I have an unfinished book manuscript, I started writing in 2020. I'm actually quite happy with what's there. It's called "A World Worth Living In". It is my attempt to capture the constitution of the principles I think lead towards what you might call the "good life". It's a deeply philosophical book, and it tries to synthesize what I see as the best principles for thinking about the present, and how I think we could move towards the future.

I keep opening up Scrivener, and can't get past a writer's block. I think what's really happened is some pretty important assumptions I went into writing it, have shifted under my feet. In particular, a pretty deep re-evaluation of how I think about the problems and opportunity of technology.

That said, I've come to a conclusion. I think I'm going to try and repurpose some select portions of the manuscript I still think represent my current thoughts into some Medium posts in the coming months.

Also, I want to start a new manuscript, that tried to build my case for bitcoin. Why I think it's important. Where I think it's going. Where I think it's not going. And how it interfaces with political and cultural challenges. I speak to a lot of people who constantly tell me that they are glad I'm advancing the perspectives I am, and that I represent a thread of thought in bitcoin that has a decent amount of adherents, but there's really no corpus to capture what the full argument is. There is plenty of such sources of this from an anarchist and libertarian perspective. I want to give a shot at creating an argument that treads a lot closer to the classical liberal tradition.

I really feel like I need a new Sunday hobby.

There's a more general observation I would make here, and it encompasses political ideologies of all sorts. That's the belief that one can know what the ideal society looks like.

Such a statement might sound confusing coming from someone such as myself that makes relatively strong pronouncements about thing I think are good and things I think are bad. So one might ask why one wouldn't simply formulate a vision of a world that contains only things that I would consider good, and exclude things that are bad. But epistemically, I think this is actually impossible to do. Rather, I think of morality as a function that can only be understood in relation to inputs of that function, and the consequences of actions. But like integer factorization, I don't believe the inverse of the operation is generalizable.

Therefore, I'd argue that all such formulations of an ideal world are hopelessly utopian.

This might actually be my biggest objection to the kind of thinking we are currently interrogating here.

Then what are you basing your objection on, if not just your intuition?

I also just want to say, when having these debates, it's often apparent to me that these sorts of things are really political and in many cases, arguments about meta-ethics.

Most people who believe the collapse of all fiat currency, the welfare state and the rise of bitcoin is "inevitable" are almost universally coming from an anarchist and/or extreme libertarian position.

When you scratch beneath the surface, you start to find that they tend to believe there's an inevitability that everyone will come to understand market maximalism is the only ethical way to live. In this sense, I believe these arguments are lost in quite a bit of moral and epistemic confusion.

I recognize some might be offended to hear me put it that way. But it's what I think, and I would be practicing a form of hypocrisy if I wasn't honest about that.

I think there's a lot of rational reasons to believe you're right about this. Including how Bitcoin may force fiat currencies to be managed in a more responsible manner, causing them to maintain legitimacy. There are always recursive effects in complex systems, and things don't tend to play out in such bland and white ways. With anything, really.

Yeah. I would argue that bitcoin is a tool of democracy in this very regard. Because it returns power to individuals and gives them an option that isn't merely the currency the government has on offer.

My assumption is it's far more likely people will tolerate higher taxes, combined with spending reforms, than they would the removal of these programs.

Its* -- I hate autocorrect sometimes.

I'm not sure that I agree that the existence of fractional reserve banks are a creature of the state. In fact, it seems to me, that the time preference arbitrage, is a pretty seductive and powerful incentive for fractional reserve banking, even in the purist of unregulated free markets.

It also seems to me, that the possibility of returns and yield on even bitcoin, from trading time preferences for interest, would persist, even in a world of hyperbitcoinization.

I feel like when people make this argument, there's quite a bit they're taking for granted about what they view as people's innate ability to practice restraint based on a normative principle, such as the ethics of such a thing.

Well, my argument isn't that bitcoin is exactly like gold. But that it will play a role of a new kind of money that has gold-like properties in the sense of its supply constraints and ability to hold independent of state authority.

Here is a citation to support my point: https://www.newsweek.com/more-half-republicans-support-tax-hikes-americans-earning-over-400k-poll-1630303?amp=1

I'm making a stronger argument than that, though. My argument is not about what "governments will want to do" but what "people will want governments to do". The social safety net is *incredibly* popular. Even among the political right, a majority of Republican voters in the United States, support higher taxes on the rich, for example. This sort of belief that most people have anarchistic tendencies, doesn't seem to pass any smell test.

One of the reasons I have doubts that hyperbitcoinization will ever happen, and bitcoin will instead become like a super-gold, is because I don't agree that people are going to ever en masse come to reject the welfare state. In most of these arguments, there's this libertarian/anarcho-capitalist assumption that people are going to "wake up" and realize that taxation is theft, the welfare state is authoritarian, and they're going to embrace a world of radical self-sufficiency and market maximalism. I don't see the political incentives ever aligning in that direction. I also disagree that such a future is mechanically inevitable, as many people claim.

Yes. This is one of my core theses about the future of bitcoin.

I don't quite agree with the way you're defining money. But I think I at least understand the sentiment you're trying to convey.

I'd argue the separation of church and state is not even as strong as people make it out to be. Being a practicing Christian basically remains a prerequisite for the presidency in this country, as an almost unspoken rule, even if the constitution says otherwise!

Reality is government's should not fear competitive private money like bitcoin, if they're a confident in their state-issued currency. I don't really take a position on the inevitability of the end of state-issued currency. I do take a position on the inventively bitcoin becoming one of the most important currencies in the world, and acting as a significant competitive monetary force in the world, which will change incentives dramatically.

Apparently!

For the record, and I am on the record, here. I've said it many times. I think Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are guilty of war crimes, and I have consistently supported the idea of their prosecution for over a decade. So I face the implication of my moral hypocrisy here, with amusement.

I think the likelihood that this is a coordinated distraction is very low. Pretty sure the empaneled grand jury, which is a year old, had no idea they were part of a grant conspiracy to distract from a crisis on behalf of the fiat system. That's just silly confused, conspiratorial nonsense.