WEBVTT - The Evening Rocket: Robin Hood 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:27.196 Pushkin. The global pandemic was a boom time for American billionaires, 0:00:27.516 --> 0:00:31.076 who gained a trillion dollars of wealth in twenty twenty alone, 0:00:32.396 --> 0:00:35.516 and as CNBC reported at the height of the pandemic, 0:00:36.076 --> 0:00:39.476 one of those billionaires was fast climbing the list of 0:00:39.476 --> 0:00:42.996 the world's richest people. Elon Musk just past Bill Gates 0:00:43.076 --> 0:00:45.996 become the second richest man in the world, with a 0:00:46.036 --> 0:00:49.236 fortune of over one hundred and twenty eight billion dollars. 0:00:50.116 --> 0:00:52.876 At the start of twenty twenty one, Elon Musk became 0:00:52.916 --> 0:00:55.756 the richest man in the world. Since then, he's been 0:00:55.876 --> 0:00:59.116 jockeying for the top place with other tech giants. As 0:00:59.276 --> 0:01:02.316 NBC reported the spring. Altogether, the worth of those on 0:01:02.356 --> 0:01:06.316 the list is thirteen point one trillion dollars, up from 0:01:06.436 --> 0:01:09.956 eight trillion last year. The rise ring as most the 0:01:09.996 --> 0:01:15.076 world was shut down during the pandemic. Welcome to The 0:01:15.156 --> 0:01:18.516 Evening Rocket. I'm Jill Lapour. I'm a historian, a professor 0:01:18.556 --> 0:01:22.276 at Harvard. This episode, which is called robin Hood, is 0:01:22.276 --> 0:01:24.396 the last in the series I've been hosting about a 0:01:24.436 --> 0:01:30.236 new kind of capitalism. Call it Muskism, extravagant extreme capitalism, 0:01:30.636 --> 0:01:36.196 extra terrestrial capitalism, a form of capitalism influenced by fantasies 0:01:36.316 --> 0:01:41.396 that come from science fiction. During the pandemic, the contrast 0:01:41.436 --> 0:01:44.756 between the dire suffering of the masses and the vast 0:01:44.796 --> 0:01:48.716 increase of wealth among a very few cast Muskism in 0:01:48.756 --> 0:01:53.436 a particularly troubling light. In the US, Bernie Sanders proposed 0:01:53.676 --> 0:01:57.396 the Make Billionaires Pay Act, a one time tax on 0:01:57.436 --> 0:02:00.796 American billionaires to help cover the out of pocket medical 0:02:00.796 --> 0:02:05.996 expenses of ordinary Americans for one year. Musk then got 0:02:06.036 --> 0:02:09.036 into a Twitter war with Sanders. Sanders claimed Musk's well 0:02:09.356 --> 0:02:11.916 had been made possible by billions of dollars in government 0:02:11.956 --> 0:02:16.316 subsidies for his corporations. Musk suggested that Sanders should leave 0:02:16.356 --> 0:02:24.716 him alone because Tesla is saving the planet. Lately, what 0:02:24.796 --> 0:02:27.236 with one thing and another, Elon Musk has been in 0:02:27.276 --> 0:02:31.036 the headlines more or less constantly. He's had phenomenal, really 0:02:31.116 --> 0:02:35.556 almost unbelievable success. The electric car revolution really does seem 0:02:35.596 --> 0:02:37.676 to be coming, and a lot of that is thanks 0:02:37.676 --> 0:02:41.076 to Tesla, to Musk's vision, and to Tesla's commitment to 0:02:41.116 --> 0:02:46.996 renewable energy. Meanwhile, Musk's other company, SpaceX, has spectacularly realized 0:02:47.036 --> 0:02:49.996 the promise of its founding with the success of rockets 0:02:50.036 --> 0:02:54.956 that go up and come down safely, they're reusable, and 0:02:55.076 --> 0:02:59.116 with SpaceX carrying astronauts to the International Space Station. Then 0:02:59.156 --> 0:03:03.316 there's Neuralink, which Musk announced has implanted a computer chip 0:03:03.316 --> 0:03:07.156 in the brain of a live pig named Gertrude. Thebets 0:03:07.196 --> 0:03:10.756 you're hearing are real time signals from the neural link 0:03:11.116 --> 0:03:15.996 in Gertrude's head. In other recent Musk news, Starlink, another 0:03:16.036 --> 0:03:20.356 SpaceX project, launched a record number of satellites, as reported 0:03:20.396 --> 0:03:23.516 by CBS News and Sacramento NAH to a string of 0:03:23.596 --> 0:03:27.916 lights streaking across northern California tonight, and the sky lit up. 0:03:27.956 --> 0:03:30.596 Our newsroom falls lit up as well, bringing off the 0:03:30.636 --> 0:03:34.156 hook with people wondering what are they. It seemed as 0:03:34.156 --> 0:03:37.636 though anytime Musk did anything at all, newsroom phones lit 0:03:37.716 --> 0:03:41.876 up with controversy. Those satellites were designed to bring Internet 0:03:41.916 --> 0:03:45.076 service to the least networked parts of the world, but 0:03:45.156 --> 0:03:49.156 some astronomers said they were ruining the night sky. SpaceX 0:03:49.196 --> 0:03:52.996 believes these fears are overstated and Gertrude the pig. Some 0:03:53.116 --> 0:03:57.516 neuroscientists were dubious about this experiment. One researcher telling the BBC, 0:03:57.756 --> 0:04:01.836 the science was mediocre, and during the pandemic, Musk at 0:04:01.836 --> 0:04:04.796 first opposed the shutdown and vowed to keep his Tesla 0:04:04.836 --> 0:04:09.636 factory open, tweeting in all caps free America. Now Elon 0:04:09.716 --> 0:04:13.196 Musk is escalating his fight with a California county, restarting 0:04:13.236 --> 0:04:15.916 a Tesla factory in Fremont despite a stay at home 0:04:15.996 --> 0:04:20.516 order there. Then, in protest of California's strict regulations, Musk 0:04:20.516 --> 0:04:23.876 announced that he was moving too lightly regulated Texas and 0:04:23.996 --> 0:04:28.236 had decided to build Tesla's gigafactory there too. We approached 0:04:28.276 --> 0:04:31.356 both Tesla and SpaceX for a response on several points 0:04:31.356 --> 0:04:33.676 in the series, but at the time of the recording 0:04:33.916 --> 0:04:39.916 we had not received a reply. If earlier, Elon Musk 0:04:39.956 --> 0:04:43.796 had been Iron Man, a hybrid Silicon Valley Hollywood superhero. 0:04:44.516 --> 0:04:47.316 In twenty twenty one, he dubbed himself the doge Father 0:04:47.836 --> 0:04:51.596 after the cryptocurrency as if he were head of a cryptomfia. 0:04:51.956 --> 0:04:56.076 A CNBC reported market seemed to hang on his every word. 0:04:56.316 --> 0:04:59.196 One thing we've learned lately is that when Elon Musk tweets, 0:04:59.516 --> 0:05:01.796 the news cycle follows him, and in fact, he does 0:05:01.836 --> 0:05:03.756 have a series of tweets in the past few minutes, 0:05:04.116 --> 0:05:08.196 says I'm selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house, 0:05:08.636 --> 0:05:12.956 says Las. Stock price is too high, IMMO in my opinion, 0:05:13.436 --> 0:05:16.556 and now give people back their freedom. It's going to 0:05:16.596 --> 0:05:19.876 get attention. Stock now down almost seven percent. In the 0:05:19.876 --> 0:05:21.876 world of Muski is m a single tweet by a 0:05:21.916 --> 0:05:25.756 single person, not an announcement from a central bank, can 0:05:25.796 --> 0:05:30.476 drive a stock pricer hobble a currency market. In January, 0:05:30.796 --> 0:05:35.036 after the insurrection at the US capital Twitter band Donald Trump. 0:05:35.756 --> 0:05:38.636 With Trump gone, Musks seemed to become the loudest voice 0:05:38.636 --> 0:05:41.196 in the room the Love Hate Twitter account to follow. 0:05:41.836 --> 0:05:46.676 If Trump's tweets destabilized American politics, Musk's tweets, as even 0:05:46.676 --> 0:05:52.396 the doge Father himself observed, seemed to be destabilizing financial markets. Meanwhile, 0:05:52.396 --> 0:05:55.556 as Musk, Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg jockeyed for 0:05:55.636 --> 0:05:59.516 first place in the World's Richest Man contest with inconceivably 0:05:59.636 --> 0:06:02.116 large fortunes, a lot of headlines had to do with 0:06:02.196 --> 0:06:05.916 the fictive quality of money. After all, all forms of 0:06:05.916 --> 0:06:09.316 currency are acts of imagination. As Douglas Adams pointed out 0:06:09.356 --> 0:06:12.756 so well in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy. In fact, 0:06:12.756 --> 0:06:15.556 there are three freely convertible currencies in the universe, but 0:06:15.676 --> 0:06:19.436 the Alterian dollar has reasonly collapsed, the Flanian pubble bead 0:06:19.516 --> 0:06:22.356 is only exchangeable for other Flanian pubble beads, and the 0:06:22.396 --> 0:06:26.196 trigantic pew doesn't really counted money. I started out this 0:06:26.236 --> 0:06:29.356 series with The Hitchhiker's Guide because Elon Musk read it 0:06:29.396 --> 0:06:31.596 as a kid growing up in South Africa, and he 0:06:31.676 --> 0:06:33.996 cites it all the time, like, for instance, when he 0:06:34.036 --> 0:06:36.116 announced that he plans to name the first ship to 0:06:36.196 --> 0:06:39.476 Mars the Heart of Gold. But The Hitchhiker's Guide is 0:06:39.556 --> 0:06:43.876 also a strange influence on Muskism, partly because Adams was 0:06:43.916 --> 0:06:47.876 so brutally gut wrenchingly funny about the arbitrariness of money 0:06:48.036 --> 0:06:51.556 and the foibles and follies of financial schemers and assorted 0:06:51.556 --> 0:06:54.276 idiot executives. If we could, up a moment, move on 0:06:54.356 --> 0:06:57.436 to the starbitalis school policys, school policy. How can you 0:06:57.516 --> 0:07:00.596 have money if none of you actually produce anything? It 0:07:00.676 --> 0:07:04.716 doesn't grow on tree? And Adams was particularly devastating on 0:07:04.756 --> 0:07:07.316 the subject of the damage done to the natural world 0:07:07.516 --> 0:07:11.196 by advanced extractive capitalism, since we decided a few weeks 0:07:11.196 --> 0:07:14.396 ago to adopt leaves of legal tender. We have, of course, 0:07:14.476 --> 0:07:18.196 all the comm immense live also run into a small 0:07:18.236 --> 0:07:21.156 intatient problem on account of the high level of leaf availability. 0:07:21.516 --> 0:07:24.796 So in order to obviate this problem and defectively revalue 0:07:24.836 --> 0:07:27.876 the leaf, we are a badlingbach on an extensive defaiation 0:07:27.956 --> 0:07:32.996 campaign and burned on atists. If you've been following the 0:07:33.036 --> 0:07:36.356 story of cryptocurrency, the scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide might 0:07:36.396 --> 0:07:39.916 sound a little too on the nose. Elon Musk had 0:07:39.956 --> 0:07:42.836 been a real booster of bitcoin. He announced earlier this 0:07:42.916 --> 0:07:45.476 year that Tesla was buying millions of dollars of bitcoin 0:07:45.756 --> 0:07:48.436 and that you could buy a Tesla with bitcoin, until 0:07:48.436 --> 0:07:51.796 he changed his mind, citing the sort of environmental concerns 0:07:52.036 --> 0:07:54.956 that I looked into an earlier episode of The Evening Rocket. 0:07:55.636 --> 0:07:59.036 Turns out that mining bitcoin really is burning down the forests. 0:08:02.716 --> 0:08:06.596 But of course there's a backstory to Muscism's relationship to currency, 0:08:07.076 --> 0:08:12.476 so we're going to blast off to the past. The 0:08:12.556 --> 0:08:16.636 kerfuffle over bitcoin really dates to eighteen forty eight and 0:08:16.716 --> 0:08:19.996 the discovery of gold in California. A flood of gold 0:08:20.036 --> 0:08:22.716 reach havoc on the US dollar, and so as the 0:08:22.756 --> 0:08:26.356 federal government took on new powers, it adopted a gold standard, 0:08:26.436 --> 0:08:28.836 which set a rate for the price of paper currency. 0:08:29.556 --> 0:08:32.276 Europe then did the same thing. This ushered in a 0:08:32.356 --> 0:08:36.516 new era of global trade, and not incidentally, the grotesque 0:08:36.556 --> 0:08:40.476 economic inequality of the Gilded Age. Farmers and factory workers 0:08:40.556 --> 0:08:44.036 argued for a silver standard, but the US formally established 0:08:44.036 --> 0:08:48.036 the gold standard in the year nineteen hundred. That same year, 0:08:48.276 --> 0:08:51.556 a science fiction writer named Garrett P. Service imagined a 0:08:51.596 --> 0:08:55.756 different outcome in a novel called Moon Metal, in which 0:08:55.796 --> 0:08:58.636 gold is discovered at this South Pole, setting off a 0:08:58.676 --> 0:09:02.436 second gold rush. Gold is going to be as plentiful 0:09:02.556 --> 0:09:05.756 as ire. If there were not such a flood of it, 0:09:05.796 --> 0:09:08.436 we might manage. But when they begin to make trouser 0:09:08.516 --> 0:09:11.436 buttons out of the same metal that is now locked 0:09:11.476 --> 0:09:14.996 and guarded in steel vaults, where will be our standard 0:09:15.036 --> 0:09:18.636 of worth? My dear fellow, I would as willingly face 0:09:18.756 --> 0:09:22.916 the end of the world as this that's coming. Just then, 0:09:23.076 --> 0:09:26.796 a sinister scientist discovers a mysterious new metal on the 0:09:26.796 --> 0:09:29.156 Moon which he can beam to Earth by way of 0:09:29.196 --> 0:09:32.756 a particle ray, and introduces a new and more precious 0:09:32.756 --> 0:09:35.996 form of currency. I can produce it in the pure 0:09:36.196 --> 0:09:40.836 form abundantly enough to replace gold, giving it the same 0:09:41.156 --> 0:09:45.276 relative value the gold possessed when it was the universal 0:09:45.516 --> 0:09:48.476 stand But that will make you the richest man who 0:09:48.516 --> 0:09:53.876 ever lived. Undoubtedly, why you will become the financial dictator 0:09:53.876 --> 0:09:59.876 of the whole earth. Undoubtedly, currency is always a worry. 0:09:59.996 --> 0:10:03.836 Its value is so contrived, so imaginary, but also so important. 0:10:04.556 --> 0:10:07.596 After the stock market crash of nineteen twenty nine, people 0:10:07.636 --> 0:10:09.796 took their money out of the banks and turned in 0:10:09.796 --> 0:10:12.956 their paper dollars for gold. In the nineteen thirties, the 0:10:13.076 --> 0:10:15.916 US abandoned the gold standard, at least for the duration 0:10:15.956 --> 0:10:19.476 of the depression, and prohibited the private ownership of gold. 0:10:20.236 --> 0:10:22.116 If you've been listening to The Evening Rocket for the 0:10:22.196 --> 0:10:25.476 last few episodes, you'll remember that it was during this era. 0:10:25.716 --> 0:10:29.836 Then in Canada, Elon Musk's grandfather joined and became a 0:10:29.916 --> 0:10:34.196 leader of the technocracy movement, founded on the belief that 0:10:34.316 --> 0:10:39.636 engineers could solve all political, social and economic problems. Technocrats 0:10:39.796 --> 0:10:43.756 did not believe in prices. My price system is not 0:10:43.916 --> 0:10:48.076 meant merely the capitalistic system, which is only one variety 0:10:48.116 --> 0:10:52.756 of the species. It means the collapse and complete obsolescence 0:10:52.836 --> 0:10:57.476 of the entire method of distributing goods and services by 0:10:57.596 --> 0:11:01.316 means of a price. Technocrats didn't believe in prices because 0:11:01.356 --> 0:11:04.276 they didn't believe in any system not run by engineers. 0:11:04.876 --> 0:11:07.716 They wanted to get rid of both governments and banks. 0:11:08.156 --> 0:11:12.436 There will be no place for politics or politicians. Finance 0:11:12.596 --> 0:11:17.676 or finance is rackets are racketeers in place of prices 0:11:17.676 --> 0:11:21.996 and money. Technocrats wanted to reimagine the entire economic system 0:11:22.436 --> 0:11:25.556 with a new currency, a unit of energy, an ERG 0:11:25.956 --> 0:11:30.716 whose stability would eradicate the volatility of finance. A dollar 0:11:30.876 --> 0:11:34.836 may be worth in buying power so much today and 0:11:35.236 --> 0:11:39.676 moral as tomorrow, but a unit of work or heat 0:11:40.156 --> 0:11:44.756 is the same in nineteen hundred, nineteen twenty nine, nineteen 0:11:44.916 --> 0:11:49.316 thirty three are the year two thousand. The ERG never 0:11:49.356 --> 0:11:52.396 did replace the dollar, and the US formerly abandoned the 0:11:52.436 --> 0:11:55.996 gold standard in nineteen seventy six, but starting in two 0:11:56.036 --> 0:11:58.716 thousand and nine, people who want to trade in units 0:11:58.716 --> 0:12:02.996 other than dollars can buy bitcoins. Bitcoin a cryptocurrency isn't 0:12:03.036 --> 0:12:06.036 based on anything of value, Although not unlike the ERG, 0:12:06.316 --> 0:12:09.476 it has some relationship to energy. The energy it takes 0:12:09.516 --> 0:12:13.796 to produce it. Financial analysts who talk about bitcoin tend 0:12:13.796 --> 0:12:17.076 to refer not to the Hitchhiker's Guide but to Peter 0:12:17.196 --> 0:12:21.396 Pan and the so called Tinkerbell effect. It takes his 0:12:21.596 --> 0:12:28.396 faith and trust. Oh and something I forgot dust dust 0:12:28.636 --> 0:12:37.956 gaff yep, just a little bit of pixie dust. Bitcoin's value, 0:12:38.036 --> 0:12:40.556 like the value of other money, only exists if you 0:12:40.636 --> 0:12:45.116 believe it exists, like Tinkerbell or Neverland. Nevertheless, in a 0:12:45.196 --> 0:12:49.036 report issued earlier this year, JP Morgan suggested that bitcoin 0:12:49.196 --> 0:12:53.356 is poised to become the new gold standard. Cryptocudencies were 0:12:53.396 --> 0:12:58.116 designed to make payments without a trusted third party, such 0:12:58.156 --> 0:13:01.916 as a government or the financial institution they involved. Eshwar 0:13:02.036 --> 0:13:05.116 Prasad is an economist at Cornell University and a fellow 0:13:05.116 --> 0:13:08.116 at the Brookings Institute, author of a forthcoming book on 0:13:08.196 --> 0:13:11.636 the future of money. He believes cryptocurrency has set off 0:13:11.636 --> 0:13:15.676 a revolution, a foundational change in finance, but that bitcoin 0:13:15.756 --> 0:13:19.956 itself has not admit its subjectives. Bitcoin has really ended 0:13:20.036 --> 0:13:22.596 up failing in what it was supposed to provide, which 0:13:22.636 --> 0:13:26.556 is a cheap, trustless medium of exchange. It turns out 0:13:26.636 --> 0:13:29.796 it is not anonymous. It turns out it is not cheap, 0:13:30.036 --> 0:13:33.276 and it is not very efficient, so bitcoin has centered 0:13:33.356 --> 0:13:38.876 up becoming a pure speculative asset. The technology underlying cryptocurrencies, 0:13:39.036 --> 0:13:42.116 Perside argues, well, of all kinds of effects on finance, 0:13:42.156 --> 0:13:45.276 it really is the future. But he's not persuaded that 0:13:45.556 --> 0:13:50.796 some advocates claim cryptocurrencies will democratize finance. They've made it 0:13:50.836 --> 0:13:55.516 possible for people with very low incomes, very low levels 0:13:55.516 --> 0:13:59.636 of wealth to get relatively easy access to digital payments 0:13:59.676 --> 0:14:03.876 and also to basic banking products. But the problem is 0:14:03.916 --> 0:14:08.516 that digital access is unequal and financial literacy is unequal. 0:14:09.196 --> 0:14:12.116 You might give people easy access to a lot of products, 0:14:12.436 --> 0:14:15.236 but if you don't teach them their risks embedded in 0:14:15.236 --> 0:14:18.516 those products, then you might end up with the relatively 0:14:18.636 --> 0:14:21.956 less well off taking on much more risks than they 0:14:21.996 --> 0:14:26.076 realize that they're taking on, and the rich ending up 0:14:26.156 --> 0:14:29.516 being able to use his technologies much more to their advantage, 0:14:29.756 --> 0:14:32.276 so they become even better off than they are right now. 0:14:32.716 --> 0:14:35.836 One version of that story is the story of robin Hood, 0:14:35.996 --> 0:14:38.796 when feudal barons ravaged the countryside to live in pomp 0:14:38.796 --> 0:14:41.756 and splendor. When one man alone, they're challenged the might 0:14:41.836 --> 0:14:46.676 of his country's oppressors, robin Hood. No, not that robin hood. 0:14:47.036 --> 0:14:49.836 This robin hood couldn't be easier to make a trade 0:14:49.916 --> 0:14:55.356 using the robin Hood app three taps, I just bought 0:14:55.356 --> 0:14:59.996 some stock earlier this year, this robin hood the investing 0:14:59.996 --> 0:15:02.916 app led to a rockiss over a video game company 0:15:03.236 --> 0:15:07.036 called game Stop. A number of Wall Street firms had 0:15:07.076 --> 0:15:10.836 taken a bet that the pri of game Stop stock 0:15:10.956 --> 0:15:15.516 would fall, and somehow a group of people on Reddit 0:15:16.036 --> 0:15:18.116 decided that they were going to take on these hedge 0:15:18.116 --> 0:15:21.756 funds and show them the power of the masses. So 0:15:21.796 --> 0:15:26.276 they basically rallied around a lot of retail investors who 0:15:26.676 --> 0:15:30.796 would start buying up game Stop stock, thereby driving up 0:15:30.796 --> 0:15:34.156 its price. So they started buying up shares, which was 0:15:34.236 --> 0:15:37.756 made possible through this robin Hood app which allows for 0:15:37.876 --> 0:15:42.596 low cost or essentially zero commissioned trading. The problem, of course, 0:15:42.676 --> 0:15:45.396 is that those who got to the party late were 0:15:45.436 --> 0:15:48.756 the retail investors, and they got sucked in and ended 0:15:48.796 --> 0:15:51.236 up losing a lot of money, because, as you might expect, 0:15:51.596 --> 0:15:55.396 the speculative frenzy finally ended, the price of game Stop 0:15:55.556 --> 0:16:01.276 stock fell and many of these retail investors got burned. There. 0:16:01.316 --> 0:16:04.036 It is Wendy Second start of the right straight on 0:16:04.196 --> 0:16:08.316 till morn. That's Peter Pan leading the way to the 0:16:08.356 --> 0:16:12.836 island of lost boys who never grow up. Musk's fans 0:16:12.876 --> 0:16:14.876 seemed to think of him less as Peter Pan, though, 0:16:15.116 --> 0:16:18.276 and more as Robin Hood. That I think is partly 0:16:18.316 --> 0:16:21.596 due to the story of dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on 0:16:21.716 --> 0:16:24.916 nothing except a meme about a dog, started by a 0:16:24.956 --> 0:16:29.236 software engineer named Jackson Palmer as a joke. Palmer later 0:16:29.236 --> 0:16:32.996 wrote an article called my joke cryptocurrency hit two billion 0:16:32.996 --> 0:16:37.236 dollars and something is very wrong, in which he said cryptocurrency, 0:16:37.316 --> 0:16:40.036 for all its promise, had become nothing more than an 0:16:40.116 --> 0:16:44.356 unregulated penny stock market. Musk hadn't been much involved in 0:16:44.396 --> 0:16:47.516 all of this, but in twenty nineteen, after people started 0:16:47.516 --> 0:16:50.676 tweeting that he should be the CEO of dogecoin, he 0:16:50.756 --> 0:16:56.476 said it was his favorite cryptocurrency. Dozecogn's value skyrocketed, then, 0:16:56.516 --> 0:17:00.196 in a kind of quintessential act of Muscism, Musk kept 0:17:00.236 --> 0:17:04.236 tweeting about it and upwind its price. This past February, 0:17:04.356 --> 0:17:07.436 Musk talked about dogecoin on Clubhouse, a kind of audio 0:17:07.556 --> 0:17:12.116 chat room. Popular and Silicon Valley occasionally make jokes about dogcoin, 0:17:12.276 --> 0:17:13.996 they are really just meant to be joked. But dose 0:17:14.036 --> 0:17:17.356 cooin is made as a joke to make fun of cryptocurrencies, obviously, 0:17:17.556 --> 0:17:20.876 but fate Love's irony and often as part of my 0:17:20.956 --> 0:17:23.556 says that most ironic outcome is most likely, or I 0:17:23.636 --> 0:17:26.396 say the most entertaining outcome is often the most likely 0:17:26.636 --> 0:17:30.476 and arguably the most entertaining outcome, and the most ironic 0:17:30.476 --> 0:17:34.196 outcome would be that dogecoin becomes the currency of Earth 0:17:34.196 --> 0:17:37.876 in the future, the future, the future. But to me, 0:17:37.996 --> 0:17:40.836 beneath the thunder of rocket engines and far from the 0:17:40.916 --> 0:17:45.436 glare of computer screens, there's something medieval going on here. 0:17:45.836 --> 0:17:49.516 Even calling a cryptocurrency a coin is kind of a throwback. 0:17:50.036 --> 0:17:53.036 So I called up a medievalist named Rory Naismith who 0:17:53.036 --> 0:17:55.596 teaches at Cambridge. I asked him how people in the 0:17:55.636 --> 0:18:00.076 Middle Ages trusted money. You can trust the people behind it, 0:18:00.116 --> 0:18:02.396 and that's important. They think about money very much in 0:18:02.556 --> 0:18:06.036 personal terms. These coins are very often issued in the 0:18:06.156 --> 0:18:09.156 name of a king or a bishop or someone like that. 0:18:09.156 --> 0:18:11.556 That's one side of it. There's a strong sense that 0:18:11.716 --> 0:18:15.316 money is precious metal. It's not quite worth its weight 0:18:15.356 --> 0:18:18.516 in gold or silver, at least not always, but that 0:18:18.836 --> 0:18:22.316 is still there as a kind of kind of fallback. 0:18:22.636 --> 0:18:24.796 So there's a degree of abstraction that we put our 0:18:24.836 --> 0:18:27.516 trust in the identity of the person whose faces on 0:18:27.556 --> 0:18:30.396 the coin, say, but there's also a degree of real 0:18:30.476 --> 0:18:34.316 concrete value. You could melt this thing down right, Yes, 0:18:34.396 --> 0:18:37.116 that's exactly right, and right down to the seventeenth eighteenth 0:18:37.156 --> 0:18:41.516 century people thought of their silverware, their forks, their plates, 0:18:41.556 --> 0:18:43.796 all that sort of thing as in a very real 0:18:43.836 --> 0:18:46.996 sense another kind of money. Then, of course came paper 0:18:47.036 --> 0:18:49.956 money and banks and the nation state, and the growth 0:18:49.956 --> 0:18:53.436 of state power and government regulation of currency, the Bank 0:18:53.436 --> 0:18:56.996 of England, the Federal Reserve. It's as if some advocates 0:18:56.996 --> 0:19:00.316 of cryptocurrency, some of them use an investing app named 0:19:00.316 --> 0:19:03.916 after a mythical medieval character, want to uninvent all of 0:19:03.916 --> 0:19:06.076 those things. They want to go back to a time 0:19:06.156 --> 0:19:09.836 before those things were invented, to a fantasy Middle Ages 0:19:10.156 --> 0:19:13.676 where the currency is coin and robin Hood is stealing 0:19:13.716 --> 0:19:16.596 from the rich and giving to the poor. In a way, 0:19:16.876 --> 0:19:19.876 it's also a bit like not necessarily just the future 0:19:19.876 --> 0:19:21.796 of money, but also going back to the past of money. 0:19:21.796 --> 0:19:23.996 It's it's quite light going back to this period in 0:19:24.676 --> 0:19:27.236 the Middle Ages, when you thought much more in terms 0:19:27.276 --> 0:19:31.516 of people and sources rather than bigger states and bigger 0:19:31.836 --> 0:19:36.236 institutions that would underpin the authority and trustworthiness of these coins. 0:19:37.836 --> 0:19:41.236 To me in Sherwood Forest, Elon Musk isn't Robin Hood. 0:19:41.556 --> 0:19:44.756 He's the king whose face is on the coin. In 0:19:44.956 --> 0:19:49.916 Musk retrust. In February, Musk tweeted the single word doze 0:19:50.236 --> 0:19:52.716 under a picture of a SpaceX rocket in front of 0:19:52.716 --> 0:19:56.476 the moon. Doge to the Moon became a rallying cry. 0:19:57.396 --> 0:20:00.276 This was all a performance, a joke, topsy turvy, like 0:20:00.316 --> 0:20:04.116 a medieval carnival. Musk would tweet outrageous things, then say 0:20:04.156 --> 0:20:07.476 he was only joking. On April Fool's Day, he tweeted 0:20:07.716 --> 0:20:10.436 SpaceX is going to put it literal dogecoin on the 0:20:10.476 --> 0:20:14.636 literal Moon. A joke, but also not a joke. Musk 0:20:14.716 --> 0:20:17.916 said that SpaceX will be accepting dogecoin as payment, with 0:20:17.996 --> 0:20:22.556 one doge funded launch scheduled next year. Meanwhile, Tessa was 0:20:22.556 --> 0:20:25.356 in the news for investing in and accepting bitcoin, and 0:20:25.396 --> 0:20:28.916 then in the news for walking all that back. Days later, 0:20:29.156 --> 0:20:32.516 NBC's Saturday Night Live announced that Musk would host an 0:20:32.596 --> 0:20:36.876 upcoming episode. It aired on Mother's Day Eve. Musk brought 0:20:36.876 --> 0:20:39.236 his mother onto the stage and told her his present 0:20:39.316 --> 0:20:44.476 for her was dogecoin. In his opening monologue, Musk announced 0:20:44.556 --> 0:20:47.596 that he has Asperger syndrome. Look, I know I sometimes 0:20:47.636 --> 0:20:49.756 say or post strange things, but that's just how my 0:20:49.796 --> 0:20:52.676 brain works. To anyone I've offended, I just want to 0:20:52.676 --> 0:20:56.276 say I reinvented electric Carson. I'm sending people to Mars 0:20:56.276 --> 0:21:02.956 and our rocketship. Did you think I was also going 0:21:02.996 --> 0:21:06.236 to be a chill, normal dude. Some people in the 0:21:06.236 --> 0:21:11.036 autism community celebrated Musk's announcement a milestone, and, as some 0:21:11.076 --> 0:21:14.396 autistic writers observed, there was something very moving when he 0:21:14.476 --> 0:21:16.516 joked that he was pretty good at running human in 0:21:16.636 --> 0:21:20.876 emulation mode. Elsewhere, Musk has joked that he's an alien 0:21:21.116 --> 0:21:24.156 or a robot other ways that he's conjured a struggle 0:21:24.196 --> 0:21:27.356 experienced by many people on the autism spectrum who've been 0:21:27.356 --> 0:21:31.676 forced to mask their very selves. But there were critics too, 0:21:31.916 --> 0:21:35.316 who maintained that Musk's announcement was deeply cynical and just 0:21:35.396 --> 0:21:39.876 another element of an anything goes capitalism. In Slate magazine, 0:21:40.156 --> 0:21:44.116 journalist Sarah Ludermann who was autistic objected to a billionaire 0:21:44.196 --> 0:21:48.756 using Asperger's to insulate himself from criticism of his business practices, 0:21:48.996 --> 0:21:52.916 writing Apparently Asperger's syndrome means in never having to say 0:21:52.956 --> 0:21:58.236 you're sorry. What struck me, though, is that Musk's monologue 0:21:58.236 --> 0:22:00.396 made out as if people who criticize him object to 0:22:00.476 --> 0:22:03.876 him personally. But it has never been my sense that 0:22:03.996 --> 0:22:07.316 serious people who criticize Musk do so because they object 0:22:07.316 --> 0:22:10.316 to his tone or his mode of expression. The coral 0:22:10.396 --> 0:22:12.596 isn't with what he says or how he says it, 0:22:13.036 --> 0:22:14.996 but with what he does and with the world he 0:22:15.036 --> 0:22:18.076 seems to want to build. The coral isn't with Musk, 0:22:18.636 --> 0:22:23.356 but with Muscism. To Luderman's point, appearing on SNL gave 0:22:23.436 --> 0:22:27.276 Musk all sorts of opportunities to tell a new, redemptive 0:22:27.316 --> 0:22:30.996 story about himself. He appeared in nearly every sketch as 0:22:31.036 --> 0:22:35.036 the Nintendo villain Warrior on trial for murdering Mario, he explained, 0:22:35.356 --> 0:22:39.036 I'm not evil, I'm just misunderstood. In a skit set 0:22:39.076 --> 0:22:41.876 in the Old West, he played a bandit named leron 0:22:42.316 --> 0:22:44.476 what if instead of panning for gold, we just create 0:22:44.516 --> 0:22:49.396 our own currency currency? Yeah? And what the heck would 0:22:49.396 --> 0:22:52.396 it be based on? Whatever we say it's based on 0:22:53.356 --> 0:22:57.676 da ain't how money works. The money ain't the golden 0:22:57.756 --> 0:23:00.596 rock that we dig out of the ground. Then we 0:23:00.636 --> 0:23:02.876 hope no one kills us before we train it for 0:23:02.916 --> 0:23:07.516 pieces of green paper. It's a perfect system. It's a 0:23:07.516 --> 0:23:10.596 weird thing about being a historian, and everything reminds you 0:23:10.636 --> 0:23:14.396 of something else. Watching Elon Musk play Leron dressed like 0:23:14.436 --> 0:23:17.716 a cowboy, he looked exactly like an old photograph of 0:23:17.716 --> 0:23:21.156 his grandfather, the technocrat, who worked as a cowboy and 0:23:21.276 --> 0:23:26.276 performed at rodeos doing rope tricks. The family likeness is uncanny. 0:23:26.796 --> 0:23:30.636 Musk is also named after that cowboy's father, his great grandfather. 0:23:31.036 --> 0:23:35.796 Elon muskis m asks us to picture always the future, 0:23:36.436 --> 0:23:38.836 But I find it hard not to keep picturing the past. 0:23:39.676 --> 0:23:46.516 Yanked back lassoed by likenesses on SNL, Musk appeared too 0:23:46.556 --> 0:23:50.476 on the show's newscast as a cryptocurrency expert who can't 0:23:50.476 --> 0:23:53.476 give a straight answer. What is dollas coin? Well, it 0:23:53.556 --> 0:23:57.476 actually started as a joke based on an Internet meme. Okay, 0:23:57.596 --> 0:24:01.036 but what is doa co? Finally he admits the truth. 0:24:01.196 --> 0:24:03.876 I keep telling you it's a cryptocrcy you can trade 0:24:04.156 --> 0:24:08.916 for conventional money. Oh so the hustle, Yeah, it's awesome. 0:24:15.436 --> 0:24:18.996 That night, Dogcoin lost a third of its value. Me 0:24:19.196 --> 0:24:21.276 I was left thinking about the ending to that old 0:24:21.276 --> 0:24:25.236 science fiction story Moon Metal from the year nineteen hundred. 0:24:25.636 --> 0:24:29.796 The looting of the Moon brought disaster to the Raba planet, 0:24:30.956 --> 0:24:33.996 so mad with the efforts to get the precious metal 0:24:34.596 --> 0:24:38.596 that the surface of our globe was fairly showered with it. 0:24:39.476 --> 0:24:45.516 The air was filled with shining dust until finally famine 0:24:45.556 --> 0:24:51.596 and pestilence joined hands with financial disaster to punish the 0:24:51.676 --> 0:24:56.916 grasping world. At the end of Moon Metal, markets collapse 0:24:57.156 --> 0:25:00.796 until an international agreement leads to government control of the currency. 0:25:01.676 --> 0:25:03.996 Some people think this is what's most likely to happen 0:25:04.076 --> 0:25:08.556 to cryptocurrency too. Meantime, the air is being filled with 0:25:08.716 --> 0:25:13.716 shining pixie dust as famine and pestilence and pandemic join 0:25:13.796 --> 0:25:20.196 hands with financial disaster to punish the grasping world. This 0:25:20.276 --> 0:25:26.196 is an age of technological wonder, an entrepreneurial experimentation. It 0:25:26.316 --> 0:25:32.276 is in many ways tremendously thrilling. SpaceX and Tesla engineering 0:25:32.356 --> 0:25:37.196 marvels as social engineering, though I don't find any of 0:25:37.236 --> 0:25:40.996 this thrilling. The people with the most money shouldn't get 0:25:40.996 --> 0:25:43.636 to decide what happens on Earth, or on the Moon, 0:25:44.276 --> 0:25:50.636 or to the skies, or on Mars or anywhere. To me, 0:25:50.716 --> 0:25:54.356 the larger story about the rise of Muscism extravagant, extreme 0:25:54.476 --> 0:26:00.236