Is nostr the Galt's Gulch?
#AskNostr
Discussion
Galt’s Gulchstr
The Atlas Shrugged metaphors ringed strong when thinking about the #nostrville last panel.
- nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx talking about opting out of his Twitter influence moat, leaving it behind, and not turning back.
- nostr:npub1tvqc82mv8cezhax5r34n4muc2c4pgjz8kaye2smj032nngg52clq0rkrq4 about his motivation for coming to build the new world for his kids.
It paired up extremely well with Jeff Booth speaking to me on the pod, going like a broken record about impossibility of fixing the broken system from inside of the system.
- it really clicked this time!
- Is Satoshi the John Galt coming for the men of the mind one by one?
- Did he got an army of ostriches to help him expedite the process?
The metaphor isn't new in the space, but nostr gives it new strength.
Yes, although I personally don’t try to fit Nostr into that metaphor. Nostr is cool, but subtracting ourselves from traditional social media isn’t as impactful as subtracting ourselves from the fiat economy. If you really didn’t want to use Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. you could just exit it all and only interact in the real world.
Bitcoin fits the metaphor much better. Satoshi is a figure similar to John Galt. I’ve had many people ask “who is Satoshi Nakamoto?” And nobody has an answer. Leaving the fiat economy and entering a Bitcoin one where there are hard rules attached to reality and nobody acts for the sole purpose of benefiting others is very similar to Galts Gulch. It’s also actually impactful - every dollar we give away makes the dollar a weaker form of money. The “wall of energy and encryption” is similar to the invisibility shield concealing the valley, except it’s in cyberspace instead of in physical reality.
Both matter. It's about stopping to feed your life energy into the permissioned system where that energy is being stolen from you over time.
Emancipation/independence movements are more powerful when they combine all spheres of influence in their flywheel (money, arts, language, schools, digital content, ...).