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I’ve read your Pegged white paper with genuine interest. It is both original and thought-provoking, an attempt to design a monetary protocol that redistributes value through provably fair lotteries, stripped of governance, narrative, or intervention. The elegance of its neutrality is clear, and it advances an important conversation about how money can be structured differently.
That said, I want to offer a critique that comes less from technical design and more from praxeology and anthropology, from the standpoint of how humans act, organize, and construct legitimacy.
From a praxeological perspective, money and capital are not ends in themselves; they are means to purposeful human action. Exclusion from finance is indeed a structural constraint, but it is not an empty space. Where formal banking and credit fail, people already build institutions to mitigate risk and create access: families and kin networks, savings circles, reciprocal lending, remittances, microfinance groups. These institutions exist because they counter randomness. They convert uncertainty into predictability through reciprocity, trust, and mutual obligation.
Pegged, by contrast, elevates randomness as its principle of fairness. This is technically ingenious, but anthropologically brittle. In real communities, repeated random outcomes are rarely interpreted as neutral. If the same individual wins twice, suspicion of foul play arises, no matter how strong the cryptographic proof. Without narrative legitimacy or embedded trust, structural neutrality risks being read as arbitrariness or collusion.
Moreover, excluded populations often place the highest value on reliability, continuity, and competence. A chance-based redistribution system may feel less like access and more like a casino. By design, Pegged refuses the social institutions that humans rely on to transform windfalls into sustained capital. The result is a profound cultural mismatch: what appears mathematically fair may be experienced socially as illegitimate.
My question, then, is whether randomness can ever serve as a sufficient foundation for money. Pegged is an experiment in radical neutrality, but fairness in human terms usually requires more than chance. It requires narrative, reciprocity, and competence. Without these, a protocol may function flawlessly in code yet fail as a human institution.
I offer this not as dismissal but as engagement. Pegged opens a fascinating design space. My critique is that it risks mistaking exclusion for emptiness, overlooking the dense institutional logics that already govern access to capital. I would be very interested to hear how you see Pegged addressing this cultural dimension.
With respect,
Richard Martin
Try smiling.
Do you correct stories that don't add up by making up other stories that don't add up?
How do you know that?
Of course, but that doesn't entail they are all connected in some way beyond the fact that our knowledge is always partial and people lie.
Who says I don't do my own research? Stop projecting.
What if there’s no conspiracy at all but just overexcited people making up stuff from random occurrences?
I've created a Bitcoin Home Mining Calculator: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A27rvArtVs32nGj62pOCHAFKjK5eSJp6/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117433313265964214204&rtpof=true&sd=true
#bitcoin #mining #homemining #calculator
Bitcoin Home Mining Calculator
Yours to use. Yellow cells for variables and green cells for estimates. Let me know what you think.
Rich
Information follows a Pareto distribution: 90 percent of the information comes from 10 percent of the sources. Prior to the internet and mobile phones, that meant a few TV networks and local radio stations and newspapers. It used to cost tens of dollars for a long distance phone call; now it’s basically free. Now the outliers can broadcast their messages. In some cases, they’re valuable. But there are a lot of wing nuts out there. There have always been conspiracy theories, for instance, but now they have a global community and can talk to each other.
Or maybe you've become much more aware of the need to triangulate because all information is partial.
I can relate. That’s why we need to consult reliable sources and wait for police to do their job.
That’s unnecessarily cynical.
I just saw that. WSJ normally a reliable source, but it’s still early.
Exactly. Key word is allegedly. What is the source?
What evidence do you have that the guy is a radical—or any other kind of—leftist?
"The aggressor is always peace-loving; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."
Carl von Clausewitz, On War
War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, huh!
Except when a country attacks. Are you just supposed to lie down and take it?
Anybody who thinks that military defence can be assured by private businesses is delusional. That includes all the Mises Institute libertarians who follow Rothbard and Hoppe.
The keyword in the term Austrian economics is economics. It has nothing to do with defence or security. Even Ludwig von Mises, the namesake of the institute was clear that only the state can provide defence and security. For that it requires the monopoly of force suitably constrained by a vigilant population and enforced through effective institutions of governance.
The problem comes when actors who are empowered by the stae try to do what individuals and businesses/non profits do best.
I am working on a book that will clarify a simple conviction: sovereignty and parasovereignty are not rivals, but complementary guarantees of human action. Sovereignty is the insurance policy for collective survival and prosperity. Parasovereign protocols — Bitcoin, Nostr, Tor — are the insurance policies for individual freedom. Both are indispensable, but they do not operate on the same plane.
The task now is to serve those who recognize this. To build systems, products, and services that help individuals and organizations leverage parasovereign protocols for their own freedom and flourishing. That, after all, is what the capitalist system exists to do: to meet real human needs with ingenuity, discipline, and courage.
My intent is to explore and equip leaders for this frontier. Not to predict the future, but to help shape it — by aligning strategy with the enduring truth that freedom and survival require both sovereignty and parasovereignty, each in its place.
#parasovereignty
Sovereignty and parasovereignty are not rivals.
Sovereignty is the insurance policy for collective survival and prosperity.
Parasovereign protocols — Bitcoin, Nostr, Tor — are the insurance policies for individual freedom.
Both are indispensable. Both must be served.
The work ahead is to build systems that help people leverage parasovereignty for freedom and flourishing.
That is what capitalism is for.
I never claimed otherwise. I’m fully aware that Jews are not a homogeneous group, nor anyone else for that matter. Don’t put words in my mouth or over interpret my statements. However, Israel is explicitly THE Jewish State. A quick ChatGPT search answers this question, but that requires bit of work, right?
In 1948, Israel accepted the UN partition plan but was immediately invaded by five Arab armies. The Arab leadership rejected both the Jewish and the projected Arab state, seeking instead to wipe out the Jews. In the war that followed, Israel survived and controlled land allocated for the Arab state, but Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt took Gaza, leaving Palestinians stateless and in refugee camps by Arab design. From 1949 through the 1960s, Israel endured constant fedayeen raids from Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, and Lebanon, with full state backing. The 1956 Sinai campaign came after Egypt blockaded Eilat, an act of war, and massed troops. Under U.S. pressure, Israel withdrew. In 1967, after another Egyptian blockade and massive buildup in Sinai, Israel launched a preemptive strike; despite urging Jordan and Syria to stay out, both attacked, and Israel captured the Sinai, Golan, West Bank, and East Jerusalem. These territories were understood as bargaining chips for peace, not conquest. The 1973 Yom Kippur War, launched by Egypt and Syria, finally led to peace with Egypt and Jordan. The pattern is clear: Israel’s territorial changes came in defensive wars forced on it, not from unprovoked expansionism.
I like how you assume I must be Jewish.
Do you accept the right of Israel to exist in peace? If yes, then that automatically implies the inherent right to defend themselves.
Self defence is not for political gain. It is existential. It is costly and destructive. As long as one people or state attacks other peoples or states, they should expect them to defend themselves. Unfortunately, this causes death and destruction.
Framing the situation in abstract terms is irrelevant. We have to ground all consideration of real options and their consequences in terms of the concrete situation, not disembodied absolutisms.
The very groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic of Iran, among many others—that openly proclaim their intent to wipe Israel off the map and eradicate the Jews accuse Israel of genocide. That’s not justice—it’s the oldest antisemitic blood libel repackaged for the 21st century. That’s called projection.
It’s projection: the very groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic of Iran, among many others—that openly proclaim their intent to wipe Israel off the map and eradicate the Jews accuse Israel of genocide. That’s not justice—it’s the oldest antisemitic blood libel repackaged for the 21st century.
How about you contribute to mine instead?
More like "When did you stop beating your grandparents."
As Jane Fonda said about being in Barbarella, "work is work."
Thanks for the shout out Ava. Working on a book proposal. Stay tuned. #parasovereignty