#625: Leisure, Magnificence, and the Bitcoin Standard with Michael Goldstein

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

(00:10):
You talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
All the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency,
Bitcoin wins.
In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

(00:31):
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
And we're live.
Just like that.
Just like that.
3.30 on a Friday, Memorial Day weekend.
It's a good way to end the week and start the holiday weekend.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Thank you for having me here.
Thank you for coming.
I wore this hat specifically because I think it's very apropos to the conversation we're going to have, which is, I hope, an extension of the presentation you gave at BitBlockBoom, HODL for good.

(01:08):
You were working on that for many weeks leading up to the conference and explaining how you were structuring it.
I think it's a very important topic to discuss now as the Bitcoin price is
hitting new all time highs and people are trying to understand what am I doing
with Bitcoin?

(01:28):
You have,
you have the different sort of factions within Bitcoin get on a Bitcoin
standard,
get on zero,
spend as much Bitcoin as possible.
You have the sailors of the world.
We're saying buy Bitcoin,
never sell,
die with your Bitcoin.
And I think you do a really good job in that presentation.
I just think your understanding overall of Bitcoin is incredible to put everything in the context.

(01:51):
It's not either or.
It really depends on what you want to accomplish.
Yeah, it's definitely there.
There is no actual one size fits all for, I mean, nearly anything in this world.
So, yeah, I mean, first of all, I mean, it was the first conference talk I had given in maybe five years.

(02:12):
I think the one prior to that was Bitblock Boom 2019, which was my meme talk, which has become infamous and notorious.
So there was also a lot of high expectations.
You know, Rockstar Dev has treated that talk with a lot of reference.

(02:39):
A lot of people have enjoyed it.
And he was expecting this one to be, you know, the greatest one ever, which is a little bit of a little bit of a burden to live up to those kinds of standards.
But, you know, because I don't give a lot of talks.
You know, I like to try to bring ideas that might even be ideas that are common.

(03:05):
So something like hodling.
We all talk about it constantly, but try to bring it from a little bit of a different angle and try to give a little bit of new light to it.
I also have, I've always enjoyed kind of coming at things from a third angle.
Whenever there's, you know, there's, there's all these little debates that we have in, in Bitcoin.

(03:25):
And sometimes it's nice to try to step out of it and look at it a little more kind of objectively and find ways of understanding it that incorporate the truths of, of all of them.
uh, you know, cause I think we should always be kind of as much as possible after ultimate truth.

(03:48):
Um, so with this one, um, yeah, I was kind of finding that, that sort of golden mean. So, uh,
um, yeah, and I actually, I think about that a lot is, uh, you know, Aristotle has his,
his concept of the golden mean. So it's like any, any virtue is sort of between two vices.
because you can always take something too far.

(04:13):
So you're always trying to find that right balance.
So someone who is courageous,
one of the vices on one side is being basically reckless.
I can't remember what word he would use,
but effectively being reckless
and just wanting to put yourself in danger
for no other reason than just the thrill of it.

(04:35):
and then on the other side you would just have cowardice
which is like you're unwilling to put yourself at any risk at any time
and courage is right there in the middle where it's
understanding when is the right time to put
yourself in the face of danger and take it on
and so in some sense this is kind of me

(04:58):
in some ways like I'm obviously a
partisan of hodling. I've for, you know, a long time now talked about the why hodling is good,
why people do it, why we should expect it. But still trying to find that that sort of golden mean

(05:19):
of like, yes, hodl, but also what are we hodling for? And it's not we're not hodling just merely
for the sake of hodling there there is a a purpose to it and we should think about that
and that would also help us think more about um what are the benefits of of spending when should

(05:40):
we spend why should we spend what should we spend on um to actually give light to that sort of side
of the debate um so that was that was what i was kind of trying to trying to get into um as well as
also just uh at the same time despite all the talk of hodling there's always this perennial

(06:00):
uh there's always this perennial dislike of hodlers because we're treated as uh as if um
we're just free riding the network or we're just greedy or you know any of these things and i wanted
to show how hodling does serve a real economic purpose and it does benefit the individual,

(06:23):
but it also does, it has actual real social benefits as well beyond merely the individual.
So I wanted to give that sort of defensive hodling as well to look at it from a broader
position than just merely I'm trying to get rich. Because even the person who that is all they want

(06:47):
to do, just like, you know, your pure number go up, go up moon boy, even that behavior has positive
ramifications on the economy. And while we might look at them and have judgments about their
particular choices for them as an individual, we shouldn't discount that their actions are having

(07:10):
positive effects for the rest of the economy. Yeah, so let's dive into that, just not even
in the context of Bitcoin, because I think you did a great job of this in the presentation,
just you've done a good job of this consistently throughout the years that I've known you.
Just from a first principles Austrian economics perspective, what is the idea around capital

(07:33):
accumulation, low time preference, and deployment of that capital?
What?
Getting into the nitty-gritty and then applying it to Bitcoin.
Yeah, it's a big question in many ways.
Even I barely scratched the surface.
I can't claim to have read all the volumes of Bamba Works,

(07:54):
capital and interest, and stuff like that.
But I think there's some sort of basic concepts that we can look at
that we can draw a lot out.
The first, I guess, let's break that.
So repeat, so like capital, time preference.
Well, I guess getting more broad,

(08:15):
like why saving, why do people save?
What should they plan to do with that savings?
Yeah.
And what are the externalities
throughout the broader economy
of individuals doing that in aggregate?
Yeah.
I mean, it always goes back to, you know, the very beginning is like, you know, humans are acting purposefully because they have, they believe that they can perform some action that will have an effect on the world that will remove some uneasiness and basically improve how they feel.

(08:51):
and when you're doing this you're always you're you're employing some means it may even literally
just be you know your own body or something if you're you know if you're robinson crusoe
that's that's how a lot of economists like to start this is just you're you're a one man on a

(09:13):
on a desert island you know you only have your body and you need to go you know make shelter
make food or find food, et cetera, et cetera.
So you start using your means, your body, the resources around you, and so on and so forth.
And what happens is, you know, like as you're doing that, you may start to realize that there

(09:39):
are ways to use means to produce goods that are not meant to be consumed.
So you're not trying to, you know, maybe you're trying to catch fish.
You make goods that you realize will help you catch more fish because you want to be

(10:01):
able to eat and eat more and know that you have food available.
So those kinds of goods, that's what we call capital.
And those goods don't even need to be physical.
It can be knowledge, you know, or other sort of like non-physical things.
Capital is something that we, it's a psychological categorization that an actor chooses.

(10:29):
So, you know, one man's capital is another man's consumer good or worthless.
but it's not
there's not just like a magical thing called capital
which I guess like a lot of Marxists
and think as well as
like Keynesians treat capital

(10:52):
often as you'll see it in kind of Keynesian
neoclassical kind of stuff it all treats it as sort of these
like black boxes of
just you know here's a factory
and it's like as if it's just like all other factories
but it's really a conglomeration of all kinds of very particular goods.
But when you have capital, now you can produce more things.

(11:19):
But the thing is, in order to make that capital,
you need to know that in that time period
that you're not actually out catching fish,
that you'll still have fish to eat in the time it takes you
to make the spear or then the net
and so on and so forth,

(11:39):
each of those times you actually need goods available
for that time period that you're not specifically
trying to get those goods.
And so you have to recognize,
one, you have to recognize that there's a possibility
of doing something that can produce more in the future.
And then you also have to recognize

(12:00):
you need to have enough savings
to actually get through that time.
And this is where the concept of time preference
comes into play.
Because if you know that,
humans sort of necessarily want goods sooner

(12:24):
than later.
So you would prefer things now or earlier than waiting.
But whenever you have some kind of production, production necessarily takes time.
So your ability to sort of withstand that time, both in a physical sense of literally having something to feed you, but also, you know, being sort of psychologically willing to wait it out.

(12:59):
that uh that that requires having some some form of uh lowered uh time preference where it's like
i'm willing to wait because i know that there will be more for me later and i prefer that
future to what i could have right now so that's that's where time preference plays in

(13:21):
and as an economy develops,
whether it's one person or adding on,
they're able to hopefully continually identify new ways
of sort of lengthening that structure of production.

(13:43):
We call that roundabout production
because you're doing things that aren't actually related
to literally getting a fish,
but all of the capital goods needed to do it.
And the more you can lengthen
that structure of production
while knowing that you're actually going to get
more of what you want,
obviously the more goods you'll be able to have.

(14:07):
But along the way,
you need to be able to lower your time preference
in order to do so.
But also the actual success of that
can also lower your time preference
because now you actually have more goods.
So your time is valued differently
because you actually have something available

(14:28):
so you can more safely rest and look into the future.
So savings is effectively at its core.
It's just having the goods available
to withstand all of the potential uncertainties

(14:49):
that you have to deal with through the production process.
And then there's also investment,
which came up in my talk in the form of capital goods,
something that you might actually use your Bitcoin for.
That's taking your savings
and putting it into some productive goods,

(15:10):
some capital good that can help create more future goods.
and yeah I don I hopefully that like a decent it a good covering of what you asked Uh I don know if I missed something
No, I think you covered it well.
And just to go a little bit further before we get into like the triple entendre of huddle

(15:33):
for good, uh, how's that process been disturbed in recent decades?
Yeah, so I would say that fiat money is by its nature a disturbance of that process and a very notable one and the one that obviously Bitcoiners are kind of most focused on.

(15:55):
And the reason being is that at a basic level, if money is being continually produced, especially at an uncertain rate, but even at an exact formulaic rate, your mythical 2%,

(16:18):
Um, in that case, uh, that means that whatever savings you have, uh, necessarily, uh, the,
the, the time that it can last.
So you, you, you receive money that you could put away in savings.
Um, but if you do that, um, every time money's being printed, the amount of time that that

(16:40):
money can last, uh, to suit your needs is less than it otherwise would be, um, in the
market.
And so your time horizon is necessarily brought shorter.
And now it might actually stimulate you to go invest with your money.
You might find yourself seeking out various investments.

(17:05):
But these two are focused on shorter term profits than they otherwise would be.
So the way that you invest also changes.
Um, so, uh, you know, we, we, we see this in the marketplace of, you know, especially
you in the sort of VC world, you can see how this, uh, plays out where people are chasing

(17:30):
after whatever kind of stock picks they can for the sake of getting some short-term profit
that helps, uh, at least keep them afloat, but also they want to make it, uh, extra big,
get rich quick because that gives you more breathing room. But that sort of behavior is

(17:52):
exacerbated by the fact that your money is continually devalued. But then, of course,
if you're also adding in an uncertainty to how much and when, it makes this even harder to
rationally plan out. And so you're even less interested in really, uh, treating, uh, just

(18:16):
plain cash as something, uh, to, to hold. And so now, uh, we, we live in a world that is, uh,
heavily debt financed, uh, as opposed to self-financed through savings. Um, something I
didn't mention, um, that I think is, is crucial, um, especially like to understand, um, what,
what tends to just be sort of the Austrian position is that savings

(18:41):
precedes capital accumulation and capital production.
You can't,
you can't produce unless you already have resources that you can manipulate
into something else.
You can't,
you can't just snap your fingers.
So whenever,
whenever the,

(19:02):
you know,
the government,
you know,
stimulates the economy, what they're really doing is just inducing you to put that savings
into investment. But often we'll hear economists talk as if savings is just this thing that

(19:23):
is withholding from investing, which is also why they want to do that, because they think
saving is bad because you're not doing anything, according to them.
And so they're trying to induce you to put it into something.

(19:44):
But the key there is that you're only able to actually start doing anything insofar as the savings are actually there,
that there is something to save from.
So often these policies are really just redistribution of wealth. And then it gets especially bad when you artificially change the interest rate, which is basically this societal measure of time preference, so to speak, based on how people price money and such.

(20:18):
If you artificially change that, you have situations which cause the business cycle, which is people begin doing projects that they don't actually have the savings for.
And then at some point, you know, Mises gives the example of building a wall or building a house.

(20:38):
And you think you have all the bricks.
And in the process, you run out of bricks and realize, oh, well, this project is over.
So you have to just kind of liquidate everything.
And then everyone down the line who is lending to you then also takes that hit.
And so the boom is, yes, look at us.
We're doing all these things.

(20:58):
Look at all these things we're building.
But then the bust is realizing that you don't actually have the savings you thought you had.
And everything comes crumbling down.
So it's very important for society to allow these things to operate in a way that describes or reflects reality rather than merely what you wish to be.

(21:21):
Yeah.
Leads to a misallocation of capital.
Do something, hoarder.
Yes.
Do not save.
Yes.
Do something.
Yes.
And it leads to half-built buildings and projects and societies in aggregate overall if you do it long enough.
and i i think you know an important thing there is like you know why you know why hold like we said
it's like it's dealing with uncertainty so a lot of people who uh they they have that attitude

(21:45):
towards hoarders hoarding being you know just this pejorative towards saving um is this idea
that it's unproductive because the cash is just sitting there why aren't you doing anything with
it um but it might be unproductive to you because it's not literally going towards something you
want it to go to um but people are broadly speaking rational in the sense that they use

(22:10):
their brains to identify means to attain uh particular ends so if they're doing something
they're probably doing it for a reason and when people are hold holding money um it's because
they have more uncertainty about the future um and so that that's what the money allows because
because it being the most liquid good,

(22:32):
they know if they have money,
whatever opportunities, good and bad, arise.
So a positive opportunity,
you come across something that you didn't even know existed before
and now you have the cash to get a hold of it.
Or a negative thing, like there's a bit of a disaster
and you need to weather the storm.

(22:53):
Both of those things, having money allows you to get past that.
And so when people have that feeling like,
There's probably more of these potential situations,
both good and bad, coming my way.
They're going to want to hold cash.
And that's actually productive from that individual point of view.
So it's very silly to look at that as unproductive

(23:19):
because if it was unproductive, people wouldn't be doing it.
Yeah.
And so in that context, you're hodling for good,
and that good being the ability to
opportunistically take advantage of something that
is unforeseen that may arise that is seen as a positive opportunity
and conversely able to weather a storm in the future.

(23:42):
So you're hodling for good in the sense that
you will be able to repair your roof
or do something if some emergency arises.
Yes, and I think Bitcoin hodlers are doing a bit of both.
The real speculation that all HODLers are dealing with that that's usually really motivating them is the number go up.

(24:03):
So it's effectively more focused on the positive.
But also that then in turn means that, oh, more negatives would be able to be addressed in that case.
But they obviously most are looking for a number to go up and they desire that.
And with that, it's very well possible that what you would see post-hyper-Bitcoinization, when the economy has settled on a Bitcoin standard, the rate of growth of Bitcoin would no longer be as high as it is now.

(24:40):
It would be more reflective of the growth of the economy as a whole.
And so therefore, people would find more investment opportunities that would have a higher return in purchasing power than just holding the Bitcoin.
And so you would start to see more investment.

(25:02):
and in fact the reason that there would be continued economic growth would be from the fact
that hodlers some other hodler out there in the universe had seen one of these opportunities and
they took it and they were successful and wealth was generated so there's more goods in the
marketplace and then it gets reflected back into uh you know the the the purchasing power

(25:29):
in the economy as a whole.
So holding in that state
with the global money or whatever,
that can be sort of analogized
to people investing in the economy as a whole.

(25:49):
So you're not investing
in any particular structure of production.
You're just investing in the economy as a whole.
And the reason why that's possible
is because when you hold money, a sound money,
where there's no more new Bitcoin being made
or very little still being mined,

(26:10):
what that means is when you hold,
you're increasing the marginal value
of everyone else's Bitcoin,
which means that their purchasing power
is increasing to that point
where some of them start to see
this purchasing power gives me opportunities
that I didn't previously have, and now I can self-finance some venture or even just getting

(26:36):
a consumer good that itself benefits some other line of business and so on and so forth.
So the reason why there's economic growth is because others were doing exactly that.
And so you're sort of investing in them. And then hopefully, you know, I would I would recommend people trying to imagine what would you actually spend on?

(27:06):
But you have this positive externality on everyone by holding.
It's not just for yourself.
It's actually rather charitable in a sense, that sort of gratuitous benefit to everyone else,
that you're increasing their potential to be able to acquire more.

(27:30):
And was it Holtzman who you referenced in the presentation who wrote a book about?
Yeah, he had his newest book, which is a tremendous book.
It's one of the most interesting economics books I've read.
So I'm still one of my, I've put a lot of memes out there,

(27:51):
but I think one of my favorite has always been that I got a lot of Bitcoiners to read his book,
The Ethics of Money Production.
And he brings a similar lens to the idea of gifts and charity in his book that came out, I guess it was last year, called Abundant Generosity in the State.

(28:14):
And it's talking about the, like I said, gift giving, charity, the gratuitous effects of free exchange, and also how government intervention destroys that ability to give gifts and creates gratuitous bads on the economy.

(28:39):
In the form of NGOs just taking taxpayer money.
Basically, yeah.
yeah just a huge huge grifts lots of grifters no and i think we were texting about this the other
week because independently i was at bitblock boom but i didn't show up till after we gave the
presentation so i saw for the first time earlier this week and i was a bit proud of myself because
i was on a podcast last week and the last question that was posed to me was what would you say to

(29:05):
an individual that buys bitcoin now an individual decides not to like what's their life going to
look like in 10 years my response is basically the individual who buys bitcoin now and saves
using bitcoin as a savings vehicle they're going to be i i believe uh very happy with their decision
and their life will be benefited massively for making that decision the person who doesn't

(29:28):
decide to huddle now they're probably not going to benefit as much from bitcoin directly
as the individual decided to start holding now,
but their life will be better
because others will have decided
to have used Bitcoin as a savings vehicle,
lowered their time preference,
built up an amount of purchasing power
that allows them to go invest

(29:49):
in productive endeavors in the economy.
And the person, even if he didn't buy Bitcoin,
will benefit from that
because the economy overall should be better.
Yes, and I agree completely.
The last person, yes,
they wouldn't get gains necessarily.
Although if they start saving right then and there,

(30:11):
there is no top to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin goes up forever.
So with that in mind,
they actually could continue to get gains.
They just wouldn't have gotten gains
from speculating on that future coming to fruition.
And perhaps they might be a little bitter about that, but hopefully not.

(30:36):
Hopefully they get over it because they would now be living in a Bitcoin world and in an economy that is running on a Bitcoin standard which is much more conducive to you know prosperity you know capital accumulation free exchange all these good things that lead to economic growth and you know increase the amount of goods that we have in the world to make use of to make our lives better

(31:06):
So this is something that I think is so interesting about time preference and kind of this idea of gratuitous goods, meaning these are goods that are not intended.
They just sort of happen. And you can have gratuitous bads as well, collateral damage from some activity.

(31:30):
but free exchange has a lot of gratuitous goods,
which Holzman writes about.
And specifically, and I referenced it in the talk,
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the very first,
actually the very first sections,
the very first chapter essay in his book,

(31:52):
Democracy That Got That Failed,
is talking about just the nature of time preference.
And this is prior to even getting into anything about,
government or anything at all, which of course there's much you could say about how that affects
time preference, but he's just talking about time preference itself. And he basically alludes to
this exact concept in such an interesting way because he points out the fact that

(32:17):
you know, such whoever it is that exists in the economy, as someone around them is lowering their
time preference, adding knowledge to the world, creating more goods through their own self-interested

(32:38):
capital accumulation, capital production, and so on and so forth. Because there's more goods in the
world, the marginal value of all goods is going down for even the poorest person or the sort of
highest time preference person for whatever reason, their high time preference.

(33:04):
All goods are now marginally cheaper. So whatever money that they receive in their from their labor
is now worth more.
And so they're inherently lower time preference
than they were before
because their relation of time

(33:25):
to goods on the market has changed.
So that is an incredible revelation
and it goes to exactly what you're saying.
It's like, this doesn't just apply to Bitcoin.
Rather, what you're describing with Bitcoin,
that last Bitcoiner,
that's actually just one application of this more fundamental fact that what we do in the marketplace can benefit the market as a whole,

(33:53):
even the people that you're not thinking about.
I mean, some fat cat capitalist or whatever is not necessarily thinking about every single person in the market.
and yet insofar as he's successful in a free market,
we have a rule of law and everything is just and all of that,

(34:15):
insofar as if he's earning profits,
it's because he was creating wealth
and it is ultimately having that downstream effect.
And then when you have things like knowledge,
which comes from explicitly people teaching one another
or implicitly of just kind of picking up
whether through anything from memetics to just trying to reverse engineers,

(34:38):
like, how did that guy do it?
I want to do that too.
And you just kind of pick them up.
That knowledge spreads like wildfire.
And so in many ways, people become smarter as well.
And so the more knowledge you have regarding your available means to the possible ends,

(35:01):
the more you can get out of the economy and also the more productive you are.
And I think that's incredible.
A nice example of this would be, and I think it's almost relevant to consider in today,
because there's a lot of talk about AI and labor and so on and so forth.

(35:22):
And I don't know how that will fully flesh out.
So I'm not trying to comment on that, but just at least thinking up until now,
when we look at someone like a like think like a barber a barber is not you know it's it's not

(35:43):
like a prestigious job and yet it's one that we all need you know most most people get haircuts
if he just continues doing his job that like the job hasn't really changed that much
in my life like all these things have changed over the past few decades but like the barbershop

(36:03):
experience is is basically the exact same for me uh as it was when i was a little boy and um uh you
know the price has gone up because of inflation um but you know i imagine the the margins are are
just the same um but the thing is is that person their labor over time is actually becoming more

(36:25):
valuable, despite the fact that there's nothing about it that's really changing.
They're still just sitting you down and cutting your hair, getting a basic cut.
But their labor is ultimately more productive because everyone else in the economy, you have
more capital goods.
So everyone, any unit of labor that you're putting into the world has a larger downstream

(36:50):
effect of how much is produced from that labor.
And so when you're getting a haircut, the time saved, it takes 20, 30 minutes or whatever
to get a haircut, that 20, 30 minutes is actually more valuable to you now than it was back

(37:11):
then in the sense of the opportunity cost of what goods could have been produced had
I been working more instead of getting that haircut. And so even the barber, you know,
the barbers have not getting, you know, the barbers are not getting, you know, poorer and poorer.

(37:33):
They're actually, you know, helping. Now, that's that's assuming a sound economy. I'm sure a lot
of barbers are hurting a lot. Like I think everyone is in this inflationary economy. But
in a sound economy, that kind of labor, it only becomes more valuable. And then if you add Bitcoin

(37:56):
into the mix, supercharge sound money, it only benefits those people even more.
And diving deeper into this concept of shifting towards the idea of leisure, what is true leisure
and how does the ability to exercise leisure,
as you defined it in the presentation,

(38:18):
actually compound and accelerate
this type of productivity growth and value creation?
Yeah, and so it's somewhat indirect.
I guess I would say, it's like I was trying to say,
it was like, okay, what do we hodl?
So as you said earlier, hodl for good.
I was rather proud of myself for coming up

(38:39):
with what I thought was a clever title because of being a triple entendre.
The first one just being was like, well, no,
there's a reason you would hodl for good. You'd hodl forever.
And then the second one is like, well,
hodling for good in the terms of I want to hodl for good stuff.
Meaning I don't, I don't want just what I have today.
I want something better later. I want,

(39:02):
I want my children to have a better life than I had.
And I want my grandchildren to have a better life than my children and so on.
and so forth. I think every, every normal person, you know, wants that, uh, in the world. And so,
um, you know, the question is like, okay, well, what's this good stuff? And one of them is like,
you just, you just hodl so that, you know, number go up and now you can have more of something,

(39:27):
or you can just have like the nicer version or whatever. Um, then there's, uh, I talked about,
capital goods. So, you know, the market doesn't necessarily magically make exactly what you want.
Maybe if you just want commodity items that kind of everyone wants, but there might be things that
you specifically want, and there's no guarantee that the market is going to find the most efficient

(39:50):
way unless you actually participate in developing those structures of production. So for the people
with means. That's a great way to try to actually help the market provide what you really want.
And I'm trying to think, well, there's like another thing, but the big one that you were

(40:15):
asking about then was leisure. And I think this is an important one that Bitcoiners should think
a lot about. And when I say leisure, I don't mean just sitting around watching Netflix,
you know, just taking a breather on the on the weekend before, you know, you go back to

(40:36):
your wage cage. You know, it's like leisure. Leisure is a is about contemplation. It's about,
you know, communing yourself with philosophy and the arts and science and actually coming to

(40:57):
see reality more face-to-face and engaged with just, you know, the reality around you with
contemplation. The word, I'm going to butcher things, but, you know, the word comes from the
Greek skole, which means school.

(41:18):
It's a proper liberal arts education is teaching these types of what would make the mind capable
of engaging in these contemplative acts.
And when you go back to Aristotle and many philosophers since, contemplation is sort of the height of living. That is the height of human living. That's why you do it. You work for leisure. You work so that you have the savings so that on the seventh day you can rest.

(41:58):
And when you're resting, you can actually take a look at what there is and decide if it's good or not.
And you can actually start to chase after what is truly good.
So when I talk about leisure, I'm not meaning, like I said, I'm not talking about just watching Netflix or something.
What I'm talking about is actually engaging your mind towards a vision of the higher good.

(42:26):
um so thinking about um what do you truly value in life um and this this can take many forms like
i said you know there's there's uh you know there's the arts and sciences philosophy a lot
of these things ultimately uh kind of go together um but that's that's what we mean by that and

(42:46):
where does this you know come into play like what does that have to do with anything i've talked
about and i would say that uh in a sense it has to do effectively with with time preference because
what what you're doing um i wish i had like a whiteboard so i could be like you know drawing
drawing graphs or whatever but it's like if you have a time preference schedule um uh if you go

(43:12):
find hoppa's book you'll you'll see the little graphs of of time preference versus uh monetary
income but in that you're looking for the book so you're like hold it up to the camera i have it on
one of uh it's okay but like it's it's my home book the point is is like any given given a time
preference schedule you know you you have you have a certain schedule and um assuming your

(43:34):
your personality doesn't change your knowledge of the world doesn't change um your your rate of
income through just the process of of production and so on and so forth so everything's kind of
static otherwise you're just on that curve and your time preference is lowering um but uh along
this curve and i would say that so when he's describing what he calls the process of civilization

(43:59):
which is all of that stuff together i was talking about leading when you have when you have a whole
uh society of people engaged in this and connected to one another you're building on top of it and
that builds civilization that is the civilizing process and what he shows like he has a little
graph for this and he's basically saying it's like the process of civilization is taking that curve

(44:24):
and then like taking the whole curve and lowering it fundamentally because you've changed um in in
some way and then also because you're accumulating capital you're getting further down that curve
so the lowest time preference stuff like every step of the way you're trying to you know not only
take where you are and accumulate, you know, more of the goods. So your time preference goes down,

(44:48):
but you actually, what, what can be done to actually lower that curve completely. Um, and
once again, that comes through knowledge, uh, cause ultimately capital requires knowledge
because it requires knowing that there is some thing that you can add to the, the, uh, you know,

(45:08):
structures of production to lengthen it in some way that will take time,
but allow you to have more in the future than you would today in a way that,
you know, pleases you or whatever.
So when you're engaged with leisure and you're thinking about what you truly
value, you're, I mean, you're, you're really looking into the abyss.

(45:30):
I mean, so I,
I reference a book called leisure,
the basis of culture by a German philosopher named Joseph Pieper.
and he's writing from a very Catholic perspective,
but I think it's something that a lot of people
could get a lot of value from regardless.
And for him, coming from that Catholic perspective,

(45:53):
he sees, when he's even talking about culture,
he says cultists and I can remember exactly all of the etymology of that word but it was effectively around celebration which for him meant effectively worship
But even from a sort of non-religious perspective, I don't want to—you have many listeners of many stripes, so I want to bring this to a more universal way of thinking about this.

(46:23):
when you're celebrating or worshiping, what is it that you're doing? You're trying to get in touch
with the highest of the high good. So for him being a Catholic, it's worship around the Eucharist
and Sunday mass and everything because they're getting communion. So you're getting in touch

(46:49):
for them with literally god himself um so that is the highest good now for whoever anyone is
everyone has some highest good that they're chasing after and so it's like leisure is that
connection with trying to connect uh not only with whatever that highest good is but also uh

(47:11):
all of the sort of implications of that of like a whole ecosystem based around having that vision
of that highest good um and so you know this manifest is like okay well if whatever is the
highest good it's like okay well how do i how do i best express that and how do i best express the

(47:33):
implications of that well that's going to change your perspective on the arts and how things should
look um and and what kind of value should be imbued in the design of things um if it's in um
the sciences it's like well you know how is it like what what are the questions that i have about
the world um how how do i go about asking these questions um if you if you believe that the world

(47:58):
is just chaos you know the scientific method's not going to really help you um but if you if you think
that the world has some kind of regularity to it. Now you can start to have more of the scientific
method and so on and so forth, start investigating to try to understand the full extent of natural
reality, which is also going to feed itself back on when you're trying to build capital,

(48:21):
you're having to overcome the realities of the natural world and the scarcity of things and how
they work and so you have to deal with all of the complexities of you know you can't fly a plane if
you don't understand gravity um and along with everything else you need to know uh to fly a
plane can't turn on a light unless you understand electromagnetism um so all of these things have

(48:46):
to deal with these these realities so when you're engaged with with leisure and you're you're focused
on these highest goods and trying to explore that highest good and all of its implications
uh it helps it helps form your mind around the higher things so that when you go to the
the idea is like okay like what do i want you basically want better things whatever that is

(49:12):
better better in this sense meaning getting you closer to that ultimate good that ultimate end
on your entire order of preferences that you have.
Everyone is walking around with just,

(49:32):
I would prefer this to this.
And it's all this,
it's just this big giant list in their head
of what they want.
And every economic decision is like,
okay, well, I have these goods available.
So which thing can I address?
And it's like, well, I have this
and this could address, you know, you know, you know, my third thing and, you know, or I could

(49:55):
get this and this would address, you know, four, but it's cheaper. So that would help me in the
long run actually be better at getting towards number two or, you know, whatever. This is,
this is what economizing is, is you're, you going through the world trying to do that.
All of that is ultimately trying to get to whatever that ultimate good is. And so when you're,

(50:18):
engaged in this whole process of leisure and trying to find those higher order goods and how
to make them and how to put resources towards them by saving and so on and so forth, you're
pushing yourself closer to that actual ultimate good, which is going to reflect itself as actual
good in the world. And hopefully your vision of the good lines up with other people so that you're

(50:42):
not actually making their lives miserable.
But I think there's another important nuance to this to point out is like, if you have enough
savings to exercise true leisure, to think about these higher order goods and the market's
not meeting the needs that you would determine are necessary to depart with your savings to

(51:06):
attempt to achieve that higher good while you're continuing to save, while you're looking
for things that will help you achieve that higher good,
you're also setting a signal to the market
that this isn't good enough.
So it forces producers to rethink
what they're doing as well.
Yes, yes.
You are effectively, you know,
you're helping liquidate

(51:27):
or make less profitable
certain structures of production
than they otherwise would be
if you were participating.
And that then creates an opportunity
to create better structures of production
better in this case meaning more aligned with your actual thing so uh for instance you know

(51:48):
if i ever wanted to buy a house um which i don't recommend at this moment uh people should should
let blackrock buy the houses and you keep the sats not the other way around uh you wait until later
for larry fink to try to sell you a mansion so you can so you can get eke out a few sats from you or
something. Um, but, uh, if you're doing that, if you just, if you just go and buy a random house,

(52:13):
you're getting a piece of trash. Um, and you can, you can follow a lot of great guys on,
on Twitter to, to learn about just how awful, um, you know, houses these days, uh, can be like
modern builds and such. Um, our friend Kelly Lannan is, uh, very, very good on this topic and
urbanism and so on and so forth uh you're not if if you if you go buy a house at a new development

(52:38):
you're not you're not getting a forever home no uh just physically speaking you're not getting a
forever home it's not about like whether you like the house or not it's like it's literally not
going to last you um a lifetime um certainly not passing down likely not even the length of the
mortgage that you take out of the house. Yeah, it's just, it's total garbage. I had a tweet,

(53:03):
I was like, you know, Fiat, you know, Fiat housing is paying, you know, 2,000, 3,000 bucks per month
for a house or apartment that has doors literally made of cardboard.
Quite literally. I remember a couple of years ago, you sent me a video.
Yeah. So I put a video of a guy, he's looking at the doors. It's like, and I didn't know that

(53:24):
before i like i had these doors are so light it's like sound i can hear everything in my
going on like the what's going on there and i but i never really it didn't really cross my mind
other than how annoying um and how weird that the doors are so light and i watched this video and
it's like no it's literally cardboard um uh and have you ever seen the movie the producers

(53:49):
No.
Okay.
Because I always think of that because the guy, he's totally, the producer guy, he's washed up.
And he's just like, I'm wearing a cardboard belt.
And it's like, that's all of us.
We're all living that life.
We're all washed up from inflation.

(54:10):
So point being that it's like, if you just go out and get a house, you're going to be getting a piece of garbage.
but if you don't participate and you just focus on on hodling but you also learn more about what
it is that you actually want out of a house you are ultimately helping create you know the the

(54:31):
conditions to have more what I would prefer which is more traditional you know housing housing builds
and I'd want that whether I was living in a house or an apartment or anywhere I want I want a
beautiful building to live in because i have to look at look at it and live in it every single day
yeah and you can squint and see projects like thousand year homes pop up and more

(54:58):
builders and architects will understand this problem and they're coming to market with
higher end like masonry yeah that right now is probably not scalable across the country across
the world but it can be it can be if people begin yeah in fact showing their preference saving enough

(55:20):
to right now they may be more expensive than your average cardboard box build and that makes sense
but the more people that save enough and then go and deploy that savings into the capital goods that
these builders need to build better homes thousand-year homes then they're more economically
secure they can expand their business and sends a signal to the market of other builders like oh

(55:43):
oh, maybe there's an opportunity here
if I decide to really focus on quality builds
instead of fast, high-velocity trash economy builds.
Right.
So that video was by a guy, Brent Hull.
He's located here in Texas.
He's up in Fort Worth.
Highly recommend his YouTube channel
to anyone who's interested in home building

(56:05):
and traditional styles and architectural principles
or whatever.
but you know he's he's a good example of some of his there's only so many people like him
but if you could if you could get more that'd be great but even for people like him he I remember
he was starting to use more CNC to do some of the milling because he has only so many people

(56:29):
and while there is this sort of you know people people like the idea of handcrafted stuff
you can get over the fact that there's not enough people by now uh using using machines to help
augment the thing and it's going to come out nice um in fact there's in fact he's shown there's you
know long traditions of of machines uh helping with builds that's why a lot of victorian houses

(56:53):
are so ornate is because it was it was the start of like really industrializing a lot of production
of various metalwork.
So you were able to make way neater designs
than just hands would be able to do,
or at least in a timeframe
and for a cost that's actually worth it.
So with that in mind,
not only is it something that, you know,

(57:17):
you can start to create the conditions for,
but also if enough people are sitting
and having those thoughts,
the structures of production could build
in such a way that's like, you know,
yeah, you might not get the handcrafted
traditional house but you can get the one of good materials and that looks really nice because it
was made by a machine that did it exactly to the spec and so i actually see no reason why uh that

(57:42):
sort of architecture should be expensive at all in fact it should be dirt cheap uh over time um
but it also the the economy is frankly it's sort of garbage in garbage out and so part of what i'm
saying is that it requires leisure to actually stop being, stop inserting garbage in to the high

(58:02):
volume trash economy, um, and start demanding something that's actually a little better because
it aligns more with the long-term view of, of the good. Um, and, uh, but the other thing there's,
there's also, uh, the, the cap somewhere capital goods also plays because obviously people can
start businesses, they can invest in stuff that makes stuff. I mean, this is basically what you

(58:25):
would do at 1031. You want to live in a Bitcoin world, so you invest in businesses that are
helping make that thing. But I also think education is part of that because education
is what helps form the mind to actually engage in effectively sort of higher forms of leisure
to be able to think more clearly about what makes a good house. So in many of these things,

(58:48):
I like talking about it, but I'll be the first to admit I'm a deletante.
I'm not an expert on these things, but in some sense, it's like I do desire them.
So it does actually create an obligation for me to try at least to do something to learn
about how does this actually work, to actually understand not just that building looks good,

(59:11):
that building doesn't, but actually think about it.
It's like, why does that building look good?
What is it? What are the principles underneath that do that? And that takes time and education.
And even the beginning of it, it still does take a sort of vibes mentality. So, you know, capital goods is a like I said, it's psychological. It's very broad.

(59:33):
So I would even put things like people starting Vibe accounts on X as being within that because what that does, you know, some of them can get really annoying and they also turn into grifts and stuff like that.
Shout out to prep propaganda.
I like prep propaganda.
If we're going to give shout outs, I have to give a shout out to Necktie Salvage, LW Root, who is probably the Vibe King of X.

(01:00:02):
Wonderful guy.
super nice guy and uh he does he does a great job of of promoting the oxford uh collar button downs
um and uh so so yeah necktie salvage but like guys like him what is he doing i mean he offers
services to to teach people like you can he'll go help you uh you know improve your wardrobe or

(01:00:24):
whatever but even just you know having these accounts that just show different things um
It's like, you know, you go to a showroom for all kinds of interior design and so on and so forth.
That's meant to help you understand the different vibes of what is out there.
So you can just get this, even a visceral feeling of what is good, what is bad, and get a sense of that.

(01:00:46):
But then I would recommend, it's like you also try to get deeper of why does that feel good?
Why does that, what is it about it that makes it good?
you know why why is why is Bach so good why is Mozart so good and in the realm
of music it's not just because they just you know it's not like it's not pure

(01:01:06):
vibes that did that there's also musical principles underneath that made them that
they built those vibes on and so education is extremely important and so getting
this out into the world, creating those signals so that people know.
I mean, how did how did a steak and shake know that the world wanted beef tallow?

(01:01:33):
They didn't just make a guess is because there's been a growing sort of movement online of people
sharing information about what they believe are the health effects of beef tallow versus versus others.
Seed oil disrespect or vibe vibe connoisseur of a beef tallow.
over seed oils. Yeah. So this is like one of the, the, the, the roles that, that things like that

(01:01:57):
play. So people should, people should consider that of, you know, what, what are the, what are
the vibes that they can put out? Um, so, uh, I'm, this whole interview is just me trying to,
trying to, uh, you know, get a, get a job at vibes capital management, I suppose.
But, um, yeah, it's just that that's very important. And, uh, but also, like I said,

(01:02:19):
you know, further education. Um, and so where is all of this going, you know, with, with,
you know, you, you have leisure, you have that moment of rest to actually stop like, uh, you know,
trying to earn yet another, you know, dollar or whatever. Um, or, you know, like, you know,

(01:02:39):
take, take a break, um, and actually reflect on what is it that you're doing so that you can
recalibrate and, you know, go back in, uh, with, with a, a higher sense of, of what you're trying
to do in your day-to-day life. Um, and where that goes is that what I would argue is there's

(01:03:02):
obviously a market price, um, for, for, you know, a good, um, so Bitcoin's market price is, you know,
whatever it is at the moment, like $110,000 or, you know, whatever. That's the market price.
That means you can go, you can trade it, you can get $110,000. You have that much purchasing power,
whatever that means. That's just the price. That doesn't tell you anything about what,

(01:03:26):
what if you, you know, just wanted to use a Bitcoin to go get something,
that doesn't tell you what you should get. It only tells you how much you can get.
And so one thing that I was trying to argue in my talk is that the ultimate value of your sats is up to you.

(01:03:48):
Because it's up to you to decide, are these sats worth a Lambo?
Or are they worth something better than a Lambo?
How do we even define what's better than a Lambo?
How did we decide Lambos were a thing?
um it's it's up to you to ultimately decide what that value is good for and so um you know price

(01:04:13):
obviously enables much more of that sort of value expression but it's up to you to sort of make
yourself worthy of desiring something that gets every potential value out of any given unit of
money that you have. And it's only up to you. The market will give you anything that you ask for.

(01:04:37):
And if you do not have a virtuous mindset of what you want, they'll be happy to just sell you all
the crack that you want and you can just smoke crack until you die. They'll be happy to give
that to you um it's it's up to you to say oh well i want i want a beautiful house i want you know uh

(01:05:03):
you know i want um you know uh good good things for my family and so on and so forth like only you
can can demand that out of the market yeah and this is this reminded me austin tennell is also
in the world of masonry and his the name of his company is escaping me but they're building
beautiful brick houses and whole neighborhoods up in Oklahoma and other parts of South Midwest.

(01:05:30):
And he mentioned one thing that's like, I think building on this, like he has a problem finding
quality brick for the builds that he wants to do because the brick factories don't exist anymore
because the market has basically gone out there and say, we prefer these high velocity trash
economy builds with cardboard over the bricks all the brick factories sit down so like kelly who

(01:05:52):
mentioned already austin tur and i sat down recorded a podcast probably a year and a half ago at this
point tur and i have often joked since we recorded that podcast like when are we gonna invest in the
brick factory so that people like austin can because if you want it you have to actually make
it happen and it takes time yes like you don't just get to when when you demand something out
of the market you don't just get to snap your fingers and say i want bricks now but it's like

(01:06:16):
i don't only want a beautiful house i want my neighborhood to be beautiful yeah and if i want
that we need a brick factory yeah you can't yeah you need not just enough brick production for
yourself but enough for uh the whole the whole neighborhood so you you know build the change you
wish to see in the world effectively is i i think how i put it um so yeah you you have to actually

(01:06:37):
you know get to work um and so um i you know with any of this i don't know uh i don't know what
what everyone else wants i don't know um you know because of that i don't know at what point is the
best point for them given whatever they have to to be making moves into anything my point is not to

(01:07:00):
make any kind of statement about what the correct thing is because i don't know i'm not you
but rather be thinking about this and take that time dimension into consideration take the knowledge
uh factor uh into consideration and be thinking about it so that you can find what what is the

(01:07:24):
right thing uh to do so that you can actually get what you want no i'm really happy you gave
this presentation that we're recording this right now i'm trying to figure out how to frame this
without coming off judgmental,
but I think Bitcoiners need to be thinking about higher good,
higher level things like this and thinking in this mind,
or at least me individual.

(01:07:45):
We'll put a broad brush on Bitcoiners,
but myself and I think others should as well.
And like to raising the discourse to think,
and Turs talked about this a lot.
I think that same Bitcoin urbanism meetup that we had last year
or a year and a half ago, whenever it was,
that is sort of the flag he planted in the ground is we could look up 10 years from now

(01:08:08):
bitcoiners could be like 90 of the 0.1 percent um and what are we going to do with that wealth
like how we're going to make the world better and obviously that meetup was highly focused on
urbanism but right beginning to think of this not just buy a lambo or buy a second house it's like
how do you want to see society progress yeah well the nice thing is at least you know obviously

(01:08:30):
people are going to want to stack more sats. I don't blame them. They probably should go stack
more sats. But one of the nice things about Bitcoin is that it's going up regardless of you.
You're along for the ride when it comes to Bitcoin. And so first of all, I agree. It's like,
I look at myself like this is a me judging myself, telling myself I need to be doing this.

(01:08:57):
I need to be thinking about, you know, what is it that I truly want in life?
Because, um, I, I don't think I've done well enough thinking about that, um, in the past
and I should be, I should be focused on, on a better future.
And, uh, as we've said, it's like money itself alone does not do that.
You have to have all these other things to actually turn that money into, uh, those nice

(01:09:23):
things.
and as I'll just beat the drum on it,
it's like there is a time dimension as well.
These things take time.
So yes, I think that because of the fact
that it's like Bitcoin is just going to do what it does,
you have however much time between now
and Bitcoin getting to a price
where you want to engage in something,

(01:09:43):
you have lots of time to study
and you should probably be making use of that time.
I should be making use of that time
to actually figure out
You know, what does your dream house look like?
What does, you know, we go down the list of all the things that someone would want out
of life, but what are all those things?

(01:10:06):
How do they reach their highest potential that are imbued with the highest values that
are ordered towards the highest good around?
And it's like, you can be thinking about that now, even if you have no plans on spending
because you recognize that if I, if I hodl in the future, I'm going to have more that I can deploy,

(01:10:27):
uh, you know, orders of magnitude more, you know, 10, a hundred times more purchasing power. Um,
and with that, there's so much more potential that it is worth waiting to actually get the ball
rolling at a future date. Even before then you can be doing the education stuff because that's
all free online well i'm gonna combine two three things here now going back like hodl for good in

(01:10:53):
the context of in the future there may be some good be a good opportunity for you to deploy
your savings into where something bad happens and you need your savings to
subsist the latter happened to me but it gave me like when i in my mid-20s i quit a job expecting
to get a new job within a month and it turned into 18 months i was unemployed and it wasn't a

(01:11:18):
great time to be selling bitcoin but i did have bitcoin savings that i could have some leisure to
think about what i want to do next could also get through the the hard times yeah and get through the hard times because i had savings But I also had the leisure to really think And you were actually working at this company during this period of my life

(01:11:39):
And this is like a great example of me spending my leisurely time
and the excess savings that I had to learn more about Bitcoin.
Turned out to be a very shitty miner.
But I learned how to operate like Bitcoin,
interact with Bitcoin from the command line.
I learned more about hashing and mining pools and those concepts, which gave me the knowledge to confidently write about some of these topics in Bitcoin.

(01:12:02):
And so that leisure and the excess savings that I had gave me the time to learn more, to start a business, educating people about Bitcoin.
And I think in the long run, I'm better off because of that.
But I was only able to do that because I had savings and somewhat forced leisure.
but use that leisure, I would argue, wisely to learn more,
to bring something productive in the form of this media company.

(01:12:24):
So in that sense, when you're re-entering the market,
you have way more to aim for,
and basically way more human capital to deploy on the market.
That's funny, because I remember I was setting this up
and playing with it when I was unemployed in Brooklyn,
in East Williamsburg.
I remember exactly where it's at,

(01:12:44):
but I remember playing around with the CLI
yeah learning about mining and all that yeah no one for me you know what was
exciting about that was the was was before then it would seem silly to people
now because we're in 2025 but back then having having some of the you know
things like a payment decorator and like all these all these just like having a

(01:13:07):
node with a Python library that could communicate with it well that was that
was very fresh and exciting and simplified things that used to be extremely difficult.
I remember trying to make a, just, you know, toying around, trying to make a blog with
a paywall that was based on, you know, watching a node for payments to come in.

(01:13:32):
And is, like, when you actually look at it, it's a complex engineering task because you
have to, you know, watch the blogs.
You have to wait for the right wallet, the right address to get some money.
And you have to be paying attention to all of this.
And it depends, do you care about confirmations or not?
And so you just have to be doing all this stuff.

(01:13:56):
And then when it's like, oh, there's a simple couple lines of Python that just does all of that now because it's tied to a node.
That was sort of revelatory.
and that's also a you know software is capital and that's a great example of how capital helps
we've and we've advanced you know far beyond that now yeah a decade later it's funny I literally

(01:14:21):
just looked up I was like oh this actually ties in well to this conversation this little computer
yeah and yeah you know I was trying to think it's kind of just veering into this other thing
I don't know if he would want to be named, so I won't name him, but he'll be listening and he'll enjoy this.
But I was having a discussion with a gentleman because I thought he would like my talk, so I sent it to him.

(01:14:45):
And he likes Bitcoin, but he's not like a hardcore Bitcoiner. He probably has some or something.
But, you know, one of the things that he was concerned about is this idea that, you know, money is a tool and money itself does not do anything.
You know, like he's not meaning that in like sort of the Keynesian way.

(01:15:07):
But it's like you can have all the money, but it's like, do you actually have the things you want?
And it's like if you don't, it's like you do have to spend in order to get those things.
and it probably is good to have you know other productive assets that are aligned with the
specific things that you like in the world and one of his concerns is like because of people just

(01:15:32):
hodling and and just buying more and more it's like if people are doing that then in some sense
that sort of keynesian view is like kind of right you know it's like people are just going to hold
forever and then what? And I was thinking on that and I think there is an interesting concept that I
think people should be thankful for Bitcoin with, which is a lot of what he's describing is, to me,

(01:15:59):
more of a problem with fiat than it is with Bitcoin. And I think Bitcoin actually solves it.
And the reason why is because with fiat, your time horizon is shortening. So you're always
having to chase after more yield. Everyone's, everyone's yield chasing at all times. And you
can never stop. It doesn't matter how rich you get. Uh, you still have to keep, keep going forward

(01:16:21):
or it's all going to go away. Now, maybe you get to a point where you're so wealthy that, uh, you
don't even want to give it to your kids. You just want to give it all away like Bill Gates or
something. Don't recommend that. But, um, you know, uh, you know, that's, you know, for him,
Obviously, how much is he truly chasing after new wealth?
I'm not sure.
But for most people, you can't stop.

(01:16:44):
And then even beyond people, as an organization, you have to keep chugging somehow or this whole thing's going to fall apart and then everyone's going to lose their job and they're going to have to find something.
So you're always trying to do something, which in our trash economy means every business becomes a financial services business.
and so you have to do that.

(01:17:08):
But with Bitcoin, because of the fact
that units are not being added,
so it's not getting debased,
and so you can actually just hold on to money
and know that it's part of that percentage of a pie,
you can actually rest.
You actually have that room to rest.

(01:17:29):
And so there's actually, in some sense,
a, like, there is a diminishing marginal utility for money. And Bitcoin, I think, helps illustrate
that better because of the fact that over the long run, if you just save it, the value of each

(01:17:50):
unit is going to go up. And so, you know, at some point, you actually can theoretically say, you
know, this is enough for this moment, for whatever your purposes are. And if that's the case,
I would point out, you know, where do we get the chance for leisure? We get the chance for leisure
from being able to rest, taking that seventh day off or, you know, whatever. And so Bitcoin, I think

(01:18:18):
you can actually come to a rest. You're not chasing after money just for the sake of more money.
I think that is mostly a function of Bitcoin being in such a high growth state that it's like, in many ways, why wouldn't you want to attain that kind of monetary mobility when it's put in front of you?

(01:18:42):
Especially if you have that long term view where it's like, you know, at the very least, I can pass it down to my children and they can figure out what to do with it, even if I don't get to partake in that.
that's very attractive to people and it totally makes sense like of course you would just go
bananas over trying to stack as many sats as possible and just just leave it at that but um

(01:19:09):
because you can rest there is that room to actually be able to stop and think what really
matters. And as the world converges on Bitcoin, that growth rate will slow down. So people are
not going as bananas just to get additional sats and they can think more long term about

(01:19:29):
what do I want to do with any money that comes in, whatever I have now, whatever I get in the future,
what is it that I actually want to do with that? They have more capacity to actually contemplate
reflect on that. And so that in turn, we were talking about all the production, all the whatever,
that in turn would actually lead to more of the thing that I think my friend was hoping for.

(01:19:55):
So I hope that's a good answer for him to address that sort of concern and anyone else who might have
that concern. And I think if you're interested, you're the interviewer, but leads us into a
different part of my talk on um basically a legacy um um so you know i talk about legacy and

(01:20:21):
you said you know there's there's some people who uh what they want to do is just die with their
coins you know and uh they see that as a benefit because there are gratuitous benefits of the
marginal value of everyone else's coins uh goes up and to me that is a called a good baseline
nice thing, a nice legacy. That's a baseline legacy because it's like, well, you know that

(01:20:46):
you're helping just like when you invest in, or sorry, when you save money, you're sort of
investing in the economy as a whole. In a sense, you're putting like a permanent endowment in the
economy as a whole, you know? And so it's like, okay, everyone gets that little bump in their
money. That's cool. But at the same time, if you have a vision of a higher good that you want,

(01:21:11):
and you have values that you're trying to build the world towards, if you just raise the marginal
value of everyone's sats, then you just get whatever, like you're just feeding into a garbage
in, garbage out kind of thing.
And, you know, hopefully Bitcoin, because of its properties, will indeed kind of make

(01:21:33):
people lower time preference kind of have a longer term view of things that reflects back and sort of you know you know more more civilized you know lives and whatnot
But there's, there's no like inherent guarantees of that.
Whereas if you can leave other things behind and you can actually put those coins to something,

(01:21:56):
it's not everything.
Obviously you'd, you're, you're not gonna, you're not gonna, like any of this stuff,
You don't spend your whole stack.
You balance it out however it is that you want,
but there will be more savings than there would be in a fiat world.
If you do that, then you can be leaving things behind

(01:22:19):
and leaving capital goods behind for your children and others
and also just great works of various kinds
that help imbue the world with those particular values
for them to continue building on.
And so I brought forth a virtue of magnificence.

(01:22:40):
Magnificence is basically the act of basically doing great things.
You're sacrificing your wealth.
In fact, a poor person can't have magnificence.
And I don't mean that in a sense of a poor person can't be a virtuous person, but specifically the virtue of magnificence is the sacrificing of great wealth for the purposes of something great.

(01:23:11):
And so it's something that actually demands.
Only a whale can possibly do something that would be considered magnificent.
and if you have your mind towards magnificence
and you have another virtue of,
I didn't mention this, but magnanimity,
just basically directing your mind at great things.

(01:23:34):
If you have that because you've had leisure,
you've had time to reflect
and contemplate these highest goods,
now you can think about goods
that can sort of outlast your Bitcoin.
One of the things I said was that when you,
if you just leave your Bitcoin,

(01:23:55):
if you have children, like they'll have children,
people will spend, maybe they have lots of children.
So maybe things get diluted over time.
Like at some point, it's sort of a,
it can be an Ozymandias situation
where everything just kind of dissipates over time.
But what are the things that you can do
that would outlast your specific Bitcoin?

(01:24:16):
Bitcoin itself will be here forever, but your stack might not.
And that might be the case.
I don't know what kind of money the Mozart family has today.
I literally don't even know if the Mozart family exists anymore or not.

(01:24:41):
Maybe they do.
um but uh like uh i don't i don't know what kind of money uh you know his his broad family like
you know has but he left behind you know some of the absolute greatest pieces of music in all of
history and we're still listening to it hundreds of years later and i imagine people are going to

(01:25:05):
continue to listen to it for hundreds of years uh especially because they're going to open up
the reorg podcast and be forced to listen to some Mozart.
But point is, is having, you know,
if you can be a patron of the arts or,
or even just have,
have the leisure time to be able to learn the skill yourself and produce

(01:25:27):
something like a great piece of music, a great building or whatever that will,
that can, that is something that can exist forever.
and perhaps Bitcoiners should consider
what are the magnificent things
that they can devote themselves to.

(01:25:47):
And I had a picture on there
of the cathedral in Florence,
which is probably one of my very favorite buildings
in the world.
And I remember going to Florence
when I was a teenager
and I was just standing and staring.
It was already one of my favorites
because I thought Brunelleschi's dome
is just so is magnificent learning about how it was engineered uh just you know incredible thing

(01:26:12):
and i stood there and i looked at it and just to think that that's hundreds of years old and of
course there's i think there's regulations in florence about how tall they can make uh buildings
or whatever but that thing still towers over florence and it is it it um you know it's just
a very moving sight anytime you see it. And that's been that way for hundreds of years,

(01:26:36):
for countless numbers of people. And so what can you do that perhaps also has that effect on the
world? And the way that you get there is by aiming at those higher ends. And that to me is something

(01:26:59):
that would be worth spending Bitcoin on
if you knew that you can make something
that would hundreds of years down the line
still bring inspiration to the entire world.
What is Bitcoin for if not to make a society

(01:27:22):
and create the conditions possible
or make the conditions that make such an act in creation possible.
So to me, that's sort of part of the whole end.
So it's like when we're hodling for good, we're hodling forever.

(01:27:42):
We're hodling for nicer things,
but we're also hodling sort of for these ultimate goods,
uh or and i i also put it as like the common goods of you know things that are are just these
magnificent gifts uh to the entire world going back to the cathedral like something was built

(01:28:03):
literally that yeah inspires you inspires you living today in 2025 or 2015 whenever you visited
yeah on the total you know other side of the world yeah it's the sort of thing that you know
I'd love to go travel to the other side of the world again, just to see it. Um, and that goes for,
you know, many, many other great buildings, um, many, many other great, you know, works of art.

(01:28:27):
Um, you know, uh, you know, there's, there's all sorts of things in this world is like,
you can't imagine even wanting to live without it. There's some things in this world. It's like,
how did the world live before this? You know, it's like, what, what was the, how, how could,
How could you live in a world before Beethoven's Ninth existed?

(01:28:47):
It's almost like inconceivable once it does exist.
So, you know, why wouldn't you want to create things that have that kind of effect on the
world?
That's sort of, you know, why are we here?
Why are you holding in the first place?
It's not merely for the sake of holding.
Even though holding is completely rational, it's something I recommend people do.

(01:29:09):
you shouldn't necessarily just like throw away all your all your sets on this thing because then
yeah you made this thing but how are you going to eat so you can continue to enjoy the thing you
just made so you know this once again this is not it's not telling people that they they ought to go

(01:29:30):
spend right now or what they should spend on or anything like that my my goal with that talk and
And subsequently, this interview is to inspire people to think about how these fit into their own world and what it means for their sets.

(01:29:54):
And I think for a lot of people, they think about their family and so on and so forth, which is obviously an obvious good thing.
and to me that's sort of like the the first baby steps is kind of these obvious universal things
it's like oh yeah like i want to take care of my family but then further it's like okay how do we
take that to the next level there's always a next level and the more time you can spend um reflecting

(01:30:18):
and contemplating on these things the better you can find what that next level is and uh the more
that you're actually placing value on those sets that you have because those sets actually mean
something you know it's like i'm going to be able to put these sats towards that one day um uh and
and i would like to know that would be including i want to hold these sets because i want to be

(01:30:41):
able to know that i can give my children this amount because i think it'll be um what they
need to have a leg up um in their lives and in my in your grandchildren's lives and so on and so
forth so you know even you know passing down hot old sats is also part of this equation um but
there's a lot more than just that yeah and this seems like uh extension another way to articulate

(01:31:10):
bitcoin fixes this that meme um and i can hear people saying like this is such a pipe dream
it's cool and all that you're talking like this but it'll never happen like the economy's foregone
and even to the gentleman that you had a conversation with
about are Bitcoiners falling into the Keynesian trap of
or becoming the
it's not a character

(01:31:33):
becoming the hoarders the Keynesians talk about
this stuff is already happening on the margins
to the gentleman that you had the discussion with just an example I spent sats during that period when i had time for leisure but also needed to dig into my savings to to live um yes maybe not every

(01:31:55):
bitcoin is doing that but it is possible made me able to survive that time uh in terms of like
magnificence and building institutions and things for the greater good maybe
it's not beethoven's third or a cathedral in florence but nakamoto institute very integral

(01:32:18):
sort of property for the higher good of education to help people better understand
what predate a bitcoin why bitcoin works how to think of it from an economic perspective and
where it may go like that is an example of a bitcoiner yourself going out there and building
something for the greater good and not only that the patrons and the donors to the nakamoto institute

(01:32:43):
or individual bitcoiners to say hey i'm willing to part sats with my sats and give them to the
satoshi nakamoto institute because i think what they're doing will be for the greater good of
society so this stuff is already happening at the margins and many people may hear this and be like
you guys are are talking pipe dreams here but it's happening not at scale that we would like to see

(01:33:04):
like it to see but if adoption continues at the pace that it has and more individuals internalize
this perspective and framing of what to do with my bitcoin like you can begin to see the feedback
loop accelerating and you also have to start you have to start somewhere exactly it's like if you're
you know you you run a marathon by taking that first step um so uh yeah and you know like i said

(01:33:30):
you know, part of, you know, capital goods and so on and so forth. Much of that has to do with
education, which is, you know, kind of the realm of capital goods that I find myself, you know,
kind of most interested in. And so that's why, you know, like you're saying, like why I have

(01:33:51):
the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. And, you know, I would say even though, you know, the websites
existed for a long time, I think, as an institution, as like a, you know, legit, you know, organization
and everything. I think we're still on that, you know, that first step. But, you know, that step
is, I think, oriented in a direction of wanting to know how do we actually create a magnificent

(01:34:21):
educational institution that helps us know that we're not just passing down sats,
but also passing down the knowledge to understand what those sats mean and what those sats are
capable of, which also means understanding how do we actually value this? What does it take to
make those sats worth something? And so that's why it's like, why have the cypherpunks and the

(01:34:48):
Austrians and so on and so forth. Well, it is my belief that in order to best understand
what Bitcoin is, how it works, why it's important, why it unlocks any of these nice things that we
have, why it is integral to the process of civilization through the lowering of people's
time preference and the increase in savings and capital production, accumulation, et cetera,

(01:35:14):
et cetera, et cetera. All of that requires, you know,
understanding these economic principles, which I think are best,
that knowledge is,
is exemplified by the Austrian school and the cypherpunks help,
help us sort of best see in a world of

(01:35:38):
a deeply connected computerized world with the internet,
how is it that we can build social institutions on top of that
and ones that do an even better job, thanks to computation,
at protecting our rights and facilitating exchange than we had previously.

(01:36:05):
So actually sort of being able to put these technologies into creating, shall we say, like, you know, technology that helps us socially, but is also eusocial in the sense that it actually does things in a positive direction, a more humane direction, such as, you know, being able to have more personal freedom

(01:36:35):
or protecting privacy in certain ways and so on and so forth.
All of that comes from understanding a, you know, broadly cypherpunk vision
of what it means to engineer with the internet in mind.
And, you know, likewise, there's, you know, just understanding the history of cryptography in general

(01:36:59):
and understanding computation.
but then you know there's there's much more in the world that that has to like come into this
to all play that that role in helping people know this is why there's only 21 million
uh a bitcoin um or i guess it's 2.1 uh quadrillion bitcoin now but no we're not we're not no 21

(01:37:23):
million Bitcoin. I'm not giving into that. But yeah, why there's a 21 million Bitcoin,
why we run our own nodes, why hold your own keys, et cetera, et cetera. All these things require
that all of that knowledge of understanding what this gift that we've received in the form of

(01:37:46):
Bitcoin, what it actually unlocks for us. And then in turn, like actually appreciating like the full
picture of what that what is actually being unlocked through all of the sort of economic
and, you know, sort of cultural and dare I say, spiritual elements of what we've talked about

(01:38:09):
today. Yeah. So go support the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, please. I'm a supporter, a very happy
supporter i will be a long time supporter yes moving forward but i think i mean we've had many
discussions about what you're building over the years and honestly as a bitcoiner cares deeply
about the principles that we discussed in this article i think an institution like the satoshi

(01:38:32):
nakamoto institute is going to be an imperative if we're actually going to facilitate the necessary
knowledge transfer to make sure that bitcoin has the potential to survive in the long term
across generations.
Yes, and people can go to
nakamotoinstitute.org
slash donate if you

(01:38:53):
wish to part with some
sats. And frankly,
I mean, sats are needed
to actually build these capital
goods. And one of
the reasons why things
are more sort of
slow going and
baby steps in this organizational
process is
these things do

(01:39:13):
have, you know, resource bottlenecks. I can only do so much as a single individual and with only
so much, you know, monetary resources at hand. So for those who have gotten value out of the
Nakamoto Institute and they like what has been done so far and you want to see that scaled up

(01:39:39):
with all kinds of new stuff.
Please get in touch.
And any contributions are greatly appreciated,
to say the least.
Michael, this is my last in-person TFTC interview
in Austin before I leave.
Thank you for-
I'm honored.
Well, thank you.
I picked you specifically

(01:40:00):
because I think it's a great way to end.
Yeah.
I'll be back in the studio making trips.
I mean, I'm also mad at you.
I know.
You know, for leaving us.
I know.
We'll still see you here all the time.
Yes.
The greater good of family calls in the Northeast.
Yeah, it makes sense.
Yeah.
And you also, you'll get to be around a lot of crack in Philly.

(01:40:23):
So that'll help you.
It'll help you in your leisure time to reflect on how do I ultimately get as far away from this as possible.
Well, I'm going to go.
Which will then in turn get you just back to Austin because that's all you had to do in the first place was stay here.
I'm going to go with some savings and send a signal to the drug dealers that my sats are not buying crack.

(01:40:46):
So go build something more productive.
Yeah, you can get some kind of drone fleet to start harassing them and getting them away or something.
I don't know.
Maybe that's a good idea.
Maybe that's the greater good of Philadelphia that needs right now.
I mean, hey, you know, Philadelphia is very much, you know, a birthplace of the United States, you know, a country that I'm very grateful to live in, be born in.

(01:41:11):
And my family's been here for quite a while.
And I would love to see a Philly that is much more pleasant than it is now because it is once a great city and it can be a great city again.
So maybe it needs people.
Go forth and do that.
Maybe it needs productive savers who plan on deploying capital to effectuate that change,

(01:41:34):
you know?
Maybe.
Maybe.
And maybe that needs to happen all across the world.
If only there were a large group of people holding on to the finest monetary technology
in history to make that happen globally.
Someone's got to hodl for good to make the change happen.
Yes.
Go out there and hodl for good, freaks.
Peace and love.

(01:41:55):
Tiki!

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