https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MAeYCvyjQgE
What are your thoughts on Bitcoin and technology pushing for decentralization? Do you have any thoughts on that? Well, I like the idea of decentralized. I wouldn’t say power, because again, I think that’s the wrong way of construing the situation, because as soon as you think about decentralized power, then you’ve fallen into the clutches of those who think that power is the fundamental motivation. I really do think that’s an unbelievably pathological presupposition, because what it presupposes is that, well, if everyone had their own choice, what they would choose is to compel others to do their will. And I don’t believe that’s true. I mean, I think it’s true under some circumstances, but as I said before, I think that’s only true when things degenerate, because I don’t think that we find our highest meaning in the compulsion of others to do our will. And I don’t believe that we can find the meaning that sustains us in life by forcing others to do, to grant our short-term wishes. I think that’s an extraordinarily counterproductive way to live. And I think that the fact that psychopaths fail is evidence for that. Psychopathy, psychopaths are people who have the proclivity to use instrumental compulsion on others. For a psychopath, you’re the source of whatever gratification can be extracted in the short term. And that looks like it’s a more effective evolutionary strategy than laying at home semi-conscious in your bed. But it’s certainly not effective enough so that it’s the dominant human strategy, not by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not even the dominant chimpanzee strategy. And so it isn’t the distribution of power that’s the advantage to decentralization. It’s the distribution of destiny and responsibility. Now, I’ll tell you one other thing about the story in Exodus, because there’s another segment of that story that’s extremely interesting. So when the Israelites are out in the desert, remember they’ve been slaves forever, and so they don’t know how to organize themselves. They’re fighting like mad. They have no idea how to mediate their own conflicts. And you see this in the modern world constantly, especially among people who are married. But within families as well, people are very bad at negotiating mediation. They have no idea how to do it. Why that is, is very complicated. But I think it’s partly the desert and tyranny problem, is it’s hard to communicate with your partner, because if it turns out that you’re wrong, which you often are, probably usually, and it means you have to give up something you believe to be true and which wasn’t, which is a bit of the tyrannical you. And then when you give that up, then you have to be in the desert for a while. And that’s annoying. And so it’s much easier just to tell your everyone laughs, because you all know that’s absolutely true. Yeah, and that’s partly why you have to be willing to die in order to come back to life, too, right? Because you have to let go of those parts of you that are dead and or that should be dead. And then those parts have to die. And that’s not nothing. And those parts fight to stay alive. And so. So Moses is out in the desert with the Israelites, and they’re fighting away with each other and they don’t know how to negotiate. They don’t know how to mediate their disputes. And so they come to Moses and they say, Look, we’re fighting all the time here. Do you want to tell us what to do? Do you want to judge us? And Moses says, Yeah, I guess. OK. And so then he sets himself up as judge and he judges the Israelites for like years from morning till late at night. And his father in law, Jethro, shows up and he’s a figure that represents the archetype of the moral stranger. So he can see the enslaved Israelites squabbling away in the desert and he can see Moses set himself up above them. And he can see that that’s not so good. And so he goes to Moses and he says something like, You have to stop doing this. And Moses says, Why? And Jethro says, Well, first of all, it’s too much responsibility. Nobody can do what you’re doing and stay together. You’re going to degenerate mentally and physically. It’s too much burden. But worse, arguably. You’re depriving your people of the responsibility of their own destiny. You’re depriving them of the adventure of their life. You’re depriving them of their own. The necessity of their adventure. And you’re setting yourself up as another pharaoh because you can imagine the pharaonic situation, the tyrannical situation. It’s like the Tower of Babel. There’s a lot of disenchanted fractionated individuals and there’s a tyrant. And that’s all the structure there is. And that’s just not any good. And all these disaffected individuals have no responsibility. And so all the responsibility is taken up by the tyrannical force. And then you have a huge gap between the tyrant and the disaffected individuals. And it’s just a recipe for tyranny and slavery. It’s a recipe for disaster. And so what Jethro says to Moses is he says something like, You have to build an intermediary hierarchy. Although those aren’t the words that are used. And it turns out that we build those intermediary hierarchies in our own neural networks in an attempt to process the world properly. So this looks like a universal principle of proper apprehension and action. There has to be intermediary levels of processing. And so what Jethro tells Moses is divide the Israelites into groups of 10 and have each 10 propose a leader. And then take the leaders and group them and you have the leaders elect another leader and then do that all the way up to groups of 10,000 and then have all the decisions made at as local a level as possible. And if the local hierarchies can’t handle it, then you can make the final judgment. Otherwise, leave the people to their own devices because they need the responsibility. And if you take on all that abdicated responsibility and destiny, then you’ll just be another Pharaoh. And that’s the principle of subsidiarity. That’s the technical term. And the principle of subsidiarity is that decisions are best made at the at the lowest and most local level possible. And that looks like a universal principle. And Jonathan Pagio, who some of you know about, told me yes, he’s very smart. Jonathan Pagio. He told me in the Exodus seminar that that was the archetypal pattern for the idea of Mount Sinai. It’s the archetypal pattern for the notion of proper governance, the distributed system of responsibility as opposed to absolute slavery. And it’s supposed to absolute slavery. It’s supposed to absolute tyranny. And it’s also opposed to freedom without bounds. As one of the other things that happens in Exodus is when God tells Moses to tell the Pharaoh to let his people go, which is what you always hear. It’s a famous line. Let my people go. That’s not what God tells Moses to tell the Pharaoh. He says, let my people go so they may serve me in the wilderness. That’s a whole different idea, because what it does is juxtapose against slavery ordered freedom, not borderless and boundless freedom, because borderless freedom is a freedom of the people. Because borderless and boundless freedom is just chaos, whereas ordered freedom is freedom according to a set of a set of appropriate principles. And then the question is, well, what are the principles? And that’s the same question as what is the story that should guide you? In any case, the proper model of governance is something like a hierarchy of responsibility. And so one of the things that Tammy and I have been endeavoring to do as we travel from city to city, and I suppose what I’m doing right now is to remind all of you of one thing. I suppose if you abdicate your civic responsibility, then power mad tyrants will vacuum it up and use it against you. Because someone’s going to take that responsibility. And if it’s not you, then it’s going to be someone who wants to take that from you. And so one of the things that’s happening in our society. I’ve been thinking this through with regard to such things as church attendance, you know, because I’ve heard all the arguments about why you shouldn’t attend church. And it’s not like I’ve been a great attender of churches myself, by the way. And I’ve come to the conclusion that that attitude, regardless of its rationale, is wrong. Because it may be the case that the churches are corrupt and misguided. But that’s also the case for you, by the way. And if they are corrupt and misguided, then they could probably use some help. And if you’re not corrupt and misguided, then you could help. And if you are corrupt and misguided, well, maybe the church could help you. And then you have a reciprocal relationship, you know. And. And so you may say, well, I’m going to abandon all that. But then the question is, well, what are you abandoning it to? And if the answer is, well, when you abandon all that, let’s say your devotion to a tradition of faith. You abandon your responsibility to tradition and the past. You abandon your responsibility to the ordered principles that allow us to properly be free. And you abandon it to what? And the answer is, well, you abandon it to chaos and to tyrants. And that just doesn’t seem like a very good alternative. And one of the things that’s also seemed to happen as people who have abdicated their responsibility in relationship to the religious quest is that they have also tended to abandon their civic duties. And so all of our civic institutions, political parties and businessmen’s clubs and sports clubs and all of those inter and marriages, by the way, and families, they’re all disintegrating. And the problem with that is we all end up atomized and disparate. And then all that abdicated responsibility goes to the tyrants. And that’s a very bad idea. And it’s happened time and time again. You know, it’s encapsulated in the kinds of stories that we’ve been talking about tonight. Part of the reason that Bitcoin is attractive to people, you see. There was a point to all that. Part of the reason that Bitcoin is attractive to people is because we all have the sense right now. And that’s certainly part of the reason why so many of you are here tonight is that there’s a little bit too much tyranny going on. And that’s the collusion of large scale enterprises at the top. And so there are attempts to push back on that by developing decentralized systems. And the idea that we could develop a decentralized standard of universal value, which is what money is, is very interesting idea. I’ve done what I could to think through the Bitcoin proposition, and it makes sense. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. You know, I went to a Bitcoin conference a while back and it was full of Bitcoin enthusiasts. And of course, all they wanted to hear was enthusiastic things about Bitcoin. And fair enough, you know, because it’s not like I’m a great fan of the fiat currency that allows governments to print money and inflate away value, because that punishes people who are sensible and who make the proper sacrifices. It’s inflationary, as you’re all seeing right now. It’s a very bad idea. And to give the centralizers that power, I think is it’s not a good idea. Now, that doesn’t mean that Bitcoin is the right solution. And part of the problem with introducing a radical solution like Bitcoin, and it’s radical because it would change the way we undertake all our trade, is that it probably won’t do just the things you think it will do. Right. Because when you change a system that is so complex, you don’t understand it. Like when you disrupt the supply chain to hypothetically control covid, all sorts of things happen that you don’t expect, which is what conservatives always remind liberals. It’s like, don’t be thinking that your revolutionary change is only going to bring about the positive things that you envision, because you don’t know what you’re mucking about with. And so we could, in principle, and this seems to be what happened, what’s happening is allow a variety of currencies to battle with one another on the competitive landscape. And we sort of have that internationally because every currency has to trade against every other currency. And now we’ve added cryptocurrency to that mix. And that seems to me to be a good experimental option. And maybe Bitcoin will aggregate to itself the value that its adherents claim. But that remains to be seen. And it doesn’t mean it’s a pathway without pitfalls. Right. Because we imagine Bitcoin was successful and all of a sudden we never had any control over. We really never were able to exercise control over our monetary system again, because that’s what it would mean, because it really is decentralized. And if Bitcoin and the blockchain technology truly obtained the upper hand, we would have put our economic system outside of the political domain. Now, you could you can make a case that maybe that would be an OK thing, right? Because you don’t want the economic, the standard of value subordinate to political machination. But it also means that it’s no longer subordinate to the collective will, the collective express will of the people as manifested in the electoral process. And we don’t know if that would be a good thing. And it’s a hell of an experiment to run because you won’t know the outcome until you can’t alter the results of the experiment. So, you know, I have some investment in Bitcoin because I’m curious about it. And it it it’s a compelling idea. It’s a genius idea. But that doesn’t mean that it’s destined for success. So I’m pro decentralization. I like the idea that mendacious, short term oriented, narcissistic, power man, politicians can’t inflate the currency and steal value from people to fund their idiot pet projects. But. But, you know, revolutionary changes usually bring about radically unintended consequences. So and I think that’s why the marketplace is still toying with Bitcoin, you know, instead of rushing headlong into its into its embrace, let’s say. So so that’s what I think about Bitcoin.