The signal is here.
This is Blood Chain Radio.
All right, we are live.
Welcome, gentle pioneers, to the Lightning Laced Airwaves.
Today is Friday the 9th of January, and it is 1.02pm on the East Coast of the United States at the time of recording.
This is episode 145 of Plep Chain Radio, and we have an interesting one.
In a departure from the regular format, there will be no guest today by design.
Instead, I will be reading four essays by my friend, and indeed friend of the show, Max Hillebrand.
For those of you who've been living under a rock recently, Max has been in an absolute purple patch for the last month or so, churning out one incredible long-form post after another.
To protect at least a few of those essays from getting lost in the firehose of Noster's stream of consciousness feed, I've picked four of my favorites and will attempt to enshrine them in this podcast.
Don't miss our Value for Value music segment coming up later in the show
A double header this time
I stumbled across an incredible prog rock artist this week
And couldn't settle on just one song
The two I've picked fit in beautifully
With the themes of Max's essays
90% of your boost during the songs will go to the artist
and all the more reason folks
that if you are listening to this show
on Apple or Spotify
first of all thank you for listening
but I would urge you to hit pause
and switch over to the Fountain Podcasting app
where you can earn some sats
and support the value for value revolution
while you listen
and while you're there
I would appreciate it
if you hit that subscribe button
your support goes a long way
in keeping this mic warm
and the podcast ad-free.
This show is being streamed live from my self-hosted streaming server
and because of the magic of Noster,
is available on any client that supports streaming
such as Amethyst, Noster, Fountain, Primal and Nostria.
The third episode of my travel show, Finding Home,
will be dropping on Wednesday, January 14th on IndieHub.
In this episode, I travel to Asuncion, Paraguay,
where I spend a few days with Jan Kotas,
a young Czech expat who has learned how to hack life
and embody the sovereign way in the new frontier that is Paraguay.
Lots of wine, lots of steak,
and glorious shots of Asuncion are in store.
You can watch the trailer that is out now.
In another exciting development, this Sunday, January 11th at 1700 UTC, that's 12 p.m. Eastern Time,
I will be launching a new show, Sunday Brunch by Plep Chain Radio.
Think of it as a decompression chamber for the sovereign individual.
The concept is simple but distinct.
I invite a guest. It can be a developer, an artist, a philosopher, or a builder you respect, and we just hang.
We talk about life, we talk about art, we talk about culture, and we talk about what happens when the laptop closes.
But here's the twist that separates Sunday Brunch from every other fireside chat in your feed.
the guest is bringing the vibe for the show they hold the orcs cord throughout the episode
we will pause the conversation to spin a track selected specifically by the guest and we won't
just listen we'll unpack it why this song why right now does this track remind them of a
childhood memory a specific struggle during a bear market or a moment of triumph
As I've started doing on this show
90% of the boost splits during each song
Will go directly to the artist
To kick off this new era
There was only one choice for my inaugural guest
If we're going to build a show on sovereign infrastructure
We should start by talking to the architect
I am thrilled to announce
That the very first guest on Sunday brunch
will be Oscar Merry, the creator of Fountain.
Oscar will be bringing his personal playlist,
and together, we will christen this new format
the only way we know how,
with value for value, good music,
and high signal conversation.
Mark your calendars.
Sunday, January 11th, 2026, 12pm Eastern, 1700 UTC.
The show will be streamed live on Noster and will be available on your favorite podcasting app a couple of days later.
Right, let's get into our reads then.
And let's start with the foundation.
We talk a lot in the space about winning and hyper-Bitcoinization,
but there's a dangerous trap in thinking that the collapse of the old system automatically builds the new one.
It doesn't. As Max writes, we have the money layer and we have the communication layer, but we are missing everything in between.
This piece is a wake-up call for the agorist. It's called Builders, Not Talkers.
Several decades have passed since crypto anarchy and agorism entered the minds of more than a few people.
In recent years, real progress has accelerated.
Bitcoin works. Decentralized social protocols are gaining users.
Encrypted communication is mainstream.
Privacy tools that once required expertise now run on phones
The theoretical work of the cypherpunks and agorists is bearing fruit
But it is not enough, not nearly enough
We have built the communication rails and money rails
We have not built the society that runs on them
The gap between what exists and what a parallel economy requires remains vast
Closing that gap demands something the movement has always been short on
Builders
The situation
More people every year see that the world built on hierarchy, centralization and endless intervention does not work
Public services are bankrupt or collapsing.
The mainstream explanation is always the same.
Not enough regulation, not enough oversight, greedy capitalism.
This is wrong.
The fundamental problem is that you cannot wish reality into a different shape.
The masses believed that fixing the problems caused by the last fix would eventually produce paradise.
It does not. It never has.
The only thing central planning creates reliably is misery for those at the bottom of the pyramid.
Humanity has achieved much.
hunger and plague
have been largely overcome
for hundreds of millions
but instead of embracing
what made this possible
the satisfied masses of the West
spit on it
rule of law
functional markets
economic freedom
instead of dismantling
harmful corporatism
the call is for more
democratic control
more government blessing
more protection from above
and if history is taught nothing
as if history is taught nothing
as if only a productive lifestyle
not a parasitic one
can advance the human condition.
Our systems are fragile
built on redistribution
and top-down control
rather than individual achievement
and decision-making.
Economists and complexity theorists increasingly understand this fragility
We face two options
Delay the decay or accelerate the collapse
There is no third path where intervention finally works
The task ahead remains what it was decades ago
We need a more disentangled world
more decisions made by individuals, more diversity.
One rule suffices for human cooperation.
Do not steal.
You probably know all this already.
The question that matters is, where do we go from here?
Three steps.
First, stop waiting for mass approval.
Deprogram yourself from collectivist thought
And hoping that masses will wake up
Do not waste time trying to fix politics
Win over majorities
Or receive mainstream validation
You're on your own for now
Every achiever is alone at first
Possibly for a long time
Societies break down collectively
But they are rebuilt individually
Second, realize that you must be a builder
There is no one to wait for
No blueprint to hand to future architects
If you do not act, nothing will be
If you do not implement your goals, they will never materialize
and even if someone else bills what you wanted, you will have no claim to it.
You would be a free rider and free riders cannot complain when the thing they wanted never appears.
Third, cooperate and compete.
The division of labor was one of humanity's greatest discoveries.
But neither cooperation nor competition works for those who produce nothing.
You cannot sit around waiting for the market to fulfill your dreams.
The market does not create.
It only amplifies the actions of those who do comparatively well,
while eliminating those who produce waste.
Entrepreneurs bring things into existence.
People who act and face reality
Individuals who invest, think, build, then compete and cooperate
The market rewards and punishes
It creates nothing
These three steps build on each other
They are complete only together
Opposition
Understand that what we do is cultural entrepreneurship.
We create cultural systems.
And the current culture does not welcome our input.
It opposes everything we represent.
The dominant culture offers security through numbers,
comfort in conformity.
Everything we build threatens the structure.
If you doubt this, present the idea of crypto-anarchy or radical individualism to your peer group.
Watch their reaction.
The opposition has consequences.
Developing the current system into something new would consume enormous energy with little probability of success It makes more sense to build independently of what exists You have no chance of mass approval before we have already outcompeted existing systems
And even then, approval is not a goal worth pursuing for its own sake.
The competition with dominant culture involves real risks.
We are met with resistance.
Those who defend the current order will take action against alternatives they perceive as threatening.
Being active as a cultural entrepreneur building a competing way of life carries personal risks.
Take reasonable security measures.
Do not be naive.
Do not lock yourself in a castle and become ineffective either.
You can lose by being overpowered or by being scared into submission while your capacity for action withers.
Good security defends against the first.
Courage defends against the second.
Beyond the digital.
We have made progress in some areas.
Decentralized communication exists.
censorship-resistant social networks are being built.
Bitcoin provides an alternative monetary rail.
These are real achievements,
but they are nowhere near sufficient.
A parallel society cannot run on social networks
and payment rails alone.
The cypherpunks gave us the communication layer.
Bitcoin gave us the monetary layer.
What we lack is nearly everything else.
The production layer, the physical infrastructure, the human institutions that make daily life possible without dependence on hostile systems.
The future will not consist of money movers and coders only.
Coders and financiers create platforms and tools.
but life comes from those who produce real goods and services,
thousands of trades and products that people actually need.
The farmer, the carpenter, the machinist, the small merchant.
A society of app developers and traders starves in a day.
If you're reading this and you're neither a coder nor a financier,
you might be exactly who is needed most.
This means embracing the physical.
Not everything is digital.
Life does not happen on the internet.
Because we are not welcome in contemporary institutions,
we cannot delegate the physical to them.
Mixing our activities with their banking,
their justice systems,
their identity infrastructures makes us vulnerable.
Create physical places to meet and trade.
Physical currency and barter networks, warehouses, marketplaces, workshops.
Protect your personal perimeter, but do not hide entirely.
There is no life and no progress in staying dug into a digital fortress.
The combination of digital and physical creates real power.
Digital communication enables coordination across distances.
Physical production creates the goods and services that sustain actual human life.
Neither alone is sufficient.
Together, they enable something new.
A distributed society that can grow slowly across geography while building real economic substance.
You are not alone in this, nor should you try to be.
Division of labor requires others.
We need peers who provide new insights, new capabilities, or simply understanding.
Trade and economy are about relationships more than transactions.
Business relationships become friendships, collaborations, new ventures.
A society requires social fabric.
Invest in relationships.
Find or build your tribe.
What is required?
You will feel fear.
This is appropriate.
Fear keeps you alert, ensures you maintain security practices, protects against carelessness.
But you must rule your fear rather than letting it rule you.
Use it as a tool, not a cage.
Your future depends on whether you can act despite fear rather than being paralyzed by it.
Many have asked where the networks are, the movements to join, the leaders to follow.
There are none, at least not in the way they imagine.
What exists is a distributed collection of people who have decided to build rather than wait.
Entry requires becoming one of them.
What we do is risky, and we know it.
What we build has value, but we know our implementations might not be optimal.
We have learned that quality of associates matters enormously.
Energy spent on those who only consume is energy unavailable for building.
We are not offering free passage.
If you wait for others to solve your problems, implement your vision, lift you up, you will wait forever.
It is not anyone's job to do work you must do yourself.
Do it yourself.
If you do, others who build will notice and collaboration becomes possible.
Passivity accomplishes nothing.
What matters is action.
Building, trading, producing, creating.
Talk has its place
But talk without action is just noise
Those who act are rare and valuable
Those who only discuss are common and contribute little
Our world is not a place of entitlements
What we build costs us dearly and continues to
Compensation matters
Honor matters
Keeping commitments matters
We are merchants, craftsmen, builders, entrepreneurs
Contrary to stereotype, this requires being civilized and trustworthy
Trade depends on reliability
We hold ourselves to this standard and expect the same from those we work with
Be patient, good things take time
Be quick to act, but patient in building
You might think all this is too demanding
There must be an easier path, a lighter burden
Perhaps there is, but we have not found it
What we have found is that the rewards of building are real
Even when the work is hard
The alternative is waiting for a freedom that never arrives
If you're ready to build, begin
The only credential that matters is action
And that concludes our first article
That line
Societies break down collectively
But they're rebuilt individually
Is one to pin on your wall
Stop waiting for mass adoption
If you want a parallel economy, you have to build the physical infrastructure for it yourself.
This is a good point to pause and listen to the first track of our double header today.
And it's a nice contrast to the article.
I stumbled upon an artist a few days ago and he stopped me in my tracks.
He's from Southampton, England, and his name is Steve Thorne.
now people might call this prog rock and it probably is but don't let that scare you off
it's not 20 minutes of flute and guitar solos it's driving it's cinematic and it has this massive
sweeping sound that reminds me of late era genesis or even mid-90s porcupine tree
The track is called Rubble and Dust.
And honestly, looking at the state of the fiat world this week, I can't think of a better title.
Let's get into it.
Rosebees are falling
From its high dry space
Connor is calling
From a cat on mace
Wow, what a finest
As they speed and crash
Witness the madness
As it burns to ash
We'll emerge from the rubble dust
Be more careful when giving our trust away
All the world might as we said it will burn
Take some value from all that you learn today
This long dark winter
We will rise above
Squeeze out this winter
Stand for all you can love
Breathe in the free air
That was always ours
Focus a brave stare
At those ivory towns
We'll emerge from the rubble and dust
Be more careful when giving our trust away
All the historical records are lies
They destroy it in front of your eyes
Today
Let's emerge from the rubble and dust
Think again before giving our trust away
All the bloodlines we sell and burn
Take some value from all that you've earned today
That was Rubble and Dust by Steve Thorne.
You can hear the British influence all over that, can't you?
It's got that moody, grey sky atmosphere,
but with so much polish.
I love how the synths and guitars fight for space in the mix without muddying it up It hard to pin down the exact genre It a little too accessible to be pure prog rock but definitely way too complex for pop radio
So I think it sits in that perfect album rock pocket
that just doesn't exist in the mainstream anymore.
So if you dug that atmospheric vibe,
check the chapter out.
the album is called malice in plunderland steve's only album as far as i can tell
i've got him set up with a 90 split show him some love for bringing that southampton sound
to the lightning laced airwaves and the title of that song feels appropriate doesn't it if you are
going to build something new, we often have to do it amidst the debris of what's failing.
And this brings us to our second reading. If the first essay was the call to action,
this next one is the strategy. Max draws a sharp line in the sand here. There is a difference
between fighting a system and simply leaving it. Fighting keeps you trapped in their game.
playing by rules designed to ensure you lose.
Leaving?
Leaving renders their game irrelevant.
This is the quiet departure.
There are two ways to respond to a system you reject.
You can fight it or you can leave it.
Fighting means petitions, protests, elections, reforms
It means working within structures designed by your opponents
Playing by rules written to ensure you lose
Generations have tried this
They won battles but lost the war
Every reform became the foundation for the next expansion of control
Every victory was temporary
Every defeat was permanent.
Leaving is different.
Leaving means building alternatives so complete
that the old system becomes irrelevant to those who use them.
It means creating facts on the ground that no law can undo
and no election can reverse.
It means making your exit so quiet
that by the time anyone notices,
there is nothing left to stop.
We have chosen to leave.
The Discovery
Sometime in the last decade, a threshold was crossed.
The tools for genuine exit became real.
Not theoretical, not someday when the technology matures.
Real functioning tested under pressure.
A Venezuelan can now store value that his government cannot seize or inflate away.
A dissident can publish words that no platform can delete and no state can trace.
Two strangers on opposite sides of the earth can transact without any institution's permission or knowledge.
These facts repeat millions of times daily.
the significance of this is easy to miss
for all of human history
exit required physical movement
you could flee one jurisdiction for another
one lord for a different lord
one cage for a slightly larger cage
the territorial monopoly of power seemed as natural as gravity
where could you go that was not already claimed
Now, there is somewhere to go
A set of protocols rather than a place on a map
A society defined not by borders, but by cryptographic keys
A jurisdiction you carry in your pocket, entered by choice and exited at will
What changes?
When exit becomes possible, the nature of power changes.
A ruler whose subjects cannot leave can afford to be predatory.
A ruler whose subjects can vanish into the ether must offer value or be abandoned.
Anyone who has moved their savings into sound money,
their communication into encrypted channels,
Their commerce into peer-to-peer networks already knows this.
They have already left.
The old system simply has not updated its records.
The interesting question is not whether this works.
It works.
The interesting question is what happens when enough people notice.
Nothing dramatic, most likely.
No storming of barricades, no moment of collective uprising, just a slow bleed of legitimacy as the most productive, most independent, most capable people quietly relocate their lives to systems that do not require their subjugation.
The old institutions will continue to exist, issuing proclamations to subjects who are no longer listening, enforcing rules on activities that have moved beyond their reach.
They will not fall, they will simply become irrelevant, one person at a time.
The Principles That Emerged
This did not begin with a manifesto.
It began with problems to solve and tools to solve them.
The principles came later, distilled from what actually worked.
What works is voluntary association.
People cooperate when they choose to, defect when they choose to,
and bear the consequences of their choices.
No authority assigns roles or enforces participation.
Reputation emerges from repeated interaction.
Trust is earned and verified, not mandated.
What works is individual sovereignty.
Each person controls their own keys, their own data, their own identity.
No administrator can freeze your account.
No committee can vote away your access.
No terms of service can change beneath your feet.
You own yourself in a way that is mathematically enforced, not legally promised.
What works is building over arguing.
The cypherpunks had it right.
Code beats law
A working alternative accomplishes more than a thousand essays
about why alternatives should exist
Too many decades have been spent explaining why freedom matters
to people who do not want to hear it
Better to spend that time creating systems
that make freedom the default for anyone who chooses to use them
What does not work is asking permission.
Every request for reform is an acknowledgement of authority.
Every petition concedes that the petitioned has the right to grant or deny.
Those who have left do not concede this.
They do not ask.
They build, use what they build, and invite others to do the same.
An open door.
There are no membership requirements here.
There is no initiation, no dues, no loyalty oath.
There is only a door that is open to anyone who wants to walk through it.
If you are tired of asking permission to live your own life, the door is open.
If you want to keep what you earn, say what you think, and associate with whom you choose, the door is open.
If you're willing to take responsibility for your own security and your own choices,
rather than outsourcing them to institutions that do not have your interests at heart, the door is open.
There is no promise of utopia here.
Voluntary systems have their own problems, their own failures, their own injustices.
What they do not have is the forced participation that makes existing systems inescapable.
If something does not work, you can leave it.
If someone wrongs you, you can exclude them.
If a better alternative emerges, you can adopt it.
The freedom to exit is the freedom that makes all other freedoms meaningful.
Some will find this frightening.
A world without guaranteed outcomes, without authorities to appeal to,
without safety nets woven from other people's labor.
The fear is understandable.
Most who have left felt it too.
before discovering that the safety promised by the old systems
were always an illusion,
that the guarantees were funded by theft,
that the authorities served themselves first
and everyone else never.
The fear passes.
What replaces it is something better,
the quiet confidence of people
who have stopped waiting for rescue
and started building their own lives.
No conclusion.
There is no conclusion here because the work has no conclusion yet.
There is the middle of something, not the end.
The parallel society is being built in real time
by countless people who will never meet,
coordinated by nothing more than shared protocols and aligned incentives.
No one knows what it will look like when it is finished.
No one needs to know.
The beauty of emergent order is that it cannot be designed, only discovered.
The direction is clear.
Away from coercion towards consent.
Away from permission towards sovereignty.
away from the loud politics of fighting over who controls the cage
towards the quiet work of building lives outside it.
The door is open.
You are welcome to walk through it.
That was the second essay of the day, The Quiet Departure.
The door is open.
It sounds simple, but as Max points out, walking through it means leaving behind the illusion of safety.
It means accepting that there is no one coming to save you except yourself.
And the quiet exit is something that I have lived myself.
And in many ways, it can be exhilarating.
As some of you know, I quit my Fiat job in July of 2025, July of last year.
and it was a job that paid well and allowed me to provide for my family very comfortably.
There was a catch though.
It was a Faustian pact.
I was destroying my heart and soul by giving up the vast majority of my time to the fiat parasite.
And quite honestly, it was a slow death.
And once that realization landed, and it landed with a violent and crystalline clarity, the choice became quite simple for me.
I was a prisoner in a cage I had built myself, and all I had to do was simply use the door I was pretending wasn't there.
So I did.
I had no plan for making money or keeping the lights on at home.
all I knew was it was time to finally, in my 40s no less, focus my time and attention on the things
I loved, the things that gave me meaning and purpose. And for that, I have become a far better
provider, a far better father and husband than I was when I was earning all that fiat.
I made a short video about this right after I quit last summer.
It's called Exigenesis.
And because it so fitting with the article I just read I will play the audio version of it now
The Fiat Terminal.
It sometimes feels like Sartre's drawing room in no exit.
A fluorescent purgatory where the clocks lie.
The air never changes
And a loudspeaker recites an eternal delay
Next train to freedom
Indeterminate
You see, the cruel joke of that place
Is that the only prison is the one you accept
The slow realization that hell isn't just other people
It's the resignation that nothing can change.
But Satoshi flipped the script.
The Genesis block blew the hinges of that existential waiting room.
A door swung wide.
An invitation that needed no gatekeeper's signature.
You could have walked out right then.
But, habit is a heavy sofa, and many are still sitting, arguing over lanyard colors while
an open door lets in the breeze of possibility.
Look around you.
Some still clutch resumes like boarding passes, praying for an oracle on TV to grant them
absolution.
They forget the lesson isn't a story you read, it's the sentence you serve, and the sentence
is the waiting.
To refuse to choose is the choice.
Indecision is its own sentence.
Meanwhile, the block height rises.
Lightning invoices ping like impatient alerts,
and Noster Relays glow with chatter,
braver than the people typing it.
So step through the exit Sartre never offered.
Trade the quarterly OKRs for private keys,
The exit interviews for open source commits.
The HR portals for zap storms that shout, sat by sat,
I back your weird idea.
Yes, the corridor beyond is dim and uncarpeted.
Some months, revenue will look like a meme stock on mute.
But at least the hallway leads somewhere.
And the floor creaks with your own footsteps, not someone else's marching orders.
Worried about uncertainty?
Remember, a fiat paycheck already wages your fate on somebody else's spreadsheet.
Bitcoin wages it on math and ingenuity.
far less capricious than the next quarterly memo.
Job security is just a cubicle-shaped talisman.
Trust instead the cryptographic compass
that always points to self-sovereignty.
And if anyone asks who unlocked the door,
grin and point to the mirror.
The permission slip in your pocket is dated January 3rd, 2009.
Countersigned by nobody and everybody all at once.
Management approved.
Management is you.
Broadcast boldly.
Build relentlessly.
The time chain is live.
The relay is listening.
And the only thing still waiting is that unused exit you've been pretending isn't there.
The only thing waiting is that unused exit you've been pretending isn't there.
But this brings us to the hardest part of the exit.
We might be ready to walk through that door.
But what about the people we care about?
What happens when we leave the system,
but our family, our extended family and close friends
are still standing on the other side,
looking at us like we've lost our minds?
That friction is real.
This next piece by Max hits on something painful
that I think everyone listening has felt.
It's that moment at the dinner table
when you try to explain why you're opting out of the system
and your friends and family look at you like you've joined a cult.
It's frustrating, it's isolating, and it hurts.
But Max flips the script here in this essay.
He asks us to look at it from the other side,
not to concede the argument,
but to understand the tragedy of the disconnect.
The article is called What Your Loved One Is Actually Trying To Tell You.
Your son keeps sending you articles about government overreach,
complete with highlighted passages and urgent requests that you just read this one.
Your brother brings up Austrian economics at every family dinner,
derailing conversations into territory that makes everyone uncomfortable.
Your old friend has started talking about Bitcoin and parallel institutions
and the state as a dangerous superstition.
You watched someone you care about change and that change worries you.
The conversations are exhausting.
What used to be comfortable family time now involves navigating around topics that seem to make them agitated and you defensive.
You've tried ignoring it, hoping the phase would pass.
You've tried engaging, only to find yourself backed into corners by arguments you weren't prepared for.
You've tried setting boundaries, but they keep finding ways to circle back.
you're beginning to wonder if they've been radicalized
whether they've joined something like a cult
whether you're losing them to ideas that sound frankly
extreme and possibly dangerous
your frustration is legitimate
the relationship strain is real
and some of what they say probably does sound frightening
when stripped of context and delivered with an intensity
that leaves no room for measured response.
But consider this.
Why would someone who loves you
spend so much energy on something
that clearly strains the relationship?
They know these conversations make family-gathering stents.
They know you find some of their views troubling.
They watch you grow uncomfortable
and they persist anyway.
Not because they enjoy your discomfort,
but despite it.
What would make someone do that?
The answer, almost certainly,
is that they stumbled onto questions
they couldn't stop asking.
Not answers they swallowed whole
from some charismatic figure
or online rabbit hole,
but questions that once asked
refuse to go away.
And their inability to un-ask those questions
drives them to share them with people they love most.
It probably started with something small.
Maybe they wondered why a license is required to cut hair
or why they needed permission from the city to build a shed
on land they already own.
Maybe they noticed that the exposed government lie
they dismissed as an isolated case of corruption
seemed to connect to other lies
and then to others still.
Maybe they asked a question that seemed simple at first,
but if I didn't consent to this arrangement,
why am I bound by it?
That question tends to lead to others.
If taxation is justified because I benefit from services,
does that mean anyone who provides me with an unsolicited service
can demand payment under threat of imprisonment?
If the state is necessary to prevent chaos,
how did people organize society before states existed?
And were those societies actually more chaotic?
If democracy legitimizes government
because it represents the will of the people,
what happens when I'm in the minority?
Am I bound by the will of others
simply because there are more of them?
If a private company did what the government does,
taking a portion of my income by force,
dictating what I put in my body,
deciding which foreigners I may hire or trade with,
would I consider that company legitimate?
If not, what makes the state different?
These questions are not comfortable.
Once you start asking them, you find yourself examining things you had always taken for granted.
And the person you love has been sitting with these questions, sometimes for years, unable to find satisfying answers within the framework they were given growing up.
This is what they're trying to share with you.
not a set of conclusions you must accept
but questions they believe you deserve to ask.
They remember what it felt like before they asked them
when the world seemed simpler and the authorities seemed trustworthy
and the system seemed basically fair even if imperfect.
They understand why you might prefer to remain in that simpler world.
They also believe that the simpler world is built on assumptions that don't survive scrutiny
and that living within unexamined assumptions carries costs you may not see.
Imagine discovering that something you trusted was not what it appeared to be.
Imagine finding out that the questions you were taught to consider settled were not settled at all,
that serious thinkers had been asking them for centuries,
that entire bodies of scholarship existed
that you had never encountered
because they weren't taught in schools
or discussed in mainstream sources.
Imagine wanting desperately to share this discovery
with people who matter most to you
and watching them refuse to engage with the questions
because the questions themselves seem dangerous.
This is what this person experiences every time they bring up these topics at dinner and watch you change the subject or grow defensive.
The intensity that feels like aggression is more likely desperation born out of care.
You do not need to adopt their conclusions, but you might consider engaging with their questions.
not to be converted, but to understand
what would it mean to apply the same skepticism
to political institutions that you apply to corporations,
religious authorities, or salespeople?
What would it mean to ask whether the services you receive
from government could be provided another way
and whether the costs you pay in taxes, in freedom,
in compliance with rules you never agreed to
are actually necessary.
The person who keeps sending you articles
hasn't been captured by a cult.
They've encountered questions
that changed how they see the world.
And they cannot, in good conscience,
keep those questions to themselves
while watching people they love
proceed on unexamined assumptions.
Where did those questions lead them?
In most cases, to conclusions something like these,
that human beings specifically...
possess inherent dignity and should not be used as means to others' ends without their consent.
That voluntary cooperation produces better outcomes than coerced compliance.
That skepticism towards those who claim authority over your life is not extremism but prudence.
that the capacity to live peacefully with your neighbors
does not require an institution claiming a monopoly on legitimate force.
These conclusions may sound radical,
but they follow from questions that are not radical at all.
Questions that children ask before they're taught to stop or asking.
Questions that anyone might ask
if they looked at the state with the same skepticism they apply to any other powerful institution.
The question is not whether you must agree.
The question is whether you trust this person enough to take their questions seriously,
to recognize that their persistence is evidence of love rather than the evidence of dysfunction,
to engage with what they are actually trying to say
rather than what is easiest to dismiss.
They believe you deserve to think freely.
They're trying to offer you questions they found worth asking.
Whether you want to ask them is, of course, your choice.
That choice, freely made, is precisely what we're fighting for.
And that concludes the third essay,
what your loved one is actually trying to tell you.
It's a powerful reframing.
The intensity you feel from them, your loved ones,
as Max calls it, is desperation born from care.
It's not aggression.
We aren't fighting with our families because we want to be right.
We're fighting because we found questions we can't unask.
And we want them to see the truth too.
Now, it's time for part two of our Steve Thorne doubleheader.
If the last track was the atmospheric opener,
this one is the main event.
It kicks off with a spoken word sample about secret societies
and the British Institute of International Affairs
that will sound very familiar to anyone who studies deep state history.
But listen to the lyrics.
He doesn't beat about the bush by hiding behind metaphors here.
He goes straight for the jugular with lines about
Oxford-eaten clowns and a government virus.
this is dissident signal exactly what rock used to be and i'm glad to see it coming back
the track is called who or where you are and pay attention to the very end there is a sample that's
going to make some of you cheer and some of you laugh out loud let's go there is a similar
...establishments of the Illuminati in England,
operating under the name of the British Institute of International Affairs.
There are similar secret Illuminati organizations in France, Germany, and other nations,
operating under different nations in all these organizations.
The CFR continues to be settled for a subsidiary for the United States.
We're the fall from the Bible
The angels in the dust
The creators of a world of greed and lust
There's a government virus
And objects of the mind
From the Oxford Eats and clouds
That rub your blood
If they've got you spinning round a star
You don't know who or where you are
So the tyrants of destruction
Are the vampires to the mass
They're a ruthless breed of loveless bureaucrats
Out beyond the northern horizon
There's some answers we require
And now's the time to cut the razor wire
They've got issues spinning round the stars
You don't know who or where you are
Who the hell is anyone to block the road to somewhere?
As they throw you around the sun
They know you're going nowhere
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
You are the way you are
The reason for this unawareness
and frightening danger to our country
and to the entire free world
is simply
masterminds behind this great conspiracy
have absolutely
control of all of our
present communications
especially television
radio
press and politics
I love you.
The ohlex gets the slingling me ass down
Your bitches are like one with me
I love you.
...א полб�
The ocean will rise one hundredth of one percent over the next three hundred fucking years.
That was Who or Where You Are by Steve Thorne.
And yes that was a clip of Donald Trump at the very end there dropping the hammer with a classic Trumpism Talk about a mic drop ending But the line that really stuck with me was right in the second verse
The tyrants of the structure are the vampires to the mass.
This is basically the rent-seeking fiat class
draining the life out of the productive economy.
That's really what he's talking about.
and obviously a recurring theme on this show.
Steve Thorne is clearly wide awake.
He's documenting the collapse through powerful lyrics and beautiful melody.
I have the 90% split set up for this chapter and the previous song as well.
If you want to support musicians who actually have the guts to say the stuff out loud,
especially cloaked in the magic of prog rock
send him a massive boost
and let him know that the Nostiverse has his back.
Right, let's get back to Max.
This article is the other side of the equation
presented in the previous one
where we identify the problem
the friction with our loved ones
but what is the solution if lecturing them on Austrian economics doesn't work
and we know it doesn't what does in this final piece which i believe is the most powerful one
in the series so far max offers a methodology he calls it the candles work it's about moving from
preaching to asking and understanding that you cannot force someone to see the light.
You can only hold the candle until they're ready to look.
The candles work, helping loved ones escape the most dangerous superstition.
You see the world clearly now, having pierced the mythology of political authority to recognize
voting as ritual, legislation as theater, and the entire apparatus of legitimate government
as the dangerous superstition it has always been. You understand that taxation is not a social
contract, but wealth extracted under threat that the state maintains power primarily through the
belief that it should have power. The edifice rests not on tanks and prisons, but on the far
more fragile foundation of collective imagination. And you watch your loved ones worship at the altar
without the slightest awareness that an altar is what it is. Your brother argues that without
government who would build the roads, apparently unaware that free men built 30,000 miles of
private turnpikes before the state claimed the function for itself. Your mother trusts whatever
approved sources tell her to trust, having never questioned why certain sources received approval
in the first place. Your best friend enthusiastically participates in elections every
cycle, convinced that this time the right people will finally fix things, despite decades of
evidence that things never get fixed regardless of who wins. You have tried to explain what you see,
sharing videos and recommending books and offering arguments you found persuasive
when you first encountered them.
Nothing works.
They politely change the subject,
become defensive in ways that make further conversation impossible
or begin viewing you as the extremist
who has fallen for dangerous ideas.
The relationship strain under the weight of truths
you cannot unsee and that they cannot yet perceive.
Holiday dinners become minefields.
You find yourself increasingly isolated among the very people you love most,
wondering whether everyone you care about is simply beyond reach.
Here is the uncomfortable truth.
The problem is not that your loved ones lack the intelligence to understand your arguments.
Many of them are quite intelligent and would grasp the logic immediately if they could hear it.
The problem is that the way you've been approaching them virtually guarantees they will never hear what you're actually saying.
The Frustrated Liberator's Error
Every cult uses essentially the same technique for winning converts.
Assert the truth with confidence, demand acceptance, and repeat with increasing intensity until the subject either capitulates or must be written off as lost.
When simple assertion fails, the cult escalates to social pressure, emotional manipulation and appeals to authority figures, all in service of implanting correct beliefs in minds that stubbornly resist receiving them.
The subject either converts and joins the faithful or becomes an enemy to be cut off.
you've been making precisely the same mistake
deferring from the cultist only in the content of your assertions
rather than in the method of your approach
when you lecture your brother on Austrian economics
explaining the problems with central banking in tones that suggest
any reasonable person would obviously agree
if they simply understood the facts
You're not communicating, but programming.
Attempting to install correct beliefs in a mind you have implicitly judged defective.
When you share that video exposing government lies,
confident that this evidence will finally break through the conditioning,
you are demanding conversion rather than inviting inquiry.
When you become frustrated that he does not immediately see what you see, you're treating him not as a person with his own reasons and psychological defenses, but as a malfunctioning machine that ought to produce correct outputs once supplied with correct inputs.
This approach fails for the same reason cult programming eventually fails.
It cannot overcome genuine resistance without destroying either the person or the relationship.
You may win arguments this way, leaving your brother unable to counter your points while feeling vaguely defeated and resentful.
You will not win minds.
The research on cult recovery discovered something important.
People almost never leave destructive groups because someone argued them out.
They leave because seeds of doubt germinated over time,
because contradictions between ideology and reality became impossible to ignore,
because someone they trusted remained present and curious rather than demanding.
What you're actually fighting.
Etienne de la Bauti identified the problem nearly 500 years ago
in his remarkable discourse on voluntary servitude.
He asked why people obey rulers who are vastly outnumbered by those they rule
and his answer has lost none of its force.
Custom, education and self-interest maintain servitude
Not primarily force
People born into servitude cannot imagine alternatives
They accept chains as natural
Because chains are all they have ever known
And the very capacity to conceive of life without chains
Has been bred out of them by generations of conditioning
Modern psychology calls this learned helplessness
A phenomenon first documented by Martin Seligman
In experiments where subjects exposed to inescapable negative stimuli
Stopped trying to escape even when escape became possible
The critical revision came decades later
when Seligman and his colleagues discovered they had the causal story backwards.
Passivity is not learned, but is rather the default response to prolonged aversive conditions.
What must be learned is the sense that actions produced outcomes,
that control exists and can be exercised.
This learning happens not through explanation, but through demonstration.
Seligman's dogs had to be physically moved through the escape action before they were tried themselves.
Your loved ones suffer from both conditions simultaneously.
They cannot imagine life without the state because they've never experienced it
and have been systematically taught that such life is impossible, dangerous and morally suspect.
Compulsory schooling,
as John Taylor Gatto documented
across decades of research,
trains compliance as its primary function rather than its unfortunate by Media reinforces the necessity and benevolence of political authority
Every institution your loved ones encounter assumes the state is natural, inevitable, and good.
So that questioning this assumption feels not like reasonable inquiry,
but like questioning whether gravity exists or whether the sun will rise tomorrow.
They are not stupid.
They are conditioned.
And you cannot uncondition them by lecturing any more than Seligman could cure
learned helplessness by explaining escape theory to dogs.
The Candle Method
Locke and Rose spent decades making arguments against statism
before realizing why they rarely worked.
The problem was not the arguments,
which were logically sound and well supported by evidence.
The problem was that people's psychological defenses
triggered the moment they perceived a challenge to fundamental beliefs.
shutting down the capacity for rational evaluation before it could engage.
They literally could not hear what he was saying
because their minds had already classified it as threat
and initiated countermeasures designed to protect core identity.
His own solution, developed through years of trial and painful error,
was elegantly simple.
Stop arguing and start asking
Questions bypass defenses in ways that statements cannot
When you ask someone how they know government is necessary
You're not attacking their belief
But inviting them to examine it
And the examination itself is neutral territory
Where defensiveness need not arise
When you ask what specifically would happen without taxation, you're not asserting your position but creating space for them to discover gaps in their own reasoning.
The difference between taxation is theft and what makes taxation different from theft might seem subtle,
but it is the difference between a frontal assault that triggers defensive fortifications
and a flanking maneuver that arrives at the same destination without ever engaging the defenses at all.
The Socratic method has worked for two and a half millennia
precisely because it respects this psychological reality.
Plato described it as midwifery.
The teacher's job is not to implant ideas
but to help the student birth their own understanding
through careful questioning that reveals what they already know
or exposes the contradictions in what they thought they knew.
You cannot birth understanding in someone else, for the understanding must be theirs or it will not survive.
You could only assist the process, asking questions that create the conditions for insight,
while leaving the actual insight to emerge from within.
Street epistemology
The modern systematization of these ancient techniques applies the same insight with particular focus on epistemology itself.
Rather than debating specific claims about government or economics or social organization,
practitioners can ask about the method someone used to arrive at their conclusion,
probing the foundation rather than the structure built upon it.
What would it take to change your mind?
Reveals whether genuine inquiry is possible
or whether you're speaking to someone whose beliefs are held as unfalsifiable axioms.
How confident are you in that belief and why?
Create space for doubt that arguments never could
because the doubt emerges from the person's own reflection
rather than being imposed from outside.
The point is not clever rhetoric or psychological manipulation,
but genuine curiosity about how another person thinks,
combined with questions that naturally expose contradictions without requiring you to point them out.
If their position is sound, the questioning will reveal that soundness and you will have learned something.
If it's not, they will discover the problems themselves, and discoveries made by oneself stick in ways that lectures from others never can.
Practical Principles
First, abandon the goal of changing their mind.
It sounds like defeat, but is actually liberation from an impossible burden.
Your goal is to plant seeds, ask questions, and preserve the relationship that makes future conversations possible.
Whether those seeds germinate is not within your control and never was.
Some people will never question their conditioning regardless of how skillfully you approach them.
Some will question decades later, long after you have forgotten the conversation that planted the first doubt
Some will question and then retreat to comfortable beliefs when the implications become too threatening
None of these outcomes represent failure on your part, for you were never responsible for their conclusions in the first place
Second, ask instead of tell
Which requires more patience and genuine curiosity than most people possess
But which pays dividends than lecturing never can
Why do you think that?
Opens inquiry where
That's wrong because
Closes it
What would have to be true for you to reconsider
invites reflection, whereas
here's evidence you're wrong triggers defense.
How would you test that belief?
Treats them as a fellow inquirer, whereas
let me test it for you. Treats them as a student in need
of correction. Third,
accept emotional responses without matching them,
recognizing that defensiveness and anger are signs you have touched something important
rather than evidence of bad faith.
When your brother gets defensive about political beliefs,
he's demonstrating that those beliefs are load-bearing structures in a psychological architecture,
which is precisely the information you need.
Do not escalate.
Acknowledge his frustration.
Express care for him as a person rather than as a target for conversion.
and either drop the subject or gently continue if he shows willingness.
The goal is keeping the door open for future conversations,
not winning this particular exchange.
Fourth, model rather than preach.
Recognizing that living without the fears they've been taught to have
is more persuasive than any argument you could construct.
Homeschooling your children demonstrates that education need not come from the state.
Building parallel economic relationships demonstrates that commerce need not be licensed and regulated into submission.
Achieving independence through action rather than permission creates cognitive dissonance that pure argument never can.
because when your life contradicts their worldview,
they must either dismiss you as crazy or reconsider the worldview.
And dismissing someone they know and love as crazy
becomes increasingly difficult over time.
Fifth, be patient beyond all reasonable expectation,
which is perhaps the hardest discipline of all
for those who see clearly and want others to see as well.
You did not arrive at your current understanding in a single conversation
Neither will they
The person who awakens after 5 years of patient questioning
Is not a failure of the first 4 years
But a success that required those years of careful cultivation
The limits of light
Some people will never see
and accepting this truth is essential
to preserving both your sanity and your relationship.
Doxatic closure, the technical term for minds sealed against revision,
is a real phenomenon that no technique can overcome.
Some people have fused their identity so completely with their beliefs
that questioning the beliefs feels like annihilation of the self
and no amount of gentle inquiry will penetrate defenses erected to prevent psychological death.
You cannot reach everyone and attempting to do so will exhaust you while damaging relationships beyond repair.
Labottie observed that those closest to power have the strongest incentive to maintain the systems that grants them proximity.
Your brother, who works for the state, faces costs you do not face if he questions its legitimacy.
Your mother whose pension depends on government solvency has reasons beyond mere conditioning to believe the government will remain solvent Your friend whose identity is built on being a good citizen who participates
in democracy and trusts proper authorities, cannot abandon that identity without becoming,
in his own eyes, a bad person. Respect that their situations differ from yours
in ways that make change genuinely harder, not merely slower.
Your job is not to save everyone, but to be a candle in the dark,
providing light for those ready to see,
while not burning down relationships with those who are not.
The candle does not chase people through the room,
demanding they look at its flame.
It stays lit and those with eyes eventually notice.
The most dangerous superstition persists not through force but through minds that cannot imagine alternatives.
Every person who begins to question weakens the foundation.
Every relationship preserved keeps a door open for future questioning.
Every act of patient engagement plants seeds whose harvest cannot be predicted or controlled
You cannot determine whether your loved ones will wake up
You can only determine whether you remain someone worth waking up towards
Someone who modeled freedom rather than demanded conversion
Someone who asked questions rather than delivered lectures
someone who cared more about the person than about being right.
Stay lit.
Questions worth asking.
The following questions are offered not as a script to be memorized,
but as examples of the kind of inquiry that opens minds rather than closing them.
Adapt them to your conversation.
ask with genuine curiosity rather than rhetorical intent
and be prepared to sit with silence while the other person thinks.
On authority and legitimacy
If a group of people cannot delegate a right they do not have
where did government get the right to do things that would be crimes
if you or I did them?
When you say we need government to protect us from bad people
what prevents the government positions from being filled by bad people?
If voting creates obligation
are the people who voted against the winner also obligated to obey?
What about those who did not vote at all?
How would you know if a law were unjust?
What would you do if you concluded that it was?
On consistency
If someone took money from your wallet without permission
and used it to buy something you approved of,
would that make the taking acceptable?
When a private company does something harmful,
we say the solution is government oversight.
When government does something harmful,
What is the solution?
If you discover that a charity was using 90% of donations
on administrative overhead and executive salaries,
would you keep donating?
How does this compare to how tax revenue is used?
You say people are too selfish and short-sighted
to organize society without rulers.
Who do you think seeks political power?
On Origins of Belief
When did you first come to believe that government is necessary?
Was it something you concluded through investigation or something you absorbed from your environment?
Have you ever seriously tried to steel man the opposing view,
constructing the strongest possible case that government is unnecessary before rejecting it?
If you had been raised in a society without government, do you think you would be advocating for creating one?
What sources do you rely on to understand whether government is working well?
Who produces those sources?
On evidence and falsifiability
What evidence would you expect to see if government were actually making things worse rather than better?
Do you see any of that evidence?
Can you name something government does that you believe could not be done at all without government?
How confident are you and what is that confidence based on?
If private organizations successfully provided a service you currently believe requires government,
would that change your view?
Has this already happened with anything?
How do you distinguish between things that are illegal because they are harmful
and things that appear harmful because they're illegal?
On implications
If the social contract is real, can you show me where I signed it?
If consent can be implied by residents, can any terms be imposed on residents by those claiming authority?
If democracy means the people rule themselves,
why do people need to petition, beg and lobby their own employees to get what they want?
You trust government to regulate businesses because businesses have profit motives.
What motives do you think government officials have?
If political solutions work, why do the same problems persist across decades and across changes in ruling parties?
On alternatives
Before public schooling existed, how do you think people learned to read?
Were literacy rates higher or lower than today?
How do people resolve disputes, build infrastructure and maintain order
in the many times and places throughout history that lacked centralized government?
If you wanted to leave the system entirely
and live without government services or obligations
where could you go?
What does it mean that no such place exists?
What would you personally do differently
if you woke up tomorrow and there was no government?
How many of those things could you do right now?
And with that, we've reached the end of the candle.
I've talked a lot on this show about the inherent tension any Bitcoiner or Nostrich feels
when they step out of the safe cocoon of our world into the big bad outside.
Once we hit the wall, and everyone eventually does,
that realization of the utter futility
of orange and purple pilling friends and family members
who are just not ready for the message
an uneasy calm and clarity sets in
is a clarity which says
it's better to be a lighthouse than a talkboat
be a beacon through your actions
rather than through your words
a lighthouse doesn't chase ships
It stands where it stands. It radiates. It says, here is solid ground. Here is danger. Here is a way home if you want it. The ship still has to steer. The captain still has to choose.
Max, I think, takes the lighthouse metaphor
and refines it even further
and somehow makes it gentler
He says the candle does not chase people through the room
demanding they look at its flame
That is the takeaway for this week
Stop chasing
Stay lit
Leave quietly and peacefully
build your parallel systems
and be the example
that others eventually
want to follow
that wraps up this special reading
of the works of Max Hillebrand
if these pieces resonated with you
I'll have links in the show notes
to where you can find more of his writing
remember this is a value for value production
if you got value from these readings
consider streaming or boosting some sats back to the show
half of those boosts and streams will go to max
thank you everyone listening in the live stream
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Until next time, stay sovereign.
Thank you.