Nostr notes by NSmolenskiFan

The rise of LLMs in education has made more apparent who is using ...

2025-05-13T05:25:27Z

The rise of LLMs in education has made more apparent who is using the new technology as a prosthesis—to enhance their ability to learn—and who is using it to outsource responsibility for their own minds.

This outsourcing of responsibility is nothing new. People have been doing it since time immemorial: letting authorities, crowds, and received wisdom think for them. Technology only accelerates that. Technology shows us our character—and if we don’t like it, it gives us the opportunity to become better people.

There will always be alpha in thinking for yourself and being your own person. But it’s a much harder road than “going with the flow” and contenting oneself with the illusions of intelligence, virtue, insight, agency, and independence.

People who insist on learning and becoming in good faith will make mistakes; they will fail; they will look dumb; they will disagree with their past selves; they will repent; they will be humbled; they will forego opportunities for easy power and pleasure that others take advantage of.

But they will live truthfully, and it is the truth of their lives that will inevitably transform them—and, over time, the world.

Nostr event nevent1qqsy3fe7r8m5sjh03pnku29uqmh0msymexktp0x74hm7jqd3n9mas7czyqqqqqqqetq0sxdlrg9xpjy3a6ce8yhe37vafqysknl2pjj38n5tupl9ngx

2025-04-29T13:13:29Z

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/featured/an-introduction-to-the-satoshi-papers

Nostr event nevent1qqs02u7e33ntec2zpfwg3rzr9a6gynqq30nlhx9aphfslqlgjzuhlqszyqqqqqqqetq0sxdlrg9xpjy3a6ce8yhe37vafqysknl2pjj38n5tuan9wqx

2025-04-24T14:04:19Z

Uncertainty increases transaction costs.

Graeber’s theory of money in “Debt” is basically MMT. He ...

2025-04-07T16:19:36Z

Graeber’s theory of money in “Debt” is basically MMT.

He doesn’t come out and say it—academics sometimes like to hide their views for various reasons—but that’s what it is.

For a thorough takedown, check out “Toward an Anthropological Theory of Money” in The Satoshi Papers.

Graeber is a fascinating storyteller, but a poor theorist of money.

Order The Satoshi Papers here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F1FNGYD9?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_cp_apin_dp_PFNS3RGN8BBEVNCT190P&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_cp_apin_dp_PFNS3RGN8BBEVNCT190P&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_cp_apin_dp_PFNS3RGN8BBEVNCT190P&bestFormat=true&dplnkId=d05a9d4d-fc12-47ee-9975-30e00958d790

Nostr event nevent1qqstjtyspxhnau7gs8g6zs9crkdlve4nrzec4swf8qchjy79keewywgzyqqqqqqqetq0sxdlrg9xpjy3a6ce8yhe37vafqysknl2pjj38n5tuzc3zz6

2025-04-03T17:27:59Z

Do you think they know what the Triffin Dilemma is?

It’s wild to me that @LinkedIn still hasn’t implemented ...

2025-03-27T17:52:34Z

It’s wild to me that @LinkedIn still hasn’t implemented @Blockcerts.

Few know this, but every @MIT graduate gets a digital diploma anchored to #Bitcoin using the @Blockcerts open standard.

It’s the easiest way to verify claims on the internet.

https://registrar.mit.edu/transcripts-records/diplomas/digital-diplomas

The paper “Toward an Anthropological Theory of Money” ...

2025-03-17T07:03:15Z

The paper “Toward an Anthropological Theory of Money” contains a detailed response to #Graeber’s theory of money.

In a nutshell, my argument is that debt is a moral sentiment that precedes both law and money. In that sense, it is a social universal. However, methods of *reckoning debt* via units of account (which measure *price*, not “value”, as Graeber claims) had to await the invention of money, which emerged bottom-up as media of exchange in standardized commodity forms (what anthropologists have called “repeatable objects”). The state only got in the business of issuing (and in some cases monopolizing) money many millennia after this process had already been underway in human societies around the world.

Graeber, although sometimes identified as an anarchist, subscribed to the state theory of money as articulated by Alfred Knapp and in its current interpretation by the MMT school. His “anarchism” emerges in the implicit utopian political project he calls for in “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”: abolition of both money and state.

Peace emerges bottom-up. This is why when the state is intent on ...

2025-03-13T07:13:16Z

Peace emerges bottom-up.

This is why when the state is intent on war, it divides people and makes peaceful civic associations between them harder: harder to go to the same schools, to live in the same neighborhoods, to marry, to have children, to transact, to worship together.

If people aren’t talking, trading, and making babies, war is often on the horizon.

Wisdom involves making accurate and precise distinctions. An ...

2025-03-13T07:03:05Z

Wisdom involves making accurate and precise distinctions.

An enemy and an “existential threat” are not the same thing.

Danger and “existential threats” are not the same thing.

Anyone claiming there is an “existential threat” has a very high burden of proof.

Military conflict brings one of two outcomes: victory or defeat. ...

2025-03-13T07:01:39Z

Military conflict brings one of two outcomes: victory or defeat.

Neither of these are the same thing as peace, security, or prosperity.

The conditions of peace, security, and prosperity are created by the enduring character of a society. It’s shared *wisdom* in both thought and action.

“Tyrannus impius non habet spem
Et si quidem longae vitae erit
In nihilum computabitur.”

- The Book of Wisdom

We are being led by people trying to convince us to see the world ...

2025-03-13T06:40:38Z

We are being led by people trying to convince us to see the world in terms of enemies. This “politics of the enemy” leads to vast self-destruction and destruction of others. It routinizes hate. It makes us worse people.

The only way to counter a politics of hate is with a politics of love.

That does not require pretending that enemies don’t exist.

It requires meeting everyone—friends, strangers, and enemies—with love.

That’s the only way to actually win.

We win not when the enemy is destroyed but when calling them an enemy no longer makes any sense.

With government funding comes surveillance. The more programs the ...

2025-02-10T15:48:33Z

With government funding comes surveillance.

The more programs the government funds, the more everything is AML/KYC'ed, tracked, and controlled.

The problem is not so much that new technology is being used on ...

2025-02-06T07:09:50Z

The problem is not so much that new technology is being used on the battlefield, but that there are no longer any laws or norms of war, and the battlefield is everywhere.

Promo pricing for The Satoshi Papers ENDS Feb 1st! Library ...

2025-01-30T10:31:35Z

Promo pricing for The Satoshi Papers ENDS Feb 1st!

Library Edition: $174.95 → $199.95
Paperback: $33.95 → $39.95

Pre-order here

https://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/pages/the-satoshi-papers

The redistribution Altman has in mind would certainly not enable ...

2025-01-28T08:39:29Z

The redistribution Altman has in mind would certainly not enable the kind of rising standard of living enjoyed by a productive workforce—wealth would be “growing,” but only for the very few. Rather, it would bring about a neo-feudalism, or the transformation of the majority of human habitable spaces into permanent, fully-surveilled refugee camps.

Fortunately for humanity, I don’t think Altman’s vision for the future will come to pass. The advancement of technology does not hamper the ability of human beings to innovate. People will always invent new and productive things to do as technology advances. The fact that we can’t imagine the jobs our great grandchildren will have does not mean that those jobs won’t exist.

Follow-up: Those making predictions about AI “transforming ...

2025-01-27T06:53:06Z

Follow-up: Those making predictions about AI “transforming society” need to make their claims a lot more precise. Every new technology “transforms society.” What exactly are you claiming is being or will be transformed in this case, and by what mechanism? Most of what passes as “commentary” on this topic is just wild speculation.

People invoking political solutions to problems have an especially high burden of proof to clear. You have to convince the American people that 1) there is a problem that 2) legislation, or another use of state power, can Constitutionally solve 3) in a way that preserves the values of liberty and opportunity that are central to the character of this Republic.

The fact that something is new and makes people uneasy is not, in itself, a justification for any action whatsoever, especially not by the state.

Anthropologist here: Sam’s claim that “the whole structure of ...

2025-01-27T06:52:32Z

Anthropologist here:

Sam’s claim that “the whole structure of society will be up for debate and reconfiguration” because of AI is meaningless. It literally means nothing.

It *is*, however, part of Sam’s pattern of existentialist scaremongering. Scaremongering to which the solution always seems to be to give Sam more power.

Sam’s suggestion that “the whole social contract” is up for grabs is a *political* claim. The social contract that underpins the political institutions of the United States is crystallized in the U.S. Constitution.

Sam is implying that AI will soon be so powerful that this Constitutional political order will no longer hold. He can then position himself as a savior—as an author of the new, “post-AI” social contract. Which, like all the other contracts he negotiates, are structured principally to benefit Sam Altman. And these contracts tend to change whenever Sam decides they should.

While AI is certainly advancing at a rapid clip, it is human beings who continue to be in charge—and responsible for—our social and political destinies. We can absolutely choose to uphold the Constitutional social contract that the American Founders put in place. I would strongly suggest we do.

Of course, as a free people, we can also choose to alter that contract. But if we do, it should be for *positive* reasons, not reasons driven by weakness and fear.

Anyone selling you fear is selling you control. Don’t buy it.

Fascinating piece on the anthropology and economics of prison ...

2025-01-15T09:45:16Z

Fascinating piece on the anthropology and economics of prison gangs. ⬇️

Gangs, like clans, are a form of governance that arises organically when populations reach a certain *scale.* Exploding prison populations in certain U.S. states (Texas, California, New York, Chicago) mean that prison officials can’t effectively govern them all. Gangs step in to fill the void.

Political economist David Skarbek: “So each of these is consistent with a causal claim that big, diverse communities that can’t rely on official governance tend to form gangs. If you look at clan-based societies, they’re socially organized in a very similar way. And I hadn’t discovered this clan literature until I finished writing my book. But clans form when there are not strong and effective state based institutions, and when groups are large enough that they can’t rely on these informal mechanisms. So there’s a similar phenomena arising in certain times and places like we might expect.”

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/why-we-have-prison-gangs

I wrote about the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement that ...

2025-01-14T06:39:20Z

I wrote about the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement that toppled communism in Poland, and its similarity to the #Bitcoin movement today.

I spotlight the song "Noah's Ark" (with a full English translation!) by "bards of the resistance" Jacek Kaczmarski, Przemysław Gintrowski, and Zbigniew Łapiński.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/arka-noego-noahs-ark-on-solidarity-and-bitcoin

In his response to Marc Andreessen, Yuval Levin of the @AEI and ...

2025-01-11T09:24:43Z

In his response to Marc Andreessen, Yuval Levin of the @AEI and @tnajournal points out that what humanity needs to become the builders Andreessen calls for is a "fuller anthropology":

"an understanding of the nature of the human person and the character of human flourishing that could help [the builder] see that what we most need to build are families and communities, and that technological progress ultimately cannot be sustained without the kind of cultural confidence that makes itself evident first and foremost in a commitment to the next generation."

Levin repeats throughout his essay that many Americans today don't know how to be good ancestors: how to build for future generations who will enjoy the world after them. He calls this blindness characteristic of all "decadent" societies--and I think this is an astute observation.

There is an important extension of this thought: those who don't know how to be ancestors also often don't know how to be inheritors. I have witnessed this in many American universities: confusion over canon, a desire to reject or cancel thinkers who were instrumental in building the institutions we now inhabit, a desire to change things that have been working well just to put one's own "individual mark" on the institution. There is a kind of graceless lack of charity toward past generations which mirrors the difficulty of caring about future generations. The general result is that students suffer. They are not only robbed of their own inheritance, but they learn socially destructive attitudes, which they often go on to mimic later in life.

Kinship is one of the oldest concepts in anthropology--and one of the oldest social technologies on Earth. The anthropological discipline was born, during the 19th century, largely through the comparative studies of kinship around the world.

Kinship is the most fundamental way that human beings imagine their world and their place in it. Every human infant comes to know itself first in relation to its mother or father--the primary caregiver who is most closely in sync with the provision of its basic survival needs. As the child grows, it builds out its model of the world first in terms of kin, and that becomes a kind of "scaffolding" for everything else.

A crisis of kinship--defined in terms of Levin's essay as the incapacity to be good inheritors and good ancestors--is a crisis of humanity. Here it is important to remove some of the value judgments that often accompany crises. A structural crisis is no particular individual's "fault," although a cascade of irresponsibility is often both a cause and a result of human-generated crises. Rather, crisis points to the fact that something that was previously working (or seemed to work) no longer does. We must ask what about the previous arrangement was unsustainable and adapt our institutions for the future--in light of *who we want to be, as individuals and as a people.*

This means that learning to be good ancestors and good inheritors requires something of us beyond simply "returning" to past models of kinship that may have worked, provisionally, for other human societies. As L. P. Hartley said, "The past is a foreign country." The answer to any society's ills cannot simply be importing the cultural practices and values of another--including those of its own society in the past. Such importation simply cannot be done, because the past no longer exists.

Rather, we must be in integrity with who we are today--and that means admitting and accepting the particular challenges that afflict us as well as the particular opportunities we have that are ours to seize. Levin quotes Ecclesiastes:

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what was planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. (Ecclesiastes 3:1–3)"

Becoming a good inheritor and a good ancestor thus requires, first and foremost, recognizing what is *ours*--who and where *we* are in relation to our past and future kin.

The questions we must ask mirror this ancient text:

What is *our* season?
What is *our* purpose?
What is *our* time to live, and *our* time to die?
What shall *we* plant, and what shall *we* harvest?
What shall *we* kill, and what shall *we* heal?
What shall *we* tear down, and what shall *we* build?

Every individual person must answer these questions for his or her own life. And every community--that collective of shared will and action--gets to answer them for itself as well

Do you know a college-aged young person interested in #Bitcoin? ...

2025-01-09T18:53:10Z

Do you know a college-aged young person interested in #Bitcoin?

Consider sharing this exciting initiative with them!
--------------------

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That’s why we started “Layer Zero.” This summer, step out of the classroom and into the world. Immerse yourself in communities worldwide, where you’ll build real-world solutions & champion innovation.

Satoshi said "Bitcoin" twice in the white paper. "Network"? Twenty-one times. Progress happens when people come together and Layer 0 is the heartbeat and foundation of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

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The reason studying the “history of economic thought” matters ...

2025-01-08T15:56:48Z

The reason studying the “history of economic thought” matters from a scientific (rather than merely historical) standpoint is to understand how key concepts and theories in the field of economics are justified.

For example, an economist should be able to take to root an account of why profit-and-loss accounting is a key component of a “free” market economy.

This does not mean studying old texts for their own sake. Any science that is truly a science advances, and practitioners should not need to reconstruct the entire history of the field to practice their science. You don’t need to read Leibniz to understand and use calculus, for example.

But economics, like all the social sciences, must have a keen grasp of the objects within its domain. The objects of mathematics are often quite clear; the objects of economics less so. Thus, at this stage in the development of the field, they need to be justified—that is, described in a way that can be objectively verified.

Nostr event nevent1qqs90vtkjc3y5nxytm2fqnsp4d8trsf0dcxhg5zwud4r5mmg0cy7s3czyqqqqqqqetq0sxdlrg9xpjy3a6ce8yhe37vafqysknl2pjj38n5tuc5m4du

2024-12-17T17:53:36Z

The antidote to control is responsibility.

Grimes asks a good question: "Who is a philosopher?" ...

2024-12-17T17:53:07Z

Grimes asks a good question: "Who is a philosopher?" Before we can answer it, we must first answer, "What is philosophy?"

The truth is there is no consensus on this--although there are ways to approach such a consensus. Etymologically, the word philosophy means "a love of wisdom," but then what is wisdom? Is wisdom different from, say, science? Is philosophy, then, something different from science, or is it itself a scientific practice?

Every state (that is, centralization of power) either starts as ...

2024-12-08T17:59:22Z

Every state (that is, centralization of power) either starts as or trends toward dictatorship. No exceptions.

Political theory must begin here.

“Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks” - 2024 ...

2024-11-30T13:00:49Z

“Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks” - 2024 Edition

(From the @dailytelegraph)

#SovereignDebtMatters

The Texas Bitcoin Foundation is excited to share a chapter of The ...

2024-11-28T07:16:20Z

The Texas Bitcoin Foundation is excited to share a chapter of The Satoshi Papers just in time for the Thanksgiving Holiday—“Then They Fight You,” by @Avik Roy.

Avik explains why #Bitcoin adoption is in the interests of both the American people and the US government.

Clear, well-researched, and concise, this analysis will be accessible both to families and policymakers across the country.

Pre-order your copy of The Satoshi Papers at a Black Friday discount, below! ⬇️ #Bookster

https://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/pages/the-satoshi-papers

No, going along with the narrative that AI companies care about ...

2024-11-28T07:14:40Z

No, going along with the narrative that AI companies care about “safety” has nothing to do with gullible, childlike “neurodivergence” and everything to do with the ability to think and be honest with oneself.

Think: What are this company’s incentives? What do its actions over time show that it is consistently solving for?

Think: Has anyone at this company actually defined “safety?” Technically? Legally? Interpersonally?

Think: What are my incentives? What do I *really* want? What am I personally solving for that this job is attractive to me?

Just asking those questions should be enough to disabuse anyone of the convenient stories that 1) the companies they work for prioritize “AI safety” (whatever that is) and 2) their own illusions that they are “pure” moral actors navigating a fallen world. Both the companies and their employees are making rational decisions based on their own values and priorities.

We need to stop giving people outs for their own moral responsibility—whether that is due to neurodivergence, mental illness, or anything else. These are full-grown adults making real decisions that affect their own lives and the lives of others.

Choosing to work for a company building AI tools is neither essentially good nor bad. Just be honest about what the company is doing and the ways you have chosen to participate—or not.

The Tornado Cash ruling is undoubtedly good news. However, the ...

2024-11-27T11:38:23Z

The Tornado Cash ruling is undoubtedly good news. However, the court also spells out clearly the path that the U.S. Congress could take to make mixers illegal: amending the IEEPA.

As the “Introduction” to The Satoshi Papers shows, the IEEPA (International Emergency Economic Powers Act) and the NEA (National Emergencies Act) were both passed in the 1970’s to enable the U.S. President to bypass Congress and directly govern by Executive Order—so long as he claims it is a “state of national emergency.”

“Governance by national emergency” has become a primary way that unaccountable executive power has been used since the Carter Administration—particularly through the unilateral imposition of economic sanctions by U.S. presidents. All presidents of all parties have used this power, and they do so with increasing frequency. The NEA and the IEEPA are the legislative authority that U.S. presidents rely on to function as dictators, exerting personal economic control over anyone, anywhere in the world through their enforcement arm: the U.S. Treasury Department.

These laws must be abolished if we are to once again become a free society. That is the truth.

We talk a lot about the Federal Government’s sovereign ...

2024-11-21T16:25:39Z

We talk a lot about the Federal Government’s sovereign privilege to print money to pay off debt. (For this reason, many believe government debt doesn’t matter.)

State and local governments do not have this privilege.

Government dysfunction is often easier to see at the state and local levels for this reason.

At the end of the day, collateral—things of actual value—backstops the whole debt system. The productivity of citizens is the ultimate collateral.

So grateful to the brilliant @LynAldenContact for this vote of ...

2024-11-20T18:09:02Z

So grateful to the brilliant @LynAldenContact for this vote of confidence in The Satoshi Papers. 🙏♥️💪

This means so much to me and to all of the authors of The Satoshi Papers.

"The Satoshi Papers" is now available for pre-order! ...

2024-11-19T14:12:27Z

"The Satoshi Papers" is now available for pre-order! 🥳🚀🎄 LINK BELOW ⬇️

The @TXBitcoinFound's first book features ten essays by some of the world's leading #Bitcoin scholars examining what happens when a key function of the state--the issuance of money--is automated by a stateless, global protocol.

As an artifact, "The Satoshi Papers" is also a rare feat in the publishing world today: a limited-edition, hardbound Library Edition with gilded pages. We went out of our way to produce an object of the highest quality that Bitcoiners can be proud of: scarce, valuable, and made with ideas and materials that stand the test of time.

The Library Edition is designed to be a precious gift and lifelong keepsake. Only a few will ever be printed. These books are destined to circulate as collectible objects, monuments to our current era in the history of Bitcoin adoption.

The Foundation also recognized that the Library Edition may not be accessible for everyone, so we made a paperback edition that all can enjoy. Whether you order the Library Edition or the paperback, you are supporting the Foundation's work as a volunteer-led, educational charity.

The launch dates for both the Library Edition and the paperback are still being finalized, but both editions will start shipping in early 2025. I will share with you the official publication dates as soon as they become available.

Please also stay tuned for news of the Satoshi Papers Book Launch Event, which is being planned in Austin, TX in 2025. We look forward to welcoming you and celebrating this achievement together.

Together in truth and self-sovereignty! 🫶✊

https://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/pages/the-satoshi-papers?_pos=3&_sid=aa9a82d9b&_ss=r

A Nation of Individuals? ...

2024-11-15T12:17:14Z

A Nation of Individuals?
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/a-nation-of-individuals-

Join me, @RebelEconProf, and @Avik Roy (founder of @FREOPP) at ...

2024-11-14T14:56:44Z

Join me, @RebelEconProf, and @Avik Roy (founder of @FREOPP) at the @NABSummit on November 20 in Dallas, TX!

Our panel discussion, "US Global Leadership: #Bitcoin & the Dollar," will cover how the US Treasury became the world's global reserve asset and the relationship between that reality and our fiscal future. We will also examine three model scenarios for Bitcoin adoption in the United States.

northamericanblockchainsummit.com

Perhaps it’s time we just started calling Neocons ...

2024-11-12T18:33:39Z

Perhaps it’s time we just started calling Neocons “imperialists.”

There is nothing “neo” about their worldview. The urge to conquer and subjugate others is as old as humanity itself.

I would love to see honor become a cultural value in America ...

2024-11-07T14:08:23Z

I would love to see honor become a cultural value in America again.

- Keeping our word to our friends, to strangers, and to our enemies.

- Speaking and acting in good faith.

- Having a consistent moral compass that guides us in both good and bad times.

- Changing our minds when presented with better evidence or arguments.

- Being able to have hard conversations without melting down, blaming, shaming, or retaliating.

- Standing in solidarity with people who are different from us without needing to valorize or demonize any part of that coalition.

Honor enables us to keep and nurture relationships over time. A world without honor is a bleak hellscape of shallow, transactional relationships and betrayal. You can’t build anything without honor; not friendships, not families, not companies, not countries, and certainly not a civilization.

No matter what we do, if we do it with honor, we have hope that any mistakes we make, errors of judgment, or misunderstandings can be corrected over time. And we have hope that other honorable people will continue to stand with us.

Honorable people hold up the world.

It starts with us. We can do this. 💪

These “precarious elites” do see their exploitation as a ...

2024-11-07T14:07:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…sy22
_________________________

These “precarious elites” do see their exploitation as a structural problem, but they blame “capitalism” instead of the brute fact of supply and demand: there are just too many of them competing for the same few prestige jobs. While the American worker imagines a path to better pay and working conditions through organizing, the precarious elite sees no such path—because for them *status* is just as, if not more, important than pay and benefits, and that is something much harder to negotiate. Elites insist that *they should be able to do exactly the (prestigious) jobs that they want to do.* They are also educated enough to have read the socialist and communist literatures. That combination leads to the fantasy that the government could force their employers not only to pay them more and treat them with dignity—which in some cases it could, certainly—but also to guarantee these conditions *in prestige jobs* for everyone who wants them.

There likely is a legitimate case to be made that some of these prestige employers are violating labor laws and should be held accountable. In other cases, there are certainly opportunities to pass new laws prohibiting what amounts to indentured servitude. But actually enforcing these laws will only reveal what is already plain as day: that there are far fewer prestige jobs than there are elites who want them.

The double bind for elites is that the prospect of taking a “lower status” job—even one that pays a lot more, where workers are treated significantly better—is even worse than being a de facto slave with a prestigious role. This leads precarious elites to demand a magical solution: the state. The state must not only protect workers, but guarantee certain kinds of jobs at certain levels of pay and benefits for anyone who wants them. Needless to say, this demand can never be fulfilled, and the cycle of partisanship is then retrenched: precarious elites blame American workers for having the gall to vote and organize based on self-interest, rather than to crusade for an idyllic state of affairs that will not come.

The shift of the American working class from the Democratic to ...

2024-11-07T14:06:56Z

The shift of the American working class from the Democratic to the Republican Party in this last election, and the outrage it has generated among many leftist American academics, has led me to reflect on why so many academics become strong socialists or even communists, while the vast majority of the American “working class” do not.

They would likely call it “false consciousness” on the part of the American worker. By I see it as false consciousness among elites: they *do not recognize that they are elites,* and that their social status motivates them differently from how the typical American worker is motivated. In short, there is a difference between economic *class* (being a “worker”) and social *status* (being an “elite”). In this I am convinced that Peter Turchin’s structural-demographic theory continues to have explanatory power. (I won’t go into that here, but do check out his work.)

Socialism and even communism carry strong appeal for a specific kind of highly educated, young elite today: the kind that needs to work for a living, but still sees itself as elite. These are not “white collar workers;” they are “precarious elites.” They are subject to a dynamic that few want to talk about:

Some of the worst labor exploitation in this country occurs in so-called “prestige industries.” These include education (higher and lower), entertainment, journalism, publishing, art, philanthropy—even, on the higher-paid end, investment banking and other financial services.

You want to help a celebrity launch a new brand or product? Prepare to make $35,000 a year and work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, doing countless frenzied tasks that have nothing to do with your job description.

You want to teach philosophy at a University? Get ready to make $17,500 a year, if you’re lucky. If you’re an international graduate student, your visa to stay in the U.S. is also completely contingent on your advisor’s approval; as a result, abuse is rampant.

You want to write for The Atlantic or The New Yorker? You can maybe get a few hundred bucks per article as a freelancer; $60K per year as a staff writer, if you’re lucky.

You want to become a powerful banker? You may start at $150K per year right out of college, but you will work 80-120 hours a week at the expense of everything else in your life, no telling how long—certainly for years. Your mental and even physical health are the price you pay for this “opportunity.”

These are the jobs that children of elites want. They want these jobs so much that they are willing to subject themselves to highly fragmented, authoritarian, and toxic work environments, with such high turnover, particularly of junior workers, that it’s socially a war of all against all. These jobs are different from working at a factory or an established company—there is a “musical chairs” dynamic, authority is exercised arbitrarily and chaotically, the job tasks can change daily and even moment to moment, most relationships are based on dominance/submission, and there is no “solidarity.” Employers believe it’s a “privilege” for anyone to have these jobs, and that therefore no one in them has the right to complain. Their refrain: “There are always 100 more candidates ready to take your place.”

In addition, there is the psychology of being an elite: you expect to be treated better by virtue of your education and social status, so it can be shameful to admit that you are being abused and might need to fight for better working conditions. Young elites may even want to organize and collectively bargain, but they don’t know how—they’ve been carried along by their social status in extremely authoritarian and chaotic environments and may never have really built anything with others over time.

For many young precarious elites, therefore, socialism becomes a kind of dream of not only of a good workplace but of a good society—one where they get what they believe is their “due.”

Yes, economics is a science. The astronomer and polymath ...

2024-10-23T06:12:53Z

Yes, economics is a science.

The astronomer and polymath Copernicus not only discovered that the Earth orbits around the sun, but argued that the quantity of money affects the purchasing power of money. He also described both Gresham’s Law and the Cantillon Effect decades before their eponymous elaborators.

The point is not who was “first” to come up with a theory (that is irrelevant for the science itself), but that multiple scientists were independently coming to the same conclusions about the social phenomenon that is money.

Observations that are considered “political” today will be simply folded into the scientific knowledge of the future. That is how progress is made.

No, #AI cannot and will not allocate capital “more ...

2024-10-22T06:23:15Z

No, #AI cannot and will not allocate capital “more rationally” than human economic actors.

This is because the information that is navigated by allocators of resources is not just information about past actions but the *subjective nexus of motivation and will* that is *actively being generated* by living economic actors in every moment.

This *cannot* be determined in advance.

No amount of computational power can model the present and future valuations, motivations, and actions of all living subjects interacting to form markets and economic ecosystems with perfect accuracy.

The planning problem continues to have no resolution.

The “institutions” people rarely if ever address the question ...

2024-10-18T07:47:12Z

The “institutions” people rarely if ever address the question of scale.

How exactly are you going to “achieve social consensus,” as @DAcemogluMIT says we must, at a scale of 336 million people (population of the U.S.)? 30 million people (population of Texas)? 7 million people (population of Houston metro area)?

Human beings evolved in communities of under 150 people (the Dunbar number). Beyond that, “consensus” (in any active, intentional sense) becomes very difficult.

Perhaps the key to achieving social consensus at larger scales is for those institutions to do less. A lot less.

But somehow that never seems to be on the table for mainstream social scientists.

Join economist @RebelEconProf, policy leader @Avik, and myself on ...

2024-10-18T05:21:29Z

Join economist @RebelEconProf, policy leader @Avik, and myself on November 20 at the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas for a spirited panel discussion about the past and future of the U.S. #dollar and U.S. #Treasurys.

We will discuss America’s evolving role in the world and prospects for a brighter domestic fiscal future.

All panelists are contributors to the upcoming book, “The Satoshi Papers: Reflections on Political Economy after #Bitcoin.” Soon to be published by the @btcpolicyorg.

satoshipapers.org

"The hypotheses [are] not beginnings but really hypotheses ...

2024-10-16T06:14:06Z

"The hypotheses [are] not beginnings but really hypotheses – that is, steppingstones and springboards – in order to reach what is free from hypothesis at the beginning of the whole."

- Plato, The Republic

One of the bases of Western anti-semitism (which used to mean ...

2024-10-15T15:51:04Z

One of the bases of Western anti-semitism (which used to mean hatred of “Semites”—that is, both Jews and Muslims) was the strong moral aversion in Medieval Western societies to commercial activity. The Church and the aristocracy believed that there was a natural class order, where benevolent aristocrats ruled over a dependent peasantry. Trafficking in commerce and money was seen as “dirty.” This is in part why Medieval European princes often had to invite immigrants—Jewish merchants—to kickstart economic growth in their domains. These immigrants were segregated from the rest of the population in order to avoid disrupting the feudal balance of power in the majority Christian population. This segregation and the perception that Jews had privileges that Christian peasants didn’t have of course nurtured a lot of prejudice and resentment. Simultaneously, Jews were often barred from owning land or working in agriculture—activities that were designated for Christian landlords and serfs, the classes who were supposedly part of the “natural order.”

The “bourgeois revolution” in Europe—the commercial revolution that generated capitalism, beginning in the Renaissance—was in this sense a genuine cultural revolution against the static and segregated worldview of feudalism. The European merchant classes needed to fight to emancipate themselves from both Church and State. This was not the case in Islamic-majority societies, where commercial activity was already well established, extending back to ancient Mesopotamian and Levantine commercial traditions.

Hayek and Whitehead on institutions: "The [planning] problem ...

2024-10-15T05:30:38Z

Hayek and Whitehead on institutions:

"The [planning] problem which we meet here is by no means peculiar to economics but arises in connection with nearly all truly social phenomena, with language and most of our cultural inheritance, and constitutes really the central theoretical problem of all social science. As Alfred Whitehead has said in another connection, "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." This is of profound significance in the social field. We make constant use of formulas, symbols and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up."

In "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945)

Technological innovation is what enables greater productivity and ...

2024-10-13T17:48:01Z

Technological innovation is what enables greater productivity and growth from limited (scarce) “material and energy throughput.”

The de-growth movement has no concept of innovation. Which is baffling, because the prosperity of their societies—the fact that they themselves are not dying from malnutrition, preventable diseases, or childbirth, but are able to write books about “degrowth”—is entirely a function of the raised floor created for them by centuries of technological innovation.

.@PaulLew16394851 speaks about the conditions for self-governance ...

2024-10-13T09:01:08Z

.@PaulLew16394851 speaks about the conditions for self-governance as described in the work of James Buchanan and Vincent Ostrom at #MAS2024.

“Self-governing societies exist only under conditions in which individuals become their own masters and become capable of governing their own affairs and working with others in mutually productive relationships.”

- Vincent Ostrom

A clinical psychologist with decades of experience treating ...

2024-10-12T15:20:38Z

A clinical psychologist with decades of experience treating people suffering from the depths of psychosis once described the reason that many clinicians cannot help their patients:

They function from the doctrine of “Reality with a Capital R,” that is, the belief that they, the clinician, understand the world “as it really is,” while their patients are simply insane. These doctors refuse to listen to their patients, refuse to empathize with them, and dismiss their delusions without asking what truth or reality the patient is trying to express through their madness. Indeed, in some cases, the patient may not be “mad” at all; they may be accurately describing the toxicity and failure of the social institutions that have harmed them but may have rewarded the doctor. As a result, the patient can see a reality that the doctor’s self-interest prevents him from seeing.

The imbalance of power between a doctor and his patient means that a doctor’s misunderstanding can have devastating consequences for the patient. The patient may be misdiagnosed, mismedicated, but above all subjected to the compounding trauma that in seeking help for a harm that has been done to them, they are met only with further harm and careless misunderstanding. This can result in what is called “iatrogenic” illness—or illness that is the *result* of medical treatment. “Psychiatric illnesses” are often exacerbated or even generated by the clinician’s unwillingness to care about or understand their patients’ life experiences.

The hysteria around “misinformation” as expressed by someone like @cwarzel resembles a clinician operating from the doctrine or “Reality with a Capital R.” In Charlie’s view, he is one of the “experts;” one of the people who “operate in reality” and “describe the world as it is.” It is crazy conspiracy theorists who, through their willful delusions, menace the republic with violence. Warzel does not pause for a moment to ask what potential malpractice the government and the media, the Fourth Estate, could have perpetrated on the American people such that they no longer believe them. What truths are “conspiracists” seeing—perhaps hastily and inaccurately expressed in the details, but thematically true—which need acknowledging in our present moment so that we can heal as a people and make our institutions more resilient for the future?

If it’s up to people like Warzel—and there are many such people—we will only see an intensification of so-called “delusions” and conspiracy theories: the iatrogenic “illnesses” of a population subject to experts who don’t care about them and who insist on controlling Reality with a Capital R.

The notion that any company, let alone any government or other ...

2024-10-09T05:41:27Z

The notion that any company, let alone any government or other organization, could or should “maximize utility for all people” is looney tunes.

“Lawful interception” means “encryption backdoors” which ...

2024-10-06T07:22:44Z

“Lawful interception” means “encryption backdoors” which can and will be used by malicious actors.

Any politician who supports encryption backdoors should be laughed out of the room and run out of office.

In a functioning market, businesses don’t have the luxury of ...

2024-10-04T05:27:47Z

In a functioning market, businesses don’t have the luxury of not calling out failure. They have to admit failure, cut losses, and move on to survive.

Where are we calling out failure in government? The government response when things go sideways is to demand MORE money to do MORE of the same. Governments act as the ultimate “too-big-to-fail” institutions—and huge companies latch on to them for this very reason, often becoming indistinguishable from the state.

We need to start calling out failure in government. You don’t get another dime to do things that don’t work. No more.

The whole “Iran tried to assassinate Trump” story is the ...

2024-10-01T06:46:09Z

The whole “Iran tried to assassinate Trump” story is the clownworld version of “Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Niger.” 🤡

Not even the people saying it believe it is true, but they don’t care, and they know almost nobody else cares, either. The American people no longer have a choice in the matter of war.

That is a collapse of the representative function of government.

As bombs fall on #Beirut, it struck me that perhaps some of my ...

2024-10-01T06:44:24Z

As bombs fall on #Beirut, it struck me that perhaps some of my fellow Americans and Westerners would like to know more about the history of Beirut and of #Lebanon. And how Shi'a Islam figures into that history.

In my early days as an anthropologist, I wrote a short article about the role of Shi'a book publishers in the intellectual landscape of Beirut and the wider region (link below). In short, Lebanon's relatively weak state and multi-religious population made it a center for free expression. Many refugees from both #Iran and #Iraq immigrated there during and after the Iran-Iraq war, seeking more stability, opportunity, and even the freedom to criticize the governments of their home countries. For example, some Lebanese religious thinkers imagined Islamic political models that avoided the pitfalls of the Saudi model of shari'a-as-law and the Iranian model of vilayat-i-faqih.

These Islamic thinkers openly called for dialogue with the West and with "the American people." Virtually nobody in our media has reported this; instead, our media and government have frightened us of these people so that we would not listen to them. As a result, Americans are largely unaware of how badly Muslim thinkers in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries have wanted to talk with us openly about what civilization is and how civilization can progress while staying rooted in its traditions and values. These are conversations we are all having now. We could have been having them with friends and colleagues around the world, but we didn't even know they were there.

I never formally published the article, but I put it online for free. ⬇️ It's just a tiny drop in the scholarship on this topic, but if it helps just one person understand another world, perhaps it was worth it.

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/2nujm

Good question. I would say no—the case study suggests that ...

2024-09-29T17:59:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…fa24
_________________________

Good question. I would say no—the case study suggests that interest groups will inevitably mobilize to capture loci of power (especially the state) for their own ends. This is similar to regulatory capture by established corporations, which is what transforms free markets into crony capitalism.

The main countervailing force to capture of the state by interest groups is the character of the people—the values that they hold dear. It is the people who have to continually be the site of resistance to capture—to say no, to enforce limits on government power, and to remind everyone of the values of nondiscrimination and equality before the law. This means a literate, aware population that does not trust power *as such.* A people who are not asking to be lied to if it means their “tribe” gets to win this time.

Ultimately this comes down to how we raise children—education writ large. The future of a free country is established in families and elementary schools. If those places become sites of tribal indoctrination and culture war, the seeds are sown for a violent and illiberal future.

The point of the American project was to create a larger national ...

2024-09-29T17:58:23Z

The point of the American project was to create a larger national identity that superseded people’s tribal (ethnic, religious, racial) affiliations.

Now we have leaders and elites using the fruits of the big-tent, melting-pot American project to advance their tribal agendas. They either laugh at you or are offended if you seriously talk about America being a “melting pot,” or a project that can include people regardless of where their ancestors came from.

American civilians are now just routinely collateral damage in ...

2024-09-29T17:57:41Z

American civilians are now just routinely collateral damage in undeclared wars.

Our government has gone from covering it up to pretending to care to openly not caring.

Who represents us?

It’s helpful to understand this election through historian ...

2024-09-27T07:22:54Z

It’s helpful to understand this election through historian @Peter_Turchin ‘s structural-demographic theory of history.

In short, elites consume vastly more resources than everyone else. In good times, the numbers of elites in a society grow. But the numbers of elites tend to grow faster than the number of high-status positions (jobs, appointments, whatever) in a society. At this point, a game of “musical chairs” sets in—elites start getting pushed out, becoming “downwardly mobile.” If economic growth also stagnates or slows, the problem gets even worse, because new elite positions stop being created and may even be destroyed.

At the same time, successful people from lower social statuses are seeking to turn their new wealth into elite status as well. But they are finding the path to higher status increasingly blocked.

This sets up the society for a contest between “established elites” (like the Biden, Harris, Cheney, Clinton coalition) and “outsider elites” (like the Trump, Musk, etc. coalition). Outsider elites politically mobilize their grievances—which come down to the fact that establishment elites won’t give them the status and respect they feel they deserve. (It’s really important to understand that wealth and status are not the same thing. They are different kinds of social capital that may or may not be exchanged for each other.)

Both types of elites seek to enlist everyone else in their factional conflict, which may become violent. A period of civil war (or foreign war) may ensue, which reduces the number of elites to a more sustainable level. Eventually, the society stabilizes and whichever elite faction was victorious gets to re-found the political order.

As long as elite overproduction (total number of elites relative to the number of high-status positions) continues, we will likely see this same contest between insider and outsider elites re-hashed, regardless of who the actual candidates are. Our best bet for getting out of this cycle is rapid economic growth, but unfortunately status-seeking elites for the most part don’t understand how to bring that about.

Having a realistic assessment of the motivations of the ...

2024-09-26T16:55:36Z

Having a realistic assessment of the motivations of the leadership of another country is not “being afraid.” It is rational statecraft.

Without rational statesmen, the game theoretic conditions of peace through deterrence no longer function.

At the very least, our Cold War-era statesmen understood this. But the system they built, which protected the world from nuclear war, has been inherited by blustering fools who believe they can “win” by ignoring reality.

These are the types of leaders who lose not only wars, but civilizations.

"No End In Sight" is a documentary made in 2007 about the ...

2024-09-25T15:05:03Z

"No End In Sight" is a documentary made in 2007 about the first years of the Iraq War.

It shows with clarity how the top leaders of the Bush Administration ignored and sidelined regional experts and experienced military leaders from their own defense and intelligence communities in order to engage in a slapdash, rushed, sloppy, and criminally negligent occupation of Iraq (where we still have troops, btw).

It should be required viewing for every American. This is conquest without responsibility. It shows an Empire that is both careless and breathtakingly naive in its view of the world and of power.

youtube.com/watch?v=SsDROo…

In a previous life, I wanted to be a journalist. I spoke fluent ...

2024-09-25T05:33:02Z

In a previous life, I wanted to be a journalist. I spoke fluent Arabic but refused to be part of the wars in the Middle East, so instead I largely focused on media coverage of those wars in America.

During the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006, I worked at a local radio station. They asked me to vet a “documentary” made by an older American couple about “Islamic extremism” in Palestine and Lebanon. It quickly became apparent to me that the English-language subtitles they used to translate what people in the region were saying were complete garbage. Like, not even faulty translations—just completely made up statements designed to show how “extreme” these people were and how much they “hated” Israel and the West.

I submitted my opinion that the documentary should not air because it was false propaganda. Fortunately, it was not shown (and the couple who produced it was really upset). But I cannot overstate how often the American people have been lied to, via mainstream news sources, about who “hates” us and why. They know that few people, if anyone, will fact-check them, and by then no one will care. The damage will have been done.

It is we Americans who have been radicalized—by our media and our politicians, who conjure or repeat lies from people who do not care about us or about our country.

We Americans have no fight with the people of Middle Eastern nations. There is no reason that America should not be friends with all nations in the region, working together for mutual prosperity. All of this carnage is unnecessary and manufactured. It takes real work—intent, money, planning, political will—to engineer multiple coups, regime changes, and occupations across an entire region over several generations. Literally, if we had just stepped away from the region and left it alone generations ago, things would be orders of magnitude better today. Instead, we have brought about just about the worst-case scenario: genocide and a regional conflagration threatening to escalate into the next World War.

I agree with Monbiot that both capitalism’s defenders and ...

2024-09-23T18:17:20Z

I agree with Monbiot that both capitalism’s defenders *and* detractors rarely define it.

I find the following definition the most useful: “Capitalism is an economic system in which capital goods are put to work in order to generate more capital goods.” In other words, capitalism is a system in which growing productivity through capital investment is the main aim of economic activity. This is what differentiates capitalist economies from other types of commercial economies, and why it has been such a runaway engine of growth historically.

Importantly, you can have a capitalist economy in which the means of production are either privately or publicly owned. The question then becomes: what structures of ownership create optimal conditions for the generation of capital goods? In other words, what structure of ownership lends itself best to increasing the rate of economic growth in a human society? This is where economists from different schools genuinely disagree, and that disagreement needs to be made explicit and owned in order for political conversations to be actually productive.

Naturally, I agree with economists who have argued that returns on capital are most strongly incentivized under the conditions of private property protected by the rule of law. Societies that prioritize private property ownership will economically outperform societies in which the state is the owner of capital goods. This is what we should be debating, not whether “capitalism” (which is nothing more than a social technology) is “good” or “bad.”

It’s not about “fighting dis/misinformation” (negative ...

2024-09-23T17:40:18Z

It’s not about “fighting dis/misinformation” (negative project), it’s about *creating the conditions for truth* (positive project).

Truth is an achievement; it is the exception. Dis/misinformation is the rule.

As consent is being manufactured for a war with Iran, it’s ...

2024-09-22T06:11:09Z

As consent is being manufactured for a war with Iran, it’s worth watching the movie “Shock and Awe” to remember how it was done with Iraq.

What has changed? Mainly the rise of social and alternative media. It’s harder to ignore people telling the truth today.

A just government neither privileges its friends nor persecutes ...

2024-09-22T06:05:19Z

A just government neither privileges its friends nor persecutes its enemies, but ensures equality and due process under the law.

Few Americans know this: Federal law since 1953 has effectively ...

2024-09-21T16:48:35Z

Few Americans know this:

Federal law since 1953 has effectively suspended the Constitution within 100 miles of the U.S. border. That covers 2/3 of the U.S. population.

Needless to say, suspending the Bill of Rights has done nothing to prevent illegal immigration, but it has created an unaccountable police state.

Being anti-establishment is not the same thing as being ...

2024-09-19T01:46:24Z

Being anti-establishment is not the same thing as being anti-authoritarian.

People are starting to discover that violence is a key element of ...

2024-09-19T01:43:36Z

People are starting to discover that violence is a key element of both founding and constituting societies.

Unfortunately, often their takeaway from this is that this is the way it should be, and that the only thing that matters is raw power.

No. Values matter. Character matters. Institutions matter. Each action and reaction creates the world to come. We can decide whether we live in a loving and prosperous community or whether we live in hell.

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the “War on Terror” is ...

2024-09-19T01:42:13Z

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the “War on Terror” is that the word “war” has lost all meaning. So has the distinction between military and civilians. People are now cheering and justifying atrocities left and right because it’s “war.” Who declared the war? Upon whom? What is the objective?

This collapse of distinctions is made worse by the fact that no one is in charge. There are plenty of authoritarians and “strong men” but few leaders. Instead, globs of largely unknown “combatants”—state and non-state—are just vibing their way through fields of violence. Discipline has been replaced with amateur recklessness. Tactics executed without strategy. This is a “melée.”

In case you missed the #CATO 2024 Conference "Financial ...

2024-09-18T13:00:14Z

In case you missed the #CATO 2024 Conference "Financial Privacy under Fire," the full recording is now available. ⬇️

The panel on CBDCs starts at 1:15:15.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4RRhe9whVlo&t

At some point, the AI doomers will likely flip to “AI should ...

2024-09-15T06:19:15Z

At some point, the AI doomers will likely flip to “AI should rule us all” because their most fundamental belief is that there is no central planning problem.

“I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty of the ...

2024-09-13T19:16:17Z

“I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.”

- Abraham Lincoln

War, for a superpower, is a deliberate choice. Don’t let anyone ...

2024-09-13T05:35:50Z

War, for a superpower, is a deliberate choice.

Don’t let anyone convince you that war “just happens to us,” or is suddenly and out of nowhere provoked by our enemies. We have had literally armies of diplomats, in addition to actual armies, intelligence officers, and civilian defense forces around the world for decades engaging in great and small power politics.

To prevent war, we need a non-imperial foreign policy. Full stop.

“Privacy rights are an absolute restriction on government ...

2024-09-12T15:18:39Z

“Privacy rights are an absolute restriction on government behavior.”

- Jumana Musa, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

#CATO Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives Annual Conference

“It is a profound and repeated finding that the mere facts of ...

2024-09-12T12:03:39Z

“It is a profound and repeated finding that the mere facts of poverty and inequality or even increases in these conditions, do not lead to political or ethnic violence. In order for popular discontent or distress to create large-scale conflicts, there must be some elite leadership to mobilize popular groups and to create linkages between them. There must also be some vulnerability of the state in the form of internal divisions and economic or political reverses. Otherwise, popular discontent is unvoiced, and popular opposition is simply suppressed.”

- Jack Goldstone, “Population and Security: How Demographic Change Can Lead to Violent Conflict” (2002)

Without anonymity, everything becomes either crime or pre-crime. ...

2024-09-11T19:18:51Z

Without anonymity, everything becomes either crime or pre-crime.

Remember the Miranda Warning in the United States: “You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can *and will* be used against you in a court of law.”

The only protection U.S. citizens have against this self-incrimination is encoded in the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution: “No person shall be . . . compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

What this means in practice is that the U.S. is one of the only countries on Earth whose inhabitants are not required to talk to legal authorities. Very few Americans understand how valuable and precious this right is.

Anonymity is a manifestation of silence. It creates the cone of silence in which innocence can be preserved. Without anonymity, we have no choice but to incriminate ourselves in violation of our Constitution.

In psychology, there is a term called “splitting:” seeing ...

2024-09-11T14:41:22Z

In psychology, there is a term called “splitting:” seeing people and things as either all-good or all-bad, and often swinging wildly between the two. Splitting is a characteristic of mental illness, particularly personality disorders.

This is the state of our political discourse today. It is not just polarized; it is split. A growing number of people cannot fathom that people who disagree with them about certain things or who support certain candidates can be decent, intelligent, kind, and honorable people. That they may even want similar ends, but disagree about the means used to get there.

The remedy for this sickness is for us to patiently, over time, practice prioritizing and speaking truth in public with a generous spirit. Give people the grace to learn, make mistakes, and be wrong—so long as the overall trajectory of the conversation is toward truth. This means focusing on principles, not personalities; ideas, not parties.

We need to reclaim our public sphere as the agora it is, a “marketplace of ideas” characterized by peaceful exchange, not as a gladiatorial arena where we deploy heroes for our “side” to decide right and wrong through feats of strength.

As I head to Cato Institute to discuss financial privacy and ...

2024-09-11T13:45:31Z

As I head to Cato Institute to discuss financial privacy and #CBDCs tomorrow, I thought it worth sharing this @btcpolicyorg research report again:

“Why the U.S. Should Reject Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)”

https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/627aa615676bdd1d47ec97d4/63323238ea73aa551a769b5b_BPI%20CBDC%20Paper%20.pdf

Peter Van : “You have a Constitutional right to anonymous ...

2024-09-11T13:28:36Z

Peter Van : “You have a Constitutional right to anonymous transactions.” 🔥🔥🔥

It’s time to mount a fierce defense of anonymity. 🎯🤿

Protip: U.S. companies are not successful because the government ...

2024-09-11T05:44:26Z

Protip: U.S. companies are not successful because the government invests in them. They are successful because they make products and services people want, and they have a large (interstate) market to grow in.

(Of course, all of this can change. Many American leaders unfortunately share Varoufakis’s view that the state should direct the deployment of capital.)

The union of bank and state is perhaps the main problem in need of fundamental reform in the United States.

And yet even despite this corruption, the obstacles to technology innovation and commercial success remain lower in America than in most places on Earth. That is precious and worth defending.

There is no doubt that the U.S. government has been itself a site of fundamental technology innovation (through some of the projects you mentioned) and is one of the largest customers in any market (unfortunately, and growing). But the U.S. government is not the primary allocator of capital; neither does it commercialize technologies. If a company cannot successfully commercialize, it will eventually die—unless there is genuine corruption in play, which I think both you and I agree is a bad thing.

Finally, this merits saying explicitly: TCP/IP, the protocol for which the DARPA project laid the groundwork, is not “the internet.” The internet is a complex protocol stack that has garnered contributions, yes, from some government-employed individuals, but also from a vast network of mostly volunteers in civil society around the world. Innovation is often done precisely by those people who have nothing to gain materially or in terms of political power; innovators tend to be idealists motivated by solving hard problems or making the world a better place. Similarly—again, this cannot be stressed enough—Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta—these companies are not “the internet.” They have produced commercial products that make use of fundamental technologies in ways that add value that people are willing to pay for. But they can and should be disrupted by companies that create greater value. By putting its thumb on the scale through onerous regulation (I.e. GDPR, the AI Act), the state in fact ensures that these wealthy incumbents will be the only players who can afford to enter the marketplace.

In short, the best thing the state can do is stay out of the way of both innovators and commercializers. The success of the software industry in America is largely a material testimony to the fact that, at least until recently, the U.S. government largely has. Perhaps the highest political priority of our current era is ensuring that remains the case. Growth is the reason that any of us have hope of a future that is not riven by zero-sum conflict, of warlords fighting over the scraps of innovation from a prior era. This requires both the idealistic innovators motivated by mission and the talented entrepreneurs motivated by profit. If the state wants to fund some fundamental (i.e. not immediately commercializable) research, that is great—but it is merely one actor among many, and not even the most significant one, at that.

Protip: U.S. companies are not successful because the government ...

2024-09-10T14:46:53Z

This Thursday! Let's see if we can change the narrative from ...

2024-09-09T17:33:27Z

This Thursday!

Let's see if we can change the narrative from "financial privacy" to "the right to transact."

September 12, starting at 9:30am Eastern Time.

The event will be live-streamed!

https://www.cato.org/events/financial-privacy-under-fire-protecting-restoring-americans-rights

#Privacy #RightroTransact

Some folks believe we still need a CBDC despite FedNow offering ...

2024-09-08T07:41:12Z

Some folks believe we still need a CBDC despite FedNow offering real-time interbank settlement.

What this suggests is that by CBDC they mean “retail CBDC” (for individual account holders), not “wholesale CBDC” (for interbank settlement).

As many suspected, the “wholesale CBDC” fig leaf was a polite fiction designed to get political buy in for money that is fully ID-verified and programmable at the transaction level.

“The evidence strongly suggests that small-scale warfare is ...

2024-09-08T07:37:21Z

“The evidence strongly suggests that small-scale warfare is part of our evolutionary history predating agriculture and sedentism, but that cooperation across group boundaries is also part our evolutionary legacy. . . . our evolutionary history is more complex than one of selection for war or peace; rather, it reflects the complicated lifeways of a highly social and interdependent cultural species for which both cooperation and war were likely important selective forces.”

- @HSB_Lab
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513824000941

Assumptions people who favor planned economies often make: 1. ...

2024-09-07T04:57:56Z

Assumptions people who favor planned economies often make:

1. “I can do a great job planning the economy”

2. “I will be the one planning the economy”

If you’re looking at BTC strictly from a wealth equality ...

2024-09-06T18:22:25Z

If you’re looking at BTC strictly from a wealth equality standpoint, the current ownership distribution of BTC ownership is actually far more concentrated and unequal than fiat wealth ownership. Neither is BTC a mechanism of wealth redistribution. That is, in part, why so many hate it and are seek to use the power of the state to curtail adoption.

I would suggest, though, that an equality of ownership is neither the point nor value of BTC. Those who focus on that are missing the point entirely. BTC is censorship-resistant sound money, which does put downward pressure on the ceiling of endless debt monetization (which creates a kind of illusory wealth). Its widespread adoption may even result in lending slowdowns and production slowdowns as a result. But, counterintuitively, this may smooth out the “business cycles” of wealth creation and destruction that render the fiat economy so volatile.

A lot can be said about the causes of lower wealth inequality in ...

2024-09-06T18:19:34Z

A lot can be said about the causes of lower wealth inequality in the U.S. after the Second World War. Many believe that it’s because taxes were higher, but as economic historians have pointed out, almost nobody paid the higher rates.

The main cause of greater wealth equality was most likely the *actual war,* which absolutely incinerated property, labor, and value all over the world.

In other words, the easiest way to create “more equality”—at least on paper—is simply to destroy wealth. But by lowering the ceiling, you also lower the floor.

The only thing that reliably has raised the floor for everyone is entrepreneurial capitalism. But it also raises the ceiling.

Acemoglu is here exhibiting the classic logic of what he referred ...

2024-09-04T16:56:55Z

Acemoglu is here exhibiting the classic logic of what he referred to in his own book, "The Narrow Corridor," as the "Cage of Norms."

The Cage of Norms is a form of tyranny embedded in society rather than the state. The logic of the Cage of Norms is that "status is zero-sum," as Acemoglu says below. Therefore, "any flower that grows too tall must be cut down." Success is fine, as long as it's not "too much." Once that arbitrary boundary has been crossed--"too rich," "too prestigious," "too influential"--the successful individual or entity must be "cut down to size."

The miracle of entrepreneurial capitalism is precisely that wealth, money, and status are NOT zero-sum. Entrepreneurs willing to take the risks and do the work to create real value can grow the pie for everybody.

This doesn't mean that powerful people don't abuse their power. Of course they do; they have and they will. This is why, first off all, power is not to be trusted; and second of all, why each of us has the unique responsibility to acquire and use power in the ways we consider most morally generative. Cutting down flowers that grow tall is an abuse of power. But by ourselves growing into the tallest flowers we can--that is how we check the power of bullies.

We need to stop calling for bigger bullies (the state, the manager, the whatever) to punish and cut down people we don't like. Instead, each of us needs to remember, find, and grow our own power.

That is how civil society is preserved, and that is how we prevent it from becoming a Cage of Norms.

Important research paper on the economics of migration. The ...

2024-09-04T05:59:42Z

Important research paper on the economics of migration. The consensus narrative today is that most migrants are the poorest of the poor—people with no economic hope in their home countries.

The reality is more complicated. Many migrants are relatively poor, yes, but they are also people with the *means* to migrate.

Simply put: migration is expensive. The poorest of the poor often stay in their home countries simply because they can’t afford to move.

That said, greater desperation at home—war, violence, natural disasters—change the economic calculus. Under those conditions, it may be more expensive to stay than to go. People whose lives are at risk—i.e. refugees—routinely endure extraordinary hardship to escape what seems to be highly probable death. At the end of the day, people value their lives over material possessions.

One of the interesting things I’ve learned about MMTers is that ...

2024-09-02T17:48:51Z

One of the interesting things I’ve learned about MMTers is that their main political goal is full employment at any cost.

They don’t distinguish between the “value” generated by massive government make-work projects and the value generated by entrepreneurial capitalism. The only thing that matters to them is that people are “employed” and getting a paycheck—of course, in the industries deemed “valuable” by the state, rather than the market.

Fantastic lecture by economist PeterBoettke inaugurating the ...

2024-09-01T07:19:11Z

Fantastic lecture by economist PeterBoettke inaugurating the Initiative for the Study of a Stable Peace (ISSP).

Boettke masterfully traces the lineage of mainline economics as the study of exchange rooted in human action as mediated and often laundered by institutions. The tradition of mainline economics differs from other economic traditions in that it “advances the ball” of the “science of liberty,” which is rooted in 1) non-discrimination and 2) non-domination. This science demonstrates that the “invisible hand” of the market can be either benevolent or malevolent, depending on the character of the individuals and institutions that shape that market.

It is the science and practice of liberty that gives humanity a fighting chance at finding solutions to problems that are not violent. Peace, in other words, is a cultural achievement rooted in a certain kind of civil society that arises from the interaction of individuals with a moral imagination shaped by the commitment to liberty.

youtu.be/spRZOVRSf-Q

The answer to Sahlins’s question—quite sadly—is that ...

2024-08-31T07:37:21Z

The answer to Sahlins’s question—quite sadly—is that (socio)cultural anthropology stopped considering itself a science.

Early anthropologists didn’t study the intricacies of specific human societies just for shits and giggles. They studied these things in order to develop a scientific account of human cultural and social life.

If you kick away the scientific scaffolding—as cultural anthropology has in fact done—the topics Sahlins lists out end up being little more than trivia. They may attract a few antiquarians here and there, but that’s about it.

Most knowledge—including most human languages, cultural practices, and histories—are forgotten. Remembering is the exceptional case. And that requires there to be a *motivation* to remember. That motivation is, like it or not, some form of significance for living human beings: the ones doing the remembering.

Cultural anthropology has gone all-in on political significance (as the Facebook reply to Sahlins below shows), but all but abandoned scientific significance. Counterintuitively, the politicization of the discipline has drained it of the actual political purchase it used to have, and is one of the many reasons why cultural anthropology must be re-founded as a discipline.

Creating value is not the same thing as generating profit. Great ...

2024-08-30T17:54:30Z

Creating value is not the same thing as generating profit.

Great companies, like all great organizations, seek to generate value above all else.

This means that profits will sometimes be sacrificed, especially in the near term.

In the long term, however, these are the companies that change the world.

“What is perhaps distinctive about the dynamic of difference as ...

2024-08-29T21:47:13Z

“What is perhaps distinctive about the dynamic of difference as it is asserted in the WAT [War on Terror], however, is the belief that, in a globalised world, the transformation of the ‘other’ is essential for the defence, the very survival of the Western self. This could give rise to a uniquely dangerous situation and a continuous and self-sustaining violence.”

- Antony Anghie, “Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law” (2004)

Waiting for the announcement that all new technological ...

2024-08-29T21:45:05Z

Waiting for the announcement that all new technological development has to run through the Department of Safety, Security and Innovation and be approved by the Central Committee on Free and Fair Competition.

#AI

As anthropologist Marshall Sahlins once said, “Economics, as ...

2024-08-26T19:17:10Z

As anthropologist Marshall Sahlins once said, “Economics, as constituted, is an anti-anthropology.”

I’m here to prove him wrong. 😘

Stay tuned for “Towards an Anthropological Theory of Money,” coming soon in The Satoshi Papers.

If they can’t criminalize cryptography by statute, they will ...

2024-08-26T18:56:08Z

If they can’t criminalize cryptography by statute, they will criminalize it through enforcement.

Humans evolved to have strongly anthropomorphic models of how the ...

2024-08-23T17:02:57Z

Humans evolved to have strongly anthropomorphic models of how the world works. If something bad happens, we immediately look for someone (usually another human) to blame and punish. This is the “political mode”—find someone specific to punish or eliminate, and then the problem will be solved. Right?

Wrong. The world is vastly more complex than our Dunbar number-oriented social brain can account for. Our moral reflexes are built for simple, in-the-moment, relational reasoning, and few of us are incentivized to do the long-term, boring, scientific work of understanding causality across the many domains that impact our lives. And that understanding is always partial: we see as through a glass, darkly.

This leads to a pessimistic outlook on the possibilities of political action in general, whether authoritarian or democratic. Quite simply, most problems do not have “political” solutions, if the political is understood as the moral logic of attributing responsibility and blame in public. This is why social scientists like Mises and Hayek urged first and foremost intellectual humility. Humility doesn’t mean “doing nothing.” It means tailoring our actions to those areas of life over which we have actual control, not presuming to understand and control things we can’t.

At the end of the day, politics solves for enabling feelings of moral satisfaction for groups of people who enjoy seeing their enemies subjugated while reaffirming their own belonging in the powerful—winning—group. That is, quite simply, not only useless but counterproductive. It actively gets in the way of solving the problems that ostensibly motivate political outrage.

#BTC #Politics

This has been clear to me for a while now, but the Thiel/Rogan ...

2024-08-20T06:16:06Z

This has been clear to me for a while now, but the Thiel/Rogan interview illustrated again that we need to have a broader cultural conversation about violence, sacrifice, the sacred, and the elementary forms of religious life.

One’s anthropology becomes one’s political theory.

The people saying they’re going to “control prices” are the ...

2024-08-18T18:09:43Z

The people saying they’re going to “control prices” are the same people who bailed out the banks, again and again.

They’re literally running on the Cantillon effect and betting that people will vote for the crumbs they are promised.

I'm excited to join @CatoInstitute for a day-long event: ...

2024-08-15T15:46:08Z

I'm excited to join @CatoInstitute for a day-long event:

"Financial Privacy Under Fire: Protecting and Restoring Americans' Rights."

Thursday, September 12. Fittingly, the day after 9/11.

The event will be live-streamed, and you can submit questions for the speakers online. Registration is now live at the link below!

The full conference agenda will be posted later this week.

https://www.cato.org/events/financial-privacy-under-fire-protecting-restoring-americans-rights

Nostr notes by NSmolenskiFan

The rise of LLMs in education has made more apparent who is using ...

Nostr event nevent1qqsy3fe7r8m5sjh03pnku29uqmh0msymexktp0x74hm7jqd3n9mas7czyqqqqqqqetq0sxdlrg9xpjy3a6ce8yhe37vafqysknl2pjj38n5tupl9ngx

Nostr event nevent1qqs02u7e33ntec2zpfwg3rzr9a6gynqq30nlhx9aphfslqlgjzuhlqszyqqqqqqqetq0sxdlrg9xpjy3a6ce8yhe37vafqysknl2pjj38n5tuan9wqx

Graeber’s theory of money in “Debt” is basically MMT. He ...

Nostr event nevent1qqstjtyspxhnau7gs8g6zs9crkdlve4nrzec4swf8qchjy79keewywgzyqqqqqqqetq0sxdlrg9xpjy3a6ce8yhe37vafqysknl2pjj38n5tuzc3zz6

It’s wild to me that @LinkedIn still hasn’t implemented ...

The paper “Toward an Anthropological Theory of Money” ...

Peace emerges bottom-up. This is why when the state is intent on ...

Wisdom involves making accurate and precise distinctions. An ...

Military conflict brings one of two outcomes: victory or defeat. ...

We are being led by people trying to convince us to see the world ...

With government funding comes surveillance. The more programs the ...

The problem is not so much that new technology is being used on ...

Promo pricing for The Satoshi Papers ENDS Feb 1st! Library ...

The redistribution Altman has in mind would certainly not enable ...

Follow-up: Those making predictions about AI “transforming ...

Anthropologist here: Sam’s claim that “the whole structure of ...

Fascinating piece on the anthropology and economics of prison ...

I wrote about the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement that ...

In his response to Marc Andreessen, Yuval Levin of the @AEI and ...

Do you know a college-aged young person interested in #Bitcoin? ...

The reason studying the “history of economic thought” matters ...

Nostr event nevent1qqs90vtkjc3y5nxytm2fqnsp4d8trsf0dcxhg5zwud4r5mmg0cy7s3czyqqqqqqqetq0sxdlrg9xpjy3a6ce8yhe37vafqysknl2pjj38n5tuc5m4du

Grimes asks a good question: "Who is a philosopher?" ...

Every state (that is, centralization of power) either starts as ...

“Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks” - 2024 ...

The Texas Bitcoin Foundation is excited to share a chapter of The ...

No, going along with the narrative that AI companies care about ...

The Tornado Cash ruling is undoubtedly good news. However, the ...

We talk a lot about the Federal Government’s sovereign ...

So grateful to the brilliant @LynAldenContact for this vote of ...

"The Satoshi Papers" is now available for pre-order! ...

A Nation of Individuals? ...

Join me, @RebelEconProf, and @Avik Roy (founder of @FREOPP) at ...

Perhaps it’s time we just started calling Neocons ...

I would love to see honor become a cultural value in America ...

These “precarious elites” do see their exploitation as a ...

The shift of the American working class from the Democratic to ...

Yes, economics is a science. The astronomer and polymath ...

No, #AI cannot and will not allocate capital “more ...

The “institutions” people rarely if ever address the question ...

Join economist @RebelEconProf, policy leader @Avik, and myself on ...

"The hypotheses [are] not beginnings but really hypotheses ...

One of the bases of Western anti-semitism (which used to mean ...

Hayek and Whitehead on institutions: "The [planning] problem ...

Technological innovation is what enables greater productivity and ...

.@PaulLew16394851 speaks about the conditions for self-governance ...

A clinical psychologist with decades of experience treating ...

The notion that any company, let alone any government or other ...

“Lawful interception” means “encryption backdoors” which ...

In a functioning market, businesses don’t have the luxury of ...

The whole “Iran tried to assassinate Trump” story is the ...

As bombs fall on #Beirut, it struck me that perhaps some of my ...

Good question. I would say no—the case study suggests that ...

The point of the American project was to create a larger national ...

American civilians are now just routinely collateral damage in ...

It’s helpful to understand this election through historian ...

Having a realistic assessment of the motivations of the ...

"No End In Sight" is a documentary made in 2007 about the ...

In a previous life, I wanted to be a journalist. I spoke fluent ...

I agree with Monbiot that both capitalism’s defenders *and* ...

It’s not about “fighting dis/misinformation” (negative ...

As consent is being manufactured for a war with Iran, it’s ...

A just government neither privileges its friends nor persecutes ...

Few Americans know this: Federal law since 1953 has effectively ...

Being anti-establishment is not the same thing as being ...

People are starting to discover that violence is a key element of ...

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the “War on Terror” is ...

In case you missed the #CATO 2024 Conference "Financial ...

At some point, the AI doomers will likely flip to “AI should ...

“I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty of the ...

War, for a superpower, is a deliberate choice. Don’t let anyone ...

“Privacy rights are an absolute restriction on government ...

“It is a profound and repeated finding that the mere facts of ...

Without anonymity, everything becomes either crime or pre-crime. ...

In psychology, there is a term called “splitting:” seeing ...

As I head to Cato Institute to discuss financial privacy and ...

Peter Van : “You have a Constitutional right to anonymous ...

Protip: U.S. companies are not successful because the government ...

I agree with Monbiot that both capitalism’s defenders and ...