WEBVTT - Why The War On Physical Cash Is A War On Freedom 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:08.440 Hello, Odd Lots listeners. It's Joe Wisenthal. Before we get 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:11.000 to today's episode, I wanted to let you know that 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:14.840 we recorded this interview with Rowan Gray back in early 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:17.880 in March, so things have obviously changed quite a bit 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.280 since then. What we thought the interview was still an 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:22.560 important one to run, and actually it's quite a bit 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.440 to say about the role of money as it relates 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.840 to government, questions of privacy, all things that are going 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:31.240 to be important. So we wanted to get it out. 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:34.479 But if it doesn't sound exactly timely with the news, 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:53.280 now you know why. Thanks for listening. Hello, and welcome 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.880 to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:02.080 Wisenthal and I'm Tracy all Away. Uh, Tracy, how are things? 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:04.640 How are things holding up there in Hong Kong these days? 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:06.440 I don't know what to say. Most people are still 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:09.520 wearing face masks, lots of people are working from home. 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:13.760 I guess it just feels more normal nowadays, so normal ish, 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:18.080 like more normal than it was, say, like a month ago. Yeah, 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:21.120 but I can't figure out whether or not it's actually 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:24.039 getting back to normal or this has just become the 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.360 new normal. There are there are a lot of like 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:31.880 extraordinary stories that we've been reading about things going on 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.759 in China in Asia as people and government to deal 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:40.959 with this virus. And one story that's probably not the 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.520 most important story of all of it, but that was interesting, 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:49.280 was the story about the government literally laundering cash. Yeah, 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:53.160 that's right. So in order to help mitigate the spread 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:56.960 of the coronavirus, there was a moment when the Chinese 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:01.720 government was sanitizing it's actually cash bills, and it was 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:03.760 doing it with I think it was with uv light, 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:09.639 but money laundering, as you say, literally literal laundering of money. 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.120 But by large, like although obviously cash exists, and cash 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:17.400 exists in Hong Kong, etcetera, mainland China and Hong Kong 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:22.760 are probably among the most forward economies in terms of 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:26.799 really becoming a post cash society. Yeah, I think that's right. 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.040 I think I've told you stories before of me going 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:33.359 to Beijing and just being almost unable to purchase stuff 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:37.200 with cash. When you try to pay for coffee at Starbucks, 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:42.120 for instance, with actual money, the cash register lady tends 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:44.520 to give you this sort of look of despair and 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:46.839 have to go to the back room and pull out 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.799 a little plastic bag with with change in it because 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:52.120 no one else pays it that way. And in the 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:57.560 coronavirus outbreak, there's actually an argument that the digital realization 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:01.440 of money in China was a good thing because it 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:04.720 meant that people could still pay for stuff through apps, 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:08.200 money could still flow through the system, and of course 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:13.480 people didn't have to touch all those dirty physical bills. Yeah, 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.160 I mean, it feels like there's a few different angles 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.600 of this. So one, as you mentioned and um uh 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:23.840 we just discussed, bills could in theory be a vehicle 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.920 for transmitting the virus. There was also an interesting story 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:32.400 a few weeks ago I recall about how authorities in 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:37.120 Hubei Province, where Wuhan is the real epicenter of the virus, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:41.440 we're able to basically track everyone who had bought cold 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:46.840 medicine uh in the entire province or in the entire city. 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:49.600 And it struck me that that is one of those 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:52.920 things you can only do if you have a very 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:58.920 highly centralized database of essentially every transaction there is, every purchase, 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:01.680 and be able to tie that to some individual. Yeah, 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:07.520 a digital database combined with an intensely powerful surveillance system 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:13.480 of government short Yeah, So regardless, we are moving and 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:16.320 you know, this this episode is not really going to 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:20.280 be about the virus per se, but it is emblematic 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.120 of where we're all going as a society, maybe a 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:27.560 different speedies, which is that physical cash is on the 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:31.920 way out, and certainly with so much commerce going digital, 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:34.480 where there's no such thing as cash in the digital 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:40.240 realm for the most part, excluding sort of U independent cryptocurrencies, 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:45.160 cash is kind of a dying thing. I think that's 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:48.479 definitely an open question, and I think there is as 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:53.679 you say, this move to electronic transactions, Uh, definitely, China 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:56.520 is at the vanguard of this, and it does open 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:59.600 up the question of what's the role of cash in 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:03.000 that kind of society in the future. You know, is 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.159 it going to be like the Starbucks in Beijing where 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.000 people have to go to a back room to sort 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.560 of search for coins to give you change because no 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.880 one else is using it, right, And you know, we 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:17.479 see this push towards cash in different ways. So there's 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.920 the sort of emergent phenomenon which is just hey, app 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:23.880 payment apps are cool. I like paying for things on 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:28.880 Apple Pay on my phone. It's extremely convenient. There's aggressive 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.640 pushes among some sort of intellectual elite to reduce the 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:36.040 amount of cash and society. The economist Ken Rogoff wrote 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.160 an entire book basically about why we should get rid 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:41.719 of cash. He had a few arguments. One, it's like 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:47.119 it's used in crime more than digital money. It also, uh, 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:49.679 if we don't have cash, you can't take your money 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.080 out of the bank put under your mattress. That makes 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:55.760 it easier to impose negative interest rates. In India a 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:59.000 couple of years ago, in sixteen, we know there was 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.760 the big demonitization campaign where they suddenly forced everyone to 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.520 convert their high dollar bills. That has had mixed success 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:09.880 at best, I believe. But whatever it is, whether it's 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:13.479 sort of an emergent phenomenon or very intentional push by elites, 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.640 there is this sort of disappearance of the significance of 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.920 cash in the economy. Sure, is that what we're going 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.839 to be talking about today? It is, And I think 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.360 the key question we're going to explore today is just 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.720 because it's happening, is this good? And do people really 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:35.480 want this? Do people really realize what they're losing with cash? 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:40.120 And is there a danger in society if one day 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:42.719 we wake up and there's no cash, and everything is 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:45.880 just purely uh in our bank accounts. Yeah, and I 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.279 think that gets back to the surveillance question. Of course, 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:51.800 when it comes to the coronavirus, it might be a 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.120 good thing that China contract all the cold medicine purchases 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:58.960 because people were paying for them by apps and electronically. 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:01.840 But maybe when it comes to some other stuff, you 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:05.039 wouldn't necessarily want the government to be able to see 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:10.000 your entire purchase history. So big questions. That is exactly right. So, 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.040 without further ado, I want to bring in our guest 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:18.239 for today. He's Rowan Gray, poly math thinker UH talks 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:22.560 about all kinds of stuff money, modern monetary fury, the law, 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.480 and so forth. He is a doctoral fellow at the 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:28.840 Cornell Law School, and he's done a lot of thinking 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:35.360 about cash and whether what we lose when society slowly 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.880 gives up cash is more and more transactions go digital. 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.920 So Rowan, thank you very much for joining us. Really 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:46.120 looking forward to talking to UH. Why should we care 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:49.480 about the existence of cash in your view? Uh, Well, 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.200 thank you for having me, um, And I think the 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:55.280 first thing tonight is that the rumors of cash's demise 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:59.120 might be slightly exaggerated. UM. First, I don't think it's 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.280 just a matter of UM even convenience or the elites. 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.360 As my friend Brett Scott has has written about at length, 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.480 there's a there's a deliberate war on cash by UM 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:13.440 certain industries who benefit from the move to digital cash, 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:18.720 notably various financial technology and regular financial industries. UM. There's 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.960 actually a pushback starting now. Places like Philadelphia have passed 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.280 laws requiring physical cash UM. And I think if you 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:30.200 look at the history of digital voting and the problems 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.440 there UM, and and the ways that voting experts talk 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.480 about the value of sort of in person physical voting, 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.400 there's a good case be made that whatever happens with 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.839 digital that we're still going to need physical cash as 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:46.120 another layer, as a kind of fail safe, and should 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.800 be taking steps to protect that. UM. But I think 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:52.240 when it comes to digital UM finance, and as you say, 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:55.559 the world is sort of moving increasingly towards centering digital 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.040 payments as as the primary way of paying. We're in 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.120 a moment now where we have to make a decision 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:05.480 as a society whether the balance of civil liberties and 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:10.720 privacy on one hand and surveillance, control and law enforcement 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:15.240 on the other either maintains the sort of uneasy relationship 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:19.800 it's had for centuries with respect to money, or whether 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:24.000 it moves drastically in one direction away from the ability 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:27.000 of average people to engage in any form of monetary 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:32.120 activity that isn't surveilled, controlled, and potentially censored on the 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:35.559 basis of the interest of political authorities. And I think 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:38.120 the really important thing to think about here is that 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:42.880 this isn't a question where we should be thinking about 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:47.560 it as taking an active step to introduced digital cash, 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:51.359 but rather that if we don't do something, the inertia 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:56.480 of technology will take away something that we already have. 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.679 And in that respect, the radical move is to get 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:04.600 rid of cash and cash like services, not to allow 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.880 them in the digital world that we're building. Maybe before 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:13.359 we go any further, you could explain the relationship between 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:18.480 money and governments as it's existed historically, because I think 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.800 this is probably going to influence a lot of our discussion. 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.080 But how do you see that relationship? Yeah? Thanks so, I, 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:29.240 as as Joe said, come from a background in modern 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.280 monetary theory, but I also come from a background in 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.680 the legal history of money. And scholars like Christine Disanne 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.480 and Roy Krietner and others have traced that the way 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.640 that money throughout history has been a tool of public 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.320 governance and most importantly a creature of law, so you 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:49.080 can have private actors involved in the making of law. 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.200 My my former law professor, Caterine A. Pistol, has a 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.080 whole book out recently called The Code of Capital about 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.880 the way that private lawyers used various legal techniques to 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:05.280 old capital and make capital instruments, but that ultimately you 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:10.079 require some sort of public authority to not only enforced law, 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:12.440 but be the kind of enforcer of final settlement. If 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:17.200 you have disagreements amongst private arbitrators or private lawyers, the 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:19.400 place that they go to resolve those things is the 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:22.280 public courts and ultimately some sort of central court that 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:25.440 says this is the sort of final decision. So when 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.240 we look at the way that money works, there is 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.120 the charter lists sort of m M T argument that 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:35.360 whatever kind of money the state says it will accept 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.920 in payment of its debts will always have a primacy 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.840 in any society with a functioning rule of law, because 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:46.680 that's the entity that most people are going to find 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.760 themselves in some sort of relationship with, or know that 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.079 their friends and colleagues and and and sort of trading 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:56.280 partners are also going to be in some relationship with. 0:11:56.960 --> 0:12:00.200 But it's also because that entity can choose what kinds 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:04.559 of private contracts and private property it wants to enforce. 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:09.240 So there's always been various forms of private money issued 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:13.840 in circulating in circulation alongside public money um and and 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:16.560 some of them have been more or less validated by 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:21.680 the state, notably, for example, to turn towards uh state 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.520 licensed commercial banks being able to issue money being considered 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:31.640 one of the notable developments towards modern capitalism. But even 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:34.720 with sort of various forms of private community currency or 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:39.640 private credit, there's always a relationship to state validation, state enforcements, 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:43.960 state legitimacy. And if you think about the modern economy today, 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:48.920 there's so many ways in which public law and legal 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:53.960 governance structures even the most private relationships. It's impossible to 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:55.880 think of a world in which you could sort of 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:58.080 even go out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.840 and try to create some private utopia without international water 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:06.000 law coming into into relevance or things like that. So 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:08.640 so in my opinion. Money is always a creature of 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.920 public governance. It's always an instrument of law, and public 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:14.480 law is always the basis for the way that we 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:21.240 govern even private actors. Before we go any further, I'm 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:25.240 actually curious if we just need to define what cash is, 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:28.079 because Okay, I have a dollar bill or a twenty 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:32.080 dollar bill in my pocket. That cash. We're gonna be 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:37.839 talking about it more. What cash means in the digital realm? 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.760 What how how do you define cash? Yeah, that's a 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.800 great question. So I think if you look at the 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:47.840 history of money, on one hand, you can look at 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.560 it in terms of the kind of legal and power 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:55.400 dynamics at play, and that's a really important lens. Another 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:57.960 lens to look at it is in terms of its materiality. 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.640 So a lawyer at the Federal is a Bank of 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:03.560 New York. Joseph Summer has a line that I like 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:07.080 to use or like to borrow, which is UM. Money 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:11.360 is what payment systems do. And if you look throughout history, 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.400 there's been two major forms of money that have existed 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.560 in in parallel, in sort of combination with each other. 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:21.360 UM one is a system of ledgers. So the the 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:23.520 economist time at Minski would say, you can think of 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.080 the whole economy as a series of balance sheets and 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:29.240 income statements. You could imagine a sort of great, you know, 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:34.560 god like master account in the sky, where everybody's liabilities 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:37.560 and assets are being constantly added and weighed up and 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:40.880 moved around relative to each other. But the other one 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:43.120 is a system of tokens, a system of what we 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:48.000 would call legally bearer instruments, where there is no single ledger, 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:52.800 even distributed ledger. There's no ledger at all. Um. It's 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:56.240 it's simply an instrument, a physical thing, or it can 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.000 be a digital thing that you that you own, and 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:01.440 the act of being able to show that you're in 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.160 possession of it is proof that it is. It is 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.360 your asset. And this will goes back, actually interestingly to 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:10.480 the origins of writing itself, about six or eight thousand 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:15.040 years ago. The archaeologist M. Denise schmant Besser at when 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.800 she started looking at where writing came from. What she 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:22.960 saw was that there were these three D clay tokens, 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:26.800 sort of little kind of shapes and abstractions of various 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.600 kinds of animals that people used to use as a 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.000 form of tax receipt so not even a tax credit, 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:37.120 but proof you paid your taxes um that the tax 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:39.640 collector would go around to the provinces and when you 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.400 give them the right amount of real goods and services, 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:44.720 they would give you a little token to prove that 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:48.240 you had paid, so that when the time came to 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:52.240 sort of do you do your taxes effectively, you could 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:56.360 present these tokens. And what happened was that eventually they 0:15:56.400 --> 0:16:01.360 started to store these tokens in forms of clay tubes 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.160 for sort of safe keeping, so that the tax collector 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:07.960 couldn't steal them or you know, skim off the top. 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.040 And then over time they would start to mark the 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:15.760 outside of these sealed clay tubes with with little markings 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:19.920 to show what three D tokens were inside. And eventually 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:22.120 they said, you know what, rather than carrying around this 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:24.280 tube with these markings, why don't we just roll the 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.640 whole thing onto a flat piece of clay and put 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.920 the markings there. And that was the sort of origins 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:33.840 of what we now consider writing on a piece of paper. 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:36.680 But it began with a three D token that people 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:41.920 would physically hold as an abstract representation of tax receipts, 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:44.240 which is not only entirely consistent with the chart list 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:48.880 MMT narrative, but also shows the relationship between even sort 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:53.120 of balance sheet accounting based money and a physical bearer 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:57.520 kind of abstract less abstract money. So we've defined our variables, 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:01.040 we've talked about what money is and whatsh is. Can 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:03.960 you maybe talk to us about the value of cash 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:08.520 to governments? Like I sort of get the I get 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:12.480 why cash is important for individuals. You know, you can 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:15.359 put stuff on your mattress, as we mentioned in the intro, 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:19.480 and you can hide certain transactions from the government, possibly, 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.560 so there are privacy issues at play there. But is 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:27.760 there any reason that governments should want cash? Yeah? I 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:32.200 mean I think if you sort of maybe hopelessly idealist, 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.000 you would think that any government's interests should be to 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.760 preserve people's civilities um as as a sort of core feature. 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:43.080 People often like to present um civilities and law enforcement 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:45.960 interests as in in conflict with each other, sort of 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.960 a trade off between being able to catch the bad 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.679 guys and let the good guys get away with things. 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:53.840 But there seems to be, at least to me in 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.240 my legal capacity, very little point in having law enforcement 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.480 if it isn't to protect people's legal rights includes our 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:04.120 civilities UM, but to sort of think about the government 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:06.520 as an as an entity, as an institution with its 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:10.000 own set of vested interests UM. I think one area, 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:13.879 certainly is that, at least until recently, the idea of 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:20.159 the government maintaining its own accounts was not considered the 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:25.280 primary kind of feasible model for an account based money UM. 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:29.919 Usually there have been various forms of private institutions or 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:34.440 delegated institutions who maintain parts of what we could call 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:37.840 the kind of common universal ledger, And in that respect, 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:42.960 the more power that those entities have over both economic 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:47.640 information and payment system settlement, the more the state exists 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:52.240 in a kind of UM public private partnership with those 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:55.840 actors and has to share power. So having direct cash 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.800 that goes into individual citizens hands is a way to 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:03.000 counterbalance the power of any private intermediaries that they might 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:06.560 be UM employing. Beyond that, I think that there are 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:11.600 sort of technological or technical benefits to having physical cash UM, 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.639 in the sense that it creates a different kind of 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:18.879 infrastructural need or a different kind of infrastructural cost benefit 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:22.560 analysis when you have to do things like inject money 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:27.480 into an area that doesn't have established institutions, doesn't have 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:31.359 established banks or even post offices that can function as banks, 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:34.760 or if you're going into a war zone, or if 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:37.520 you need to be able to move money into a 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:41.840 place temporarily that's not going to have established accountants and 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.440 established payments intermediaries, and then want to leave that place 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:50.280 shortly thereafter. Um. Having something that is sort of instrument 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:55.440 out rather than institution in I think has its own 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:59.840 unique benefits depending on the use case, and that that's 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.960 thing that throughout history, for example, has been very useful 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:09.320 for states with potentially moving borders. So if you think 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:11.600 about Europe and the sort of maps you see about 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:16.200 the evolution of various European political units, and then kind 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:19.879 of every five years the whole map is rearranging. Requiring 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.160 the same entity to be accountable in the exact same 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:28.000 way to a public authority might be unfeasible or at 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:32.520 least quite difficult, whereas having an instrument that can sort 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:36.760 of do the work of validating itself in people's pockets, 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:40.440 UH creates a very different kind of set of costs 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:59.840 and potential. So something I'm curious about is that you know, 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:04.120 a lot of the people who are most interested in 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:09.240 this topic, the idea of censorship free payments, the idea 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:13.439 of bearer assets that people can hold onto for person 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:16.359 aid to transfer to person B without worrying about person 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.679 see overseeing it. Are people who are involved in the 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:26.640 non state cryptocurrency realm bitcoiners and so forth. And then 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:29.480 a lot of people who are sort of interested in 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:33.159 working within the existing existing system, including many M M. 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:38.680 Tears and Keynesians and people who otherwise accept that public 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:41.960 money is an important thing, that public institutions are good, 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:47.199 tend to be uh more skeptical of their worldview, and 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:50.560 so I'm curious you sort of bridge the two, and 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:54.280 I'm what, what do you have a hard time in 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.879 the circles that you deal with on the public money 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:05.240 front arguing convincing people that these sort of crypto perspective 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:09.439 on money, at least from a privacy and censorship standpoint, 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:13.960 is something that they need to internalize more seriously into 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:18.639 their worldview. Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:21.520 been a lot of I'm not going to say trauma, 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:25.280 but a lot of skepticism in precisely because the people 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:29.000 that they usually associate these kinds of ideas with are 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.440 the kinds of people that you could be considered either 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.600 libertarians on one hand, or money money cranks on the other. 0:22:35.680 --> 0:22:37.960 And so the minute they even hear the word digital 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:40.399 currency of cryptocurrency, they sort of think you're one of 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:42.800 those people. But a lot of the people I think 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:45.040 who do come from an m MT point of view 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:49.480 do so because they care about the empowerment of individuals 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:52.640 relative to the state. I mean, for example, a job 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:56.040 guarantee is at least in my opinion, a way of 0:22:56.240 --> 0:23:00.600 reclaiming power for individuals even against the state and saying, 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:02.840 you know, I have a right to a job. This 0:23:02.920 --> 0:23:06.719 isn't something that the state can arbitrarily deny me. So 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:09.600 even though you're relying on the public institution to provide 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.120 the job, you're doing it in a way that's designed 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:15.439 to transfer sort of relative power away from the center 0:23:15.480 --> 0:23:19.360 and towards the proofhery. So once you explain these ideas, 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.160 I think it's often quite possible to get people on board. 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:24.880 It's just that it is new, and that it's hard 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:27.160 enough for the average person to to get their head 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:30.800 around five thousand years of monetary history and macroeconomic theory 0:23:30.800 --> 0:23:33.879 and central banking operations. To then add on sort of 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:36.680 the entire world of technology is just it's a lot 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:39.480 to bite off. As someone coming from a background in 0:23:39.560 --> 0:23:42.120 law and and now money and finance and now moving 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:46.080 into technology, there's a lot of technical competencies to juggle. 0:23:46.560 --> 0:23:48.879 But I would say that that the m m T 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:53.160 community has been very open and warm to at least 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:56.920 trying to incorporate these ideas as it involves and grows. Um. 0:23:57.000 --> 0:24:00.280 For example, it had my friend Brett Scott as a 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:04.320 keynote speaker at the International m Ntique Conference two years 0:24:04.359 --> 0:24:07.879 ago in Kansas City, which I don't think would have 0:24:07.960 --> 0:24:10.720 happened if if there was a sort of antipathy towards 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:14.600 um these concerns. I think one of the challenges is that, 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:17.520 you know, not to get too crude, but on the 0:24:17.600 --> 0:24:21.239 kind of two dimensional political access. A lot of the 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:25.000 m m T focuses on economic equality, and so it's 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:28.879 that kind of left right spectrum, but that and often 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:33.200 to make the case in favor of economic equality involves 0:24:33.840 --> 0:24:36.280 making a case for the benefit for the benefits that 0:24:36.320 --> 0:24:40.159 can be gained from collective governance. So you're offering in 0:24:40.160 --> 0:24:43.199 a position where you're defending the state against people that 0:24:43.320 --> 0:24:46.240 say the government can't do anything good. So to be 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:51.560 able to hold that thought in your head simultaneously as saying, yes, 0:24:51.600 --> 0:24:56.440 the government is a necessary engine for social justice and equality, 0:24:56.480 --> 0:24:59.160 but also maybe we shouldn't be trusting it with all 0:24:59.200 --> 0:25:04.159 of our hopes, dreams, and forgetting historical moments when the 0:25:04.240 --> 0:25:08.360 state kept a list of everybody everybody knew and everybody 0:25:08.359 --> 0:25:12.000 where everybody went, and the problems that came from that, 0:25:12.240 --> 0:25:16.879 whether that was right wing governments or left wing governments. UM. 0:25:16.920 --> 0:25:21.440