The Philosophy of Money with Andrew Bailey

Summary

Highlights

• Peter McCormack and Andrew Bailey unpack the philosophy of money and its impact on society. 💬
• Bitcoin as a disruptive force in traditional economics is explored. 📉
• The ethical implications of wealth and the fairness of inheritance are questioned. 🏛️
• A fascinating discussion on the emotional and philosophical significance of time as akin to money. ⏳
• The importance of questioning financial systems and considering the ethical aspects of wealth distribution is emphasized. 🌍

Key Takeaways

• Understand the philosophy of money and how it affects both society and individuals. 💡
• Bitcoin challenges traditional theories of money by offering a new kind of currency that shares features with both fiat and commodity money. 🚀
• The conversation explores the ethical considerations of wealth, such as the fairness of inheritance and the impact of income inequality. 💰
• Peter and Andrew emphasize the importance of questioning and understanding financial systems and the role of freedom in education and economic theories. ❓
• The evolving role of money in human life and its psychological impact on both personal freedom and societal structures are discussed. 🧠

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 06:15: Introduction and Previous Meeting The chapter titled 'Introduction and Previous Meeting' begins with a conversation between Andrew and Peter. They exchange greetings and pleasantries, including a mention of their previous meeting over Zoom in 2020. Peter was involved in helping Andrew and his colleagues with branding for their Bitcoin Research Collective. The chapter highlights the continuity and development of their professional relationship over the years.
• 06:15 - 10:45: Bitcoin Show and Philosophy of Music The chapter discusses the concept of 'resistance money' and includes a conversation about the unexpected progress of a particular project, which involved publishing 20 articles and producing a book. There is also mention of a personal commitment to respond to emails, though it isn't always possible to entertain all inquiries. The conversation refers to someone named Troy, suggesting a prior discussion or collaboration.
• 10:45 - 15:30: Resistant Money and Roger Peair The chapter discusses the title 'Resistant Money,' which was initially seen as a cool name by the speakers. They reflect on why the name continues to stick with them. The conversation mentions traveling shows that have been performed in Texas and are now in Miami. There is a pressure on Danny, who is expected to enjoy the upcoming Andrew Bailey show the most, despite past statements that Danny declared a different show as the most anticipated.
• 15:30 - 21:20: The Role of Peter Schiff In the chapter titled 'The Role of Peter Schiff,' the gatekeeper of 'What Bitcoin Did,' Danny, highlights a recent show guest, Andrew Bailey. Danny knows Peter enjoys philosophical discussions, which he associates with Andrew Bailey's upcoming appearance, adding pressure on Andrew as the anticipated favorite in philosophical discourse. The chapter suggests a thoughtful examination of perspectives within the cryptocurrency discourse, likely emphasizing Schiff’s contributions and views intertwined with Bitcoin.
• 21:20 - 30:05: Adam Smith and Economics This chapter discusses the philosophy of money, starting with an introduction of the speaker, who is part of a resistant money collective. The speaker shares a pre-Bitcoin story, mentioning a personal experience with a debate camp in 1999, where taxation was a topic of discussion.
• 30:05 - 42:30: Teaching Economics and Philosophy The author shares an anecdote about an encounter with a person named Roger at some event. Roger challenged the author's views and suggested they read 'The Wealth of Nations' by Adam Smith. Despite the confrontation, Roger sent the author a copy of the book, which the author kept and even had signed by Harry Brown, a Libertarian figure. This interaction evidently left a lasting impact on the author.
• 42:30 - 50:00: The Role of Bitcoin and Project The chapter discusses the influence of a person named Roger on the speaker, particularly in their early adoption of libertarian ideas, which eventually prepared them for Bitcoin. Although the speaker is no longer a libertarian, they remain receptive to some of those ideas. In 2019, the speaker realized it was Roger who had gifted them a book in the past, and Roger confirmed it, stating he now gives away Bitcoin Cash instead.
• 50:00 - 55:00: Bitcoin Adoption and Its Effects The chapter titled 'Bitcoin Adoption and Its Effects' covers various aspects of Bitcoin and its adoption. The speaker mentions trading for real Bitcoin and appreciates someone named Roger. They express that one of the saddest parts of Bitcoin involves discussions they've had, including one with Peter Schiff. The conversation touched upon separating Peter Schiff's ideas from Bitcoin, mentioning that Schiff is an interesting individual with many insightful points, despite his criticism of Bitcoin. The speaker finds the discussion slightly tiring, indicating the need for a nap due to its length or complexity.
• 55:00 - 67:00: Money and Happiness This chapter discusses differing perspectives on the economy and taxation, highlighting a particular individual's stance on Bitcoin. Despite being brilliant and knowledgeable, there is a critique of this person’s decision to go against Bitcoin without thoroughly considering its implications. Additionally, there's a mention of checking this person’s recent Twitter activity for further context.
• 67:00 - 74:30: The Resistance Money Project The chapter titled 'The Resistance Money Project' discusses the views of a person named Robert (possibly Kobashi) with a slight confusion about a similar name from 'The Usual Suspects.' Robert is known for tweeting about economic issues and advocating for buying gold and silver, but not Bitcoin. Another person named Schiff often replies to these tweets, agreeing with everything except the stance on Bitcoin. The speaker suspects that Robert has not thoroughly researched Bitcoin.
• 74:30 - 83:30: Philosophy of Money and Life The chapter discusses the philosophy of money, focusing on the concept of gold and Bitcoin. It presents a scenario where an individual re-evaluates the usefulness of gold and concludes it is useless except outside the context of Bitcoin. It also reflects on the contributions and changing perspectives of individuals within the Bitcoin community, such as someone named Roger, who was once helpful in understanding Bitcoin and the idea of freedom but is now seen as irrelevant due to his lack of understanding and being hurt by the Bitcoin community.
• 83:30 - 93:00: The Future of Bitcoin The chapter delves into the personal experiences and struggles within the Bitcoin community. The conversation appears to focus on Roger, a prominent figure, often referred to as 'Bitcoin Jesus'. It discusses the impact and emotional turmoil he faced due to public perception and criticism on platforms like Twitter. The label 'Bitcoin Jesus' is critiqued as a strange and unhelpful moniker, which could have contributed to his subsequent rejection and possible ego-related issues. The narrative captures how personal identity and ego can be affected within the digital currency discourse.
• 93:00 - 108:30: The Role of Taxes and Equality The chapter discusses the lack of significant new interest in Bitcoin Cash (BCH). It mentions the persistence of some individuals with Bitcoin Cash, despite its perceived irrelevance in the current market compared to years ago. It highlights the notion of 'ego death' and criticizes those who still hold on to BCH. The text emphasizes that BCH has not attracted new users and remains of interest mainly to those who were involved during its earlier, more relevant period.
• 108:30 - 121:00: Inheritance and Teaching Children The chapter discusses the topic of inheritance and teaching children, with a focus on personal interactions and learning from influential figures in history. The conversation touches on Bitcoin and the varying opinions about it, as well as the influence of economic philosophers like Adam Smith. It highlights the importance of learning from experts and influential works, even if not fully understood, to broaden one's understanding and perspective.
• 121:00 - 127:30: Money and Markets The chapter 'Money and Markets' discusses the contributions of Adam Smith, an 18th-century Scottish economist who was part of the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith, along with contemporaries like David Hume, essentially laid the groundwork for what we know today as political economy or economics. The chapter revolves around Smith's seminal work, 'The Wealth of Nations', which explores the fundamental question of why some nations are wealthy and how capital is formed. It seeks to unravel the mechanisms that lead to the prosperity of certain countries.
• 127:30 - 143:00: The Role of Money in Happiness This chapter delves into the exploration of how markets, as initially explored by Adam Smith, contribute to prosperity and underpin the concept of happiness. Highlighting Smith's significant discovery, the chapter outlines his insights on the systematic creation of wealth through markets and refers to his work as foundational in understanding economic happiness. Although Smith's work is extensive and detailed, its attractiveness lies in uncovering the mechanisms behind prosperity and happiness, as emphasized by subsequent economists.
• 143:00 - 155:00: The Influence of Bitcoin The chapter delves into the evolution of the term 'political economy' and its transformation into 'economics.' It discusses the reasons behind dropping the 'political' aspect of the term, attributing it to the desire to separate political connotations and the trend towards academic specialization. As economics and political studies became distinct fields, the intersection, known as political economy, seemed to fade in importance for economists, leading to a lack of awareness among them about this intersection.
• 155:00 - 167:30: Philosophical Perspective on Money The chapter titled 'Philosophical Perspective on Money' delves into the intersection of economics and mathematics. It highlights a viewpoint shared during a discussion where it was stated that economics is fundamentally about humans and their incentives, rather than being purely mathematical. This perspective challenges the modern educational approach to economics, which heavily emphasizes mathematics. The chapter reflects on the reason someone might choose to study economics—the love for mathematics—contrasting it with the notion that understanding economics requires focusing on human behavior and incentives.
• 167:30 - 177:30: Wealth Inequality and Justice The chapter discusses a conversation centered around the perception of economics and its relationship with mathematics. One perspective is that economics should be considered as the study of human behavior under conditions of scarcity, rather than strictly a mathematical discipline. While mathematics is acknowledged as a useful tool, it shouldn't solely define the field. The chapter also includes a brief mention of a professor teaching at Yale NUS College.
• 177:30 - 186:00: Morality and Economy The chapter discusses the educational setup at a college in Singapore, specifically focusing on the collaboration between Yale and the National University of Singapore. It highlights the teaching of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at the institution. There is a brief mention of different schools of economics, but the speaker chooses not to fully engage with a question related to their personal economic stance, such as being a Keynesian Economist. The discussion seems to suggest an emphasis on presenting a broad view of economics without subscribing strictly to one school of thought.
• 186:00 - 200:30: Philosophy of Happiness The chapter 'Philosophy of Happiness' begins with a reference to an interview with Perry Anne and another with an individual who studied economics. The narrator mentions their own background in studying economics at the 'A level,' which is part of the British educational system for students aged 16 to 18. They make a comparison to Singapore's educational system and recall being taught about the economist John Maynard Keynes. The teachings of Keynes were not presented as one of many competing economic theories but rather as the definitive economics. However, the narrator expresses a different approach, indicating they do not teach Keynesian economics as the sole viewpoint on the subject.
• 200:30 - 210:00: Closing Thoughts In 'Closing Thoughts', the chapter seems to focus on the intersection of economics with philosophy, rather than the technical or mathematical aspects such as demand curves or indifference curves. The speaker, presumably a teacher, discusses how they do not engage with the 'techie side' of economics due to a lack of proficiency in calculus. Instead, they focus on the philosophical aspects intertwined with economics. Moreover, there is a mention of the economist Keynes, emphasizing that he was more than just a figure in macroeconomics. Some bitcoin enthusiasts might overlook the multifaceted contributions of Keynes, focusing narrowly on certain economic ideas.

The Philosophy of Money with Andrew Bailey Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Andrew how are you doing all right Peter how are you good uh welcome to what Bitcoin did thank you well good to see you again yes well yes uh I didn't know we'd met before we had a zoom chat in 2020. I asked you for some time to help me and my colleagues work on some branding for this new Bitcoin research Collective we were going to be launching so that was two years ago and you gave us the thumbs up on the title we we
• 00:30 - 01:00 landed on which is resistance money I I have no memory of this at all this Terror wasn't it well it happened the website is up we published 20 articles since then and we got a book amazing well I tell it I say uh email me anyone email me I'll do my best to reply we cut it out for a while but it's back and uh I don't say I don't entertain say no to a lot um so that's kind of funny because thank you well when we first spoke was it Troy we
• 01:00 - 01:30 first spoke to yeah and Troy's reference referenced the resistance money I was like that's a [ __ ] cool name huh that's what you thought back then we stuck with it at all like Jesus I wonder why that is well listen we've got we're doing stretcher shows we've just did Texas uh we're now here in Miami and Danny don't want to put any pressure on you but Danny said the show you're gonna most enjoy is the Andrew Bailey show that's the one you're going to look forward to but then the last episode you said Danny says that
• 01:30 - 02:00 everybody's great so no but but Danny said everyone's well Danny has to say that because Danny is the uh thank you Danny Danny is the gatekeeper of what Bitcoin did if then he says no the people come on he's the booker so he he would think they're all great but he said Andrew Bailey's the show you're gonna most enjoy I think it's because we've had some philosophers on recently and we've gone to a bit of philosophy and he knows I enjoy those and he said he said Pete I'm telling you now Andrew Bailey is the One You're Gonna enjoy so the pressure's on them
• 02:00 - 02:30 and we're going to talk about the philosophy of money so I think a good starting point as a one of the resistant money Collective uh tell us tell people a little bit about you if they don't know you what is it you do work wise would you spend your day on could I start with a pre-bitcoin story then then oh yeah you start with anything you want my friend I want to talk about Roger beer in 1999 I was 15 years old and I was at this debate camp and we were arguing about Taxation and
• 02:30 - 03:00 there's this guy in the audience named Roger who came up to me and told me Andrew Andrew you're wrong about everything this was wrong this was wrong this is wrong you need to read some real books and then he sent me in the mail a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations wow and we met one other time so I was 15 he must have been about 19 20 at the time I still have copies those very copies he gave me and I later had them signed by Harry Brown who was the Libertarian
• 03:00 - 03:30 presidential candidate in the year 2000. so I met Roger and he was actually an influence in a way to to move in that libertarian Zone even in my youth so I think that was one thing that prepared me for Bitcoin even though I'm not libertarian anymore it may be receptive in some ways and then years later maybe in 2019 I emailed Rogers like there's this guy named Roger who gave me this book was that he was like absolutely that's me I used to give away books all the time now I give away Bitcoin cash and then he sent me some bch
• 03:30 - 04:00 I quickly traded it for real Bitcoin good man that Roger is one of the saddest parts of Bitcoin uh a little bit like we discussed uh Peter Schiff this morning with uh we did an interview with um sorry Perry I'm boring see that's why I have to have a little nap I gotta wake up now um we hit we did an interview pair and boring we were discussing Peter Schiff and it's if you separate Peter Schiff from Bitcoin he's a super interesting guy he makes some amazing points uh he's written some really
• 04:00 - 04:30 interesting things if you've talked about the economy or the FED uh taxation he's he's brilliant he's halfway there he's he needs to be 90 there yeah he's 90 95. something doesn't compute though well he's made the decision to go against Bitcoin and he refuses to do the work to consider it uh even today I just after the interview I went and checked his Twitter and his last tweet was uh um the oh who's the guy Rich there poor
• 04:30 - 05:00 dead guy he anyway Robert something kobashi or something yeah because I'm trying to confuse it not with um Kobayashi from The Usual Suspects um and he puts out tweets saying something about the economy and you need to buy gold silver and Bitcoin and tweets were like uh shifts replies you need to be yeah I agree with you on everything apart from Bitcoin so he's made a decision in every single single interaction to reject Bitcoin but I can't imagine he's ever done the work I can't imagine he's ever and done it in
• 05:00 - 05:30 a neutral scenario where he reconsiders gold as well so he he is completely uh useless with color regardless of Bitcoin he's not useful in any way at all but he is useful outside of Bitcoin and I feel has similar feelings about Roger Roger there was very useful to me at one point in terms of trying to understand freedom and trying to understand parts of Bitcoin but now it's completely useless as he doesn't understand Bitcoin I think he was hurt by bitcoiners too
• 05:30 - 06:00 we can all have that moment you've been hurt by bitcoiners too saying mean things about you on Twitter I think I think it went by Phoenix I think it went deeper for Roger than he might admit well when you go from Bitcoin Jesus like I think Roger's problem is he became Bitcoin Jesus which is a really crap label to receive to then uh having an idea you have completely rejected that possibly hurt him but that isn't that is an ego problem and with an ego
• 06:00 - 06:30 you have to have an ego death and he just didn't have the ego death and now he's he still hasn't given off on bitcoin cash when nobody gives a [ __ ] like nobody can when I say nobody I say relatively small amount of people nobody knew comes into Bitcoin and then goes to bch only people who care about PCH now cared about it four years ago or three years ago whatever their time period was where it had a small amount of relevance nobody goes to bch now unless they're a [ __ ] idiot idiot and that's a shame because not even Peter Schiff goes to
• 06:30 - 07:00 bch nothing beat a chef but I would happily uh Peter shift here opposite me and have that conversation with him or talk about things outside of Bitcoin I would still talk to Roger beer but we could not discuss Bitcoin because it would be a pointless conversation and it's a shame it is he was sincere he really believed yeah so what did Peter sorry what did the Adam Smith book do for you tell people who Adam Smith is if they don't know him I've never actually read The Wealth of Nations which is why I've written it down well I never read the whole thing either but sometimes I
• 07:00 - 07:30 teach some of the famous portions so he was a Scottish Economist in the 18th century living what was called the Scottish Enlightenment so this was a group of thinkers around Edinburgh David Hume who's a friend of Adam Smith basically inventing what we now know as political economy or economics and the big question of The Wealth of Nations was why are nations wealthy how is it that capital is formed how is it that some Nations get rich and others don't what what are the underlying mechanisms here and the big answer throughout was
• 07:30 - 08:00 markets so that was Adam Smith's big Discovery was thinking systematically about how markets create prosperity and of course this is the theme that you can see in other economists ever since but he was one of the people who really put it in a I wouldn't say Punchy way because it's a two volume set that I've never read the whole thing of but uh I think he discovered the mechanism that underlies all of that and put it together in a really attractive way so that's the thing he's known for I've never heard somebody uh refer to
• 08:00 - 08:30 economics as political the political economy economic used to be called political economy never knew that do you know that no never heard that uh makes sense it's interesting that they dropped the political part isn't it well because it's it really it alludes to propaganda yeah and I think it's also specialization in Academia we get further and further apart from each other so there's political science over here there's economics and there's their intersection political economy but a lot of economists don't know about
• 08:30 - 09:00 that bit and a lot of the political scientists are economically ignorant another thing Preamble at this morning she also said economics has nothing to do with math interesting yeah she said it's all about humans and incentives hmm it's got nothing to do with math I don't think you'd learn that if you took a modern economics degree course she said the reason she took uh economics because she wanted to do the math part because they wrote math
• 09:00 - 09:30 classes I went with her right but she said economics really isn't anything to do with math yeah if you think of Economics as the study of human behavior under scarcity then it's not fundamentally math maybe math is one useful tool that we could and should use but you wouldn't think of it I think the way that a lot of modern economists do which is that it's something like calculus yeah it's a study of curves so you're you're a professor I'm afraid so you're a professor where can you say that I teach at Yale and US
• 09:30 - 10:00 College it's a small school in Singapore jointly founded by Yale and the National University of Singapore and I teach philosophy politics and economics there philosophy of politics and economics and if you're discussing uh teaching economics there are you teaching that there are different competing schools of Economics or are you uh a Keynesian Economist the the part of I'm not going to answer the question is you phrased it okay again I bring that up only because we
• 10:00 - 10:30 did the interview with Perry Anne but we also did another interview recently with somebody who studied economics I studied economics at a level I don't know if you understand the British system but a levels is 16 to 80. Singapore does it that way right okay and uh we were taught canes in economics we had a whole pretty much a whole semester on Keynes and economics it was um it wasn't studied as a competing School of Economics it was studied or taught this is economics that's not the way I think about it or the way I teach it yeah I don't teach
• 10:30 - 11:00 the techie side of econs because I'm not good at calculus okay what I teach is the stuff that intersects especially with philosophy so the stuff that isn't all about demand curves or about indifference curves or whatever other technical devices economists use now I do have a thought about Keynes I think when bitcoiners talk [ __ ] about canes they miss that he was more than just a macro
• 11:00 - 11:30 Economist who said some wonky things maybe dangerous things maybe things that are uh influential to the worse uh he also said a bunch of other things too and there's one great assay from him I just got a plug it's called economic possibilities for our grandchildren and it's really interesting to read this wasn't what he thought it was he saw this prosperous future where productivity continued to go up and that all of us could work for our days so one great question is Dr Keynes
• 11:30 - 12:00 or maybe with Mr Keynes what happened in 1971 why why is it that we don't have four hour work days productivity continued to rise at least for a big part of the 20th century but but something broke and and he was predicting the rise he didn't predict the break and he was wondering well what are we going to do with our time it's a great essay it's one of these bits of it's kind of like speculative futurology or science fiction I'm just dreaming about what the possibilities could be and I think that Keynes is deeply
• 12:00 - 12:30 appealing and interesting and humanist and bitcoiners might like it even if they don't like anything else he said about you know the Paradox of thrift and stuff like that so he had good intentions people talk about Karl Marx in a similar way they talked about Keynes them because people talk about Karl Marx's somebody who had has a great Observer great intentions but it was the application of his ideas which are the issue yeah Marx was a great social scientist in this respect he really had a great mind for putting
• 12:30 - 13:00 together theories these abstract hunches or intuitions we have with data and seeing if we could support or disconfirm the theory with the data and he was basically inventing social sciences we know now which is kind of the intersection of numbers plus people uh unfortunately in my view a lot of his ideas just turn out to be false yes and the application of his ideas dangerous dangerous yeah and still still today some people uh think his ideas have just not been implemented
• 13:00 - 13:30 correctly we haven't had real Marxism oh dear I'm surprised people haven't said we don't have real Keynesian economics you know Peter somebody said that somewhere I'm sure I'm sure they did somewhere on Twitter in your teaching how much Freedom do you have in terms of what you want to teach and how you want to teach with regards to like a syllabus do you have absolute freedom or is there certain constraints around what you can teach some of my teaching is in the common
• 13:30 - 14:00 curriculum within my college which is the classes that all students take and those are team taught so all syllabus decisions are made by the team so very little freedom in a way there except over time where you iterate and persuade colleagues and build coalitions to make the changes you want but when teaching my own courses near full autonomy excellent so guess what I've been teaching about for I don't know last four years plus Bitcoin cash close one of those words was accurate well that's that's amazing
• 14:00 - 14:30 um and I imagine your students absolutely love this class and love the fact that they're doing something completely different they're at the Forefront of real economics well I think reflecting carefully about money and Bitcoin both of these things are catnip for students and if you can do them together in a responsible way I found not only do I get like the enrollment like students uh you know their butts and seats but they get something out of it but at least I hope they do and I think I think they do that's what the alumni tell me
• 14:30 - 15:00 later and uh how much of it like do you have I was talking to Perry Anne about this as well in that uh I went to University and I went to a [ __ ] one and just studied the [ __ ] course and left and it was terrible I was telling her I romanticize I'm going to say American uh higher studies because I imagine I said to I imagine these large Amphitheater to classrooms full of uh for the students debating with their professor and their Professor encouraging debate and encouraging questioning we don't get that at school
• 15:00 - 15:30 my kids aren't encouraged to question I encourage them at home to question question me question school don't don't trust anything don't believe anything I always had this example my son my son was a drama student and he had to do a monologue as one of his performances and uh the monologue he picked out was one that was done by what was the name of the kid who was in Dune uh charlem and Timothy Charlotte yeah Timothy charlemen he found a monologue that
• 15:30 - 16:00 Timothy charlemen did as a student I think it was that one I could be wrong but anyway and the piece was set during um I think it's either it was it was the post-slavey area era I'm gonna get some of this wrong in in the US and so the piece had some racist connotations in it but my son as a fan of the actor and thought the piece is going to wanted to do it and uh he presented it to the the teacher and the teacher said I don't think you should do this because there's racist connotations to it and my son
• 16:00 - 16:30 came home disappointed and I said is the peace itself racist or is the peace itself a reflected reflective of a period of racism and he said well it's this you didn't understand the full question but he said it's just about that time I said well do you want to do it and he said yes I said well why can't you and he said the teacher was worried that there may be some black people in the audience who would be offended so I said well what do you think about that he said well it's it's yeah
• 16:30 - 17:00 performers art I mean my view is that it's racist to say you can't do it like this teacher is creating a situation that isn't racist and turn it into one so I said you as my son are welcome to go back and demand to the teacher this is the piece you do and you're willing to question them and if you don't agree with their decision you're you are welcome and like under my approval to refuse to do anything else like you can challenge this I mean obviously he's not dead I'm not
• 17:00 - 17:30 gonna do that that was that was a a gift to offer that freedom yeah because they're not taught to challenge I said to my daughter every time she says I don't want to do my homework don't do your homework then tell your teacher why until you tell that teacher what you did instead they don't teach any of this I mean I'm a dick so I want my kids to be like that I want them to be challenging and spiky and but I that's what I always hope that happens at higher education and I kind of I kind of hope maybe you are like Robin Williams and The Poet Society
• 17:30 - 18:00 I don't know about that but I think the question is a powerful tool for a teacher yeah not to tell someone the way things are but to ask them something interesting and see what happens it can be magic and have you found teaching Bitcoin it forces people to question more forces students to question more it makes us question everything hell yeah a good question opens up I'm afraid more questions which in turn open up more questions and the fundamental questions about Bitcoin are very
• 18:00 - 18:30 fruitful in that way they just generate more and more of the same and that's magic in the classroom when you get somebody wondering and not just trying to answer the question that you just asked but responding with questions of their own and of course you can't do this forever sometimes you have to just write an essay or figure something out but that that's the magic that that's where it's at that's what I aim for as a teacher is uh could I make an observation please do you describe the the interaction with your son and I
• 18:30 - 19:00 think you gave like three questions in a row you were asking him questions until instead of saying I think you should do it I think you should you ask some questions yeah no I don't that's why I do it yeah I do well because the other thing about the the having children right now we're in a very difficult time to have children for two reasons they're they're living through a reset of some kind I don't I don't mean like the world economic forums great reset but there they're certainly living through a reset they're living through a time of uh increasing uh or growth in
• 19:00 - 19:30 authoritarianism and surveillance within Western liberal democracies but they're living at a time where there's massive change in technology uh it's like that um there's a TED Talk we used we've watched that guy is a teacher he said teach a kid to dance you must have seen it and yeah this kid wants to dance and he's saying yeah we're teaching we don't know where we're going to be in five years and we've got five year olds we don't know the world they're going to be in 20 years you know what skills do we need to teach them
• 19:30 - 20:00 so with my kids it's like I'd have weird when my daughter's 20 and entering the work 22 entering the the world we don't know what jobs are going to be available what types so I think one of the most important skills is is the ability to to stand out and be different to question things not to not to be just some someone is able to go in a cubicle and complete your tasks because we don't know what those tasks will be and plus they'll be mind-numbingly boring it's hard to teach I believe it can be tight you have to give people freedom to take risks and
• 20:00 - 20:30 not punish them when they take the risks hmm they have to have environments where they can Flex that muscle of risk tolerance and for me that's one place that the classroom is it's a place where we can say the weird the outrageous the dubious things as we're processing through and to not be punished for them by peers or by professor I think of a podcast like that but but we do get punished for them but I do think it I see your other podcast or this one no I think this is a place to
• 20:30 - 21:00 question and think about things and test ideas that's why this show isn't just a bunch of right-wing Libertarians confirming why bitcoin's amazing and it's a place where we talk to everybody from somebody who is a professor to somebody who is an economist is somebody who's a program like all different people um let me ask you so Bitcoin is Bitcoin a solution to the problem or the Bitcoin a theory
• 21:00 - 21:30 I want to say both as if it's a trick question what I'm getting at is uh one of the questions me and Danny ask ourselves a lot is I'll be wrong about Bitcoin I don't know the answer to that I've thought about the theory question I think of Bitcoin in some ways as an anti-theory it's more like something that bulldozes through the theories that pre-existed it so here here's a view and you can probably think of a bunch of these here just an example here's a view
• 21:30 - 22:00 that was standard on the one hand we have commodity monies these cost something to make on the other hand we have Fiat monies which have no intrinsic value and cost nothing to make commodity monies do have intrinsic value that is they have use value you can burn them eat them they're shiny and so on what Bitcoin shows us is it's actually possible to combine these characteristics nobody's ever done that before it's costly to produce and it has no intrinsic value the fact that has no intrinsic value means that the design space is opened up in ways that it's not for commodity money and the fact that it costs
• 22:00 - 22:30 something produced means that it's not just a [ __ ] coin so there's this Theory or a standard way of thinking about what monies are even possible Bitcoin isn't like a new theory about what kinds of money are possible it's more like a bulldozer that says you're all wrong you need more tools to think properly about money here's a totally new kind of money that is kind of like Fiat kind of like gold and kind of like neither so I think Bitcoin can do that in a variety of other ways too it's it's not it's not a theory it's more like a
• 22:30 - 23:00 something that shows us we were wrong before are you more interested in the philosophy of money or the uh application of economics I know more I'm better at philosophy because that's where my degrees my training are in but I'm super interested in econ stuff and I'm trying to learn more so that I can be a more effective teacher and researcher on that side of things and really the intersection that's that's the Forefront that's this bit you know with the Venn diagram where the two meat yeah that's it's so poorly understood but so vital I think to
• 23:00 - 23:30 understand our Dynamic world because it's right in that intersection with so many interesting things are happening so I question therefore what does what does good money mean and how do we class a successful money and let me frame what what I'm thinking is that when we recently just sat down with Stephen lubker and we talked about Fiat money the uh the way it distorts the markets it distorts prices
• 23:30 - 24:00 um that's absolutely true but could we also argue that with Keynesian economics and the money printer that extra money has uh sped up the advancement of society and Ed is led to more Innovation I mean we talked about uh Venture Capital firms having access to cheap Capital but perhaps that cheap Capital has led to advancements in technology which has led to advancements uh in development of positive drugs I know negative drugs as well like it's very obviously difficult to create a net
• 24:00 - 24:30 calculation but would a would a Bitcoin based uh economy have slowed advancement with it as slow development and would have it changed how society would have shaped right that could it be a net more dangerous Society because there isn't that kind of Shield of protection for government in certain areas now there's thousands of inputs to these because somebody who is anti-fiet could say well military industrial complex or you know you know wide in a
• 24:30 - 25:00 wealth Gap but somebody you know who positive fit would say uh or World Police Protection like there's different ways you can look at it and your bias will certainly influence it but that goes around in my mind a lot I always think it's important to question it rather than just cheerlead it yeah I think that's what Bitcoin does in an unsettling way for many people it raises these questions I'd like to make a distinction between two kinds of questions about money and
• 25:00 - 25:30 the best kinds of money there are some properties that make something useful as money let's call these aptionist properties these are things that make it a useful medium of exchange the primary role of money so it's things like durability divisibility you're familiar with the list there's a less studied question by monetary economists which which might be surprising right the people whose job it is to study money which is not what makes something a better or worse money
• 25:30 - 26:00 at better at being money but rather what are the what kinds of money have better or worse externalities or Consequences for the rest of the world and obviously these are hard to foresee sometimes the effects the higher order effects of selecting one kind of money over another coin you you can size it up against other monies on either of these dimensions and it might turn out that it's worse in some ways better than some others but I think one of the unsettling things that
• 26:00 - 26:30 Bitcoin does and this is why we're so resistant to it when we first encounter it I don't know how how many times it took you it took me a couple of times to see it as more than anything as uh like funny money for Libertarians or like the speculative bet I try to never allow myself to fully sit that's wise you should always ask this question yeah but it's but it's unsettling to ask that like okay wait a minute what if what if we've collectively selected a money that has negative externalities what if we're encountering them now the grand experiment since 1971 is turning
• 26:30 - 27:00 out to not be so great that this is not not a totally happy thought to have uh we need a bottle of wine I'm having a drink for this conversation you don't have to but I want to let's wait let's wait till we got five minutes left and I'll have glass this is a glass of wine conversation all right unfair yeah I'm having fun so far I hope you are yeah but but this is the point like I'm always questioning it because I worry about the negative externalities I've decided Bitcoin personally outside
• 27:00 - 27:30 of the podcast I've decided on bitcoin I've chosen Bitcoin right but as a podcaster releasing content for an audience I haven't allowed myself to get fully there and I never allow myself to get fully there I think if you became a pure cheerleader I don't think you'd be as successful if I didn't have Danny I want business as well I hope you don't lose that or Danny Danny or or this this kind of intellectual honesty and I think that's
• 27:30 - 28:00 one reason you and Troy connected well but it looked to me like like you did yeah Troy's an old friend I love Troy he smoked very highly of you oh it was he had a really nice moment talking about me uh hi Troy I tried one of the things I admire about him is his intellectual honesty and I think I think you connected yeah on that point but we did we questioned a lot don't we don't yeah actually yeah one of the things that you have to really fight as a content creator is
• 28:00 - 28:30 audience capture it's really difficult because if there is a certain cohort or certain group of people who have a particular set of opinions you are rewarded for echoing those permissions and you are punished for uh not for challenging but maybe disagreeing and that for disrupting their expectations yes that's it disrupting their expectations of you that's you've put it perfectly and uh that also can have an economic
• 28:30 - 29:00 personal economic impact because of the risks of one being canceled to being ignored three um there's no three those two primary ones and that's why I think so many people get audience captured because uh they get the likes the follows the confirmation and they grow what their thing is so you know there's a parallel to money
• 29:00 - 29:30 money is this thing that we want we strive for it we dream of it how often do you check the Bitcoin price how often do you think about your portfolio those are behavioral manifestations of the way that money we want it yes but then it comes to control us at least that is a very real worry and it's not just those who have a lot of it who have to worry about this of course they maybe have to worry more that the things you own end up owning you to quote try Club yeah
• 29:30 - 30:00 uh and Eric Weinstein was the one who made us think about that the first time we interviewed it was a very challenging interview and I did a [ __ ] job uh but he said you're talking your book I remember that and I felt like I was trying to convince him on bitcoin I was like what am I trying to do this for I'm an I'm here to interview not debate you one I'm terrible at debate that's my job but so since then I'm always questioning Bitcoin and I never allow myself have you told them that
• 30:00 - 30:30 um yes we I have told about it I should people like it when you learn from them and then you tell them here's what I learned from you well no I put out a tweet Thread about exactly what I got wrong in the whole interview and he retweeted it and said uh well he said something along what was it something along the lines of oh don't worry I can be a right dick sometimes he was good about it we did a follow-up interview and it was magic we we got them really well but but but I think you're right there's this expectation
• 30:30 - 31:00 that people have and when you when you miss the expectation it disappoints them but that is their problem and their weakness not mine it could be yours that's up to you huh I think of money as that way too so bitcoiners are used to talking about the bad effects of money of a bad money that is but we just listen to an interview about that very topic we can go about go on about that I think
• 31:00 - 31:30 one thing that Bitcoin has done to me is to think more deeply about money so like what money is but also to see more clearly that money even good money can be dangerous yes it can be dangerous for those who have it the the way it has a hold over our own Hearts our own desires the way it captures us just the way an audience might capture a Content maker and so the thing that you think you own is like I have so many followers this is my account the ownership language there ends up owning you controlling you so it
• 31:30 - 32:00 does the exact opposite money's supposed to be a tool of freedom but but it can enslave us too yeah krishnamati talks about that in a slightly different way Juda krishnamurthy he talks about it do you know Indian philosopher I I know the name but so he talked about you shouldn't own stuff and things you should get away from owning stuff and things because he talks about the person who has the big house has the yard has the garden has the fence now that person has to think about the house and the garden and the fence and look after that
• 32:00 - 32:30 and the more stuff you accumulate the more distractions you have in your life from exploring uh truth and exploring the world and living like a fruitful life these things are new it's the same point and I think you strive for money then you'll if once you once you you don't have money well in some of my happiest times I was broke because I didn't have any money like I I had a wage sorry I had money but not wealth you know I had money but I haven't
• 32:30 - 33:00 accumulated any stuff then you earn money then then you feel losing it and you know that fear gets worse sitting from the outside you might think oh no I should worry less and less about money the more I have of it but in fact the opportunity cost of stepping out of the rat race or of loss gets higher and higher so it can have this effect that we worry more the more we have I wonder if it's a worry of losing the money you have itself losing the status that the money
• 33:00 - 33:30 has afforded you because I think it can obviously be both yeah money represents a lot for us it's in a way it represents all material things because you can trade money for anything that's for sale yeah so it makes it it grabs our attention it's like an attention magnet in ways that other things of value aren't so here's a goofy example so here's here's something of value it's worth like a thousand bucks you won't look at it when I put it on the table totally uninteresting
• 33:30 - 34:00 but if I go like this this is not worth as much as the iPhone I put 100 rail on the table yeah I like that and yet when I do this in the classroom do you know where the student's eyes are on the thousand dollar thing or the 100 thing of course they're looking here you can't take your eyes off of it you put some pounds on the table as well there we go you ever seen British money you haven't been to UK why don't have you been there some people haven't I've been to Scotland only that's not pretty I was happy to be there in Scotland Scottish money as well for this okay we don't accept their money down south
• 34:00 - 34:30 yes just just think about the the simple fact that we pay attention to these way more than we pay attention to even things of greater value it has this poll on us we should say just so people don't know there's a there's a hundred dollar in the 100 note on the table Benjamin Franklin I don't it is it is you can't have it you can't have this if you had twenty dollars I would give you 20 pounds at the moment that's a good trading okay well no no when that's a
• 34:30 - 35:00 better trade for you right now oh okay would you take 20 or 20 pounds no what would you I mean you just told me I should so okay maybe I would you would I mean it's what 20 pounds is probably about 23. 23. I try to acquire the money that I think I'll need so I have Singapore dollars in US dollars in Bitcoin for the United States for Singapore and for the future how much would you sell 20 for now this is like a trick question your philosopher is going to get this wrong
• 35:00 - 35:30 but sure just just for the sake I'll give you 20 for it right now so this trade now you've made more money than I have okay right let's uh let's save these notes till we next meet okay let's see who has more money because I think I think I won that trade based on the fact we've timelocked this money so I next see you again you have to give down your wallet I'll keep this so I've given up good money for bad yeah bad money for worse but I I think when we next meet you made the pro you made the better no I made the better
• 35:30 - 36:00 trade there we'll see I just just [ __ ] you over um thank you so so with your students do you how where's the starting point like on the philosophical side do you just start with what is money are you trying to teach them what is money holistically or what it is to them more of the latter yeah in fact that's what got me thinking about this as a class to regularly offer an interdisciplinary class on money
• 36:00 - 36:30 I had older students come to me who were looking forward to careers in Finance Management Consulting they would eventually be making in fact very quickly be making a lot more than me and eventually been making quite a bit more than me these will be high-flying uh rich people if they're not already rich and as students do they come to you with an existential crisis like well I'm I'm interning at Barclays at Goldman Sachs I'm not happy
• 36:30 - 37:00 I want more money and I'm incentivized to get more of it and the more money I make the greater the opportunity cost of opting out is so it's actually harder to opt out of the long hours of the intrusive work of this obsessive money chasing game so is that good is that bad what do I do about this help so there's there's one student in particular I won't say his name uh but we're gonna we'll call him Derek
• 37:00 - 37:30 so so I started thinking you know what I need to offer a class about this exploring these kinds of questions like what is the role of money in a good life how much is enough and money has power over us it's their way to to think well about that and to maybe not be so controlled by money so as I think of things these are these are the theoretically interesting questions they're rich they connect that question what money is they connect of course to bitcoin many other things but they're also deeply practical and for the people I'm trying to serve they're intensely
• 37:30 - 38:00 practical so you're trying to help them be happy be happy I want them to be the best versions of themselves to live thoughtful lives and in the money class we're living thoughtful lives with respect to money so you know we sort of zoom in the mission that's obviously impossibly big to say I want to help you be a better person okay but I can help you think better about money and your interactions with it and the hold it has over you and figure out how much you want and why because nobody on their deathbed ever thinks I wish I'd worked more
• 38:00 - 38:30 the regrets are usually the same that's right I wish I'd spent more time with my children I wish I'd spent time I looked after my health more not that I wish I'd worked though every weekend when I was with Goldman so I didn't even richer it's a strange man who dies with that thought on his mind let's put it that way yeah an unusual man do you really have to you have to really I guess help people because I'm sorry I'm gonna jump back people don't often think about the
• 38:30 - 39:00 nature of money no it's like water to a fish yes so I have my friends in Bitcoin and my friends are the Bitcoin friends of Bitcoin they spend a lot of time thinking about money friends out of Bitcoin they haven't can I make a smile yeah I think they think about money but mostly they think about getting more of it um so not what it is they're not reflecting about Bitcoin or I'm sorry about about money Freudian slip
• 39:00 - 39:30 yeah it's like when it's on their mind but I know my money money on my mind but not in this reflective way well when they buy a car there's a handful who understand the the engine of the car they're buying and most people just buy a car because they they like the look of like the brand and they it just is something gets them A to B they don't think about the nature of how the car does that and I think money's similar that very few people think about that some are forced to if you go to Venezuela they're forced to
• 39:30 - 40:00 think about the nature of money because it melts in front of them and people in Turkey are forced to think about it and you know this because in these countries the dollar as a black market so people are forced to think about it there's no dollar Black Market in the UK despite the fact that it's because it's melting slower so a lot of people don't think about the nature of money they don't think about that there is an alternative to Sovereign currencies it just doesn't happen unless which is
• 40:00 - 40:30 why it's that's why low inflation is so Insidious whereas High inflation forces you to think about money what is money a store of value people don't think about a store of value often not everyone yeah and I think human psychology is sensitive or more sensitive to change than to information and maybe the picture of that think about the T-Rex in Jurassic Park does
• 40:30 - 41:00 the T-Rex respond to people picture like images of people in front of it no it responds to change it's when the people move quickly when there's a the flare moving back and forth it's it's it's more efficient to have a perceptual system that responds to Delta rather than information to change over time and what that means is that when the changeover time is slow we don't notice it so how will you how you orange pilled and at that time
• 41:00 - 41:30 how did you reflect on bitcoin and and the nature of everything you taught previously and was it like a real fork in the road did you have to question everything you'd done previously I think I I when I it's hard to answer questions like this because there's a bit of narrative or myth telling you know you look backwards and start to tell a story about yourself it doesn't make it wrong it might be true but it's it's a story that you can only tell looking backwards but when I when I try to do that I see
• 41:30 - 42:00 at least two forks the first Fork was whether to buy Bitcoin or not yes and for me that was not all that difficult because some of my good friends simply told me to and I looked and I thought this is so cool it might catch on you might want to have some so that was in uh 2014. and it didn't occur to me that it could be interesting Beyond a speculative bet
• 42:00 - 42:30 until sometime later and it was really my friendships with Troy Troy cross Craig warmke Brad rattler and Craig Brad and I had to make a decision in early 2020. this was actually before March 2020 before the [ __ ] hit the fan and you know asset prices started to do weird things and the money printers started to go Burr and all that and and we had to decide do we want to give our careers to bitcoin or not we actually made the decision before March 2020 it was about February like
• 42:30 - 43:00 okay we're going to wind down our other research projects because we think this is a civilization shaping technology maybe it's not Fire or the printing press but it's really important this is the big thing of our lifetimes to to really think deeply about so wind down our other research projects and start working together more and more it might I can't say it won't I'm not totally sure well it it might just it might destroy part of the printing press ideally the printing press that prints the money
• 43:00 - 43:30 well there you go I mean it's uh it's an anti-printing press there are plenty of people who will say that Bitcoin is the most important Technology Innovation of our time and they will say electricity railroads internet Tech Bitcoin and we won't really know we we can we can uh we can write our hypothesis on what it will be but we will only know retrospectively that it
• 43:30 - 44:00 is because in 40 years time books will be written on the transition to bitcoin and why it happened and what it meant at the moment it's potential like at the time of the internet there were people who said with internet this is going to change everything a lot of people like Paul Krugman no it won't now we know how fundamentally different the world is because of the internet we will maybe know 20 30 40 years maybe maybe beyond our lifetimes I think it
• 44:00 - 44:30 was a couple of years of teaching about money and thinking about money not only in connection Bitcoin but just money and then having a crew to work with these things converge together so you know I guess there's there's three inputs to that there's the Bitcoin interest there's a crew and there's this background of thinking about money and those those converged in February 2020 or so so we decided to start writing on this and to write about nothing else eventually so
• 44:30 - 45:00 our other research projects are winding down have you all got together physically yes we had five weeks together at the University of Wyoming this summer wow and or I had five weeks with Brad Craig was with us for two of those five weeks and Troy Troy was not you've not had the five you know the whole gang together not yet but we need to make that happen and I want to be there I just want to be in the corner of the room watching this it would be crazy man when you get enough philosophers together I'm not sure you want to see that I'm do
• 45:00 - 45:30 you want to see that I want to see [ __ ] yeah I want to see that there's something that Troy said it may have been on your podcast may have been somewhere else that his drug of choice and he's speaking for all philosophers here he said his my drug of choice is ideas so in a way I'm high all the time there's something deeply right about that that's what philosophers love we love ideas and we love to get high on them and you get a bunch of us in a room together and we'll say some produce any stuff but Bitcoin has always taken me back to the real world that's one difference between
• 45:30 - 46:00 the work that we do in Bitcoin and any of the research and the thinking and teaching I've done in philosophy that's highly abstract and theoretical because Bitcoin answers to the real world it has a price it has people who use it it has people who desperately need it and so whether we're right or wrong about Bitcoin matters in ways that speculative stuff about free will or about the nature of material objects or time these things just don't matter they don't have that concreteness that Bitcoin does but there is a resistance
• 46:00 - 46:30 to bitcoin as well people people resist it people actively campaign against it people there are certain people who will lie about it they will ah and I know you can go to incentives so when the when that comes from somebody connected to a job yeah the trigonometers to freeze you [ __ ] [ __ ] um but there are people who actively they kind of hate it it's like it feels like they hate it and there are those who
• 46:30 - 47:00 feel like they hate it because they discovered it early and forgot to buy some but there are others who do I don't understand the hatred that some people have towards it bitcoiners can be I don't know if you noticed this pretty annoying that that's got to be part of it maybe yeah we get we get obsessed and we refuse to talk about anything else and we display cult-like Behavior and that doesn't make us bad but it will make us knowing to some people yeah no I
• 47:00 - 47:30 get that maybe also it's people don't like their cheese being moved scared of change implication uh we question sometimes I I came to a realization recently I used to question uh the transition to bitcoin and how chaotic that might be and what the k what what might come at that chaos watch might mean blood death
• 47:30 - 48:00 disaster War Revolution and I used to hold that uh like a I just hold that personally like I have a deep responsibility this I'm doing something that is disseminating information about Bitcoin then in in part this show might be part of the acceleration of that happening and what if I'm wrong what if I've contributed to something like that but then I came to a realization very recently that this acceleration is happening
• 48:00 - 48:30 because of the failures of Fiat money and therefore it's it's a natural response it's not your fault it's not your fault it's not your fault oh stop it man you I will [ __ ] cry that is that's our second Robin Williams reference there we go that is one of my favorite moments of any film ever
• 48:30 - 49:00 ever they earn it oh man that film is so good if you haven't seen it if you haven't seen it what the hell are you doing with your life but this is a famous moment between Robin Williams and Matt Damon um and I I remember uh getting my son to watch this film he [ __ ] loves it God why can't I I'm always bad with names I always forget names supposed to film Good Will Hunting Good Will Hunting that's it how'd you like those apples uh
• 49:00 - 49:30 yeah well done so uh uh what is money man what is money Andrew Patty I've had a little fight on Twitter with some bitcoiners about this who specifically were you flying to oh I won't name names but here's something that bitcoiners like to say and it's I'm not totally sure where this came from they say that money is that which fulfills three roles store value unit of
• 49:30 - 50:00 account meeting with Exchange that's not how economists think about money economists when thinking carefully say money is a commonly accepted being of Exchange and currency but isn't that currency I use that in money interchangeably or maybe currency is just a species of money it is so money is the abstract kind and currency is an instance of it like like uh the dollar is an instance of money so the dollar is a currency and then money is the bigger category why
• 50:00 - 50:30 why are you grinning no I'm just listening I enjoy the interview me too man I get like this uh I've recently discovered that philosophers are my favorite people to interview oh thank you it's kind but it's I think a good interview with a philosopher is also a little bit of therapy and I can imagine some people are going to be listening to something please shut the [ __ ] up just let the man talk but like I'm using this to deal with uh things on question therapy that's not the right word I have I'm having a one-to-one uh philosophy
• 50:30 - 51:00 education with a philosophy teacher right now I'm getting to ask those questions where you get to fire the questions back at me and I get to deal with things I'm dealing with which might not be the best for the listener but I [ __ ] love it well you're a professional at asking questions yes but but I'll point that out to some guest recently I forget which one it's like no I'm I'm the expert asking questions I'll ask the question do you remember this this was a couple episodes ago possibly I say that a lot uh maybe then Paul stores
• 51:00 - 51:30 yeah I'll ask the questions yeah that was a tough one um you guys came around it was rough yeah I mean it's just like some people uh they they aren't very good at understanding the what the audience doesn't understand well Paul needed you enough I don't know if he knows that but maybe he does now yeah that he needed someone to make him slow down and answer the questions and he has the answers and he's he's a terrific Bitcoin that everybody should pay attention to in my opinion no I agree some people don't
• 51:30 - 52:00 realize how much smarter they are than other people as well uh where they seek where they see Clarity others see a mess uh it's it is back to the x-pub thing some people see an ex-pub I see a mess I see confusion so I see uh I think see something I think you're fronting on this I think you know what an ex-pub is so many people Matt Odell has told it to you beautifully at least twice that I've heard I know what an exploit is now but
• 52:00 - 52:30 sometimes there's a benefit also to The Listener yes I I think uh at the role of an interview sometimes is to disarm two people is to disarm a guest to uh feel comfortable answering questions and disarm an audience into not to feel uncomfortable not understanding things and so you have to do both and there are I said many times there's three types of interview you if you want to listen to an expert an expert uh go and listen to
• 52:30 - 53:00 Stefan Navarro to discuss with the next one libertarianism that that would be an exponent expert my show is more on an expert where what was Bitcoin uncensored is that two morons uh no it's it's two experts pretending to be two morons maybe that's what it is no I think it's two experts uh acting like morons but they they are two of the smartest people especially John Seth especially um fantastic the two of them I missed I miss them dearly uh we luckily we get to
• 53:00 - 53:30 talk to June Seth and I was very fortunate enough once to interview the two of them here in Florida in a in a hotel room with all our shirts off yeah just like the old days just like the old days but we had no videos so we just we just it was the perfect way to disarm them to at the start I think of John Seth maybe more than Chris as a kind of Jester where he's pretending to be a fool he dresses like a fool he talks like a fool he jokes like a fool not a fool yeah not at all he he was the
• 53:30 - 54:00 jester and the Rhodes was the judge hmm and they they work together perfectly I mean if that show was still uh running today it would be hugely successful you know this was an important formative thing for me and maybe in 2016 2017 when they were active that got me thinking about Bitcoin even things that are commonplace now that we all say for example Bitcoin is a bearer asset not a registered asset very important distinction it was Chris
• 54:00 - 54:30 that in my experience who really articulated that and got clear about how even though it's on a ledger it could still be a bearer asset they got deep they were they were intellectuals but you know the interesting thing about those two they only worked together yeah you have John Seth on his own doesn't work you have DeRose on his own he tried to do on his own didn't work but the two of them together was absolute Magic it was uh miss you guys uh did I went to
• 54:30 - 55:00 roses you don't know me but I miss you too I've listened to every episode I've got them all archived my website even though they deleted all of them I kept copies for myself do you know they interviewed Perry on boring I do um did you talk to her about it no I didn't because you know what I think it was a tough show for her and when you go to do an interview you are it is a man in the arena again we know it's tough for a guest because we know people get nervous coming on the show especially now with the production
• 55:00 - 55:30 so I personally never want anyone to be uncomfortable to see and never want to push them too hard I want them to enjoy the experience and then if I've got tough questions I'm very careful about how I do it and I try and do it in an empathetic way um she may she made a mistake that a lot of people have made with regards to blockchain you know focusing on blockchain considering blockchain uh being convinced that blockchain can do all
• 55:30 - 56:00 these magical other things other than money and she put herself in that uh put herself in the arena did the interview and it wasn't good for her but he had that experience and she's carried on she still operates the digital Chamber of Commerce and she's doing some good work she she is a Libertarian at heart she's um and I had a wonderful interview with her today oh great there there was nothing good that could come off so how do you reflect on that interview now I'd ask her personally and uh separately and do it again sometime
• 56:00 - 56:30 and but there was no there was nothing from that we had nothing to gain from that in this interview uh well actually that's not true I tell you what Danny would have been a good question is to ask her what did did she learn anything from that did she reflect on that I mean that was they crushed her I actually felt sorry for her they were not kind no no that was a that was a crushing but it that also was a striking warning to anyone else who thought they could try and Hoodwink
• 56:30 - 57:00 the likes of DeRose and gin Seth with blockchain or Bitcoin yep you asked me what is money I started going on a rant like can I pick up that thread please do so bitcoiners talk about money as having these three constitutive roles three things that make something a money and this kind of annoys economists when they hear bitcoiners talk this way because it's not the way they talk in part because the roles can actually come apart in important ways it's the
• 57:00 - 57:30 meaning of exchange role that's definitive that's at the center of it all everything is an asset everything that retains value over time is to some extent an asset that is a store of value as it is just another word for store of value as Lawrence white the Bitcoin Economist OG says so I don't think that gets to the heart of what money is and unit of account doesn't either because you can make exchanges where you have a different unit of count than is the medium of exchange when you spend
• 57:30 - 58:00 money foreign money for example when I spend Singapore dollars in the United States the dollar the United States dollar is the unit of account because that's what goods are priced in bitcoin's unit of account is the dollar yes exactly and yet Bitcoin can still be money yes so I think we set ourselves up for weird kinds of intellectual failure when we fixate on these other rolls of money and of course they can be important the evolution of the money they can contribute to the media exchange money uh roll of money but that's not what money is money is a
• 58:00 - 58:30 commonly accepted meaning of Exchange so how's money different from currency money is the abstract substance and that occurrence is currency is like an instance of it and then we have units of currency which are quantized uh pieces of that abstract substance are they they uh they re they kind of contain that abstract substance that's how I think of it does that seem right is that is that not how you would use the words we don't need to get into semantic well this is quite interesting
• 58:30 - 59:00 because we've had quite a few conversations recently where people have said do we even know what money is just Snyder's like we don't know what money is like we just don't know and other people have questioned it well I think we don't know what kinds of things could be money so here's a maybe a goofy analogy I've used this in this book chapter of just writing actually think about a doorstop what color is a doorstop what a doorstop smell like that's a weird question right yeah a doorstop is something that stops doors
• 59:00 - 59:30 it could be any color it could smell like anything maybe it will burn at 100 degrees Celsius maybe not money's like that money is whatever it is that is the commonly accepted medium of exchange what kinds of things can be money we used to think that it was Commodities and Fiat monies that these are the two main kinds that they go together that they uh the properties go in a certain well Bitcoin showed us that there's another kind of money as well why is physical money so attractive
• 59:30 - 60:00 I think it when you because you mentioned it earlier and when you brought it out I smiled yeah and we watched the film last night war dogs oh you've got to see War Dogs uh it's Jonah Hill and Miles Teller and their arms dealers accidental arms should I re-watch Goodwill Hunting or watch war dogs Goodwill hunting's one of those films where I can name probably five or six
• 60:00 - 60:30 films that I've seen 20 to 30 times and every single time I can watch it over and over again You're Gonna Love Brad rattler I know talk to him about Goodwill Hunting when he's on the show I know I'm gonna love Breadwinner do you have a favorite film I've always liked Being John Malkovich it might not be the favorite but maybe top five it's a weird weird movie it's a mind trip I bet John Malkovich in a in a elevator in London the weirdest thing so I wanna God how do I tell this Fashion Story
• 60:30 - 61:00 on a depth I'm on a date there's no point lying about it I'm on a date and it's a successful date and I was staying over in London and we went back to my hotel and we get in the lift and it was that classic moment where somebody puts their foot in the door and the lift opens and they come in and I'm like hey man I'm like it's [ __ ] John Malkovich and I was like you're talking about because they chunked you and he was like yeah so I've got a photo I'll show you the photo me and John Malkovich in the lift and he you can meet anyone in a lift in
• 61:00 - 61:30 a weird moment but I always felt like meeting John Malkovich and I left this the perfect person to meet there's something about him there's a reason that screenplay was about him and not somebody else have you seen that no oh man you gotta see it it's not for everyone no no it's brilliant and weird uh yeah I don't know how to pick between War Dogs because War Dogs is a great film but it's good it's a piece of entertainment it's not like a great
• 61:30 - 62:00 it's a great piece of entertainment not a great piece of film right it's just entertaining whereas Goodwill Hunting is a great film like it's a brilliant film because of what what it makes you think when it makes you question what it makes you feel but it makes you feel yeah how do we get to war dogs money because we talked about looking at money why do we care there's a bit in the film where they uh they they go to uh collect their money from these Berettas they've sold and they you see the money machine
• 62:00 - 62:30 through the money and instantly you're like whoa money and then it pans out and they're in this room full of [ __ ] big giant blocks of money what was it 13.2 billion and it was all the money Saddam had hoarded and it was just piles of money and you're attracted to it they can just like carve a little bit of that corner of that money off of me a few million money plays an outsized role in our
• 62:30 - 63:00 minds there's a lot of psychological research that speaks to that in various ways one of them is this kind of a silly example but maybe it makes the point when you give children coins and they understand money so they're old enough to know what money means and then you ask them later they've played with some coins how big were the coins and they draw on a piece of paper they overestimate the size of the coins and they don't do this with other tokens non-money tokens so already even very young it starts to play this outsized
• 63:00 - 63:30 role in their minds they pay attention to it we treat it differently than other material objects even objects that are worth more than the money marks thought that this was a kind of fetish I I could I fully empathize with that yeah there's something not wrong about that connection well you see it with the likes of or Like Rappers when they'll come onto a video and they're waving their big wads of cash and or Floyd Mayweather you'll see if he'll have a
• 63:30 - 64:00 photo on Instagram of him on an airplane and there was just like two million dollars on there and he's on his phone like they understand that fetishism around money hmm and that fetishism of displaying wealth but in in the form of money well here's a danger because we want money so much and because it plays this outsized role in our minds I think it's easy to treat it as an end in itself rather than a means to an end there's a Bitcoin connection
• 64:00 - 64:30 here maybe remember this moment when Ross Stevens in the Bitcoin for corporations conference maybe February 2021 or so sponsored by sailor Ross Stevens at one point says something like well nobody actually wants Bitcoin they want what Bitcoin can get them and as as he says that a thousand plebs on Twitter like no no I do want Bitcoin like you're missing the point Bitcoin is a means to an end if it really is money it's a means to an end and if we identify or think of it as a an end in
• 64:30 - 65:00 itself that is a psychologically disastrous place to be all you'll want is money and all you get is money and you will not be happy so maybe one of the benefits of moving to a Bitcoin world is because it's a digital money that fetishism goes well I think there are trade-offs because there's something really intuitive about small physical objects we understand how this solves the double spend problem right once I go like that
• 65:00 - 65:30 I can't take it back without fighting you for it unless we exchange something unless we exchange we won't I'm not doing that again that's my 20 bill so we understand physical money very intuitively very young children understand how material objects work object permanence comes you know pretty early on in development it's much harder to understand abstractions and abstractions like deposits in a bank account or a balance on a ledger these
• 65:30 - 66:00 come really late in human history so I don't think we've evolved the cognitive apparatus to think about it super intuitively it's sort of weird and new for us in terms of our history but maybe their benefits yeah to moving away from something so concretely physical I don't think we actually I don't think this is well understood this might be one of those second or third or third order effects of Bitcoin that we won't know about in advance until they've already happened sort of like the mining effects nobody could have predicted five years ago that mining
• 66:00 - 66:30 could have this role to play in a variable load uh on the grid and turning methane into a much less deleterious gases monetizing methane burning instead of just putting up in the atmosphere nobody could have printed that five years ago so I think there's lots of things that we'll just discover maybe this is a realm for one of them just to think about and watch is does the abstraction
• 66:30 - 67:00 of money in Bitcoin takes that to an extreme because it's only abstract do you think about the relationship between money and time uh and I'll frame with you again uh I consider I think we have two uh important scarce items in our life that are personal to us which is the Bitcoin we own and the time we have left hmm now we know how much Bitcoin we own but
• 67:00 - 67:30 we never know how much time we have left but as you get older you become more aware of there's a limitation to the time you have your your own mortality and you talked earlier about uh you know your young students go into into the world of work and considering how much time and they've gotten chasing money as I've got older I've become
• 67:30 - 68:00 more protective over my time than my money time has become a more important currency for me than money but I don't know if that is a reflection on the money I have I'm not rich but reflection on the money I have or a reflection of how much time I have left but time is a time has become a form of money for me I think one one thing you'll do once you realize the time is finite and we real
• 68:00 - 68:30 all of us realize this sometime or other some of us later than others some of my students haven't realized it yet sorry guys you will we learn how to spend it better it's not that we don't spend it is that we we learn to spend on the things that are precious to us maybe a that lesson applies to bitcoin too once you see how scarce it is you've really taken in the 21 million cap and you take seriously the possibility that Bitcoin will become a important money
• 68:30 - 69:00 I think the thing to do there isn't just to hold on to it it's actually to spend it on the things that are most precious to you so just as you would with your time you don't just like do nothing once you realize the finitude of time you spend it carefully but therefore it can it's time money well now we need that glass of wine I want that glass of wine are you gonna pour it Jeremy's on that that question is one of these things that's so it's so abstract and so deep that there there has to be
• 69:00 - 69:30 something right about saying yes but I don't know if I'm the person to try to unpack that I think but you have any you have an absolute scarcity as the thing they have in common and that it's it's scarce for all of us so some resources are more scarce for others than for some so so uh the people who have access to the the shitcoin printer the [ __ ] coins are not scarce for them they're scarce for me because I I don't print [ __ ] coins but money is scarce for all of us nobody can print more of it time is sorry not
• 69:30 - 70:00 money Bitcoin yeah and and time that both of them like I say both are scarce both are to me I I consider I consider time like money I've never questioned if it is money right until this moment I just felt like you're the guy could do it with but I do consider it more like money I become more protective of it over time I become less uh tolerant of a waste of my time I've become a bit more selfish from my time like right now
• 70:00 - 70:30 I every six to eight weeks me and Danny get on a plane we go somewhere in the world and we make 20 25 interviews and we're so fortunate to do this it's like the most amazing life pretty cool we turn up in the city Jeremy rise we all give each other a big hug we have a glass of wine we hang out and we get to talk to some of them like I'm so lucky I get to talk to people like you and Steve and have these amazing conversations and we get to hang out and eat good food but I also sacrifice something I
• 70:30 - 71:00 sacrifice uh being at home in my town and with my family and more recently being involved in the local community I now through the vehicle of football I support my local community and I don't even know what day it is what day is it it's Sunday so if it's Monday tomorrow night I would be taking my daughter to football training and when I take her there there's 100 young girls out there playing football training and and I would be spending time with the coaches finding out their requirements and their needs and how I can support them because I'm
• 71:00 - 71:30 part of that community and I sacrifice that I've made the choice still to come here but there will come a time when I won't want to come here because that's going to become more important because I'm having I have less of that time so I'm considering time like like money like how do I spend it what is the value exchange I'm getting so I I consider time as money or like a money or a money substitute time is hard money
• 71:30 - 72:00 not just any old money I've read something once and it really stuck with me uh an inch of time is worth an inch of gold but you cannot buy an inch of time with an inch of gold and I thought of that very much I thought that a lot when uh when my mother died like the time I had with her
• 72:00 - 72:30 was priceless because she it was a finite time until she would pass literally Priceless literally couldn't pay to extend it more importantly that so like at the time thanks man there was a yeah she cheers cheers to time to time to my mother so there were she lived an island I lived in the UK every time I went to see her there was a cost but I would do it because God I want to see as often as I can so there was a cost to me
• 72:30 - 73:00 and that time was yeah priced in and cost of opportunity cost but there was no amount of money I could spend and you can Steve Jobs probably the one of the richest guys in the world he could not buy more time with money these are deep Waters if you reflect a lot on this stuff it can turn you into a really morose guy or maybe just maybe a more Wise Guy I would like to be wiser
• 73:00 - 73:30 that's the first step it says this guy who knows nothing about wisdom come on man you are obviously one wise to have a quality in allowing someone to feel comfortable questioning things because I'm instantly in this scenario questioning things now I have no idea at the moment if we're making a good show or a terrible show but I kind of don't care I'm entirely selfishly enjoying the experience of me
• 73:30 - 74:00 in preparing for the show I didn't read any articles but I looked through some old quotations that I sometimes reflect on to like remind me of my business what it is that I'm here for and there's one from a poet I don't remember the name but I posted I tweeted it just this morning and he says that for philosophers it's the questions that matter and and this is the line that stuck out to me he said there's like they're like Embers in in the fire they just sit there and they burn and
• 74:00 - 74:30 those questions can have consequences later but but it's the asking that matters that's the valuable thing in philosophy so they burn those questions sit in the back of your mind like little Embers what questions are sitting in the back of your mind like little Embers I wonder whether bitcoiners have I think about this a lot overestimated the likelihood of hyper bitcoinization and the inevitability of Bitcoin and underestimated the negative
• 74:30 - 75:00 costs those who get left behind and if you do both of those at the same time you can make some really deep mistakes I think or at least you you set yourself up for certain kinds of failure intellectual maybe even moral failure when you think it's inevitable that this thing will take over and you haven't really thought about who it might leave behind so that's something that uh Brad Craig and I thought a lot about and Brad's kind of like the heart of our operation he really thinks about that
• 75:00 - 75:30 question who Bitcoin might leave behind if it is what we think it just might be my own suspicions my best guesses are that Bitcoin will not hyper Bitcoin eyes it will not become the dominant money it'll become unimportant money that sits alongside others and that is a kind of Eternal check against institutional overreach I think that's the best scenario that I that I think is is a real possibility given where we are now
• 75:30 - 76:00 maybe that's me that's optimistic it can be really deeply pessimistic actually to think that Bitcoin can take over if you really think about who that taking over might harm that is the people who didn't buy early but you could potentially look at it a different way it harms people who didn't buy early but it net uh there's a net reduction in harm in that It ultimately would raise everybody up so the positive externalities
• 76:00 - 76:30 the the good stuff that Bitcoin creates outweighs or maybe even compensates the least well-off I think about those questions a lot but we thought about it in the interviewer Perry Anne um the the premise of the interview was actually to do with why an ETF has not been approved so this is a mind reading of Gary Gensler I mean a bit of that I think everyone has come to the same conclusion on ginsler and it's not really mind reading it's pretty obvious but by the by um why has he not approved to spot ETF
• 76:30 - 77:00 and rather than just question that we Danny and I questioned before the interview or the question we want to put to Perry Anne was is a spot ETF good for Bitcoin current bitcoin holders or everyone at Large and my fear was especially when she talked about your distinction well that she talked about the wall of money that would come in trillions of potential
• 77:00 - 77:30 investment and if that's coming into the US which already has an outsized position uh in Bitcoin as an you know as a collective group of people of ownership I don't know what this the split is but I wouldn't be surprised if 40 50 of Bitcoin is all held by Americans if that ball of money came into Bitcoin and raised the price 10 20 fold that uh that would disproportionately benefit America would that make American even far wealthier Nation what does that
• 77:30 - 78:00 do for the little guy and I don't know the answer that I I'm not even the person to answer it but I questioned it and I'm not sure okay an ETF would be amazing for me if it's you know if this water money came in I personally would make a shitload of money but what weighed on me was actually is this good for Bitcoin and Humanity at large and I think I'm signing on the side of I don't want a spot ETF because I'm not sure it's the
• 78:00 - 78:30 best outcome for Bitcoin or people yet I think I think we still need to get the little guys in sounds like Integrity to me to care about something more than just ngu number go up we have to if we're going to be more than the laser ad cultists they think we are we have to care about more than just number go up yeah but but I but I only cared about number go up I would I would be a vote like crypto or something yeah and be
• 78:30 - 79:00 involved in [ __ ] coins um and I'm not um but I that that's not to say I don't want money and I'm not attracted to money or what it provides you know the opportunity that it provides myself my children the the nice holiday nice car those things like that but ultimately like what is the mission here like trying to Anchor back to the mission what is the mission um so I question that what what else what other Embers do you have going I think about what the mission is yeah this is something we've talked about at
• 79:00 - 79:30 Bitcoin policy Institute to get rich that's what the cynical onlookers might guess I think they might be surprised at how little we care or talk about price and how much we care about things other than price and how united we are around a mission so I was on the phone the other day with Grant talking about this Swan sponsored opportunity thanks again and we ended in this really upbeat note and it wasn't because I thought that
• 79:30 - 80:00 some research money would be coming to me and my friends honestly maybe none of it will come my way maybe the resistance money people will get nothing that's okay what was so exciting was that there was something more than just getting rich that brought me and Grant together on that call it was a mission it was that we thought we could make the world better and that is so powerful as uh just juice to get you up in the morning and to get you on that call and
• 80:00 - 80:30 to get you writing so what what is the mission is the mission personal because bitcoin's personal I think like if somebody asked me uh what is bitcoin what is bitcoin to you well no I I I said this to Stephen earlier I start with trying to explain to them what uh what is wrong with Fiat and then when if inflation comes up we've you know we've pointed out inflation is a very personal problem because it affects people differently it
• 80:30 - 81:00 benefits some people there are winners and losers but Bitcoin to uh Nigerian activist is very different to a h to a Pete McCormack in Bedford it's very different to a fghani uh female Afghan you can't get a bank account like whoever you are is completely different completely personal so what is what is the mission
• 81:00 - 81:30 I've heard you say on the show what you think the mission is you think it's the separation of money and State I I would I would put it a little bit differently I think it's it's an eternal check on our institutions that's kind of a fancy way of saying it's not just the state I think we're in this time and place where schools and churches and states and corporations and mega corporations and various Unholy combinations of any of these things have tremendous power over individuals
• 81:30 - 82:00 and it's these little technologies that occasionally come up that tip the balance of power in favor back towards the individual so the printing press is something like that the the firearm is something like that and I think of Bitcoin as being one of those technologies that can really shape maybe even hundreds of years of human history by protecting us from you know precious valuable important institutions that nonetheless have great capacity to really screw us
• 82:00 - 82:30 over when they get too big coins takes something important out of all of their hands it it breaks the concentration of power it does and it splits it up it disintermediates just in the same way that Firearms might have done so when they were invented so it's a democratizing of power I I hesitate about democratizing because it has so much connection to things like you know elections and electoral politics but if democratizing just means
• 82:30 - 83:00 um putting hands into individual people yeah then yes absolutely because past the mission power concentrates yes it tends to over time and power concentrates with money so so compile concentrate with Bitcoin if Bitcoin concentrates of course it could say that could become the most powerful man in the world or some unknown whale who's more in fact more likely Roger vera for example one point had 400 000 Bitcoin there are other unknown whales that may
• 83:00 - 83:30 uh you know Splash around and create they have more than Michael does that that are unnamed or unknown to most bitcoiners yeah I I like what Bitcoin does to incentives it breaks certain incentives but I think it does it in two ways I think it breaks incentives with regards to the the money printed press within Bitcoin you've got this like check and balance on
• 83:30 - 84:00 uh institutions but there's a check of balance within the community hmm like if I if I one week have an ad read which is for cardano I'm [ __ ] like it's the death of the show I think I would unfollow you and I would ask to please have my 20 Bill back please I'll be like that's 30 pounds I said Bitcoin is an eternal check I
• 84:00 - 84:30 should qualify that I don't think that it's an internal solution I think these things are kind of cyclical and we need new technologies at new places and New Times to fight back this inevitable concentration of power equilibrium outcomes tend to coalesce around concentrations of power not always but this is a long tendency over human history and so maybe someday we'll need something that none of us in this room could actually even imagine and think
• 84:30 - 85:00 about something even weirder than Bitcoin that will make the internet once again a site of Freedom rather than surveillance and control yeah there's this concept from Tolkien probably my favorite author he calls this the long defeat the idea is that you can't defeat evil once in fact evil come back so there are these moments of Triumph in Tolkien but if you take a long view of his entire history in fact morgoth is defeated but then Sauron comes sarn will
• 85:00 - 85:30 be defeated but then the Nazis will rise you know that there's there's always new evils I'm afraid it's the long defeat yeah I mean we have uh the evil of China that exists within China which I I personally believe is an evil uh we have uh two sides of some people would argue of evil in a war right now I personally think one side is more evil than the other we have evil Rising Within uh the United Kingdom where I live we
• 85:30 - 86:00 have evil we have evil everywhere it gets even worse than that the line between good and evil you know this line from souls and eats in it's not between you and me the line between good and evil runs straight down each man's heart yeah I mean God I mean these Battlegrounds Are Spiritual Battlegrounds in a way when each of us makes a choice evil runs through all of us it does Bitcoin fix this no but Bitcoin can be enormously helpful now for certain kinds
• 86:00 - 86:30 of evils that we do see yeah so a lot to think about here uh does money create a myth of happiness I think if we use it wrong yes because you know one of the terms I really [ __ ] hate is money money won't make you happy money doesn't make you happy because having no money can make you [ __ ] miserable I think having money it's gonna be a lot of [ __ ] fun
• 86:30 - 87:00 and I think it's I think it's a lie but I think I think word is better it has meaning like money doesn't guarantee happiness I think it's a better term but fun isn't happiness is it maybe it's one element yeah of happiness if you think of Happiness as just an overall better life well a life can be made better by having some fun in it but A Life That's only fun without meaning is not as good as life with both but
• 87:00 - 87:30 not exactly you you might live a very happy life by only having fun I think you I have a lot of fun and I'm very happy good for you because my life I mean does your life have me what's the meaning of your life Dan I need to join you've got to go one what do you get on it it's upstairs what's what does the meaning of your life Danny well I don't even know how to start
• 87:30 - 88:00 answering that question the separation of money and state do you feel like I hope not I hope you've got more do you feel like the work we do is what has meaning in your life right now yeah I think it's meaningful work no not is it meaningful like is it giving you meaning do you think about it I honestly don't really know what that means like do you feel like your life has a purpose with this do you feel like you've found a purpose with it yeah I think the work has purpose but like what to say does that no no no you've switched the
• 88:00 - 88:30 question he's doing it isn't it yeah but I don't I honestly don't really know what what that means uh I think it works valuable work and it does have meaning does it give means my life I don't know if I don't know if I don't know if it does there's Empirical research on a couple of questions that's relevant to what we're talking about here so the big question is can money buy happiness can money buy a good life and there are various ways of thinking about what happiness actually is how to measure it and it turns out that if you're measuring Happiness by asking people do you feel good right now
• 88:30 - 89:00 basically money can remove unhappiness yeah and up to a point it makes you happier in that sense by removing unhappiness but then it levels off and it stops giving you benefits there's Mark diminishing marginal returns it's like that Baseline we talk about right like being being broke and poor it sucks I've been there [ __ ] [ __ ] like you and I know right now especially in the UK because we made a film about it there are people right now who are broke and poor and therefore struggling and it's
• 89:00 - 89:30 [ __ ] and they are unhappy and I think once you can cover those base costs like base costs are never in your rent your energy which is a challenge right now for some people you can buy your you can go and do your shopping not really think about your budget you know have a holiday a year beyond that everything else you need money for is for lumpy things it's a flash car a big house like it's lumpy things and I don't think that will make you happy there's another way of measuring
• 89:30 - 90:00 happiness which is asking people not do you feel good right now but more like are you satisfied with your life I hope don't do that because I'm not well turns out that money and having more of it is correlated but it does it does satisfy at a certain point and start to to have diminishing marginal returns but the numbers higher so it's easier to buy off unhappiness than it is to buy Life satisfaction and we actually don't know the edges because there aren't enough Mega rich people to
• 90:00 - 90:30 know just how far money can buy Life satisfaction yeah again that's possibly personal as well yes and and one thing that's really difficult to measure here is difference across people versus change in one person's life over time one of these things that makes money not help us be happy is hedonic adaptation is when you get new pleasures and then after you've experienced them for a while you kind of forget their pleasures the human perceptual apparatus remember
• 90:30 - 91:00 I mentioned this a bit ago it's Delta sensitive it's sense senses change so the way to have a good life from pleasure is to have more and more and more pleasure but we know that can't go on forever yeah increasing amounts and kinds of pleasure that doesn't actually work you adapt to what you have well as a former drug addict exactly yes it is diminishing returns and then yeah and it becomes a trap yes it goes from
• 91:00 - 91:30 uh a pleasure to a trap when what you think you're seeking is pleasure but it turns out you're seeking to hold off displeasure and that is no way to live huh yeah so this is maybe one of the deeper reasons how or ways that money can trap us is that we think we can get money we want more of it so that we can exchange for pleasure but it turns out that you just hedonically adapt to new pleasures and they're no longer great to you anymore
• 91:30 - 92:00 what we need are mechanisms to fight back something to keep us from adapting too quickly to to actually notice what is good in our lives and if you don't have that in your life then you'll always just be seeking more and more and more and never finding it is there any study of the super rich and happiness and does does it because you you know like yeah
• 92:00 - 92:30 you will see super famous people going through a very hard time and the same typical cliche criticism is like how can they be miserable they're so rich they've got everything they could want and I think it's just such a naive statement with regards to understanding like relativity yeah you're not living their life so you see their house their car their lifestyle and you think oh they must be super happy because they've got all that [ __ ] that you want for them that's their Baseline they've
• 92:30 - 93:00 adapted they've adapted they can't change how they feel internally but that is there any study that too much money can have destructive power against happiness there is in fact now getting social scientific research on this is tough because the mega Rich do not submit to happiness monitors so the way some of these studies work is you wear basically like a little apple watch and then you dial in a number as you know it beeps at you once every hour
• 93:00 - 93:30 and you put in a a one through ten Elon Musk is not going to wear this watch he will not submit to this kind of study it's too intrusive so we don't have big data sets to understand and things like that what we have are anecdotes here's one this is from the introduction to a book by the Dalai Lama it's called ethics for New Millennium he talked about how he names a bunch of famous people he's uh you know I've been in Brad Pitt's house I've been in so-and-so's house and you know what I found there whenever Delta's at the party I go to
• 93:30 - 94:00 the bathroom I take some time for myself and then I rifle through their medicine cabinets and you know what I find drugs benzos opioids these are people that are looking for something I mean that's a rude house guest to be fair Dalai Lama takes the piss it's not just in his book it's in the only part of the book anybody ever reads which is the introduction so if Brad Pitt wants to know what the Dalai line was doing the bathroom it was it's it's imprint
• 94:00 - 94:30 so a lot of us are really bad at this we're bad at exchanging money for happiness you're just pissed though I said the show wouldn't be funny if I died then he's going to be funny now uh [Music] or is it that they have an easier access to these drugs that they believe can mask problems oh that that has to be part of
• 94:30 - 95:00 it yeah you know I sometimes think about this for I'll say bitcoiners but I'm really talking about me too like like the struggles of my own heart we bitcoiners anticipate some future moment of getting money absolutely well this is never go up this is retirement early it's those those kinds of pipe dreams but my guess is that if we don't practice and get good at exchanging money for
• 95:00 - 95:30 happiness now we won't be any better at it later well that this is why and it won't make us happier and and what is the point except to be happier and for those you love to be happy so what's the point of money except to somehow exchange it for something that's of better value yeah this is why I'm not 100 comfortable with the um the hot lonely mentality yeah like I say hodu but I I sometimes wonder whether
• 95:30 - 96:00 that is like a collective that's Collective propaganda to fourth number go up more when of course it is yeah and it's it's kind of scammy too because the people yelling hoddle the hardest are those who are secretly selling on the way up well we don't know that the Celsius stuff is out well you know at the same time sometimes we do know this yeah yeah but I'm generally speaking Celsius is a specific situation but like I sell Bitcoin and I admit it you know
• 96:00 - 96:30 bought a car within a house and bought my son a car and like I opened it with your dad right yeah I bought my dad a car uh but I didn't but I don't think I bought his with Bitcoin I bought his with cold hard cash but like you know when I've had those jumps I've I've spent and raised miles other or other people's lives up or or we give money out to you know projects like West or what Steven's doing or Peter Todd or whoever we support things but in hrf I hope hrf I've supported hrf I supported
• 96:30 - 97:00 a lot of projects but but the human rights Foundation you should give them some of your Bitcoin you should definitely give somebody a Bitcoin um I we don't talk Danny we don't talk much about these days in terms of the next Bull Run we're going to be fabulously wealthy we talk about the next Bull Run in terms of the freedom that it gives us for this show this show is it's healthy yeah so I'm glad for you
• 97:00 - 97:30 like that you're not thinking of your next Aston Martin because you don't need another one no I mean it's a Lambo next yeah nobody needs three Aster mines I forgot to ask but this show is not really a Bitcoin show anymore it's called what Bitcoin did and we talk about Bitcoin a lot but strictly speaking Today's Show is not a Bitcoin show this is a uh philosophy or money show
• 97:30 - 98:00 and let's show we just made with Stephen was a show about uh Miss incentives with Fiat money it's not a Bitcoin show and we made a show I mean the majority of the show we made with uh Perry and we were discussing libertarianism and the health system uh it's it's becoming more about the asymmetric topics there is a creative uh desire to move on from Bitcoin because I prefer personal stories anyway
• 98:00 - 98:30 so there's a creative desire but there's also everybody prefers personal stories yeah I do I think human beings care about human beings yeah of course we set up to do the show with perian about ETFs for the first hour we didn't discuss them and for the last 40 minutes we did I was bored but when we were talking about her and her background and you know why she was drawn to libertarianism I enjoyed that um but there was also a like a reality that the the word uh Bitcoin can can cause an inertia to some
• 98:30 - 99:00 people and I feel like if there wasn't Bitcoin in the title and it was just a background topic like for example the best way you can sweat Joe Rogan makes a show with a range of topics right he doesn't make a uh show about MMA and jiu jitsu but just by listening to a show over and over again these little bits that come in I'm now kind of interested in it I've watched a little bit and I actually found out in the little school that's
• 99:00 - 99:30 five houses down from where I live they have a jiu jitsu class twice a week how am I gonna try that out but but if he'd made a Jujitsu show I'd never would have listened to that I don't give a [ __ ] about jiu jitsu and so I think about the show if I want Bitcoin to be a success am I just making a show for Bitcoin has already exist and then every four years there's like a bunch of people have realized [ __ ] I need to learn about Bitcoin number goes up and they go into Spotify they search for Bitcoin they find my show or their friends tell them to listen to it but then I just preach into the choir
• 99:30 - 100:00 would it be a more successful Bitcoin show if it wasn't a Bitcoin show well you've answered that question a while ago and we started ranging more widely yeah yeah so we know we want to do that so the big question is can we and I questioned this to Willy Wu and other people and and the only reason we have not made that leap right now is there is a it's a Gamble and it's a financial Gamble yeah the show is secure you got guys to pay for got guys to pay for uh to get stuff
• 100:00 - 100:30 to pay for stuff to pay for but I also said that I asked the question about this earlier Without You realizing it it's like uh the risk isn't just to the people on the show the risk is to personal status and standard of living if it doesn't work I may have to downsize house I may not be able to afford the life I had before but I don't know what I want to do and that that's therefore I'm trapped I'm economically trapped doing this like if
• 100:30 - 101:00 if going back to the idea the next ball run comes and I had a 5x in my net wealth we definitely go and change the show we do don't we we know we do because it's because we know that's that's our mission where we want to go is spread this knowledge to as many people as possible and we think that's a different way you're in a position to give people a gift you can give them the gift of thinking a time and a place to just ask questions haha
• 101:00 - 101:30 you know how do we we've talked about these psychological forces that are kind of at war with us they're not to our benefit one of the tools we have to fight back is thinking is noticing the simple Act of reflecting and just noticing how you feel noticing what money is doing to you noticing how you think about Bitcoin how often you check the price and these things are prompted by questions so you're in a position to raise questions that could help us notice that could help us think I think
• 101:30 - 102:00 money makes me a better person it doesn't make everybody a better person I know that but I I just know I think for me it's just leverage I mean it just it just extends what you already have I yeah I I think it makes me more generous no it doesn't make me more generous it makes me I'm the same generous but the amount I give away is more there's like total amount the impact of your generosity is expanded yeah and I think I think money allows me to ah but that maybe that means I'm not a good person
• 102:00 - 102:30 because money allows me then to focus on the things I want to do but I I'm only doing that because I've got the Financial Freedom whereas if I had a parabolics I'd just do it anyway so maybe I'm maybe I'm a piece of [ __ ] maybe maybe I'm putting money before my own happiness what I want to do no I am huh how much is enough money we talked 21. 21 no I'm greedy
• 102:30 - 103:00 we talked before about how the the happiness effects of money taper off as you get up there's a magic number that some people cite which is about 75 000 us per person per household per year that's income wait till they get there that's right well here's the thing you ask how much is enough there's a one-word joke answer that everybody knows more more it's a joke but it actually expresses
• 103:00 - 103:30 something deep and maybe pathological because if that really is your answer and for many of us it is then you'll never be happy so I think the answer isn't seventy five thousand dollars a year per person in your household nor is it more it's more like well how much do you want to be enough maybe aim at that but then you need to set yourself up so that you can stop you need to set yourself up so that you won't be grabbing for more and more and more on the hedonic treadmill always
• 103:30 - 104:00 adapting and never happy anymore is that ethical and unethical ways to spend money of course of course the answer in one sense has to be yes like you can pay somebody to assassinate somebody and that's bad but what if what if you're assassinating you can pay somebody to assassinate an innocent person that's bad yes one thing that this question highlights is that
• 104:00 - 104:30 there are interesting moral and social taboos around money that don't always make sense when you examine them Let me Give an example and maybe you can think of one Peter here's something that I give students a lot quite regularly I'll see a student who really wants to think about something and so I'll just give them a book about that thing and then I will re-buy the book for my own personal Library so I just give them a copy happens all the time this is sort of part of the job I basically budget for it to give away books all the time how
• 104:30 - 105:00 many books do you give away yeah maybe one per month so nine teaching months out of the year so 99 books per year okay so maybe all the time is exaggeration but you know this this happens it's not at all unusual for me and it goes over fine now imagine that if instead of giving a book to a student I had handed them money even money of equal value to go buy the book yeah that would be weird there's a kind of social taboo about that like wait a
• 105:00 - 105:30 minute props don't give students money what is this creep after huh think about what gifts you might have bought for your mother would you have given her money or a gift could you have given her the equal value in money or a gift which would which which would be kind of a weird thing and maybe a cold inhuman thing to do versus the right thing I always give my sister money for a birthday because I always forget it she's always glad I give her money because I always give up more money that
• 105:30 - 106:00 I would have spent on the present well enough actually I didn't get something I'm sorry these social rules don't always bind us obviously they're exceptions but there are a lot of things there are a lot of times and places and context where it's totally inappropriate here's one more example somebody who I thought was a friend of mine asked me a bit ago if I could read one of his papers and give comments on it and of course I was about ready to say yes and then he said I'll pay you and I just thought well dude I thought
• 106:00 - 106:30 we were friends his offer to pay me actually it separated us is like we weren't friends anymore that sounds like the start of mine and Danny's relationship and mine Jeremy's and we're still our friends what did Peter offer you money to do that's not what happened it's the opposite go on well I reached out to Peter years ago saying I think I could help with the podcast and I have to do the first couple of shows for free see if you want me to carry on and straight away he just
• 106:30 - 107:00 said no I'll just pay you for the work because I didn't want to see his I didn't want to see his unpaid work I don't want to see that I wanted to see what his paid work was and I wanted him to know that I value paying for work same with Jeremy Jeremy off the same it changed your relationship though yeah when when you bring money it just it changes the way we relate to each other so marxists talk a lot about this they say that money alienates us from other people I think there's something right and something wrong about that here's what's right yeah like
• 107:00 - 107:30 I think as I think people immediately will want to disagree with that because they don't want to agree with the Marxist idea but no I think they're right I mean you know we have class structures which are based around money that create separation yeah it's alienation is the fancy Marxist word for that here's where I think Marx and those who follow him have made a mistake they failed to notice the ways that money brings us together I took an Uber ride here I gave the guy money he gave me a ride it brought us together we had a fun
• 107:30 - 108:00 conversation and then we both got something we wanted out of that relationship that we couldn't have gotten without a medium of exchange between us it's this this great social technology to enable us to relate to each other and actually if loving someone is doing something that's good for them and being with them there was a kind of love that was exchanged because I did something was good for him I gave him money and then he did something that was good for me and we spent time together we interacted yeah the the so the summer it wasn't
• 108:00 - 108:30 just the trade because you got the conversation the sum of the parts was more as well but even if there hadn't been a conversation there's a kind of love that's exchanged it's meeting each other's needs so it marxists often missed that they think only about the alienation bit and they miss that money as social technology actually enables us to help to meet the needs of people that we have no knowledge of and couldn't possibly have knowledge of we maybe can't even can't speak their language and yet you could offer something of value
• 108:30 - 109:00 in exchange for something of value and we would understand each other and actually do each other a solid hmm so uh you asked her unethical uses of money of course there are there's also taboos and and that is so interesting because it tells us that money is weird it tells us the fact that there are these taboos is just further evidence of money's weirdness and uh I'll just say this uh plugging myself and my my work it's it tells us that the philosophy of money is
• 109:00 - 109:30 a real subject that we should be thinking about taboos are excellent evidence of that how much time in in teaching do you cover Marxism Marx's ideas communism that much do you have many students who spend time questioning it themselves and come to you and of course in another part of the college that I haven't taught in it's called modern social thought it's this this class that every sophomore in my college takes they read portions of Dos capital
• 109:30 - 110:00 and uh what but they often come out of that with is this sense and I believe it's correct that something's wrong something's wrong that post-industrial age the way we relate to each other there's deep alienation oh yeah and there's something effed up about the money and I just think Marx totally misdiagnosed what that was and totally misunderstood how prices work you know economists now have much better sense of how prices actually happen in markets it's not that
• 110:00 - 110:30 something was super costly to produce that's the labor Theory value therefore it's valuable no it's because it was valuable to someone else it's when supply and demand meet that something is precious and that somebody will give up something of value for it that takes both supply and demand and that that's neoclassical economists or economics post postmarks so Mark's made many many mistakes but there's something so right about that I think we should stop and think about the the taboos around money and and just
• 110:30 - 111:00 what it does to us and how we relate to each other what did Mars get right is there anything that should be told or should be debated that you think he he did get right that is missed because some people are so fearful but I think he's right that if you offer somebody that you're intimate with close to in some way money you've made a bad faux pas he thought it was basically wrong in all cases to use money at least the early March so it was before Das Capital he he published this
• 111:00 - 111:30 little piece basically arguing that so I don't think that's quite right but maybe there there's another way to put it it's uh when you're close to someone don't use money and and there's actually a difference in signal so think about what you've conveyed or signaled when you give a gift you've told someone that you know them because you bought something that they wanted you've displayed through your actions not through your words through your actions that you understood them that you got them what they wanted something that not everybody knows
• 111:30 - 112:00 and that's the difference between giving them money and giving a gift so of course Marx is right that sometimes we should give gifts rather than money now he thought at the earlier marks at least thought that we should only have barter and there shouldn't really be Capital formation privately owned oh that's hogwash in my opinion but there's a kernel of Truth there if you want to show someone you love them with material stuff know them and then give them what they want and money won't send that signal they won't feel loved when they'll feel loved
• 112:00 - 112:30 is when you give something that maybe they want and maybe they didn't even know that they want now that's that's the Deep signal of love when someone gives you something that you didn't even know you wanted and then you realize this is exactly the right thing for me and money money won't be it most of the time and that goes back to time because sometimes giving people time especially as a parent like there isn't no child wants to hear oh but I'm working so hard to give you this life
• 112:30 - 113:00 every child you think that's true even if it is true they don't give a [ __ ] they want time read to your kids read to your kids go watch them play sports that's where time is also money for me well you're giving something non-fungible there when you give your time money at least good money is fungible 100 bill is as good as any other not so your time although right now my son would be like [ __ ] off Dad give me 500 pounds he'll change his tune
• 113:00 - 113:30 no he would he listens to this I wonder if he's listening to this show if you listen to this show Hello Connor I love you man um okay we haven't even spent any time on markets what is the role of markets well markets are where we meet that's where the supply and demand come together and where price is set is super abstract but that's that's where that's where we performed this this loving dance of money exchange that's where uh you give
• 113:30 - 114:00 up something of value to get something of value you wanted to know not just what do markets do you it's something else in your mind what is it um no no no let's let's go there let's I'll come to where I'm going well well here's what is the world of markets because we here's something that money does that's obvious it's a medium of exchange here's something that is maybe less obvious but still true money is also a medium of Revelation that is it's in how we spend
• 114:00 - 114:30 our money that we show Who We Are this by the way is why Financial privacy is so important because the way you spend your money says what you value it says who you really are not who you say you are but who you really are so when you buy hormones or diapers or political traps or religious icons you can go through the list this says what you're actually willing to give up something of value for so and markets are where that happens absorb the market and money is the medium of Revelation in
• 114:30 - 115:00 a market it's how we show ourselves to the world not just through what we say but what we do and of course there's an abstract way of thinking about that oh it's prices it's when demand and Supply meet we had a wine damn we need more wine let's be whiskey next we'll work on that later yeah markets are where we show Who We Are how how did markets get distorted what breaks markets so lack of privacy will break markets you would have a more
• 115:00 - 115:30 free and honest Market if you have Financial privacy so uh I'm not I'm not so sure about that but well so for example what's the Thought there okay so um a before prior to the internet uh if you wanted to buy a sex toy you would have to go to a sex shop and maybe some people like I don't want to walk into that sex shop because someone might see me going in there I have to face the the person selling the sex toys and I'm too
• 115:30 - 116:00 embarrassed but you can buy sex toys online I'm pretty sure that's changed the market because that person has a certain amount of privacy uh you know the Kindle did this you can read books on the Kindle without anybody knowing what it is you're reading and that changed people's reading but not just their reading but they're buying patterns so I actually I bought this book I think was called how to be a woman I never would have bought this book because if I'm carrying that around you know the kinds of questions that will run through somebody's head but I bought it and I read it and it was fun on my Kindle on your Kindle nobody
• 116:00 - 116:30 else knew what it was I mean Amazon knew but the people around me sitting by the poolside wouldn't know what I was reading so private markets are more maybe more revelatory yeah well more real yeah they're a place where we even more so show who we really are through what we're willing to give up can we talk about wealth and equality and the quality because I think as students uh I think the younger you are the more you
• 116:30 - 117:00 think about do you have a naive approach to equality like if I sat down with my daughter and I said to her uh do you think we should tax the rich higher to give a more equal life to the poor she's definitely going to say yes 100 she's gonna say yes and I think most of our friends would hmm and I think as you get older if you understand the redistribution of income
• 117:00 - 117:30 and how that skews things and changes incentives you realize that isn't the answer although I'm not I am still somebody who has uh I'm not a Anarchist a a status [ __ ] I believe it's the technical term for what you are I've tried to get away from making that claim because sorry well no because I I it's tongue-in-cheek right yeah but it's also I think it's also it's not it's not a fair way to describe
• 117:30 - 118:00 myself I it's just the conclusions I've come to the conclusions I've come to is that I not the current form of democracy um I like democracy uh sadly it's [ __ ] at the moment um but I prefer a smaller state but I don't mind the state I don't mind taxation I think it's too high I don't mind Taxation and and ideas at sport Economic Opportunity for people in a more difficult situation and I I'm glad we have universal
• 118:00 - 118:30 healthcare we get beat down continuing for that but other things I believe in but why is it that some people are more happy than others to pay tax to create a more opportunity for others and there are others who are opposed to it is it down to money or is it down to political ideology or is it both I think there's something that all of us see
• 118:30 - 119:00 and perceive to be morally disquieting and we differ in how we interpret it so here's let me just give you a picture and then I think you could you could see something went wrong here so let's say there's a slum next door to a palace with a Bugatti several Bugattis when you look at a picture like that in and this exists in the real world I think if you're if your heart is real if it's beating and with with blood and you're human you'll think something is wrong there
• 119:00 - 119:30 something went wrong so here's one popular diagnosis of what went wrong oh it's wealth inequality it's the difference what is what went wrong and so we need to fix it somehow whether with markets or with Force those are our options you know with with force or without I actually take a different view myself for what went wrong I don't think it's the difference between these two stacks that is morally problematic I think it's the fact that one stack isn't high enough so one of these is absolute measure it's having enough and do we all
• 119:30 - 120:00 have enough versus do some of us have too high ratio relative to others and obsessing about that relative question can both distract us from what's morally important which is that everyone have enough and also send us into kind of wild goose chases of leveling down where we try to make the world better by making some people worse off by taking away yeah it's in my view a deep moral mistake but it's so tempting because if you have a heart and you look at that kind of
• 120:00 - 120:30 picture you will feel something I think if you head up in the background that Stephen lupka agree and he wants to say come get it on the mic so we actually get it because uh do you want mine will do yeah if everyone in the world was a millionaire like a real millionaire who cares if one guy's a trillionaire like barring some fantastic abuse of power right like as long as everyone has enough like the the problem is poverty
• 120:30 - 121:00 not the range between the lowest and highest so I completely agree with that this this is why it's uh this is this is a problem with politics as well uh with uh something like an AOC who by the way this I think there's some interesting things about her I I like AOC I often disagree with her but she's I think she's not your talent yeah I think she's I think she's naive in her understanding of uh economics
• 121:00 - 121:30 um but I also think she has a way to appeal to people but I think she's yeah I have I have issues with her but like a massive own goal is where she goes to the Met Gala and wears a dress it says tax the rich was just not even stupid and and uh it's it's the wrong problem to focus on and it's any of these like blame the billionaires you know like that is an excuse that is creating a
• 121:30 - 122:00 scapegoat for a problem that isn't the problem we have we have this massive issue in the UK at the moment whereby the country is getting wealthy wealthier in nominal terms but the bottom of society is getting poorer we I talked about this film we made we went to this place called Terminus house in harlows to private town in England they've turned an office block just used office block into housing because there's a problem with social housing we never had used to have such a big problem with social housing but we do because the poorer in
• 122:00 - 122:30 the science Society got poorer and the jobs they have access to are zero hour Logistics contract jobs the logistics jobs at the place like Amazon warehouses and what we've done is we've created a we've created a favela in the UK we've created a ghetto we've we've created a [ __ ] [ __ ] terrible place for people to live we have as a wealthy Nation we have pushed the porous down further
• 122:30 - 123:00 and in situations like that you can easily see how people's blame they want to blame the rich or politicians will use that as a scapegoat but the problem isn't the rich that isn't the problem the problem is is the wealth divide we have created through the Distortion of markets and the warping of money has concentrated the wealth in fewer and fewer hands but it's not the rich is fault for that
• 123:00 - 123:30 it's this the system we've created we haven't created a way to raise these people up raise up the Baseline we've pushed them down and that bothers me it should and this is different than I think the vibe you might get from some bitcoiners there's a kind of libertarian shitlord on Twitter who might say you know [ __ ] the poor I don't I don't think they would say that I I think they there are some
• 123:30 - 124:00 people who think that if this outcome is a result of markets so be it let the dice fall where they may and that there's nothing morally problematic about seeing someone suffer or not have enough and I think it's important to highlight that you can care about everyone having enough out without wanting to or without thinking that the problem is the ratio or that redistributive taxes are the only solution but uh you know I I don't think that's
• 124:00 - 124:30 I think anyone who feels like that is an outlaw and a psycho and I don't think there are many who think like that I think I think what the Libertarians are you're referring to would think is that we have made it perhaps too easy for some people to not work and to live off the state and they've been conditioned into that expectation and we need to remove that so people have the incentive to become productive uh
• 124:30 - 125:00 so I would challenge what you said there because I spent a lot of time with Bitcoin Libertarians and I don't think that's what they believe there would maybe be some people that they're outliers and Psychopaths I think let us set them aside then yeah I think the I I believe that libertarian friends I have in I've met and spent time in the Bitcoin actually are good people and they think the the Fiat system where with uh too much um
• 125:00 - 125:30 collectivism is the problem and you need to break that to raise up the opportunity for others with the right incentives because incentives matter that's I would challenge you on that challenge accepted I'm not going to fight back I I think you're right as a matter of generalizations there's one important distinction when thinking about distributive justice so distributive justice is is the distribution of goods just so you know you've got 10 Bitcoins I've got three Danny has seven is this a just distribution it's the same you come to
• 125:30 - 126:00 the similar answer to how much is enough well actually what a great idea let's Circle back to that because I think there's a connection to what we're talking about earlier there's two big approaches to distributive justice there's what are called patterned approaches so the idea here is that you can take a snapshot in time and look at the pattern and then tell whether it's just or not and then there's competing historical accounts which say wait a minute you need to know how the pattern got there before you can know whether it's good or bad and I think there's a really important Insight in that second historical
• 126:00 - 126:30 account that's often missed we don't know what is wrong with the situation when we see you know one guy has too little the other guy has a lot until we know how they got there and this is where bitcoiners could maybe press because bitcoiners know something about how we got where we are and what happened to the money what happened in 1971. and that's a historical question not a question about who has what a particular moment of time it's not a snapshot
• 126:30 - 127:00 question it's about mechanism it's about what created this in the first place as far as that sufficiency question the view that I've proposed and it sounds like you're friendly to it so I recommend it to you it's called the sufficiency view instead of egalitarianism so egalitarians think that equality is intrinsically valuable that it's it's as as such as an end in itself it's good for people to be equal in some respect the sufficiency view says no what's good in itself is for everyone to have enough anyways this connects to what we were
• 127:00 - 127:30 saying earlier about the this thesis that maybe for each of us there is some amount that is enough after which we should cease striving and start spending and start exchanging money for happiness what that is for you I think will vary across space and time and person and as productivity increases the enoughness the amount that we can reasonably expect to be enough I think Will Rise and we're lucky enough that we live in a world where that's true those who live
• 127:30 - 128:00 under you know for uh two 1990 per day in 1990 I don't know it was billions now it's significantly less than a billion the the number of people who have enough is is slowly Rising the world's actually getting better but if all you focus on is the ratio of The Haves to have nots you might miss this really important fact that actually our world's getting better yes yeah so there's an optimistic spin on this having having said that
• 128:00 - 128:30 it doesn't fall that everyone has enough and that our world is perfect because neither those things are true is inheritance Fair I stand to inherit nothing from my parents so is uh there's a question of bags here yeah well of course people with wealthy parents might have strong reason to give a very different answer than me I I kind of I have consider my
• 128:30 - 129:00 children's inheritance could I distinguish two questions yeah there's the question of whether we should stop people from giving money especially lots of it to their children and there's the question of whether we individually should give lots of money to our children so morally a lot of people say no you shouldn't stop that because it's uh that's theft and that's their family's money and they should do what the [ __ ] they want with it and they're absolutely right in certain ways but is it fair
• 129:00 - 129:30 because I think I think we are afforded a chronological and Geographic luck in life so I I had a geographical luck yeah NBA born in the UK another chronological luck in being born before the the invention of Bitcoin so I had some luck I was I was born to a family that a house loaded with books we were otherwise poor but we had books that was luck he didn't have a PlayStation that sucks man my friend Chris had a
• 129:30 - 130:00 Super Nintendo Chris [ __ ] cool yeah I used to go around Chris's house yeah [ __ ] your books no I'm already joking no I get that I I fully understand that there's a great line from another movie about time which is not a great movie but has like a special time it's a great movie okay what the [ __ ] are you on about that I think it's really important I think it's special though technically flawed I've been to that restaurant uh although the the one in the dark yeah the one in the dark I'll tell you a
• 130:00 - 130:30 funny story about that I I would do you know have you seen this film no I remember we should watch that tonight so Rachel McAdams and who's the guy oh you'll know him I'm so bad with names he's the guy in Star Wars who's he plays the bad guy the English guy you know but then it's in a black mirror episode too yes he's in the first is he in the first episode first series Bill Nye no bill nye's the dad okay no no I think he's in the it's the very first the first episode of Black Mirror is the politician having sex with the pig yeah
• 130:30 - 131:00 Pig yeah he's episode two of Black Mirror I thought that was Waldo thumbnail gleaton hmm yeah is spreading Gleason's son oh we didn't know that yeah interesting so uh about time we should watch after this it's Charming it's a great soundtrack too but there's a restaurant La Don's Noir and they've got about five of them in the world there's one in Paris there's one in London there's I think there's one in Vegas uh you eat in the dark hitch black dark when you say dark it's not like the dark when you go to bed and
• 131:00 - 131:30 you can kind of make up the edge of the curtains you can't see [ __ ] it's as black as you can get all the staff are blind okay so all the staff are blind and so there's two things that happen firstly the staff because they're blind they're used to navigating without sight so they know everywhere they're going it's perfect but you know the thesis about the restaurant is when you s when you cannot see the food it raises your taste sensation so you taste the food differently that's
• 131:30 - 132:00 very cool it's true it's cool and it's true uh you end up eating with your hands because if you're trying to use a knife before you just can't do it uh so two things happened that night firstly uh like a dick I got my vape out and tried to have a vape and I lit the room up so that didn't go down well and then secondly that you have to try and go to the bathroom at some points and they they don't guide you to the bathroom
• 132:00 - 132:30 they they tell you where it is you have to find your way and I walk straight into dangerous yeah for them I walked straight into somebody but it's a great experience uh I went with my friend Martina and we had it was a brilliant experience that's a that's a sorry I've deviated just because I went to London somewhere so sorry I do this talk about that film what's our third or fourth fourth film reference good good the line that I was gonna bring up it's it's something like this give your kids enough
• 132:30 - 133:00 so they they can do anything not so that they can do nothing yes and I think there's a lot of wisdom in that and if enough of us paid attention to that wisdom we would have to worry less about inheritance taxes in fairness did I hear right that Bill Gates is only leaving like a million to his children good for him I hope he does something good with the rest I I have no well he's confidence that he will but I know a lot of people isn't popular with a lot of people because he's trying he's trying to engineer food and do a lot of weird [ __ ] and I get that but he also he has also done a lot
• 133:00 - 133:30 of good with this money he's essentially a wreck is it podio he's eradicated from the world well he's working on malaria yeah but was it is it podio he's eradicated from the world like he has done good things I believe that was Jonah's sock what is it what is it that he worked on I know the Malay he's working on malaria no but he's worked on something else I'm sure it's toilets toilets and clean water can you look up Bill Gates and polio because I'm sure there was it's down to the point that was like in one location
• 133:30 - 134:00 I mean Gates Foundation funds new polio vaccine yeah can you look up uh Gates children inheritance what you said rings a bell that he intends to give very little comparatively Gates may be angling to change kids 10 million inheritance 10 million okay to what more or less I mean I'd guess more but I don't know um because even at 10 million for like a guy who's worth 100 billion or whatever it is to say here's 10 million because
• 134:00 - 134:30 that is Bill Gates is described it as minuscule [ __ ] wanker but that is enough to do anything but it'd be I mean you could do nothing but I'm assuming the lifestyle they've lived if they've got 10 million they're probably gonna spend half of that in the house they'll have to do something at some point but it perhaps gives good for Bill in enough I was going to say Capital but Stephen look at me enough Capital to go and do something that maybe they want to do or something
• 134:30 - 135:00 because I think I think the more money you have the more time you can focus on altruistic things which is not a bad thing of course not I've obviously loved this interview it shows how much Danny enjoys me and there's anyone please listen all the way through if you've enjoyed it I'm glad if you haven't I'm sorry but it's really special for me to be here Peter because you've been a voice in my ear for years so it's kind of fun to be a voice in yours now yeah my voice in my own ear uh um I want to end in a really good way
• 135:00 - 135:30 but I know we're going to do this again I feel like I want to organize a resistance money Retreat you know I was going to say if we want to end I want to end by talking about my dudes well do that but I'm gonna I'm still gonna have questions you talk about your dues but I think we should organize a like one of our Sprints should be a risk resistant money Sprint we should get everyone together I would like I like the idea of re-interviewing everyone including Bradley because we do need to get Bradley on but I do like the idea of getting you lock around a table with
• 135:30 - 136:00 microphones and me it's just saying [ __ ] all well trying to that would be hard and try honorary member and sometimes co-author yeah me and just seeing what comes out of that kind of session because I think they'll be super interesting but like the philosophy discussions are my favorite I don't care about utxos anymore like I just I'm bored of that I care about the more deeper meaningful conversations and I would like to I think we should all go to Wyoming and a great place to get steak and we should all hang out and we should
• 136:00 - 136:30 make a bunch of shows we can make we can make like Brad is a smoker and he's getting better and better at it he can make us some good stuff challenge accepted uh but I think we should organize that we've been talking about going to Wyoming yeah uh we could get Caitlyn along while we're there we could get a Tyler linholm out we could go shoot an elk maybe we can shoot an elk and eat that we'll have to challenge ourselves in killing an animal uh okay you talk about your dudes no you should finish on your dudes I want to finish on a question and then I want you to talk about your dues what is the most important question we
• 136:30 - 137:00 can ask ourselves right now and if you can't answer that because it's personal what is the most important question you're asking yourself right now it's something we've touched on and it's not about Bitcoin it's about time it's what to do with the time we have left I'm a young father myself Young my daughter is three yeah I have one how old are you 38. you're a baby
• 137:00 - 137:30 okay I have with her is so scarce and it's impressed upon me every time I'm away when I come back to see how she's changed isn't amazing one of the amazing things about having a young child is you can go away for a week and you come back and they look different and you're like [ __ ] it doesn't happen so much as they get older but when that letter they've really changed quickly I remember I'd be away for a week and a couple of like you look
• 137:30 - 138:00 entirely different like I can sure it's the same baby we'll talk about that later no they just they can look into your experience of this job but you know at some point Danny or you will um spread your seed and make your child and and you'll go away with me for two weeks you'll come back and be like this is an entirely different child it is amazing okay time is precious yes it's more having a kid has made me see that
• 138:00 - 138:30 acutely over time time becomes more important than money like if you've got a week to live that time is infinitely more valuable than money but like when you're 20 21 and you even use adversity money is more important than time it flips at some point I think I'm on that like line where they're the same they're equal hmm and that's every question I put myself is how am I using my time and I I prioritize money sometimes more but sometimes I prioritize time more
• 138:30 - 139:00 but I think that's a journey a lot I think maybe some people don't do it and they make a mistake and they have that's why they have the regrets I don't want to regret a misuse of time you can't take it back that's a chain that you can't roll back so that's what I think about all right and that has all sorts of consequences for everything else as we've discussed you talk about your dudes and then we're gonna get some money and get some money [ __ ]
• 139:00 - 139:30 what did I just do we're gonna get some food food is my [ __ ] I [ __ ] up there dummy uh well then we're gonna get some food I can't say I want to save money let's eat the money let's get rid of some money let's get some of this fancy the rich Let's Eat the Rich all right talk about your dudes talk about your work uh spend as much time as you want on it I think a lot of bitcoiners fantasize about citadels and and that really represents for us separation from other people yeah I hate the Citadel idea
• 139:30 - 140:00 [ __ ] hate it yeah my heart's desire has never been to be separate from people it's to be connected to them and my dudes are my bitcoiners that I'm connected with it's Brad rutler who you should follow on Twitter rather be Craig warmkey Craig warmke on Twitter and Troy cross and I work especially with the first two and working with them talking about Bitcoin with them almost literally every day for the last couple of years it just means everything to me but I just want to tell them that
• 140:00 - 140:30 I've got this kind of pet theory for how we work as a group they're these views coming from Plato about how Humanity has three parts there's the head the heart the hands there's the the rational part the the feeling part and the active part and I kind of think we've we found this specialization with the three of us where Craig is is the head in many ways he's the guy who has thought the most deeply about Bitcoin especially in technical matters and Brad is the heart he's got a heart for the least well-off and for how
• 140:30 - 141:00 Bitcoin can be a powerful tool for those who need it the most in many ways I'm the hands I'm the producer who makes sure that [ __ ] gets executed to make sure that that we that our collaborations actually happen and the lead writer on many occasions and like the guy fiddling the knobs even if the idea wasn't mine and I play that role with Troy as well I think jabbing him to get him to write that white paper with me and then needling it and and turning the knobs like like a producer to to get something out there I think
• 141:00 - 141:30 Troy is the wings the wings it makes it fly yeah because I've seen how he's flown since the show I did oh it's amazing yeah he's incredible he's and I see what he's wrestling with as well he wrestles with a lot which is interesting what he's a philosopher of course he does okay I hope hmm I'll say it Troy I hope you don't mind that I say this Troy started out in philosophy as this this shining star a really bright career with a lot of promise and he had a tough
• 141:30 - 142:00 time earlier on and he moved from Yale to Oxford eventually to read college and he found happiness there but him coming to bitcoin and being received by bitcoiners has been everything to him because it's like another chance at using his talents for good and I just love seeing that unfold yeah I just don't want to see him getting uh coerced or bullied into being what he isn't because there are some dicks who will talk to him like a dick and his big thread the other day he didn't need to [ __ ] do that he could have just said
• 142:00 - 142:30 I thought it showed Integrity but you're right yeah he didn't do it he was he's just he should just sometimes you just go tell someone to [ __ ] off and that's what he should have done I mean I would have but that's why the Vietnamese okay uh how do people follow the resistance money movement where do you want to send them to our website is resistance Dot money we stash everything we write there and we've got a book that we are finishing up the manuscript in December it goes to the publisher then we're getting comments later and it'll be out in 2023. it's a complete treatment of Bitcoin
• 142:30 - 143:00 from the perspective of philosophy politics economics computer science a bunch of perspectives all coming together at once and this is an academic book it's coming out in Academic Press we're not self-publishing we're trying to do it right to to really reach audiences that wouldn't just pick up a safetying book or wouldn't pick up even like an excellent but self-published book like Alex gladstein's book so we got high hopes for this well good luck with it I cannot wait to read it I would sit down like this with
• 143:00 - 143:30 you anytime you want and I cannot wait to do it again I [ __ ] love this and anyone listening what if if you've enjoyed this great if you haven't I'm really sorry I just had to be very selfish in this one and it was wonderful so uh thank you uh I'm so glad I know you I'm so glad you're in my life and let's get some food thanks Peter it's a pleasure