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it's mind bending still to me that it's just this, " just", this monetary

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innovation, which is, I never thought it would be such a philosophical rabbit

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hole in so many different directions.

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And, I don't know, sometimes I catch myself like the things I'm reading about

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or thinking about, I'm like, how did this all, how did Bitcoin lead to all this?

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Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint Show.

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The Bitcoin Philosophy Show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke the Pseudo Finn.

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In today's episode, we're joined by our friend Robert Breedlove, host of

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the What Is Money show, home to some of the best deep dive series into the

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world of money and bitcoin, including the Saylor series with Michael Saylor.

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Our conversation today is inspired by many of the books that have defined our

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personal experiences and bitcoin journeys.

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Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson, Human Action by Mises.

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Economic Science and the Austrian Method by Hoppe, and Lila by Robert Persik.

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We also discuss value and its connection to praxeology.

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We reflect on communication, language, and argumentation ethics.

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And finally, we ask Robert for his answer to the age old question, what is money?

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Curious?

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Keep listening.

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But before we jump in, a quick reminder that the best way to support the show

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is to send us a boost or stream us some sats using a value for value

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podcasting app such as Fountain.

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If you're listening to this show as a podcast, check it out on Fountain.

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You can earn sats from listening and you can support us.

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And all your other favorite shows.

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You can also support us on geyser or send sats directly to our lightning

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address freedom at geyser dot fund.

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And if you want to exchange your dirty fiat, you can support us on Patreon.

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All our links are in the description.

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If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to like the episode

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and subscribe to the channel.

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Even if you're listening as a podcast, head over to our YouTube

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channel and subscribe to us there.

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It would be a big help.

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And finally, we want to thank today's sponsors.

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AmberApp, WasabiWallet, OrangePillApp, TheBitcoinWay, and Geyser.

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All their information is in the description.

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We'll be talking a bit more about them later.

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And now, without further ado, here is Robert Breedlove on

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the Freedom Footprint show.

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Rob, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show.

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Thanks for joining us.

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Hey guys, thanks for having me.

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Happy to be here.

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Yeah, happy to have you on Rob.

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Um, I've been on your show three times, I think, so it's

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about time you come to ours.

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Yeah, I think so.

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I'm overdue.

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we met briefly in Riga.

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We were both busy, you a bit busier than us, as usual.

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And you did a bunch of interviews there.

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I mean, you're a...

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You work like a Terminator and look like one as well for that.

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I mean, you've been doing a ton of interviews and I'm really impressed

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by that work ethic of yours.

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Like it's, it's, uh, it's always on, it seems.

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thank you.

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Well, I mean, you know how the podcasting thing is like when

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you're doing it, it's very intense.

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There's, especially when you're at events and everyone's there, you get

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a lot of juice for the squeeze by just really getting all the speakers or

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whoever's attending the event together and knocking out a bunch of interviews.

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But then you get to.

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You know, turned down hopefully for a few days after that.

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So, seems like it's kind of like sprint and then rest

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type of work, work frequency.

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yeah, it's a good lifestyle.

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yeah,

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um, so who did you interview in

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Yeah, we had Adam back.

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talked a little bit about the block size wars with him.

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Uh, in addition to some other things they've been doing over at Blockstream.

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Talked to Dylan LeClair.

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Spoke with, um, I don't want to mispronounce his name now, the

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last Austrian economist in Austria,

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Taghisadigan.

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Rahim, thank you, had a good lengthy conversation with him, uh, and

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a few others, so yeah, it was a good time, and then it looks like,

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this isn't final yet, but it looks like I'll try to go to Lugano,

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Oh, excellent.

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We're coming to Lugano too.

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yeah, so we'll try to do the same thing there, get some people together, have

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some interviews, and then also, uh, I'll be at Jordan Peterson's event

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at the end of October, beginning of November in London, and so I'll be

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interviewing some of the speakers at that event there, so that'll be not,

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obviously that's not a Bitcoin event, um, But definitely a lot of people in

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the, let's say freedom focused universe.

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Um, hopefully having them on for some in person interviews as well.

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So I'm super excited for all that.

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you gave me the perfect segue, Rob.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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so, so, so, uh, I'll just give you like a quick little bit of, of

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background, but like basically you and the you, you were my orange pill.

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Absolutely.

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Oh, nice.

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so.

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You know, first personal thank you for that, but the way I found you was when

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you went on Lex Friedman, and I'd been watching kind of all of his crypto and

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bitcoin related people at the time, but yours was, well, unique, and the

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thing that I latched onto was somewhere in the middle there you mentioned

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Jordan Peterson, and you called Maps of Meaning one of your most use cases.

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Meaningful books, like the books you would recommend the most, I believe it

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was Human Action and Maps of Meaning were the two you mentioned there, and well,

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basically, I've been a Peterson guy for a long time now, um, helped me through

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my younger adulthood, Uh, so to say, I'm still young, but, uh, you know, getting

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there, um, but the, the main thing, I guess, that I wanted to, to ask or to, to

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talk to you a little bit about was, uh, so I'm rereading Maps of Meaning again, and,

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and it just kind of, it's all fantastic stuff, but can, can you tell a little

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bit about what you got out of that book?

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What, uh, Maps of Meaning means to you?

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Thank you.

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Yeah.

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Um, yeah, the, the, the books that I mentioned on the Lex Fridman podcast

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were Maps of Meaning, Human Action, and then Robert Persick's book, Lila.

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And I think reading those three books together is one, a good way

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to dematerialize your worldview in the sense that you'll move away from

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being a materialist into someone that understands the world, uh, just

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through a different framework, right?

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A framework of value, a framework of Praxeology in the case of

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human action, um, and maybe even a different metaphysical framework

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when you use something like Lila, that the book that really posits

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that value is the fundamental ground stuff of reality in a way.

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So I just thought those three books are very interesting to read together, which

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I just happened to do at that time.

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But maps of meaning specifically, I think Peterson, I mean, he's

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drawing very heavily on like Carl Jung and, and others, but he's.

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Basically putting forth, uh, a worldview that's non materialist, right?

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It has more to do with value, um, has more to do with, you know, what

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you value actually determines what, not only how you see the world, but

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what you actually see in the world.

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One of the experiments he often likes to cite is the selective attention

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experiment, where there's, uh, people are charged with the task of counting

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the number of basketball passes between these two teams on a video.

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And When they do that, they fail to see the six foot man in a gorilla costume

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come into the middle of the screen and wave his arms around for a few

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seconds and walk off screen because they're so focused on the task of

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actually counting the number of passes.

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So the point being that when they value achieving the objective of

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counting the number of passes, that you actually fail to see six foot gorillas

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walking into the middle of your frame.

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Um...

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And so value, valuation, or the process of valuation is actually

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determining what you see in the world, not just how you see the world.

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And, you know, the bookmaps of meaning, I don't know that

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I'd recommend it to everyone.

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It's very dense.

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I think Peterson said he spent 15 years and three, three hours

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a day for 15 years writing it.

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Something just...

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You know, just an absurd amount of work went into it.

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The sentences are very dense, but he, he goes down a lot of the,

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the psychological rabbit holes that Jungian psychology gets into.

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I really got, one of the most fascinating parts of that book for me

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was towards the end when he's talking about alchemy, um, and just the

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nature of what alchemy was said to be.

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You know, it was said to like.

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Be a process that paralleled the passion of Christ.

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It was the pursuit of the lapis philosophorum, which was the philosopher's

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stone, which was said to be the incorruptible substance that would serve

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as an antidote for tyranny in the world.

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and I, you know, there were just so many parallels with Bitcoin there.

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Also like by interacting with the philosopher's stone, it

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actually makes you better.

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And so we often talk about Bitcoiners going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and

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experiencing personal transformations.

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You know, I don't, maybe I, maybe I've drank too much of the orange Kool

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Aid, but I definitely saw a lot of parallels between Peterson's discussion

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of alchemy and the Philosopher's Stone to, to Bitcoin overall.

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And then, you know, where I think JBP, I guess, obviously saying maps

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of meaning, you could have also called the book maps of value in a way.

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And there's.

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A lot of talk about meaning and a lot of talk about value, but that, it, it sort of

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doesn't get into, it doesn't, he doesn't have Mises in his worldview, right?

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He doesn't have praxeology, he doesn't have human action, so it's like, it fails

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to see this deep connection, perhaps even, you might even say value and

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action are like the same thing, right?

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All human action is an expression of value.

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Um, I'm not completely convinced it's just human though, like, I

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think purpose might be something that exists beyond just the human domain.

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Obviously that's more of a metaphysical debate.

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but I think that in JVP's work, it keeps the matter of value rather

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abstract and that he doesn't ground it out in the practical realities of,

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of actually, of actual human action.

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And I think that's where you get a lot of value by plugging in, reading

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the book, Human Action and Mises.

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And then, uh, again, with, with Lila, you get this.

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Sort of metaphysical grounding, um, in addition to those two

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books that really just sort of rounds out the counterpoint to the

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materialist worldview, you might say,

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yeah, the density of maps of meaning is, is, yeah, it's, it's quite something.

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I've appreciated his, his lecture.

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series on that topic, uh, which kind of distilled that and made

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it a little bit more accessible.

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But when he, when he came out with 12 rules for life, I, I'd actually been

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hoping for like a, like a maps of meaning light instead, and sort of the rules

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for life series is that, but it's, it's.

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Of course, it's couched in this framing that's supposed

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to make it ultra accessible.

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And yeah, that's, that's had maybe mixed success, I would say.

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But yeah, the, I really like your point, I guess, about the, that

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maps of value could be an alternate.

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And, um, certainly agree that, that his, his, uh, lack of the praxeological

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point is glaringly obvious when you've been looking at that, uh, side of

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things, but yeah, um, that was, that was kind of my, uh, comments there,

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but Knut, any, any thoughts on that?

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Curious.

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When did you last speak to Jordan?

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I mean, we've traded emails about the event, so, just over the past

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several months, but, spoken to him?

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Actually spoken to him?

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I haven't spoken to him since we did our thing in Miami.

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Okay.

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So, so do you think he's properly orange pill at this point?

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You see, we see some hints, uh, back and forth, but then once in a while, he

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says something sort of counter to the Bitcoin ethos in terms of the, you know,

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internet anonymity and stuff like that.

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And he doesn't really seem to grasp the importance of, of privacy, or.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Just have a different, different outlook than on that topic than most Bitcoiners.

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Um, so, so where do you think he is in his, um, rabbit hole journey?

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Well, I would definitely say he is not properly orange pilled yet.

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Um, as we all know, that takes, whatever, X hundred hours to get to that point.

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Somewhere between one and a few hundred hours, I guess, depending on who you

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are, what approach you take, et cetera.

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Uh, I doubt he's spent that much time at all.

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Like it seems like he paid attention to Bitcoin in the bull market.

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And then when bull market ceased, he kind of stopped paying attention.

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Um, he still tweets things out though.

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Like can Bitcoin fix this?

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You know, he'll be tweeting out some

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Yeah.

235
00:13:11,215 --> 00:13:12,415
That's the last week, right?

236
00:13:12,755 --> 00:13:13,665
Yeah, something,

237
00:13:13,785 --> 00:13:14,295
something.

238
00:13:15,379 --> 00:13:18,089
Oh, Australia moving people to a cashless society.

239
00:13:18,089 --> 00:13:21,259
I think they were just turning off physical cash, you know, and he's

240
00:13:21,269 --> 00:13:22,499
saying, Oh, can Bitcoin fix this?

241
00:13:22,539 --> 00:13:25,219
And we're like, Oh, of course, that's a counterparty, basically

242
00:13:25,219 --> 00:13:26,589
rug pulling you effectively.

243
00:13:27,159 --> 00:13:29,169
And so Bitcoin's money without a counterparty.

244
00:13:29,179 --> 00:13:30,589
So yeah, Bitcoin does fix that.

245
00:13:31,165 --> 00:13:33,255
no one's going to turn off Bitcoin on you, right?

246
00:13:33,255 --> 00:13:35,485
Whereas they can basically turn off physical cash.

247
00:13:36,355 --> 00:13:39,285
So, Uh, his curiosity is there.

248
00:13:39,295 --> 00:13:40,655
Where is he at on his journey?

249
00:13:40,655 --> 00:13:43,935
I'm not entirely sure, but he will be the first to admit to

250
00:13:43,945 --> 00:13:48,975
you that he doesn't have a strong understanding of economics in general.

251
00:13:49,622 --> 00:13:53,072
even the way he describes money, you know, he describes money as trust.

252
00:13:53,972 --> 00:13:56,812
And again, I think this is, you get very muddy with the language here

253
00:13:56,812 --> 00:14:01,492
because I would lean more on Nick Szabo's perspective of money being

254
00:14:01,492 --> 00:14:03,852
the trust minimized asset, right?

255
00:14:04,512 --> 00:14:08,952
The thing that I can use in exchange with the least need to trust anyone, right?

256
00:14:08,952 --> 00:14:10,222
Least counterparty risk.

257
00:14:11,312 --> 00:14:14,692
And so, but again, the trust...

258
00:14:15,192 --> 00:14:16,802
is an ambivalent term, right?

259
00:14:16,802 --> 00:14:21,062
Because it's like, okay, there's a, there's the least need for interpersonal

260
00:14:21,072 --> 00:14:25,972
trust, but it's the same thing as saying you have trust in the integrity

261
00:14:25,972 --> 00:14:30,192
or credibility of the monetary properties associated with the money.

262
00:14:30,592 --> 00:14:35,092
It's like saying, okay, when I walk across a bridge, am I trusting an

263
00:14:35,092 --> 00:14:39,132
individual to keep or individuals to keep the bridge intact?

264
00:14:39,172 --> 00:14:43,272
Or am I trusting principles of civil engineering that were properly applied?

265
00:14:43,932 --> 00:14:47,267
You know, so it's, Interpersonal versus impersonal trust.

266
00:14:47,267 --> 00:14:51,117
And so when he just says money is trust, I think it's very much

267
00:14:51,137 --> 00:14:53,367
ambivalent and not that useful.

268
00:14:54,217 --> 00:14:56,977
So there's that.

269
00:14:56,977 --> 00:15:02,537
And then again, you know, I would love to hear him really try to expand

270
00:15:02,537 --> 00:15:04,427
upon the question, what is value?

271
00:15:05,377 --> 00:15:08,347
Because I don't know what value is other than.

272
00:15:09,607 --> 00:15:12,787
What is expressed in human action, right?

273
00:15:12,797 --> 00:15:15,847
What else is value other than what is expressed in human action?

274
00:15:16,577 --> 00:15:21,457
And so for all of his focus on meaning and value, I don't think, I would like to hear

275
00:15:21,457 --> 00:15:24,307
what grounding definition he has for that.

276
00:15:25,047 --> 00:15:27,867
Because if you really come to understand that, then, um...

277
00:15:29,477 --> 00:15:33,687
Uh, you know, a lot of the arguments he's putting forth would just plug

278
00:15:33,687 --> 00:15:37,207
straight into praxeology and then he would go down the Mises rabbit hole

279
00:15:37,627 --> 00:15:40,917
and then presumably he would get thoroughly orange pills in the process.

280
00:15:41,587 --> 00:15:42,257
So I

281
00:15:42,282 --> 00:15:43,062
we love to see

282
00:15:43,862 --> 00:15:45,872
Yeah, we would love to see that.

283
00:15:46,132 --> 00:15:48,412
Um, but who knows?

284
00:15:48,432 --> 00:15:50,912
You know, he's also, he's an older guy, you know, I don't

285
00:15:50,912 --> 00:15:55,302
know how many more rabbit holes he's, he's got left to go down.

286
00:15:56,277 --> 00:15:59,387
so on that note, what, what is, what is your answer?

287
00:15:59,527 --> 00:16:01,207
Your personal answer to the question?

288
00:16:01,207 --> 00:16:01,967
What is money?

289
00:16:03,042 --> 00:16:04,722
I wish I had only one for you.

290
00:16:05,132 --> 00:16:09,539
Um, the thing, okay, I'll say, I'll say this first.

291
00:16:10,039 --> 00:16:17,609
That the most interesting thing for me on this three, almost three year journey now

292
00:16:17,629 --> 00:16:23,209
doing the podcast, the what is money show, asking this question to, I don't know how

293
00:16:23,209 --> 00:16:29,769
many we've had 360 something episodes, probably definitely over a hundred guests.

294
00:16:29,769 --> 00:16:33,319
You know, a lot of the episodes are long form series, so we have the same

295
00:16:33,319 --> 00:16:37,009
guests over and over, but I'd say we're, we've got to be over a hundred guests.

296
00:16:38,844 --> 00:16:45,894
And the fact that there are so many different answers to that question that

297
00:16:46,214 --> 00:16:52,714
make sense in certain contexts, um, it's like asking one of these other profound

298
00:16:52,714 --> 00:16:54,594
questions, like, you know, what is truth?

299
00:16:54,614 --> 00:16:55,704
What is justice?

300
00:16:56,424 --> 00:16:57,504
What is beauty?

301
00:16:57,504 --> 00:16:58,634
What is love?

302
00:16:59,514 --> 00:17:06,048
You know, You would think that these very, essential terms that we use

303
00:17:06,498 --> 00:17:10,918
would have very clear definitions that might be your intuitive position.

304
00:17:11,358 --> 00:17:13,618
It's like, well, of course we should know what truth is.

305
00:17:13,618 --> 00:17:16,198
You know, it's like one of the most important things in the world where

306
00:17:16,458 --> 00:17:20,178
we talk about it all the time, but then when you actually get into it

307
00:17:20,188 --> 00:17:23,808
and you try to define truth, you see that philosophers have been debating

308
00:17:23,808 --> 00:17:27,593
it for Many, many centuries and it continues to be a debate and there's

309
00:17:27,843 --> 00:17:29,293
different forms of truth, right?

310
00:17:29,293 --> 00:17:32,843
There's pragmatic truths and transcendental truth,

311
00:17:33,093 --> 00:17:33,813
et cetera, et cetera.

312
00:17:33,823 --> 00:17:39,803
So money for some reason is one of those terms, apparently one of these

313
00:17:39,803 --> 00:17:44,083
very potent, uh, essential terms.

314
00:17:44,103 --> 00:17:45,453
You know, it's an essential tool.

315
00:17:45,493 --> 00:17:48,983
Obviously everyone, every trading society.

316
00:17:49,968 --> 00:17:51,978
Has money or some form of money.

317
00:17:52,498 --> 00:17:56,008
Uh, you could also say that money's more of an attribute, right?

318
00:17:56,038 --> 00:17:57,718
Than, than necessarily a thing.

319
00:17:58,688 --> 00:18:03,078
Yeah, an adjective is what we said in the last talk we had,

320
00:18:03,198 --> 00:18:03,438
Yeah.

321
00:18:03,438 --> 00:18:04,278
An adjective, right?

322
00:18:04,278 --> 00:18:09,258
Because every asset that is traded in a marketplace has some degree of moneys,

323
00:18:09,648 --> 00:18:12,478
which is commensurate with its liquidity.

324
00:18:12,988 --> 00:18:16,768
And the thing that has the most moneys is the thing we call money, basically.

325
00:18:17,528 --> 00:18:26,458
so the, the very interesting realization that I've had or am having still is how.

326
00:18:28,103 --> 00:18:32,983
Indispensable, let's say, let's say insufficient languages, first of all,

327
00:18:32,983 --> 00:18:38,893
for describing this complex fluid world continuum that we all inhabit, you know,

328
00:18:38,893 --> 00:18:42,123
we're using these little discrete data packets called words and trying to map it

329
00:18:42,123 --> 00:18:44,793
onto this fluid domain we call reality.

330
00:18:45,473 --> 00:18:46,643
So it's insufficient.

331
00:18:46,988 --> 00:18:52,668
Yet, it's also indispensable in that it is the best tool we have for, well,

332
00:18:52,678 --> 00:18:57,628
thinking, communicating, rationalizing, reflecting, you know, calculating, etc.

333
00:18:58,418 --> 00:19:04,928
So been my big takeaway, I guess, from doing the show.

334
00:19:04,988 --> 00:19:07,148
Not takeaway, I'm not, it's nothing to take away.

335
00:19:07,148 --> 00:19:08,508
It's something I'm still thinking about.

336
00:19:08,508 --> 00:19:12,258
It's like, how do you describe the nature of language itself?

337
00:19:12,258 --> 00:19:14,278
And it's taken me into a lot of rabbit holes.

338
00:19:14,308 --> 00:19:20,868
Um, now to answer your question a little more directly, I still think.

339
00:19:21,108 --> 00:19:30,448
The most useful conception of money is as a storehouse or reservoir of time,

340
00:19:30,498 --> 00:19:36,046
you know, you might say human time, you might say lifetime, and it's not just

341
00:19:36,046 --> 00:19:39,566
money though, it's really capital, right?

342
00:19:39,566 --> 00:19:44,526
Capital is the result of human spending time, effort, and energy to create

343
00:19:44,556 --> 00:19:50,161
things That amplify the productivity of others or allow future consumption

344
00:19:50,211 --> 00:19:52,081
for themselves or other people.

345
00:19:52,571 --> 00:19:58,681
So all capital is kind of like a, a stored form of human time, but then

346
00:19:58,681 --> 00:20:04,511
money is just the, the form of capital that is most liquid, most tradable.

347
00:20:05,101 --> 00:20:05,841
And so.

348
00:20:06,341 --> 00:20:12,091
It becomes a very close reflection of time, and you see that in just

349
00:20:12,551 --> 00:20:15,801
people's day to day use of money, right, in that you go to work, you

350
00:20:16,291 --> 00:20:20,901
trade time for money, and then you take that money back into the marketplace.

351
00:20:21,716 --> 00:20:24,136
And you trade that money for the time of others.

352
00:20:24,166 --> 00:20:27,676
So people will serve you at the restaurant or building you a house or making

353
00:20:27,676 --> 00:20:29,476
you shoes or whatever the thing is.

354
00:20:30,346 --> 00:20:35,526
So I think there's a lot of intuitive value in framing it as time.

355
00:20:35,656 --> 00:20:39,496
And then I think it's also very useful for.

356
00:20:40,291 --> 00:20:43,711
Explicating the malevolent nature of central banking, where you're

357
00:20:43,711 --> 00:20:47,421
like, okay, if there's a currency counterfeiting monopoly, everyone's

358
00:20:47,421 --> 00:20:52,641
forced to use this stuff, they're stealing purchasing power through, you know,

359
00:20:52,641 --> 00:20:54,841
arbitrarily inflating the money supply.

360
00:20:54,881 --> 00:20:56,051
Well, what does that equate to?

361
00:20:56,051 --> 00:20:58,231
If money is time, okay.

362
00:20:58,231 --> 00:21:00,301
It's systematic time theft, right?

363
00:21:00,301 --> 00:21:04,291
People are having their time stolen systematically with every dollar printed.

364
00:21:05,201 --> 00:21:10,451
So, um, I guess that is still the answer that I lean on the most.

365
00:21:10,451 --> 00:21:13,361
I also think, you know, obviously Saylor bringing this whole perspective

366
00:21:14,041 --> 00:21:17,971
of money as energy to the table is a big deal because you could equally

367
00:21:17,971 --> 00:21:23,336
argue it's, well, money is time, money is energy, or As we've often

368
00:21:23,336 --> 00:21:25,006
said too, money is power, right?

369
00:21:25,006 --> 00:21:28,556
And power is a product of time and energy, right?

370
00:21:28,566 --> 00:21:33,066
It's the, I think power is the capacity to move energy over time, right?

371
00:21:33,599 --> 00:21:36,529
Or perform work over time, something like that in a physics sense.

372
00:21:36,539 --> 00:21:39,574
So again, you ask this question, what is money?

373
00:21:39,574 --> 00:21:46,439
And you end up in very fundamental domains like physics and, um, You

374
00:21:46,439 --> 00:21:48,229
know, time, like what is time?

375
00:21:48,229 --> 00:21:50,609
Time is probably the most mysterious thing in the universe.

376
00:21:51,209 --> 00:21:55,389
So it's maybe not useful from like a very practical standpoint to say money

377
00:21:55,389 --> 00:22:00,589
is time, but I think it's very useful from a philosophical standpoint in

378
00:22:00,659 --> 00:22:05,679
giving people somewhat of an intuitive explanatory framework to deal with

379
00:22:05,679 --> 00:22:08,409
this very abstract, mysterious notion.

380
00:22:09,228 --> 00:22:13,948
all right, so about communication and language in general, um, there's

381
00:22:13,948 --> 00:22:20,288
some points I have there, um, like, if, if we want to apply the non,

382
00:22:20,288 --> 00:22:24,493
non aggression principle, and if we want to Not use violence in any

383
00:22:24,493 --> 00:22:30,323
shape or form or fetch thereof, then in my mind, at least communication

384
00:22:30,323 --> 00:22:32,063
is the only tool we have left.

385
00:22:32,113 --> 00:22:37,723
Like it's, it's not only, you know, a tool, it's the tool that there, there

386
00:22:37,723 --> 00:22:39,483
are no other tools in the toolbox.

387
00:22:39,483 --> 00:22:46,023
Once, once you, once you, once you do not allow yourself to use force anymore.

388
00:22:46,733 --> 00:22:47,983
So that's the only thing we have.

389
00:22:47,983 --> 00:22:53,323
So we need, so clear definitions of words are crucial to that.

390
00:22:53,343 --> 00:22:58,213
And that's why one of the things I like so much about Mises in particular,

391
00:22:58,213 --> 00:23:03,103
that he's very, very careful with words and the definition of them.

392
00:23:03,593 --> 00:23:10,853
And to, I mean, I do agree that truth is a, uh, a very hard word to define, but

393
00:23:10,983 --> 00:23:13,703
the word true, the words true and false.

394
00:23:14,763 --> 00:23:21,143
In a sense are the binary of any language because we define everything else by

395
00:23:21,303 --> 00:23:26,153
having these, this binary base layer of language, which is that is true.

396
00:23:26,173 --> 00:23:27,053
And that is false.

397
00:23:27,133 --> 00:23:29,773
I mean, is truth hard to define?

398
00:23:30,143 --> 00:23:31,803
Yes, that is true.

399
00:23:31,893 --> 00:23:37,103
I mean, there's always, you can always boil down communication to these yin

400
00:23:37,103 --> 00:23:39,983
yang ones and zeros, true and false.

401
00:23:40,353 --> 00:23:46,428
So, so the word true, is, in a sense, easier to define than the word truth, and

402
00:23:46,428 --> 00:23:50,038
even easier than the word truthfulness, which is very hard to define.

403
00:23:50,488 --> 00:23:56,328
Um, because that implies some form of subjectivity, but what do you say to that?

404
00:23:56,538 --> 00:23:57,228
What are your thoughts?

405
00:23:57,843 --> 00:23:59,843
so there's a strange thing here.

406
00:23:59,893 --> 00:24:00,343
Okay.

407
00:24:01,583 --> 00:24:08,193
First of all, the importance of, and maybe this is why money is so hard to define

408
00:24:08,213 --> 00:24:12,333
as well, but I would say words, right?

409
00:24:12,333 --> 00:24:13,093
Language.

410
00:24:13,153 --> 00:24:14,683
This is a form.

411
00:24:15,728 --> 00:24:20,848
Words are a media of exchange, just like money is a, you know, Mises would say,

412
00:24:20,978 --> 00:24:22,998
money is a universal medium of exchange.

413
00:24:23,668 --> 00:24:25,578
Well, I would say so are words, right?

414
00:24:25,578 --> 00:24:29,058
We're, we're just using them to exchange as a medium to exchange

415
00:24:29,058 --> 00:24:31,558
human conceptions or ideas.

416
00:24:32,443 --> 00:24:35,983
Whereas money we're using to, as a medium of exchange for actual

417
00:24:36,083 --> 00:24:37,973
goods and services, capital, right?

418
00:24:37,973 --> 00:24:39,873
The results of human action, let's say.

419
00:24:40,793 --> 00:24:46,473
So maybe it's because of these, these intermediary devices.

420
00:24:47,353 --> 00:24:49,693
They're a little bit hard to pin down and define.

421
00:24:50,713 --> 00:24:56,723
Um, I do agree with you that absent rationality, all that

422
00:24:56,723 --> 00:24:58,803
really remains is raw power, right?

423
00:24:58,803 --> 00:24:59,703
It's might is right.

424
00:24:59,783 --> 00:25:00,763
If you can't have...

425
00:25:01,456 --> 00:25:04,866
Precise definitions that both people have consensus on, which

426
00:25:04,866 --> 00:25:06,156
is obviously very important.

427
00:25:06,766 --> 00:25:11,076
Your notion of the number 7 needs to match my notion of the number 7 for

428
00:25:11,076 --> 00:25:15,890
us to have rational communication about mathematics, for instance, which

429
00:25:15,890 --> 00:25:18,960
is another way of saying there has to be social consensus on each term.

430
00:25:19,950 --> 00:25:24,820
If you don't have that, right, if you have a lack of consensus or no language

431
00:25:24,820 --> 00:25:29,480
at all, no rationality, no rational argumentation, then what's left, right?

432
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:31,200
It's just pure animality.

433
00:25:31,850 --> 00:25:33,810
Who, who can beat up who?

434
00:25:34,427 --> 00:25:39,257
Well, this boils back to Hoppe's argumentation ethics, which I find so

435
00:25:39,257 --> 00:25:44,337
insanely fascinating, because like, even if we don't have consensus on what the

436
00:25:44,347 --> 00:25:50,767
number seven means, We can allow ourselves to agree to disagree and like, there's

437
00:25:50,797 --> 00:25:55,357
where conversation ends, but as long as there's no, you know, property to fight

438
00:25:55,377 --> 00:25:57,887
over, we can still agree to disagree.

439
00:25:58,332 --> 00:26:01,992
Well, you can, uh, you, you can agree to disagree to the extent that rational

440
00:26:02,002 --> 00:26:03,682
communication is possible between you.

441
00:26:04,112 --> 00:26:05,062
That's the point that I'm trying to make.

442
00:26:05,637 --> 00:26:05,847
Yeah.

443
00:26:05,877 --> 00:26:06,237
Yeah.

444
00:26:06,587 --> 00:26:07,187
Totally agree.

445
00:26:07,187 --> 00:26:13,208
And, um, what's so fascinating here about Bitcoin, Is that it's nothing

446
00:26:13,208 --> 00:26:16,248
but, uh, an agreement to disagree.

447
00:26:16,348 --> 00:26:19,338
Like, that is what Bitcoiners do.

448
00:26:19,348 --> 00:26:26,137
We agree to disagree, and because we know that it's, it's, uh, it's harder

449
00:26:26,137 --> 00:26:30,207
to, it's more expensive to try to cheat the system than to just follow the rules.

450
00:26:30,467 --> 00:26:36,203
And also, like, insanely fascinating that Bitcoin has sort of teared down

451
00:26:36,203 --> 00:26:38,943
that wall between money and language.

452
00:26:39,443 --> 00:26:44,133
It is the same thing now, it is just communication, like we, we, provably so,

453
00:26:44,133 --> 00:26:50,101
we can exchange goods and services for a, for a number, which we can hold in

454
00:26:50,101 --> 00:26:56,061
our heads and, uh, we don't need anything but that, it's just communication and

455
00:26:56,061 --> 00:26:59,621
all the computers involved are just an extension of our mind and all this, uh,

456
00:27:00,231 --> 00:27:05,176
mumbo jumbo, uh, About all the time, like how you are your Bitcoin, like

457
00:27:05,176 --> 00:27:06,996
there's a sense they are information.

458
00:27:06,996 --> 00:27:12,406
There's no nothing separating you yourself from your Bitcoin.

459
00:27:12,416 --> 00:27:12,866
Really?

460
00:27:13,236 --> 00:27:14,896
It's just an extension of your mind.

461
00:27:14,896 --> 00:27:16,466
It's it lives with within you.

462
00:27:16,466 --> 00:27:19,656
And I think that that is what makes it so.

463
00:27:20,626 --> 00:27:22,336
Obvious that it's communication.

464
00:27:22,416 --> 00:27:26,376
And if money is just communication, well, that changes everything.

465
00:27:26,476 --> 00:27:32,686
Like, so this whole notion that we're being robbed by inflation,

466
00:27:33,196 --> 00:27:39,046
is that really involuntary or did we put ourselves in that situation?

467
00:27:39,186 --> 00:27:43,406
Did we, did humanity like choose to trust these things?

468
00:27:43,496 --> 00:27:44,646
And was that a bad choice?

469
00:27:44,646 --> 00:27:47,999
Like how, how enforced were government?

470
00:27:49,749 --> 00:27:51,129
Issued currencies, really?

471
00:27:51,159 --> 00:27:54,459
And how much did we just fall for it, like, en masse?

472
00:27:54,841 --> 00:27:59,531
And back to the very, the importance of precise definitions here.

473
00:27:59,531 --> 00:28:05,291
I would say that, yeah, holding an inflationary currency or a

474
00:28:05,291 --> 00:28:09,721
fiat currency where you can have your purchasing power stolen.

475
00:28:10,051 --> 00:28:18,501
VIA inflation is voluntary, however, it is not consensual, uh, and Mr.

476
00:28:18,501 --> 00:28:21,351
Kinsella, I can thank him for taking me to task on this.

477
00:28:21,381 --> 00:28:25,001
I used to always talk about voluntary exchange, how important it is.

478
00:28:25,001 --> 00:28:29,581
He's like, well, actually the definition of all, like he's the

479
00:28:29,581 --> 00:28:31,401
example of the mugger, right?

480
00:28:31,401 --> 00:28:32,096
When you.

481
00:28:32,256 --> 00:28:36,636
Get mugged in the back alley, someone puts a gun to you and

482
00:28:36,636 --> 00:28:37,906
says, give me your wallet.

483
00:28:38,826 --> 00:28:42,776
Well, you voluntarily hand the mugger your wallet, right?

484
00:28:42,776 --> 00:28:46,716
You control your arm and decide, you know, the cost of me saying

485
00:28:46,716 --> 00:28:50,836
no to this guy is higher than the benefit of me giving up my wallet.

486
00:28:50,836 --> 00:28:53,236
So I'm going to hand him my wallet voluntarily.

487
00:28:54,036 --> 00:28:58,736
However, you're doing it under the threat of violence or coercion.

488
00:28:58,776 --> 00:28:59,606
So you're not.

489
00:28:59,966 --> 00:29:04,626
Surrendering your wallet consensually, although you are doing it voluntarily.

490
00:29:05,576 --> 00:29:09,206
An example of something that's involuntary would be a seizure

491
00:29:09,226 --> 00:29:10,446
or a heart attack, right?

492
00:29:10,446 --> 00:29:12,096
Something that you can't control.

493
00:29:12,306 --> 00:29:17,594
Just your biology just controls you basically in that situation.

494
00:29:17,604 --> 00:29:21,334
So when I look at central banking.

495
00:29:21,574 --> 00:29:27,574
You have a legal monopoly that preserves the currency counterfeiting, um, or

496
00:29:27,594 --> 00:29:31,574
arrogates the currency counterfeiting privilege to one group of shareholders

497
00:29:31,954 --> 00:29:34,574
and allows them to externalize that onto everyone else, right?

498
00:29:34,574 --> 00:29:37,404
The guns are pointed out, as I always like to say.

499
00:29:37,954 --> 00:29:39,254
They're protecting the future.

500
00:29:39,444 --> 00:29:42,324
Uh, central bank currency counterfeiting monopoly, but the guns are pointed

501
00:29:42,334 --> 00:29:45,464
out such that everyone else is effectively forced to use it.

502
00:29:46,332 --> 00:29:50,302
now, again, you're not forced, like, again, it's still voluntary.

503
00:29:50,342 --> 00:29:54,842
We could all just choose to have used physical gold all this time and said, no,

504
00:29:54,842 --> 00:29:56,312
we're never going to use your paper money.

505
00:29:56,895 --> 00:30:00,125
but obviously, as a means of practicality, that doesn't work.

506
00:30:00,835 --> 00:30:03,685
It's hard to buy coffee with gold, right?

507
00:30:03,685 --> 00:30:06,415
It's hard to move gold around safely.

508
00:30:06,425 --> 00:30:07,225
There's all these.

509
00:30:08,180 --> 00:30:14,170
Problems with using gold for day to day transactions, um, in a way that's

510
00:30:14,260 --> 00:30:16,460
not, that's not centrally custodied.

511
00:30:17,370 --> 00:30:17,920
So,

512
00:30:17,950 --> 00:30:19,730
any other commodity for that matter.

513
00:30:20,030 --> 00:30:20,950
yes, exactly.

514
00:30:21,030 --> 00:30:25,270
So to answer the question, it's like, yes, holding an

515
00:30:25,270 --> 00:30:27,590
inflationary currency is voluntary.

516
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:28,940
You're doing it voluntarily.

517
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:32,900
You could sell all your dollars and buy physical gold and put it in your backyard.

518
00:30:33,260 --> 00:30:35,260
Now with Bitcoin, it's even easier, right?

519
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:36,780
You can just hold Bitcoin.

520
00:30:37,266 --> 00:30:39,486
so every time you do choose to.

521
00:30:39,816 --> 00:30:45,106
Trade something, $4 or hold dollars in an account, you're doing that voluntarily,

522
00:30:45,856 --> 00:30:50,356
but your purchasing power nonetheless, is being stolen from you non consensually,

523
00:30:51,096 --> 00:30:55,476
and that you're participating, even though you've voluntarily put yourself into this

524
00:30:55,686 --> 00:31:02,156
legal monopoly, you're not voting for, uh, the counterfeiting of currency, right?

525
00:31:02,156 --> 00:31:03,836
You're not, you're not supporting it.

526
00:31:03,836 --> 00:31:05,246
You're not approving it.

527
00:31:05,916 --> 00:31:06,576
You're not really.

528
00:31:06,976 --> 00:31:09,156
I guess you could argue you're opting into it if you have the

529
00:31:09,156 --> 00:31:12,546
right level of understanding, but most people clearly don't.

530
00:31:13,388 --> 00:31:18,068
and that level of general level of understanding is intentionally kept low.

531
00:31:18,698 --> 00:31:22,488
I always like to talk about, I have a master's degree in

532
00:31:22,488 --> 00:31:23,738
accounting and finance, right?

533
00:31:23,738 --> 00:31:28,378
You would think I would know something from my mainstream education about central

534
00:31:28,378 --> 00:31:30,058
banking, about the nature of money.

535
00:31:30,608 --> 00:31:31,328
Something, right?

536
00:31:31,328 --> 00:31:33,858
It's literally just the language of business.

537
00:31:34,419 --> 00:31:37,229
everything we learn is about how money moves in and out of

538
00:31:37,229 --> 00:31:39,889
businesses, how taxation works.

539
00:31:39,919 --> 00:31:46,889
My focus was in taxation, yet there was not one single line of education given to

540
00:31:46,889 --> 00:31:51,449
me about Austrian economics, the nature of money, no talk about central banking,

541
00:31:52,279 --> 00:31:56,449
uh, no talk about the trade offs and opportunity costs that governments exist.

542
00:31:56,979 --> 00:32:02,199
And bureaucracies and central banks face, you know, they're just treated as these.

543
00:32:03,309 --> 00:32:05,499
organizations inside of the textbooks, right?

544
00:32:05,519 --> 00:32:08,489
The government just puts new currency into circulation and takes

545
00:32:08,489 --> 00:32:09,899
new currency out of circulation.

546
00:32:10,039 --> 00:32:14,429
Like you don't, there's a black box there that the education system doesn't go into.

547
00:32:15,049 --> 00:32:23,239
So it's pretty clear that, um, the existing paradigm seeks to protect

548
00:32:23,239 --> 00:32:29,079
itself intellectually by not going into the nature of money, where it comes

549
00:32:29,079 --> 00:32:31,139
from, Austrian economics, et cetera.

550
00:32:32,109 --> 00:32:36,569
Um, so, yes, it is voluntary, but not consensual.

551
00:32:38,169 --> 00:32:41,779
Yeah, funny, funny you should give that answer because I, I, uh, I love

552
00:32:41,779 --> 00:32:45,389
the Kinsella series you did, the series you did with Stefan Kinsella.

553
00:32:45,849 --> 00:32:51,019
Uh, and it influenced why I nowadays call myself a consensualist

554
00:32:51,109 --> 00:32:52,389
rather than a voluntarist.

555
00:32:53,229 --> 00:32:54,849
I mean, I think I went from...

556
00:32:55,214 --> 00:33:02,574
Libertarian leaning to anarcho capitalist, which is sort of too aggressive, and then

557
00:33:02,624 --> 00:33:07,955
voluntarist and now consensualist because I think consensualist frames it better.

558
00:33:08,015 --> 00:33:11,885
Like, I'd like as many interactions between human beings

559
00:33:11,885 --> 00:33:13,765
to be consensual as possible.

560
00:33:14,055 --> 00:33:20,656
Like, that should be the The guiding principle for your opinion on

561
00:33:20,756 --> 00:33:23,026
everything else, like if you have that.

562
00:33:23,515 --> 00:33:26,695
It's like the apex of human rationality, right?

563
00:33:26,695 --> 00:33:30,395
It's like, of course, you want to respect that we're all rational

564
00:33:30,405 --> 00:33:33,255
beings and we're all capable of deciding for ourselves, so we don't

565
00:33:33,265 --> 00:33:35,865
need to be coerced into doing things.

566
00:33:36,825 --> 00:33:43,785
And I think this notion is pretty obvious if you look at the dating market, right?

567
00:33:45,445 --> 00:33:49,905
Now, there have been arranged marriages, there still are arranged marriages,

568
00:33:49,905 --> 00:33:53,465
there still is some degree of pressure, perhaps in some cultures, to put people

569
00:33:53,465 --> 00:33:55,935
into certain, uh, marital arrangements.

570
00:33:56,745 --> 00:34:00,975
But in general, I think the moral intuitions in the West are that we

571
00:34:01,105 --> 00:34:03,115
should all be free to choose our own.

572
00:34:03,310 --> 00:34:04,150
partner, right?

573
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:08,080
Or, or partners would date whoever we want, marry whoever we

574
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:09,580
want, if we want to get married.

575
00:34:10,347 --> 00:34:14,317
it would be pretty hard to sell the idea of having a non

576
00:34:14,317 --> 00:34:16,077
consensual dating market, right?

577
00:34:16,157 --> 00:34:21,457
Where someone gets to coerce you into being, uh, their boyfriend or girlfriend.

578
00:34:22,532 --> 00:34:26,092
And you know, another way that I've framed this, and it's not always very

579
00:34:26,092 --> 00:34:32,832
popular, but the difference between a job and slavery is consent, right?

580
00:34:32,832 --> 00:34:36,412
You can quit the job, you can say no, and you can go get another job.

581
00:34:36,892 --> 00:34:40,752
If you're a physical slave in the traditional sense, well, you

582
00:34:40,752 --> 00:34:42,612
can't, there's no opt out, right?

583
00:34:42,612 --> 00:34:45,572
You're, you are enslaved against your consent.

584
00:34:46,432 --> 00:34:50,982
Uh, the difference between a financial transaction and

585
00:34:51,112 --> 00:34:54,252
taxation or theft is Consent.

586
00:34:55,052 --> 00:34:58,652
If I can say no to the transaction, take my business elsewhere, as

587
00:34:58,652 --> 00:35:00,802
can you, then we're, it's good.

588
00:35:00,802 --> 00:35:04,432
We're all consensual, but if I refuse the transaction and there's

589
00:35:04,452 --> 00:35:07,632
a threat of coercion, well, then that's the same situation I'm in

590
00:35:07,642 --> 00:35:09,052
with a mugger in the alley, right?

591
00:35:09,082 --> 00:35:11,782
I don't want to give you my wallet for free.

592
00:35:11,822 --> 00:35:13,462
It's like, okay, well, then I'll shoot you.

593
00:35:13,612 --> 00:35:13,882
Right?

594
00:35:13,882 --> 00:35:16,272
So that's obviously theft we wouldn't call it a transaction ai

595
00:35:22,237 --> 00:35:24,117
Getting mugged or getting robbed.

596
00:35:25,027 --> 00:35:29,087
And in terms of the dating market, you know, the difference between

597
00:35:29,437 --> 00:35:33,007
sex and rape is consent, right?

598
00:35:33,037 --> 00:35:37,407
Both parties need to be willing, able, and consenting to have a

599
00:35:37,457 --> 00:35:40,747
normal sexual engagement between two.

600
00:35:41,082 --> 00:35:45,752
Uh, willing adults, if that's absent on either side, right, if

601
00:35:45,752 --> 00:35:48,632
there's either party that wants to say no but they're forced into it,

602
00:35:48,642 --> 00:35:50,252
well, then we would call that rape.

603
00:35:50,912 --> 00:35:54,842
So, you know, consent is very, very, very important and I think we

604
00:35:54,842 --> 00:35:56,782
should strive to universalize it.

605
00:35:56,912 --> 00:36:01,902
I mean, it's the only way, it's the only rational way to deal with the

606
00:36:01,942 --> 00:36:06,092
reality that we are all rational beings and capable of choosing for ourselves.

607
00:36:07,205 --> 00:36:11,795
Yeah, this once again reminds me of Hoppe's argumentation ethics, which

608
00:36:11,795 --> 00:36:17,720
basically say that if you have to If you argue with someone, you have to

609
00:36:17,720 --> 00:36:21,410
respect their property rights, because property rights are derived from the

610
00:36:21,410 --> 00:36:23,250
fact that you own your own faculties.

611
00:36:23,650 --> 00:36:27,510
If you don't accept that, that you're using your tongue and your vocal cords

612
00:36:27,510 --> 00:36:32,340
and your lungs and so on to talk to, so that you're in possession of them and

613
00:36:32,340 --> 00:36:37,090
you own them, if you don't respect that in the other person, uh, so, so if you

614
00:36:37,140 --> 00:36:43,660
argue about something, the ownership of something, or, uh, who's the rightful

615
00:36:43,660 --> 00:36:46,050
owner of something, and the conclusion...

616
00:36:46,725 --> 00:36:52,665
And you discard the conclusion and then choose to, to take instead.

617
00:36:52,715 --> 00:36:57,235
So like if you argue about taxes with a taxman, for instance, and the taxman

618
00:36:58,035 --> 00:37:04,365
agrees with you about everything you say, but then still chooses to, to, uh, to

619
00:37:04,375 --> 00:37:09,520
force you to pay the taxes, it's That's when the argument turns into mockery.

620
00:37:10,110 --> 00:37:13,310
Like, it's not an argument anymore, it's just, he's just a bully.

621
00:37:14,380 --> 00:37:19,770
So it's not, the argument ceases to be, argumentation ceases to be

622
00:37:19,770 --> 00:37:24,840
argumentation once property rights are violated in any way, shape, or form.

623
00:37:26,270 --> 00:37:30,740
On this notion, like the thing you said about consent, like, I love another

624
00:37:30,740 --> 00:37:34,780
series of yours that I highly recommend is the Hillebrand series with our

625
00:37:34,780 --> 00:37:39,410
friend Max Hillebrand, where you talk about the books, the Rothbard book,

626
00:37:39,780 --> 00:37:44,410
The Ethics of Liberty, which is one of my favorite Austrian economics books,

627
00:37:44,660 --> 00:37:46,114
that one, and Max Hillebrand's books.

628
00:37:46,565 --> 00:37:50,445
Hoppus, um, which is another recommendation from Max, by

629
00:37:50,445 --> 00:37:55,245
the way, the, the, um, economic science and the Austrian method.

630
00:37:55,245 --> 00:37:55,695
I think it's

631
00:37:55,730 --> 00:37:56,265
the title.

632
00:37:56,265 --> 00:38:02,345
It's, uh, yeah, it's, it's not a very click baity title, but, uh,

633
00:38:02,355 --> 00:38:04,455
but it's a great, very dense book.

634
00:38:04,455 --> 00:38:09,434
And those two books, I think they, they, uh, they frame this so well, uh, and.

635
00:38:10,235 --> 00:38:12,735
Just about the things you've been talking about here about

636
00:38:12,905 --> 00:38:14,735
consent and how important it

637
00:38:15,102 --> 00:38:17,582
I have a, I actually have some stuff to say about that book.

638
00:38:18,072 --> 00:38:21,892
Um, I, that's a really, really, really good book.

639
00:38:22,332 --> 00:38:23,982
Hoppe's got a lot of good stuff.

640
00:38:25,182 --> 00:38:27,932
Very unsexy title, as you said, Economic Science and the

641
00:38:27,932 --> 00:38:30,292
Austrian Method, ESAM for short.

642
00:38:30,932 --> 00:38:36,612
very short book, but like most of Hoppe's writing, very dense, very informative.

643
00:38:37,416 --> 00:38:40,496
I, I was blown away actually that he.

644
00:38:41,176 --> 00:38:45,482
One of the points that I took away from that book was that he's saying that,

645
00:38:45,482 --> 00:38:50,752
like, the, the mind matter split, right, the, the Cartesian split that we all

646
00:38:51,072 --> 00:38:55,032
sort of inherited when, when Descartes said, I think, therefore, I am, as if

647
00:38:55,032 --> 00:38:57,562
there's two fundamental realities, right?

648
00:38:57,562 --> 00:39:01,902
There's the subjective thinking mind, and then there is the objective world.

649
00:39:02,535 --> 00:39:04,945
Hoppe makes this point that it's actually...

650
00:39:05,245 --> 00:39:11,015
That perhaps, actually, this distinction between mind and matter, or between

651
00:39:11,015 --> 00:39:17,555
subject and object, is a subcategory of human action, because it is only

652
00:39:17,575 --> 00:39:21,755
through human action where mind and matter come together, right?

653
00:39:22,515 --> 00:39:25,755
It's almost like we're using this distinction is like an

654
00:39:25,765 --> 00:39:29,776
artificial distinction that's useful in many ways, right?

655
00:39:29,776 --> 00:39:31,086
We could say all value is the

656
00:39:35,146 --> 00:39:41,076
mind rather than a matter of the world, but somehow action is like above that.

657
00:39:41,106 --> 00:39:46,116
Even action is the thing that allows subject and object duality to even

658
00:39:46,116 --> 00:39:51,611
come into existence where many of us, I think Western materialist worldview

659
00:39:51,641 --> 00:39:55,191
takes subject object reality to be the most fundamental thing there is, right?

660
00:39:55,191 --> 00:39:58,861
That there is an actual split between mind and matter.

661
00:39:59,511 --> 00:40:03,421
Whereas in fact, it seems to be most things are continuous, right?

662
00:40:03,741 --> 00:40:07,881
I don't know that there's an actual, out there, discrete

663
00:40:08,191 --> 00:40:09,551
split between mind and matter.

664
00:40:09,551 --> 00:40:11,741
So that, that blew my mind.

665
00:40:11,925 --> 00:40:16,085
again, just the, the primacy of human action and how it's...

666
00:40:16,675 --> 00:40:17,455
It's everywhere.

667
00:40:17,455 --> 00:40:22,515
And I think that again, ties nicely back into that book, Leela, where Persig

668
00:40:22,515 --> 00:40:26,805
saying it almost in a different way, that value is the ground stuff of reality.

669
00:40:26,805 --> 00:40:30,845
They're like, there's no substance, like value is the substance.

670
00:40:31,605 --> 00:40:32,225
And it's something

671
00:40:32,305 --> 00:40:36,045
Actually, would you mind giving us a TLDR on that book for anyone

672
00:40:36,045 --> 00:40:36,985
who's not familiar with it?

673
00:40:37,345 --> 00:40:38,615
TLDR on Leela.

674
00:40:38,645 --> 00:40:42,555
Um, yeah, I would mind because I don't know that that's actually possible.

675
00:40:43,247 --> 00:40:44,697
let me just say, so he's the.

676
00:40:45,477 --> 00:40:48,257
The author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which was the

677
00:40:48,257 --> 00:40:52,667
most popular or best selling philosophy book in the West, I think in the

678
00:40:52,667 --> 00:40:54,317
20th century, something like that.

679
00:40:54,777 --> 00:40:56,367
One of the best, maybe not the best.

680
00:40:57,187 --> 00:40:59,077
Uh, many people have read that one.

681
00:40:59,137 --> 00:41:00,967
Many people have heard of it, if they haven't read it.

682
00:41:01,577 --> 00:41:04,927
Almost no one's heard of or read the book he wrote 15 years later,

683
00:41:04,927 --> 00:41:06,797
which is Lila, which is much better.

684
00:41:07,637 --> 00:41:08,267
And Persig...

685
00:41:09,047 --> 00:41:11,147
Man, he's just like a next level genius.

686
00:41:11,147 --> 00:41:14,287
He blends fiction.

687
00:41:15,307 --> 00:41:19,337
So there's like a fictional story blended with some elements of autobiography.

688
00:41:19,337 --> 00:41:22,857
He's actually writing about himself and his life and some of his experiences

689
00:41:22,857 --> 00:41:24,417
blended into this fictional narrative.

690
00:41:24,917 --> 00:41:29,977
And then there's a non fictional, uh, philosophical exploration about the nature

691
00:41:29,977 --> 00:41:33,437
of metaphysics and, uh, value and quality.

692
00:41:33,767 --> 00:41:36,177
He distinguishes between dynamic and static.

693
00:41:36,597 --> 00:41:37,957
Value, et cetera.

694
00:41:40,767 --> 00:41:43,566
Um, the TLDR, I don't have a TLDR.

695
00:41:43,776 --> 00:41:47,946
He just gets into like all the things we're talking about.

696
00:41:47,946 --> 00:41:53,406
We're talking about the nature of value, the continuity between, you

697
00:41:53,406 --> 00:41:55,466
know, an organic and organic reality.

698
00:41:55,466 --> 00:41:59,486
Let's say he gives different levels of value is the inorganic layer.

699
00:42:00,274 --> 00:42:04,004
biological, social, and intellectual, there's different patterns of

700
00:42:04,004 --> 00:42:05,474
value that basically interact.

701
00:42:06,244 --> 00:42:12,514
He describes how these layers interact, sort of like a software system, um,

702
00:42:12,514 --> 00:42:16,874
and it gives rise to basically a whole metaphysical framework that he

703
00:42:16,874 --> 00:42:23,914
puts forth that stuff and substance is not real, value and morality is.

704
00:42:24,544 --> 00:42:29,204
So it's a, it's a very strong argument for the, the fundamental nature of, of.

705
00:42:29,919 --> 00:42:33,229
I guess you could say human action or value itself.

706
00:42:33,919 --> 00:42:38,849
And, um, again, the ESAM book just sort of dovetails nicely with that

707
00:42:38,849 --> 00:42:41,519
one, where it's like making the argument that human action is this.

708
00:42:43,109 --> 00:42:46,099
Has this primacy that most people don't understand.

709
00:42:46,099 --> 00:42:49,879
And again, if all action is an expression of value, then we're kind of dancing

710
00:42:49,879 --> 00:42:52,329
around the same topic here, right?

711
00:42:52,329 --> 00:42:56,839
When, when you hear many people invoke the word value is again, why I was

712
00:42:57,419 --> 00:43:00,709
hearkening to Peterson earlier, like, I'd love to hear his like deep definition.

713
00:43:01,159 --> 00:43:04,449
I don't see how you escape human action.

714
00:43:04,499 --> 00:43:07,129
Like it's the, to act is to value, right?

715
00:43:07,129 --> 00:43:08,649
To, to express one's value.

716
00:43:09,739 --> 00:43:10,519
And so.

717
00:43:12,214 --> 00:43:16,144
Yeah, that's, I guess that's what I would say about ESAM in general, and then I,

718
00:43:16,204 --> 00:43:21,684
just to circle back to something you said earlier, Knut, about the tax man, you

719
00:43:21,684 --> 00:43:26,474
know, you're, when you argue with someone, which was Hoppe's point, I think, you're

720
00:43:26,504 --> 00:43:33,584
implicitly acknowledging the reality of individual self ownership, right?

721
00:43:33,584 --> 00:43:37,304
You are using your faculties to try and put forth a point.

722
00:43:38,074 --> 00:43:40,754
You're listening to another person employ their faculties

723
00:43:40,774 --> 00:43:42,424
to put forth their counterpoint.

724
00:43:43,189 --> 00:43:46,679
And the only way that process can unfold is if, indeed,

725
00:43:46,689 --> 00:43:48,339
you both own yourself, right?

726
00:43:48,349 --> 00:43:52,199
Like, you, I own my faculties and I'm generating the points that I'm

727
00:43:52,199 --> 00:43:56,099
putting forth, you're assimilating that information, presumably, and

728
00:43:56,099 --> 00:43:58,189
generating your own counterpoint and putting those things forth.

729
00:43:58,369 --> 00:44:02,639
The only way we can do that is through this implicit acknowledgement of...

730
00:44:03,034 --> 00:44:05,614
Individuals owning themselves, individual self ownership.

731
00:44:06,494 --> 00:44:11,194
And once the tax man says, okay, enough of that, you know, even if he agrees

732
00:44:11,204 --> 00:44:14,684
with you, right, yes, we agree, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but still

733
00:44:15,414 --> 00:44:22,414
pay me, right, pay the tax, you're actually dis acknowledging, if that's

734
00:44:22,414 --> 00:44:24,786
even a word, individual self ownership.

735
00:44:24,806 --> 00:44:26,736
Cause all of a sudden you're saying, well, that's all good.

736
00:44:26,736 --> 00:44:27,546
You own yourself.

737
00:44:27,546 --> 00:44:30,566
We had this argument, we reached a conclusion, but give me your

738
00:44:30,566 --> 00:44:31,616
stuff or I'm going to hurt you.

739
00:44:32,276 --> 00:44:37,366
Alright, so you're, you're, you're, you're actually, um, contradicting

740
00:44:38,656 --> 00:44:41,486
what argumentation confirms, right?

741
00:44:41,486 --> 00:44:43,526
You're disconfirming what argumentation confirms.

742
00:44:43,526 --> 00:44:45,996
Argumentation is confirming that individuals own themselves.

743
00:44:46,256 --> 00:44:50,306
When you result to coercion and violence, you're disconfirming that reality.

744
00:44:50,856 --> 00:44:52,356
And when you do that...

745
00:44:52,626 --> 00:44:57,006
I mean, you unwind the entire process of human civilization,

746
00:44:57,006 --> 00:44:59,116
rational discourse, etc, etc.

747
00:44:59,636 --> 00:45:02,526
Because if people don't own themselves, and it's just a free for all, then

748
00:45:02,526 --> 00:45:03,886
we're back to might is right, right?

749
00:45:03,886 --> 00:45:04,946
Who's got the biggest stick?

750
00:45:05,656 --> 00:45:07,406
Uh, who can coerce who the hardest?

751
00:45:08,146 --> 00:45:13,731
I think in Atlas Shrugged, There's a line, uh, she said, when force becomes the

752
00:45:13,731 --> 00:45:20,611
standard by which men interact, then the, the pickpocket loses out to the tyrant

753
00:45:20,691 --> 00:45:22,361
or the murderer, something like that.

754
00:45:22,711 --> 00:45:26,201
So the race becomes who is the most violent, right?

755
00:45:26,201 --> 00:45:29,631
Who can coerce and commit as much violence as possible.

756
00:45:29,941 --> 00:45:31,011
Well, guess what that happened?

757
00:45:31,031 --> 00:45:32,971
Guess what that does to the world?

758
00:45:33,351 --> 00:45:37,851
Guys, when you commence that race, civilizations vanish in

759
00:45:37,851 --> 00:45:42,301
a spread of slaughter and ruin, I think, as she wrote as well.

760
00:45:42,431 --> 00:45:45,491
So, it's hard to overstate how important...

761
00:45:46,246 --> 00:45:51,816
Rational discourse and respect for universal respect for individual

762
00:45:51,816 --> 00:45:54,996
life, liberty, and property is to the human enterprise.

763
00:45:55,813 --> 00:45:57,823
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764
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794
00:47:23,993 --> 00:47:31,083
Yeah, and on that note, I mean what what happens is that when when you

795
00:47:31,083 --> 00:47:37,995
have this class of people that that are able to Coerce and use force

796
00:47:38,035 --> 00:47:40,325
to extract stuff from other people.

797
00:47:40,415 --> 00:47:46,595
Uh, that's why you get clown world because the race becomes to, to, you know,

798
00:47:46,815 --> 00:47:49,235
look good to these people so that you.

799
00:47:49,665 --> 00:47:52,345
They will pay you or they will hurt you less.

800
00:47:52,748 --> 00:47:59,778
and so, so I think, uh, what Bitcoin did, like, was, uh, just turn that

801
00:47:59,778 --> 00:48:03,138
upside down and, and like give property rights back to the people.

802
00:48:03,448 --> 00:48:06,518
So in that sense, I think Bitcoin is one divided by Clown World.

803
00:48:06,518 --> 00:48:09,968
It's the literal inverse of, of Clown World incentives.

804
00:48:10,688 --> 00:48:12,148
And I find that, that, yeah.

805
00:48:12,663 --> 00:48:13,843
That's my next equation.

806
00:48:13,843 --> 00:48:15,673
I need to put that somewhere.

807
00:48:15,863 --> 00:48:17,983
Bitcoin is one divided by Clown World.

808
00:48:18,333 --> 00:48:23,483
Um, so, so on, um, back to Rothbard and Hoppe because I love them so

809
00:48:23,483 --> 00:48:26,923
much, uh, and, and also, uh, Ayn Rand.

810
00:48:26,943 --> 00:48:30,473
But congrats on that beautiful little video clip you did from,

811
00:48:30,633 --> 00:48:33,603
from that section about money in the book, by the way, it was beautiful.

812
00:48:33,883 --> 00:48:36,103
Oh, I take no credit for that.

813
00:48:36,123 --> 00:48:38,353
My editor is a genius.

814
00:48:38,393 --> 00:48:38,733
I just

815
00:48:39,618 --> 00:48:40,528
Yes, he is.

816
00:48:40,623 --> 00:48:42,573
it to him and he makes it beautiful.

817
00:48:43,080 --> 00:48:47,920
okay, okay, okay, anyway, uh, what was, uh, where was I going with this?

818
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:51,740
Yeah, uh, about ownership, uh, versus possession, because I think

819
00:48:51,740 --> 00:48:57,130
this is, uh, on the same line of, You know, argumentation and mockery,

820
00:48:57,130 --> 00:49:02,860
it's, it's adjacent, like ownership is like a legal, uh, relationship

821
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:05,480
with, with a, a thing, right?

822
00:49:05,750 --> 00:49:10,440
Because like, you can own a thing, but someone else may possess it, like

823
00:49:10,470 --> 00:49:16,890
the, the gold that is legally belongs to African countries in some central

824
00:49:16,900 --> 00:49:21,330
banks in the West, but the West refuses to give it back or whatever, like,

825
00:49:22,330 --> 00:49:25,853
but Bitcoin, What is owning a bitcoin?

826
00:49:25,903 --> 00:49:28,573
Like, can you even own a bitcoin?

827
00:49:28,653 --> 00:49:29,813
Can you possess it?

828
00:49:29,913 --> 00:49:31,893
Or is it just keeping a secret?

829
00:49:31,893 --> 00:49:36,553
Like, are we on an even deeper level of ownership than, than possession?

830
00:49:36,573 --> 00:49:40,203
Like, is this even, even more robust?

831
00:49:40,468 --> 00:49:44,348
Uh, like, what's, what's your thoughts on that?

832
00:49:44,428 --> 00:49:46,918
Because that's something that's been, you know, tickling my

833
00:49:46,918 --> 00:49:48,058
mind for a long time now.

834
00:49:48,718 --> 00:49:49,028
Yeah.

835
00:49:49,028 --> 00:49:50,818
It's very, very mysterious.

836
00:49:50,858 --> 00:49:54,958
Um, I think it was you, someone that coined.

837
00:49:55,798 --> 00:49:56,768
The whole phrase, right?

838
00:49:56,778 --> 00:50:01,386
Like to with Bitcoin owning and is now knowing, knowing and

839
00:50:01,716 --> 00:50:03,586
Yeah, yeah, knowing is owning.

840
00:50:04,086 --> 00:50:04,456
Yep.

841
00:50:05,701 --> 00:50:08,291
but again, I would credit Kinsella here.

842
00:50:08,771 --> 00:50:10,711
I used to think, Oh yeah, that totally makes sense.

843
00:50:10,711 --> 00:50:16,301
But he's like, well, actually you have to, you've got to, uh, decompose this

844
00:50:16,301 --> 00:50:21,861
terminology a little bit because ownership is actually a legal, a legally, um,

845
00:50:21,861 --> 00:50:25,571
enforceable claim on an asset, right?

846
00:50:25,571 --> 00:50:26,241
On a scarce.

847
00:50:27,261 --> 00:50:31,291
Uh, scarce asset, such that you can exclude others from its use.

848
00:50:32,181 --> 00:50:36,271
you could say ownership is like recourse to the legal apparatus of

849
00:50:36,271 --> 00:50:38,901
coercion to resolve a dispute, right?

850
00:50:38,901 --> 00:50:42,781
If someone steals your car, well, you might not be in possession

851
00:50:42,781 --> 00:50:46,151
of your car after they steal it, but you still own it, right?

852
00:50:46,151 --> 00:50:52,011
You have the title or whatever it may be, and so you can bring to bear force, right?

853
00:50:52,031 --> 00:50:53,871
Legally to get it back, right?

854
00:50:53,881 --> 00:50:55,991
They can pull the guy over and arrest him and...

855
00:50:56,576 --> 00:50:58,276
Take the car and give it back to you.

856
00:50:59,467 --> 00:51:03,667
And that's fundamentally different from possession, which in a strict sense

857
00:51:03,667 --> 00:51:06,407
is just physical custody, effectively.

858
00:51:07,401 --> 00:51:12,151
and so Bitcoin, what can you own Bitcoin?

859
00:51:12,711 --> 00:51:18,341
You know, I, I guess you, it sort of has a foot in both worlds in a

860
00:51:18,341 --> 00:51:22,251
way, because a judge could pass.

861
00:51:23,551 --> 00:51:25,041
A judge could make a judgment, right?

862
00:51:25,041 --> 00:51:28,891
And say, Hey, this Bitcoin belongs, this Bitcoin that's in possession

863
00:51:28,911 --> 00:51:32,731
of Robert belongs to Knut, right?

864
00:51:32,981 --> 00:51:35,131
Knut is the rightful owner of this Bitcoin.

865
00:51:35,161 --> 00:51:41,221
But if I'm in possession of the keys, um, that's, it's hard to enforce that, right?

866
00:51:41,221 --> 00:51:45,871
I can also have all this plausible deniability like, Oh, sorry, judge

867
00:51:45,871 --> 00:51:47,041
had the boating accident, right?

868
00:51:47,041 --> 00:51:48,401
You know, it's, it's all gone now.

869
00:51:49,971 --> 00:51:57,591
So I guess in a strict legal sense, you can own Bitcoin and that a legal

870
00:51:58,891 --> 00:52:05,121
apparatus can tell you, like, who is the rightful owner of a specific private key.

871
00:52:05,959 --> 00:52:09,499
I don't, again, I don't, I'm not saying that this is being done, but,

872
00:52:09,649 --> 00:52:12,869
um, it, it can be done, I guess.

873
00:52:13,309 --> 00:52:20,459
But to possess Bitcoin is something entirely different, right, to actually

874
00:52:20,549 --> 00:52:25,607
have the private key, and even then you don't really have, you don't, you

875
00:52:25,607 --> 00:52:31,567
don't physically custody a piece of material reality, right, you've got an

876
00:52:31,577 --> 00:52:37,467
alphanumeric string, you've just got, uh, information, right, which as you're

877
00:52:37,467 --> 00:52:40,587
saying is like something like keeping a secret, and yeah, it's a great point,

878
00:52:40,597 --> 00:52:45,292
it's not, it's If, if, if possession meant physical custody, then you never

879
00:52:45,292 --> 00:52:47,522
really physically custody Bitcoin.

880
00:52:47,542 --> 00:52:54,932
You're just guarding that secret, which allows you to unlock, the, the ability

881
00:52:54,932 --> 00:52:57,892
to spend from that UTXO set, right?

882
00:52:57,912 --> 00:53:01,612
So it's, it's different somehow.

883
00:53:02,021 --> 00:53:05,511
and I guess in that sense, it's kind of like just guarding a.

884
00:53:08,576 --> 00:53:09,066
Secret.

885
00:53:09,176 --> 00:53:11,236
I, I, yeah, I guess that's the best way to put it.

886
00:53:11,576 --> 00:53:13,086
And so no, can you own it?

887
00:53:13,436 --> 00:53:16,846
Yes, technically, but the ownership is largely unenforceable.

888
00:53:16,846 --> 00:53:17,946
I think in most cases.

889
00:53:18,936 --> 00:53:19,836
Can you possess it?

890
00:53:19,836 --> 00:53:22,686
Not really, because you can't physically possess the thing.

891
00:53:22,686 --> 00:53:24,046
It's just informational.

892
00:53:24,376 --> 00:53:25,746
So what can you do with it?

893
00:53:25,926 --> 00:53:31,186
Uh, you can keep your private key guarded and secret and use it to

894
00:53:31,186 --> 00:53:32,766
the extent that you can do that.

895
00:53:33,318 --> 00:53:35,348
Yeah, because I think we need a whole...

896
00:53:35,488 --> 00:53:42,618
A whole plethora of new laws around this, uh, if, if, or, or no laws at

897
00:53:42,618 --> 00:53:46,948
all, because like the, the, the current legal framework in different countries

898
00:53:46,948 --> 00:53:50,448
have different approaches to it, and they try to enforce like old words,

899
00:53:50,618 --> 00:53:52,928
world stuff onto this new thing.

900
00:53:53,508 --> 00:53:54,908
But, but, but.

901
00:53:55,308 --> 00:54:01,048
Even proving that someone is in possession of a Bitcoin is, is impossible.

902
00:54:01,108 --> 00:54:04,098
Because how do you prove that someone knows something?

903
00:54:04,688 --> 00:54:06,768
Like, uh, you can't.

904
00:54:06,828 --> 00:54:12,518
And, and like, uh, it's kind of vulgar that they, those, these chain anal

905
00:54:12,558 --> 00:54:14,618
companies that, that try to do that.

906
00:54:14,618 --> 00:54:19,758
And they try to set, you know, legal precedents for, uh, for this stuff.

907
00:54:20,058 --> 00:54:26,598
When, when it, you, you, not only can you not prove that someone is in possession

908
00:54:26,598 --> 00:54:32,478
of it, you cannot prove that someone else isn't like you can guess the key.

909
00:54:32,798 --> 00:54:35,958
I mean, it's the, the chances of you guessing the right

910
00:54:35,958 --> 00:54:37,508
key are astronomically small.

911
00:54:37,508 --> 00:54:40,908
And that's why, that's why we trust this thing to, to the extent that we

912
00:54:40,908 --> 00:54:47,039
do, but at the end of the day, there's no real way to prove that someone has.

913
00:54:47,154 --> 00:54:48,604
knowledge about something.

914
00:54:48,904 --> 00:54:52,974
And it's only when you put, when you put this like on a computer, on a

915
00:54:52,984 --> 00:54:57,234
hardware wallet, or, uh, you know, on a steel plate, then you turn it into

916
00:54:57,234 --> 00:55:00,804
a physical thing because then the letters are engraved in that thing.

917
00:55:01,374 --> 00:55:07,004
Uh, and then it becomes physical, but it doesn't have to be physical.

918
00:55:07,004 --> 00:55:11,609
And this is I find this so insanely fascinating because, like, you can think

919
00:55:11,609 --> 00:55:15,919
of all sorts of situations where this, where this becomes problematic, like

920
00:55:15,929 --> 00:55:20,849
if you have, um, if you fly with your 12 words, for instance, and you get

921
00:55:20,849 --> 00:55:24,429
stopped in the security check, what's stopping the security officer from

922
00:55:24,429 --> 00:55:27,469
just, you know, copying those words?

923
00:55:30,314 --> 00:55:36,554
Or, uh, which is a whole new, uh, there's a whole slew of new problems

924
00:55:36,554 --> 00:55:40,914
there that come with, come with this notion of, of, uh, keeping

925
00:55:40,914 --> 00:55:42,434
a secret or not keeping a secret.

926
00:55:42,434 --> 00:55:44,774
And, and, uh, the, the thing.

927
00:55:46,114 --> 00:55:50,954
The thing it does, it invokes responsibility in people, because once

928
00:55:50,954 --> 00:55:55,814
you dive down in this rabbit hole, you realize that you have to keep the

929
00:55:55,814 --> 00:56:02,664
secret, and you have to figure out for yourself what the best way for you of

930
00:56:02,664 --> 00:56:08,664
keeping the secret is, because there's no universal answer to how to keep a secret.

931
00:56:09,414 --> 00:56:15,814
And so, uh, yeah, there's so much to unpack there because now I'm ranting

932
00:56:15,814 --> 00:56:21,344
on here, I know, but if, if it's just keeping a secret, they're a part of you

933
00:56:22,104 --> 00:56:27,684
and that's, so, and how, how big a part of you is up to you because it's opt

934
00:56:27,684 --> 00:56:30,864
in, so you can, you can have a hundred percent of your wealth in Bitcoin,

935
00:56:31,174 --> 00:56:36,124
or you can have 1%, but how much you have in Bitcoin in comparison to how

936
00:56:36,124 --> 00:56:38,174
much you live in the, uh, clown world.

937
00:56:39,100 --> 00:56:43,070
you, you have a tool now where, where you can choose to opt out to

938
00:56:43,070 --> 00:56:47,300
a specific percentage of your being.

939
00:56:47,420 --> 00:56:52,270
Like this, 60% of me can never be coerced into anything.

940
00:56:52,540 --> 00:56:53,950
Like, I can, I can do that.

941
00:56:53,950 --> 00:56:56,140
Literally, I can say, uh, okay.

942
00:56:56,350 --> 00:57:00,940
I, I can put up with some coercion to just to, you know, have a police force and

943
00:57:01,510 --> 00:57:02,980
, you know, a fire brigade and whatnot.

944
00:57:03,430 --> 00:57:07,875
But, uh, I think I'm fine with just paying, uh, 15 percent taxes.

945
00:57:08,685 --> 00:57:09,775
I'll opt out of the rest.

946
00:57:09,785 --> 00:57:10,175
Thank you.

947
00:57:10,395 --> 00:57:11,585
And you can just do that.

948
00:57:12,235 --> 00:57:13,925
And that's true for everyone in the world.

949
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:19,280
I find it so insanely fascinating and how the question becomes,

950
00:57:19,800 --> 00:57:22,880
how, how far off into the future?

951
00:57:24,500 --> 00:57:27,750
I mean, how long will it take before everyone realizes that

952
00:57:27,750 --> 00:57:29,570
this is, this is already true?

953
00:57:30,344 --> 00:57:32,964
Well, that's a great question.

954
00:57:32,984 --> 00:57:39,304
Um, you know, I think always answering questions about timing is very important.

955
00:57:40,549 --> 00:57:45,339
I'm sorry, very difficult, obviously very important, but very, very difficult to

956
00:57:45,389 --> 00:57:47,429
say when something is going to happen.

957
00:57:48,584 --> 00:57:49,804
Yeah, it's a stupid question.

958
00:57:49,804 --> 00:57:50,104
I know.

959
00:57:50,104 --> 00:57:50,704
I mean,

960
00:57:51,224 --> 00:57:52,234
That's not stupid.

961
00:57:52,314 --> 00:57:53,164
It's very important.

962
00:57:53,234 --> 00:57:53,424
All right.

963
00:57:53,424 --> 00:57:55,914
It's like, well, when would be very useful to know, but I

964
00:57:55,914 --> 00:57:59,614
think it's equally, incredibly difficult to answer that question.

965
00:58:00,334 --> 00:58:05,284
So, uh, a couple of things, just to like things you said there, right?

966
00:58:05,284 --> 00:58:09,684
It's astronomically difficult to guess someone's private key.

967
00:58:10,674 --> 00:58:14,614
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think the right term might even be

968
00:58:14,614 --> 00:58:18,034
it's, it's like beyond astronomically.

969
00:58:18,569 --> 00:58:21,149
Small the chances of actually guessing someone's private key.

970
00:58:22,244 --> 00:58:23,974
it's like the more, what is it?

971
00:58:24,004 --> 00:58:27,994
The chances like if you made a guess every second, you would need longer

972
00:58:27,994 --> 00:58:30,024
than the life of the universe, right?

973
00:58:30,054 --> 00:58:31,624
To guess someone's private key.

974
00:58:31,624 --> 00:58:32,394
So it's actually

975
00:58:32,789 --> 00:58:33,489
on average.

976
00:58:34,324 --> 00:58:34,944
small.

977
00:58:35,439 --> 00:58:36,119
Yeah.

978
00:58:37,309 --> 00:58:41,359
Yeah, so, so infinitesimal that we obviously trust it as if it's

979
00:58:41,359 --> 00:58:44,779
not even possible, effectively, to guess someone's private key.

980
00:58:45,522 --> 00:58:50,532
and then the other like aspect I would introduce is it sounds

981
00:58:50,532 --> 00:58:53,692
like, especially people that don't understand Bitcoin, like, oh my

982
00:58:53,692 --> 00:58:55,312
God, that's a lot of responsibility.

983
00:58:55,312 --> 00:58:56,232
That's scary.

984
00:58:56,232 --> 00:58:58,002
I'm going to carry this secret in my head.

985
00:58:58,002 --> 00:59:02,072
And like, what if I get knocked out or if I get amnesia or someone

986
00:59:02,082 --> 00:59:03,502
tortures me to get the key?

987
00:59:03,502 --> 00:59:04,652
You know, all of these things.

988
00:59:05,732 --> 00:59:07,022
It's not a binary, right?

989
00:59:07,022 --> 00:59:07,422
It's not.

990
00:59:07,662 --> 00:59:11,192
You either trust someone else with your private key, or you hold your

991
00:59:11,192 --> 00:59:12,712
private key between your ears.

992
00:59:12,972 --> 00:59:15,812
There's all these other possible custody schemas.

993
00:59:16,642 --> 00:59:21,572
Um, you know, I think multi key or multi sig is obviously very important here.

994
00:59:21,602 --> 00:59:26,622
You can take that secret, chop it into pieces, into mini secrets, if you will,

995
00:59:26,652 --> 00:59:31,292
and distribute that among different people inside of your circle of trust.

996
00:59:32,142 --> 00:59:35,972
And then you need a certain quorum of those mini secrets to unlock.

997
00:59:36,297 --> 00:59:38,217
Spending ability, right?

998
00:59:38,217 --> 00:59:39,727
A 3 of 5, etc.

999
00:59:39,727 --> 00:59:41,617
So there's ways to like de risk it.

1000
00:59:42,229 --> 00:59:46,669
you know, even take, even ratcheting down the responsibility to some degree that

1001
00:59:46,669 --> 00:59:50,939
you'd still have a lot of responsibility to keep up with 1 of 5, but if you

1002
00:59:50,939 --> 00:59:52,679
lose it, it's not the end of the world.

1003
00:59:52,699 --> 00:59:56,529
Whereas if it's a 1 of 1, well, it is the end of that world, at

1004
00:59:56,529 --> 00:59:58,339
least if you lose your private key.

1005
00:59:59,035 --> 01:00:01,075
And also that gives you some resistance against just the

1006
01:00:01,075 --> 01:00:03,445
whole, against coercion, right?

1007
01:00:03,445 --> 01:00:07,405
Against 5 wrenches or the guy stopping you in the airport, you know, trying to

1008
01:00:07,415 --> 01:00:09,965
copy your, your seed phrase or whatever.

1009
01:00:10,485 --> 01:00:13,445
You're not subject to a single point of failure.

1010
01:00:14,185 --> 01:00:16,735
So I always think that's a very important point when we talk about

1011
01:00:16,745 --> 01:00:21,825
these topics because people get scared when they hear, What do you mean?

1012
01:00:22,285 --> 01:00:24,685
I have to memorize my whole life's worth and if I forget

1013
01:00:24,685 --> 01:00:27,515
or mess up, I'm, it's over?

1014
01:00:27,555 --> 01:00:29,965
And so, important.

1015
01:00:30,155 --> 01:00:33,275
can have all, all sorts of solutions at the same time.

1016
01:00:33,275 --> 01:00:37,845
You can have a multi sig, you can have a single sig hardware wallet and a custodial

1017
01:00:37,845 --> 01:00:42,235
phone wallet for different, different solutions for different purposes, right?

1018
01:00:42,765 --> 01:00:46,695
So, uh, yeah, and I, I think that we need to educate people more

1019
01:00:46,695 --> 01:00:48,775
about that, that aspect of it, that.

1020
01:00:49,385 --> 01:00:54,565
Bitcoin can be extremely simple to use, but then they're somewhat at

1021
01:00:54,565 --> 01:01:02,245
risk, and they can be hard, it can be hard to set up a really, you know,

1022
01:01:02,835 --> 01:01:09,425
theft proof solution, but On the other hand, they're, they're probably, they

1023
01:01:09,425 --> 01:01:11,225
will probably there be there forever.

1024
01:01:12,033 --> 01:01:16,063
Yeah, so it's like, you know, you put a few dollars in your pocket to go out

1025
01:01:16,063 --> 01:01:20,593
at night, you know, that might be your equivalent to your hot wallet, right?

1026
01:01:20,603 --> 01:01:23,093
You might have a few more, if you're traveling, you might have

1027
01:01:23,093 --> 01:01:27,093
a few more dollars hidden inside your suitcase somewhere, right?

1028
01:01:27,093 --> 01:01:30,673
This is kind of like your, uh, little account you'll draw from as you're

1029
01:01:30,673 --> 01:01:34,173
traveling, you'll swap US dollars for local currency or whatever it may be,

1030
01:01:34,773 --> 01:01:39,928
that's kind of like, uh, Maybe like a non custodial wallet, something like that.

1031
01:01:40,718 --> 01:01:45,378
And then, you know, you're the vast majority of your wealth for most

1032
01:01:45,428 --> 01:01:50,368
people, anyone that has, uh, any amount of wealth, you know, like well over

1033
01:01:50,368 --> 01:01:56,208
90%, you'd probably keep in a deep cold storage multi sig device, right?

1034
01:01:56,208 --> 01:02:01,328
And that would be equivalent to, I don't know, uh, A bank account for most people,

1035
01:02:01,328 --> 01:02:04,508
which is not actually a good solution because there's counterparty risk there,

1036
01:02:05,168 --> 01:02:09,088
uh, might be equivalent to gold in a vault or gold buried in the ground for others.

1037
01:02:10,078 --> 01:02:14,208
But yeah, it's just to reinforce your point, it, it, you don't

1038
01:02:14,208 --> 01:02:15,628
need one solution, right?

1039
01:02:15,888 --> 01:02:18,888
You can have different solutions for different use cases and you can

1040
01:02:19,548 --> 01:02:21,888
rebalance and reallocate as needed.

1041
01:02:22,816 --> 01:02:24,636
your earlier question, though, like when...

1042
01:02:25,841 --> 01:02:31,551
When the people realize this, um, you've probably heard me say this

1043
01:02:31,561 --> 01:02:35,691
before, cause I say it all the time, but I just don't think most people move

1044
01:02:35,721 --> 01:02:39,121
until they feel sufficient pain, right?

1045
01:02:40,541 --> 01:02:44,941
There's not a lot of nerds in the world that want to sit here and spend all

1046
01:02:44,941 --> 01:02:50,001
this time going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole that are curious enough, that are

1047
01:02:50,021 --> 01:02:56,270
intelligent enough, patient enough, To, to really try and learn all these lessons,

1048
01:02:56,270 --> 01:03:00,000
right, or try to understand computer science and economics and incentives

1049
01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:06,330
and, you know, all the different, uh, disciplines that Bitcoin touches or that

1050
01:03:06,330 --> 01:03:10,210
you touch going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, I don't think a lot of people have

1051
01:03:10,250 --> 01:03:12,655
the patience or wherewithal to pursue.

1052
01:03:12,995 --> 01:03:17,785
Go into that to, to get the Bitcoin, Bitcoin, orange pill epiphany.

1053
01:03:18,855 --> 01:03:26,125
But what most people do have is a tacit experience of pain, right?

1054
01:03:26,125 --> 01:03:30,225
Like if their bank account is frozen or they can't get their capital out

1055
01:03:30,225 --> 01:03:36,515
of a country or their currency is hyperinflating or they're a rich guy and.

1056
01:03:37,110 --> 01:03:41,180
You know, living in Russia and Putin's going to seize their company or seize

1057
01:03:41,180 --> 01:03:46,550
their yacht or otherwise redistribute their wealth forcibly, well, that starts

1058
01:03:46,600 --> 01:03:51,130
to really give people the light bulb moments like, Oh shit, okay, my stuff

1059
01:03:51,140 --> 01:03:55,170
is getting taken or my currency is failing or whatever situation I'm being

1060
01:03:55,170 --> 01:03:58,940
subjected to under this duress, right?

1061
01:03:58,940 --> 01:04:03,980
This actual pain, painful experience I'm living through kind of forces people

1062
01:04:03,980 --> 01:04:05,680
to start evaluating their options.

1063
01:04:05,750 --> 01:04:07,170
And as we've.

1064
01:04:07,765 --> 01:04:15,275
Discussed and laid out, there seems to be only really one viable option for an asset

1065
01:04:15,315 --> 01:04:20,685
that cannot be forcibly taken from you, um, assuming you've custody it properly.

1066
01:04:20,695 --> 01:04:24,615
So, I think, unfortunately, we have to go through more pain.

1067
01:04:24,625 --> 01:04:28,355
We have to go through more hyperinflations, more forced

1068
01:04:28,365 --> 01:04:34,554
asset seizures, more statism, before we see Bitcoin really

1069
01:04:34,554 --> 01:04:36,394
start to shine in the eyes of.

1070
01:04:37,184 --> 01:04:37,874
the majority

1071
01:04:38,426 --> 01:04:42,056
just to play the devil's advocate here for a while, um, if I were to make a

1072
01:04:42,056 --> 01:04:46,776
counter argument to that, that would be places like Lebanon or Argentina

1073
01:04:46,776 --> 01:04:51,156
or Zimbabwe, where Venezuela, where hyperinflation is a real thing.

1074
01:04:51,696 --> 01:04:59,451
I mean, Bitcoin adoption exists there, but it's not big, like, uh, so, and

1075
01:04:59,451 --> 01:05:03,521
that might be because these countries started to hyperinflate way before

1076
01:05:03,801 --> 01:05:05,581
people knew about Bitcoin at all.

1077
01:05:06,479 --> 01:05:13,299
Can we, can we trust that pain will turn people into hyperbitcoinization mode?

1078
01:05:13,379 --> 01:05:17,989
Like it's, it's hard to formulate this question, but

1079
01:05:18,129 --> 01:05:19,809
just curious about your thoughts.

1080
01:05:20,093 --> 01:05:24,733
Well, I mean, the other thing is we have to keep in mind where we are in

1081
01:05:24,733 --> 01:05:28,203
Bitcoin's monetization process, right?

1082
01:05:28,253 --> 01:05:28,483
Like

1083
01:05:29,795 --> 01:05:33,325
Bitcoin will not be purchasing power stable in the short

1084
01:05:33,325 --> 01:05:35,935
run for a long time, right?

1085
01:05:35,935 --> 01:05:39,925
It's just, just too small of a market cap at this point.

1086
01:05:40,535 --> 01:05:44,955
Maybe when it's in the tens of trillions of dollars in market cap, it's, it's short

1087
01:05:44,955 --> 01:05:47,405
term purchasing power will be more stable.

1088
01:05:48,115 --> 01:05:49,605
And that really tends to be what.

1089
01:05:49,900 --> 01:05:53,890
People are looking for, particularly in hyperinflations, right, they want

1090
01:05:53,890 --> 01:05:58,190
to get out of the purchasing power unstable currency, the currency that's

1091
01:05:58,330 --> 01:06:01,820
plummeting in purchasing power day over day, week over week, and they

1092
01:06:01,820 --> 01:06:02,585
want to get into a week over week.

1093
01:06:02,915 --> 01:06:07,935
Short term purchasing power stable currency that tends to be the U.

1094
01:06:07,935 --> 01:06:08,065
S.

1095
01:06:08,065 --> 01:06:08,835
dollar, right?

1096
01:06:08,835 --> 01:06:11,555
When Zimbabwe hyperinflates, people want to get into dollars.

1097
01:06:12,005 --> 01:06:17,455
So the pain, I'm not saying it's like you feel the pain once and then all of

1098
01:06:17,455 --> 01:06:20,285
a sudden you're like orange pilled and you're all in on Bitcoin, but if you

1099
01:06:20,285 --> 01:06:25,215
could imagine going further into the future, sure, currencies that hyperinflate

1100
01:06:25,215 --> 01:06:27,275
today, maybe they want to dollarize.

1101
01:06:28,135 --> 01:06:31,535
Um, and I would expect this to, this pattern to continue to play out,

1102
01:06:31,535 --> 01:06:36,815
actually, as weaker currencies fail, you would see more of these economies or

1103
01:06:36,815 --> 01:06:40,295
individuals in those economies looking to move their savings into dollars,

1104
01:06:41,035 --> 01:06:46,125
um, just, again, as a means of gaining short term purchasing power stability.

1105
01:06:46,965 --> 01:06:48,105
But what happens when the U.

1106
01:06:48,105 --> 01:06:48,375
S.

1107
01:06:48,375 --> 01:06:52,515
dollar, which is also being counterfeited rampantly, you know, I

1108
01:06:52,545 --> 01:06:54,345
think we've increased the supply of U.

1109
01:06:54,345 --> 01:06:54,455
S.

1110
01:06:54,455 --> 01:06:54,855
dollars.

1111
01:06:55,275 --> 01:07:00,305
To the tune of 50 percent or more in the past three years, I, I, the

1112
01:07:00,305 --> 01:07:03,825
number 50 to 60%, I think of the numbers that I've heard over the past

1113
01:07:03,930 --> 01:07:10,840
The best, the best number I've seen there is in 2021, 21 million

1114
01:07:11,210 --> 01:07:12,980
were printed per Bitcoin mined.

1115
01:07:13,965 --> 01:07:19,695
So 7 trillion, like, uh, divided by the number of bitcoins printed.

1116
01:07:19,735 --> 01:07:20,105
Right.

1117
01:07:20,175 --> 01:07:22,075
And so that was in one year.

1118
01:07:22,355 --> 01:07:23,605
And that was when the U.

1119
01:07:23,605 --> 01:07:23,845
S.

1120
01:07:25,230 --> 01:07:30,630
What M2 is probably in the neighborhood of, I don't know, 15 to 18, 20

1121
01:07:31,460 --> 01:07:32,770
trillion, something like that.

1122
01:07:32,770 --> 01:07:34,530
I'm actually not sure, but

1123
01:07:35,125 --> 01:07:36,815
7 trillion were printed.

1124
01:07:36,845 --> 01:07:41,005
I mean, it's kind of hard to define because M2 and M1, they're

1125
01:07:41,005 --> 01:07:43,085
sort of diffuse terms, right?

1126
01:07:43,245 --> 01:07:45,795
It's not the money in circulation, really.

1127
01:07:46,295 --> 01:07:48,695
So it's kind of hard to describe it.

1128
01:07:49,116 --> 01:07:55,326
what I wanted to get at is, is that it's a, call it a 50 percent increase

1129
01:07:55,376 --> 01:07:57,811
in the money supply, whatever your.

1130
01:07:58,011 --> 01:08:01,251
Gauge you're using and someone can check my math, but I think roughly over the

1131
01:08:01,251 --> 01:08:02,771
past three years, we've expanded U.

1132
01:08:02,771 --> 01:08:02,891
S.

1133
01:08:02,891 --> 01:08:06,471
dollar supply 50%, 5 0 or more.

1134
01:08:07,341 --> 01:08:12,011
So, all these other countries that are dollarizing and um, you know,

1135
01:08:12,011 --> 01:08:14,371
people would say, oh, this bullish dollar, this dollar is going to

1136
01:08:14,371 --> 01:08:15,631
last forever, blah, blah, blah.

1137
01:08:15,631 --> 01:08:16,321
It's like, okay.

1138
01:08:16,861 --> 01:08:17,851
Well, what is the U.

1139
01:08:17,851 --> 01:08:17,961
S.

1140
01:08:17,961 --> 01:08:18,401
dollar?

1141
01:08:19,121 --> 01:08:19,291
U.

1142
01:08:19,291 --> 01:08:19,411
S.

1143
01:08:19,411 --> 01:08:22,181
dollar is just the best of the worst, right?

1144
01:08:22,181 --> 01:08:24,521
It's just another fiat currency that weaker fiat

1145
01:08:24,741 --> 01:08:26,311
currencies are collapsing into.

1146
01:08:27,001 --> 01:08:31,061
So what happens, and when you study the nature of fiat currencies, I think

1147
01:08:31,061 --> 01:08:35,381
you'll quickly determine that they really only head one direction, right?

1148
01:08:36,041 --> 01:08:38,801
There are massive incentives to counterfeit them into

1149
01:08:38,861 --> 01:08:40,211
worthlessness over time.

1150
01:08:40,871 --> 01:08:43,021
So the big question becomes what happens when...

1151
01:08:44,196 --> 01:08:46,296
Major currencies or even the U.

1152
01:08:46,296 --> 01:08:46,476
S.

1153
01:08:46,476 --> 01:08:48,346
dollar start to hyperinflate.

1154
01:08:48,726 --> 01:08:50,136
Where do people run then?

1155
01:08:50,146 --> 01:08:51,666
You can't dollarize out of a U.

1156
01:08:51,666 --> 01:08:51,836
S.

1157
01:08:51,856 --> 01:08:54,726
dollar denominated hyperinflation.

1158
01:08:55,166 --> 01:08:56,246
So what do you do then?

1159
01:08:57,051 --> 01:09:00,981
that's where I think the pain, the real pain that's going to wake

1160
01:09:00,981 --> 01:09:03,401
people up uh, is going to come.

1161
01:09:03,401 --> 01:09:09,381
And a lot of people will say, You know, uh, Santiago capital, Brett Johnson.

1162
01:09:10,321 --> 01:09:12,261
He will just tell you this never going to happen.

1163
01:09:12,261 --> 01:09:14,061
The U S dollar is going to last forever.

1164
01:09:14,071 --> 01:09:16,591
We're just such a bad ass imperialist country.

1165
01:09:16,591 --> 01:09:20,371
There's no way we'll ever let the dollar fall and blah, blah, blah.

1166
01:09:21,061 --> 01:09:22,791
Um, I just don't buy it.

1167
01:09:23,011 --> 01:09:24,131
I just simply don't buy it.

1168
01:09:24,131 --> 01:09:25,861
I think human beings follow incentives.

1169
01:09:26,191 --> 01:09:31,391
The incentives of having a U S dollar fiat currency as a central

1170
01:09:31,401 --> 01:09:35,281
bank is to just keep producing it and using it to extract wealth.

1171
01:09:36,151 --> 01:09:40,391
Um, that ultimately leads to the debasement of the currency and

1172
01:09:40,391 --> 01:09:43,891
eventually hyper debasement or hyper inflation of the currency.

1173
01:09:44,711 --> 01:09:48,801
And I think there's also major incentives for foreign counterparties

1174
01:09:48,841 --> 01:09:50,461
to dump dollars over time.

1175
01:09:50,501 --> 01:09:53,631
And we already see the BRICS countries, right?

1176
01:09:53,781 --> 01:09:57,270
Uh, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.

1177
01:09:57,496 --> 01:10:01,826
talking about launching a currency that's orthogonal to the U S dollar, right.

1178
01:10:01,826 --> 01:10:04,606
And, and commodity based and all of these things.

1179
01:10:04,976 --> 01:10:10,206
So we've already moved from this kind of unipolar dollar world to much more of

1180
01:10:10,206 --> 01:10:13,276
a multipolar world with especially the.

1181
01:10:13,566 --> 01:10:18,876
The beginning of the Russia Ukraine conflict, I would expect that to continue.

1182
01:10:19,516 --> 01:10:22,416
All of that results in diminishing demand for the U.

1183
01:10:22,416 --> 01:10:22,546
S.

1184
01:10:22,546 --> 01:10:25,166
dollar, which is going to mean more dollar printing.

1185
01:10:25,756 --> 01:10:28,916
and I, you know, I think we see U.

1186
01:10:28,916 --> 01:10:29,026
S.

1187
01:10:29,026 --> 01:10:30,096
dollar hyperinflation.

1188
01:10:30,146 --> 01:10:34,836
Now, again, timing, very scary to talk about here, but I already put out a

1189
01:10:34,836 --> 01:10:36,946
public prediction, so I'll stick with it.

1190
01:10:37,636 --> 01:10:42,136
I think by the year 2035, we see the US dollar going into hyperinflation.

1191
01:10:43,456 --> 01:10:46,606
And so the big question for me is like, what then?

1192
01:10:46,786 --> 01:10:50,406
What, what do you dollarize into at that point, right?

1193
01:10:50,406 --> 01:10:54,336
There's, there's no, you've, you've used up all the options in

1194
01:10:54,336 --> 01:10:55,796
the fiat currency stack, right?

1195
01:10:55,796 --> 01:11:00,246
You've been scurrying up the liquidity hierarchy to the most liquid fiat currency

1196
01:11:00,246 --> 01:11:02,636
to escape your local hyperinflation.

1197
01:11:02,636 --> 01:11:06,736
Well, what happens when the point of escape becomes the point of failure?

1198
01:11:07,626 --> 01:11:08,696
Where do people go then?

1199
01:11:10,376 --> 01:11:12,816
Well, take the orange pill now or be forced to take the

1200
01:11:12,816 --> 01:11:14,346
orange suppository later.

1201
01:11:14,506 --> 01:11:14,706
That's

1202
01:11:15,336 --> 01:11:15,896
That's right.

1203
01:11:15,976 --> 01:11:19,656
Yeah, you could take the orange pill orally now, or it'll be forced

1204
01:11:19,656 --> 01:11:22,026
as a suppository later, perhaps.

1205
01:11:22,096 --> 01:11:22,836
exactly.

1206
01:11:23,041 --> 01:11:26,461
The show is also sponsored by, Orange Pill app, the Bitcoin social layer

1207
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1208
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1209
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1210
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1211
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1212
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1213
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1214
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1215
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1216
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1217
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1218
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1219
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1220
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1222
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1223
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1225
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1226
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1227
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1228
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1229
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1230
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1231
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1232
01:12:38,351 --> 01:12:40,561
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1233
01:12:41,162 --> 01:12:43,062
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1234
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1235
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1236
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1237
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1238
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1240
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1241
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1242
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1243
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1244
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1245
01:13:14,137 --> 01:13:16,997
okay, let's, let's, let's just a weird thought.

1246
01:13:17,097 --> 01:13:21,967
Uh, I love to try to extrapolate the thought vectors as far off into

1247
01:13:21,967 --> 01:13:23,867
the future as possible as you know.

1248
01:13:23,897 --> 01:13:28,917
So, so we talked a bit about volatility and.

1249
01:13:29,692 --> 01:13:33,032
In your mind, does Bitcoin ever become stable?

1250
01:13:33,142 --> 01:13:38,552
Because imagine a hyperbitcoinized world where everything is priced in Bitcoin

1251
01:13:38,552 --> 01:13:40,292
and all the fiat currencies have died.

1252
01:13:41,012 --> 01:13:45,012
And you have, I mean, we're, us three dorks here, we're like the

1253
01:13:45,012 --> 01:13:46,352
first generation of Bitcoiners.

1254
01:13:47,512 --> 01:13:52,452
And people like us are going to lose a lot of Bitcoin along the way.

1255
01:13:52,472 --> 01:13:54,832
We're not going to be able to like...

1256
01:13:56,102 --> 01:14:01,402
Store them properly and so, so, so I think people are underestimating the SAT squeeze

1257
01:14:01,432 --> 01:14:06,432
because of just people losing their keys here in their boating accidents and so on.

1258
01:14:07,292 --> 01:14:12,602
So, so if that is the case and you get into this global sound money free

1259
01:14:12,602 --> 01:14:16,542
market with increased productivity everywhere and purchasing power go

1260
01:14:16,542 --> 01:14:23,372
up, like there's a point where like technology is adopted in an S curve, but.

1261
01:14:23,992 --> 01:14:27,862
I don't really ever see the top of this in necessarily in Bitcoin,

1262
01:14:27,872 --> 01:14:31,452
because what would be the top like when all the people are on board?

1263
01:14:31,522 --> 01:14:32,922
Well, there's still more money.

1264
01:14:33,312 --> 01:14:36,902
Well, when all the money is on board, well, there's still more productivity.

1265
01:14:37,312 --> 01:14:38,522
Like, does it ever end?

1266
01:14:38,552 --> 01:14:44,682
And combine that with more and more bitcoins lost, like, This thing is, you

1267
01:14:44,682 --> 01:14:50,972
know, it's the forever Laura thing, but the, the, the, the weirdness of the, the

1268
01:14:50,972 --> 01:14:53,702
rate of forever Laura ness, if you will.

1269
01:14:54,532 --> 01:14:56,512
Well, what, what are your thoughts on that?

1270
01:14:57,014 --> 01:14:58,234
Oh, man, this is great.

1271
01:14:58,734 --> 01:15:03,204
This is the infinity divided by 21 million, right?

1272
01:15:03,284 --> 01:15:05,114
It's like, where, where's the top?

1273
01:15:05,284 --> 01:15:07,314
Well, we just call it infinity, right?

1274
01:15:08,144 --> 01:15:08,744
So...

1275
01:15:09,444 --> 01:15:15,064
It's very interesting to me because what you have, you know, assuming the Bitcoin

1276
01:15:15,074 --> 01:15:23,314
thesis plays out is you have a guaranteed fraction, like to whatever degree money

1277
01:15:23,314 --> 01:15:30,504
is being demanded as, uh, to be held as savings, as cash balances, right?

1278
01:15:30,504 --> 01:15:36,044
It's going to be a reflection of the capital that's

1279
01:15:36,044 --> 01:15:37,734
available in the marketplace.

1280
01:15:38,982 --> 01:15:43,092
That capital is a reflection of how productive we actually are.

1281
01:15:43,982 --> 01:15:49,082
And, um, I actually just listened this morning to, uh, Guy Swan

1282
01:15:49,082 --> 01:15:52,922
read Alan Farrington's piece on the killer app of Bitcoin being.

1283
01:15:53,287 --> 01:15:55,287
It properly pricing capital.

1284
01:15:56,077 --> 01:15:57,757
And I thought that was really interesting.

1285
01:15:58,397 --> 01:16:02,747
Um, so Bitcoin is going to improve productivity a number of ways.

1286
01:16:02,757 --> 01:16:08,767
One, and this would be Hoppe's point in a theory of socialism and capitalism.

1287
01:16:09,947 --> 01:16:15,847
The degree to which private property is made less viable, which is to

1288
01:16:15,847 --> 01:16:20,557
say that theft is more expensive, difficult, or risky is the same degree

1289
01:16:20,557 --> 01:16:25,477
to which we are incentivizing people to produce rather than steal, right?

1290
01:16:25,487 --> 01:16:25,897
It's like.

1291
01:16:26,232 --> 01:16:30,442
There's two roads to wealth acquisition, I can make it or I can take it,

1292
01:16:31,142 --> 01:16:34,472
and if taking is very difficult, if stealing is very difficult, well

1293
01:16:34,472 --> 01:16:37,902
then I'm left with only the other option, which is making, right?

1294
01:16:38,602 --> 01:16:42,502
Creating things of value, trading with other people, consensually, etc.

1295
01:16:42,972 --> 01:16:45,912
We've already talked about how Bitcoin sort of tilts the scales

1296
01:16:45,912 --> 01:16:50,582
away from making and towards, away from taking and towards making, and

1297
01:16:50,582 --> 01:16:52,902
that because it's expensive to steal.

1298
01:16:53,752 --> 01:16:56,492
And if you start stealing people's stuff, right, if you start stealing my

1299
01:16:56,492 --> 01:16:59,352
yachts and houses and whatever, well then maybe I'll just start selling

1300
01:16:59,352 --> 01:17:03,092
everything else and putting it into Bitcoin and moving elsewhere where

1301
01:17:03,102 --> 01:17:06,512
the government doesn't steal my stuff or have stronger property rights.

1302
01:17:07,012 --> 01:17:12,442
So you get this self organizing dynamic in the world where people are going to be...

1303
01:17:12,652 --> 01:17:17,802
More likely to engage in consensual trade, long term trading relationships,

1304
01:17:18,492 --> 01:17:21,102
making in general, and less so in taking.

1305
01:17:22,652 --> 01:17:28,892
Now, Alan's point in his paper was interesting too, that we have a really

1306
01:17:28,892 --> 01:17:34,242
hard time pricing capital appropriately under the current fiat paradigm.

1307
01:17:34,512 --> 01:17:38,252
Um, and when you start to price...

1308
01:17:38,627 --> 01:17:42,517
Capital appropriately, you actually increase productivity that people

1309
01:17:42,517 --> 01:17:47,217
are actually able to figure out, you know, through a, a sound and

1310
01:17:47,217 --> 01:17:52,867
reliable price signal or profit signal, which uses of capital are

1311
01:17:52,867 --> 01:17:55,537
satisfying the most human wants, right?

1312
01:17:55,637 --> 01:18:00,147
You get a very clear signal about where that capital needs to go, whereas

1313
01:18:00,147 --> 01:18:05,467
in a fiat paradigm, you have more of this short termism, um, Just trying

1314
01:18:05,467 --> 01:18:08,907
to generate the quarterly profit, you know, long term results be damned.

1315
01:18:09,607 --> 01:18:13,387
So I think Bitcoin, you know, again, I only listened to this once today and I

1316
01:18:13,387 --> 01:18:19,907
can't expand upon it super intelligently, but to the extent that Bitcoin allows

1317
01:18:19,947 --> 01:18:24,647
the proper pricing of capital, I think it also increases human productivity.

1318
01:18:25,297 --> 01:18:30,587
And so all these expansions that Bitcoin's providing via its incentive system, To

1319
01:18:30,587 --> 01:18:35,377
human productivity are, interestingly enough, also accretive to the purchasing

1320
01:18:35,377 --> 01:18:38,467
power that Bitcoin represents over time.

1321
01:18:38,987 --> 01:18:43,687
So it's like, uh, you know, the, the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail.

1322
01:18:44,137 --> 01:18:45,637
This is like the inverse of that, right?

1323
01:18:45,637 --> 01:18:47,977
It's like the snake feeding its own mouth or something.

1324
01:18:47,977 --> 01:18:50,367
You know, Bitcoin's actually creating more human productivity

1325
01:18:50,367 --> 01:18:51,367
through these incentives.

1326
01:18:51,862 --> 01:18:55,582
And then just fattening the snake and the purchasing power that Bitcoin itself

1327
01:18:55,582 --> 01:18:57,552
is a reflection of as it monetizes.

1328
01:18:58,422 --> 01:19:00,102
So what is the top of that?

1329
01:19:00,102 --> 01:19:02,172
I mean, how can any of us possibly know?

1330
01:19:02,192 --> 01:19:05,922
It's like asking what is the pinnacle of human development, right?

1331
01:19:05,922 --> 01:19:08,342
What is, what's the final stage of human evolution?

1332
01:19:08,342 --> 01:19:09,452
How far are we going to get?

1333
01:19:09,472 --> 01:19:10,672
Are we going to the stars?

1334
01:19:10,672 --> 01:19:11,952
Are we going to other dimensions?

1335
01:19:12,747 --> 01:19:14,677
Where does human ingenuity hit a ceiling?

1336
01:19:14,747 --> 01:19:16,807
You know, it's like the equivalent question.

1337
01:19:16,907 --> 01:19:21,757
So I, I really have no, no clue, but it is certainly fun to think about.

1338
01:19:21,757 --> 01:19:26,137
And if you, and if you frame it that way, it's like, okay, to hold,

1339
01:19:26,147 --> 01:19:27,997
this is why Bitcoin is legacy.

1340
01:19:28,447 --> 01:19:29,677
I don't want to say it's wealth, right?

1341
01:19:29,677 --> 01:19:32,677
Money is not wealth necessarily, but it's, it's legacy.

1342
01:19:33,162 --> 01:19:41,612
Purchasing power preservation, because you hold a, a basically a claim on all

1343
01:19:41,622 --> 01:19:47,002
the successful entrepreneurial enterprises that have occurred and will ever occur

1344
01:19:47,412 --> 01:19:49,352
in human history for the rest of time.

1345
01:19:50,812 --> 01:19:54,887
And you can own, you know, one, one 21 millionth of that, or 10 21

1346
01:19:54,887 --> 01:19:58,152
millionths of that, or 121 millionths of that, whatever fraction you want.

1347
01:19:58,192 --> 01:20:00,782
And to your earlier point, obviously the.

1348
01:20:02,157 --> 01:20:04,297
The denominator is decreasing, right?

1349
01:20:04,297 --> 01:20:05,347
It's not 21 million.

1350
01:20:05,367 --> 01:20:06,657
What, how many coins are there really?

1351
01:20:06,657 --> 01:20:08,287
17, 15, whatever.

1352
01:20:08,937 --> 01:20:14,827
Um, so that's very, like, it's a very powerful framing for just how

1353
01:20:14,837 --> 01:20:17,457
legacy altering Bitcoin can be.

1354
01:20:18,852 --> 01:20:21,092
Everything there is and everything there ever will be

1355
01:20:21,092 --> 01:20:23,407
divided by That was, well, well,

1356
01:20:23,867 --> 01:20:24,767
At most, 21

1357
01:20:24,807 --> 01:20:25,547
21 million.

1358
01:20:27,197 --> 01:20:27,577
Yeah.

1359
01:20:28,248 --> 01:20:31,238
Rob, I absolutely love the conversations we have.

1360
01:20:31,268 --> 01:20:35,028
And I, I, uh, sincerely hope that we get to do more of them, uh,

1361
01:20:35,498 --> 01:20:37,378
preferably in person, but also online.

1362
01:20:37,378 --> 01:20:40,108
I mean, we just need to keep this conversation going.

1363
01:20:40,108 --> 01:20:42,018
I think that's, that's the way forward.

1364
01:20:42,478 --> 01:20:44,358
So thanks very much for coming on.

1365
01:20:44,388 --> 01:20:48,398
Um, Luke, do you have any final questions for Rob before we round this out?

1366
01:20:49,338 --> 01:20:55,198
Uh, well, I, yeah, I was just going to say that, uh, the last, yeah, I don't

1367
01:20:55,198 --> 01:21:00,738
know, hour or so here, very bullish, uh, enjoying the energy, um, to,

1368
01:21:00,738 --> 01:21:03,668
to be honest, I don't have anything specific, uh, anything else would

1369
01:21:03,678 --> 01:21:08,928
be into a rabbit hole, but, uh, I've appreciated your, uh, your time and, uh,

1370
01:21:09,068 --> 01:21:13,108
take on this, uh, any final thoughts, anything else on your mind these days?

1371
01:21:13,588 --> 01:21:13,828
what

1372
01:21:17,278 --> 01:21:20,728
Rob, sincerely, you should have Luke on and, uh, on your show

1373
01:21:20,728 --> 01:21:22,198
and talk about maps of meaning.

1374
01:21:22,608 --> 01:21:23,898
That's, um, that's my

1375
01:21:23,928 --> 01:21:24,388
I would love

1376
01:21:24,558 --> 01:21:24,978
for the day.

1377
01:21:25,658 --> 01:21:26,658
Yeah, I would love to.

1378
01:21:26,698 --> 01:21:28,758
Um, I would definitely love to.

1379
01:21:28,768 --> 01:21:31,288
So please feel free to like email me.

1380
01:21:31,298 --> 01:21:33,808
What we usually do is a conversation outline beforehand.

1381
01:21:34,678 --> 01:21:38,168
And then I'll just go through that and we can get a time to talk on the books.

1382
01:21:38,718 --> 01:21:42,708
Um, and yeah, Knut, thank you for having me.

1383
01:21:42,878 --> 01:21:43,508
Um.

1384
01:21:43,968 --> 01:21:45,908
Always enjoy our conversations.

1385
01:21:46,611 --> 01:21:51,111
I, you know, this it's mind bending still to me that it's just this,

1386
01:21:51,741 --> 01:21:55,601
just this monetary innovation, which is, I never thought it would

1387
01:21:55,611 --> 01:22:00,091
be such a philosophical rabbit hole in so many different directions.

1388
01:22:00,121 --> 01:22:05,351
And, um, I don't know, sometimes I catch myself like the things I'm reading about

1389
01:22:05,351 --> 01:22:09,141
or thinking about, I'm like, how did this all, how did Bitcoin lead to all this?

1390
01:22:09,971 --> 01:22:10,211
Yeah.

1391
01:22:10,401 --> 01:22:16,366
uh, I feel very grateful, but um, also maybe even overwhelmed at times is how

1392
01:22:16,366 --> 01:22:21,633
many different directions, Bitcoin takes the mind and so always really like,

1393
01:22:21,733 --> 01:22:24,683
really like talking to you because it seems like you're on a similar path and.

1394
01:22:25,153 --> 01:22:26,833
We always have fun things to talk about.

1395
01:22:27,488 --> 01:22:27,758
Right.

1396
01:22:27,758 --> 01:22:29,468
By catch you and, yeah.

1397
01:22:29,498 --> 01:22:30,368
Came for the Lambo.

1398
01:22:30,368 --> 01:22:31,658
Stayed for Zen, I

1399
01:22:31,855 --> 01:22:32,108
guess.

1400
01:22:32,763 --> 01:22:33,573
exactly.

1401
01:22:34,423 --> 01:22:35,013
Exactly.

1402
01:22:36,843 --> 01:22:39,293
Yep, I think I think that's a perfect way to end it on.

1403
01:22:39,293 --> 01:22:42,743
So thanks again, Rob, for joining us on the Freedom Footprint show.

1404
01:22:43,633 --> 01:22:44,133
Thank you guys.

1405
01:22:45,325 --> 01:22:45,585
Yeah.

1406
01:22:45,585 --> 01:22:49,115
Like, subscribe and brush your teeth and click the little bell for notifications

1407
01:22:49,145 --> 01:22:50,605
and follow Rob's channel as well.

1408
01:22:52,055 --> 01:22:55,547
Actually, did you want to do an official where you want to, where do you want to

1409
01:22:55,557 --> 01:22:56,157
to find you.

1410
01:22:56,817 --> 01:22:59,637
Uh, yeah, I, I'm whatismoneypodcast.

1411
01:22:59,677 --> 01:23:05,057
com, uh, or Twitter's my biggest social platform at breedlove22.

1412
01:23:06,211 --> 01:23:06,711
Perfect.

1413
01:23:07,151 --> 01:23:07,841
Thanks again.

1414
01:23:08,081 --> 01:23:09,321
This has been the Freedom Footprint show.

1415
01:23:10,350 --> 01:23:12,180
So what did you think of that episode with Robert?

1416
01:23:12,810 --> 01:23:15,940
I really enjoyed digging into Maps of Meaning with him and his explanation

1417
01:23:15,940 --> 01:23:18,830
of Leela has sent that book right to the top of my reading list.

1418
01:23:19,640 --> 01:23:20,710
What was your favorite moment?

1419
01:23:20,990 --> 01:23:21,610
Let us know.

1420
01:23:22,050 --> 01:23:25,140
You can send us a boostogram on Fountain, leave us a comment on YouTube,

1421
01:23:25,150 --> 01:23:27,200
or get in touch on Nostr or Twitter.

1422
01:23:27,940 --> 01:23:30,060
If you're watching on YouTube don't forget to like the episode

1423
01:23:30,060 --> 01:23:31,150
and subscribe to the channel.

1424
01:23:31,680 --> 01:23:35,530
Our show's sponsors are Amber App, Wasabi Wallet, Orange Pill

1425
01:23:35,530 --> 01:23:37,850
App, The Bitcoin Way, and Geyser.

1426
01:23:38,550 --> 01:23:42,850
Check out their details in the That's all for now, see you next

1427
01:23:42,860 --> 01:23:44,710
time, and thanks for listening.