The reason governments spend money on things like education and healthcare is to uplift the people, who will give much more back in ingenuity, culture, and productivity.
That is, if the government then has the wisdom to step out of the way and let the people flourish according to their own talents and drives.
It is the state’s harassment and oppression of the precarious working poor—people eking out a living on the edges of society—that starts real people’s revolutions.
Maybe not right away. But eventually.
They are finally dropping the “financial inclusion” and other feel-good rhetoric and admitting what a #CBDC is about: control.
Whether it’s control of individual spending or nation-state spending, the goal is that no economic activity occur without the imprimatur of the state.
In his Farewell Address, published in a newspaper, President Washington explained why he would not seek a third term and outlined his vision for the United States: the importance of preserving the Union, of the equality of all Americans, of the dangers of party politics and foreign entanglements.
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. … I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.”
- President George Washington, “Farewell Address” (1796)
Are you a scientist, humanist, or philosopher concerned about how technology is reshaping the relationships between individuals, states, & societies? The very concept of the human?
I am hosting a conference in October to discuss precisely this question.
https://www.observatoryinstitute.org/thinking-from-the-periphery
This is an academic conference, but an academic institutional affiliation is not required to participate.
Blow us away with your abstract and then come talk with us.
The Call for Papers is linked above, and includes suggested research questions.
Tragedy must be prevented.
The role of leaders is (among other things) to foresee and prevent tragedies. Once a tragedy has occurred, there is no undoing its consequences, even if help is made available.
This is why leadership matters so very, very much. Many leaders internalize this message and become fearfully conservative, operating in a defensive posture.
But the best way to prevent tragedy is to built a positive alternative to it—a project of collective flourishing. That is why vision matters so much in leadership.
And this is why eventually, a lack of vision leads to tragedy.
The world is facing a crisis of leadership that manifests as a lack of vision.
Quite simply, few are out there proposing shared projects that preclude tragedy by building collective prosperity. This lack of vision creates room for the “entrepreneurs of limited horizons”—i.e. bullies—to flourish.
They see the world as a zero-sum game rather than a positive-sum game. And they will use force to take more than others.
It’s time to change the narrative.
It’s time to invite the people and governments of the world into the project of building the new engines of liberty and prosperity for all.
There are countless people behind the headlines, who we will never hear of or know, who are deciding the fates of their countries and the world.
These unknown soldiers are why disasters have been averted throughout human history.
Character is the final security system.
What this suggests is that the complexity achieved by any given civilization is a factor of how its internal power brokers leverage a wider environment characterized by competition between civilizations to advance their own local power at the expense of their civilization’s.
Stay nimble.
The nicest, coolest, funnest spokespeople for a flawed or incorrect idea will not make it true.
People are wired to use social cues to evaluate truth and falsehood, so separating the medium from the message can be difficult.
And yet, there is no other way to approach truth.
There is also no small amount of projection in ad hominem accusations. They are rarely made by people who themselves are kind, gracious, and engaging in good faith.
Money is actually a bottom up social phenomenon, very much like language. Your government doesn't teach you language you learn language in community, in your family. Its important that even if we are temporarily using a top down social technology like a legal tender law, that we don't confuse that law for some universal immutable law of nature.
The Federalist Papers were published anonymously.
Any attempt to do away with anonymity in the public sphere is a departure from the American tradition of free debate.
A short key to global power dynamics
Who is the:
- Buyer of last resort
- Seller of last resort
- Lender of last resort
- Violence of last resort
Under-promising and under-delivering in line with that is SO much better than not setting expectations at all or implying a bunch of stuff & then not delivering even a part of it.
Aligning expression and action is Integrity 101. It’s so rarely taught that it’s like a dark art.
Become the person who can build the institutions that will embody the change that you want to see.
Activism as a mode of engagement often prioritizes virtue signaling to the in-group over winning.
There is no virtue in loosing.
Natalie Smolenski | Defining Capitalism | Simply Bitcoin IRL
One of the most important and under-appreciated skills in business, as in life, is knowing when to stop talking.
Artists take the darkest things about life and turn them into beauty.
This is very different from glamorizing or wallowing in human suffering, although that difference may not be apparent to the casual observer.
Art is an experience that requires our full presence.