0:00

We're awakening from the economic dark ages. Like

0:02

the fact that we still think we can print

0:04

money or pass laws, or that politicians can

0:06

really do anything for an economy. The only

0:08

thing a politician can do positively for an economy

0:10

is quit and dismantle the state. They're

0:13

not incentivized to solve the problem because

0:15

they're in charge of solving that problem.

0:17

So if it gets solved, then they

0:19

go away. There's no real stop to

0:22

that because there's always money printing ultimately

0:24

that funds these activities. If

0:26

you think you're immune from propaganda, you probably

0:28

don't understand how propaganda works. The archetypal example

0:30

that comes to mind is from each according

0:33

to their ability to each according to their

0:35

need. Societal change

0:37

almost always happens when enough

0:39

people are uncomfortable. Things get so bad that

0:41

they say, oh, we have to do something

0:44

different now. Even

0:46

if you don't understand that, that your

0:48

dollar savings were being pilfered by the

0:50

US government through inflation to fund that

0:52

murder campaign, you can't wash your hands

0:55

entirely of it. You are complicit to

0:57

some extent. Thankfully,

1:00

we have a conscience and we have

1:02

some guide to what's right and what's

1:04

wrong, but it requires a significant amount

1:07

of virtue. Following what you know to

1:09

be right is not easy. What

1:12

is the right path

1:14

toward decentralized capitalism? You've

1:22

written how many books now? Five. Five books.

1:25

Well, I mean, you were in on one of them.

1:27

Co-authored one of them with E.S. Yes,

1:30

thank God for Bitcoin, us and six other fabulous

1:32

people. Are

1:35

you going to write more books? I'd

1:38

like to. I mean, I think the big

1:40

thing is figuring out what I like something

1:42

worth saying and

1:46

having an audience that I really want to

1:48

address. Those are the two

1:50

ingredients that I think you need before you write a book. I

1:55

mean, just sort of writing for the sake of writing

1:57

is like an exercise in narcissism to me. I

2:00

don't want to do that, but if

2:02

there's a particular audience that I want to

2:05

address and something interesting that I can say

2:07

to them, then yeah. But

2:10

it's not always obvious what that

2:12

could be. There

2:14

is one that I definitely want to write eventually,

2:16

which is basically a

2:19

case for Bitcoin maximalism. Some

2:23

people have addressed it, but this

2:26

is a perpetual confusion in our industry.

2:29

People think altcoins and Bitcoin are

2:32

the same or something like that. Making

2:35

that case absolutely clear and just

2:39

preventing people from going down that altcoin

2:41

path I think would be pretty beneficial.

2:44

What's your elevator if you had

2:47

the elevator pitch someone on Bitcoin

2:49

versus shitcoin or Bitcoin maximalism? Yeah.

2:53

The main thing is that altcoins are like fiat 2.0. It

2:57

has all of the same vulnerabilities of

2:59

fiat money, except it's

3:02

way scamier in many

3:04

ways because they

3:07

get around regulation in many

3:09

ways through this

3:12

veneer of decentralization, which they don't

3:14

have. They're able to print

3:16

their own money. It's

3:18

very attractive to folks that don't really

3:21

want to work for the

3:23

money. They just want to

3:25

print it into existence. But

3:28

a lot of it's honestly played

3:30

out the last seven years or

3:32

so. It used

3:34

to be like, okay, we have this coin that's

3:37

going to create this

3:39

value through doing something

3:41

for some. But

3:43

pretty much the last seven years have proven

3:46

that all of those promises have been for

3:48

nothing. There's a

3:50

deep depression in the altcoin industry for

3:53

that reason because they're like, yeah, you

3:55

keep saying this stuff when no one actually fulfills it.

3:58

We're at a point where it's

4:00

gone completely nihilistic where

4:03

the only coins that are popular at the

4:05

moment are like meme coins. And

4:08

this is like no utility whatsoever.

4:10

It's just completely like

4:12

a will to power currency. And

4:14

it's like, okay, and those

4:17

things pump and dump way faster than the

4:19

previous ones used to. And,

4:21

you know, that's kind of the state they are.

4:23

They're at. So I don't even know if I

4:26

need to write the book because in a

4:28

sense, like all of that's played

4:30

out there and like people

4:32

don't trust like all coin pitches anymore. This is

4:34

why all the all coin VCs

4:37

are all like down on, you

4:39

know, they're all, you

4:41

know, pretty down from their

4:44

initial C capital. So,

4:46

you know, yeah, well, I've

4:48

been very surprised how

4:52

each cycle that idea seems to adapt. You

4:54

mentioned meme coins. I hadn't even heard about

4:56

these until I was having

4:59

dinner with a couple of guys in New York and they were

5:01

bringing it up. I was like, what is that? And it's basically

5:03

shit coin of this cycle, you know.

5:05

Yeah. And

5:07

so, yeah, we joke that Bitcoin's an IQ

5:10

test. You got to kind

5:12

of sift through all of the crypto

5:14

garbage to ultimately realize that Bitcoin's the

5:16

only, you know,

5:18

the operative word is decentralized. Basically, it's like

5:21

Bitcoin is decentralized. Everything else is not. But

5:24

there's also kind of like an ethical test built into that.

5:27

I think that it's like you

5:29

see if people

5:31

are really pushing hard on crypto, it's

5:33

what you just said. They're trying to get

5:36

money without the sacrifice or the work. And

5:40

so, yeah, it becomes a

5:42

pretty good heuristic for who you're dealing with.

5:44

Yeah. And you know, I don't mean to

5:47

say that categorically. It's like some people might

5:49

think they're working on a crypto project and

5:51

not have nefarious intentions. But when

5:53

you really kind of peel back all the layers, it's like

5:55

how this thing you're calling decentralized

5:58

is not decentralized. So the whole thing is

6:00

built on same. So to speak. Yeah, and

6:02

in that way, it's very much like fiat

6:04

two point. Yeah. There's a lot of people

6:07

that think they're like providing value by working

6:09

at an investment bank. I work a hundred

6:11

hours a week and I'm doing all this

6:13

stuff, but really they're not, they're run seeking,

6:16

right? And that's I

6:18

think where a lot of these altcoins

6:20

are, like it's becoming more

6:22

and more clear, right? Because I mean,

6:24

meme coins don't purport to do anything.

6:26

I mean, it's- They're just memes. They're

6:28

literally just memes and it's pumping and

6:30

dumping. And you're right in the sense

6:32

that there's, it's

6:35

a virtue test because if you

6:37

have any virtue whatsoever, you would

6:39

be saying, this makes

6:41

no sense. There's absolutely no value

6:43

being provided. And, you

6:45

know, if you're still going

6:48

into that stuff, then you're

6:50

making it clear that you have

6:52

no interest in providing value for

6:54

money. It's just trading and

6:56

scam or like getting lucky

6:58

at best. And

7:01

maybe at worse, it's just straight up scamming

7:04

people. Yeah. Yeah. I do have

7:06

a little pity for like the retail participant

7:08

though, because I feel like so much of

7:10

the crypto universe is intentionally obfuscated and made

7:12

to sound, you know, there's a lot of

7:14

innovation theater occurring and a lot of people

7:16

that don't get it, they're just sort of

7:19

swept up in the veneer. And

7:21

so there's like a little bit of forgiveness

7:24

on a hard for certain people. But then there's people that

7:26

are perpetrating those scams. They're like, you guys are just. I

7:29

mean, that used to be the case, right? But like at

7:32

a certain point, if you're going and buying dog

7:34

with hat, right? Like, why

7:37

would you buy that? Right? Like there's no like

7:39

reasonable case to be made that dog

7:42

with hat is like something that provides

7:44

value. Don't people make the argument about

7:46

art? It's like, oh, it's art. I

7:49

mean, it's literally dog with hat, right?

7:52

It's based on like, it's

7:54

like a duplicate

7:56

of Dogecoin essentially, like, which is

7:58

what Shibu Inu was. or for

8:01

whatever reason, meme coins sort

8:03

of go in that direction.

8:06

I mean, at this point, it's

8:08

just so obvious and there are

8:10

no arguments being made that this

8:12

is going to provide value or

8:14

create any innovation. And

8:16

that was essentially like two cycles ago when

8:19

it was, oh yeah, there's actually going to

8:21

be innovation. I don't

8:23

blame them nearly as much, but

8:26

by now 2024, it's so obvious that meme coins

8:32

are basically the only thing left

8:34

because all the innovation coins or

8:36

whatever, the professor coins, they've not

8:38

kept any of their promises and

8:40

none of the stuff that they

8:42

said would come to pass has.

8:44

So in that sense, I do

8:48

blame retail because it's obviously greed that's

8:50

driving you and you're hoping to be

8:52

able to retire or

8:55

something on some small amount and they

8:58

all get swept in it and you play

9:01

with fire, you're going to get

9:03

burned. Whereas you store savings in

9:05

Bitcoin, it does just fine and

9:07

people are so greedy, they want

9:10

like returns higher than Bitcoin. Yeah,

9:12

I guess a subtle disagreement. It's

9:16

like, yeah, people are definitely driven by self-interest

9:19

and what I would draw the line

9:21

between self-interest and greed is when you

9:23

start violating the life, liberty

9:26

and property of another to advance your own

9:28

self-interest. And I don't know that

9:31

people understand that, right? They're sort

9:33

of conditioned by the wall street

9:35

model that, oh, you just get

9:37

income from things. You

9:39

buy a thing and it just produces money. So

9:42

I feel like there's this layer of economic ignorance

9:44

that's driving a lot of this. This

9:46

is why I keep going to this idea of

9:48

we're awakening from the economic dark ages. Like the

9:50

fact that we still think we can print money

9:52

or pass laws or that politicians can really do

9:54

anything for an economy. The only thing a politician

9:57

can do positively for an economy is quit and

9:59

dismantle the state. Like

10:01

they can't, there's actually nothing that a

10:03

government can do to advance an economy

10:05

in any way because all of the

10:07

revenues for the government are derived from

10:09

theft and theft is

10:11

decremental to productivity. So anything a

10:14

government does is gonna be anti-economic.

10:16

Well, it can certainly be better

10:19

for the private sector to do

10:21

the functions that they generally do.

10:23

Sometimes it's, you know, they're

10:25

the only ones kind of willing to do it. Like

10:28

I look at an example like El Salvador

10:30

where, you know, like they're

10:32

cleaning up the streets because the,

10:35

you know, the gangs were in,

10:37

had too much power or something

10:39

like that. So I can see

10:41

certain situations where that makes sense.

10:44

But I mean, all

10:47

those retail people that don't understand

10:50

sort of the nature of rent seeking or whatever, yeah,

10:54

there is sort of like

10:56

an underlying philosophical ignorance

10:59

about the nature of

11:02

value creation or thinking that like

11:04

rent seeking is okay in many

11:07

ways. And that's the real ignorance

11:09

is that they don't

11:11

see sort of like being

11:14

a busy body as something that's

11:16

bad. They see it as, oh,

11:18

well, that's just like another way to make money,

11:21

but that's not how things

11:23

are. Like you should- You gotta produce

11:25

something. Yeah, you gotta produce something, provide

11:27

value. And that's what it's

11:30

like on their sound money where if

11:32

you are providing value, then you make money,

11:34

right? But under a fiat

11:36

money system, it's very

11:38

easy to get into a rent seeking

11:40

position and make money.

11:42

And it feels like you're providing value

11:45

because you're making money, but,

11:48

you know, the whole system is subverted

11:50

because there's a money printer. And ultimately

11:52

it comes back to the money printer

11:54

that's able to fund your sort of

11:57

rent seeking and that whole- signal

12:01

that money's supposed to give you that you

12:03

are providing something valuable to others is

12:06

completely kaput, right? Like it gets cut

12:08

off. That's where they

12:10

are. Can you define rent seeking? Because it sounds

12:12

like, I'm sure there's a lot of people that

12:15

are in real estate out there that are, what

12:17

do you mean? So I don't think rent, it's

12:19

not that rents are inherently a bad thing, but

12:21

rent seeking kind of has its own unique meaning.

12:24

Yeah, and the way I would

12:26

describe it is getting in the middle of

12:28

some transaction and extracting

12:30

value or extracting a rent,

12:32

right? Without providing any

12:34

value. A landlord provides value, right?

12:37

They're providing the home or whatever. But

12:39

being a middle, unnecessary middle man. Yeah,

12:41

where you're collecting some fee for something.

12:44

The classic example, and there's

12:46

a picture I show in some of my

12:48

talks, is a guy that has a

12:50

chain over a river, right? And there's a guy coming

12:52

on a boat and he lifts up the chain and

12:55

says, you can't cross until you pay

12:57

me. Yeah. Now that person

12:59

is not providing any value whatsoever,

13:01

right? It's just sort of extortion

13:04

in many ways. But there's

13:06

a lot of that in all

13:09

sorts of government bureaucracy, some

13:11

rubber stamp or some

13:13

permission or gatekeeping that you have to

13:15

get around and in

13:18

order to go do something that you

13:20

want. Or it could be like a

13:22

bilateral transaction, right? I wanna sell you

13:24

something you collect, we're

13:27

doing a bilateral transaction, but somebody gets

13:29

in the middle and says, well, actually

13:31

you have to pay us a sales

13:33

tax now, right? Like because for whatever

13:36

reason they feel entitled to it. And

13:39

those things are ultimately

13:42

friction for

13:44

the normal market economy and they

13:47

don't really provide value to anyone.

13:49

Yeah, it's parasitical, right? This

13:53

transaction could flow seamlessly

13:55

without that middleman.

14:00

The devil's in the details, of course, because a

14:02

lot of these middlemen would argue, sometimes they're connecting

14:04

the parties, they're like, oh, I made the introduction

14:06

between A and B. But it's that,

14:08

I think the key line is

14:11

that element of coercion or the threat of coercion,

14:13

where it's like pay me or else. That's

14:16

when you're violating life, liberty and

14:18

property. Yeah, and oftentimes it's backed

14:20

up by the state. There

14:22

are a lot of people in

14:25

corporate America, right, that have to

14:27

do a lot of compliance work. And

14:30

that I would say

14:32

is somewhat rent-seeking, because ultimately

14:34

if you don't comply with

14:37

government regulations, most of which

14:39

is honestly arbitrary

14:41

or designed to sort

14:44

of benefit rent seekers, it

14:47

ends up hurting all the other transactions

14:50

that you're doing as a company and

14:52

makes the price higher. That's

14:55

the unfortunate reality of a lot of

14:57

stuff. Yeah, it's not, again,

14:59

not to single anyone out that works

15:01

in compliance, but sort of the dim,

15:04

grim reality is, yeah, your entire

15:07

occupation is a knock-on

15:09

effect of government rent-seeking,

15:11

right? Also, I used

15:13

to be in tax, and

15:16

that's what tax accountants do, right? They play

15:18

that role. All taxes are

15:20

rent-seeking in many ways. And I think that,

15:23

you know, I didn't know a

15:25

lot of tax accountants that love their job either.

15:27

So there's something related there, right? It's like people

15:29

tend to hate these jobs naturally. And

15:32

so, yeah, I guess Bitcoiners

15:35

are just trying to get us to a

15:37

world where we're doing things we like and

15:39

we're more productive, and therefore we're all richer,

15:41

we're all more free, all

15:43

things are more peaceful because we're

15:46

interdependent rather than kind of in

15:48

these isolated, antagonistic

15:50

groups. Yeah,

15:53

I would say that that's definitely the

15:55

case. And the

15:57

reason why people don't like a lot of...

16:00

these rent-seeking jobs is because I

16:02

think deep inside they understand that

16:04

they're not providing value and like

16:08

If you're a human being with even

16:10

a modicum of conscience Right, like you

16:12

you you want to provide value you

16:15

want to be beneficial to other people

16:17

Yeah, but if you're if you're not

16:19

being that way, right if you're if

16:21

you're hurting humanity or whatever Of course,

16:23

you're going to hate it and like,

16:25

you know the You

16:29

know, I think about like New York and you

16:31

know Although investment bankers and stuff there

16:33

they they are constantly like drowning themselves

16:37

Drugs and alcohol and stuff like that because

16:39

I think deep down they know

16:41

too, right? Like they're not providing any value I mean

16:43

if you're if you're like creating a

16:45

good or service that everyone needs I don't

16:47

think you feel the need to

16:49

do that, but you're working a hundred hour a

16:51

week. So, you know, you can make a

16:55

you know this trade and make a hundred

16:57

million dollars printed out of thin air because

16:59

you did a hundred

17:01

X FX trade that you know like

17:03

created yeah, you know money for yourself

17:05

and not really benefit anybody else I

17:08

mean that that that seems to me,

17:10

you know good reason

17:12

to be depressed. Yeah, why you need to

17:14

drown that out Yeah, the you know for

17:17

a key. I would argue the key to fulfillment

17:19

in life is Adding

17:21

value to the lives of others, right? This is

17:23

why parenting is so fulfilling because you're actually doing

17:26

that all the time And

17:29

yeah, I don't you know investment banking again not

17:32

that it's an inherently bad thing But

17:34

in a fiat paradigm, it's pretty bad.

17:36

Right like a lot of these deals

17:38

as you mentioned foreign Foreign

17:41

exchange that's a five trillion dollar a day

17:43

market. Which if you multiply that all the

17:45

way out It's like something like 12 times

17:47

the size of a global GDP And

17:50

it's not doing anything. It's not producing anything. It's

17:52

just switching from one currency to another So it's

17:54

just this it's just this parasite

17:57

basically on the global economy, right? Whatever's

17:59

actually be produced the profits that come

18:01

out of foreign exchange trading are just

18:03

sucked off the top basically. And

18:06

so anyone that's involved in that probably does know

18:08

deep down, wow, I'm getting paid,

18:10

but I'm not doing anything. I'm not

18:13

adding any value to the human race.

18:15

So that creates this dissonance within them.

18:17

Yeah. And it makes them depressed, you

18:20

know, addicted to lots of different things.

18:22

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah,

18:24

it's not a good way to go. No. So I

18:26

think this is probably a good segue into the book

18:28

we wanted to talk about today, which is one you've

18:30

been reading recently. This

18:33

is Michael Humor's, the problem

18:35

of political authority and

18:37

examination of the right to coerce

18:39

and the duty to obey, which

18:43

is critically exploring the moral

18:45

legitimacy of political authority and

18:47

the ethical justification for government coercion.

18:50

So I guess

18:53

I'll just ask you the question that

18:55

is motivating this book. This

18:58

is per the author, I think,

19:00

why are governments allowed to do

19:03

what individuals are not allowed to

19:05

do? Like a government is the

19:07

legal monopoly on coercion, compulsion, violence.

19:10

Individuals are not allowed to coerce,

19:12

compulse, or act violently toward one

19:14

another. Why do we allow

19:18

governments to do this? And then how do

19:20

we, how do we come

19:22

to a moral justification even for governments

19:25

being able to do this? Yeah.

19:27

I mean, the short answer is

19:29

they don't have that. But

19:31

the way it's justified is typically

19:33

through, you know, social contract theory

19:36

and so on. But this is

19:38

what we call political authority. Governments

19:40

are, for some reason, allowed to

19:42

do things that you and I

19:44

can't do. So, you

19:47

know, in England, for example, right now,

19:50

you can get arrested for, you know,

19:52

saying something online that the government doesn't

19:54

like. So if you

19:56

or I did that, you know, somebody else,

19:58

somebody says something that we don't like. and

20:00

trap them in our basement and keep them

20:02

there, maybe

20:05

feed them, but like, that

20:09

would make us like moral monsters, especially

20:12

for saying something that somebody

20:14

that we don't like. Yeah,

20:16

government, we give, I'm

20:19

not sure if we give or they take, but

20:22

they have for whatever reason, this

20:26

right, I guess, or this, they

20:31

do it, right? They've irrigated themselves a

20:33

privilege, it seems like, that we don't

20:35

have. To go and do things that

20:39

we're not allowed to do, and

20:41

they sort of use

20:43

this as a justification

20:47

for almost any kind of law that they

20:49

pass. We are allowed

20:51

to do it, and this idea of

20:54

political authority has grown by leaps and

20:56

bounds, I think, certainly since like 1971,

20:59

but even before then, it's

21:01

something that's been continuously growing for

21:03

a variety of reasons, but

21:06

it's this idea that we as

21:09

government have

21:12

a right to go do things

21:15

that more and more violate individuals'

21:19

rights based

21:21

on our sense of what

21:23

justice is. So it

21:25

could be about misgendering somebody,

21:28

or stuff that maybe even 10

21:30

years ago was not considered anything

21:33

close to violating someone's

21:36

rights, but is now, right? That

21:39

sort of arbitrariness that this

21:42

power that they have is

21:47

completely strange,

21:49

and that's what the book explores,

21:53

and I think it makes a

21:55

really good argument that political authority

21:57

is honestly illegitimate from a natural

22:00

society. the only way I think

22:02

you can arrive at political authority

22:05

being legitimate is if you sort

22:08

of go down a more Nietzschean

22:10

path and they have the power,

22:12

therefore, that's- Might makes right. Yeah,

22:15

yeah. That's just sort

22:17

of like the de facto reality and

22:19

you kind of have to accept it

22:22

rather than anything based on actual

22:25

moral reasoning or philosophy. Yeah,

22:27

I'm reminded of Rothbard's

22:29

quote who says to be moral and

22:32

act must be free. And

22:34

so the very introduction

22:36

of coercion or the threat of

22:39

coercion, if

22:41

he's correct, automatically makes it an immoral activity. The

22:43

fact that you have to coerce someone to do

22:45

it. Yeah. Maybe

22:48

there's some edge cases, but I struggle

22:50

to identify them actually. Yeah, there are

22:52

edge cases. He does sort of point

22:54

them out in the book. So for

22:56

example, if somebody is going around them

22:58

murdering, or

23:02

is like threatening to murder you,

23:05

the act of self-defense could be

23:07

considered in some ways, coercion, right? Like

23:09

if you shoot the person- Yeah, I

23:11

guess it's the uninitiated coercion that would

23:14

be initiated basically by someone else. Yeah,

23:16

so if there's some sort

23:18

of like, or even if somebody's going

23:20

around them murdering, I

23:25

think morally it's legitimate to go,

23:27

morally good to go and capture that

23:30

person and provided like you

23:32

take pains to make sure that

23:36

it is this correct person that did

23:38

do it and so on, to

23:42

either punish that person in some

23:44

way or at least prevent further

23:47

murders. That's a perfectly

23:49

reasonable moral thing to

23:51

be doing. But like

23:54

anything beyond some of these obvious

23:56

moral cases where

23:58

the person is violent. and violating other

24:01

people's natural rights, it

24:04

becomes very much like, okay, the

24:07

bar for coercion is very, very high, but

24:10

it's become very, very low

24:13

in a fiat economy where it's almost anything

24:15

is, I

24:18

think there's a statistic, something like

24:21

the average person commits like three

24:23

felonies a day, just according to

24:25

like, like there's so many laws.

24:29

And I

24:31

don't think any of those like

24:34

legitimate, like any

24:37

the level of coercion that

24:39

the government sort of claims for itself.

24:42

Yeah, now the Cicero quote comes to

24:44

mind, the more laws, the less justice.

24:47

And you mentioned since 1971, there's

24:50

been an explosion in, I

24:52

guess you'd call it fiat regulation, right?

24:54

These aren't, there's a distinction between the

24:56

laws that are discovered over time. Like

24:58

these are how humans have resolved conflicts

25:00

for thousands of years. So we've codified

25:02

that in English common law. There's

25:05

a distinction between that type of legality and

25:07

fiat regulation, where it's just literally a guy

25:09

in political power signing a sheet of paper

25:11

saying, you do this now or else we

25:13

put you in a box or we hurt

25:15

you or we penalize you somehow.

25:19

What is the connection there for people that

25:21

might not be familiar? Why since 1971 has

25:23

fiat regulation exploded? Yeah,

25:26

so part of it is the rent seeking and

25:28

the rent seeking class has grown

25:30

by leaps and bounds. So you can look at

25:32

any graph of like healthcare

25:35

administrators, for

25:38

example, versus physicians. Since

25:40

1971, the actual people that do the

25:42

healing in a healthcare context, like nurses,

25:45

doctors and so on, they've

25:47

grown somewhat, but not by very much. Administrators,

25:50

paper pushers, the people that are

25:52

doing bureaucratic rent seeking stuff exploded,

25:54

right? It's up like 3000% since

25:57

1971. And

26:00

it's not just healthcare. You can

26:02

go look at education, like number

26:04

of professors and people that actually

26:06

teach or do research versus the

26:08

administrators, the paper pushers. Again,

26:10

same thing, right? Like up 3000% and

26:13

that's just true of almost every industry because

26:17

of the presence of PI money. If

26:20

you can sort of like collect

26:22

rents on transactions that

26:26

you really don't have that much to do with,

26:28

you're going to explode. I'm

26:30

gonna blow the bureaucracies. Yeah, and

26:33

bureaucrats, if they

26:35

have to sort of justify their

26:37

job and generally they're going to

26:39

create more regulation as and

26:43

sort of assign responsibilities to themselves

26:45

so they can collect more rents. And

26:48

that's generally what's happened in all

26:51

of these places where they'll identify

26:53

some problem and say, okay,

26:55

we're going to put ourselves as in charge

26:57

of this problem in some way by

27:01

putting in this regulation or permission or

27:04

something like that. And those never really go away because

27:07

first of all, it's never going to be

27:10

solved because this bureaucracy

27:12

already exists and they're

27:14

not incentivized to solve the problem because

27:17

they're in charge of solving that problem. So

27:20

if it gets solved, then they go away. So

27:22

like homelessness in like San Francisco,

27:25

for example, I

27:28

mean, the city funds something like 30

27:30

or 40 different organizations to quote unquote solve

27:33

homelessness. And it's growing like we- But it keeps

27:35

growing, right? Like so the regulations

27:37

and things like that are

27:41

meant to give these bureaucrats more power, more

27:43

jobs and

27:45

grow this cancerous bureaucracy. And there's

27:47

no real stop to that because

27:52

at least on the monetary

27:54

side, there's always sort of money printing

27:56

ultimately that funds these activities. So the-

28:00

The regulations, the

28:03

sort of political authority gets

28:06

abused more and more as

28:08

these bureaucracies grow because

28:10

they have to like sort of justify their

28:13

job and you know, do whatever helps them

28:15

grow, I guess. Yeah,

28:21

yeah. It's

28:23

so crazy because you can almost just like

28:25

invert whatever the agency, their mission

28:27

is, right? It's to eliminate homeless. And I was like,

28:30

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31:46

All right, so part one of this book

31:49

is the the illusion of

31:51

authority. And I'll just name

31:54

the first three chapters and you can kind of take

31:56

this whatever direction you want. Well,

32:00

yeah, I'll name the first three and then there's more

32:02

behind this. There's

32:05

the reasons why people believe

32:07

in political authority. I

32:09

think the author goes into like the

32:11

psychological biases and status quo

32:13

biases. There's the old

32:16

social contract theory, which is introduced by

32:18

Rousseau, which we

32:20

still haven't shaken off. I don't know what,

32:22

where's the contract? Who signed it? When do

32:24

we get to renegotiate? Like, it doesn't make

32:27

any sense. And then there's

32:29

the democratic authority argument, which

32:31

is something like tyranny

32:34

of the majority is okay, somehow.

32:38

How does, how would

32:40

you, or how does the author dismantle

32:42

some of these arguments that justify what

32:45

he calls the illusion of authority? Yeah,

32:47

so let's start with social contract theory

32:49

because that's the theory that we all

32:51

sort of have a social contract between

32:54

the government and us and

32:56

we gave them that authority. But of course

32:58

there's no explicit agreement. There's no, like when

33:00

you become a citizen, you don't sign a

33:03

piece of paper saying, hey, like I

33:06

agreed that the government can coerce

33:08

and do all these things. And

33:11

if you look at things from the perspective of

33:13

the natural law, which I think is really

33:15

the only legitimate way to morally

33:17

justify anything, then they

33:21

don't have such an authority because there's no

33:23

agreement. And the author goes through, what

33:26

a normal agreement looks like, what a

33:28

normal contract looks like, among other things,

33:30

both parties have some obligation to the

33:32

other. But if

33:35

the government doesn't protect

33:38

you from looters or something

33:40

like that, then it

33:43

doesn't automatically mean that you can't, you don't

33:45

have to pay your taxes or something. Right,

33:47

right. Which would

33:49

be the case in any normal contract. Right,

33:52

if they don't perform it. If they don't

33:54

perform like some duty, if they don't collect

33:56

your garbage, for example, you shouldn't have, like

33:59

that would. be the case in like

34:01

a normal, like if you're the waste

34:05

management firm for my neighborhood and you don't

34:08

collect the garbage, I have no

34:10

obligation to pay you. But with

34:12

government, it's not like that at all. Whatever

34:15

you do, you have to pay your taxes,

34:18

even if they don't fulfill any of the

34:21

things that they're supposed to fulfill on your behalf.

34:23

So that dual

34:26

obligation aspect definitely I think nullifies this

34:28

social contract theory, but there are lots

34:30

of other reasons, including the fact that

34:32

you can't really opt out of it,

34:34

right? Or you can't say, hey,

34:38

I don't want to be a part of this. You're

34:41

coerced into the authoritarian structure

34:43

that they

34:47

say you have. So I

34:49

don't think social contract theory holds

34:52

any water. And the author

34:54

gets into why so

34:56

many people seem to be carrying water for

34:58

the regime. And part of that is some

35:01

of the psychological vipices that we have, but

35:04

we could kind of see it already, right?

35:06

Like even in politics today, there are people

35:09

that will justify almost anything that the

35:11

regime does. And part of it might

35:13

be that they're getting paid directly by

35:16

the government in some way, shape or

35:18

form. But mostly it's because they

35:20

don't want to believe

35:22

that they have to go and do

35:24

stuff that puts them in danger or

35:26

something to that effect. I

35:29

think it was our

35:31

friend Peter Saint-Angé, who wrote

35:33

about how, why

35:36

is it that

35:39

and sort of like weak men end up

35:41

supporting the Democrats? And

35:43

his argument was that actually

35:45

it's more important for people

35:47

with less agency or people

35:50

that feel vulnerable or feel

35:53

like they're unsafe to

35:56

more be in the right group

35:58

than to pursue truth. And that's...

36:00

That seems to definitely be the

36:02

case here with supporting

36:05

the regime. There are a

36:07

lot of people that will sort of

36:09

like do all kinds of mental

36:11

gymnastics to justify that. And this

36:13

is kind of like, it honestly

36:15

reminds me a lot of Keynesian

36:17

economics where people will come

36:20

up with just like the stupidest theories. But

36:23

as long as they support the

36:25

people in power. The money printer.

36:28

They'll just sort of propagate it as

36:30

if it's truth. Yes. And

36:33

you get a lot of people whose brains

36:35

are completely twisted and sort

36:37

of kind of go crazy because if

36:39

you lie too much, you just, yeah,

36:43

you can't sort of live with yourself. You have

36:45

a lot of reality. Yeah, you go crazy. Yeah.

36:51

How much does memetics play in this, do you think?

36:53

Because one of the things that I see is, okay,

36:56

capture money printer or capture political

36:59

authority. Use political authority and

37:01

or money printer to, I

37:04

don't use the word hire, I guess,

37:06

people of influence, whether these are cultural

37:08

figures, athletes, actors, whatever it may be,

37:11

to be pro money

37:13

printer and political authority. And then

37:15

the masses just unconsciously imitate these

37:17

cultural leaders. And so that's

37:19

like a very vicious cycle because then you get

37:22

more power, more money printer, and then you can

37:24

just wash, rinse, repeat. How much

37:26

do you think that plays into this propagation

37:29

of the illusion that we need

37:31

political authority to have order in

37:33

our lives? Yeah, there's definitely some

37:36

of that. And I

37:38

mean, just in general, there is

37:40

that memetic force of desiring

37:43

something that you

37:45

see as high status. Yeah. And

37:47

the entire status game, I think,

37:50

is influenced significantly by fiat money.

37:52

So to be an investment banker

37:54

in today's economy is very prestigious.

37:56

And a lot of rent-seeking positions

37:58

actually end up that way, even

38:00

though- even though they're not very

38:02

fulfilling, the people in them are

38:04

very sad and they're constantly like

38:06

depressed and trying to- Well, they're

38:08

well paid. Yeah, they're very well

38:10

paid, right? And but that

38:13

sort of like status hierarchy is

38:16

what causes that mimetic contagion, right? So

38:18

if you are at the top of

38:20

the status ladder, well, a lot of

38:22

people seek to imitate you, even if

38:24

it's like almost satanic,

38:26

some of that stuff is just like,

38:29

you hear about like what Diddy's doing

38:32

and all that. And it's just like,

38:34

okay, people imitate like what

38:36

is clearly evil almost, even

38:39

just to kind of get into that.

38:41

So it doesn't surprise me that a

38:44

lot of the apologetics for

38:48

the regime, if you will, happen

38:51

because that's in a way

38:53

to increase your status within

38:58

this fiat system. And

39:00

it's not a surprise to me that

39:02

most of the Bitcoin community

39:05

is sort of outside

39:08

that status hierarchy in many ways or

39:10

have rejected at least some parts of it.

39:12

And that's the commonality I find is, okay,

39:16

if you are still bought into

39:18

that game, you have zero interest

39:20

because you're probably fairly high up

39:22

on the status ladder, you would

39:24

much rather continue that and

39:27

like support the regime rather than

39:29

go onto this new status

39:31

ladder or I mean, I guess a

39:33

community, a more positive

39:35

sum game or whatever, in the

39:37

Bitcoin community. Yeah, no, that's a

39:40

great point. And I think it's

39:42

an underappreciated connection between the

39:44

economic paradigm and what people

39:47

are doing. Because if

39:49

you can make a good living

39:51

stealing, I'll always pick

39:54

on Putin, but insert whatever

39:56

statesman you want here. Putin has his $200

39:58

billion net worth. or whatever

40:00

it is, all from stealing, well, a

40:02

lot of guys are gonna imitate that. Well, he did it and

40:04

he's at the top of the heap. I think I'll do it

40:06

too. But if you go into a

40:08

world where the stealing is not so profitable and you

40:10

can't have a 200 billion net worth statesman, or you

40:13

could put a Nancy Pelosi in here, right? She

40:15

makes a few hundred grand a year, but her

40:18

net worth is, I don't even know. 200

40:20

million. $200 million. People

40:23

are gonna imitate that. But if you're in

40:25

a world where the stealing is not profitable

40:27

or less possible, let's say, well, then people

40:29

are gonna imitate productive strategies for

40:31

creating wealth. So there seems to be this connection

40:33

between the economic paradigm and what

40:36

is being culturally propagated via

40:39

imitation. I

40:42

mean, I scarcely can understand this, but it

40:44

seems like there's a deep connection. Yeah, there

40:46

is. But I would say

40:48

that within the fiat economy, money

40:50

and status have become very, very closely

40:53

linked, right, to the point where somebody

40:55

like Warren Buffett, who

40:58

hasn't built or created any goods

41:00

or service, he's just sort of

41:02

like pushed money around,

41:07

but he's like super well-respected. He's very

41:09

high on the status ladder, which

41:12

at least traditionally wasn't

41:14

the case. So like you look

41:17

at biblical times, some

41:19

of the most despised people were tax

41:21

collectors and prostitutes. And if you look

41:24

at that time period, prostitutes probably made

41:26

a lot of money just because it

41:28

was just so rare for people to

41:30

do that. So the

41:33

price on prostitution would go up

41:35

because there's less supply and there's

41:37

a lot of demand and so

41:39

on. Similar with tax

41:41

collectors, but they didn't have

41:44

very high status, right? And this is one

41:46

of the things

41:48

in the Bible that you learn is

41:50

that money and status weren't necessarily correlated

41:52

at that time. In large

41:54

part because tax collectors that were seen as like

41:57

completely run-seeking and they definitely were. just collected

41:59

more tax than they needed to, and they

42:02

used that as profit. So

42:05

there are times and places

42:07

where the status hierarchy depends

42:10

on something other than money. But

42:13

in a fiat economy, especially

42:15

sort of with the breakdown on morality

42:18

and sort of like that move away

42:20

from natural law, it's

42:22

become sort of almost the only measure

42:25

that people are willing to sort of notice. And

42:31

that way it becomes even worse because

42:35

now you can justify almost anything as long

42:37

as you make money. Ah, I made bank,

42:39

so who cares, right? Like it's horrible. Yeah,

42:43

it's a great point. I mean,

42:46

and at least in a sound

42:48

money world, even the rich are gonna

42:50

be people that have

42:52

rendered the most useful work or

42:54

favors to society, so it's

42:57

like the status is somewhat warranted to the degree they

42:59

do get status for being rich. It's like, well, okay, you

43:01

solved a lot of problems for people. Like maybe you do

43:04

deserve high status and we want people to imitate you, successful

43:07

entrepreneur guy, but

43:10

we don't want people to imitate the course of

43:13

political authority figures. Yeah,

43:15

and there's a lot of them. People imitate them

43:17

to a crazy degree, which

43:20

I mean, in a

43:23

sense, I suspect that Diddy was

43:25

imitating somebody, right? Sure. Like

43:27

it was- His handlers probably.

43:29

Yeah, and a lot of

43:31

people in politics, that

43:34

sort of, like

43:36

they seem to want to create these

43:40

weird culture personality around themselves and

43:42

so on to gain

43:46

power. They're almost imitating

43:48

like Kim Jong Un or something. It's

43:50

really weird that way, but that's

43:53

the path of nihilism. That's the path. Well,

43:55

she gets back to the crypto shit-coinery. A

43:58

lot of those are little money. and he

44:00

cults too, right? Yeah, yeah. A little,

44:02

seems hard. So the other, this is

44:05

the titles of chapters three and four, which is

44:07

still under part one, the illusion of authority. Now

44:10

the author mentions the

44:13

consequentialist justifications for political

44:15

authority. And then he

44:17

also names political authority

44:19

as a moral illusion. The

44:24

consequentialist is something like, you know,

44:27

well, government coercion's okay

44:29

because we get good outcomes, something like

44:32

that. And then the

44:35

moral illusion, I think he draws parallels

44:37

to slavery to say, you know,

44:39

well, there was a point in time where slavery was

44:41

normalized and everyone just thought it was fine because everyone's

44:43

doing it. Clearly it's not, you

44:45

know, it's one thing to be widespread. It's another thing

44:47

to be morally just. So

44:51

what would you say about those two

44:53

domains? Consequentialist justifications and political authority is

44:56

moral illusion. Consequentialism, I

44:59

think is morally bankrupt. I

45:01

think it's very much like utilitarianism, do the

45:03

most good for most people or something like

45:05

that. But then, you know,

45:09

you can look at the trolley dilemma or

45:11

whatever and okay, is it okay now to

45:13

go harvest organs of a completely healthy person

45:15

so you can make five people live? Exactly.

45:18

And stuff like that gets weird

45:20

real quick. So I

45:23

don't put any stock in that. I

45:25

don't think anyone should from a philosophical

45:27

standpoint, but that is the justification once

45:30

again, by the people that are trying

45:32

to rationalize things at any level, right?

45:34

And like you were saying, this happens

45:36

in the altcoin space all the time.

45:39

Oh yeah, those people are great because,

45:41

you know, they're making my investment go

45:43

up. Therefore, I will

45:45

give whatever justification that they

45:48

need. And it's a

45:50

deep moral corruption when you have

45:52

bags. You have bags

45:55

if you will. And that's the dynamic

45:57

at play. have

46:00

something tied, if your status is

46:02

tied to a particular belief, then

46:06

you're going to support that belief with

46:08

whatever rationalization you can. And

46:10

we see this in politics all the

46:12

time where people will

46:14

justify whatever their party is doing, right?

46:16

Yeah. In whatever way, and they will

46:18

use the dirtiest, stupidest

46:21

rhetoric or like not

46:23

really even arguments because most of these

46:25

things are ultimately just

46:27

based on your feelings and sort

46:30

of emotional manipulation much more than

46:32

they are intellectual arguments,

46:35

rationales, although

46:37

I mean, obviously there are people that try, but

46:40

like they don't hold any water

46:42

and you can almost feel it

46:44

when you read the stuff. There's

46:46

just sort of like a

46:49

deep dishonesty in all of them and

46:51

they kind of know it, right? And

46:53

I've seen this with atheists too, right?

46:56

They'll make arguments almost for the sake of

46:59

making the argument, not because

47:01

they believe it, but because they just want

47:03

to sort

47:05

of undermine you or something or, hey, here,

47:08

you know, checkmate maxis or whatever, right?

47:11

Like it's not intellectually honest.

47:14

And I really hate that

47:17

about like a lot of the discourse

47:19

because so much of it is scoring points

47:22

for your side or something, you know,

47:24

not necessarily about- It's not aimed at

47:26

truth. Yeah, it's not. It's

47:28

about popularity, which happens

47:30

in democracy significantly. Yeah. Yeah.

47:35

It is frustrating that because

47:37

you do need to have, I mean,

47:40

relatively extreme humility if you're going to

47:42

engage in actual discourse, right?

47:44

But the presumption has to be there's

47:47

something from this conversation that I can learn or

47:49

something from this person that I can learn that

47:51

I don't yet know. But if

47:53

you forego that presumption, then you're just in

47:55

this other game where it's like, how do

47:57

I- How do I go up

48:00

the steps? of the thing that we're doing.

48:02

Yeah, it tends to be the ad hominem

48:04

attacks, you're

48:07

making emotional appeals to the audience

48:09

rather than logical appeals. And I

48:12

would argue that's what these presidential debates

48:14

are now, right? There's not even any

48:16

logic at all going between them. Like

48:18

zero, I don't think there's one single

48:20

logical appeal being made. It's just emotional

48:24

hype. Yeah, and it's

48:27

sad because that is how most people

48:29

actually get argued to things is through

48:31

rhetoric. And I think

48:34

it was Aristotle who said that, very

48:37

few people are convinced by dialectic.

48:39

They're way more convinced

48:41

by rhetoric. And it's

48:44

not even like an IQ test per se. Once

48:48

again, I think it's more of a

48:50

virtue test because it's much

48:53

more about how honest are you

48:55

with the actual argument and what

48:57

are you convinced by? Being

49:00

in the in-group or the truth? And

49:02

for a lot of people, it's all about being

49:04

in the in-group and you could be

49:06

Republican, you could be Democrat, you could be whatever. And

49:11

once again, going back to what Peter Saint-Ogne said,

49:14

there is this desire to be

49:17

in the in-group if your primary

49:20

priority is safety. So

49:23

people that sort of feel secure,

49:27

that have some level

49:29

of agency or believe in their

49:31

own agency tend to pursue truth

49:33

way more, which is why

49:35

I think you have among

49:38

Bitcoiners a lot more of that than like-

49:41

Yeah, a lot of disagreeableness to

49:43

people that aren't afraid to stand

49:45

apart from the crowd and say, you're all wrong. Like

49:48

I'm standing on a principle, which is not

49:50

about your opinion so much. And that's

49:53

almost a prerequisite to get into Bitcoin

49:56

because Bitcoin is this fringe thing

49:58

still. That's

50:01

interesting. What, okay, so then

50:03

part two

50:05

of the book, so it

50:07

sort of dismantles or at least penetrates

50:10

the illusion of political authority, helps

50:14

us see through the veil, so to speak. Then

50:16

the author goes into alternatives

50:18

to political authority. And

50:22

this is where, you know, I

50:26

found on my own conversations with people, a

50:29

lot of people can penetrate the veil actually.

50:31

Yeah, things are really messed up and it's

50:33

not ideal. But then the alternatives

50:37

part is where the conversation gets tricky because you're

50:39

like, when you start proposing these things, they're like,

50:41

oh, that would never work. Who's gonna build the roads,

50:43

you know, all these tropes. And

50:45

it's something, I think it comes into that

50:47

status quo bias, which is like, whatever is

50:49

is just preferable to what we don't know.

50:51

You know, the scene versus the unseen, something

50:53

like that. So

50:56

the first chapter in part two

50:58

of the book is titled,

51:01

Anarchism and Free Market. Obviously

51:05

this is a, you know, he's

51:07

introducing anarcho-capitalism here. The

51:10

idea of private law, defense agencies,

51:12

you know, market mechanisms for governance

51:14

rather than just this top down

51:17

coercive structure. How

51:20

do you introduce these ideas to

51:22

people that aren't familiar with them?

51:25

The challenge is like, there's nowhere to really point. We

51:28

don't have anywhere to point, like, look, here's how they do

51:30

it over here. There's examples in history and whatnot, but in

51:33

modern fiat world, there's just not a lot

51:35

of things to point to. Well, I mean,

51:37

at least with stuff like police protection and

51:40

stuff like that, the businesses that survived

51:42

during like the BLM riots, private

51:45

security guards. Yeah, private security guards.

51:47

Your business was fine, but you

51:50

depended on the police. Not

51:53

so much. And this is where I think

51:56

introducing market forces is generally

51:58

a good thing. And people

52:00

don't necessarily believe that. They

52:04

partly because of the status quo

52:06

bias, but also because

52:08

they're, you know, there's

52:10

a security in thinking that your

52:13

current system is good enough, right?

52:15

Or you don't want to

52:17

experiment with things that might upset the Apple

52:19

card and make you have

52:22

to adjust things too much. So in

52:24

a sense, I think a lot of people are

52:26

just kind of lazy or slothful or something. They

52:28

don't want to transition to,

52:30

you know, new systems and they're, they're

52:33

afraid of it. They fear it in

52:35

some way because now they have to

52:37

learn something new. Oh my God, I

52:39

have to, I have responsibility again or

52:42

whatever. So there's certainly a

52:44

lot of that. But

52:46

yeah, I mean, introducing them to

52:48

that is not, is not easy.

52:51

And it does require, I think,

52:54

a deep intellectual humility, which

52:56

most people don't

52:58

have or don't want to have because

53:00

they'd rather just sort of keep going

53:02

with that, with what they have because

53:05

they're kind of uncomfortable already. And

53:07

this is where, you know, societal

53:10

change almost always happens when enough

53:12

people are uncomfortable, right? And like, and things

53:16

get so bad that they say, oh, like,

53:19

we have to do something different now because

53:21

we can't even get put bread on our,

53:24

on our dinner tables or whatever that

53:26

it's at that point. And it takes, you

53:29

know, people can take a lot and it

53:31

takes up until a certain

53:34

threshold before people are willing to

53:36

upend the current system. And I mean,

53:40

in a sense, I suppose that's good

53:42

because then we're not having civil war

53:44

and revolution. And I mean, those things

53:46

are absolutely hard as bad as things

53:49

have been the last four years. I

53:52

think it pales in comparison to like the

53:54

evil of a civil war. Of course. Yeah.

53:57

Yeah. There's this. well,

54:00

again, status quo bias, or you could call it

54:02

like a homeostasis in a way, or like people

54:04

just try to, you know, this is sort of

54:06

working until it's

54:09

just so unbelievably painful. Typically, as

54:11

you said, when the food stops

54:13

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54:15

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54:17

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54:20

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54:22

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love. Anarcho-capitalism,

59:14

I mean, and the word anarchy

59:16

even has this very specifically anarchy,

59:18

has a very specific negative connotation

59:20

around it. This is

59:23

what most political

59:25

rhetoricians would say, like if we don't

59:27

do this, pass this law or

59:29

print this money, things will descend

59:31

into anarchy. It's just

59:33

synonymous with chaos and uncontrolled violence,

59:36

I guess. But the

59:38

word anarchy just means no

59:41

anarchon, no ruler. It doesn't

59:43

mean no rules. Even

59:47

early US in many ways

59:49

was anarchic. You

59:52

basically have these rule structures, but people opt into them or

59:54

they opt out of them if they don't work for them

59:56

and that's how that works. How

1:00:00

do you dissect

1:00:02

that idea? The idea of anarcho-capitalism,

1:00:04

again, given that we can't see

1:00:06

it anywhere in the world, and

1:00:09

a lot of people don't seem capable of

1:00:12

getting to that level of abstraction or vision

1:00:15

perhaps, how can we

1:00:19

ever hope to invite the masses

1:00:22

into an anarcho-capitalistic future if they can't

1:00:24

even fathom it and there's nothing to

1:00:26

point to? Yeah, I

1:00:28

would, first of all, rebrand

1:00:30

anarcho-capitalism to decentralize capitalism because

1:00:32

I think that that has

1:00:35

better connotations. If we're talking

1:00:37

about rhetoric, well, anarchy's

1:00:40

rhetorically pretty terrible. It's

1:00:43

got too many bad

1:00:45

connotations associated with it. Decentralized

1:00:47

capitalism seems to me the

1:00:49

better branding. And

1:00:51

I would say that we've

1:00:53

seen how it works in Bitcoin and

1:00:56

that's, I think, something very

1:00:58

positive, where you don't have

1:01:01

a central Vitalik Buterin or

1:01:03

Charles Hotzkinson telling other

1:01:05

people, here's the roadmap we're gonna do. And of

1:01:08

course, they've all been disasters and they

1:01:10

don't keep their promises and they end

1:01:12

up doing kind of

1:01:15

self-serving things and so on. Whereas

1:01:17

in Bitcoin, you have entire

1:01:21

companies that are

1:01:23

creating things off of

1:01:26

Bitcoin. They're not rent-seeking

1:01:28

or being subsidized by some central foundation

1:01:30

and so on. And it

1:01:33

keeps developing, right? Like we

1:01:35

just had like

1:01:37

an arc transaction on mainnet and

1:01:42

they're able to do that without

1:01:44

any softworks or whatever. And that

1:01:46

sort of like permissionless innovation, it

1:01:48

shouldn't be called anarchy, per se. It's

1:01:51

decentralized and it works great. It

1:01:54

sort of allows the brilliance

1:01:58

and genius of each and every company. individual

1:02:00

to like sort of come to pass so

1:02:03

some so instead of sort

1:02:05

of defining ourselves as defining

1:02:08

this Alternate

1:02:11

system as a negative

1:02:13

thing right like without rulers or something

1:02:15

like that Inside

1:02:18

let's make a more positive

1:02:20

vision right like where each person

1:02:22

is sort of self-sovereign and They

1:02:25

are able to contribute value in a

1:02:28

way without having

1:02:30

to get the permission of others

1:02:32

and provide provide value and I

1:02:35

think it allows for a lot more bilateral Transactions

1:02:38

where you're providing value either

1:02:41

in goods or services to

1:02:43

to other people and you know, this

1:02:45

is where entrepreneurs can

1:02:48

come in and figure out different ways of

1:02:50

doing things and you get marked a competition

1:02:52

and and you converge on Really

1:02:54

innovative interesting and effective solutions

1:02:56

very quickly instead of sort

1:02:59

of central pop-down, you know you

1:03:03

know ruler based Systems

1:03:06

where instead of discovering

1:03:10

Good systems right or good solutions

1:03:13

you you have sort of we think this

1:03:15

might work Let's just see what happens and

1:03:17

a lot of people suffer in the meantime

1:03:20

And they might not ever converge to the solution

1:03:22

because there are rent seekers around the current system

1:03:25

and then one offset the apple Card and so

1:03:27

on and this this happens in fiat money all

1:03:29

the time that that

1:03:31

sort of vision should

1:03:34

be maybe called like centralized capitalism or

1:03:36

something like that or it's

1:03:39

a it has all sorts of

1:03:41

vulnerabilities and You

1:03:43

know cancerous growth and someone I

1:03:46

think decentralized Capitalism

1:03:48

could definitely be something that That

1:03:52

maybe people would sign on to and

1:03:54

and because we have this example in

1:03:56

dick coin and we can see how

1:03:58

it's worked You

1:04:00

know, maybe maybe that's input us to try a

1:04:02

little bit more and sort of slowly extend from

1:04:04

there. Bitcoin is the most purely Capitalistic

1:04:08

or decentralized capitalistic then

1:04:10

we've ever done basically Prior

1:04:14

to that, I guess is the

1:04:16

internet prior to that I guess

1:04:19

is like the US constitutional public

1:04:22

You know, so when it's been Growing

1:04:25

by leaps and bounds, but then you also you also

1:04:27

have the point comparison It's also a

1:04:29

good way to dismantle the shit more Centralized

1:04:33

capitalism even though it's more like Socialism

1:04:36

in a way. I mean not necessarily not

1:04:38

really violating a property. I get us to just

1:04:40

well, it's more authoritarian, right? they've Sort

1:04:44

of assigned themselves a political authority

1:04:46

over the protocol and and that's

1:04:48

that's ultimately what they've done is

1:04:50

hey we're gonna make the system

1:04:53

this way and y'all can't do anything about it

1:04:55

and It's it

1:04:57

I don't know why anyone would sign

1:04:59

on for that that's especially given their

1:05:01

track record, but that seems to be

1:05:03

the case Yeah, the only marginal I

1:05:05

guess improvement over traditional fiat will be

1:05:07

you can opt out Yeah more easily

1:05:09

than you can of the autism That's

1:05:13

a great idea. I also thought Instead

1:05:16

of calling it, you know fascism

1:05:19

communism democracy Statism like well,

1:05:21

let's just call it coercive ism. It's like you

1:05:23

need uninitiated coercion

1:05:27

To get it to work What I'm whichever model

1:05:29

you're running out and so that maybe that would

1:05:31

awaken people and more to the reality of what

1:05:33

this thing is We're because then you get these

1:05:35

silly arguments really. Oh, no, it's fascism. Oh, no,

1:05:37

it's common as a mess I'm also I should

1:05:40

have it. It's like guys There's a common denominator

1:05:42

between all these things and you're

1:05:44

no matter which one you're arguing for or against

1:05:47

You're arguing for or against uninitiated legalized

1:05:51

institutionalized coercion and

1:05:53

that is a problem right because then you run into

1:05:55

the moral argument in a way that just There's no

1:05:57

way around it. Right? It's never going to be more

1:05:59

no matter which way you spin it. Because

1:06:02

you're saying we need to bludgeon these people over the head to

1:06:04

get them to do what the plan says.

1:06:07

And for a long time that

1:06:09

was called tyranny. Yes, exactly. And

1:06:13

there was sort of like this

1:06:15

line between tyranny and non-tyranny and

1:06:17

natural rights. If you respect

1:06:20

natural rights, it wasn't tyranny. If you

1:06:22

did, then it wasn't tyranny.

1:06:24

And that was how it

1:06:27

was separated. But this idea of natural

1:06:29

rights has not been very popular more

1:06:34

recently, largely because I think

1:06:37

the powers that be, the

1:06:39

elites, the regime or whatever,

1:06:41

they've sort of like played

1:06:44

down this idea of tyranny and

1:06:46

like sort of rebranded it and

1:06:49

called it just sort of directing the

1:06:51

economy or

1:06:53

something like that or guiding

1:06:56

things. Public private partnerships.

1:06:59

Yeah, sort of like give you this

1:07:01

image of them being like Moses leading

1:07:03

them out of the law or something

1:07:05

like that. But in reality, it's actually

1:07:08

tyranny. And I think that we should

1:07:10

probably call it that because

1:07:12

that's what coercion is, it's tyranny.

1:07:15

Yeah, no, bingo. And then also

1:07:18

while they've sort of softened that

1:07:21

side of the field, they've

1:07:23

also co-opted, libertarianism

1:07:26

has now become a political

1:07:28

party. It's like, wait a minute, that's

1:07:30

not what that was supposed to be. So

1:07:33

yeah, it is funny how it's just a language

1:07:35

game. It creates, we're

1:07:37

battling for, what

1:07:40

did Ayn Rand say something about philosophy? Like

1:07:43

you're battling for the mind

1:07:45

of man in a way, but it's not

1:07:47

battle is kind of a bad metaphor because

1:07:49

you're not trying to storm someone's mind and

1:07:51

take it. It's like you're inviting them in

1:07:53

with logic and rational argumentation. And

1:07:56

so, yeah, I

1:07:58

guess the status just can't win on that. that

1:08:00

terrain, so they always try to devolve the

1:08:03

conflict into the domain of emotional,

1:08:07

whatever you call that, emotion. Rhetoric. Rhetoric,

1:08:10

yeah. And their

1:08:12

weapons are mostly propaganda in that

1:08:14

score. And it's unfortunate because I

1:08:17

think Aristotle identified

1:08:19

that most people are convinced by rhetoric.

1:08:21

So in a democracy, you're almost always

1:08:23

going to see rhetoric dominate just because

1:08:25

that's how most people are wired. It's

1:08:28

actually very uncommon for people to

1:08:30

be devoted to dialectic and actually

1:08:32

be argued

1:08:35

into things. Although many people have the

1:08:37

conceit that they are one of those

1:08:39

people. And then you see

1:08:41

actually how they argue or have a,

1:08:45

what appeals that they make. And

1:08:47

you clearly see that they're rhetoricians.

1:08:49

Yeah, I mean, again, I

1:08:52

think we're all at least

1:08:54

part of, like we're all driven

1:08:56

by emotions of course, but yet

1:08:59

you need the logical part

1:09:01

of yourself to balance out some of

1:09:03

that. Like if you just ran around making decisions

1:09:06

on emotion all the time, your life would be

1:09:08

a disaster, right? You need to take a step

1:09:10

back, reflect, plan for yourself. Well,

1:09:12

I think a human is

1:09:14

like most happy or

1:09:18

most sort of have inner peace

1:09:21

if you're rhetoric and

1:09:23

dialectic are aligned. Yes, yes, heart,

1:09:25

mind, resonance. But

1:09:27

that takes a lot because

1:09:30

the inner self can't necessarily be

1:09:36

conformed to the rhetoric that you're

1:09:38

spouting. It has to come from

1:09:40

truth. Yes, yeah. So that dialectic

1:09:42

and rhetoric alignment is actually quite

1:09:44

difficult unless you let the dialectic

1:09:46

take the lead. If you let

1:09:48

the rhetoric take the lead, then

1:09:51

you get into a lot

1:09:54

of rationalization, mental gymnastics, things like that.

1:09:57

And unfortunately that's where most people are.

1:10:00

because they value safety so much or

1:10:02

they value being in the in group

1:10:04

so much. And this I think also

1:10:06

is part of why so many people

1:10:09

are so anxious today. Because if

1:10:12

the threat of being in the out group

1:10:14

is always sort of ever present, of course you're

1:10:16

going to be anxious because what

1:10:18

if I get canceled? What if I, yeah. And

1:10:22

that's an unfortunate reality

1:10:25

that most people are just deathly afraid of

1:10:27

in a fiat economy. Because if you are

1:10:29

cut off from the in group and

1:10:31

you have like a job at an investment

1:10:33

bank, or any

1:10:36

fiat job, you could very much

1:10:38

get canceled and now what do you have? Yeah,

1:10:42

I don't know. Like I don't have anything. Oh,

1:10:44

what am I going to do? And

1:10:47

that's a very like unfortunate place

1:10:49

to be. And I get why

1:10:51

people are like that, but

1:10:54

it's part of democracy, part

1:10:57

of sort of the system that

1:10:59

we have set up that people are

1:11:01

so influenced by rhetoric.

1:11:04

So that's what gets played too. If

1:11:08

we had a different system, maybe one

1:11:11

that's more based on ruling a lead or something,

1:11:15

maybe it would be a little more dialectical, I don't

1:11:17

know. And that's not to say

1:11:19

that it's necessarily better, but

1:11:23

the current system that we have is

1:11:25

largely based on rhetoric, just because that's

1:11:28

how most people are wired. Yeah, yeah,

1:11:30

no, that's a great point. And then

1:11:32

the rhetoric is

1:11:34

self-deception in a way, right? It's either you're

1:11:36

buying into someone else's rhetoric, which is deceptive

1:11:39

by definition, or you

1:11:41

can also deceive yourself. And then that

1:11:43

is, Verweke

1:11:46

often says self-deception is like the opposite of wisdom

1:11:48

in a way, right? Like wisdom is seeing

1:11:50

your own self-deception and overcoming self-deception is

1:11:53

one major component of it. I

1:11:56

had Robert Grant on the show recently, and he said, when

1:11:58

you learn to... feel

1:12:00

with the mind and think with the

1:12:02

heart, the river of wisdom flows. So

1:12:05

when you get resonance between these two things,

1:12:07

you can actually overcome the self-deception and make

1:12:09

good decisions. That

1:12:11

feels about right. It's like, it's not

1:12:14

purely computational rational. It's like, there's

1:12:16

also the human component. That's where the moral and

1:12:18

the ethical lives is like it's in the heart,

1:12:20

right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean,

1:12:22

there is a definite utility to

1:12:24

rhetoric and it's to reinforce the

1:12:27

dialectic. And this is what I

1:12:29

think Christianity would call faith, right?

1:12:31

It's, if you believe something,

1:12:34

using the rhetorical devices and things

1:12:36

to strengthen what you already believe

1:12:39

is a virtuous thing, right? Like

1:12:41

it helps you do that stuff. Like,

1:12:45

you know, I mean, one of

1:12:47

the rhetorical devices that the state uses,

1:12:49

for example, is the flag, right? Again,

1:12:52

you know, for patriotism and stuff like

1:12:54

that, it's supposed to reinforce this other

1:12:57

thing that you believe

1:12:59

in the country that you're a part

1:13:01

of. And the flag is a symbol.

1:13:03

It's a rhetorical device

1:13:05

to help you strengthen the

1:13:07

thing that you've hopefully determined

1:13:10

through dialectic. And that's what

1:13:12

it's for. And, you know, this is why I

1:13:14

like memes and stuff within Bitcoin, you know, not

1:13:16

your keys, not your coins, stuff like that. It's

1:13:19

a way to reinforce at

1:13:22

an emotional level what you believe

1:13:24

at sort of like an

1:13:27

intellectual level. And that combination

1:13:29

is very powerful. If you

1:13:31

can sort of like meme

1:13:33

yourself into having good habits,

1:13:35

well, that's wonderful. I think

1:13:37

that's awesome. But

1:13:40

the wrong way to use it

1:13:42

is to make you believe something

1:13:44

that is wrong or false or

1:13:47

lies, or, you know, whatever justifies

1:13:49

your own sin or wrongdoing or

1:13:51

fraud or whatever. That's where I

1:13:53

think it goes wrong. Yes,

1:13:55

yeah, yeah. Yes, you

1:13:57

must have like... when

1:14:00

you look through the rhetorical

1:14:02

device or the symbol or the icon, that

1:14:04

needs to have firm intellectual footing and truth.

1:14:08

And then the device is sort of a, almost

1:14:10

like a memory device or reinforcing

1:14:12

the emotional involvement with it. Yeah,

1:14:15

that makes a lot of sense, but the state

1:14:17

puts the cart before the horse, right? They just

1:14:19

push out the propaganda. This is what defines propaganda,

1:14:21

maybe. It's like, it's all that symbology, but

1:14:24

there's no truth underneath it. Yeah. And

1:14:26

it's really tricky with propaganda because

1:14:28

it's so close to the

1:14:30

truth, right? Yeah. And like the

1:14:32

best propaganda, they don't say any lies.

1:14:35

They just tell you the truth that they want

1:14:37

you to know and they don't give you any

1:14:39

of the other side. And that

1:14:41

it's a way of manipulation, the

1:14:44

sort of like at an

1:14:46

emotional level, so that you're

1:14:48

turned away from what you already believe,

1:14:50

which is why like so

1:14:52

much of propaganda is so dangerous. And I

1:14:55

don't understand like the people that are, like

1:14:59

a lot of libertarians, for example, they'll say, oh,

1:15:01

I read the New York Times to know what

1:15:03

the opposite side is thinking. You're

1:15:05

also exposing yourself to a lot

1:15:08

of freaking propaganda. And if

1:15:10

you think you're immune from propaganda, you

1:15:12

probably don't understand how propaganda works because

1:15:15

it works at like sort of like this

1:15:17

base emotional level. And

1:15:19

if you're not careful about the propaganda

1:15:21

that you're consuming, like

1:15:23

you will get influence. And I've seen a

1:15:26

lot of people, supposedly

1:15:28

libertarian, that like

1:15:30

Veer left as a result of that,

1:15:33

right? They get influenced by propaganda so

1:15:35

much. And maybe there is some level

1:15:37

of fear in them of, oh,

1:15:39

maybe I should be with this group

1:15:41

because that's more secure or they sort

1:15:44

of act like they're

1:15:46

outside it, but they're really in it and so on.

1:15:48

And it becomes this intellectually

1:15:51

dishonest game that they end up playing

1:15:53

to sort of justify why

1:15:55

they want to be in this in

1:15:58

group. And you, can

1:16:00

see the mental gymnastics when they talk. And

1:16:03

it's actually quite horrible.

1:16:06

But this is why it's like,

1:16:08

I don't agree with the assessment. Oh,

1:16:10

we should hear from all sides and

1:16:12

blah, blah, blah. No, you

1:16:15

don't understand how vulnerable you are and how

1:16:17

big your attack surface is when it comes

1:16:19

to rhetoric because it is, there

1:16:22

are so many ways to like sort of

1:16:25

get past your intellectual guard, right? That's

1:16:27

what it is. Like get underneath and

1:16:29

dig under this wall that you have

1:16:31

or go over the wall that you have.

1:16:34

Undermine, that's what undermine actually means. Dig

1:16:36

beneath the wall and compromise its

1:16:39

fortifications. So you're compromising the intellectual

1:16:41

fortifications through this undermine. The

1:16:43

archetypal example that comes to mind is from each

1:16:45

according to their ability to each according to their

1:16:47

need. My heart loves it. It's

1:16:49

like, oh, that sounds great. You know, like

1:16:51

that sounds very peaceful and everyone will be

1:16:54

taken care of and we don't have to

1:16:56

fight about anything. And it's

1:16:58

all done. But then as soon as you're in a like looks at

1:17:00

it, it's like, hold up. How,

1:17:02

who's determining whose ability? How are we

1:17:04

motivating those of ability to serve those

1:17:06

with need? Who's quantifying need? Like who's

1:17:08

arbitrating all of this? You know, it's

1:17:10

very squishy. And so it

1:17:12

doesn't hold up to intellectual. Yeah, and this

1:17:15

is how rhetoric works is that almost always

1:17:17

it's like exactly

1:17:19

that example, it sounds

1:17:21

really good. But the frame

1:17:23

by which it comes through, yes,

1:17:26

like sort of like a frame

1:17:28

bro. Yeah, they, they, they smuggle

1:17:30

in all of these like assumptions

1:17:32

about how things are going to

1:17:34

be in order to make that

1:17:36

thing true, including stuff like who

1:17:38

determines this, that, or whatever. And

1:17:42

that, and that's what you have. If

1:17:44

you understand propaganda, that's the first place

1:17:46

you would look is how are they

1:17:48

framing this phrase? Right? Like what,

1:17:50

what are the sort of like

1:17:52

intellectual assumptions that are being smuggled in

1:17:55

with this feel good thing or

1:17:57

feel bad thing that I have

1:17:59

to be. very wary of and

1:18:02

this is the hard work of

1:18:04

sort of parsing what people are

1:18:06

saying is, okay, they

1:18:08

have certain assumptions on the statement and what

1:18:11

are these assumptions and are they intellectually true?

1:18:13

And that is very, very hard, right? It

1:18:15

takes so much work to go through each

1:18:17

statement and if you are willing to do

1:18:20

that, yeah, by all means, go and read

1:18:22

the New York Times and if you can

1:18:24

do that for each statement you

1:18:27

can honestly and intellectually

1:18:29

understand where it's coming from and

1:18:31

you can disantle. I

1:18:33

give props to people that can do that but

1:18:35

it is just incredibly hard. I

1:18:37

don't think it's possible. It's like diet, right?

1:18:40

If you're eating whatever sour

1:18:42

patch kids every day, it's going to get

1:18:44

in your metabolism and gunk you up. You

1:18:46

can't like out rationalize it. It's the same

1:18:48

thing with a diet of information. All right,

1:18:52

so getting back to the

1:18:55

book here. We're still in part two which

1:18:57

is the alternatives to political authority. Author

1:19:01

in chapter seven goes into public

1:19:03

goods and market failures. Talking

1:19:08

about the free rider problem which is often

1:19:10

cited as

1:19:12

it pertains to public goods and then

1:19:15

I'll mix in chapter eight here too just

1:19:17

in the interest of time which is titled

1:19:19

security without the state. I

1:19:22

still have not found actually what I

1:19:24

consider to be a compelling example of

1:19:27

a market failure in the real world.

1:19:29

I've heard a lot of really smart

1:19:31

arguments. I would say

1:19:33

the most intelligent ones I've heard are from people like

1:19:35

Eric Weinstein. He

1:19:38

cited the example of the nuclear

1:19:40

weapon in a backpack that

1:19:43

that's a market failure but I was like, well

1:19:45

actually, doesn't the state produce nuclear weapons? I don't

1:19:47

think the market ever produced that. What

1:19:52

can we say about I guess

1:19:54

public goods or

1:19:56

market failures even real and

1:19:59

then how this is

1:20:01

probably people's number one concern and number one

1:20:03

counter argument to what

1:20:06

we're calling decentralized capitalism or as

1:20:08

more traditionally called anarcho-capitalism that without

1:20:11

the state, if it's not who's

1:20:13

gonna build the roads, it's how are we gonna

1:20:15

protect the borders? How are we gonna defend ourselves?

1:20:17

How are we gonna have security? So

1:20:19

what can we say about these

1:20:21

points? Yeah, so first question about

1:20:24

public goods. And we discussed this, I

1:20:27

think, maybe two times ago when

1:20:29

I was on the show about like when

1:20:32

we were discussing Hans Hermann Hoppe's

1:20:35

democracy that got that fail, like

1:20:37

the idea of public property is itself in

1:20:39

an anthem. Yeah, it's not too long. And

1:20:41

of course you're going to have weird free

1:20:43

rider problems because we all own it, but

1:20:46

we don't. Exactly. And we can use it,

1:20:48

but we can't. Get the rights, but we

1:20:50

don't have the responsibilities. Yeah, it's a very,

1:20:52

very strange idea. At least with

1:20:54

a monarchy, you get somebody that owns it

1:20:56

and therefore they have this sort of incentive

1:20:59

to go and take care of it and

1:21:01

do something with it. To say Aristotle, sorry,

1:21:03

I didn't know it one more time. I

1:21:05

think you said when everyone owns everything, no

1:21:07

one takes care of anything. Yeah, exactly. And

1:21:10

that's kind of the problem of

1:21:13

free ridership or whatever, it's this

1:21:15

weird thing. You know, at property,

1:21:17

I think you pointed out last

1:21:19

time or two times ago that it

1:21:22

comes from Latin propé, which is

1:21:25

one zone, right? Like it's a

1:21:27

property. And to

1:21:29

say that it's public one zone, well,

1:21:31

it doesn't make any sense. It's

1:21:34

actually an oxymoron, public property. So

1:21:38

you get rid of those problems just

1:21:40

by having people own things. And I

1:21:42

think that also goes to

1:21:45

stuff like border security and

1:21:49

things like that. If you're responsible

1:21:51

for the security of

1:21:53

your own place, and this is something that Hoppe

1:21:55

points out in his book as well, then

1:21:59

you don't have to. have stuff like

1:22:01

immigration problems or whatever, you

1:22:03

can bring in whoever you want to your own property,

1:22:06

which that's part of property rights.

1:22:09

But you're also responsible if they

1:22:12

incur damage on other people's

1:22:14

property or whatever. And

1:22:16

at that point, you'd be very much more careful

1:22:18

because of the liability of who you invite in.

1:22:21

If it's your mom or whatever, that's fine. But

1:22:25

some military age dude from China

1:22:27

or something? No, you're probably going

1:22:29

to be like, okay, maybe not,

1:22:33

especially if you don't know who they are or whatever.

1:22:35

So there are

1:22:38

natural ways in which this

1:22:40

all can be

1:22:43

resolved. The

1:22:45

main thing about security is I don't

1:22:48

think the

1:22:50

current security regime that we have in

1:22:52

the United States is at all

1:22:54

efficient. We're

1:22:57

starting to doubt whether or not they even

1:22:59

have the right capabilities because in many ways,

1:23:02

the technology that the US

1:23:04

military is based on

1:23:06

is from say 40 years ago. And

1:23:12

Houthis can use a drone to

1:23:14

take out entire warships. That

1:23:18

tells you something is horribly off

1:23:20

about the supposed defense that we

1:23:22

have. I

1:23:26

think private security would do a lot better job. It'd

1:23:28

be a lot more efficient, a lot more affordable. If

1:23:33

you look at the US budget and

1:23:35

all the veterans benefits and all this

1:23:37

other stuff, it actually takes

1:23:39

up a very significant chunk of

1:23:41

the national budget. Is

1:23:44

that really worthwhile

1:23:46

or is it efficient or is

1:23:48

that something that we should pay

1:23:50

for at that level? I really

1:23:52

don't think so. And I think

1:23:54

in a decentralized

1:23:58

capitalist society, we would. find out very

1:24:00

quickly that a lot

1:24:02

of that is just overkill. And there's

1:24:04

probably significant amounts of rent seekers that

1:24:07

are benefiting hugely,

1:24:10

probably orders of magnitude more cost than in

1:24:12

this fee. What

1:24:14

about market failures? Do you buy into those at all?

1:24:17

I don't, like you were

1:24:19

saying, I haven't seen any market

1:24:21

failures that weren't like caused by

1:24:23

government or something like that. It's

1:24:25

almost always like government failure or

1:24:28

something like that and not market

1:24:30

failure. I don't even know

1:24:32

what that would mean. The market

1:24:34

rejects something that somebody thinks that

1:24:36

is useful. That's the market working.

1:24:39

I mean, that would be an expression of they don't actually think

1:24:41

it's useful. It's almost a definitional

1:24:43

thing because if a market is just where

1:24:46

consensual actors exchange things, it's like, well, if they

1:24:48

don't want it, then it's not going to manifest.

1:24:51

If they do want it, it will manifest. So

1:24:53

how can a market fail? Yeah. Yeah.

1:24:55

I mean, I guess me trying

1:24:57

to steal maybe the thought is

1:25:00

that it violates some natural law

1:25:02

in some way. The

1:25:04

market violates somebody's

1:25:07

rights. But

1:25:10

again, I kind of struggle to think of

1:25:12

one where somehow someone's

1:25:14

rights are being violated in a normal

1:25:17

functioning market. It almost suspends

1:25:19

the definition of market once someone's rights

1:25:21

are violated. Yeah. Because the market is

1:25:23

the free consensual exchange

1:25:25

respecting both participants' rights and every transaction.

1:25:27

Yeah. Once you violate someone's rights, it's

1:25:29

like, well, it's no longer a market.

1:25:31

Yeah. There's some coercion involved. Yeah, exactly.

1:25:33

Somebody and it's like, well, why is

1:25:36

that a market failure? Isn't

1:25:38

that like a

1:25:41

failure maybe to punish the coercion possibly?

1:25:43

I mean, I can maybe see that

1:25:45

where people are, I don't

1:25:47

know, forced to do something

1:25:49

that they would not rather do by

1:25:52

a market participant. But in

1:25:54

that way, they're violating rights. And maybe

1:25:56

they think that some other entity.

1:26:00

that he needs to punish those people.

1:26:02

Yeah. But yeah. Well,

1:26:04

yeah, I think we're both struggling with this

1:26:06

one. So if anyone's listening, please let us

1:26:08

know. I would love the challenge, my own

1:26:10

thinking on this, but I have years

1:26:12

of thinking about it, reading about it, talking to people

1:26:14

about it. I've yet to find one that's convincing to

1:26:16

me. Yeah. Chapters

1:26:20

nine and 10. Chapter

1:26:23

nine, the moral cost of government. This

1:26:25

is a very big one. I think

1:26:27

this might be maybe the climax of

1:26:29

the book in

1:26:32

some ways, where he really is getting into the

1:26:35

moral cost of government. And then talking

1:26:37

about utopianism versus realism.

1:26:43

Again, the argument that's often

1:26:45

wielded against

1:26:48

what we're calling decentralized capitalism is

1:26:50

that it's just a utopian thing.

1:26:53

They even make fun of, what do they call

1:26:55

it on Twitter? They call them LOL. Lobertarians.

1:26:59

Lobertarians. It's

1:27:01

like, that would just never work. Ha ha ha ha. And

1:27:04

it's like, what kind of mentality is that? It's

1:27:06

like, if you just say that about everything, we're

1:27:08

never gonna progress to anything. Yeah, I mean, and

1:27:10

that's again, sort of like a rhetorical device. It's

1:27:14

to make it look ridiculous as if,

1:27:17

like no right

1:27:20

thinking person would ever consider this

1:27:22

or something like that. And that's

1:27:24

unfortunately very effective, especially if you're

1:27:26

concerned about ingroup-outgroup. Yeah,

1:27:29

oh, you're called a libertarian.

1:27:31

Mockery is extremely, extremely effective

1:27:34

keeping you in the ingroup. But

1:27:37

yeah, the utopianism versus

1:27:39

realism argument. It's like,

1:27:41

oh, that's not realistic.

1:27:43

Like nothing looks realistic,

1:27:46

especially if you have a significant status

1:27:48

quo bias. It's like, you can't really

1:27:50

imagine things going any other way. So

1:27:53

therefore you sort of

1:27:55

dismiss it out of hand.

1:27:58

But again, like, you know, Things

1:28:01

tend to happen in such a way

1:28:03

that when enough people are

1:28:06

suffering enough, then they're like, okay, well,

1:28:08

whatever this alternative is, it has to

1:28:10

be better than what I'm experiencing now.

1:28:12

At that point, it's like, okay, all

1:28:14

right, we'll try this then. But

1:28:17

yeah, the main, I think,

1:28:19

moral implications are that you get a

1:28:22

lot of people that are sort of

1:28:24

abdicating their own responsibility in many ways.

1:28:27

And they sort

1:28:30

of let the

1:28:33

state get away with way too much

1:28:35

and sort of suffer and

1:28:39

allow their own suffering and the suffering

1:28:41

of others. I mean, the

1:28:43

fact that we had like a

1:28:45

couple of trillion dollar wars in

1:28:47

Iraq and Afghanistan just like added

1:28:49

so much devastation and misery to

1:28:51

the world. You know, millions of

1:28:53

people, right? Millions and millions of

1:28:55

people that are either dead now

1:28:57

or in horrible situations as

1:29:00

a result of that. And we

1:29:03

kind of wash our hands morally

1:29:05

of it rather than think

1:29:08

about the, I

1:29:11

think, the collective responsibility that

1:29:13

we have in sort of supporting

1:29:15

the political authority,

1:29:18

right? Like saying that this is a

1:29:21

legitimate thing that they're allowed to

1:29:23

do. I

1:29:25

think reflects on the

1:29:27

people that allowed it to happen,

1:29:30

which I would say at some

1:29:32

level is the voters, right? Like,

1:29:34

and it gives us responsibility to

1:29:36

some degree, morally for that

1:29:38

outcome. Now, it's so true. And

1:29:40

this one is very, I've thought

1:29:43

about this a lot actually. And like, even

1:29:46

if you don't vote and

1:29:49

you just hold some savings

1:29:51

in US dollars, well,

1:29:53

the war on terror was paid for entirely

1:29:56

by printed money. So

1:29:58

if you were holding dollar. balances at

1:30:00

that time, it was your purchasing power

1:30:02

that was getting stolen to go

1:30:05

and wage the, I don't even call them

1:30:07

wars, by the way, they're just imperialistic campaigns,

1:30:10

right? They're just mass murder, mechanized

1:30:12

mass murder campaigns waged by the

1:30:14

US government against smaller

1:30:17

states, basically, it's gang warfare at

1:30:19

scale. You,

1:30:21

then even if you don't understand

1:30:23

that, that your dollar savings were

1:30:25

being pilfered by the US government

1:30:27

through inflation to fund that murder

1:30:31

campaign, you're still kind of complicit

1:30:33

in an economic way. So it's

1:30:35

like, it gets

1:30:37

very, it makes

1:30:39

me appreciate the complexity of the world when I

1:30:41

think about it that way. It's like, you know,

1:30:43

it's, we do

1:30:45

need to draw these bright lines, but man,

1:30:49

it's complicated, right? And a lot of people don't

1:30:51

under, like they just flat out don't understand inflation.

1:30:53

So it's like, you can forget about them understanding

1:30:55

the rest of this, but the people like Bitcoiners

1:30:57

that do understand inflation and maybe they hold dollar

1:30:59

balances still somewhere. Well,

1:31:02

you can't wash your hands entirely of it.

1:31:04

You are complicit to some extent. And

1:31:06

I say this as someone who holds dollar

1:31:08

balances today, like it's not a fun

1:31:10

thought exercise, but I think

1:31:13

it's true. The bigger one for me

1:31:15

is just like loans in general because

1:31:17

they actually expand the money supply. So

1:31:19

instead of just sort of

1:31:21

leaving your dollars in a cookie jar

1:31:23

that the government can dip

1:31:26

into at any time, you're actually one

1:31:28

of the hands that go in

1:31:30

there. That's big, it takes some

1:31:32

money. So for me, that's the

1:31:34

bigger moral culpability is expanding

1:31:37

the money supply, you know, however small it

1:31:39

is. If you're not, if

1:31:42

you have a 45 day loan on

1:31:44

your credit card for 50 bucks, even

1:31:46

that like dilutes the purchasing power of

1:31:49

everybody else for some short duration for

1:31:51

some amount of time. I

1:31:53

think you're still morally culpable, even if

1:31:55

it's a tiny amount. And that's something

1:31:57

that I'm honestly trying to

1:31:59

get away. away from, right? It's like, okay,

1:32:02

I don't want to have any sort

1:32:04

of like debt facilities and

1:32:08

sort of have that on my conscience. Because morally

1:32:11

speaking, that's

1:32:14

really hard, especially as

1:32:16

someone from America. Right? Like you

1:32:18

have access to a lot of debt, which is

1:32:21

honestly what makes you richer than

1:32:23

people in other countries. But all

1:32:26

these other countries, they're using

1:32:28

paper U.S. dollars to keep

1:32:30

things the way they are

1:32:32

or whatever. And

1:32:36

that's harder for me

1:32:38

than say holding a dollar

1:32:40

balance. Because in many ways, like merchants

1:32:43

won't take Bitcoin and there's no other way

1:32:45

to pay them unless you have a dollar

1:32:48

balance and you got to eat. You got

1:32:50

to buy shoes. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:32:54

It's dirty. It's a dirty game. We're all tied up

1:32:56

in for sure. So

1:33:00

the author talks about utopianism

1:33:03

versus realism. And

1:33:06

I guess this would be the Lulbitarian

1:33:08

thing, right? That we're the

1:33:10

utopians. But it

1:33:12

seems to me like if you

1:33:15

actually get into libertarian philosophy and

1:33:17

thinking that it's very

1:33:20

realistic, actually, maybe

1:33:24

we're not giving enough emphasis

1:33:26

to the darker side of human nature,

1:33:28

like why the things like the state

1:33:30

emerge, they're very opportunistic organizations,

1:33:33

I guess you might say. But

1:33:35

how does the author, I guess, delineate between

1:33:38

those two domains? Because the other thing about

1:33:40

the state is it's often using back into

1:33:42

rhetoric. It's using utopian rhetoric to

1:33:45

sell itself, right? You know,

1:33:47

the from each according to their ability to each

1:33:49

according to the need. Now all the things coming

1:33:51

out of the WEF today are like all this

1:33:53

utopian technocratic nonsense. What they're

1:33:55

actually selling is just more coercion. So

1:33:58

how do we. disentangle those

1:34:00

two ideas. Yeah. I mean, the

1:34:02

rhetoric is always used, you know,

1:34:05

by, by people to one denigrate

1:34:07

one side and prop up the

1:34:09

other side. So, and utopianism

1:34:11

versus realism, like it,

1:34:13

it's always to,

1:34:16

um, sort of make your

1:34:19

own vision seem more realistic and,

1:34:21

uh, other, um, visions

1:34:24

look more unrealistic. And certainly from

1:34:26

the status quo, it feels like

1:34:28

it's a shorter jump to go

1:34:30

with the regimes, uh, plan because

1:34:33

it's usually more of the status quo in some

1:34:36

way, shape or form, um, like,

1:34:38

uh, again, and just give us a little more

1:34:40

power. You could, you could have everything you want.

1:34:42

Yeah. Uh, but

1:34:44

you know, the, the bigger thing

1:34:47

here is that it's, it's not

1:34:49

really even about the

1:34:51

vision, right? It's, it's more about like

1:34:53

what's right and what's wrong as it's

1:34:56

natural law. It's it's a

1:34:58

coercion is wrong. And I

1:35:01

think if people saw it in those terms,

1:35:03

it would be a lot, um,

1:35:05

a lot easier to convince

1:35:08

them of it. But, uh, but the thing

1:35:10

is like, uh, you know, we're,

1:35:12

we're kind of getting into consequentialism or

1:35:15

utilitarianism again, it's like, Oh, well, you

1:35:17

know, theirs isn't realistic and it won't

1:35:19

happen or whatever, but

1:35:21

like if, if you're driven by

1:35:24

moral law or what's right and what's

1:35:26

wrong, then you would just do things

1:35:28

because they're right and not, not because,

1:35:30

Oh, they might lead

1:35:32

to some consequences that we can't foresee

1:35:35

or whatever. And I, I would say

1:35:37

that that's the more stronger argument philosophically.

1:35:39

It's to do the right thing for

1:35:41

its own sake and not, not

1:35:44

because, Oh, they, uh, you know, it

1:35:47

might be unrealistic or realistic or whatever,

1:35:49

because those are all secondary, uh, the,

1:35:51

you do the right thing. Because it's

1:35:53

the right thing, right? Like it's, it's

1:35:55

own reward. Um, and

1:35:57

that that's, that's the main thing

1:36:00

behind. natural law, it's not some

1:36:02

consequentialist thing or some biologically

1:36:04

evolved thing or anything else.

1:36:07

It just is, the

1:36:09

natural law is, and you

1:36:12

either follow it or you don't. And all

1:36:14

evidence that we have is that if you fall

1:36:16

out of natural law, you're gonna be kind of

1:36:18

a miserable human being. And that's, yeah,

1:36:22

and I don't doubt that at a

1:36:24

societal level, you become a miserable society

1:36:26

once you stop following natural law. So

1:36:29

why not follow the thing that's

1:36:31

correct and not the

1:36:34

thing that's incorrect? So there's very

1:36:37

simple, right? Do the right thing.

1:36:41

But how do you

1:36:43

specifically break that

1:36:45

down into action steps for, it's

1:36:48

hard to give a formula for that. So

1:36:51

how do you, if someone's like, what do you mean

1:36:53

by do the right thing? How do you walk

1:36:56

them through that in greater detail? So

1:36:59

there is a very deep

1:37:01

natural law tradition. And you mentioned

1:37:03

before, English common law and

1:37:05

how, English

1:37:08

common law evolved case by case, right?

1:37:10

It had to be a real conflict.

1:37:12

And then as a judge that would

1:37:14

think about natural principles and rule based

1:37:17

on natural law. And if

1:37:19

other judges found that useful, they would use

1:37:21

that as a precedent to, like

1:37:23

rule on other things and so on. But

1:37:26

it's something that's discovered. And

1:37:29

you can, I

1:37:31

think most of us have some moral

1:37:34

intuitions about things, but

1:37:36

there's always sort of like new

1:37:38

moral territory that you have to think about

1:37:40

and sort of figure out. So

1:37:46

think like a good one that

1:37:48

came up in the last 20

1:37:50

years or so is like privacy

1:37:52

on your cell phone. Like it's

1:37:54

like, okay, what's the right thing?

1:37:56

Because it's

1:37:58

kind of this weird area. where

1:38:01

do you have possession of your data?

1:38:04

And is it right for government to

1:38:06

be able to snoop into it and

1:38:08

so on? And this is something that

1:38:11

Supreme Court justices have had to

1:38:13

think about. Okay, do

1:38:16

you need a warrant to go search a phone or

1:38:18

whatever? And

1:38:20

those are very useful questions. The

1:38:24

thing about natural law and figuring

1:38:26

out what the right action is,

1:38:28

is that it requires a significant

1:38:30

amount, not just of knowledge, right?

1:38:32

Because you, although, you know,

1:38:35

thankfully we have a conscience and we have

1:38:37

some guide to

1:38:39

what's right and what's wrong, but

1:38:41

it requires a significant amount of virtue,

1:38:43

right? Like following what you know to

1:38:45

be right is not

1:38:48

easy. And it does not come

1:38:50

easy to most people. And it's

1:38:52

this discipline

1:38:55

and it requires a

1:38:58

lot of sort of moral cleansing or,

1:39:01

you know, confession of sin

1:39:04

and reform of the heart that's

1:39:07

very unpleasant, honestly. But

1:39:11

that's what's required. And most

1:39:14

people don't wanna go down that path, even

1:39:16

though I think ultimately it's what aligns your

1:39:18

dialectic and rhetoric and like, you know, aligns

1:39:20

your whole self and puts you in a

1:39:22

position where you can really

1:39:24

truly appreciate life and,

1:39:27

you know, have fulfillment. But

1:39:30

that's not a place that people wanna go because

1:39:32

it is just so difficult. It's the hard work

1:39:34

of virtue. Yeah. Something

1:39:38

like taking it very, like we have

1:39:40

this very materialistic paradigm, right? We believe

1:39:43

in things like the laws of physics,

1:39:45

right? Like those work, that's the bottom

1:39:47

of reality. But there is

1:39:49

this equal, I

1:39:51

don't wanna say opposite, but there's an

1:39:54

equal counterpart to hard material

1:39:56

physical laws. And it is these

1:39:58

moral ethical laws, right? Very

1:40:01

simple stuff, but hard to do consistently.

1:40:03

Like really try to always tell the truth,

1:40:05

or as Peterson might say, at least not

1:40:08

lie. Don't

1:40:10

be coercive, don't be violent,

1:40:12

do not cheat, do not

1:40:14

steal. Like when you

1:40:16

actually seriously follow these things in

1:40:18

your life and you

1:40:20

act as if God is always

1:40:22

watching, then your life actually improves.

1:40:24

And it's not just, it

1:40:29

doesn't seem to me like it's just an

1:40:32

epiphenomenon, I guess maybe would be the term, it's

1:40:34

like it's something that's real. Like there's certain principles

1:40:36

that make a plane fly according to the laws

1:40:38

of physics, and there's certain principles that make your

1:40:40

life fly according to these ethical,

1:40:43

the ethicality encoded by

1:40:45

natural law, let's say for summary

1:40:48

purposes. And yeah, how

1:40:50

do we get people to take that more

1:40:52

seriously? Because is it, we are a society

1:40:54

that's drifted from God and religion, and that's

1:40:57

where these things tended to be housed and

1:40:59

now, I don't know, is there a way

1:41:01

to bridge the gap between the scientific materialist

1:41:03

worldview and the need for these ethical principles?

1:41:06

Yeah, and you brought up the right point,

1:41:08

right? Like it is the

1:41:11

sort of materialist bias that's sort

1:41:13

of like the base framing for

1:41:15

almost everything. That's

1:41:18

sort of undermined the spiritual reality,

1:41:20

which is that there is natural

1:41:22

law, there are moral things, there

1:41:25

are ethical considerations, and

1:41:27

they've almost always been sort of

1:41:29

like undermined in some way, but

1:41:31

you can't live without ethics, right?

1:41:33

You can't, no society runs without

1:41:36

some level of morals or

1:41:39

ways of functioning. And this

1:41:41

is ironically enough, what

1:41:43

we found out with like smart contracts

1:41:46

or whatever in the industry that we're

1:41:48

in, is that there's

1:41:51

a lot of sort of

1:41:53

inbuilt assumptions about moral law

1:41:55

that are very hard to

1:41:57

codify. into

1:42:01

digital bits and whatever.

1:42:04

It's actually extremely difficult. And

1:42:07

this is why you had judges, right?

1:42:10

You had people at it. If it was just a

1:42:13

matter of a rule, then you can just sort of

1:42:15

adjudicate based on that rule. But

1:42:17

it's a deeper one. It's a

1:42:19

spiritual law. And you need a

1:42:21

conduit to interpret that and

1:42:24

at least look at it objectively and say, okay,

1:42:26

what is the right thing here? And

1:42:28

it is very difficult. And

1:42:30

it used to be something

1:42:33

that people studied very deeply.

1:42:35

But because of this materialist

1:42:37

bias, it's

1:42:39

kind of gone by the wayside. And I

1:42:41

would argue that it's actually taken

1:42:44

a lot of the materialist knowledge and

1:42:46

put it into sort of like that

1:42:48

realm of uncertainty again. Because in

1:42:51

many ways, like science and a

1:42:54

lot of the materialist things have

1:42:56

more or less stopped because of this lack

1:42:59

of respect for natural

1:43:01

law. So you have stuff

1:43:03

like in physics of like string theory and

1:43:06

things like that, which have zero

1:43:08

evidence, can't even be proven or

1:43:10

disproven, but continue to be popular

1:43:13

mostly because there are people in

1:43:15

positions of power within the

1:43:17

physics community that propagate it,

1:43:19

right? Like their careers depend on it. This

1:43:21

was their thesis. This is what they published

1:43:23

a lot on. So they can't just sort

1:43:25

of throw it out. Like if

1:43:28

you were concerned with natural law of what

1:43:30

the right thing was, well, the right thing

1:43:32

when you have a wrong theory is to,