MICHAEL SAYLOR - Satoshi Opened A Portal Into Cyberspace

I'm about halfway through it but it's

actually been

quite quite inspirational in a way I

found it to be really catalytic to my

thinking because

you see hundreds and hundreds of

political economic experiments and you

see them getting corrupted and then the

people struggling to fix them

and and the impact of that and and you

and you can see the

but uh germination or the seeds of the

American psyche and and the drivers that

created the Declaration institution of

Independence and the Constitution and

the Bill of Rights and and uh the the

150 or 200 years of History before the

founding fathers formed America right

that's what they were living with and

they were remembering all of that

it's not something that's taught in in

high school or Junior High it's not even

taught in college it's it's the buried

part of history that goes something like

yeah a bunch of Europeans showed up in

North America the English ended up doing

the best jobs the Indians kind of

receded out of the way and then we

fought a revolutionary war against the

British and started our own country

well it's funny how the narrative always

gets paired down and simplified and like

in that process like almost everything

gets lost and it's so amazing to me just

like

how deep and how many of the corollaries

between right now and those times are

going on like include like the

Continental inflation the way that uh

the speculators would come out in front

of like essentially horse horses would

ride out in front of uh

not the debt collectors but people that

would like redeem the bonds for those

who participated in the Revolutionary

War they got like paid with I forgot

what it was but essentially Bankers

would come in front of them like two

days being like hey the bank it's all

going to be worth nothing but I'll buy

it for you like for two cents on the

dollar and it was you know this rampant

speculative thing that really harmed the

economy and that that's why not we have

the phrase not worth a continental is

because of the hyperinflation that the

Continental paper currency went through

there's also this idea that like uh the

American experiment ended in 1776 which

I'm not sure I agree with that idea but

it's an interesting provocative idea

can you put some meat on that yeah just

basically I mean that was when we

started to lose all our freedoms you

know I mean once things got codified

that like you know you had uh you had

the you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna

use the bad word but you had the agarist

uh Utopia before uh you know things got

codified

well Murray kind of shows that the

American Revolution was just one of the

revolutions right the colonists were

rebelling against Central Authority

multiple times there were other

revolutions lots of them and and uh they

all succeeded or failed to a certain

degree

but from the from the point that

well before the Europeans set foot on

the continent there were thousands of

Indian tribes struggling with each other

right the strong tribes displacing the

weak tribes yeah and um and after the

European set foot on the continent

they simply engaged in the same kind of

tribal struggle and the some Europeans

displaced others but it wasn't even one

European tribe the Puritans had their

view the Catholics had their view the

Quakers had their view the anglicans had

their View

and then you had uh you had

representative governments where the

assemblies had power and then you had

proprietary governments where they in

essence brought the feudal Lord system

to the United States

and you actually could see the

difference between them

a capitalist system and a feudal system

for example in New York

um they chopped up the land amongst a

bunch of Rich families and the settling

no one else could own any land you

couldn't subdivide it so one family

might have 200 000 acres and if you

showed up in New York you would be a a

tenant farmer indentured servant you

could work yourself to death but you

could never own property right and then

if you went to Pennsylvania or certain

other colonies they would let you buy or

claim land and you could get your own

property so of course there were

struggles between the colonies and when

the New Yorkers struggled with the

pennsylvanians or those in New Jersey

the New Yorkers were at a disadvantage

because they didn't have as many people

as much Manpower

because their system was to

disenfranchise and give no property

rights to the people so no one in their

right mind would want to go to New York

right and so like my family

came they were palentines and they came

from Rotterdam to Philadelphia and I

always wondered why they go to

Philadelphia in 1730 and the answer is

you wouldn't have gone to New York

because you had no opportunity there was

no hope for you in New York you would be

working for a feudal Overlord in New

York

so I mean the fascinating thing about

the American experiment is you can you

can ask the question what happens if we

don't let people own property and what

happens if we do let people own property

and the economy and and the culture and

the political system and the people that

do own the property gets 10x bigger and

then you lose and they win and so then

you have a a similar dynamic between the

English settlers and the French

the anguish embraced Agriculture and

they Embrace Manufacturing

and they want to create things whatever

you know and ship it back to Europe the

French wanted to trade with the Indians

for furs

so the French came in and they settled

in an inner part of the continent they

traded for Furs but that's not a very

labor-intensive activity just trading

for Furs so when the French started

vying with the British the British had

20 people 20 uh 20 men for everyone

French

and so how are you going to stand up

against uh against a counterparty or a

competitor that's got 20x the Manpower

you have so their economic choices

um whether it was to give property

rights or whether it was to engage in

agriculture or engage in manufacturing

those resulted in the accretion of power

Manpower eventually military power and

so the most powerful system the system

that was most

organized and most efficient in uh

creating and channeling energy and

capturing energy that was the one that

won and and the the stupid ideas like 10

families are going to own everything in

New York

not a very bright idea that eventually

doesn't win

right because you probably do it for so

long and so I guess the beauty of the

experiment was you had

um irrational behavior in every colony

and um in Georgia it was almost a prison

Colony they brought in a bunch of people

they were indentured servants almost and

they were forced to work

nobody wanted to work the economy

collapsed everybody fled the you know

the colony the colonial effort wasn't

that successful

in Massachusetts the Puritans came and

they were literally puritanical so

you're not allowed to do things on

Sunday you can't smile you know yeah you

can't you can't yeah there are all these

things that were just against the rules

and so people fled

and uh and then the more permissive

cultures either permissive in a

religious sense or in an economic sense

they attracted all of the entrepreneurs

and all of the energy and they grew and

and the problem if you have a federal

government that controls everybody is

there's no experiment right that's a

centralized government and you could

argue that the U.S success was because

of the decentralized nature of the

colonies there was so much distance

between them and there are so many uh so

many competing authorities

that you couldn't impose an unfair rule

on everybody right simultaneously you

know it's funny because as the American

experiment has gone on you know things

have gotten so large and so centralized

and we think of the US government as

this Behemoth you know and I think we

often forget that like uh you know the

United States of America is a you know

is an experiment in decentralization

that's that's the core of it right and

when you compete best idea wins this is

part of the

novel emergence of Bitcoin which you

know for all of human history you have

these Dynamics and it's like what

creates the most Prosperity which leads

to the most power and so you would say

an element to that is freedom and

property rights as Michael was just

saying but at some point it becomes

corruptive or corruptable and so yes you

have the freedom at first and you have

the checks and balances and you have the

property rights but that becomes so

successful that it's a growing honey pot

to co-opt and then it becomes corrupted

and then the whole thing goes to hell

and then you start over again somewhere

else and much of that as far as I can

tell is because of the nature of

property because up until 2008 property

had to concentrate somewhere physically

and it could be you know the Returns on

violence so-called were very high and so

that Honeypot just grew and grew and

grew and if you were the one to

establish order in the land then you

were the one that could easily co-opt

that wealth

and now of course we have a money that

is strictly informational so as we often

say you can hold it in your mind if you

like

and so to me it's interesting and

Michael we've been talking a lot this

week about

you know don't try to see beyond the

Paradigm of the jurisdiction that you're

in because it's basically about who who

has the power in that jurisdiction and

what narrative do they create and what

laws do they create and all that kind of

stuff and so if you could how can you

see beyond that and you if you're going

to see beyond that you have to have an

open mind and that allows you to assess

things properly but when we have

something now that seemingly is

Distributing power so

substantially I.E and Bitcoin so it

doesn't concentrate in one central place

anymore to become a Honeypot but that

power is being distributed what does

that mean for the nature of governance

for the nature of political or

individual organization like how and

also you know the question here is

Michael you've been talking a lot lately

about basically like a Will To Power

right if you have the more guys if you

have the better machines if you can make

the more drones you win right who can

bear the most resources in that game

but when something causes the

distribution of power like Bitcoin seems

to have the capacity or potential to do

how does that influence if at all the

kind of just Eternal dynamics of power

that auto always settle disputes between

the Indians and the Puritans or between

the French and the English or between

the the cons and the Chinese or what you

know the the Mongols and the Chinese how

does that emergence of Bitcoin in that

type of property influence the Eternal

balance of power game that's been

playing out since time immemorial

I mean I think it's useful to have a

model with two extremes two polar

extremes one would be a country where

all the property was in the land or in

the physical assets or in the companies

within the country

and uh The Other Extreme would be a

country where substantially all the

property let's say 95 percent

was in cyberspace

stored uh in the heads of the people

they say in the form of Bitcoin and

cyberspace

so

in the one extreme where all the

property is in the land

there's uh there's an encouragement to

to war because the country right next to

you

can invade your borders and take all the

property

right especially if the property is

something which can't be destroyed like

gold let's say the most extreme we've

got all of our money in gold and a volt

indestructible and you live next door

you can come in the country Kill

Everybody

firebomb everything

take the gold leave right so gold is an

encouragement to violence from outside

encouragement to war

um if if the property is buildings and

and factories and forms maybe I want to

use a neutron bomb right like I want to

use something which doesn't necessarily

destroy the structures you have to be a

little bit more careful and surgical in

your War right not to destroy something

um and

but so let's say uh we know that war is

encouraged by immobile property or

indestructible property in the Physical

Realm

um and uh the encouragement to

corruption I'll call politics right if I

want to seize your property via Politics

the way I do it is you have a building I

see the building I tax the building two

percent a year I reassess the value of

the building up seven percent a year

and in about 20 years I've taken your

building

right so taxation is a way for me to

seize your property expropriation is a

quicker way I just seizure oil company

or I just seizure land we need your land

for an airport we need your land for

you know for a school we're going to pay

you whatever we're going to pay you

right so when the property is immobile

uh there's a tendency for a foreign

politician or foreign government

to cross your border with violence and

take it all and if they do cross-border

with violence they get it all depending

upon how indestructible it is right and

how how surgical they are and then when

your property is immobile there's a

tendency for the authority of the

federal government or the provincial

government simply to tax it or

expropriate it or I can get it by

regulating it right I can just say that

oh you operate a bakery

and it is now illegal to bake bread that

that happened in New York the governor

of New York made it illegal to bake

bread

so your bakery is worthless I can make

it illegal to make hats they did that

too the Hat Act is illegal to make hats

I can make it you have a ranch and you

export beef I make it illegal to export

beef

you know I make it illegal to sell right

and then if I can't make a legal I could

put a price control on it it's illegal

to sell it for more than a dollar it

cost you two dollars I bankrupt you then

I buy your uh your factory or your Ranch

out of receivership and then I changed

that law and I make it illegal but but

not for the government or not for a

person with a license and then it's

legal again so in that environment you

have a high return on corruption and you

have a high return on violence and War

and the Other Extreme

all the property is digital so the

Hostile nation state crosses the border

and kills everybody and there's no

property left there's nothing to seize

because the property's gone because it

was in cyberspace and they cross the

border and they jail everybody and then

they're like in a negotiate if they

don't kill everybody but they just jail

you there's this negotiation where I

want your property and you say you're

not going to give it to me and I tell

you I'm going to shoot you and you tell

me shoot me but you're not getting it

and people you know the entire history

of the world it's the history of the

world is this and this is what you learn

humans have had courage for thousands

hundreds of thousands of years the

history books are full of examples of

people that died for their beliefs

you read Livy the Romans attack a city

the people in the city didn't want to

give in the Romans they got so angry

they took all of their goods they piled

them in a bonfire they burned everything

they even burned all their their jewelry

down and then they threw themselves in

the bon fire

you know if you read the the sack of

Carthage the famous example and Carthage

is is the prince of Carthage was was

going to surrender to the Romans and his

wife went up to the roof of the of the

Citadel

with the children and she said you're

not a carthaginian you're no husband of

mine anymore and she threw herself and

her kids off the top of the building

before they would surrender to the

Romans right and so there's plenty of

examples of people dying for their

beliefs but the problem is the property

was seized anyway

and that makes me believe

that in fact when your property is in

your head when they invade your country

and they put you in a jail sale and they

sweat you for 90 days

they're not going to get more than half

right you know you might get half I'll

I'll do a deal with you I'll give you 25

I'll give you 50 50 turns out to be like

the tax rate that stale like when the

government gets strong enough that

they're going to take as much money as

they can they generally take like 50 of

everything and they kind of can get away

with taking half but when you get to the

point where you're taking 90 percent of

everything people just think I'm just

not going to work anymore I'm leaving if

I can get out and I'm not you know this

is not worth the trouble right and the

famous example in the Beatles song is

it's 19 parts for you and one for me

because the tax rate in in Britain was

95 at one point

so I think on the right side of the axis

when all property is substantially

Bitcoin and digital

then there's no point in uh in invading

that country because you're not getting

anything I mean but because first of all

if you did invade the country unless you

did it in an hour or less and no one

knew

all the Bitcoin will be gone from the

country right it's going to be wired off

into cyberspace put into some time lock

multi-seg or it's going to another

country the Bitcoin can move faster than

the Army can move so there's not it's

not really that productive to engage in

war to get it and then the corruption

doesn't make a lot of sense because if I

run a country country a and I pass a law

taxing Bitcoin five percent a year or 50

percent

the Bitcoin leaves the country

right and like Bitcoin is mobile

property and the Cyber domain

the the example of this in the real

domain is you know there was an island

in the Mediterranean that I won't name

that came up with the idea of taxing

yachts it had a bunch of super Yachts

there and they decided that all these

super yacht owners had a lot of money

and it was unfair that they should be

there even though the Yachts are

spending millions of dollars a year on

dockage and and buying food and buying

drink and and paying for services but

their thought was we just want more it's

not enough so they passed the law taxing

the super Yachts thinking that they were

they were such a great place and all the

Yachts were in the port until the day

before the law went in and then the day

the law went into action the entire Port

was empty and the Yachts never came back

and the entire economy crashed all the

shop owners you know all were going

bankrupt they went back to the

politicians and said you know that was a

pretty stupid law can we like reverse

that one and they reversed that and then

the Yachts came back Yachts are mobile

property right but of course Bitcoin is

a lot better than a yacht you know if

you're going to store your value for a

hundred years I recommend the Bitcoin

not the yeah but I would say

when you have a building and it's in the

middle of town and you're the richest

person in town everybody walks by the

building and they think it's really

unfair that that rich person doesn't pay

more taxes and they just start thinking

about a way to put a progressive tax on

that building

and all you can and the problem with

that coming back to corruption is if you

actually are a rich person with a

building in the middle of town and they

haven't stolen all your money it's

because you're the one backing the

politicians and so you're basically

encouraging the corruption of the

political process because to have wealth

that is visible and stationary it

requires that you elect the politicians

so that they don't steal your wealth and

you have two classes of people those

that don't engage in politics with

stationary visible wealth and they are

their wealth is stolen within one

generation they are all impoverished and

then you have people that have visible

stationary wealth that do engage in

politics that contribute to the

political process that corrupt the

political process they get to keep their

wealth but in so doing they corrupt

themselves and once they realize that

they can influence a politician to not

steal their wealth they basically

influence the politician to steal some

competitor's wealth and you engage in

this never-ending cycle of political

corruption where we weaponize the

political system

because you just can't have wealth in a

virtuous fashion that is visible and

stationary in uh in a political

jurisdiction because all the political

systems all tend toward power and they

all tend toward corruption and so in the

absence of freedom to to leave and take

your property with you

the system is doomed to an endless cycle

of ever greater corruption until

eventually it reaches this entropic

Frontier where it collapses under its

own weight this is what makes Rob's I

mean all the stuff we always talk about

Eric your work so fascinating because

basically the premise here is that

imperfect property creates an incentive

structure that exacerbates human

imperfections let's say so to flip that

on its end what does perfect property

now I don't know if we can say perfect

but Bitcoin is damn close to a perfect

property how does that create an

incentive structure that instead of

exacerbating the aspects of ourselves

that we might deem deem imperfect how

does it draw out the aspects of

ourselves cells that are more virtuous

more truthful more if you want to be

dramatic Divine and this is what we you

know this is why this is so

mind-blowing because once you realize

that that incentive structure that is

going to draw those things out of people

almost inescapably as Michael just said

like if you're that property owner in

New York you're going to respond to your

incentives do you want your property

taken away or do you want to play the

political game and when you start

playing that game you start doing things

that you don't like that you know are

kind of wrong but you do them to to

survive and now that the property has

shifted we have a different form of

property it's bringing out these

elements of ourselves that I think we

would deem good and you know that's so

on display in this environment we've

been in the last week we meet all these

people and they're so you can tell that

their eyes are open they're looking

toward the future with hope they're

invigorated they're enthusiastic and

there's a strong ethical Dimension to

all the stuff that's going on here and

Eric you talk about it all the time so

why don't you well so the ethical

dimension thing is really important and

what I'd point out is that

the idea of imperfect property doesn't

exist property itself is a an idea and a

concept legally and the problem is is

that it's not that we don't have

imperative property it's that we have

imperfect law and so that the Sovereign

exception that always allows for the

state of emergency so that expropriation

can happen or even the taxation

structure made so that you can

eventually siphon everybody else else's

wealth goes to show that this exception

and the idea of property property in

itself fundamentally collapses under

that so Bitcoin with the ethical

assertion of a a property that

fundamentally does not have any sort of

sovereign exception that can ever be

triggered inside of it now means that we

have true property which also reinforces

the that essentially property itself is

fundamentally an idea and so we took

this idea and transposed it onto

physical stuff whatever it may be yacht

house car whatever's physical

but because of its actual physical

qualities and violence that the state

has and the ability to use the Sovereign

exception it turns out like we actually

don't have property at all we have this

thing where governments give us

permission to some limited amount of

access to I.E the property

up until the limits that they choose

within that Sovereign exception and so

so to me a lot of what we're seeing here

together as people is essentially

the overcoming of this exception idea

with a true form of law that also gives

us ethics which is in my opinion why

we're also lit up about being here and

participating one of these extremes

to kind of take a page at a Sailors book

if you use the thought experiment

of a hypothetical world where everyone's

invincible

and no one can take anyone else's stuff

right so you can't be killed and you

can't be stolen from

in that world you actually have perfect

property right like your stuff cannot be

taken and your your most personal

property your body cannot be harmed or

killed

and in that world there's basically zero

relevance for a state or government you

don't need physical security to maintain

the Integrity of your relationship to

your stuff because no one can take it

and no one can hurt you

so there's this weird like obviously

that's an ideal that's an impossibility

you can never achieve that we're not

Invincible we're mortal our stuff can be

taken but we're when I look at property

it's basically taking this

I guess it's a biological darwinian

impulse for territoriality all right

like the original property was families

living on land and they would they would

burn the flame that reflected their

ancestors and if the flame ever went out

it was like a very bad omen

and the family was the primary social

unit

so it was very much like this emergent

thing about territoriality that we then

when we invented the individual we

started assigning that to individual

things like you now can own individual

things rather than just land that's

purely immobile

so we've been kind of working away from

this

immobile property that's very seasonable

and then invites violence towards things

that are

more abstract I guess and more

personalized and more individualized

and so to the extent you can create a

world that's closer to that ideal where

you can't steal people's stuff there's

repercussions for it you're actually

inhibiting or disincentivizing violence

as a wealth acquisition strategy

and I always boil it down to making

versus taking right there's two ways to

acquire wealth you can take someone's

stuff you can seize your farm or steal

your business or steal your gold or I

can build the business construct the

farm mine the Gold all right I can make

it or engage and trade with with other

people that have engaged in making so

the the way I see Bitcoin is like just

giving people recourse to this form of

property that is hypermobile

unseasonable

uh lets people opt out of those games

when the political environment

degenerates into corruption and chaos

and theft so it's it just it's a check

right so if

if Human Action is like emerging from

the incentive structures we inhabit

we've just

been inhabiting weird incentives by

virtue of being you know Apes with plans

and sticks and rocks trying to build a

better world

but that temptation to steal your [ __ ]

was always there so people always always

give into it

and you get as much as we get the

Austrian boom and bust business cycle

from the base and currency and violating

property I think we also get this

civilizational boom and bust cycle

and so I don't know Bitcoin just gives

you this portal to another dimension

unless you kind of opt out of the game

when the game's disfavorable for you and

then you can go to a place where a

jurisdiction that treats you better and

uh that more respects private property

and that seems like a much better world

I think that it's a useful

model to think that on one one extreme

of the axis if you have physical

property

uh there's a vicious cycle

of corruption and violence

and when you have digital property

there's a virtuous cycle toward Civility

and cooperation

one extreme is

the economically

the economically powerful

but physically weak

versus the uh the physically powerful

economically weak when you have that

situation that is um

a poor person with a gun

in the room with a multi-billionaire

then what you have is the physically

powerful hold

the economically wealthy and contempt

and uh and so that's in very that's

happened throughout history right it's

always like Genghis Khan rides across

the plain and sacks all of the all of

the Nations that are physically weak or

militarily weaker but economically

stronger why did he bother

to conquer them right

you don't bother you don't go to war

with someone militarily stronger that

has nothing

right it's like we don't go out and pick

a fight with a volcano that offers us

nothing right basically it was the the

powerful praying on the weak because

they hold the weak in contempt

but if on the other hand you're

economically invulnerable when you meet

someone to Robert's point of view you

meet someone that is economically

powerful but you know that it is

absolutely impossible for you we'll just

say for for the sake of discussion it's

impossible for you to seize their

economic wealth

like forgetting about the physical

component if if that person has a

hundred billion dollars and there's no

law and no gun and there's no way for me

to get the hundred billion dollars

through force or through trickery or

through law

then I actually hold them in respect

right so if you're weak I hold you in

contempt

if you're invulnerable

I hold you with respect

and of course the only rational action

if I know I can't take it

is I have to trade with you

what is it that you want that I have

that you might that you might uh trade

me some of your economic energy for

so so ultimately

if um that the world has been doomed to

an endless cycle of violence and

Corruption

uh because of this uh because of this

physical property and and these physical

assets and I think the world is being

tipped into a virtuous cycle of of

Civility and cooperation

because of the formation of a digital

property you can hold and right now

Bitcoin is just this very flickering

Ember it's 0.1 percent

uh maybe it's less than 0.1 percent of

the economic wealth of the world maybe

it's five basis points of economic

wealth of the world but it is the first

time in human history where you had

something that approached that that

perfected uh property right

now I'll say one more point on the on

the

pre-colonial or the colonial American

experiment to the extent that virtue

came out of the colonies

one of the reason that virtue emerged

that created the Constitution the Bill

of Rights The American Nation and a

nation that to a greater degree than any

other we know of has supported economic

freedom and political freedom

that virtue came because if I oppressed

you in one Colony you could flee and

cross the border they didn't have sealed

borders you could literally walk from

Massachusetts to Rhode Island in fact

there are lots of examples of Quakers

walking from Massachusetts to Rhode

Island on the road right and there's no

one stopping you and of course the

borders weren't sealed to the West so if

you lived in a in Virginia and you felt

like the Virginia governor was

oppressive you could just keep going

west and there were Indian tribes but

the tribes weren't that organized and if

you could make if you brought the tribe

something they wanted you could make

friends with them

right and so there there was uh freedom

of mobility and to the extent that the

New York Governor made it illegal to

make hats or or actually the making the

legal hat thing was applied to all the

colonies by the British it wasn't even a

New York thing it was a it was exciting

when when the British came up with a

silly rule in London and you lived 500

miles out in the wilderness in the

Appalachians maybe you just ignored that

rule so to a certain degree a lot of the

ridiculous laws that were put on the

books were ignored because it was so

difficult to enforce them

and so that's another they and there was

a period of what they call benign

neglect

where where a Walpole didn't he would

agree to pass a stupid rule but he

wouldn't enforce the rule and everybody

lived halfway right so it was difficult

to enforce oppressive rules it was

difficult to Jail the people in a

jurisdiction and in New York if the New

York Governor wouldn't let you own land

or buy land you had the opportunity to

row across the Hudson River or or go to

New Jersey or go to Pennsylvania and get

a better deal so it's not that they

didn't have those corrupting Tendencies

but it was much more difficult to

enforce the corrupt rules and although

they didn't have physical they didn't

have perfect property they didn't have

digital property what you did have is

you had the possibility

if you were oppressed in Europe you had

the possibility to get on a ship travel

for six to 12 weeks and get off on the

other side of the world where maybe you

could have some property it was a

12-week dangerous Journey from no Pro no

rights to rights and if you were in

Massachusetts and it was oppressive you

had the ability to go west or go south

and because people had optionality

there were consequences to irrationality

you you pass a ridiculous Rule people

just don't abide by it and you and you

declare an irrational edict then people

flee your jurisdiction

and when a politician or authoritarian

finds that um that people won't do what

they want

and the history of America is the long

the long-running history of people not

doing what they're told

not doing what they're told and being

you know it's like eventually at the end

of the day why do I go west it's because

I want to get away from the mayor and

the governor and the politician and the

lawyers right and and you could say we

were pretty virtuous as long as we could

keep going west yeah and when we ran out

of a place to go right and we got

trapped with ourself things started to

get worse and worse and worse

so the story of human history is people

striving to find a place where they can

have property and it's always imperfect

but now we've kind of run out of places

and of course the ultimate corrupt

regime is you're in a country you can't

flee through the airport you can't get

out you can't take your property with

you you can't get away and in that

country whether it's a Zimbabwe or a

Cuba or North Korea it's one percent of

the people with the guns

end up proving that they can literally

starve everybody else and you wonder

well how long can this go on until they

lose power and the answer is they can

pretty much starve 95 percent of the

country and squeeze the country down to

a GDP of three percent of previous

and they'll probably still have power as

long as they keep the guns and until and

the only way that uh that uh that falls

or that stops is when someone next their

next door neighbor says I want that and

so the next door neighbor comes in and

they find a bunch of starred population

and they're able to topple the regime

that kind of might work

or you get the Easter Island situation

where the authoritarians just decide

that you must cut down all the trees to

make large statues to worship my gods

and if you don't I will murder you

and someone says well you know

eventually chop down all the trees we

won't be able to fish and we're going to

starve to death to the lake murder him

your heretic

essentially you and you end up with a

lot of stone statues and everybody

starves to death and like 100 years

later or a thousand years later people

come along and they say who built these

statues and why are they all dead

and then and then someone goes it seems

kind of stupid to waste all of your

economic Energy building statues in an

island in the middle of the Pacific and

it's like yeah you don't know the half

of it

but you know let me show you other

religious and authoritarian societies

and let me show you what they build

and I just make one last point

every great city on earth

London Paris Venice New York Moscow

Tokyo

Beijing every great city on Earth was

the center of an Empire that used

violence and force in order to impose

taxes and customs duties in order to

seize the wealth of everybody else in

the Empire

and they form the city they passed the

law they create the monopolies they

Seize Your wealth Rome when someone

doesn't want to pay half of when they

don't want to give half of everything

they've got to the Empire they're to

court a Smuggler a pirate

a barbarian

a heretic we raise our army we raise our

Navy we go and we kill them we sink

their ships

right that's why Carthage had to die so

Rome could rise that's why the

phonations were dispersed so the

carthaginians could rise that's why

every Venetian Fortress was previously a

phonation Fortress was previously a

Greek Fortress was previously a uh a

Roman Fortress eventually became a

British a French Fortress then a British

Fortress right because you just have to

have these Island fortresses and the

Mediterranean so that you can murder

people that wished across from point A

to point B without giving you half their

stuff

and all of that plunder you know the

Navigation Acts were what caused the

Revolutionary War and that was the

British saying you have to ship

everything in a British ship and you

have to pay a tariff and the Tariff is

two to three times the value of the

thing that you're shipping

like they're literally taking 50 to 75

percent of the economic value and

there's always that issue of just how

much can I get with a barrel of a gun

and when it got to be 90 people just

said screw it we're just not going to

produce this thing and ship it it's just

too hard right so the number is like

half normally half to two-thirds but

then we evade it

so at the end of the day you you see the

rise of these Empires throughout human

history one after the other after the

other after the other enforced by a

military enforced by a Navy enforced by

physical power

the money goes to London and you have

beautiful castles and beautiful

buildings until it goes to New York and

you have beautiful buildings and if you

see a big building

it's because somebody had an Empire and

when you go to Venice and you look

around you realize that the venetians

that inherited that stuff they can't

even afford to fix the leaks they can't

even afford to maintain and paint the

building they're all sinking into the

ocean and you think how did they ever

have the money to build this stuff

and it's they didn't it's just that they

stole half of what everybody else had in

the Mediterranean for a while as long as

they could

and then when that stops

you know the the city ossifies you know

and you either go to Venice or you go to

Rome or eventually in Rome they had to

steal all the marble and the Coliseum

because they couldn't afford to to

Quarry their own marble anymore and

that's how far they'd sunk

and uh every time you go through a big

city today you look around and what you

see is an edifice to a Empire

and uh

you want to fix the problem right you

you fix the ability uh to impose your

will through physical Force

on everyone creating something you

basically disenfranchise the parasite

class

and you enfranchise the producer class

when that happens then all of all of

this Prosperity will spread evenly more

evenly around the globe until you won't

be able to identify the seat of the

Empire and you won't need a Navy or an

army to defend it

I think going back to the concept of

like going west and you know how we ran

out of room eventually like then you

know when we did run out of room we had

to go digital right but you know you

talk about uh how America's culture has

always been a culture of like sort of

being an unruly people who don't really

do what the [ __ ] we're told which I

think is the beautiful thing about being

an American it's like maybe I'll do that

maybe I won't I don't know

um you know I I think that because of

the new digital you know panopticon that

we have like because of the surveillance

Society we're actually in this very

precarious place where the state you

know the state didn't used to win that

much they would pass a rule like you

can't make hats and people would be like

that rule is [ __ ] stupid I'm not

following that and so basically we're

now approaching this this place where

the state has like a near 100 win rate

because of the surveillance society and

so you got to jump ship and you got to

go digital and I I don't think that

people realize that there are basically

two boats and one is leading them into

bondage and the other boat is full of

encryption-powered individuals who are

heading towards sovereignty and to me

it's like ver I feel like I'm standing

at the shore and screaming at people get

on the right boat and people are going

nah this other boat's just as good it's

faster it's taking us to America and and

you know I just want to tell them like

that's the wrong boat you have no power

the powerful are going to be

contemptuous of you because of how weak

you are and they're gonna you know

shackle you put you in bondage and tell

you what to do you're going to become