Speaker 1: Robert, thanks for sitting down. Glad to be here. Mark.
Speaker 2: You know, I consider you a good friend. I love
Speaker 2: hanging out and talking with you. Sometimes the best conversations
Speaker 2: everyone were just flowing. And then I hate how it
Speaker 2: turns into an interview.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, we're all different when the
Speaker 3: cameras are on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. It's a human thing, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I hate to turn it into an interview.
Speaker 2: It's fun just to kind of risk a little bit,
Speaker 2: but I wanted to. You know, we've been next door
Speaker 2: neighbors here at the Bigcoin conference.
Speaker 1: You've been busy over here.
Speaker 2: I've been busy over here, and unfortunately I missed a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that was going on. Last night. I
Speaker 2: watched some of the videos trying to catch up a
Speaker 2: little bit. You got to give a keynote presentation at
Speaker 2: the event, which is a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. This is the biggest conference of the year.
Speaker 2: I might I don't know, I would guess might be
Speaker 2: the biggest keynote of your career. I think so in
Speaker 2: terms of a number of people. Yeah, yeah, number of people.
Speaker 2: I certainly want to go back and watch it. But
Speaker 2: let's talk about that yeah, so give me the high level,
Speaker 2: thirty thousand foot view of what that was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll give you kind of the back story
Speaker 3: because I think it's relevant. You may have seen John
Speaker 3: Ravake on my show. He's a colleague of Jordan Peterson's,
Speaker 3: so he's uh.
Speaker 2: Well that was a while ago, right, Yeah, we.
Speaker 1: Did the John Raviki series.
Speaker 3: He had a very popular lecture series on YouTube called
Speaker 3: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. It's like fifty five zero
Speaker 3: one hour episodes about I mean, he starts in the
Speaker 3: beginning of time basically and goes through all our philosophical
Speaker 3: history and builds up to why we are in this
Speaker 3: meaning crisis today.
Speaker 1: He's just a really brilliant guy. A lot of people have.
Speaker 2: Described Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of people have described Jordan Peterson as
Speaker 3: the gateway drug to John Ravake. So if you're into
Speaker 3: Peterson's work, I mean, Verveake's work kind of goes to
Speaker 3: another level. They're both very deep and fascinating in their
Speaker 3: own right. But Veake's very interesting guy and so he
Speaker 3: again I've had him on the show.
Speaker 1: He's been like just.
Speaker 3: A great guy to ban ideas off of reading recommendations.
Speaker 3: Super smart, interesting guy. It's been a very good friend
Speaker 3: in that way. When I have weird esoteric questions about
Speaker 3: the things I'm working on, I'll shooting the text and
Speaker 3: he sends me good resources. So we kind of had
Speaker 3: that dialogue going. And at one point I was watching
Speaker 3: his interview on the Lex Friedman podcast and he was
Speaker 3: describing the nature.
Speaker 1: Of the flow state. And the flow state.
Speaker 3: Is said to be an optimal human experience, and it's
Speaker 3: optimal in two ways. One, it's one of the most
Speaker 3: enjoyable experiences human beings can have in a way that's
Speaker 3: distinct from just pleasure, because people do weird stuff to
Speaker 3: get into flow, like rock climbing, you know, Like rock
Speaker 3: climbing is not pleasurable, it's painful actually, but it can
Speaker 3: get you into this flow state that people will do
Speaker 3: almost anything to get into flow. Like it's an optimal
Speaker 3: human experience in that sense. It's also optimal in the
Speaker 3: sense that people in flow tend to give peak performances.
Speaker 3: So Olympic gold medalists, they'll report these like they're just
Speaker 3: in the zone, right, is what athletes say a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was going to ask you to define
Speaker 2: what the peak state is or the flow state. So
Speaker 2: that's kind of where everything starts going on autopilot and
Speaker 2: everything just starts clicking, and like your subconscious almost takes.
Speaker 3: Over, Yes, something like that, but it's very enjoyable and
Speaker 3: you're typically performing at a very high level. So there's
Speaker 3: a they do a chart where it's basically like your
Speaker 3: skill set, the level of your skills on the vertical axis,
Speaker 3: and then the challenge on the horizontal axis, and flow
Speaker 3: is kind of the diagonal channel in between. Because if
Speaker 3: you've got very high skills and low challenge, you're bored.
Speaker 3: If you've got very high challenge and low skills, you're
Speaker 3: anxious or you have anxiety. But right in the middle,
Speaker 3: where your skills are matched to the demands of the
Speaker 3: situation is the flow state.
Speaker 2: You're working in your core competency.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're like you're you're pushing your skills right to
Speaker 3: the edge and so you.
Speaker 1: Know you're.
Speaker 2: Which is why rock climbing is one of those Yes,
Speaker 2: I've been an action sports guy my whole life growing
Speaker 2: up int Than California, and you know, meditation is this
Speaker 2: thing where they say you should kind of try to
Speaker 2: clear your mind, and I'm not good at that because
Speaker 2: my brain works so fast. But when I'm dropping in
Speaker 2: on a double overhead wave and there's razor sharp coral below,
Speaker 2: you're meditating, or I'm going eighty miles an hour on
Speaker 2: my rbrak across open desert, there's nothing that can come
Speaker 2: across your mind.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly right.
Speaker 3: And actually meditation is another form of flow, right, because
Speaker 3: meditation is a skill, right, But you're matching your skill
Speaker 3: to the challenge of not thinking. It's hard to do.
Speaker 3: It's very hard to do. It takes practice. So anyways,
Speaker 3: it's this often human experience. People love to get into it,
Speaker 3: and it's also where we cultivate like skills, competence, virtue like,
Speaker 3: it's where people become better. The more often we get
Speaker 3: into flow, the better we become at whatever we're flowing,
Speaker 3: whatever activity we're flowing within. So he was describing that,
Speaker 3: and he in the book Flow by I cannot pronounce
Speaker 3: this guy's last name. The author of Flow is me.
Speaker 3: Hey chicks sent me Hie. I think how it's his
Speaker 3: last name?
Speaker 1: He just go out the book. Yeah, it's it's called Flow.
Speaker 3: It's written back in the eighties or nineties, And Verveaki
Speaker 3: was telling lex about the three informational conditions necessary for
Speaker 3: flow induction. So to get into the flow state, there's
Speaker 3: three informational things you need. One is that information must
Speaker 3: be clear, it must be unambiguous, and it must be flowing.
Speaker 3: So if you're looking in the case of the rock climber,
Speaker 3: a rock climber can only be good to the extent
Speaker 3: that his senses are working. Right, his eyes need to
Speaker 3: be working, his ears need to be working, he needs
Speaker 3: to be able to fill the rocks, all these things.
Speaker 3: If all of a sudden he lost his sense of sight,
Speaker 3: then information is not flowing. Well, he's not going to
Speaker 3: be in a flow state, right, He's going to fall
Speaker 3: off the damn rock face.
Speaker 1: So you have to have information that's flowing.
Speaker 3: You also have to have tightly coupled feedback loops so
Speaker 3: such that every action you take the environment responds with immediacy.
Speaker 3: So if he know misgrabs a rock and there was
Speaker 3: no consequence to that, then he wouldn't know that he
Speaker 3: was doing it wrong. But you know, when you're rock climbing,
Speaker 3: there's an immediate consequence. You put your foot or hand
Speaker 3: the wrong way, will you fall off.
Speaker 2: Or you feel like slipping or the rock cracking.
Speaker 3: Right, So the point is there can't be a lag
Speaker 3: between action and environmental response. And then the third one
Speaker 3: was failure has to matter, right, there have to be
Speaker 3: consequences to failure. And so when I heard Vervaki describe
Speaker 3: these three, it hit me like a ton of bricks
Speaker 3: that he was simultaneously describing the informational conditions necessary for
Speaker 3: free market capitalism, which is, we need information that flows right.
Speaker 3: We need clear and unambiguous price signals. To the extent
Speaker 3: you debase the currency, you distort price signals, entrepreneurs don't
Speaker 3: know is that a shift and supply and demand or
Speaker 3: is that quantitative easing that caused that price to fluctuate,
Speaker 3: and that leads to you know, capital misallocation, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. You have to have tight feedback loops, which
Speaker 3: means you need load and bureaucracy. People need to be
Speaker 3: able to act based on the knowledge that is particular
Speaker 3: to their time and place. So if an entrepreneur is
Speaker 3: dealing with, you know, boats coming in, he doesn't need
Speaker 3: to say, oh, there's thirteen boats that came in. Let
Speaker 3: me send a message to Washington, DC and see if
Speaker 3: they approve this or not, and when it comes back,
Speaker 3: we'll make the decision. By the time that information goes
Speaker 3: and comes back, there's gonna be fifty votes there and
Speaker 3: it's just a disaster.
Speaker 1: Right, So you need tight.
Speaker 3: Feedback loops as an entrepreneur lead decision making, not bureaucrat lead.
Speaker 3: And then third, obviously in capitalism, failure matters, right, we
Speaker 3: don't have bailouts, bail ins, tax subsidies, zombie companies. Like
Speaker 3: in capitalism, if you're not profitable, you fail, and the
Speaker 3: capital life should be as his life. Right, It's like
Speaker 3: it's Darwinian, right. So that was the start. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, there's this individual flow state that's like an
Speaker 3: optimal human experience for the individual human organism. But we
Speaker 3: also or try to create that in markets, and they
Speaker 3: operate best when they have the same informational conditions. And
Speaker 3: then it started going down this rabbit hole where you're like, okay,
Speaker 3: in a perfect free market, people are.
Speaker 1: Doing ideally what they love.
Speaker 3: Right, You've turned your passion into your paycheck kind of thing,
Speaker 3: such that more people would be operating in flow day
Speaker 3: in and day out. You could think of like the
Speaker 3: division of labor, where we're each doing the thing that
Speaker 3: we specialize in. It's kind of like the opportunity to
Speaker 3: discover flow. It's like whatever thing that you like to
Speaker 3: do for its own sake and that you're good at
Speaker 3: and you get to push your skills within, Well, that's
Speaker 3: that's how you get into flow professionally and so on
Speaker 3: the aggregate that would be a free market. So none
Speaker 3: of this was mentioned in the keynote, by the way,
Speaker 3: but that was like the lead into how we started
Speaker 3: thinking about this.
Speaker 2: And we actually had this conversation in Wyoming, Yes, and
Speaker 2: I was just starting. I started that exactly, so I
Speaker 2: just to me asking up questions about that before we
Speaker 2: dig in on that. So in this in the flow state.
Speaker 2: So if we think about this, you're applying this through
Speaker 2: the overall market economy hundreds of millions or billions of people.
Speaker 2: But on a personal level, we would want to access
Speaker 2: flow state because that's where we're optimizing our performance, like
Speaker 2: as you said, based off of that vector.
Speaker 1: And part of it.
Speaker 2: Like, personally, I would want to get into that because
Speaker 2: at that point, when I'm in that flow state, things
Speaker 2: become almost effortless. So I read a book. I didn't
Speaker 2: read flow, but I read a book called deep work,
Speaker 2: which is very similar in a sense where we want
Speaker 2: to have periods where we get into deep work, giving yourself,
Speaker 2: you know, one hour minimum, but two to three four
Speaker 2: hours sometimes. And then they talk about where like time
Speaker 2: just gets away from this, everything just starts coming, you know,
Speaker 2: whether you're writing or researching, whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: As humans, if we're going to be doing big things,
Speaker 2: big work, we should be trying to achieve these deep
Speaker 2: work states or these flow states, because that's where this
Speaker 2: big stuff gets done. And of course, modern technologies and
Speaker 2: just you know, you know, we've been try a brain
Speaker 2: for distractions and that constantly pulls us out of the
Speaker 2: flow state. So I understand from that point why we'd
Speaker 2: want to understand this and achieve it as a personal level.
Speaker 2: But if if you take that to a larger level,
Speaker 2: like a market economy, would the economy also work more
Speaker 2: effortless instead of trying to force it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 3: So it's it's hard to say, like chicken or egg,
Speaker 3: because you know, the less you force the market economy,
Speaker 3: the more free the market is, the more free individuals
Speaker 3: are to choose their own profession, right, And I mean
Speaker 3: it's kind of intuitive in a way. Don't you want
Speaker 3: a world in which people are creating the goods and
Speaker 3: services that they are passionate about creative, right, rather than
Speaker 3: being forced into a job because inflation's destroying their savings or.
Speaker 2: Whatever and they yeah, and so instead of like, I
Speaker 2: hate my job, but I have to do it, as
Speaker 2: opposed to doing what they.
Speaker 3: Want, which is another I mean, because you can't force
Speaker 3: a flow state. I can't put a gun to your hood,
Speaker 3: and getting flow states doesn't work right out of it,
Speaker 3: like you have to be left to your own curiosity
Speaker 3: to there's another progression here. So it starts with curiosity, right,
Speaker 3: Like you're just curious about the world. Children are really
Speaker 3: good at flow states, by the way, They're just naturally curious.
Speaker 3: If you're left to be curious and you're uncoerced, you
Speaker 3: might develop. You might find something you're interested in, and
Speaker 3: that thing might become a passion for you. And a
Speaker 3: passion pursued long enough can become a purpose.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: People decide that hey, this thing that I'm into, I
Speaker 3: want to commit my life to it. And then if
Speaker 3: purpose becomes to pursue purpose, well, you have to develop autonomy, right,
Speaker 3: because typically the thing you're trying to do almost by
Speaker 3: definition doesn't exist in the world because otherwise you would
Speaker 3: just someone else will be doing it. So purpose leads
Speaker 3: you to develop autonomy, and then in the development of
Speaker 3: autonomy you can ultimately culminate in self mastery. And self
Speaker 3: mastery is possession of those skills, self authorship, self sovereignty,
Speaker 3: and virtue. Really, so there's this element of freedom or spontaneity,
Speaker 3: or you cannot coerce it into existence, right for the
Speaker 3: freedom's a necessary ingredient to the whole thing that's both
Speaker 3: the free market and that's the individual flow state.
Speaker 1: So that was the.
Speaker 3: Lead in and then I guess where bitcoin comes into
Speaker 3: the picture is that bitcoin makes coercion less profitable basically, right,
Speaker 3: like inflation doesn't really work on a bitcoin standard. You
Speaker 3: can't print the money. Taxation is more difficult because people
Speaker 3: have this hyper portable form of capital. So if I'm
Speaker 3: living in a jurisdiction that's mistreating me, it's much easier
Speaker 3: for me to vote with my feet or vote with
Speaker 3: my wallet. I can just take my bitcoin and exit
Speaker 3: to a jurisdiction that treats me better. And so, and
Speaker 3: this gets into a bit of the sovereign individual thesis,
Speaker 3: where we think the long run outcome of that is
Speaker 3: a world in which governments are incentivized to be accountable
Speaker 3: to the preferences of citizens, right versus today not so.
Speaker 2: Much, and not just not just accountable, but actually I
Speaker 2: would argue the even more than that, because to your point, now,
Speaker 2: it's easy for them just to steal, that's right. And
Speaker 2: if they can't steal, then they're accountable, but they're not
Speaker 2: really accountable. The only way they can get what they
Speaker 2: want is actually to provide value, that's right, which is
Speaker 2: actually the opposite.
Speaker 3: So they become more of a free market enterprise in
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: They encourage and help it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well the market enterprise, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, whereas state's going to just steal from you because
Speaker 3: you're immobile, right, Yeah, my capital is locked up in
Speaker 3: the FIAD system. I'm stuck here. If I wanted to
Speaker 3: get capital out, there's capital controls, and you know they'll
Speaker 3: they'll de authorize your bank account, freeze your assets.
Speaker 1: All these things.
Speaker 3: Right, you have no autonomy actually over your assets, right,
Speaker 3: that's a real problem. But with bitcoin, you have full
Speaker 3: autonomy over your assets. So there's the idea that bitcoin
Speaker 3: would lead us to a world where coercion is less profitable.
Speaker 3: You could also say people have just have by virtue
Speaker 3: of having more autonomy over your assets, you are more
Speaker 3: capable of going through that progression, that flow progression from
Speaker 3: curiosity to passion to purpose to autonomy to self mastery.
Speaker 3: We've kind of had like in the West, you know,
Speaker 3: we have a high degree of autonomy. We have relatively
Speaker 3: strong private property rights, relatively stable rule of law, like
Speaker 3: bank accounts work, you know, especially in Florida and Texas
Speaker 3: and Tennessee. You know, these states are business friendly for
Speaker 3: the most part. But we've been lacking the full autonomy
Speaker 3: over money, right like as we've seen in the Canadian
Speaker 3: truck protest and many other bank issues before.
Speaker 1: You don't own your money.
Speaker 3: That's in a bank, right, the bank owns the money.
Speaker 3: Therefore you don't have autonomy over those funds.
Speaker 2: There's that, and then the bigger one was the consequences.
Speaker 2: So there's no feedback mechanisms and the feedback that there's
Speaker 2: you said, feedback loops, and then consequences matter, and the
Speaker 2: feedback the consequences matter is feedback yeah right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so it is information flowing. They're all connected.
Speaker 2: But right there all so information flowing, feedback, loops, consequences,
Speaker 2: and when I think about going to bitcoin, if you
Speaker 2: think about just today with the existing monetary system that
Speaker 2: we have, people want to compare bitcoin transaction to visa transactions,
Speaker 2: for example, which is a horrible comparison because visa transactions
Speaker 2: probably happen on like a fifth layer of settlements where
Speaker 2: it's settlement. Bitcoin is final settlement. But even in regards
Speaker 2: to that, So if you think about the time a
Speaker 2: free flow of information between the arbit charge, between transaction
Speaker 2: time and settlement time. So I can go online right now,
Speaker 2: I can pull up Amazon, I can scan this, I
Speaker 2: could buy it. The transaction happens instantly, But when does
Speaker 2: the settlement happen?
Speaker 1: Never months months later?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I could charge my credit card back
Speaker 2: up to what six months? Yes, and so maybe visa batches,
Speaker 2: that sends me a report tomorrow, doesn't hit my money,
Speaker 2: doesn't hit my bankcount first three days, maybe a week,
Speaker 2: depend on what type of transaction it is, and then
Speaker 2: there's six months where it's like not immutable, and so
Speaker 2: that transact. So technology has gotten disiplined where the transaction
Speaker 2: times have sped up in the old days, I would
Speaker 2: have to travel to your general store and we would
Speaker 2: transact and settle right away. And now technologies gotus to
Speaker 2: where transaction times have sped up. Its settlement hasn't.
Speaker 3: Deferred settlements very fast. But final settlement, I would argue,
Speaker 3: actually occurs never in a fiat.
Speaker 1: System because gold is not changing hands.
Speaker 3: So you think about it, even when those banks you
Speaker 3: do the Amazon transaction, your bank settles with Amazon's bank
Speaker 3: probably T plus sixty sixty days later, those banks still
Speaker 3: have liability to the FED, right right.
Speaker 1: The FED can.
Speaker 3: Always just print more money into base and all that.
Speaker 3: So I would argue that you never have final settlement
Speaker 3: and a FIAD system like it's an internal confidence game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but with bitcong game.
Speaker 3: You're conya. With bitcoin, you fully reunite. There's no deferred settlement, right,
Speaker 3: I'm just sending you specie if you will physical bitcoin
Speaker 3: over the internet, And so that cuts out a lot
Speaker 3: of that in that gap where systemic risk and all
Speaker 3: these things fester. Bitcoin just kind of closes that gap.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of reasons we could say why
Speaker 2: that's good or bad. Mostly good, But in context of
Speaker 2: our discussion here, if it needs to be free flowing
Speaker 2: information with a feedback loop, then we need that gap
Speaker 2: to be closed.
Speaker 3: Yes, and failure again for the failure mattering is very important.
Speaker 3: Central banks and governments, right, they create these programs that
Speaker 3: are unprofitable, which means no one actually wants them. That's
Speaker 3: what unprofitable means. No one's paying you for the fucking thing.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't be there unless you could steal from taxpayers,
Speaker 3: taxation and inflation to pay for the thing. So you
Speaker 3: end up with all these You know what, did a
Speaker 3: freedman say that there's nothing more permanent than a temporary
Speaker 3: government solution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: We had the I think safety and talks about the
Speaker 3: I think it was Lebanon. The train Authority is still
Speaker 3: a government organization thirty years after they've had any train
Speaker 3: tracks in the country.
Speaker 1: I might have the country wrong. You get.
Speaker 3: All this misallocation of capital essentially, and it's all rooted
Speaker 3: in the theft, right, the ability to steal from productive
Speaker 3: market actors and fund whatever kakamane scheme you want, and
Speaker 3: so that it destroys the flow of information. Price signals
Speaker 3: get all screwed up, feedback loops go awry. Right, business
Speaker 3: owners now instead of just going to market and solving
Speaker 3: something for consumers. I got to go through all this
Speaker 3: red tape. I gotta get a business license. I gotta wait,
Speaker 3: I gotta pay the fee. I gotta do this. I
Speaker 3: have to get permission.
Speaker 2: By the time you get through that, the market might
Speaker 2: have changed.
Speaker 3: Right, so feedback loops are eft, and then failure doesn't
Speaker 3: matter as much.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The name of the game and fiat is to get
Speaker 3: too big to fail or die trying, basically, because once
Speaker 3: you're too big to fail, well, you live on that
Speaker 3: taxpayer subsidy forever you can't. You're literally deemed too big
Speaker 3: to fail, which is totally crazy if you look at
Speaker 3: it through a lens of nature.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: Do we have any animals that are too big to fail?
Speaker 3: Is like an animal gets so big, like, let's keep
Speaker 3: that guy alive forever. Yeah, it's like no, nature naturally
Speaker 3: dies and the resources go back into the soil.
Speaker 2: And the resources back into the soil is the big piece.
Speaker 2: And so what happens is, you know, in a free market,
Speaker 2: capitalist system, then people should be able to move.
Speaker 1: Up the ladder.
Speaker 2: But if people aren't leaving the top positions and falling
Speaker 2: backs around then there's no room at the top, and
Speaker 2: so we need a system where people can go up
Speaker 2: and down.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: And it's maybe a little worse than that too, because
Speaker 3: people that get into these positions inside of the state
Speaker 3: or near the FIAT spigot can now extract resources from
Speaker 3: those lower down. And so what you tend to see
Speaker 3: is like an evisceration of the middle class. So the
Speaker 3: rich getting way richer and the poor getting way poorer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this might be a going into a tangent. But
Speaker 2: in regards to that specifically, I was having a conversation
Speaker 2: last night. We're talking about AI, right, and AI is
Speaker 2: going to replace all these jobs. And one thing that
Speaker 2: I did agree with a lot of people in regards
Speaker 2: to this is they think that it's going to replace
Speaker 2: so many jobs and all these people, all these jobs
Speaker 2: we wiped out, and then we're gonna need UBI for this.
Speaker 3: No, I agree, I agree, I agree with your disagreement, right.
Speaker 2: And well, but here, but here's where the rub is
Speaker 2: and and is that you know, as as animals, back
Speaker 2: to kind of this animal example, the lion's king of
Speaker 2: the jungle.
Speaker 1: It's free, but it's not an easy life.
Speaker 2: It has to fight it could be killed, it could
Speaker 2: starve to death, but it's free. Now I could move
Speaker 2: it into a cage and I could give it its
Speaker 2: one mili day and antibiotics, and now that's safe. But
Speaker 2: it's not free. The problem with an animal is if
Speaker 2: that lion's born into captivity, I can't put it back
Speaker 2: into what maybe ever, I don't I don't know, maybe,
Speaker 2: but we're not animals, we're humans. And so my dad
Speaker 2: told my mom and I didn't want eat my vegetables,
Speaker 2: that if he's hungry enough, he's gonna eat. And so
Speaker 2: if you're hungry enough, you're gonna dig a hole like
Speaker 2: whatever it is, you're gonna do it if you're gonna adapt.
Speaker 2: But so in regards to that, every time there's been
Speaker 2: a new piece of technology, people said, hey, we're gonna
Speaker 2: wipe out all these jobs, and we do. But because
Speaker 2: humans can adapt, they've adapted. So when the Destrial Revolution
Speaker 2: took five thousand jobs, they did medicine and science. But
Speaker 2: the problem is when we do UBI, we incentivize people
Speaker 2: not to adapt. That's right, and so in this case, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: AI will get rid of all those jobs, and instead
Speaker 2: of those people finding new jobs, will just let's incentivized
Speaker 2: do nothing.
Speaker 3: That's right, and you're penalizing those who are the most productive,
Speaker 3: the taxpayers that are getting stolen from to fund UBI.
Speaker 3: So you're disincentivizing productive action and incentivizing non productive action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and this is what destroys the world.
Speaker 3: You're paying people to sit on their ass, like, what
Speaker 3: do you think is going to happen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So yeah, it's it's a really good point.
Speaker 3: And the other So to take it back to the keynote,
Speaker 3: we tried to get because obviously this is rather abstract.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about.
Speaker 3: How information moves and how market economies work and how
Speaker 3: flows like these are the flow states a little less
Speaker 3: substract because most people have experience once or twice. But
Speaker 3: when you map that onto a market economy, that can
Speaker 3: be pretty abstract. You're basically saying the individual is like
Speaker 3: a fractal of the market, and so that can be
Speaker 3: a leap. We try to and that type of content
Speaker 3: lends itself better to an essay format, So for the keynote,
Speaker 3: we try to bring it down to embodied experience to
Speaker 3: make it visceral for people. So one of the things
Speaker 3: and the punchline there with bitcoin is like bitcoin enables
Speaker 3: more of a market economy, so it's more of a
Speaker 3: flow state market economy, but it's also allowing people to
Speaker 3: self select jobs that they get into flow more often
Speaker 3: with like.
Speaker 1: I assume you like what you do.
Speaker 3: Sure, you probably get into flow a lot in these
Speaker 3: conversations and doing your like it's a job that's satisfying. Right,
Speaker 3: that's great. Right, You've got to choose something that the
Speaker 3: world pays you for, that you're good at, and that
Speaker 3: you enjoy. The ideal world is when we have as
Speaker 3: many people as pop doing that, finding their thing. So
Speaker 3: bitcoin becomes this instrument that enables more people to discover
Speaker 3: flow by making coersion more expensive essentially. So to try
Speaker 3: and embody these like the difference between Bitcoin and let's
Speaker 3: say central banking or the Federal Reserve, we use an
Speaker 3: analogy from Terminator too, and we're saying, imagine if there
Speaker 3: was a cyborg programmed to defend your family and loved ones,
Speaker 3: and now the first cyborg is programmed in the spirit
Speaker 3: of the Federal Reserve Act of nineteen thirteen. It's like
Speaker 3: if you've seen Terminator to the liquid Metal guy or
Speaker 3: using images of him, it's like he lies to you
Speaker 3: every day. He's coercive and manipulative without remorse. He'll borrow
Speaker 3: borrow your resources without your permission. If he borrows and
Speaker 3: too much and runs out of resources, he will conscript
Speaker 3: your kids to go and die for his debts. So
Speaker 3: we're analogizing this entity central banking. It said, Okay, that's
Speaker 3: pretty grim. So let's imagine another cyborg that's programmed with
Speaker 3: the values and virtues of bitcoin, and he'll never tell
Speaker 3: a lie.
Speaker 1: Can't tell a lie because bitcoin is truth.
Speaker 3: It would have perfect integrity and that it will only
Speaker 3: ever do what it says it will do. Just like bitcoin,
Speaker 3: it would perfectly preserve energy or purchasing power into the
Speaker 3: future for your kids forever. No watt would be expended wastefully,
Speaker 3: like all the energy in bitcoin goes towards preserving private property,
Speaker 3: so it would be totally unwteful.
Speaker 2: It would encourage, motivate and incentivize want your kids and
Speaker 2: your family to grow and be the best they could
Speaker 2: be exactly.
Speaker 3: So, which gets back to that flow state, because we're
Speaker 3: talking about kids. It's like, if we want to build
Speaker 3: this world, this flow state, free market capitalist world, well
Speaker 3: we better start with the kids obviously, right, like a
Speaker 3: start with a kid.
Speaker 1: You can't teach an old dog new trick, so to speak. Like, sure,
Speaker 1: we can improve ourselves and.
Speaker 3: We can all try to be better, but the real
Speaker 3: future we're talking about is in the kids and in
Speaker 3: their kids and so on.
Speaker 2: And the kids are under attack today.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: And we went into state schooling. The author John Taylor
Speaker 3: Gatto wrote two books, Weapons of Mass Instruction and Dumbing
Speaker 3: Us Down. And I was talking about the Western educational
Speaker 3: system and where it came from. And so these two cyborgs, basically,
Speaker 3: you know, you get the bad liquid metal Federal Reserve cyborg,
Speaker 3: and you get the Arnold Schwarzenegger, a bitcoin cyborg that
Speaker 3: actually defends your family and also defends the rest of
Speaker 3: the neighborhood, like he's open to taking care of everyone.
Speaker 3: That was kind of like, I guess, a way of
Speaker 3: anthropomorphizing bitcoin and saying like, we should try to be
Speaker 3: like that for our kids, be you know, and using
Speaker 3: bitcoin to defend their purchasing power, telling the truth, exhibiting integrity,
Speaker 3: and in doing so, you would nurture your children's curiosity.
Speaker 3: The young and most precious minds among us, which are
Speaker 3: our kids while they are the future if you nurture
Speaker 3: their curiosity and give them the opportunity to discover passion,
Speaker 3: and give them the opportunity to figure out purpose and
Speaker 3: then develop autonomy and then ultimately pursue self mastery. These
Speaker 3: are the things parents want for their kids, right. If
Speaker 3: you don't want it's also the things central planners don't
Speaker 3: want in their population. Like, I want you dumb and
Speaker 3: addicted and conforming.
Speaker 2: So you can be a cogno, will.
Speaker 3: Trust the Yeah, So like that can't be a coincidence, right, Like,
Speaker 3: these are things good parents want in their kids, and
Speaker 3: the exact opposite of those things is what central planners
Speaker 3: want their population. Right, And so it's about moving away
Speaker 3: from It's really just getting the state out of our affairs,
Speaker 3: and that gets us back towards this progression that we
Speaker 3: can discover flow and hopefully just build a better world.
Speaker 2: I listened to this interview with the Mike Pompeo, who
Speaker 2: was previous Secretary of State, used to be with the CIA.
Speaker 2: I think he was talking about potentially running for a
Speaker 2: president and this was a couple of months ago, and
Speaker 2: in the interview they asked him who do you think
Speaker 2: the most dangerous person in the world. Is is it
Speaker 2: putin right now? Would you say it's z Like, who's
Speaker 2: the most dangerous person in the world at this at
Speaker 2: this time? And he named a lady. I can't remember
Speaker 2: her name off the top of my head. I was
Speaker 2: trying to think about it. And she said she's the
Speaker 2: most dangerous person in the world. Like, who's this. It's
Speaker 2: the head of the Secretary of Education in the United States. Okay,
Speaker 2: more dangerous than anyone else in the world. Well, why
Speaker 2: would you say that, Because she's educating the kids and
Speaker 2: she's not educating them properly. We'll just say that that's right.
Speaker 2: And so to the point that you're making, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: they're driving them down the wrong path and everywhere you
Speaker 2: look unfortunately. I mean we can kind of talk about
Speaker 2: the but politics works against our best incentives, right, And
Speaker 2: is that a feature of them wanting to centrally plan
Speaker 2: and manage or is that just a symptom of as
Speaker 2: things grow that's how it turns.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: For example, in order to get food to more people,
Speaker 2: food production has been centralized so it can become more efficient,
Speaker 2: more cost effective. But to become more efficient, cost effective,
Speaker 2: then they've lowered the quality of the food, which works
Speaker 2: against what I want. So some of this like that
Speaker 2: or is it more to like I said toes centrally plan,
Speaker 2: they need everybody to be dependable, reliable and a cog
Speaker 2: and a wheel, and they can't have you being a
Speaker 2: free thinker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question, and I mean my admitted
Speaker 3: tunnel vision, right. I think a lot of it's rooted
Speaker 3: in the money. Like, once you start to centralize the money, well,
Speaker 3: what does money do? It's like it's one of the
Speaker 3: primary things that moves humans in the world, Like people
Speaker 3: wake up, how do they in most of their days,
Speaker 3: like the.
Speaker 1: Average person chasing money, going to.
Speaker 3: Work, trying to get money so they can eat and
Speaker 3: have shelter and all these other things. If all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, one organization can just print money out of
Speaker 3: thin air, then that's like the power to control people,
Speaker 3: like to control human action to a large extent. So
Speaker 3: it doesn't surprise me at all that we see government
Speaker 3: centralize in tandem with the centralization of money. So you know,
Speaker 3: as far as like the sequence, and I'm not saying
Speaker 3: this is like purely linear, obviously there's feedback between them.
Speaker 3: But I think technology essentially dictates how we interact with
Speaker 3: the world, Right, Like if we're hunters and gatherers, well
Speaker 3: typing fast doesn't really matter, right, you know, you better
Speaker 3: be able to throw a spear or whatever it is today,
Speaker 3: where digital people were all stuck on our phones, homeless
Speaker 3: people to billionaires, all spending their time on basically the
Speaker 3: same device, yeah, every day. So it's like technology I
Speaker 3: think actually drives economics in that it's determining what we
Speaker 3: do every day, what jobs we're doing, right, that we're
Speaker 3: operating within a specific technological paradigm, and those jobs typically
Speaker 3: have to do with those technologies, right, Like we all
Speaker 3: work on computers today, we all.
Speaker 1: Work on the internet.
Speaker 3: Well that wasn't the case fifty years ago, and so
Speaker 3: on and so forth. So it's in terms of going downstream,
Speaker 3: it's like technology then economics, and then economics influences culture
Speaker 3: because culture is just how.
Speaker 1: We interact, how we interact, how we organize ourselves.
Speaker 3: Obviously there's different features of like food and religion and
Speaker 3: ritual and all these things kind of mixed into it,
Speaker 3: but even those things have to do with technology and economics. Right,
Speaker 3: It's like, well, what churches are we building? Are we
Speaker 3: in a hut Are we in a cathedral?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: It depends on what paradigm you're in, And so you
Speaker 3: get cultures kind of emerging from economics to some extent.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that culture is economic necessarily, It's just
Speaker 3: that cultures influenced.
Speaker 1: More by economics than the inverse.
Speaker 3: And then downstream from culture as politics, right, which is
Speaker 3: people fighting over the rules essentially.
Speaker 2: And then that example I gave about, like food being
Speaker 2: mass produced so they can bring cost down and become
Speaker 2: more efficient, but then they're serving less quality food. If
Speaker 2: the money supply wasn't broken and they weren't forced to
Speaker 2: try to make it more economical because one people could
Speaker 2: afford to pay a higher price, then it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: working against it. So it kind of does.
Speaker 3: Go back to the money in that respect, that's right,
Speaker 3: and the tax subsidies. Right, So they subsidize corn, sugar,
Speaker 3: et cetera. They're stealing from productive market actors and then
Speaker 3: subsidizing a specific crop which rewards the largest and most
Speaker 3: centralized providers of that crop at the expense of.
Speaker 1: Smaller, more boutique operations. So what do you get.
Speaker 3: You get centralized money leading to centralized food, and when
Speaker 3: you get to centralized food, which is also centralized wealth,
Speaker 3: they're also going to via the lobby mechanism, vote themselves
Speaker 3: favorable regulations, and then we get fucking seed oils and
Speaker 3: industrial sludge and it.
Speaker 1: Just, yeah, it destroys the world.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so kind of like we talked about the
Speaker 2: other day, where like this system of government politics is
Speaker 2: just not compatible with the world anymore because the world
Speaker 2: has moved and it hasn't and so kind of going
Speaker 2: back to that kind of ai UBI type of example,
Speaker 2: that's only going to continue to exaggerate the problems and
Speaker 2: not make them better. And so the only way that
Speaker 2: we're going to get better, I guess one of two ways.
Speaker 2: Either one the world culture technology goes back to the
Speaker 2: way it was or which is never gonna happen, which
Speaker 2: is never gonna happen. Or the political system has to change,
Speaker 2: that's right. The monetary the political and monetary system has to.
Speaker 1: Change, that's right. Yeah, And I think.
Speaker 3: Eric Winstein said this well earlier, that technology has always
Speaker 3: chased people into higher value add activities, right, So it's
Speaker 3: always scary when it's without UBI, without UBI exactly, so
Speaker 3: all the it's creative destruction right where. Okay, your job,
Speaker 3: you're an Italian shoe merchant, and all of a sudden
Speaker 3: the factory got installed down the street. Pretty scary, Like
Speaker 3: I've been making shoes for three generations. Now they're printing
Speaker 3: them out by the thousand. I'm probably out of business.
Speaker 3: That sucks, right, So people resist that they used to
Speaker 3: destroy factory. So these people protest against it. But that's
Speaker 3: so dumb because that factory actually increases aggregate wealth and productivity.
Speaker 2: But he has to go now find a new skill
Speaker 2: that's right in the market.
Speaker 1: He has to adapt.
Speaker 3: And so this is people need to understand that, especially
Speaker 3: in times of great upheople and change like we're living through,
Speaker 3: it's humility and adaptation that are at a premium.
Speaker 2: And think about I mean, if we want to go
Speaker 2: way back to like early days like hunter gatherers, once
Speaker 2: you've exhausted all the food supplies in the area, what
Speaker 2: do you do?
Speaker 1: You move?
Speaker 2: You move to the next area, Like this is just
Speaker 2: human nature. This has always worked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's and it's almost like the argument that oh,
Speaker 3: if AI is successful, that means we have to have UBI.
Speaker 3: It's not thinking properly because what you're saying is if
Speaker 3: AI is successful, then by definition it's a profitable enterprise,
Speaker 3: which means it's increasing human productivity. So it's a net
Speaker 3: benefit for everyone in needing to increase UBI by the
Speaker 3: jobs that are displaced, right, the accountants, lawyers, whoever else
Speaker 3: that get laid off by AI. No, you don't need
Speaker 3: to steal from whoever's succeeding in the market and fund
Speaker 3: those people. Those people need to go and develop new skills.
Speaker 3: That's the process of the marketplace we're adapting, right, And
Speaker 3: so Winsign said, it chases you up the value stack.
Speaker 3: So if we don't need attorneys and accountants and all
Speaker 3: this stuff in fifty years because of AI, great, go
Speaker 3: do something that people want, right, figure out what the
Speaker 3: market demands, which you can get paid for what you're
Speaker 3: good at. Hopefully that you can enter into flow and
Speaker 3: doing and do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, I think that's a good place to break.
Speaker 2: Will probably stop there, unfortunately, I just maybe we could
Speaker 2: just finish on this piece. So like, what does this
Speaker 2: mean for the future? And so I think ultimately the
Speaker 2: thesis is then that if something doesn't change, then we
Speaker 2: continue to exaggerate this problem, and no government is going
Speaker 2: to be willing to change this on their own, and
Speaker 2: so bitcoin could force that change essentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, technology, you know, solve an individual, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: said the four mega political variables that shape human society, climate, microbiology, topography,
Speaker 3: I think is the other one, and then the most
Speaker 3: important one is technology, right, because technology affects all the
Speaker 3: other ones. Right, Like, as technology changes, well we inoculate
Speaker 3: ourselves against microbiology, and we fly so we don't have
Speaker 3: to worry about topography and all these other things. So
Speaker 3: technology seems to be the prime thing, you know, like
Speaker 3: it changes how we interact with the world. It's upstream
Speaker 3: from economics, culture, politics. As I described earlier, we should
Speaker 3: embrace that it makes life better. Now, it's not always
Speaker 3: purely good necessarily, we also develop things that are terrible,
Speaker 3: like nuclear bombs and things like that, so it can
Speaker 3: be a double edged sword. But in general, if a
Speaker 3: technology is successful in the marketplace, that is a signal
Speaker 3: that it's improving people's lives in an economic way.
Speaker 1: So we should embrace that. Yeah. Cool,