start to, even people who have been asleep, start to realize,
like, the emperor has no clothes and he's drunk and he's trying to tell me what words I can and cannot say.
Like, fuck this guy.
You know, it feels like we're getting close to that because, and it's very heartening actually to see,
I've seen a lot of
pro-European
Union posting as a result
of this
current spat, right?
Most of the people doing the pro-EU,
not pro-European Union or
pro-European Commission posting, you look
and it's like they're all somehow related.
They're on the take, essentially, in some
way. They're part of the bureaucratic machine.
Of course, yeah. But Europeans
who are citizens of
individual european countries who i like you know yourself are like yeah like there's a european
the eu has nothing to do with that they don't speak for me i fucking hate those bureaucrats
and americans are all kind of coming together to say like yeah like fuck this like no this is this
is stupid like these guys what we're supposed to feel bad for the poor little politicians who are
like what are they really trying to throw themselves a pity party like it's that's one of
the worst looks is when a politician who is literally in charge of how much to steal from
you every year is like, whoa, is me.
I'm, you know, I'm being attacked on social media.
It's like, yeah, because you said something fucking stupid, you totalitarian quat.
Like, fuck off.
And the EU started as a free trade union.
Yep.
And the only, but what people forget, and it took only a couple of decades to slippery
slope itself into this dystopian nightmare that it is right now, right?
but the thing with trade unions that people don't get is that they are only necessary because someone put up a border
and stopped people from trading across that border
so it's the nation state's fault that the border is there in the first place
and that you can't send goods and services through it
so Bastiat, to go full circle here, we're back at the starting point here
uh bastiat said if goods don't cross borders soldiers will and that is still true and by the
way tariffs are fucking horrible and stupid like it's theft too it's also taxes and you know uh
the the thing about the u.s that that bothers me the most is of course the federal reserve
because the way i see it at least since 1971 the u.s is a centrally planned economy and not a free
economy at all because they have a money printer and if you have a money printer you're a centrally
planned economy you're not even socialist you're communist and so is everyone else by the way
but yes and it's this dystopian as fuck to think that but if you really like prices ought to fall
everywhere everything ought to be awesome we ought not to aggress one against one another
and instead we live in a money printing dystopian hellhole and we're still doing quite fine because
the free market is such a powerful force that we can still afford fucking good food and flying and
stuff it's great but we could have it so much better it's the seen and the unseen and we never
see the exponential effects that could have happened if the taxes hadn't been there uh no
so it is what it is well you know it's like the communists always say like well real communism's
never been tried it's like fuck you real capitalism's never been tried no exactly because it's been
under the yoke like people forget that marx was the one who advocated for centralized
control of credit like marx is the one who said the central bank was the most of the crucial thing
and it's like god come on you know you've seen a political compass right with authoritarian left
and authoritarian light and the funny thing is that the upper upper left corner i think it is
where it's left wing and totalitarian they call everything else on the political compass alt-right
Yeah.
Or extreme right.
Yeah.
Everything else is alt right.
But the, the actual truth of the thing is that the opposite corner where there's, uh,
no, not at all totalitarian right wing or libertarianism or anarcho capitalism is the
only corner that admits that the entirety of the rest of the compass is theft.
Yeah.
So, so it's so backwards.
So whenever you hear anyone tell you otherwise they're wrong.
Yeah.
Anyway, Walker, I know very little, like, I don't know much more about you than when we started this interview, because it was not really an interview.
It's more of like a banter.
This is my favorite kind of conversation, Klu.
My favorite kind.
Yeah, yeah.
And we haven't discussed Bitcoin at all, almost, or anything else.
Or have we?
Which is interesting.
And I'd love to have another conversation where we get into all sorts of shit and
figure out where we disagree with one another, because we haven't found such a
thing either in this conversation.
I know that Wisconsin is full of beer and cheese, but that's about it.
I don't know how you and Carla met.
I don't know what your hobbies were as a kid.
I don't know what your education is.
And honestly, I think we were better off just ranting.
I think so too.
I've enjoyed the heck out of it.
Now I need to return the favor and we can Bitcoin podcast as Bitcoin podcasters on my Bitcoin podcast.
Oh, fantastic.
Complete the circle.
But no, I always enjoy more of the conversation that flows wherever it will.
I'm not a fan of too much structure.
when it comes to these things.
So for me, this was perfect.
Oh, thank you.
And yeah, right back at you.
I enjoyed it a lot too.
So, and I'd love to come on your show
and do my rants there.
And yeah.
Let's do it.
Whenever.
We've got to cross pollinate.
You know, that's the important thing.
We've got to.
Yes.
Send me a link somewhere
and I'll come.
We'll see each other in San Salvador, won't we?
Yes, we will.
Looking forward to it.
Yeah, yeah.
Looking forward to it.
It's going to be just the time of the year
where the winter starts getting very oppressive
here in the Midwestern United States.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'll be looking forward
to the El Salvador sunshine.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, I'm going to spend some time
in the States this summer.
I'm looking forward to it.
Oh, well, let's, we'll,
we'll maybe do some coordination off air, yeah?
Yeah, yeah, we should.
Anyway, thank you very much, Walker.
This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show.
Go brush your teeth.
Good night.
Thank you.