Ironic - Alanis Morissette


The Way Out. https://medium.com/@mike.brock/the-way-out-1fb9177f0e1b


Some Thoughts on the TikTok Ban And Liberal Democracy. https://medium.com/@mike.brock/some-thoughts-on-the-tiktok-ban-and-liberal-democracy-ed6b4ce70fd6


So once again, you're just so certain this world of yours will be so much more just and market forces will deliver just outcomes. You're so sure, you just shrug and say these regressions I bring up are not worth thinking about. Neat!


The concept you're referring to is known as "prior restraint".


In an anarcho-capitalist future, what exactly does the poor person appeal to when the billionaire doesn't honor their commitment? What if that billionaire owns the private court for dispute resolution? The obvious problems with this extreme property maximalist view are quite simply not that hard to think about. You're just asserting moral prefepts, and acting with indignance that anyone could disagree.


An economic dominance can never be a form of authoritarianism, because you believe property rights are the highest moral good. Yes, I know all your arguments. And I'll just say, you've just treated my entire critique as irrelevant, because you're so certain of the objective correctness of your views based on a priori reasoning.


I mean, right-libertarians just act as if their first principles ethical stances are self-evidently true. And concerns about things like the problem of collective action are irrelevant. Even more bizarre, is they assume that everyone is going to eventually agree with them and have a moral awakening where they realize "taxation is theft" and therefore we have to get rid of the welfare state.


Basically you're just saying the anarcho-capitalist argument is objectively objectively morally correct. All matters of distribution are just irrelevant because property rights must be absolute. Any claim on the public good is authoritarian. Naturally, I think this stance is both unconvincing and smug.


You haven't really addressed anything I've said here, so not such how to respond. You've merely just restated the case I'm criticizing and not attending to my arguments at all.


I actually got distracted and didn't proof read that. Here is an edited version of what I just said for clairty:

I never said that Davidson and Rees-Mogg advance the praxeological justification. I said the best attempts to justify that kind of thinking do. In fact, that the Sovereign Individual is silent on its normative foundations, and simply tracks a technological determinist argument — that to your point, the incentives leading intractably towards a certain outcome — is the entire basis for my charge of epistemic authoritarianism.

An example of what I’m saying would be the notion that say “the welfare state won’t be possible, even if people want it” in the future that is an intractible logical consequence of the incentive structures. That’s an implicit normative constraint that takes arguments about a common good that isn’t merely a feature of revealed market preferences off the table. Which, I say betrays a very extreme right-libertarian view at the bottom of the whole thesis.

So I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough in the following paragraph to separate the critique of the argument from the praxeological argument for the normative foundations of such a view. But I’d argue, if anything, I am trying to bring my critique against the strongest form of the argument. Which I don’t think Davidson and Rees-Mogg make, by the way.


*Rees-Mogg. My bad.


I never said that Davidson and Rees-Moog advance the praxeological justification. I said the best attempts to justify that kind of thinking do. In fact, that the Sovereign Individual is silent on its normative foundations, and simply tracks a technological determinist argument — that to your point, the incentives leading intractably towards a certain outcome — is the entire basis for my charge of epistemic authoritarianism.

An example of what I’m saying would be the notion that say “the welfare state won’t be possible, even if people want it” in the future that is laid out. That’s an implicit normative constraint that takes arguments about a common good that isn’t merely a feature of revealed market preferences, betrays a very extreme right-libertarian view at the bottom of the whole thesis.

So I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough in the following paragraph to separate the critique of the argument from the praxeological argument for the normative foundations of such a view. But I’d argue, if anything, I am trying to bring my critique against the strongest form of the argument. Which I don’t think Davidson and Rees-Mogg make, by the way.


Technological determinism is a real mind virus that afflicts way too many people in my field. It’s pervasive and has led an  incredibly large group of people to make dramatic philosophical errors. The book, the Sovereign Individual, has played at outsized role among many people — especially in the “web3” space — at convincing people of the inevitability of future outcomes. Balaji’s “network states” are really just another revision on these philosophical errors, born of foundationalist a priori notions about moral truths.

The best attempts at defending these moral truths — such as things like praxeology — are completely unconvincing and are just tautologies that assume the things they set out to prove. In particular, property rights as intractable consequences of the moral necessity to enable human action by a fundamental — not social — right to the product of one’s own labor.

These arguments all also boil down to “this future is going to happen whether you like it or not”, which really betrays the epistemically authoritarian nature of this thinking, which denies the possibility for, and the normative possibility of collection action in defense of a common good.


I also have an argument based on thermodynamics as to why I think these arguments are true at a systems level — but I know people roll their eyes on this stuff as it is.


Yes.


We don’t use cash for everything.


I will also say, this same argument, when generalized brings into question the whole concept of digital contracts as workable at all. The idea of self-executing contracts that can be used to revolutionize everything from property titles to equities trading. But any sane workable system is going to rely on truth oracles that have some social component to deal with disputes. And if that’s true, then we’re probably right back in good old regular law courts.

At which point, the question just immediately needs to be asked: why do we have these digital contracts in the first place?

I actually think this is a completely fatal blow to the entire idea of Web3. The intractable problem is staring you in the face, if you do some philosophical exploration of the people. nostr:note1np9663690xy42xlh6ec9pa9mjxxttsa5ue6retld7ckc58lnfzgqw93ejf


I’m somewhat skeptical that there’s some technological solution around the corner, where the scaling issues around bitcoin are going to be solved to such a degree, that all payments themselves can be trustless.

The main reason being that all of the solutions being pursued thus far, achieve trustlessness by giving up on the possibility of recourse in the transaction. The only real counterparty probelem being solved then, is eliminating the possibility of settlement default, once a transaction has been arranged. But this has never been the only trust issue in payment arrangements.

Most of the kinds of default that people think about in the real world, have nothing to do with the possibility of non-settlement, and everything to do with the possibility of breach of contract on the delivery of goods or rendering of services. To the extent that bitcoin scaling discussions set these issues aside, and instead center the discussion around durability in only the most adversarial situations (resisting state overreach, usually) — a broader understanding of the way economic advancement comes about is ignored.

Economies don’t flourish simply because they have reliable money and payment schemes. They flourish because social trust is possible — that people will honor contracts, commitments, won’t resort to violent means of dispute resolution.

This is actually why I find the anarcho-capitalist frame of thinking around bitcoin so distracting to moving bitcoin forward. The target it’s aiming for, simply bypasses all of these notions, and is really just an exercise in question begging.

“But if we have recourse on payments, how will that prevent the government being able to regulate or censor it?”

If that’s what you think is the highest good to be considered in the project of finding ways to scale bitcoin payments, then I’d suggest that none of the solutions you land on are going to be satisfactory for mainstream use — ever. Because there can never be a way to control for matters of social trust through cryptographic protocols alone. We are not digital light beings that live inside computers, that can be forced to act or not act based on computational rules. Our interaction with any technology is always analog and mediated by a social context — where all the interesting problems of counterparty risk exist.

This is, of course, what the insight was that led to the creation of tbDEX. Instead of any doubts being raised in me about this observation, the stridency of my stance here has only increased, as I’ve watched the conversation move forward.


Elections are a legitimizing function for political power. That is the role they play. Approaching electoral choices like a purity test and one of cosmic significance to your character, is downstream of some very impoverished understandings of both democracy and society itself.

Ultimately, we have to confront the pragmatic reality that we are ultimately navigating a hierarchy of good. If you resist this notion, you’re actually participating in a fairly dangerous game of reducing the umbrella of interests the political economy will be responsive to, to the most craven — if for no other reason than smaller polities are easier to capture.

For me, character is just as important as policy in thinking about these things, because the question I ask myself about who I want having power, is not one merely about “what policies does this person support?” — but a more subtle one: “who would I feel more comfortable disagreeing with, knowing the conversation can continue, and that our current policy commitments remain, in perpetuity, provisional?”


People wonder why I have chosen to infuse philosophy so deeply in my work style and even professionally. Daniel explains the power of this better than I can, in this 10 minute video. He is one of my personal heroes. I got to meet him once, and it was one of the few times I got genuinely star struck. He was gentle, patient and kind and seemed to enjoy answering all my dumb questions.

https://x.com/bigthink/status/1781367395107357144?s=46&t=8zspgFtU1sQttMY8dBvhOQ


You’re describing an echo chamber effect. It’s why I hate echo chambers. I understand they give others a great sense of community and comfort, however. It also, tends to lead to people in these echo chambers dehumanizing people they disagree with.


You seem to be reaching a very violent conclusion.


Are we a fragmented society of hostile factions fighting for dominance, or do we contain and retain some collective capacity for maintaining some conception of the common good? And I note that both external and internal arguments are being made to undermine that notion. Some of you, are taken by those notions, and for that I can only express my sadness. Even I hope for your redemption and return to the project.


*With absolute seriousness. Damn typo!


And I would suggest, without absolute seriousness and concern, that only the conclusion of the necessity of violence is left once you foreclose the possibility of argument. The totalitarian impulse is revealed. And the liberal like me, is trying desperately to convince people that in order for us to hang on to our freedom, we must also cradle and nurture some conception of the common good.


The problem with identity politics often isn't the social injustices they highlight. Those things are often quite obvious and hard for us to ignore. The problem is when we close off the possibility of redemption. Because if we can't see each other as redeemable, then we really have no basis for sharing a civilization. And I make this same general argument as harshly to my right as I make it to my left.

And I'll complete the thought for you: if there's no redemption possible, there's also no point in having an argument at all. And from that conclusion, nothing good comes.


Just because someone is wrong about something, doesn't make them a bad person. What matters more, when it comes to character, is if they're open to having their mind changed.

... and if you're not, in principle, open to having your mind changed, we're having a whole other conversation all together.

I would also suggest that people be preoccupied with this basic insight, because I might suggest it's actually the basis for civilization existing at all.


The thing about the stability of systems, is it has absolutely nothing to do with ossification and everything to do with adaptability. People misunderstand this to their peril. In all domains: politics, economics, and yes: bitcoin.


For extra bonus points: Try going through this process before staking out a position, at all!


How to have sane takes on things, in a few easy steps:

1. Consider what you believe.
2. Seek out the best arguments you can find that contradict what you believe, and carefully consider these arguments.
3. If you cannot figure out why these arguments are wrong, and make good logical arguments against them, reduce the credence that you’re right. Perhaps even consider changing your mind.

The end.

Addendum: If you are unaware of good arguments against your deeply held economic, political, or ethical position, this is a very intellectually suspicious state of affairs.


Was happy to speak at the Bitcoin Policy Summit in DC this morning about why I think Bitcoin is valuable. https://youtu.be/1yzuEipN-D0?si=jdY1gmagoD4xi4Zj


I have an incomplete essay on my criticisms about the Austrian school. It's not complete. I might finish it. I might not. But the core thrust of the argument is there. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R2YqH4kTtVhoZdtFT5t8TPEsdUAKchSOU2V1U1eMC5I/edit?usp=drivesdk


I don't define it as government rental. But I do think that land is a common good.


Not an argument. Thanks for playing.


Land taxes are the most defensible form of taxation. Fight me.


But the TLDR is that I think all radical individualism is always overly simplistic, and tends towards illiberal outcomes.


Uh, my essay taking on The Sovereign Individual is getting very long. It's greater than a 20 minute read at this point. And I have also found myself bringing in Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia" into it. I am approaching my critiques very much through the lens of Epistemic Liberalism, that I've been kicking around. But yeah, this is going to be some deeply academic reading.


More thoughts. docs.google.com/document/d/1cc…


I Am An Epistemic Liberal. https://medium.com/@mike.brock/i-am-an-epistemic-liberal-8fac669245de


It doesn't really matter what the technology is. At the end of the day, all technology is serving a purpose. That derives from human values and preferences. Technology is always used in an instrumentalist frame relative to its use -- which is always to serve a human end. This is basically just another way of repeating David Hume's famous insight, "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions".

The key to understanding this insight is understanding that any logical or rational system always serves a normative goal (a human passion). In other words, we don't do advanced industrial farming because the technology availed itself to us. We do it, because we want to eat more food, and the technology improved the fulfillment of that passion.

If you recognize this insight, you should be skeptical of ALL technological deterministic reasoning. The Sovereign Individual, Hyperbitcoinization, AI apocalypses, etc. Some of these things may have grains of truth in them, on a first principles basis about what social orders could be *possible* given these technologies. But possibility space is just that. The other part of the equation is the probability of outcomes within that probability space. So, when we ask ourselves, based on everything we know about human nature, culture, economics, do we think that these scenarios that the possibility space opened up by these technologies is a probable future?

I think the answer is no! No, it's not. Mainly because the entire conclusion rests on a technological deterministic argument! Which just doesn't epistemically make sense!


Re-reading parts of The Sovereign Individual for the critique I'm writing about Davidson and Rees-Mogg's arguments, and the thing that really stands out at me -- and I think this is also a problem that the hyperbitcoinization crowd suffers from -- is this almost religious belief in technological determinism, as the way to predict the future.

Technology is a powerful driver of culture, and in some respects can just be considers part of culture, so it goes without saying that technology helps shape and influence society. I'd never argue against a thing. But I would generally argue against any thinking that views culture and politics as *downstream* of technology. It's a complex interplay between human nature, individual and group differences, economic conditions, political climate, etc. These things interact with each other. Technology doesn't just drive all the others towards some deterministic end. I think that's actually silly!


I’m clearly going to have to take on the Sovereign Individual in my next Medium post. Too many people seem to think it’s a convincing preemptive counterpoint to everything I’m saying. Naturally, I think this is nonsense and I intend to argue why.


I've been making these arguments in fragments across social media. I figured it needed a more long-form take. https://medium.com/@mike.brock/the-libertarian-to-fascist-pipeline-30558ce03c92


I think Trump is a pretty dangerous figure. And if you think that's TDS, I'm not sure that I care.


Dunno. When I hear members of my family and former friends referring to him as the most honest, down-to-earth politician of theirnlifetime, I just hear "I'm in a cult". Thats what my brain translates that to.


This is kind of a straw man of my position. In any case, I'm on vacation this week, and planning on sitting down and writing a pretty meaty Medium post on the Libertarian-to-facist pipeline. My claim is not all libertarians end up fascists -- but a lot do. Many ultimately come to the same conclusion as me, and have retreated into things like state capacity libertarianism, liberal nationalism or New Liberalism.


Nah. They're kind of in a cult.


*argument


Yeah, you can collapse this into a more flippant version of artiment: if you want to be self-sovereign, go live alone on an uninhabited island in the middle of the ocean.


*externalities


But I'm not trying to reach it from the top down. I don't know what you're insisting on a directionality. Individual and collective interests can be in tension with each other, and the maxima of the latter seems to be highly contingent on some concept of the former. As demonstrated by collective action problems (see: tragedy of the commons, uncaptured negative exterbalities, incentive structures for non-violent dispute resolutions like rule-of-law).


The idea that freedom means solely pursuing one's own chosen purpose, without regard for any broader social or ethical context, is a shallow and ultimately incoherent view. True freedom involves more than just individual choice - it requires taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions, recognizing our obligations to others and to society as a whole, and working to create the conditions that enable all people to pursue their own flourishing in a meaningful and sustainable way.

My personal opinion, and what I'm gesturing towards in all my arguments here is that a genuine conception of freedom must be grounded in a sense of shared purpose and common good, not just isolated individual preferences. It's about balancing personal autonomy with social responsibility, and understanding that our own well-being is deeply interconnected with the well-being of our communities and institutions.


I think America has a surprisingly concordant view of the common good, when you look at opinion polls 60-70% of Americans generally agree on most things. There's an institutional failure occuring in the two-party system with minority constituency capture. An even bigger problem is one of the parties has collapsed into a personality cult.


I think this is true. But the problem is even worse than this. I think things like anarcho-capitalism are basically a kind of neo-feudalism that is obsessed with self-justifying itself around a conception of property rights maximalism that claims to be libertarians on a first principles basis, while only paying attention to initial conditions and then falling back into a cold transactional logic from there.


Yes. I'm unapologetically in favor of democracy. Bye, I guess.


Liberal democracy is supposed to be a political answer to that question.


The fact you are insisting it must be bottoms up, is the ontological fallacy. The fact you think I'm arguing a transcendent objective truth about universal notion of a common good, is a straw man of my position. I'm not as sure you have a very strong grasp of these issues, as you seem to think you do.


I don't claim the common good exists in a foundationalist way. I am arguing that conception of it, is necessary for a stable society. You're the one that's insisting that any ethical foundation must be derived from purportedly self-evident truths or objective truths about individual rights. I make no such claim. Either about individual rights or collective rights.


This might be the dumbest thing I've read all day, to be honest.


I sense you are a fan of Rothbard, et al. -- who, quite frankly I have almost nothing good to say about.


How am I suffering from an ontological fallacy, exactly? I'm not the one insisting that the normative grounding of my ethics needs to be erased in any universalist natural rights theory. You're doing that. Not me.


It's just as "real" as any social construct. Like language. Which is once again, why I think you're engaged in a kind of ontological fallacy.


I think you're engaged in a kind of ontological fallacy here, where you insist there's something necessary to directionality. The collective interest and the individual interest can simply be in tension, and mediate each other. Insisting on a simplistic grounding, as say praxeology tries to do, to me, is just weird. It just rejects any kind of dynamical notion around competing equities, and demands a universal starting point.


I definitely don't think that ought can be derived from is. I am firmly in Hume's camp.


I am advancing my own category of what I call the “fascist impulse”, yes.

For me, fascism is better understood as an impulse in people to wield permanent political and economic power, by capitalizing on cynicism of polities, and using cultural control (propaganda) and pseudo-religious mythos to contain the political conservation in a cultural envelope, that leads to extreme depoliticization of the average member of the polity.

I think this more intellectually robust characterization of fascism was always staring political science in the face, if you just came at it from a little category theory, and some analytical moral epistemology.


You have the play the political game and push for reform. I don’t know what else to say. Just throwing up your hands and excising yourself is exactly the kind of depoliticization that fascists pray on.


Kind of. And I think unconstrained libertarianism, particularly propertarian forms of libertarians are just outright fascist. See: Hans Hermann-Hoppe.


Sure, I am trying to tighten up the category of what I think a fascist is. Guilty as charged.

I just think when you think about fascism as an impulse or a tendency and ground it in things like a the desire for strong leadership, the fear of social chaos and disorder, the resentment of perceived enemies and outsiders, and the longing for a sense of national or ethnic identity and purpose, you can kind of make sense of the apparent contradictions in someone like Gabbard, Trump or Bannon.

Basically all intellectualism boils down to just trying to formulate better categories, ultimately.

In other words, I’m trying to set aside the idealistic frame in which most political science tries to operate and say: guys, we’ve learned a lot of about human nature and how it operates in political economies, so there might be a more useful framing for understanding the apparent ideological contradictions we see … which are only contradictions in the idealist notions of these ideologies. But not contradictions at all, if reduced to core tendencies.

What I think is when you do this simple reframing, you can see the fascist golem for what it is. I actually think we try hard not to see it, and make bad mistakes trying to categorize it, because a synthesis like this has better explanatory power, in my view.

In conclusion, to me, fascism is better understood as an impulse in people to wield permanent political and economic power, by capitalizing on cynicism of polities, and using cultural control (propaganda) and pseudo-religious mythos to contain the political conservation in a cultural envelope, that leads to extreme depoliticization of the average member of the polity.


The key point is that when these principles are taken to an extreme and divorced from any consideration of the common good or the social and institutional prerequisites for a stable and just society, they can lead to outcomes that are deeply problematic and that can create the conditions for more authoritarian and even fascistic forms of politics to take root.

Here's how this dynamic might play out:

If the principle of "don't aggress" is interpreted in a highly individualistic and atomistic way, it can lead to a view of society as nothing more than a collection of isolated individuals, each pursuing their own interests without regard for others. This can erode social bonds, undermine a sense of shared responsibility, and create a vacuum of meaning and purpose that can be filled by more authoritarian and collectivist ideologies.

Similarly, an absolutist conception of private property rights, without any recognition of the broader social context in which those rights are embedded, can lead to extreme inequalities of wealth and power, and a sense of disenfranchisement and resentment among those who feel left behind. This can create fertile ground for populist and nationalist movements that promise to restore a sense of belonging and purpose, even at the cost of individual freedoms.

Moreover, if the state is seen as nothing more than a "night watchman" whose sole purpose is to protect individual rights and property, it may lack the capacity and legitimacy to address collective challenges and provide the public goods and services necessary for a healthy and stable society. This can lead to a breakdown of trust in public institutions and a further erosion of the social fabric, creating openings for more authoritarian forms of governance to fill the void.

To be clear, none of this is to suggest that the principles of individual rights, private property, and non-aggression are inherently fascistic or that they inevitably lead to authoritarianism. Rather, the point is that when these principles are taken to an extreme and abstracted from the broader social and political context in which they are necessarily embedded, they can have unintended and dangerous consequences.

This is why thinkers in the classical liberal tradition, and more recently those associated with "state capacity libertarianism" and "liberal nationalism," have emphasized the need to balance these principles with a strong conception of the common good and a recognition of the positive role that effective and accountable government can play in securing the conditions for individual freedom and social flourishing.


I think you’re mostly getting my idea. I think it’s also worth mentioning that in many ways, classical liberals like say Locke and Jefferson, were in their own ways, skeptical of libertarianism (even though they didn’t have a word for it) as a standalone ideological orientation, hence the fact they were social contract theorists — which by definition is trying to mediate individual rights against some conception of the common good.

I’d go further and suggest that the emergence of state capacity libertarian and liberal nationalist thought are both re-evaluations of these insights by a bunch of former libertarianism and neoliberals who have recognized this very danger and are now trying to cope with it, in a contemporaneous conversation.


I will try to respond with as much academic clarity as possible, to avoid any misunderstanding of exactly what I mean when I talk about uncontained libertarianism:

Libertarianism, while a vital force for individual freedom and resistance against tyranny, can become self-defeating and enable fascism when taken to an extreme and not constrained by a commitment to the common good. The libertarian focus on individual liberty and skepticism of collective action, when unmoored from any conception of public interest or social responsibility, can erode the very foundations of a free and open society.

By making epistemic arguments against the possibility or knowability of the common good, radical libertarianism can fuel a market fundamentalism that concentrates power in the hands of the wealthy, dismantles social protections, and undermines the capacity for democratic self-governance. This atomistic individualism creates a vacuum of meaning and solidarity that is easily exploited by fascist demagogues promising a return to unity and purpose through authoritarianism. Thus, an improperly contained libertarianism that rejects any notion of the public good or legitimate government can paradoxically enable a far greater threat to human freedom in the form of fascist tyranny. The libertarian impulse must be balanced with a commitment to the rule of law, democratic institutions, and some conception of our shared responsibilities and interests as a society.


Of course it has to be contained. The individual is not the only equity in a society. There must be a social interest considered, as a prerequisite to encouraging cooperation, rather than violence.


Yes! nostr:note1kcg8xevur0l9pesrmtr3vf5sahz4a4l64lvq8fqyevv5lrjq7v0s3hhae2


Oh, I would argue that praxeology is complete epistemic nonsense. And thus, anything that rests upon its axioms, is not truth-reifying by definition.


Liberal aristocracies can form, can be corrupt, and can run amok. But that doesn’t make them fascists. It’s why they’re haunted by their mistakes, and waste away painting dead soldiers. It’s not that it’s not a failure of liberalism. It’s just that, well, it maintained the pretense. That at least counted for something. These fascists … there’s no pretense.


None of these people served the fascists, actually. But Nixon was a cheap date, to be fair.


Close, but so slightly off, as to miss who the fascists actually are in this story.


It’s not a wrong take, I suppose. I’d frame it much differently. But, yeah.


“He is, after all, very stupid and very easy to control. And he’s ours. Good boy, Donald.”


In the guerrilla warfare against liberalisms institutions, the demagogue is always a tool of the fascist, and never the true fascist himself. Lenin. Stalin. Should Germany have prevailed, we might have found who Hitler’s true heir would have been. And it comes again … Trump. I promise you he’s just step one of the plan.


Mine involves two precepts: cooperation is better than violence. And the truth can be known. The fascist doesn’t really care which one of these he needs to disabuse you of. It only takes one. He’s happy to talk the language of Capitalism (Putin) or Communism (Xi) to you. Whatever it takes to get you to take a knee, and admit there’s no point in fighting it.


Although, I can imagine having it framed this way, could conceivably cause one to question for themselves, whether they want to be one?


If you read my narrative here, and your sentiments are the exact inverse of how I framed it here … then you are a fascist.


The liberals thought we did a pretty good job at fascist containment. But the fascist laid low and found weaknesses. It always knew if it was going to take down liberalism, it was going to be from the inside. So it buried itself in its institutions, and started looking for weaknesses.

When the time was just right, the fascists surrounded both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party (and yes, this is very much an America-centric conversation), and out popped populists on the left, and populists on the right. The 2008 Financial Crisis was the moment they waited for.

This is where all the famous “libertarians” line Rockwell, and Block and Hoppe, send out their troops to seize the Republican Party. They knew what they had to do. Goebbels had it all written down for them. He passed on the fascists knowledge of how to weaponize the human spirit against itself.

So it sought to establish the media infrastructure that would ultimately become the replacement media, having fully discredited the establishment, elevate a fool like Donald Trump, who we can control, with his stupid narcissism. But we’ve made the masses just so mad enough at the elites, and fueled this culture war, so expertly to bring us to this moment … that in your anger, which they so expertly controlled, as their father Goebbels intended of you, that you will hand control of your precious stupid little liberal institutions over to us. And our friends Putin, and Orban are waiting for us guys. “Let’s put these liberal fuckers down for good. We just need to get rid of thjs Trump guy, right after he blows this whole constitution thing up.” Then they’ll figure out what to do with Beijing and their Eastern totalitarianism, which they think is way less sexy than their paeanistic stuff. So they’ll fight that out later.


It’s what makes the Austrian school such a pernicious school of thought in my mind. It’s why its produced so many outright fascists! Its goal is to convince the liberal by their predilections to reason, to give up on any notion of a Greater Good.

Its goal is two-fold: to convince you there is no Greater Good (to sell you on cynicism). But if you’re just too romantic for that, convince you it’s impossible to know what the Greater Good is (so why try? Leave it to the market!)

The fascist wants to convince you of that, because he’s got big plans. And you’re in them. nostr:note10u7dshfqymr97cx66cwassrz98m35l26t7ut84745q9pzjdvmhlqgu9n5a


It’s what makes the Austrian school such a pernicious school of thought in my mind. It’s why it’s produced so many outright fascists! It’s goal is to convince the liberal by their predilections to reason, to give up on any notion of a Greater Good.


It always made perfect sense that fascists travelled in libertarian circles. There should have been, in retrospect, nothing at all surprising about it. If libertarianism is not met by a representative of the collective interest, fascism just comes out the other side. It should come as no surprise to true liberals that the fascist would want to convince you there is no collective interest. They’ll never convince socialists of that. That’s why they whisper in your ear.


The libertarian impulse is a beautiful, necessary and emancipatory part of the human spirit. Without it, we’d all already be in bondage. Or dead. But the libertarian impulse, improperly contained is ultimately self-destructive and closes in on its own contradictions. It should actually not that all be surprising, to find that when, uncontained, its contradictions emerge in the fascist tendency.


+1 on the Animal Farm reference. I might use it!


Someone privately asked me why I am wasting my time refuting the hyperbitcoinization narrative. They suggested that if I’m right, it doesn’t matter in the end. They also suggested this represents an unnecessary argument *within* the bitcoin conversation.

One, I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time at all. Because my goal isn’t even to convince people who hold the view that hyperbitcoinization is inevitable. In fact, given their predilection for simple, self-consistent narratives and their tendency to dismiss my attempts as nuance as a “lack of critical thinking skills”, I don’t actually expect to convince them of anything. But I do want to debate them, if for no other reason than I can test the strength of my own ideas. Which for me, is pretty important to being intellectually honest with one’s self. Alas, it does not surprise me that they refuse the opportunity of debate. Because, well, you can guess where I’m going.

The audience for things like this are always the unconvinced. The people who are coming to bitcoin for the first time and trying to make sense of it. I seek to give them a theory of bitcoin I think makes sense, and steers it towards its potential. That focuses people on believable use cases, that will hopefully, on balance direct research and development into more productive products and ideas.

Also, I am just generally fascinated by people who think they have everything figured out, and can smugly claim that something in the future is “inevitable”. I’ve never thought anything about the future is inevitable. To me, the future is an epistemic fog-of-war. The fact some people think they see it with overwhelming clarity (even in the narrow issue of money and markets) by playing forward some theory from a first principles foundation, says to me something about human nature that, quite frankly, I see as the seeds of fanaticism at worst, and sophistry at best.

As for the worry that I’m trying to create unnecessary discord within the bitcoin conversation, this just offends my intellectual and truth-seeking sensibilities. If I think something is wrong, and I feel strongly enough about it that I want to say something about it, then I’m going to. I don’t know what to tell you. Suggesting that it’s counterproductive to engage in a debate against a relatively popular strain of thought, in a field I work in, that I think is wrong, is just bizarre to me.

It’s the anti-intellectual golem showing up again.


I offer it here! https://medium.com/@mike.brock/bitcoin-maximalism-is-dead-long-live-bitcoin-36df4ba12eff


The way you put it, that is.


This is actually beautiful.


When the crux of your argument is to just start demanding the other party subscribe to more simplistic categories of thought, you’re through the Dunning-Kruger looking class.

When they start dismissing nuance and complexity as a lack of critical thinking skills, you know you’ve come face to face with the golem of anti-intellectualism.


Is it true because you want it to be? Or is it true because it fits the facts?


Culture is an emergent epistemology.  The relationship between an emergent epistemology and a person is the person's belief that it is best for their sentiments and goals.


I had a thought. Seemed important. So I wrote it down in this Google Doc. Thought about making it a Medium post. But a Google Doc will do (warning: I reserve the right to keep editing it): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N9mgt-1wmqQFMeUrh7joYe351FpcuEQVCa0CxNTTIqM/edit


How is forcing the sale of TikTok to a U.S. successor owner doing that, exactly?


I do think that people who think everything the government does is instinctively a slippery slope towards totalitarianism is moronic. I'm sorry. It's paranoid stupidity. What do people want from me? This chaos climbing is exhausting.


Well, unlike a lot of people in this space, I actually think we need to protect our institutions in order to protect liberty. I think the people who argue the government should have no power to mediate any of these issues, are literally the useful idiots of authoritarians around the world.


The CCP is bad. The end.


*then


I have literally no problem with the US government forcing divestment of TikTok by ByteDance. None. I don't see how they can "ban" it without running afoul of the First Amendment -- and should they try to engage in direct censorship of the platform through something like mandatory filtering by ISPs, I'll be right there with you all.

But if you think forcing a Chinese company, serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, that wants to spy on our kids, and manipulate their worldview, with the goal of destabilizing our institutions is "all's fair love and war", due to some highfalutin libertarian principle, than you're actually a moron.


Continue to be amused by people who get angry and animated about my "obviously wrong" opinions about Bitcoin, without fault, refuse to debate me live when I offer to do so. Usually because I'm "not worth [their] time".

If I'm so out of my depth, why not make a fool of me, and take the W? These people spend large amounts of their time deeply in the bitcoin discussion, get offended by my contributions to it, but don't have the time to engage.

I'll be honest, I'm starting to think it's because they're worried I'll wipe the floor with them. Not that they're managing their highly valuable time.

🤷🏻♂


If the market is producing a risk signal, then of course, that will affect the decisions of policymakers. So the answer is yes.


Yeah. I completely disagree with you on the directionality here. Which I kind of address in the article, if you’ve read the whole thing.


I think you’re misreading my point. I *am* saying the equilibria lies within the state-based model. I’m not saying it will win because states are powerful. I’m saying it will win because people want states, and for those states to have certain powers — like enforcing rule-of-law and managing economic stability.


My latest Medium post (I’m basically at one-per-year at this point) https://medium.com/@mike.brock/bitcoin-maximalism-is-dead-long-live-bitcoin-36df4ba12eff


Saying you choose to abstain, because you don't believe in settling for the least bad option is political equivalent of saying "the cancer will definitely kill me. But the chemotherapy is really bad for my body, and I want nothing to do with that. So it's tragic if the cancer eats me alive, but I want nothing to do with my hair falling out."


The functional difference between the politically apathetic and the impossible-to-please, armchair puritans is basically zero.


The more certain you are, the less you know. This isn't some throw away line. The more you foreclose the possibility of being wrong, the less likely you are to listen to arguments against your beliefs, or believe evidence that contravenes it.

I look around, and I see more and more people enslaved to a rabid certainty of what's right and what the future holds.

If you start a sentence with "nothing can convince me ..." you might well say "let me warn you, I'm a closed-minded zealot on this particular topic."


I think he’ll win.


Cynicism is the tool of evil. It is the pathway to apathy and depoliticization. There is nothing that autocrats and would-be tyrants want more than for people to through up their hands and say: “Democracy? Dictatorship? What difference does it make?” In fact, this is the goal of the political propaganda of tyrants. It’s why regimes like Putin’s sells cynicism — “we’re not worse than America. Look at what they’ve done.” Too many people in these conversations are playing along.


I’ll let you in on my mind-blowing approach to predicting the future. Here it goes … are you ready for it? I’m not a cynical discontent.


Well, you're explaining something they're romantic about.


One thing that doesn't get talked about ever, is what left-progressives, libertarians and anarchists all have in common: they all have excessively romantic notions about unconstrained human nature. The power structures they're focused on don't necessarily overlap in big ways. But the mistake is the same.


Ultimately, problem with acting and justifying action in purely deontological terms, is consequences don't care about your moral sentiments. Wars are just battles. It's the peace that must be won.


There is no final destination awaiting us if we can just get through today's struggles. Our civilization of liberty is a ship that sails through endless waters. Through calm seas, and through storms. The ship could sink. Our job is to keep it seaworthy. And make no mistake ... those are storm clouds on the horizon.


You assume unrestricted access to said global market. Or that said market exists at all.


So it's an ethical claim of how the world ought to be. It's not a universal objective truth of what constitutes good money.


But that's starting from a libertarian frame. Which is a normative atgument. Which was my point all along.


Wages are literally the biggest driver of the PCE. By far. This is not breaking new ground, here.


Yes. The definition of being poor is to have no excess income. Which, by definition, means no capacity to accumulate savings.

Poor people are not getting poorer because the cash under their mattress is losing spending power. This is just a wrong way to think about it.


Moreover, the value of savings is tied to the productive capacity of the economy. If an economy is more productive, each unit of saved currency can command more real goods and services in the future. However, if an economy’s productivity stagnates or declines, the real value of savings may decrease, regardless of whether the nominal amount of money saved grows.


My point is the temporal nature of savings is a social construct. Even with sound money, it's not a perfect proxy for the availability of capital, nor does it account for capital depreciation across time, relative to the production in which the savings were accumulated.

You can do some basic thought experiments here to realize how this concept is purely normative.

Let's say you diligently saved up bitcoin for your whole life, and then suddenly, one day, every factory in the planet shut down. For whatever reason. Alien mind control, whatever. The point is you just have to imagine everyone stopped making "stuff" all at once.

What would your bitcoin be "worth"?

It's a silly example, but it reveals the socially contingent nature of all of this.


People don't climb out of poverty by saving. They climb out of poverty by climbing the income ladder, and then diverting excess income into savings.


It's a major a fallacy that the poor tend to stay poor. We have longitudinal data on income mobility we can look at to see if this is really true. And it's not.

Based on long-term income mobility data, we can see that about 80% of the people who were poor in 2010, are no longer poor today. About 20% of them have moved into the top two quintiles for income.

So the argument that there's an intractable poverty trap that's been created by fiat currency just isn't true.


Most of the people who are poor -- young people, new immigrants, etc -- do not stay poor as they age. The cohorts are not stable across time, even though people seem to intuitively think it's true. It's not true.


There's no such thing as an objective measurement in macroeconomics. You're always measuring from some normative frame. In other words, relative to what you think *ought* to be true about the world.

There's no such thing as objective value. There's no such thing as objective measure of inflation (no, seriously).

Prices emerge from our preferences. Value emerges from our sentiments.

Sound money doesn't change this. Because the whole concept of sound money emerges from a normative foundations, on how money ought to work. Why should money retain its value across time and space? The only reason is because we all want it to! Not because that's objectively more efficient.


Low-skill wages disproportionately rising is a definitely inflationary from a median frame of reference. It's a major form of cost-push inflation.


The middle class were squeezed in a cash flow basis the most, yes. But the top quintile saw their net worth's drop significantly as the wealth effects of ZIRP evaporated. Which explains why so many wealthy people have gone full populist in recent years.


One of the biggest fallacies I see when talking about inflation in terms of savings debasement, and in particular, focusing on how it disproportionately hurts the lowest percentiles of income earners, is the fact that the lowest percentiles have no savings. That's what being poor is. If they had excess income, they'd have savings and assets. But they don't. And the poor never have! So the only meaningful way to judge if the poor are being disproportionately affected by inflation, is to compare their income across time, to prices across time.

When we look at income data from the past few years, it actually turns out, that the poorest Americans saw their incomes grow by over 20% since the pandemic.

The massive rise in wages for low-skilled workers was actually one of the major self-reinforcing drivers of inflation.


The center must hold. Leviathan cannot come off its leash. It is too big, and the stakes are too large. They are, in fact, existential.


Where did I say that inflation is non-existent? Or that the "economy is the strongest it's ever been"?


Bitcoiner cold plunge bali edition. Thanks for getting the ice nostr:npub1v67clmf4jrezn8hsz28434nc0y5fu65e5esws04djnl2kasxl5tskjmjjk nostr:npub1klkk3vrzme455yh9rl2jshq7rc8dpegj3ndf82c3ks2sk40dxt7qulx3vt !

nostr:npub1h50pnxqw9jg7dhr906fvy4mze2yzawf895jhnc3p7qmljdugm6gsrurqev nostr:npub1spdnfacgsd7lk0nlqkq443tkq4jx9z6c6ksvaquuewmw7d3qltpslcq6j7 nostr:npub155c00a6mvtuxquc83lgdsgcz2zxfyulvs3k3janw7s2p06uzqezqw6dfkh https://i.nostr.build/oOJw.jpg https://i.nostr.build/zJ68.jpg https://i.nostr.build/AoVE.jpg https://i.nostr.build/nVE7.jpg


I'm not *quite* directly disagreeing with Lyn per se. I'm emphasizing an orthogonal point about the importance of stability, and suggesting that if the dollar collapses in a catastrophic way in the near future, then I'm not confident we survive the chaos at all. I don't think we get a chance to reset with Bitcoin. I think it's just potentially game over for our civilization. If people are still living, they'll be living in a dark age.


Yep. https://image.nostr.build/168e74efbdc3208150efd417bf9e4a82ebf60714c7bb2a87e0123fd6a179ee56.jpg


Housing starts are way more constrained by local land use policies than anything else.


I agree with you in the sense that all macro patterns in complex systems are meta stable. And no system will survive forever. My disagreement comes from that abandoning incrementalism and suing for compete revolution is profoundly dangerous given the complexity of modern states, modern economies and the modern world.

We agree that these breakdowns are often associated with war. But I disagree that money can be a limiting factor -- especially for say a great power conflict. Governments can just nationalize supply chains and defense production directly. They don't HAVE to go into debt to sustain a war. And if the war is considered to be existential, it's likely this is what they'll do. In fact, the US already had laws on the books that give the president expansive authority to seize control of production in the presence of a real or apprehended war -- the Defense Production Act, for example.

So I get my back up against the wall when people suggest something like Bitcoin can bend us away from these kinds of risks because of any discipline they think it can impose on governments, in this sense.

I'm willing to concede that wars like Iraq in 2003, conducted at the height of America's unipolar moment, within a largely peacetime framework of government debt and spending, could potentially have been attenuated if the public had felt the effects of that more directly, as you pointed out on WBD.

But I think existential wars are different. The rules change. The government can just force industry into a wartime economy and use production nationalization as a tool, if necessary. Which happened under FDR in WWII.


You may very well think that!


Redefining the definition of "war", "empire" and "depression" to the point they contain no historical symmetry or stable meaning across time, so you can tell your doomer and declinist narratives, makes you no better than the government propaganda you criticize. You're just a propagandist trying to tell a story that serves your selfish agenda.

Sad. But true.


You're just saying words and causally redefining what they believe so you can tell the story you want to tell.


I'm sorry. Anecdotes and narratives aren't raw data.


I have no fucks left to give, right now. I'm alarmed by the geopolitical risks I see, and I think people need to wake up from their luxury narratives.


Neither of these charts show a depression. Can you reference the raw datasets? But generally, I'm sorry but ... a depression is not measured relative to a long term exponential curve. That's just a stupid argument.


The idea there's going to be a mass tax revolt, where everyone stops funding the government by hiding seed phrases in their heads is a cool story.


Sorry. I don't believe that real production has declined. And I'm pretty sure people have nothing but feels and anecdotes to advance the argument that's a thing.


I agree the risk of chaos is alarming. What actually makes me angry is people who think we should just let our institutions fail and prepare for what's next, cross our fingers and hope we survive the chaos.


This is irrelevant. I agree with you that the US has done evil. I’ve criticized it. But it’s so fucking ahistorical by any standard — I don’t give a fuck HOW you define war — to suggest that the last half of the 20th century through the oughts and teens of the 21st haven’t been the most peaceful in the history of recorded civilization.

And thinking that if you just take America out of the equation and everything would have been so much more peaceful because you think that the only thing fueling war is the profit motive of the military industrial complex is so naive, and so geopolitically ignorant, that it’s nausea-inducing.

The idea that America is the principle agent in all conflict, and that conflict will subside fi the US was defanged is ridiculous. There are so many geopolitical tensions built in historical, cultural and religious animosities that have nothing to do with the US. And if anything, it’s been the US’s shadow that has kept some of those conflicts at bay. And we’re seeing some of them flare up as we speak!


I think people overstate the case about the “constant forever wars”, quite honestly. And I say that as someone who is a harsh critic of US foreign policy. The reality is that the period starting at the end of World War II, all the way up to today, has been the most peaceful time in most of the history of civilization.

Civilization itself, going all the way back to the Roman Empire has been a forever war. We have existed in an era of the Long Peace. Sometimes called the Pax Americana.

The number of people dying in wars has been in precipitous decline. So when people act like this so-called “American Global Empire” has been an unmitigated war machine that has made the world a far more violent place, I actually don’t know WHAT THE FUCK they’re talking about.

Here’s a chart of the last hundred years of people on this planet who have died in wars. https://image.nostr.build/cbcae93ca67c69964a72269653f0459056d5166a4537e144baec8497d484dee0.jpg


Well, aside from this question being a straw man, I would say that my default assumption is not that everything the government tells me is a lie, like some people in these conversations. As it pertains to econometric data that government agencies like the BLS put out … do I think that this data is all fake and made-up? No. No I don’t.

The reality is, if the data was really as badly manipulated as you intimate, quants at hedge funds and other private researchers would have figured that out a long time ago, and probably made a big stink about it.


I think just sitting back and letting our institutions fail, rather than trying to reform and fix them, is just about the dumbest fucking idea at this point. It’s playing with matches at a civilizational level.


We have found a way to overcome our tribal impulses. It was called liberal democracy and pluralism. We built institutions that facilitated the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the basis for economic exchange.

The people who want to tear these institutions down and replace them with “pure capitalism” or some nonsense like that, have no idea of the forces they’d be unleashing.


The problem is always going to be, that one person’s definition of “senseless war” is another person’s “just war”. If enough people think a war is just, then the tolerance of the public to sacrifice towards the prosecution therein, will go up.

Ukrainians are paying extreme economic costs — and in blood — to sustain their war against the Russians. And support for the war in Ukraine is >90%.

Humans are not purely driven by narrow economic incentives.


You can’t beat human nature. The tribe will always close ranks when threatened. Bitcoin will not stop this. You’re hoping for a spiritual awakening that will never come, unless we literally breed our tribal instincts out of us through genetic engineering.


The vast majority of humans will give up liberties in exchange for security if they’re afraid. History shows us this time and time again. Bitcoin isn’t going to change this. There’s going to be no spiritual awakening on this. We are hard wired — literally in our DNA — to have a tendency to close ranks with our tribe when the tribe is threatened. It’s bedrock human nature shit.

This is why maintaining stability is so fucking important. People embracing collapse and chaos as an opportunity for some libertarian or anarchist awakening are in la-la land.


Oh, I think we could be in WWIII before the end of the decade at this point. My prediction is up to about 50% likely now.


If China invades Taiwan, I promise you, we’re at war. Japan will be drawn in immediately, and the likelihood that the US will be drawn in — and likely have its bases in Okinawa attacked — is basically 100%. Then the US is just at war.

All of the libertarians and peaceniks arguing we should stay out of it, will be blown away like dry leaves on a windy Fall day.

The only thing worth thinking about at this point, is how to dissuade China from taking that step.


People need to wake up from their fairy tales. Bitcoin can make the world a better place. But the idea it’s going to stop these forces from rolling over us and killing us all, is so beyond naive, I don’t know what else to do, but start using more expletives. 🤷♂


There’s this thread in thinking within the bitcoin community that the discipline that a commodity money will impose, will lead to incentives that turn us away from the worst excesses of state power. I think it’s a deeply misguided belief.

It is a belief that is built around normative foundations of the universality of individual property rights and a general consensus for the capitalist mode of production. Which, people assume, is largely inviolable at this point.

I think this is serious reasoning error. People are not even aware of their normative biases here.

How will the government fund the war effort if it’s drowning in debt? Easy. It’s called the Defense Production Act. It will seize the supply chains and factories and bring them under public control, and directly produce weapons, tanks, and planes. There won’t be any negotiation with the private sector over costs and payment.

The problem is, a lot of people think this will lead to public outrage and pushback. Except it won’t. A public, terrified of external enemies, will happily go along with it. And the capitalist class that screams about it, will be branded as traitors.

THIS ISN’T HARD!


That threat is nothing to do with fiat. Nothing.


The doom loop is so stupid. Not that there’s not things to be deeply worried about in the world — including inflation and the fiscal crisis we are likely to have. But the way some people are embracing the chaos they believe is coming as some kind of cleansing, and opportunity to build a new world, like we’re somehow likely to even survive a complete destabilization of the world order is fucking nuts.


So feelings. Not facts.


That chart doesn't mean what you think it means. This is a diffusion index. It is a relative weighting index. Not an absolute measurement.


If you’re right and systemic collapse is inevitable, then we are headed into a dark age of humanity or extinction. The modern Leviathan of the current global order is not something you just let spiral, and hope that bitcoin acts as a safety net which arrests the fall. Money just isn’t going to matter that much, when the power competition starts on a global scale, and the Long Peace comes to its end.

The idea that the “bad money” being used to fuel the armies and weapons will blunt the ability of states to prosecute World War III is pretty much, to me, one of the most naive hopes that I see in these conversations. It requires a real failure of imagination and ignores the real ways in which our tribal instincts cause us to close ranks around external threats.

In World War II, the American public and most of its allies, were able to sustain extreme economic hardship, while maintaining support for war, for instance. Rationing. Soup lines. High inflation. Germany’s currency had literally completely collapsed nearly 10 years earlier, and Hitler still managed to nearly take over the world within a decade of that event.

If people really think we need to write-off the current “system” and prepare for “what’s next”, and abandon the principle of stability and trying to hold the center, then I actually think humanity is likely careening towards extinction. I don’t say that lightly.


Show me your data.


US real GDP is positive. And wage growth has actually, in 2023, referred to its long-term mean. https://image.nostr.build/b043d967eb3cfafff0526a49db741d35f67cebe83d02601c077d2caefebedc6c.jpg


We are not currently in sub-inflationary wage growth. Wage growth has been outpacing price growth for some time now in the United States.


This is all horrible. Inflation has been painful for the entire world these past few years. But that’s not the same thing as a recession. A recession means the economic activity is decreasing overall, which usually means lower employment levels. We are seeing the opposite of this. So we are not in a recession.


We are neither in any economic recession or depression. The fact people keep saying this makes me think we need to turn the whole Internet off.


If it’s true that Jon Stewart was dropped by Apple for his China+AI takes (Apple reportedly wanted Jon to be more “aligned” with their view due to their Chinese economic overlords), I wonder what his next path is.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/19/23924549/jon-stewart-apple-ai-china-cancel

Retire with his “fuck you” money and maybe do a couple independent projects for fun? Or do a more independent/decentralized show?

I grew up watching Jon’s Daily Show. I don’t agree with all his past or present takes, but I always found him to be the best political jester- the one who could bring complex serious topics to a younger audience with humor. And right or wrong, speaking from his heart and logic rather than fully advertiser-captured or audience-captured.

Curious to see what he does next.


The level of geopolitical destabilization we are seeing is alarming. The potential for other fires to start around the world, as certain powers and interests feel this could be their opportunity to expand regional influence, is rising quickly.


If you can't repatriate your money, then it's a pretty shitty alternative to the dollar!


I'm just enjoying the fact that the reasons why I said these currency swap agreements with India and Brazil and others, that people, especially in the bitcoin community saw as the death-knell for the dollar, would fail, are coming true in hilarious rake-to-the-face ways.

Currency swap agreements are cool and all. But closed capital accounts kind of abrogate the possibility of deep liquidity and deep markets.

But people are who emotionally-invested in the collapse of the dollar don't want to hear this. They want to hear doom narratives that make them feel like they have an exclusive lens on the future.


Last year, America declinists: "Look! The dollar is finished! India is buying Russian oil in rubles and has signed a currency swap agreement!"

Today, Russian capital controls: "Hold my beer!"

https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/oil-gas/indian-oil-companies-unable-to-repatriate-300-400-million-in-dividends-from-russia/amp_articleshow/99871824.cms


If you find my prose to be too prolix for you, I apologize. If you'd like to say something substantive or constructive, I'm happy to engage. But otherwise, I'll just step away from this thread.


I’m not one to be swayed by grand macro-historical theories; I see them as akin to spotting random shapes in the clouds. My skepticism comes from observing the gritty details of present-day geopolitics and power dynamics. When an established order like the American-led rules-based system is in decline and there’s no clear, widely accepted successor on the horizon, it tends to usher in a period of volatility, not tranquility. Some might daydream about a more peaceful world without the supposed ‘antagonist’ of the current order, but the nuances of international relations suggest otherwise. Bottom line: a world in flux is rarely a peaceful one.


What of my own normative arguments do you think I'm not self-aware of? I'd be happy to address them for you.


I'm convinced the most powerful insight that one can have, in order to see the world in the most a dispassionate analytical lens possible, is to fundamentally come to understand where value-judgements enter our human arguments and understanding about the world. These things are what philosophers call normative arguments.

They are everywhere in your thinking.

Every argument you make about politics, economics and culture, has a normative argument hiding in there. No matter how "evidenced-based" or "objective" you think the position is.

When you learn to parse for that, you immediately see through a lot of the narrative-based reasoning traps that people fall into.

But still, no matter how analytical you are, you're going to have to show up with your own normative arguments, yourself. But being aware of them is critical to intellectual honesty.


Yes. I'm way more concerned about this spiraling than Ukraine. The cultural and religious caché of the Israel-Palestine conflict creates serious destabilizing cleavages. The fact that Iran likely funded, trained and provided weapons for this. The fact Russia is an Iranian ally. The fact Erdogan in Turkey is Hamas-sympathetic. The fact that Israel was about to consummate a deal for normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, which probably is over now. The fact Hezbollah just fired rockets at Israeli settlements from Lebanon. The ways this conflict stressed the global security situation is ... deeply concerning.


America is not an empire. But its strength in relative terms has declined due to the rise of other power centers. That said, the end of the unipolar moment will lead to instability.


What doesn't make sense?


Well, it's an empirical question at the end of the day. I'll either be right or I'll be wrong. I think a lot of people are hopelessly naive and wandering astray in the fog of misleading vividness. But that's just my opinion. Take it or leave it.


Yes


The reality is this ... those people who think the decline of American-led rules-based order is going to usher in an era of peace, because you've convinced yourself that the military industrial complex is the chief antagonist in what would otherwise be a more peaceful world ... well, you may very well be about to feast on prodigious meal of rude awakenings.


The thing about the progression of history and the increased interconnectedness and complexity of the world is ... it's always different!

But I'll give more thoughts on why this is horrifying for global stability tomorrow.


I think the situation in Israel is going to be dramatically destabilizing to global security.


There's an oddly persistent narrative among some quarters that seeks to attribute the complexities of the global stage directly to the doorstep of Washington, D.C. Nowhere is this more evident than in the discourse surrounding the global oil industry. A fluctuation in oil prices? Blame the Fed. A shift in OPEC's stance? Surely, it must be the result of a Federal Reserve policy.

Such attributions aren't just overly simplistic, they're fundamentally misguided. The Fed, while influential, is not an omnipotent entity controlling every ebb and flow of global oil prices. The oil market is dictated by a myriad of factors — geopolitical tensions, supply-demand dynamics, technological advancements, and yes, sometimes, monetary policy. But to single out the Fed as the solitary puppet master is not only intellectually lazy but also flies in the face of the intricate workings of global economies.

Furthermore, it's telling how this narrative — that every significant world event has its roots in U.S. policy — manages to simultaneously overinflate American influence and undermine the agency of other global actors. Consider Russia's actions in Ukraine, or the socioeconomic dynamics of the Global South. To ascribe these solely to U.S. policy or, more specifically, to the Federal Reserve, is to view the world through a severely distorted lens. It glosses over centuries of regional history, deep-seated nationalistic sentiments, and local political dynamics.


The oil crisis is an under-talked about factor in the general trajectory of inflation, the automotive industry, and even urban development in the US. It’s underplayed just how much the OPEC bloc reshaped the economics of the 80s and beyond. The profound economic consequences of the Oil Crisis rippled across sectors and daily life. The sharp rise in oil prices introduced pervasive inflationary pressures that directly impacted heating, transportation, and production costs. This not only contributed to global economic downturns but also significantly altered trade dynamics, exacerbating trade deficits and leading to greater foreign debt for many oil-importing nations.

In the automotive realm, there was a marked shift in consumer preferences towards fuel efficiency. This trend, in turn, opened the door for Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda, known for their compact and fuel-efficient cars, to secure significant market shares in the US. The crisis also catalyzed the introduction of stricter emissions and mileage standards, pushing automakers towards technological innovations.

Urban development too felt the ripple effects. The burgeoning cost of gasoline posed challenges to the rapid suburban expansion witnessed in the post-WWII era. Commuters began to reconsider the feasibility of long drives to work, leading to a renewed interest in public transit as an energy-efficient alternative. Furthermore, the increased costs associated with heating homes drove a push for better insulation and overall energy efficiency in construction.

The way some portray the "petrodollar" system, suggesting that it's predominantly a golden ticket for the United States, really misses the mark. Yes, the pricing of oil in dollars does generate a certain demand for the USD. However, to suggest this has been a unilateral boon for the U.S. while ignoring the significant windfalls OPEC nations have enjoyed, is a bit naive.

Let's break it down. OPEC nations, via this arrangement, have not just stacked up substantial revenues but have transformed their economies, cities, and geopolitical positions. Just look at the vast sovereign wealth funds they've built over the years, all driven by petrodollar influx. These funds don't just sit idly – they're active, global investors and have a significant say in global financial markets.

Furthermore, this dollar-for-oil setup also inadvertently ties America's hands to the fortunes and stability of oil-exporting nations. It's a double-edged sword. On one hand, yes, there's a demand for dollars. On the other, it places the U.S. in the midst of geopolitical quagmires and demands a continued diplomatic, and sometimes military, engagement in often unpredictable regions.


One more thing … not to mention, try letting a car from the 1960s sit in a garage for 3-4 months without it being started. Manufacturers literally instructed owners that they should regularly run and drive the car regularly, and not let it sit too long — otherwise the engine could become un-lubricated and seize up, preventing it from starting. Modern cars can sit for years, have some fresh fuel poured in their tanks and startup fine! People’s definition of “quality” is weird sometimes.


They were easier to service and repair, yes. But they also needed a lot more maintenance. In 1970, the average recommended oil change interval for a car was 2,500 miles. Also, cars needed regular tune-ups, to adjust the timing belts, clean the carburetor — which was recommended to be done every 6,000 miles, on average for a car made in 1970. Clutches in transmissions wore out all the time.

Today, cars are being sold with oil change intervals of 15,000 miles / 1 year. Tune-ups aren’t even a thing anymore, because engine timing is controlled by an ECU, and fuel injection has replaced carburetors. Transmissions routinely last the entire life of the car and go hundreds of thousands of miles with no maintenance — that was literally not a thing for a car made in 1970.

So when people say modern cars are of much lower quality, I never really understand what they’re talking about.


The “cars were better built in the past” is one of those insanely wrong myths that just won’t die. But this video puts it into really stark terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U


I think it’s mostly a fallacy that product quality has been falling across the board. It’s been a common trope. Even when I was growing up in the 80s, my parents would say the old adage that “they don’t make things like they used to”. But this relies on an incredibly distorted false nostalgia.

How often does a television repairman come to your house and replace the vacuum tubes? When was the last time your radiator in your car exploded because you were running the air condition in hot weather? How often does the compressor in fridge break down, and refilled and re-pressurized with coolant? When was the last time you heard of a car needing its transmission to be rebuilt when it had less than 150,000 miles on the odometer?

These things were all common occurrences and were considered par for the course in the past. But people will swear up and down that all these things were built to much higher levels of quality in the past.

People’s common retort is to point out that a lot of these goods have a lot of “plastic” in them, instead of metal. As if, it’s always preferable to make everything out of metal than plastic. Metal is heavier. It bends. It conducts electricity (when maybe you don’t want it to). When it bends, it doesn’t bend back. But people will swear this is a hallmark of “quality”. Which I think is complete nonsense.

Anyways, I know you’re talking about food, here. And there is some reason to believe that fruits and vegetables have become somewhat less nutritious over time, as a result of nutrient-depletion in the soil from intense industrial farming. However, to attribute that to inflationary monetary policy, instead of the Green Revolution — which by the way, has almost completely eliminated famine from the entire planet, would be a very silly thing for people to argue.


Basically.


What makes someone a free-thinker?


You are certainly in control of what you're interested in.


Kind of surprised: a lot of the people I thought my most recent WBD interview would really irk, have had pretty positive things to say about my arguments -- even if they didn't fully agree with me!


Democracy theorists have been thinking about this for a long time. Technically, electing representatives through lotteries is still completely democratic.

Democracy just means that everyone has equal political rights and equal political franchise. A random lottery still fits this definition!

The arguments for it are reasonably compelling. Trial juries are often cited as an example of how randomly selected citizens do a much better job at making dispassionate decisions than self-selected groups are.


Who thinks I should return to Nostr?


Great episode nostr:npub164q45vfa8prpl7f63stsl9qm9n22v6julkasjdqxjc8kevchsj0sp42rl3

Appreciate nostr:npub1hyqrsvl6hle8r5rc9cpshesm0mpcee75tgde4p5lhke5h83dyqqqdwk7cp for your sane and nuanced take on left/right polarization, Covid, and societal unity. A rare find in this space sometimes…

Worth a listen 🔥

https://fountain.fm/episode/m0sjAPxMc1lL0bXbtFB7


brockm

@TBD. Some people have said I'm extremely reasonable person. Others strongly disagree! #bitcoin  #tbd


I really think everyone should be significantly more freaked out about AI.


I think the truth is, there's no universally good diet. Different genetics produce different optimal diets for people. There's increasingly a lot of science that supports this.


If bitcoin miners can afford to pay for their electricity at the prevailing market rate, then they are no different from any other consumer of electricity. The end.


Too many people have given Elon a pass. Don't give him a pass.

He's a marketer, not a founder or an engineer. He didn't found PayPal or Tesla; he bought into them early. He's good at selling narratives and equity valuation for perpetually unprofitable companies.

Everything for him is a narrative. His green revolution was a narrative to sell more cars and get more subsidies. His bitcoin purchase was to gain appeal among bitcoin/crypto people in a bull market. And he shilled doge like a dumbass. His SpaceX narrative is to get money from the government.

His rooftop solar thing was an outright scam; the technology isn't ready and went nowhere because of that. His full-self-driving-in-an-intermediate-term timeline was a scam, and is going nowhere because of that. He makes scams to draw people and capital in, because for him it's all about narratives and equity valuation.

And then he dug unproductive holes, suggested unproductive hyper-tubes, built meme flamethrowers, for what? It's a narrative, not a business. None of this is real productive shit to make peoples' lives better.

His latest "we need free speech" narrative was a scam too. He tapped into something real, which is what marketers do and why it kind of worked. Yes, we need free speech. Yes, Twitter had censorship issues. He saw that and jumped on it maliciously rather than productively.

But what did he replace it with? He replaced it with arbitrary journalist censorship about his private jet, arbitrary censorship of Substack, selective Twitter Files release, won't talk seriously about any of his China connections because Xi Jinping fucking owns him economically there like Jack Ma, has his balls firmly in his grasp, etc.

Elon's playing the narrative, the anti-woke meme of the day. He's a master meme-momentum-player. Don't fall for it.


Oh, well then ...


*lossy I mean. JPEG is not lossless.


I'm so bullish on Africa and #Bitcoin 🤙🏻

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/26/bitcoin-is-poised-to-blow-up-africas-86-billion-banking-system.html


All great things are made up of many small steps.


#Bitcoin doesn't fix everything. It's a great start though.


I don't assume that, at all. I maybe assume that people understand where I live. To the extent you do not care about US domestic issues, I suggest you proceed to ignore me on this point. Or entirely on all points.


Yes, I have a particular interest in land use policy in the United States and how it's contributed to an affordability crisis. I have spoken extensively on this topic.

There are parts of the world that have a much better and sane approach to land use and housing policy. So I don't see why I must be forced to speak in general terms to fend off your accusations of Americentrism.


I care about my backyard, yes.


Then we agree.


https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1638524441826131975 😬 #[0]


LOL!


Not sure we're in disagreement, here?


Yes. This was a point I made yesterday. #[5]


Another item on the stack! Thank you!


You might dig this 👇

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_a85a3eccb9f6d1d21ccfb168b873e637a15e4cc86326230c0ff78e650162f714.jpeg


I literally just listened to Nita's interview on Sean Carroll's Mindscape Podcast and this book is already in my Audible Library, ready to go!


Tomorrow we'll hit two Zap milestones. 200,000 Zaps sent and 100,000 Zapped events. The gap between Zap senders and Zap receivers has also widened to ~9,000 senders and ~6,000 receivers.

https://i.imgur.com/RDyiz03.png


I'm happy for you if you're able to live fully bitcoin native. Most people can't.


I would just suggest you're working really hard to engage in narrative-fitting, here.


Average hours worked is also not up. Where are you getting your information from when you say things? https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_c158a4d739e37b6a72fd8491f3930e3b4b38581590b192df177d86f0cc70b6f7.png


I have no respect for the "burn it all down" argument. None.


The clout drug is hard for most people to resist.


charlotte community is strong

https://bitcoincharlotte.org/


Bitcoin is Freedom Money.

Episode Four with Abubakar Nur Khalil is Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWmfDSxtvi0
---------

Episode One with Gigi: https://youtu.be/6Tr4-DL1c1s

Episode Two with Roya Mahboob: https://youtu.be/D0y41yelcNM

Episode Three with Janine Roem: https://youtu.be/xTfY5TjuN2A

New Episodes Every Wednesday 🤙


I’d say the average is ~5 years from first commits to wide-spread adoption. Git was introduced in 2005, and didn’t really break out in a big way until 2010-2012. Linux was early 90s, and didn’t really break out until the dot-com era. First web browser, HTTP and HTML was 1990. First real breakout was about 1995.

So if you’re seeing exponential adoption curves <5 years into a new protocol and/or new open source technology, you’re doing pretty great!


**HUGE! HUGE! HUGE!** Congrats to #[0] on this massive accomplishment. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication. I feel like we're all winning, because of your success.