<unnamed>

Public Key

npub1n3nx5zyq9xmmz70q2v2kks9h7ukm2vdqw4q4huwvrdv59rlusgqsulm3x6

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsfcen2pzqznda308s9x9ttgzmlwtd4xxs82s2m78xpkk2z3l7gyqgpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqe3hrnp

Publishing to

nos.lol

Last Notes

2026-09-01 06:20:54 UTC

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Would help if they understood the difference between Bitcoin and Dogecoin, for a start.
I’m too small right now—but let’s have more like this.
https://thecommonwealthperspective.substack.com/p/not-all-crypto-make-better-arguments-cryptocurrencies-part-1
#nevent1q…w7rd

2026-08-26 02:12:41 UTC

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Cited you all in a recent article. Love your work and would love to support you.

2026-08-26 02:12:12 UTC

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Love to see it.

2026-08-16 17:06:31 UTC

The argument over U.S. dollar global reserve currency status is not a postliberal debate, but an expressly liberal one about tradeoffs. Liberals are ceding that ground.
https://thecommonwealthperspective.substack.com/p/the-debate-over-the-global-reserve
https://blossom.primal.net/e0591b9b5fc4a917a77470a7bad4828330311b6378f4b6823f956951c6ce4232.jpg

2026-08-13 03:43:23 UTC

My inner millennial is out tonight. Rocking out to this in more ways than one.
Cuz here it goes again.
https://youtu.be/dTAAsCNK7RA

2026-08-03 01:27:40 UTC

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Cheers

2026-08-03 01:23:03 UTC

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Any idea what’s causing so many dust transactions to flow?

2026-08-03 01:20:38 UTC

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This looks… I don’t know. I don’t check or watch mempool all the time, but this looks wild.

2026-08-03 01:18:11 UTC

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Sooooo many tiny transactions…

2026-08-03 01:16:11 UTC

What the hell is this mempool?

2026-07-30 16:50:55 UTC

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“… one that cannot be changed at the flip of a switch. One that is decentralized. One that is permission-less. One that is open-source.”

2026-07-28 20:32:38 UTC

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And yes, not just Americans, but all people.

2026-07-28 20:32:11 UTC

Americans ought to earn their success, but equally, they ought to always be able to earn success, and therefore guarantee the dignity of work.
That presupposes that the value of what is earned isn’t quietly and persistently eroded through inflation.
Put simply, you ought to keep what you earn.
You ought to earn sound money.

2026-07-27 20:04:02 UTC

One of the most entertaining reads I’ve had in a long time.
“What stands out for me, when I look back over the trajectory of my convictions, is that I used to be full of shit – utterly and completely full of shit – and that over time I became somewhat less so.”
Hey, me too.
https://open.substack.com/pub/josephheath/p/on-becoming-less-full-of-shit

2026-07-25 21:43:46 UTC

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(They call me mellow yellow—quite rightly.)

2026-07-25 21:43:28 UTC

The more I look on at the development of technology… the more I think that electrical banana is gonna be a sudden craze.
Electrical banana is gonna be the very next phase. 🍌⚡️
IYKYK

2026-07-24 01:49:34 UTC

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I said to him, I said…
https://blossom.primal.net/f09626cd73e42504e1a8f8e27fe4b7ea31364494dbac1b0d1d7620968317a3cc.gif

2026-07-24 00:49:12 UTC

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Unimatrix Zero.

2026-07-24 00:47:25 UTC

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*of

2026-07-24 00:46:08 UTC

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This isn’t very Bitcoin or you, buddy. Don’t make me send Hugh and One after you.

2026-07-24 00:32:42 UTC

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“Obedience brings victory.”
This you? Idk man…

2026-07-24 00:17:21 UTC

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https://blossom.primal.net/7880a6557c77147ddad25673a50fd3936142c519927bc33bab53f247cf53e9fb.gif

2026-07-21 20:28:07 UTC

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That’s an excellent point! Really, I think you nailed it though—if the ideas have merit on substance and are rewarded, then you have something akin to proof of work.
But you’re right, my analogy is a bit shaky.

2026-07-21 20:25:21 UTC

Well. Fate tempted. Applied over the weekend to the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s Congressional Fellowship. Then I saw I was invited to interview (happened today) to the Emerging Scholars Program at the Mercatus Center.
I mean it when I say I’m thinking about how to fix democracy, our institutions, and the economy. Hopefully now I can find a place with funding to help me explore and advocate for ways to do it.
Wish me luck, y’all. The way the labor market is…

2026-07-21 20:02:07 UTC

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And to be clear—I mean to ideate and create new ideas channeling that optimism to spur creativity, enabling you to imagine that future and refining the ideas publicly. (Good reminder to me not to post before I finished making my thought make sense. 🤦‍♂️)

2026-07-21 20:00:15 UTC

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By imagining it and refining that idea in public. (Proof of work.)
#nevent1q…yv6n

2026-07-21 19:57:57 UTC

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Poignant. Also addressing the crux of my generation’s crisis to deal with. Now it’s time to pony up ideas and solutions.
So can we transition gracefully (or less chaotically) towards a sound money system? And how do we express this problem set to the broader public? Can we? I think we can.
#nevent1q…58ya

2026-07-20 05:32:04 UTC

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So I’m seeing the second one having come through now on my Wallet of Satoshi, but Nostr is still showing none, despite being connected. I may have it hooked up wrong?

2026-07-20 03:34:11 UTC

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But it just *was* football season, Ben. That was football. 👀⚽️

2026-07-20 03:33:11 UTC

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Cool. 😁
#nevent1q…uac3

2026-07-20 03:32:25 UTC

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Just checked—I think I got it? At least, there are sats in my wallet I didn’t put there! (Unless someone else zapped me.) My first zap, too! Thanks, Beau!

2026-07-20 02:12:47 UTC

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I want to complain.

2026-07-20 01:50:43 UTC

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And if I want people to zap each other for saying smart, good things… should I…
https://blossom.primal.net/89d68a9939468dddfc85b207013575921779b159158f788e5c1918fc30f298b0.gif

2026-07-20 01:44:25 UTC

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But… but…
https://blossom.primal.net/5b5ab390bcb4ab19cc5b38dcfd19fc175f95e7b55243217e2250ebac38009199.gif

2026-07-20 01:42:47 UTC

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Oh, I know. But I’m Zillennial. It’s what I played with the neighbors 🤷‍♂️

2026-07-20 01:27:12 UTC

If you think the left is unreachable on sound money, you haven’t internalized that the left doesn’t know the term or problem framing.
So make it accessible. Especially if you’re pro-Bitcoin.
Dignity of work? No dignity of work if the value of that work can be eroded by a “printer.”
Seeding the capital for Abundance? It’s hard capital already and easy for anyone to acquire in any amount.
Addressing wealth inequality? Cantillon’s yelling at you to talk about this.
Not everyone shares classical liberal, libertarian, or cypherpunk priorities and values.
Fortunately, sound money is actually better for everybody, and speaks to liberal, conservative, progressive, centrist, and institutionalist values, concerns, and priorities, too.
We ought to do better making those cases as well.

2026-07-20 01:10:47 UTC

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I heard the Super Smash Bros music start in my head and now it won’t go away. I blame you. 😂

2026-07-19 22:05:41 UTC

World Champions—well done, Spain! 🇪🇸 Bien jugado, chavales.

2026-07-19 21:56:22 UTC

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For real. As a former defender myself, I gotta say the defensive setup matters too, but realistically it’s hard for newer fans to get excited about the brick wall 😅🤷‍♂️

2026-07-19 21:43:36 UTC

!GOOOOOOOOOOOOOL ESPAÑA! 🇪🇸

2026-07-19 21:40:41 UTC

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Keep trying—it is worth it. Main thing—if you just watch where the ball is, it’s like you’re trying to watch 11v11 ping pong. Look for where the ball should be going next, the plays being set up, and the momentum. ⚽️💯

2026-07-19 20:29:07 UTC

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Ain’t nothing but a heaaaaartaaaaaache

2026-07-19 20:13:58 UTC

Ted Lasso at the World Cup halftime is on my top 10 for this year already.

2026-07-19 19:45:21 UTC

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I cackled. I did. That was good.

2026-07-19 19:14:51 UTC

¡Vamos, chaval! 🇪🇸
https://blossom.primal.net/e7425000b108011729dd82002634e04f7e7e54ceb219b22a5b74bc7ab33b1b72.jpg

2026-07-19 19:05:07 UTC

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Correct way to state this. 👌
#nevent1q…84st

2026-07-19 19:04:23 UTC

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Oi! 😅 Man, I thought we were on the same side here 😂

2026-07-19 19:00:20 UTC

This may be controversial, and I’m biased having lived there, but…
Let’s go Spain! 🇪🇸
Any of my fellow nostriches watching the World Cup?

2026-07-19 18:41:16 UTC

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I’m sorry—wut? I feel so shamed and jealous 😂

2026-07-18 14:16:46 UTC

Arguing the value of sound money and Bitcoin with liberals and progressives isn’t actually that hard. You just have to put the conversation in their language—what do they *actually* most care about? How does sound money or Bitcoin achieve that?

2026-07-15 17:58:59 UTC

There is no dignity of work if the value of that work disappears after you’ve earned it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-and-the-dignity-of-work
https://blossom.primal.net/134ec7f0cad4a2767cc8fa3278d8e603d9a7eda7fb75b4e60a893ca675cb6dc9.jpg

2026-07-09 22:43:29 UTC

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Love this.
#nevent1q…h6km

2026-07-09 22:41:21 UTC

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Best way to share this message with the left: dignity of work. Seriously, give it a shot.
#nevent1q…rl69

2026-07-09 22:39:28 UTC

There is no dignity of work without sound money.
The Nostr crowd really doesn’t need reminding of this, but this might help you when talking to someone on the left. (Take it from a former progressive of the social democratic / liberal variety.)
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-and-the-dignity-of-work
https://blossom.primal.net/1c032fd6ea4f43f7e457d1c0fddf6477631f4da85511c4151c52c33b435d3fc2.jpg

2026-06-27 03:37:40 UTC

I think I’m just naïve enough to believe I can make a difference.
And that’s why I will.

2026-05-30 22:28:14 UTC

You know, you’ll find me an AI skeptic on a lot of the boldest claims. Here’s one I almost never see: for those who are curious, epistemically honest, and self-aware, AI is a godsend of a learning tool.
Over the last 48-72 hours, I’ve been doing a real deep-dive on the private credit crisis portion of the tripartite economic crisis scenario from my latest article, here.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/ai-isnt-taking-your-job-the-crash-might
(I’m due for an update on that topic, and overdue on much more across my Substack.)
A hypothetical—Viewed from 2030, what would we have expected to see in 2025-2026?
(Assuming a private credit crisis, AI bubble collapse, and simultaneous supply and demand destruction (Iran War +) crashes the economy in 2026-2027.) Is that present? What’s nuanced? Where is there countervailing evidence or sentiment? What are the mechanics, triggers, transmission systems, etc.?
And wow, am I deep down the rabbit hole.
Now, I follow the macroeconomics and finance news as I can, and try to keep track of the analysts on FinTwit. This is threading those needles into a highly coherent tapestry. All while learning/exercising:
• Structured finance and credit markets literacy
• Systemic risk analysis
• Source criticism and epistemics applied to financial data
• Political economy of financial regulation
• Interdisciplinary synthesis
That’s usually reserved to formalized university or accredited learning vehicles. The fact I can design my own course and subject—so long as I’m vigilant about confirmation bias, check the sources, and produce original theses and critiques—is genuinely revolutionary for learning.

2026-05-22 03:23:08 UTC

I can’t stress enough that the political reform folks needs to at least understand the monetary reform folks, and vice versa.
Because they are two sides of the same coin. If you don’t fix the money, you can’t fix the world. But if you don’t fix the politics, you still can’t fix the world.

2026-05-13 01:09:47 UTC

From The Guardian US: “World is approaching point where no one can shut down a rogue AI, says director of body behind research”
Feeling uncomfortable about this Doctor Who quote these days:
“Clara: Why would a computer need to protect itself from the people who made it?
The Doctor: All computers do that in the end. You wait ’til the internet starts. Oh, that was a war.”
One would hope we would find a way to be more responsible. (Or rather, build systems with better incentive structures to encourage and reward responsible behavior.) #AI
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/07/no-one-has-done-this-in-the-wild-study-observes-ai-replicate-itself

2026-04-08 20:05:01 UTC

There’s an underlying tension to just about every major political issue in America today. It’s marching in the protests. It’s in the memes and wry tweets. It’s in the posters. It’s implied in the appeals politicians, advocacy organizations, and even companies make. It’s asked for in press conferences, public statements, campaign advertisements, and every fundraising push.
Trust.
Americans have lost a great deal of trust in their institutions and government. In their political leadership and parties. In their economy and business leadership. In their society and in each other.
Trust is the most coveted, most scarce political asset in America. It cannot be spontaneously willed, argued, or reasoned back. No amount of institutional wording, grandstanding, prestige, or influence will bring it back.
It must be earned.
To recover it, we need to repair the systems that continually break trust. That is the first step towards renewing America. Almost nobody is engaging seriously on that task.
We have run out of short-term. The question is—who will be the first to take the long road towards rebuilding trust in America?

2026-04-08 13:52:24 UTC

It’s wild when you step back from everything going on and realize almost nobody has a plan for a future America that goes beyond 2028.

2026-04-07 21:53:12 UTC

Structural and systemic challenges don’t stay hypothetical emergencies forever.
Eventually, things break.
It’s easier to perform maintenance than repair work. But when your tools for fixing things are themselves broken, fixing your tools is the most important place to start.

2026-04-06 19:14:26 UTC

It’s possible to be incredibly critical—scathing even—of the institutions that be…
… and still recognize that they serve a purpose and can be used for the public good.
Too much of our political discourse is all or nothing, black and white. Reality is painted in shades of grey.

2026-04-02 13:25:56 UTC

Really seems private credit is starting to meltdown now, likely taking a good chunk of the AI industry and blue chip growth with it. Massive redemptions at Blue Owl and Treasury calling regulators in to talk about private credit risks.
Good time to recall that none of this need have happened—and we can fix it.
We need an institutional transition to sound money—and Bitcoin is the best sound money we have.
https://www.ft.com/content/09f4fa70-d3e6-4abc-bc95-234afe7111f4
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-02/blue-owl-bdcs-impose-caps-after-facing-41-22-requests-to-exit
https://blossom.primal.net/cec9ac78ca46eb63deb359c9e3bb57cea800ebcfca812eb1e06ec9566384ff5a.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/357b96fa0d214b2edc95bbe5d7ee6d1475f796c08340a1be02a1eee9c66248b6.jpg

2026-03-31 07:49:37 UTC

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Eh. Come argue with me. I could use the company lol
I’ll start: The institutions aren’t inherently bad. 👀

2026-03-31 00:40:38 UTC

Latest. I hope I’m wrong. What do you think?
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/ai-isnt-taking-your-job-the-crash-might
https://blossom.primal.net/83981eb7802763e99dc9c4f2e3200a39febb0b8afc61b8faa9b2810eb1f4ac2f.jpg

2026-03-28 05:08:33 UTC

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Eh. I was born just in time to come technologically “of age” for the staging. Little I can do. I can be on here and slowly move more off of it than into it, but… I’m trying to advocate for positive change—including Bitcoin. So. Ironically and paradoxically gotta be in nearly all the spaces anyway.
I feel you though. I remember when social media was social and memes and “reels” content were legit and just funny YouTube videos…

2026-03-28 05:00:34 UTC

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One of my favorites. Such genuine laughter 😆

2026-03-27 02:48:00 UTC

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In fairness, they’ve been taught to understand the economy and finance in fiat terms of trust.
Discovering sound money is like finding out you’ve been working on a virtual machine the entire time instead of the actual operating system.
The system and constraints aren’t wrong, they’re just not the ultimate system and constraints.
If I was more glib and flippant back before I understood Bitcoin, I could see myself saying something like that. (And I would have been wrong.)
Opinion incoming: We reach these people not by pointing to the ultimate answer, but by redefining the problem set for them. Let them ask the next questions. Curiosity wins every time.

2026-03-27 02:43:25 UTC

You can’t fix what you refuse to face.
Politically— we say we want solutions but our electoral systems reward avoidance.
Leaders don’t name tradeoffs and institutions don’t admit failure. Everything becomes messaging instead of decision-making.
And so nothing actually gets fixed.
Economically— we say we care about the future, but our economic systems keep borrowing from it.
Debt lets us delay hard choices and inflation hides the cost. Everything becomes delay instead of decision-making.
And so we keep struggling and kicking the can down the road.
Socially— we say we want a stronger country, but our social systems expect less of each other.
Responsibility gets outsourced and citizenship becomes licensed commentary. Everything becomes spectatorship instead of participation.
And so the civics that hold a society together weaken and become brittle.
We can turn all of this around. And it’s high time that we do.

2026-03-26 22:45:46 UTC

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What’s fake?

2026-03-26 21:03:20 UTC

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Great stream. Very thoughtful questions and reflections. (Also scandalous questioning of the Saylor Orange tie.) Good stuff.
#nevent1q…68th

2026-03-26 13:02:06 UTC

We need to do for electoral incentives and governance what Bitcoin as a sound money does for economic incentives and the economy.
Repair and renew them.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/honest-institutions-how-americas-institutions-lost-trust
https://blossom.primal.net/17a46360e832da7d28a28c811b9c089443926c82b51dcbc991b756e78b7043c8.jpg

2026-03-26 00:55:50 UTC

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One of my favorite book quotes, and I always told my writers/colleagues this: “‘Weird is good. Strange is bad.’ Be weird.”

2026-03-25 22:39:00 UTC

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Exactly! I have a supporting companion piece coming out in the not-too-distant future to “back” this one. For most folks—even and most especially the institutionally-minded crowds in D.C. who haven’t looked at monetary policy quite as closely—this is just about as big a bite as I expect them to be able to chew.
Even then, pretty big bite in terms of an article. Too much shorter and it feels hand-waving. Too much longer and it’s a mini-dissertation and history lesson.
I wanted to write a piece that clearly draws the links for people, explains it tightly, and makes the case that the shift from sound money to fiat creates and exacerbates these issues.

2026-03-25 15:57:17 UTC

I know I’m preaching to the choir here on Nostr, but perhaps someone finds this article and argument useful to explain to their non-orange-pilled friends:
What do the affordability crisis, the decline of American industry and manufacturing, the national debt crisis, wealth inequality, and the erosion of the middle class all have in common?
Well, money.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-part-1-why-america-economy-lost-anchor
https://blossom.primal.net/456a7d06c934b8836a17fcdfcaaf52c8c033290b9b7290712fd50a13886ef1f2.jpg

2026-03-24 13:49:04 UTC

We need to work towards honest institutions—not tear them down.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/honest-institutions-how-americas-institutions-lost-trust
https://blossom.primal.net/6963c5ef37ed2acdc1200a3f2068fe968d635c42e33d0f04c5824ff3a6f6e5d1.jpg

2026-03-22 14:52:55 UTC

Happy to report I am now zappable! Joining the Bitcoin community more fully.
Let’s bring Sound Money back, better.

2026-03-22 13:32:06 UTC

If your system will break without villains, it’s not about villains.
It’s about design.
Bitcoin offers better monetary design.
But we need better institutional design, too.
Let’s have an America of Honest Institutions.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/honest-institutions-how-americas-institutions-lost-trust
https://blossom.primal.net/ba2edbf40f08b50f738a5a3eee3419721a177e5548e6ca843a2a818b364c71a2.jpg

2026-03-19 02:59:46 UTC

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“To design a better future for ourselves, we must engineer an institutional return to sound money. Under a sound money architecture, costs become visible constraints again. Policymaking and politics must address real trade-offs with voters. Growth becomes sustainable again. Industry can become competitive again. Stewardship becomes more rewarding than capture and speculation. State capacity is bounded by economic reality.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-part-1-why-america-economy-lost-anchor
#nevent1q…pvs7

2026-03-18 23:03:35 UTC

My latest on Substack. Let me know what you think! As always, stay curious and stack sats.
“That is not good governance. We have created a system that preserves itself by steadily consuming the institutional trust and credibility on which it was built. That is institutional, economic, and societal erosion by design.
The most damning thing of all is that none of it needed a cartoon villain plot.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-part-1-why-america-economy-lost-anchor
https://blossom.primal.net/306d6d25f394c3c2a5d2a0d85d5b3f2bf3586c56275aa76c51bd116c59067ecb.jpg

2026-03-07 05:11:30 UTC

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On point. I’d add—it didn’t even need to be malicious to happen this way. It’s bad design. It’s crisis management layered on crisis management layered on crisis management that got us into this problem.
Burning it all down may seem tempting, but it’s designing something better that will fix it. Bitcoin does the something better at the level of money.
Next we need better institutional design so that our intentions for the world we want to create align with the incentives of the world we choose to build and the principles behind how we choose to live.
So yes, go buy the good sound money. Then let’s build some honest institutions and share responsibility for them and the world we create together.
#nevent1q…h7ql

2026-03-06 20:16:02 UTC

My latest. Faith in democracy and trust in America’s institutions are collapsing not because democracy is failing or because institutions lie—but because our incentives reward fear, performance, and fundraising over truth and accountability.
“The answer cannot be to insist that this system works, to demand moral heroism, or to insist that the institutions are sacrosanct any more than it can be to insist that tearing the system down will give us better results.
We must redesign the system so that it works the way we intended it to.“
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/honest-institutions-how-americas-institutions-lost-trust

2026-03-03 01:06:10 UTC

Come be curious with me.
More on its way, tomorrow.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/the-fifty-eight-pages-i-didnt-publish-honesty-humility-conviction-clarity
https://blossom.primal.net/2506ad344957ea88894732f3368347f2f09de26f8e2f607c17344c1bd7c8ff36.jpg

2026-03-02 19:02:35 UTC

We are in an era of democratic rebirth—if we can keep it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/hyperdimensional/p/clawed
https://blossom.primal.net/d48dd4f8bd6b3c007073d3beb76596619ac52a2bd369a5413ad08e247f5fd1e2.jpg

2026-03-02 06:28:54 UTC

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Come prove me wrong, please.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/the-fifty-eight-pages-i-didnt-publish-honesty-humility-conviction-clarity
https://blossom.primal.net/a7da2c6cc57bf5204a371e3e6aacf8667d25d5c103aa70d83bf7f9ff96db734e.jpg
#nevent1q…0u6n

2026-03-02 06:26:03 UTC

Last week, before the weekend, I slept maybe 35 hours. I wrote fifty-eight pages about the crises facing America—in our democracy, our economy, and our society & civics. I didn’t publish them. Not yet. Here’s why.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/the-fifty-eight-pages-i-didnt-publish-honesty-humility-conviction-clarity

2026-02-26 21:28:27 UTC

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Since at least June 2025*

2026-02-26 21:27:56 UTC

AI industry looks to me like it’s heavily over-leveraged and about to crash out in a big way. We’ve seen since at least:
- OpenAI invested heavily nvidia, which is invested in OpenAI
- Sam Altman float being “too big to fail” and being rebuffed on “this echoes too much like 2008
- Numerous AI-led corporate and even government embarrassments and task failures, if you will
- Studies like those the AI Now Institute has conducted that credibly question whether AI usage has meaningfully increased labor productivity
- About a gazillion fearmongering takes that ‘AI is replacing white collar jobs, probably tomorrow’
- And now, this.
https://blossom.primal.net/e14958adbf78af6eac1ff73189eab1a5aea2e2e9d99a3ee92cc239ff50595af4.jpg

2026-02-26 20:13:38 UTC

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Can I have a checkmark to put by my name on all the things if I let you track me? 😜

2026-02-26 17:29:50 UTC

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Ahem. “What he said.” See? Good actor.

2026-02-26 00:56:00 UTC

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I’m gonna start calling this ‘marble-pilling.’ Honest institutions matter just as much as sound money.
#nevent1q…250u

2026-02-24 23:05:59 UTC

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*And yes, this is not a U.S.-only problem. It happens in plenty of other democracies, too.

2026-02-24 23:04:17 UTC

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I think what you’re describing—the terror and ridiculousness of being forced to choose between two coercive systems—is real and damning, but not for the reason you imply. “Choice” without legitimate alternatives can feel like (and in the moment, perhaps might as well be) an illusion.
That said, your deeper point, I think, actually maps to structural problems in many modern democracies. When the incentive structures that ultimately drive institutions and institutional behavior collapse into false binaries and political partisanship, voters are often choosing between packages they don’t actually endorse. The system *as it exists today* only allows two viable bundles at a time in the United States. Voters are voting against what they most fear, not for what they actually want. But that’s not the only way to ‘do democracy.’
In that sense, the poison isn’t left or right, but poor institutional design (and here, especially, electoral design). Winner-take-all systems especially tend to turn complex multivariate disagreement into an often binary, forced-choice referendum, reward extremity, and convert politics and policymaking into semi-permanent ‘governance by emergency / fiat.’
I’d posit that the answer isn’t “reject the system,” but to “fix the system.” It’s to redesign the rules so choice is real and meaningful again. Proportional representation where legislatures reflect the public, majority-acceptable executives rather than factional winners, and fiscal/monetary constraints that make tradeoffs visible so politics can’t run on pure symbolism. The goal is not to have perfect options. It’s to have real, fair, honest, representation and legitimate options, so people aren’t asked to pick a tribe, but to select representatives who can build durable coalitions around specific problems.
In short—I don’t think this is so much a referendum on whether liberal democracy works, but how ours works now. If we fix the rules, we can keep our promises—to ourselves, to each other, and to future generations.
/rant over

2026-02-24 06:53:05 UTC

Sound money is institutional honesty. It is also inherently part of America’s democratic republican tradition.
- It requires the state to hold itself to account (literally) and keep its word in real time rather than defer its costs indefinitely into the future.
- It aligns public spending with visible trade-offs instead of obfuscating the part of the true cost in inflation; it tells the story of what things actually cost.
- It protects the value of work, savings, and contracts from quiet dilution; it’s how we keep our promises about tomorrow to ourselves and our fellow citizens.
Sound money is part of institutional truth-telling and accountability. Put simply, when money tells the truth, governance must as well.
Stay curious and stack sats, y’all.

2026-02-19 17:08:23 UTC

Reshared here—
So much to like in terms of questioning, line of argumentation, and ideas being posed here from John Avlon and the usual suspects at The Fifth Column.
https://substack.com/@wethefifth/note/p-186911701
A few key things really stood out to me and got me excited:
- There is a genuine opportunity here to distance from the illiberal extremes in favor of a common-sense politics that’s not “centrist” for centrism’s sake or “split the difference,” but by addressing the institutional and incentive structures that are repeatedly delivering poor results;
- Voting systems are one part of this problem, because they force us to the extremes and push out representation for many Americans (just look at the latest Gallup poll from January showing only 27% of Americans identify as Republican, 27% as Democrats, and 45% as independents);
- Overspending is the other half of this problem—constant fiscal deficits that blind the real trade-offs and incentives structures to governance driven by (in many cases well-intentioned, many not) instincts to solve everything through the state from both parties (implicitly through fiat currency debt financing);
- A through-line I don’t think got as much play and I don’t recall explicitly stated: the crisis is about trust, legitimacy, legibility, and incentive misalignment.
Definitely worth a listen. Got my attention immediately. This is more of the conversation I think we need to be having.

2026-02-18 16:57:26 UTC

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This is excellent—I’d agree. It’s also for this reason that I’d argue not only is this an economic issue, but a political one. Sound money adoption is necessary to restore that anchor, but that’s just one part of liberal democracy’s ‘ship of state,’ to torture a metaphor.
The structural incentives of governance—most especially those in voting systems for a democracy, as they either incentivize or constrain politicians’ freedom to argue the ideas and policies rather than along donor or partisan lines—also need re-stabilization. Here, the ‘truth-telling currency’ is votes, and the method of transfer is less continuous and necessarily more fixed. (The ‘compass, if you will.’) Unless votes can be aligned with genuine preferences (at least, way better than they can be now) and enable politicians to represent constituencies better, liberal democracy becomes unstable. Again—it’s not so much that vote counts lie, but that they are incapable of telling the truth.
Of course, ships still need to go somewhere—and that is the art of statecraft. Piloting a lopsided ship without a working compass and no stabilizing weights makes for quite a challenge. You have the expertise and ability to see far into the future (your eyeglass), but no clue where that leads and a less than stable ship to get you there. It’s unsurprising, then, that we repeatedly end up somewhere other than we intended to go—even with the best of intentions.
(Definitely used the metaphor too long; I hope you take my meaning.)

2026-02-18 16:33:14 UTC

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Love this line of thinking.
#nevent1q…ql8f

2026-02-18 16:32:52 UTC

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Yep—because Bitcoin is a sound money. Very well put. From a societal and governmental point of view—sound money enables truth-telling across time. Without it (and especially under fiat currency conditions) the information is time-delayed and signal source is confused.
In some sense, none of us are “educated buyers” or “educated voters” because the price signals, political costs, and economic costs are all mixed up, misattributed, and deferred into the future. It’s not that the system isn’t lying, per se—it’s that it’s incapable of accurately telling the whole truth.

2026-02-18 05:08:07 UTC

I’m just getting to the part of fiat currency secondary effects in @npub1t62…aj6w's Broken Money book where we’re talking about the politics of fiat currency. So pleased to find I’m in good company with what I’ve been hammering home (to anybody who’ll listen—sorry @nprofile…8ws8) about democratic decision-making and fiat currency. Here’s a great excerpt, and one I urge pro-democracy reform folks to take heed of:
“The goal for this whole process is for the money supply to grow at a smooth and moderate pace, without big contractions or big accelerations that destructively feed on themselves. The peaks and troughs of the private sector are dulled, and external shocks are smoothed over—or at least, that’s the plan.
This theory works well on paper, assuming that government and central bank officials are more detached, intelligent, and/or long-term in their thinking than people in the private sector in aggregate, or at least that their incentives are more aligned with long-term planning. A problem obviously arises if they are not, and realistically, that’s usually the case. Authoritarian governments often have a clear lack of incentive alignment with their subjects. Democratically elected officials, meanwhile, are focused on winning the next election. None of these lawmakers have an incentive to run a surplus now and slow down the economy to create a reserve of capital from which they could backstop a weak economy later. And if they were to try, they’d likely get voted out of office because people in aggregate always want less taxes and more services in the present.”
What’s clear here is that, beyond the question of being able to manage fiat currency and Keynesian economics well, incentive structures in democracies—in large part by the *way* that elections are held—lead to short-termism in planning as much as the externalities of fiat currency systems themselves do.
In other words, the incentive structures of our voting systems (I’m talking first past the post, mostly here) discourage long-term planning by electoral logic by pushing long-term interest past the electoral cycle. (And it doesn’t have to be that way—and can be far better—under better and more representative voting systems.)
Fiat currencies further enable economic, and therefore political costs to be offset from present decision-making to the future, which also obscures accountability. “Is this inflation or slump all, partly, or none of the fault of X Fed/Presidential/Congressional policy?” And even then, most voters won’t (and I’d argue, fairly can’t be reliably expected) to connect all the dots there.
The two reinforce each other. In my mind, the sound money movement is therefore just one half of the solution to perhaps the biggest challenge for free societies and liberal democracies in the 21st century. Institutional reform and renewal is the other. Neither fixes the entire equation alone—both are necessary.
What do you think?
Stay curious and stack sats.

2026-02-17 16:00:55 UTC

So many parallels to what I’m analyzing these days, and such a clear-eyed assessment. “It is a story about institutional design and the incentives it creates.” Singing my song!
Great article and thoughtful analysis. Worth your time to read.
https://open.substack.com/pub/liyapalagashvili/p/ups-is-the-symptom-not-the-disease
https://blossom.primal.net/118859350502c6fbce8dab98041f653626a158178b775e193d0f06ca9eff421c.jpg