Bitcoin and the American Dream with Walker | Bitcoin Infinity Show #183

0:00 Walker, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity show. Nice to have you here. It is great to be on the Infinity Divided by 21 million show. Oh, yeah. I'm stoked to do it. Big fan, of course, so it's always nice, you know, when we can have Bitcoin podcasters together podcasting about Bitcoin podcasts. It's a beautifully virtuous cycle. Yes, it's fantastic. Yes, the circle jerk is complete. What the circle is complete and the circle jerk is something else. Yeah. Anyway, we would just before we started, we were talking about your wonderful voice. It's like talking to Darth Vader and I love it. This is not, Walker does not have a filter on as a disclaimer, like this is his actual voice.

0:42 And yeah, have you been chain smoking early in an earlier life? I mean, I used to smoke cigarettes many years ago, you know, but I have not for some years. It turns out that I guess, uh, I didn't really know I had a voice that people enjoyed listening to until like more recently. And it was, I think it was actually after speaking at a conference or something. And somebody was like, they came up to me afterwards. It was Lugano 2022. They came up to me and they were like, Walker, like, would you record a voice message for my girlfriend? Like, and I'm like, this, this is getting weird. This is getting weird in a hurry, but yeah, why not? you know so yeah then i then i realized that uh because you know i think everybody has a weird thing about their voice right like you i mean some people genuinely like the sound of their own voice i'm like not one of those people i kind of tolerate it but like we we all hear our own voices differently than everybody else hears them though it's it's it's important to remember that yeah and you you first experienced that the first time you record your voice like and when i grew up like it wasn't that easy to record your voice as it is today like we have everyone has a device to record their own voice every day but uh when when i grew up that wasn't the case and like when you heard your own voice for the first time it's like oh fuck i sound completely different and kind of dorky like yeah because you have this resonance in your skull that that other people don't hear uh so you sound better to yourself when you don't hear yourself or or something like that but you get used you've got those deep bone vibrations when you hear your

2:15 own voice. It's like, it's right there, you know? Yeah. So for you, it must be like being Batman in a Gothic cathedral or something. That sounds, that sounds like a, like an AI image prompt, you know, but Batman in a Gothic cathedral sounds pretty sweet actually. Yeah, no, these are all compliments. I think you should, um, come and sing like, what a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong with, with us in a rock a motor someday. You know, I, I can, I can actually mimic Louis Armstrong decently. I'm not a good singer I am a good mimic so Carla is the talented singer did you get a chance to see the Christmas music video she just put out yesterday? Yes but I thought it was a rerun so I only watched snippets of it because I thought it was but I thought it was the da da da da da da da da that thing right?

3:05 No no no she did the Grinch this time so like you're a mean one Mr. Grinch it's a scathing critique of both central bankers and EU bureaucrats all rolled into one. So we don't discriminate. It's not just against US or EU or not just politicians. It's central bankers too. Janet Yellen makes an appearance as the ghost of QE past. It's quite nice. And Carla has, again, a beautiful singing voice. So I highly recommend you check it out. She basically comes out of retirement now once a year to make a political monetary Christmas tune. So this is the one we get this year. I mean, I've loved those things since the first time I saw them.

3:49 I just adore them. I think this is embracing the cringe in the exact right way. Like, this is how you do it. Don't be afraid of it. Just embrace it. And they're funny as hell. And I'm a huge fan of those videos. And I have been for a long time. it means a lot like for us it was we realized even like after putting this one out yesterday i was just telling carla i was saying you know nobody else makes this kind of content like no monetary political musical satire like nobody else is like that's that's a niche within a niche within a niche you know and it's just funny because she's always very uh not self-conscious per se just she like she mostly cares if she loves it but she also obviously wants the message to get out there.

4:38 And so it's that fine balance between making something that's, you know, again, a niche within a niche within a niche, but also giving it some broad appeal. But it's interesting because it's like, I mean, you know this, on any of these centralized social media platforms, like you are, the majority of what people are served up and what they go after is just slop. It's just slop. Whether it's AI or human generated slop, it's just slop. Dem slop, pleb slop, it could be anything. The worst kind of slop is the politis slop, you know, the politics slop. Yeah. It's just like the lowest of the low, but, but it's so hard. There's just, there's so much noise out there. So much noise more than ever. The amount of the signals noise ratio is growing, you know, uh, it's going in the wrong direction constantly as it gets noisier and noisier.

5:23 And so it's hard to break outside of that, I think. And it's, it's hard to get people to, to pay attention in this goldfish attention span, you know, world that we live in. It's, but sometimes you do. And even if it reaches a couple people, it makes a couple people laugh or a couple people think differently. Like that's, you know, that's still a win. And I mean, every social media platform has its niche, right? So Facebook quite quickly became for boomers and like that's the boomer platform. It's like for people who don't really understand the internet. So it's convenient and kind of tame. And there's a lot of pictures of food still like stuff like that.

6:03 five-year-old memes and X the reason I fell in love with Twitter back in the day was the fact that you had to boil down your thoughts to 144 characters because that made me such a much sharper writer like so it was a sharpening my mind and that that's the thing I loved about it and that it was fast and all this uh yeah i do wonder how much of of that because i i agree like i like i liked uh or i still like a forcing function on like that forces you to be brief that forces you to be concise i think so much was kind of like lost when they expanded it so it's like now you can just write long form for anything like you don't have to be concise anymore i think still the most still you don't you you only see the top part of it it's true and the and i think still the tweets that perform the best you know perform the best are the ones that are concise distillations like it's i mean it's the reason that memes broadly are such an effective information distribution mechanism because they are concise they can they uh convey a massive amount of information cultural information in a really really bite-sized form and you know a short tweet does the same it's like it's why uh it's why vine too and i'm not sure if you've been tracking this but rabble he's one of the you know the early guys that was working with on twitter with jack he just released uh divine like spelled like divine but uh for anyone that doesn't know maybe

7:35 for like if the young folks out there mine was awesome but i remember i remember specifically because i posted a meme about it on instagram at the time i went back and found this uh i remember when like people may not know this but instagram didn't always have video like it wasn't always just a video you know first platform like not everything was just shorts vine was the original short form video platform you were constrained to like seven seconds yeah and it was beautiful like force like making a video in seven seconds and try to convey so much information that short amount of time that takes like it takes some real thought or it takes just creativity it was yeah it was just a beautiful culture and now they're bringing that back and a huge thing they're doing is filtering out ai slop which i think is great it's like you want to see you don't you don't want all the ai slop you don't want to have to filter that noise like i think it's nice to have a a human first uh platform you know what i mean yeah yeah absolutely uh i mean i uh i i spend a lot of time on youtube unfortunately i don't really want to but it's one of those things i'm trying to move away from but i haven't even gotten a premium account yet so i see all these ads now it's ads for making ai slop made made by ai slop so there's ais telling me to install ais to make ai slop and i'm like no i'm not going there like fuck you i use a ai daily but for completely different things. I use it to be more creative, not less. No, it's slop all the way, which

9:15 is unfortunate. And there was a Kurzgesagt video, I believe. I don't always like their videos, but sometimes they're pretty decent. And one of them was about how scientific research is now like peer reviewed research. Like the papers being reviewed are a product of AI slop. And AI slop is very good at lying and sounding like the truthful because they don't really have that function, the truth filter. So everything is getting worse because of this slop. And it's slop built on slop built on slop.

9:56 There's layers of slop, right? So, yeah. It is crazy. Two comments on AI slop. One related to boomers on Facebook. I find this hilarious irony. I remember when Facebook was first coming out, and my parents were telling me, like, oh, this is, you know. Of course, with every new unfamiliar technology, right, the older generation is like, I don't know about this. Like, it's going to rot your brain, whatever it is. uh you know but the boomers were super anti-facebook now they're the only ones left on facebook i've also noticed that the boomers they have no like their ability to distinguish what's ai slop is like zilch they are super bad at determining what is real and what is ai generated they just they don't have the defense mechanism they're used to seeing seeing things where it's like oh that oh that's a video of something so it must be real i can see the video it's jesus riding a unicorn over a rainbow to a pot of gold of course it's real where did this happen was this ireland this is amazing like wow you know no and even i like in comparison to my kids i'm bad at detecting ai slot like they detect it instantly they know exactly the difference between uh and like i feel like the boomer i'm but yeah you but but you you one you're not but then you know No, this is a borderline.

11:23 Yeah. But you've got, I think you have a much, you have obviously a discernment about you that you're not, you're not lured into the same. Like you don't see Jesus riding a uniform and think, when did this happen? Wow. I can't believe I made it. Why isn't this on the news? No, no, no. But even, uh, uh, more realistic videos, like, uh, they can instantly tell if it's AR or not in a way that I can't. Like the more, the most realistic ones. And it can be anything. So that's interesting, I think, that the younger generation actually have a... Because I think they're fed with so much more content from an earlier age that they learn the difference. They have a more fine-tuned AI slop gaydar or whatever you call it.

12:10 I like that. It's interesting because obviously we're still... The timeline of this is wild. If you think about when ChatGPT came out. and how quickly things have advanced in just a couple of years the proliferation is wild and even like grok now grok imagine it's gotten so good like i can you know either with grok or with sora generate a very realistic looking video of richard nixon you know at the in the oval office saying like i really fucked up here guys like we never should have left the gold standard like i've done it looks really good and the voice is right and even the crackle of the static of the tv is is per like it's incredible to see it's going to be wild to see where we go like what does it look like 10 years from now how good is that you know and a thing i noticed uh today even is like this backlash of uh actually started yesterday but the the um uh the backlash elon got uh or the backlash the eu got rather or both of them because the eu decided to fine elon for this and that uh a lot of accusations and you can have your opinions on whether the accusations were valid or not i think it's all invalid because i'm an anarcho-capitalist but anyway even if you so i'm gonna argue like for argument's sake that even if you're the if you subscribe to these things uh there may or may not have been an underlying agenda but the thing that happened on x which is the platform that got fined

13:41 And it one which is also the number one downloaded app in every single country in the EU at the moment Not only in the EU by the way in Europe uh regardless of what they do and how much they fine musk uh or his company they are not in charge anymore it just and you can see like the instant backlash from you eu bureaucrat pundits that that uh uh posted europe flags uh and i'm proud and i'm a free person and blah blah blah this government mandated what do you what we call it like politicians sucking up to politicians sloth yeah and the funny thing is that they do it on x so they don't see the irony of of saying haha we sort of won uh uh the the only reason that they can say that is because it's actually a free speech platform.

14:44 He does not censor, uh, opinion, negative opinions about himself. Like it's, it's just a testament to them being dinosaurs. Like, and I find that insanely fascinating. The irony is just baffling. It's been incredible to watch this saga lay out. This is one of the reasons why Carla, what we were initially going to released this Christmas video that she did in a week or so, or maybe two weeks, closer to Christmas. And then this happened. And we already had Keir Starmer and some EU bureaucrats featured in the video prior to all this going down. And then this went down and we were like, oh, wow, this is how serendipitous and perfect. We got to get this out now. So she crunched it out and it was very good but the the point being you're right about the irony and and they're they're not seeing it i mean perhaps they should use noster you know then they could at least be uh walking the walk but no except no one's there yeah we're all there and we were all there yes we're hanging the vibes are still good on those yeah yeah but that's but that's also why we don't use it because no one's wrong on noster then you want to point out when people are wrong well exactly yeah i'm a much nicer person on Noster than I am on X on, on X. I just can't help myself there. I mean, and it's my own fault, right. For engaging. I've seen recently just my feed gets my free page just gets flooded with just communist idiocy, like really just dumb commies. Uh,

16:18 and I mean, as a communist, you're either dumb or evil. Like that's basically what it is. Cause if you actually understand what you're doing, then like you must be evil. And if you actually think communism is good, then you're just dumb. Same as true for shit corners, by the way. exactly exactly yeah well said and that's the thing i've seen so much of this and why because i engage with it and because i can't help but engage with it but it is the it's the global town square and it is a i mean it's an incredible tool yes it is centralized yes you know it's centrally controlled yeah elon owns the thing it's not an open protocol yes that being said no relatively speaking it is a really great option for the disseminate you know the relatively free dissemination of information. Again, the problem there though, is finding signal, right? Make it, you know, actually finding signal amidst the slop. That's the difficulty, but that's, that's the same. It's the same everywhere, right? It's the same on any platform. Like Noster, there's maybe less slop, but it's just because it's a much smaller cohort of people who are over there, generally more ideologically aligned, you know, because it's a small, a small in-group, but yeah it's this eu thing is just it's just fascinating when i saw people saying things like look the eu the you know european union has more of it's more free speech than the united states of america i'm like you can get thrown in jail for germany for calling someone a fuck yeah yeah like or like the guy in switzerland who was just uh you never had free speech like that's the irony that we never held it as like sure orwell was british but he had nothing to do with the state

17:55 yeah like it's crazy to see this because i think that again they they tell on themselves a little bit this is the great thing about politicians having these accounts is they get to kind of they get to show for everyone just how ridiculous they are like it's not every time because it used to be, they could just go on one of the few news stations. They could give their one to many broadcast and there's no feedback loop. There's nothing, there's nothing coming back to them. There's nothing checking them on it. Now they can get ratioed in real time. Like I ratioed multiple EU bureaucrats just in the space of the last 24 hours. And it's like, that's amazing. That's me, a random American from, you know, the other side of the world who granted I have a, I have a European wife. Um, you know, she's, she's Romanian though. Right. Because they're like, this is the other thing and i i'd love your opinion on this do you think there's a european identity or do you think there's a national national identities within europe like i think both okay so i'd say in the us it's more uh there is definitely an american identity and less so a separate state entity i I mean, you're not very specifically Utahan because you're from Utah, right?

19:14 Some are like, I still consider myself a Wisconsinite because that's where I'm from. Texans, I think, are some of the most proud about it. Yeah, absolutely. And I would know what a Texan is, but I would not know what a Wisconsinite is like. A lot of beer and cheese. A lot of beer and cheese. Yeah. We have a lot of Germans and Scandinavians. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds good. Sounds like a place I'd like. You would, you would. Yeah, yeah. But it's your point stands though. It's a different level. Yes. And I think if it's like this in the US, it's like that in Europe, because I do think we feel like a common European identity. And I like that. But the national identities are stronger, of course, especially in these old colonial countries.

20:00 So I think national identity in France, for instance, is never going to go away. they're proud of not speaking English there. So, so, so, um, and no, I shouldn't bash on France only, but I think natural identities are very strong in, in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, you name it. Yeah. Even in the Nordic countries. So certain extent, but not, not in the same way. I think Northern Europe is a bit different than Southern Europe. I think. But regardless that that's, that's kind of, uh, outside of any, like the EU doesn't create the European identity, right? It's absolutely not. That identity, I think, preceded the formation of an extra bureaucratic layer, right?

20:47 Yeah. I mean, I feel, and I think many people hate the EU because they feel European. And they think the EU is destroying Europe, more or less. And oh, did you see that? The other thing on Twitter was that Reporters Without Borders poll about the most trustworthy. And I looked it up. It's super simple to find the data. 65% state funded. That organization that made that. And I bet you that's direct taxes. the other stuff is funded by people who benefit from state subsidies like why else would you support that organization if you know it's 65% state funded it's propaganda all of it it's like in North Korea they can very easily have show you data that shows you that North Korea is the freest, most happiest, most prosperous country on earth where people are definitely not starving and everybody loves their supreme leader so so so much there's a hundred percent approval like of course you can any state sponsored media is going to say that the state is great like that's their whole raison d'etre right you know to yeah the friend that's why they exist is to be mouthpieces of the state they are just an arm of it and if if if i learned anything from these two latest wars that have popped up ukraine russia

22:17 and israel palestine it's the insight that you can't trust anything from any side like at all like how could you and if you want to actually figure something out about it it's super complex and you don't know at the end of the day you don't know which state man didn't get to bang the other state man's wife which is probably the true motive between all of these things like uh behind all of these things but somehow it's it's just it's senseless and a waste of resources on a fucking massive scale enabled by taxes and inflation at the end of the day that's why they happen that's why we have wars because we still fall for taxes and inflation and we think they're natural and the only way to do things and that's the lesson not learned from the world wars yeah a quick something that was in my head when you were talking about just european versus national identities and america a quote that my my father-in-law who's a very very brilliant guy and he was a communist defector right he came to america uh before before the fall of communism and he he loves america he's a he now says he sees a lot of the same hallmarks that he saw during communism that's a whole different story right yeah but he sees them everywhere not just in america but like in a lot of western europe as well eastern europe I think has more of an immune system built up because they, they just went through this not so

23:47 long ago. They're kind of like, Oh no, no, no guys, we've seen this before. It's not good. It's not good. But he told me, he basically, he, he said this to me a few times and it's always stuck with me. He said, fucker, America is unique because if you move to France, we'll pick on the French again, but you know, you move to France, you marry a French woman, you become a French citizen, you, you pay French taxes, you assimilate. I mean, you're eating your baguettes and, and you know, And you are becoming as French as you can be. And maybe you have kids. You have kids born in France. You love France. You're living in France, paying taxes, married, all of that. You'll never be French. You go to Russia. You go to Russia.

24:27 You marry a Russian woman. You have Russian babies. You drink Russian vodka. You pay Russian taxes. You assimilate into the Russian culture. It doesn't matter. You'll never be Russian. And this is the same for almost every country in the world, except the United States of America. You come to America, you assimilate, you really like live by the American ideals and you pay your taxes and you, you know, you try to create value here. You become American. You're like, he's like, you know, I'm an American. I just wasn't born here. And I just thought that's, and it's true, right? That it's a beautiful, beautiful thing that you can truly become American.

25:07 Like it's, it's, and it's, it is unique. and it's not a bad thing again that like the national identities uh in europe like i mean another extreme example but just more obvious from a skin color perspective is japan you can move to japan you can pay japanese marry a japanese woman have japanese kids all this you will never be japanese like that you can't you can't do it you'll always be a gaijin or whatever the the expression is and i i think that that's it's just always stuck with me because as an sometimes somebody was born in america you take these things for granted a little you take for granted that this is a special place that you can come to where you can become american yeah yeah just wanted to throw that out there because it's something that's always really stuck with me and and isn't a way i'd thought about it before no and it's it's a good insight and i i think uh the american dream uh is applicable to everyone in the world though and and it's achievable and from anywhere in the world uh if you if you dedicate your life to to to to actually living the dream it's just that most people don't realize that it's not only for americans and that they could like not give a fuck about what the state tells them and live life on their own terms you can be american wherever you are if if you have the american dream in your heart and i would say that I fit into that category now.

26:36 Like it took me half a life to figure it out, but yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sit back and let others decide what I can and cannot do. Like it's retarded. Why would I, uh, I want more. I have, I have one life. I'm not gonna wait. Like why it's not like I have anything, anything better to do than, than live life on my own terms. Yeah. so not it's so it's it's funny you said it because my father-in-law has also said that exact same thing and in talking you know with people from all over it's like there's americans that are or there's americans in russia there's americans in france yeah they're just maybe they've never even been to america but they have that idea in their hearts because that's you know the american idea is something that is very powerful and i think who was i talking to the other day about this i think it was nico uh from simply bitcoin yeah and and he he put forward basically that like at its fundamental level, Bitcoin allows anyone anywhere to actually realize the American dream in a meaningful way.

27:39 Cause it something that more so than just theoretically feeling that you are able to have this this freedom it actually enables you to take that freedom And this is something that I I been trying to harp on a lot lately and remind people, because I think we often forget that governments are not there to give you rights. They're not there to give you freedoms. The government can, they can take them away. They can, they can codify, they can enshrine those rights in formal documents, legal documents, that those rights are protected by the law, but they do not give you any rights. Individuals take rights for themselves. We need to remember this. And when we take those rights together, we are more powerful, but people have this idea in their head. And I think it comes down to like, people don't understand money. They also don't understand the state. And I think that those two things are very much intertwined. And the reason that they, if they're so hard to, for people to actually wrap their minds around is because you don't, it's the water we swim in, right? It's the air we breathe. It's something that we become so accustomed to. Like, yes, the state just exists and always exists in varying degrees. And, and it's just, it is what it is. And we've got to pay our taxes and we've got to do this and this and that, and we've got to listen to whatever they say and money, money just is just there. And a print and stuff just gets more expensive forever because that's just the way things work. And I haven't really thought about it more than that. But the second you do and the second you actually, and I used to be that, that person, right? I, I think all of us, some people were extremely based before Bitcoin and Bitcoin just made them more based.

29:14 I was not as based as I could be before Bitcoin. And I think that- Me neither. That journey sends you down, when you go down the rabbit hole and you start exploring, well, if money is a lie, as I know it, as I've been taught it, which I never really was taught it, because they don't want to teach it, right? But if money is a lie, money is this base layer of all the societal coordination what else is a lot and that's when you really start to go whoa okay well then what what the fuck is the purpose of the state at all and that's what you maybe you do a little reading of bastia and you're like yeah dear lord this guy's a genius how he lived how many years ago like wait he they've had this figured out since then yeah parallel he lived at the same time as marx which is so ironic i know because one is famous completely different conceptions. The idiot is famous and the clever guy is not.

30:05 God. No, when we're touching on this specific rabbit hole here, I would say that in line with all the other Austrian economics insights and praxeological insights that rights in plural is actually wrong. there's only one human right that can be universal and timeless and it's the right to be left alone in other words the non-aggression principle there's every other right uh by necessitates a breaking or is necessitates the right word uh you can't have any other rights without violating the non-aggression principle and the right to be left alone if you have a right to housing for for instance, someone has to build the house. How can you build a house without consent? You have to break the... So in that sense, laws are actually things that can and ought to be discovered rather than man-made. Because what's the goal for humans interacting? Why do humans have conflicts?

31:25 And should we resolve conflicts? Should we strive to resolve conflicts? Yeah, of course we should. That's what everyone does. Even an animal attacking another animal does so because he wants to resolve the conflict by killing the other animal. And then when we apply that to humanity, we quite quickly figure out that it's probably not a good idea if we just go around and kill each other and take each other's stuff. That's not what led us here. That's not what invented the automobile. We can do things in another way that is more productive for all of us and better for all of us. And so conflict resolution through non-aggressive means is better than aggressive means.

32:10 And from those principles alone, you can derive, you can quite quickly come to the conclusion that the state is bullshit. And that when I say we can all be Americans, I mean the American values that everyone strives for. I don't think we should all be governed by Donald Trump or Joe Biden or anyone else. Like, I think that's retarded. What we do want, though, is the right to be left alone. And America upheld that value the longest of existing countries i mean sure there's the free cities project which is kind of interesting that places like prosper on roatan in honduras for instance where there's an actual private free city and stuff you can claim that there are some other smaller places on earth where freedom is even more achievable than in the u.s but but yeah in principle that's what we should strive for and it takes guts and it takes like you actually reclaiming the driver's wheel of your life and responsibility is the flip side of the freedom coin you have to you have to be willing to face the consequences uh because some asshole might not like what you're doing and say that you belong in jail or that you should be fined or have a giant tax bill to pay but just be ready for it maybe all the above yeah yeah maybe all of the above another thing i like about america by the way when we're talking about it is uh a tradition

33:43 that we don't really have over here that's thanksgiving because i i think humans ought to be more grateful for shit like we are i can i can have this video call with you i can travel to the US whenever I want, it's fucking amazing. I can fly in a steel tube up in the sky. Like, there are so many things to be grateful for. And people forget that all the time and focus on negatives instead. And I think that leads to shitty lives. So I like Thanksgiving. I like it too. It's funny with Thanksgiving because even a lot of Americans take that holiday for granted.

34:25 And instead of using it as an opportunity to be thankful, use it as an excuse to argue with their racist uncle jim you know or you know racist uncle jim you know and and then not speak to their family until you know until christmas or whatever i'm obviously not everybody does that but i do think that that that uh practice of being grateful and realizing as you said like what this is insane we're across the world from each other we've got we're somehow beaming this conversation in real time with with you know imperceptible delay in 4k resolution yeah across the world we're able to talk about these things we're able to then go and publish them on various platforms some of which are controlled by centralized corporations others are open protocols that some anonymous developer in latin america built you know as a as a cool project like all of these things like we can fly around the earth in metal tubes tubes we've got you know this this awful billionaire elon musk built fucking reusable rockets like reusable rockets and now another another awful billionaire who makes sure that i can order a you know i can order a pack of mason jars and have them delivered within four hours to my doorstep jeff bezos he also is building reusable rockets and we're doing all this incredible shit and so much of it just gets taken for granted.

35:47 I think, and it's tough. I'm guilty of this too, but it's important to remind yourself sometimes just to slow down and be like, wow, this is, what an incredible time to be alive. What an amazing thing. I'm so grateful. The more I learn about Bitcoin, the longer that I've been in Bitcoin. And also I have still to this day, from the first time I heard about Bitcoin until I started stacking, has still been longer than I've been stacking. So I've ignored Bitcoin for longer than I've been stacking. after another little over another year they'll finally equal out but i'm so grateful that i exist to see before bitcoin and after bitcoin yeah we're at a very unique time like my son you know about two years old now you will only know after bitcoin yeah which which is great too yeah but i'm just glad that i i was aware of bitcoin or you know i i existed before bitcoin I am now seeing Bitcoin come to life. And I mean, that's just incredible. It's another reason whenever people say, oh, I'm too late for it. It's like, you're too late. There's people that haven't even been born yet. How can you possibly be late to Bitcoin? Think about the untold billions who are yet to be born. Think about the kids that are going to be born in 2140.

36:59 And that are going to be saying, wow, well, or, you know, they're born in 2139. Well, at least we were born before the block, the block subsidy completely ran out, you know, and bitcoin security budget obviously collapsed and by the way you should use my shitcoin uh oh it's it's wild what a what an amazing thing that we get to get to see this happening jeff said this to me the other day he was like i'm just so happy that i get to bend reality with such amazing people and i was like wow that's that's that's that's making me but it's what we're doing like we're seeing everything change in real time in front of our eyes and are actively were active participants in that bending of reality yeah how fucking cool is that no it's it's amazing he's he said that many times to me too and and i i frame it as uh um i have a front row seat to the future of humanity like i like that i just get i get to sit in the front row at the theme park and just enjoy the ride it's it's amazing and the the craziest thing and this is sort of a TLDR on all the talks I do and whatnot in the books, is that when you really think about it, so what is Bitcoin?

38:12 And my shortest answer to that is that it's an agreement on a fixed set of rules. And the slightly longer answer is that the reason we agree on this set of rules rather than other sets of rules is that these are the only rules known to man that are more expensive to try to break than to follow. meaning that we are all incentivized to help one another instead of aggress against one another and also when you think about what a bitcoin is is it possible to possess a bitcoin is it possible to own a bitcoin no it's not because it's just information and it's information you keep from everyone else so it's a secret every single the satoshis are on the time chain in in in the sense that you can see them there but the ability to move them which is the important aspect of them are all in people's heads every single one of them is in someone's head and the reason we we we can act as if we own them is a because we think that no one else knows the same secret that we do and B we don't believe that the rules will change to such an extent that it will endanger the value of the token mainly that the 21 million cap will not be broken.

39:36 We can argue about nuances about that and other detrimental things too but the reason that we act as if we own them is just that we believe in the system because we understand the system to the extent of being convinced that it works. Either we understand praxeology or game theory or both or mathematics. Regardless of why you understand it, when you do, there's no way back. And all of a sudden, you're in this thing where you realize that everyone in this, it was all in our heads, like all the time.

40:19 We had the ability, the computers involved, the ASICs, the nodes, everything. It's just a fancy abacus. It's just we're orangutans with a very fancy stick to put in the termite mound to get more termites per second. Like that's what a computer is. It just saves us time. Like every tool and every technology is just there to save a human being time to reach their ends faster. and here we have this abstract system that's just beautiful that all of a sudden unlocks the ability to just be awesome to one another instead of aggress and it's it's so obvious that oh human beings are better off if we don't aggress against one another who would have known like boom and it's so obvious but it's fucking and what it has done to me and i know it has done this to you too is like inject you with this enormous uh newly found self-conscious uh self-confidence and and like just a uh ability to and willingness to just do things and not be ashamed of it and just embrace everything and embrace life in a way that we couldn do before this and the thing is We had it within us all along It was just impossible to tap into because we hadn found the equation for it yet So the cliche thing I say in all my talks is like, the Beatles were right.

41:49 All you need is love. They just hadn't found the equation for it. I love that though. No, no, I absolutely love it. I think it's interesting. the deeper into this we get and bitcoin is still again uh i heard about bitcoin for the first time in 2014 it was the silk road days i had a friend who was using the silk road for some things and he was a finance guy i was an engineering guy so for some reason he you know he came to me he was a quaker have you you know i'm getting things off of the this website called the silk road. Uh, have you heard of these, this Bitcoin, Bitcoins, something like that? They, we, I need to, I need to use them or I need to buy them so that I can pay for stuff on this website. It's the only way that you can, you can pay on this website. I'm like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard of this. Um, I like just, you know, whatever nerd, like you just on, on, on with my fiat stuff ignored. Uh, I've, I actually, I bumped into him at the Bitcoin conference in Vegas, which was, which is very cool. You know, after, after some years, but I heard about it again, 2017, right at that blow off top. I didn't, I'd spent still exactly zero time looking into Bitcoin and thought, well, I can't afford a full Bitcoin at whatever it was, you know, $17,000.

43:13 I'll just get one of a couple of these light coins. They're, they're cheaper. And you know, maybe they'll be worth as much as a Bitcoin is. I mean, still, I bought like the Pico top. It was like $500 a light coin. I think, I think light coin is still, I don't know what it is. I think it's a couple hundred less than that now to this day. Uh, so, you know, I have empathy for people who say, well, I can't afford a full Bitcoin. It's like, it's okay. You can buy a fraction called a Satoshi. I was once retarded too. I didn't look into this at all, but you know, my point being, once I finally started going down that rabbit hole and started really looking into this, that, that journey of discovery and realizing that every, the way you've been told the world works or the way that you assume the world works or must work needs to work has to work whatever it doesn't have to be that way and just because we've never seen a system like this before we've never seen anything like this before there's we we come up with all these analogies right it's it's digital gold or gold is analog bitcoin or whatever but you know all these different it's not analogies for it but they all fall flat right yeah because we've never because it's not It's not just digital goal. That's, that's a nice convenient way to package it to, you know, to boomers, but, but it's not actually, that's not what it is. It's something so much more than that. And what it allows us to do. And I think what it will enable for us in the long run is to, as you've said, have a way of interacting with each other. That is purely, there's no incentive for violence anymore. You're disincentivized to use coercion. And that's just something we've never,

44:49 ever ever seen if it was just purely digital gold with all the other properties of gold being the same then it wouldn't have that effect right no it's still like you would still be incentivized to coerce and even if it was something bigger here here's a thought like even if it was informational gold so it's still like this informational element or element zero as i like to call it uh but it had inflation just like gold does so it's if you look harder for it you'll find more of them then it wouldn't work then it would still incentivize violence because it would incentivize uh getting a a uh artificial monopoly on mining and then mining more than everyone else So it wouldn't work without the difficulty adjustment.

45:40 And the funny thing about that is like, yeah, this is also from the clown world book. I ask, or we ask, me and Luke ask, uh, uh, if human beings practice doing things, do they usually get better or worse at doing those things? And the answer is obvious. It's yes. But the follow up question everyone forgets to ask themselves is so why aren't all prices falling forever? and the in real bitcoin is the only thing that gives you the ability to see that they actually do and that that is true if you look at the world from a bitcoiner lens you see that happening and it's it rewrites everything everything you uh thought was true about human society is backwards uh it's it's it's based on ginormous lies and a giant funnel and life-sucking vampiric machine just funneling wealth from the masses to the one percent uh at all times and idiots think we can fix it with more politics yeah yeah maybe if we just vote harder you know the, the, like, oh my God.

46:58 Like, that's the thing that people can't conceptualize that we all want to believe that our actions matter and they do, but certain actions do not have the effect that you think they do. Like for instance, you voting is just voting for who's going to, you know, give you more favors and manipulate the money printer more and manipulate the legal system more. It's not, it's not a vote for actual meaningful changes. Just, it's still just a vote for the status quo. Now, I think there are some, obviously some, there are some votes where this, uh, there is a difference. Like El Salvador is an example of where that was actually, that was a change in the status quo, a very, very distinct change in the status quo. So that's, but when we talk about the average you know election it's like yeah in the u.s do i think that kamala harris would have been far far worse than donald trump absolutely but ultimately like you know to use a linaldin meme like nothing stops this train right the government needs to continue spending the amount of expenditures that it must continue to have are so great that no actual meaningful decrease in spending can be can be had it's just not going to happen and so you know and elon realized this very quickly with doge and you got to love him for going in there bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and thinking i'm just gonna i'm just gonna run this like a business and i'll just cut the waste i'll trim the fat i'll get rid of all the the excess spending and it'll be great and then

48:30 you know it's like the uh the meme uh from like the incredibles you know with mr incredible where he's like smiling then the next one's like the black like like that's basically what he had where it's like oh shit there's there's no there's no fixing this thing that it's it's and this is why these parallel systems that we build and that we engage in and that we put more of our time and energy and monetary value into are so important because i don't think that the systems that we have the fiat based systems that we have are fixable neither from like they're not fixable from the inside out the only way for them to change is by external parallel systems being a forcing function upon them to either suck them of their you know bleed them dry of their energy or to maybe uh to get have those fiat systems eventually get subsumed by the growing parallel system but i just don't think the fiat systems that are in place fix themselves from the inside out i just i don't think it's possible you know no i totally agree i the lifeboats on the titanic analogy is is 100 literally true like because what does it mean that the fiat systems are unfixable it means that they are leading to disaster like real disaster the real titanic level disaster There is no saving them, and therefore they are going to lead to civil war.

49:58 At some point, there will be a civil war because of them. Or even worse, there won't be a civil war, which means we're all enslaved. And that is the which way Western man thing comes to mind, and it's absolutely true. One system leads to more and more involuntary things, and the other leads to more and more voluntary things. it's super the choice is it's not a choice at all sadly most people most people don't want to make a choice i think and i don't mean to over generalize like uh but sometimes it's it's useful and there there's a quote i'm forgetting forgetting who it was may have been one of the stoic but it's very maybe it was seneca very few people are born slaves the majority enslave themselves and I think that it's it's very poignant because most people don't want to take responsibility because that's scary this goes back to your your earlier point of like because when you take responsibility you have to deal with the consequences they're yours there's no you know there's there's no bailout right there's nobody to come in and save you in a very real sense with in bitcoins like you lose your private key like you lose that that seed phrase you have no back of that, like it's gone. There's no customer support. There's no government that's going to come in. You know, well, now you can at least like get an insurance policy on it. So like you can do that. But again, that's something that you have to do yourself as well. Right. All of these things

51:28 have to be done. And so it's, it's, it's scary for people because that requires again, a complete reframing of how you interact with the world to say, I do have agency. I'm not just some passive observer in my own life. I have to be the one at the driver's seat. I have to be the one steering this, this vehicle of my existence. Yeah. But when you do that, then that means also, if you accept that, if you accept that you have agencies, if you accept that through your human action, you can make changes in your life that are meaningful, that are beneficial, that will change the course of your existence and your families. That means accepting that up until that point, you also had agents that at any point you could have made those changes and you did not.

52:15 And it's a lot easier to just, again, like inertia, right? Maintain the status quo. Don't rock the boat, whatever you want to say. It's easier to do that than it is to completely have a kind of a, an ego death and rebirth to have a Phoenix rise from the ashes and say, wow okay i am in control here but me being in control means that i am also responsible if and when i fail and i surely will at certain things i surely will but then how will i you know how will i get back up but that's hard like we know this this is why most people would rather just that most people don't want to leave the matrix right it's cozy the the beef tastes just like real beef i know it's not real but it still tastes good you know it's it's wild most people are cipher yeah yeah it reminds me of the first time i was ever promoted to skipper on one of the the yachts i was sailing or like big ones with a lot of people on board and once i was promoted to skipper people came and asked me all these questions that like when are we when are we going to eat for instance and i'm like uh can't you ask someone who knows and like oh i'm supposed to decide something and like it's uh and you're supposed to decide all sorts of things that you never realize that anyone decided for you before you and it's the same with uh breaking out of the

53:48 government spell it's it's it feels the same um because you're reclaiming something that you ought to always have had. I think the other difficulty is it's a lot of work to do that. Like it's a lot of even just something as basic as, you know, like your digital footprint and trying to be a good steward of that, trying not to, you know, make your information easily accessible to a bunch of hackers out there, right? Just trying to have like general good, like digital operational security practices. Like that's really hard. It's a lot of work. there's a reason that most people use the same email and the same password and the same for everything right and there's a reason that there's any single hack is a cascading effect for most individuals yeah because it's like oh i shouldn't have used you know dog's name one two three is my password with like the same email for literally every single for my bank and for you know my facebook and for my everything else do you know that that's how they hacked hillary clinton is it really yeah no way what's the name of my first dog and wikipedia hillary clinton's first oh that's how they hacked her that's that's wild i did that hillary is short for hilarious oh my god she is a boy just a creature of the swamp huh and imagine that that woman was this close to having nuclear launch codes.

55:24 It's hilarious. What's the launch code again? One, two, three, four. Yeah. Oh, jeez. it's it's it's crazy but wow okay i'm gonna be i'm gonna need to go back and look at that that hack again because that was look it up there's so many things about that too yeah that that's a that's a whole that's a whole another rabbit hole right there say that yeah it's it's funny though i think how how obvious buffoons end up on top like sure you can you can say that trump is a good good negotiator and this and that and no one else would have been able to negotiate with certain people but he is he's a buffoon like and all of them are like since since at least bush oh they're all fucking gw bush no since even the st clinton like yeah yeah or yeah i don't know too much about Bush senior or Bush senior sort of before I started paying attention, I guess.

56:32 I like Reagan a lot though, like in hindsight, but, but, uh, if, if we just look at the American presidents and when George W. Bush was doing his thing and, and being ATI cube, uh, people thought like, what the fuck is this guy? Especially from Europe with European eyes is like, this guy is a moron. Like he's, he's like, is he retarded? Like what's going on over there? And then there's just the next, the next guy is just worse. And then there's Biden and Kamala, which are just like, what the fuck is going on here? And the, and Trump is the other, like, like it's, it's such a, it's yeah. I don't know.

57:13 I don't even know where to start. Like it's so, uh, um, yeah. And then you get a well-spoken guy, Obama, and he's the worst one in his, in like ages because he bombs people like fucking mad and no one notices. They gave him a Nobel Peace Prize for just bombing the ever-loving shit out of brown people. No, they gave him the Peace Prize before he got the presidency. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just remarkable. Yeah, so he basically got it for being black. There, I said that. This is such an important point because people think, oh, well, he was such a great or, you know, he was such a good speaker and he was so nice. And he was. like obama was an incredible politician and i mean that as an insult not as a compliment i mean that exactly he was psychopath i'm i mean the the the definition of just talking out of both sides of your mouth right like where yeah he's saying all these nice things and he says them in a certain way with a cadence that makes you know that he's got your best interest at heart and meanwhile he's like bomb bomb drone strike drone strike like i mean just insanity but honestly a it's it's wild how many people are still like oh i wish we could just go back to the the obama like things that's when things were everything was nice and it's like and and if you also look like when did like the kind of racial tensions in the u.s really start to get polarizing again it was during obama which is weird yeah it should have been the other way around yeah yeah and it's according to theory to do with yeah but it was just it was just insane to

58:45 me but that's the thing like we we do live in this in this crazy clown world you know i've literally written a book about this and when i don't even know if orwellian describes it you know but it's something it's i mean i guess it's just clown world right yeah yeah it's everything is so absurd everything is so absurd and you're told to just or you're meant to just kind of take it as it is and like yeah that's just that's it's just everything's just fucking crazy and stupid and just yeah yeah that's just the way it is and it's like no it doesn't have to be like that it no no it shouldn't be like that trump the phenomenon is absurd like it's absurd that that's the only guy that manages to stir the stir the pot like that that they uh and i mean uh the things he's said over the years i mean don't get me wrong i love that he irritates the left as much as he does but i don't think like never attribute to 5d chess what can be explained by retardation because some of it is just like it's pulling stuff out of his ass it doesn't give a shit and it's the doesn't give a shit part that is good for humanity but yeah if you look at it objectively it's just a fucking shit show all of it isn't it and you had the choice between the actual commie and a crony capitalist meme coiner like oh there's so much who doesn't give a shit about anything but making money i mean that's who he is like at heart and he's obviously not a good

1:00:17 guy but it's like yeah i prefer i prefer pneumonia to bone cancer so i'm gonna vote for him like because that's the comparison they're all on the bad scale what i would say about trump is that i think that he's actually uh been it's been very good to have trump as president because it completely pierces the veil of like the obama type of politician right it's the yeah he's the antithesis of that he's he's coarse he's he's crass he you know i mean he literally you know call like calls you know tim waltz retarded like you know he's like there's no there's no filter there there's no political veneer i love that's a good thing because it take it takes the mask off but then you also see i mean you know in this first term it was all about drain the swamp right drain the swamp it's like oh the swamp's still there the swamp's gotten worse it has not drained it has not drained there's additional swampiness in there now um i mean he's like i will say he is i think he's a hilarious stand-up comic the dude has incredible comedic timing it's like it's insane absolutely his un speech was hilarious but my point is not that like someone can be a good entertainer and like as you say that the swamp is still not fucking green and what's exhausting to me is seeing bitcoiners simp for the guy like why like so let me ask you an honest question what would you prefer uh uh a pro bitcoin uh politician or an anti-bitcoin one and i think

1:01:53 This is a bit of a trick question. So let me lay it out for you. On the face of it, it's awesome to have a pro-Bitcoin president. But when you have a pro-Bitcoin president that shills meme coins and says the crypto industry and stuff like that, and has his son go to Abu Dhabi to have oil shakes by paper Bitcoin, uh like is that really a good thing if you have an anti-bitcoin president on the other hand people are forced to run their own nodes on their own terms and actually do their fucking homework and do shit for real so what's better i don't know it it's it's a it's a fair question i i've often said i would rather have a government full of senator lemmases than senator Warren's like Cynthia Lemus has been a vocal proponent and of like of of Bitcoin not she hasn't launched her own meme coin she hasn't done any shit like that you know she's been neither has been rock solid neither has Bukele correct correct and that's thing and then contrasting that with uh with Elizabeth Warren somebody like that who would is very happy to say that you know anyone uh she would love to lock up even more software developers for writing open source code, you know, because they're money launderers and helping the terrorists.

1:03:24 So I think that I'll, I'll take the bad with the good. Does that make sense? Even with regard to Trump, because I think that I would still rather have people in power who are not openly antagonistic to Bitcoin. I would still rather have that. Now, granted, would I rather that Trump wasn't a massive shit coin or two? Yeah. like yeah i i would i would like it if the president of the united states and his wife hadn't launched shit coins right right before you know right after the election and right right before you know getting into office but also i wasn't surprised at this and anyone who was surprised or trying to be like well you know we all knew this was coming because he had already launched multiple nfts he'd already launched multiple nfts guys this was this was on on on ethereum and i think on solana maybe he did on ordinals too i don't know but like this this was par for the course like of course he was gonna was gonna shit coin like this was natural i'm just surprised baron trump hasn't launched you know his own shit coin yet um but maybe baron's actually the toxic maxi of the family yeah maybe he's the heart like he's he's like guys what are you doing here yeah yeah but i love i think that ultimately demeanor like his uh harkonnen yes yes yeah this exactly but no i think again i i what i will agree with you on 100 is the simping side of things yeah if if you and again do whatever you want people right like but i'm gonna do whatever i want which is call you out for when you are ideologically inconsistent the people who are

1:04:58 are basically they're saying well we don't criticize trump for anything right like it's It's Bitcoiners who are also like super Trumpers, which is again, like fine. Like I, you know, I've got, I've got no problem with Trump when he does something good, like freeing Ross, pardoning Ross, full presidential pardon. I think that's amazing. He should be applauded for it. He kept his word. Yeah, but don't forget that he didn't free Ross for three years during his last bucking. Yeah, yeah. No, no. I, I, I, I know. Absolutely. And then Ross comes up and licks his ass and I'm like, dude, have you forgotten what this guy did to you? Like he could have pardoned you back then, but it wasn't in his interest. So he didn't.

1:05:38 I, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with you there. What I'm saying is when, when a politician does something that I think is good, I'm going to say, I think that's good. And when they do something that I think is bad I going to say I think that bad I not going to try to equivocate and moralize about how well actually you know he just he needed to launch this shit coin because you know that how he going to own the libs. Like, no, that's shit coining. That's bad. Yeah. I think that's scammy, scammy fucking behavior and people end up getting wrecked and insiders get enriched. Shit coining is just fiat on steroids. Yeah. It's the end state of fiat. It's not just the central bank is the counterfeiter. Everybody's a counterfeiter and everybody's a fucking scammer. Yeah. And like, you know, everybody's a scammer period. Right. But like, I'm not going to in any way, excuse that. And like, honestly, shame on, shame on anyone who does, we should call out bad behavior, especially in America. And I'd be curious how you see this, uh, you know, in the glorious European union, but in America, because we have a Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola democracy, we have a duopoly, right? It's, it's, you know, it's, it's red versus blue, right? That's, that's all it is.

1:06:45 you don't like coke it's okay because you can have pepsi you don't like pepsi no mountain dew no fanta none of that um certainly no you can't just have good old plain water either you got to have this sugary beverage that's you have to be good if you stop drinking mountain dew i think yeah yeah i agree agreed a mountain dew now that's the green party they never get elected but but because we have this duopoly there's a tendency for people when their guy is in power or their gal, Kamala folks, you know, if she never made it, but you know, if she would have, there's a tendency when people have their party in power to absolutely paper over and excuse any of the stupid things their party does because admitting that their party did something stupid would be viewed as giving the other side ammunition. And so, but, but then both sides are just, their hypocrisy is laid bare because they're not actually operating from any sort of a principled stance at all. It's all just tribal politics. It's all identity politics.

1:07:42 you know it's fake the difference with Trump there is that he blatantly lies but he has no moral quarrels about it he just does it because it's part of his job does any politician? no no but the others at least they try to look like they're not lying he doesn't give a shit he just says the lie because it needs to be said right then I don't know which is worse though trying to hide the lie don't get me wrong No, no, I like that. That's one of the great things he did because he sort of showed everyone the man behind the curtain in that sense, right? So, the emperor is still naked, like all the emperors.

1:08:23 but as a European I mean we also have this two party system in a way because there's always a red side and a blue side and it's always even between them in all of the European countries it's all the same and the left side always have to get the support of the actual commies to get into power and the right side have to get the support of the nationalists to get into power and that's the dichotomy but at the end of the day all democracies tend towards that towards a two party system where there's two and if you look at the budgets it's all the same like no one wants to actually change things so it's the statist quo exists everywhere and like all the parties they always talk about what the state should do about this and that no one ever says the state should stop caring about this and that They should not do anything about this and that they should remove this and that.

1:09:26 It's always, where do we put the more state control that we're going to, it's all. So where are we going to aim this being an asshole gun that we've got? Like it's, it's all, it's all wrong. But Kanu, that's the insane part to me is that it's never, nobody is ever talking about wherever you are in the world. No one's ever talking about how, well, you know what? how do we actually shrink the government? How do we take power away from the state? Well, Bitcoin, no, but I mean, uh, the, the, you know, people running for political office, and maybe we do need more Bitcoiners doing this from a localized standpoint first, and then run that on all the way up. But, but my point being, it's always just, well, here, we're going to give the government more power, no matter which side it is, whatever it's red, blue, left, right. We're going to give the government more power, but it's okay because we're going to be the ones deciding how to use that power. It's okay. And And we're better than the other guys.

1:10:21 So you don't have to worry. Unfortunately, I think it's impossible to be like all politicians or not all. There are a lot of career politicians, but there are politicians that this is a better way of phrasing it. There are politicians that start out as good guys and they're really fighting for a cause that they believe in. But they get captured by the system because the system does not reward them for sticking to their guns. The system rewards them for adapting to whatever the current thing is. That's what's rewarded. So they get rewarded not for being honest in principle.

1:11:02 They get rewarded for going with whatever direction they can go to get more votes. And this is how the system works. And it's flawed from the get-go. Democracy is not what you think it is. And a popularity contest does not make theft more ethical. It never has. It never has. It is an extremely flawed system. And it's sort of taboo to criticize it because it's always described as the worst system except all others that have been tried. Well, how about trying a fucking new one without this crap?

1:11:42 Why do we need any of it? or at least shrinking it or trying to remove most of it. But that never happens because everyone has a survival instinct. No one working at any of these institutions is ever going to vote against the hand that feeds them. So the more time that passes, the more the cancer grows because it has to. It cannot not grow. So the only way is to opt out and bypass all of it. There is no other way. that is the lifeboat and the other shit is the Titanic and everyone's going COVID was fun let's try that again wake the fuck up people but again this gets back to the fact that most people most people are cozy and comfortable just kind of following the directives that they're given most people don't want to most people are not leaders and most people certainly aren't even leaders of themselves, right? They're, they're, they're, they're just, it's easier to be a follower. Not making decisions is easier. That's the easier path. That's the path of least resistance. It's the maintaining of the status quo. It's moving with inertia. It is much more difficult to say, no, no, I'm, I'm going to step, you know, you're all fucking wrong. I'm going to step over here and I'm going to, I'm going to chart my own path.

1:13:09 That, that's why most people don't do it, but therein is the opportunity as well, right yeah there therein is therein is the the chance there is where optimistic hopeful driven people who actually give a shit yeah can rise above everything and optimism is a rational choice because you can you can choose to live either optimistic or pessimistic and this is the last chapter from the praxeology book it has this uh shawshank redemption analogy so uh morgan freeman warns Andy Dufresne, the main character, that hope is a dangerous thing because you're going to die in here and having hope is only going to give you it's only going to disappoint you ever and then a 90 year old inmate gets released and he hangs himself two weeks later because he's totally institutionalized three free meals per day he knows his routines, he cannot function on the outside as a free man and but as andy points out to red morgan freeman's character that hope guess what you're gonna die anyway so you might as well live as as if hope exists and that's what gets him out that and low time preference and digging that tunnel over 10 years and and so i choose to live with hope because why wouldn't i it would be retarded and that's how the soviet union ended by the way uh it ended the day that they started believing in that it was all that

1:14:39 the emperor didn't have any clothes like sooner or later resist is all we can do and laugh about these things and more and more people are waking up i see i see it uh not every day but i see it quite often normie is actually waking up and realizing that something is fucked with the like seeing through the propaganda because it's it's getting more and more ridiculous by the by the fucking day you know and this trump eu thing it should wake up a whole a whole bunch of other people don't you think because it's so ridiculous and you may think that it's wrong that a billionaire gets to do whatever but at least this guy had to work for his fucking billions he didn't get them from nothing sure he got some of it from the state because of goddamn electric car subsidies that shouldn't have been there but i bet he would have been successful anyway and at least now he's he's trying to stand up for free speech what what what's wrong with you why why are you against that like i don't get it because it's not like no one's no one is silenced on twitter have you when was the last time you heard about anyone like complaining that their post didn't get any attention and they had 5 million followers.

1:15:56 That just doesn't happen. Like people see these things and they. Yeah. Well of course like the main reason for all of this uh EU bureaucrat backlash against Musk is is because he not censoring to a meaningful degree anywhere and that what it comes down to right that how you defang the system you defend the system by by speaking freely by by saying like nobody will say that the emperor has no clothes until you know the little boy says look he's naked obviously he's naked but if the little boy is censored and it's like nope shut me can't sit then then nobody says it right but as soon as one person is able to speak freely as soon as one person is able to speak and somebody else hears it that person is then emboldened that's a that's a that's paying it forward it's a cascading effect right information wants to be free it wants to be free it longs to be free information is rumors younger swifter cousin is that the is that uh yeah some something something to that effect uh but but but this is what it comes down to is the totalitarian state yeah needs a complete absence of privacy and needs complete control over the uh the the memes of production you know the memes of production the the modes of communication it needs both of those things because if you can be production that's great i wish i came up with it yeah that's i don't remember where i heard it but somebody more clever than I. But if you have either, if you have both of those things, first of all,

1:17:31 if you have both privacy, you know, if you have anonymity or pseudonymity online and you have the ability to speak freely and disseminate a message, that is what thwarts the totalitarian state. Because then you can speak the truth because without privacy, without some meaningful degree of privacy, true free speech is impossible, right? Because if you are worried that like, oh yeah you can say whatever you want but we might but we know where you live and we'll come and break your knees then you know you you need to be able to say things with a degree of anonymity or pseudonymity to actually be able to exercise true free speech no and if you have those if you have that and that's why the totalitarian state that's why any authoritarian they they they clamp down on speech they clamp down on your money and they and they make sure you have no privacy and because they need it and then then then they can twist right then they can twist the thumb screws in but if they don't have that ability then you can break them then they they cannot last for long because again information wants to be free the truth will out and the totalitarians ultimately are left fangless because they cannot keep up the illusion of their like they don't have total control they don't have total control and people can speak freely and say i hate this i don't want this i reject this and that's what the head is what gives us our power you know that is why privacy is so fucking important and again because what is privacy it comes back to the first principles you were speaking of which is the right to be left alone yeah that's what it is

1:19:01 that that's what it comes down to yeah so important to uh uh like uh define the concepts here there's There's a great Rothbard book called The Ethics of Liberty, in which he explains why free speech is the wrong term to begin with. Because the question that people forget to ask themselves is, free speech where? And on my property, here in my house, I get to decide who gets to say what. And I can discriminate as much as I want. Discrimination is one of the most beautiful things we have on this planet. Like, because that's what everyone does in their own homes.

1:19:45 And like, I invite people I like, I don't invite people I don't like. And if they talk about things that bore me, I will not invite them again and so on. And if they offend me, I might even kick them out. Then again, where is free speech applicable then? If there's only private property, you don't need free speech laws because every property owner gets to decide who gets to say what on their property. So free speech laws have to be preceded by property violations, by expropriation. In order for there to be a public space, that needs to be taken from someone first.

1:20:29 So that's the first thing. And the same thing is true on social media, for instance. Not your platform, not your rules. so whoever sets the rules on the platform is and should be the owner of the platform unfortunately the state meddles with the platforms in a very mafia style way and say that you have to censor this or that person it's just that mr musk is so rich so it takes a lot to pressure him to do shit because he can buy himself out all the time and this is why people who are shit rich are actually better defenders of free speech than politicians could ever dream of being because that means you have some kind of resistance against this pressure to censor and and do all those things so right now that is the very thing they're trying to use against him that he's shit rich is the thing that actually saves him from all this and that you know i believe in free markets I believe if there's a free market between social media platforms, people will want to be on the one with the highest free speech in it.

1:21:41 Or with the most free speech, the most free speechy platform, if you will. Because there's a demand for that. A natural demand for it. Because people want to hear what other people have to say. It's that simple. So in a perfect world, yeah, there wouldn't be any coercion. That's it. And then you wouldn't need any free speech laws because whoever owns it dictates the rules. It's that simple. Well, yeah, and that's the exact, you're 100% correct. And that's the exact problem, right? It goes back to what we were talking about initially, which is the government doesn't give you rights. They can restrict them.

1:22:22 They can only take them away. And that's the thing when the government is the one that is the, uh, uh, that in control of whatever, you know, insert area you are in. Yes. That's why like, it's insane that any sort of centralized bureaucratic body has basically any, uh, any authority to say, no, you're, you're not allowed to say that. And now, okay, even in America, if you make a specific, targeted, time-based, actionable threat against somebody, that's different. If you're saying you're going to do, I'm going to go to this person's house at this time, and by the way, we should all go there to this person's house at this time.

1:23:05 Here's where they live, and we should string them up. That is obviously a different thing. right like this is something where you're now talking about violating that person's private property you're now talking about violating the the ultimate form of their private property which is themselves their body right you're talking about coercion you're talking about violence but like the idea of hate speech like if i just say like i think that guy's a fucking retarded idiot no no no that's that's not violence violence is violence yeah calls to violence are not violence they're the silence is not violence and silence is 100 not violence that is just absolute lunacy i mean that's basically that that's just a classic like communist communist technique right like that's just that's just textbook the sentence i put in one of the books was hate speech is a term obviously coined by someone who hated speech that's good because it is it is obvious you have to hate speech in order to be pro hate speech laws and ultimately what it comes down to is you and i both know this it's the people who want to restrict speech the most like if or i should say let me put it a different way this is a good heuristic for people to be able to analyze the uh the worthiness of the opinions of those around them if somebody seeks to restrict the speech of other people, it's a pretty good chance, just like, just work this one out in your

1:24:37 own brain, you can do it. There's a pretty good chance that that person who seeks to restrict the speech of others does not have a very strong argument for whatever they're peddling. Because if they did, that argument would stand on its own. They wouldn't have to suppress dissenting opinions. Again, this is why communists, socialists, totalitarians all want to restrict speech because they don't have a good argument because their systems fucking suck that's they have to restrict speech because otherwise everyone will go hey you guys this this fucking sucks like this is terrible i i don't like this again anyone who is restricting speech doesn't have a leg to stand on their own arguments for whatever they're peddling or shit yeah they're scared of speech and and guess what uh what is speech uh on a technical level uh it's small changes in air pressure it's not gonna hurt you you know like you can yell really you choose you choose how to react to it that is what will hurt you if you react in the long wrong way you choose to be offended or not it's like no yeah fuck you free speech uh fuck you uh hate speech laws proponents it's it's it's insane like again we've gotten to this point where it's like i posted this clip uh maybe yesterday of the three germans who are going there they're on 60 minutes in the u.s and like

1:26:07 it's just an insane i've seen it i've seen it the worst part is when they start laughing yeah it's weird like i mean it's just like this sickening laughter where it's like you're laughing about locking people up for memes yeah you like you're not on the like you are you are in the wrong here you laughing about taking away somebody somebody freedom locking them in a cage because you were offended by what they said That fucking insane I got such a letter in Germany once Like this is like 15 years ago maybe when we were working on a wind farm site So I was the skipper of a small crew transfer vessel to a wind farm outside a town in Germany, former Eastern Germany.

1:26:49 And we rented some apartment complex for the crews. and we had wifi in there and I used the pirate bay and downloaded a couple of movies or someone else in the building did or many people could have been anyone but it wasn't only me it was a lot of us did and then we got this letter or rather was sent to our employer to the office from a German prosecutor like pay this or we will sue you and they they that's their industry is like sending these warning letters is basically blackmail like they're sending it to to thousands and thousands of people uh like there's a 99% chance that if you don't pay it they won't they won't sue anyone because they don't have a case and it's pretty expensive for them to start up a whole new case against a simple file sharer so but for the most part like they only need a small percentile of people to be afraid of the consequences to get them to pay and of course our company paid because for them it was a small sum and it's like yeah yeah fuck it it's like paying a speeding ticket or something yeah yeah exactly but it's such a vile phenomenon and you know you know what copying a file is not stealing the file because the original owner of the file still

1:28:25 has the file and this is why intellectual property laws are fucking retarded and just detrimental to everyone they can only be artificially scarce all data can be copied that is why the satoshi is not data by the way but it within us and this is the thing i never had a shitcoin period because the thing that fascinated me from the get-go with bitcoin was the notion of something on computers that couldn't be copied that was just outlandish to me like i couldn't wrap my head around that it's like what do you mean it can't be copied it's information and it took me uh till now to articulate properly like or till a couple of years ago and figured out that it's holy shit it's because they're not on the internet they're in our heads that's it that's and it's wild when you think about it but yeah it is well i mean i i hope i hope that the absurdity of the world and of these control structures and those who operate within the frame of these control structures i hope that the absurdity is reaching such a level where it's like escape velocity absurdity yeah again people start to even people who have been asleep start to realize like the emperor has no clothes and he's drunk and he's trying to tell me what words i can and cannot say like fuck this guy you know it feels like we're getting close to that because and it's very heartening actually to see

1:29:56 like i i've uh i've seen a lot of uh pro europe european union posting as a result of uh this this like current spat right yeah most of the people doing the pro eu like not pro europe pro european union or pro european commission post like you look and it's like they're all somehow related like they're on the take essentially you know in some way they're part of the bureaucratic machine of course yeah but but but europeans europeans uh who are are citizens of individual european countries who like you know yourself are like yeah like there's a european identity the eu has nothing to do with that they don't speak for me i fucking hate those bureaucrats yeah and and americans are all kind of coming together to say like yeah like fuck this like no this is this is stupid like these guys what we're supposed to feel bad for the poor little politicians who are like what are they really trying to throw themselves a pity party like it's that's one of the worst looks is when a politician who is literally in charge of how much to steal from you every year is like whoa is me i'm you know i'm being attacked on social media it's like yeah because you said something fucking stupid you totalitarian quat like fuck off and the EU started as a free trade union and the only but what people forget and it took only a couple of decades to slippery slope itself into this dystopian nightmare that it is right now right but the thing with trade unions that people don't get is that they are only necessary

1:31:27 because someone put up a border and stopped people from trading across that border so it's the nation state's fault that the borders are in the first place and that you can't send goods and services through it so bastiat to to go full circle here we're back at the starting point here uh bastiat said if goods don't cross borders soldiers will and that is still true and by the way tariffs are fucking horrible and stupid like it's theft too It's also taxes. And, you know, the thing about the U.S. that bothers me the most is, of course, the Federal Reserve.

1:32:08 Because the way I see it, at least since 1971, the U.S. is a centrally planned economy and not a free economy at all. Because they have a money printer. And if you have a money printer, you're a centrally planned economy. You're not even socialist, you're communist. And so is everyone else, by the way. Yes. And it's dystopian as fuck to think that. But if you really, like, prices ought to fall everywhere. Everything ought to be awesome. We ought not to aggress against one another. And instead, we live in a money-printing dystopian hellhole. And we're still doing quite fine because the free market is such a powerful force that we can still afford fucking good food and flying and stuff.

1:32:51 It's great. But we could have it so much better. It's the seen and the unseen. and we never see the exponential effects that could have happened if the taxes hadn't been there. No, so it is what it is. Well, you know, it's like the communists always say, well, real communism's never been tried. It's like, fuck you, real capitalism's never been tried. No, exactly. Because it's been under the yoke. Like, people forget that Marx was the one who advocated for centralized control of credit. Like, Marx is the one who advocated. He said the central bank was the most crucial thing. And it's like, God, come on. You know, come on. And you've seen a political compass, right? With authoritarian left and authoritarian right. And the funny thing is that the upper left corner, I think it is where it's left wing and totalitarian, they call everything else on the political compass alt right.

1:33:42 or extreme right. Everything else is alt-right. But the actual truth of the thing is that the opposite corner where there's not at all totalitarian right-wing or libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism is the only corner that admits that the entirety of the rest of the compass is theft. So it's so backwards. So whenever you hear anyone tell you otherwise, they're wrong. Yeah. Anyway, Walker, I know very little, like, I don't know much more about you than when we started this interview, because it was not really an interview.

1:34:25 It's more of like a banter. This is my favorite kind of conversation, Klu. My favorite kind. Yeah, yeah. And we haven't discussed Bitcoin at all, almost, or anything else. Or have we? Which is interesting. And I'd love to have another conversation where we get into all sorts of shit and figure out where we disagree with one another because we haven't found such a thing either in this conversation. I know that Wisconsin is full of, uh, beer and cheese, uh, but that's about it. I don't know how you and Carla met. I don't know where you, what your hobbies were as a kid.

1:35:06 I don't know what your education is. and honestly i think we were better off just ranting i think so too i i've enjoyed the heck out of it now i need to return the favor and we can uh bitcoin podcast as bitcoin podcasters on my bitcoin podcast uh you know fantastic complete the circle but no i can i always enjoy enjoy more the uh uh the conversation that flows you know wherever it will there's too much i'm not a fan of too much structure when it comes to these things so for me this was perfect oh thank you and uh yeah right back at you i enjoyed it a lot too so and uh i'd love to come on your show and do my rants there and um let's yeah let's do it let's do it whenever you gotta cross pollinate you know that's yes we gotta yes send me a link somewhere and i'll come and we'll see each other in san salvador won't we yes we will looking forward to yeah yeah looking forward to it's gonna be just the time of the year where the winter starts getting very oppressive here in the midwestern united states oh yeah yeah yeah i'll be looking forward to the el salvador sunshine oh nice yeah i'm gonna spend some time in the states this summer i'm looking forward to it oh well let's we'll we'll maybe do some coordination off air yeah yeah yeah we should anyway uh thank you very much walker this has been the bitcoin infinity show go brush your teeth good night Thank you.