← The "What is Money?" Show
The "What is Money?" Show
Money, Power, and Soul | The Pysh Series | Episode 6 (WiM077)
01:01:13
Preston Pysh joins me for a multi-episode conversation exploring two books: 1) The Brain by David Eagleman, and 2) The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav.
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Transcript73 lines
- [00:09]
A
So we left off talking about courage as being the most important virtue. Because without courage you cannot practice any other virtue consistently. And this reminds me of that old quote, when you do what you fear, fear disappears. So courage is not a matter of absence of fear. It's like feeling the fear and going towards it anyways. And that head into the wind approach to life is what lets you kind of, I guess, exhibit other virtues consistently.
- [00:48]
B
The thing that I would comment on, I love this book, but some of the stuff that we were talking about on the brain are things that just kind of change. And I read a lot of the stuff about the brain after I had read this book for the first time. And it kind of just changed my perspective on some of the ideas that he's throwing out there. Like, hey, you want to do things that you're fearful of in order to overcome them, but you want to do it in a thoughtful kind of way that you don't actually put yourself in danger. People will just cling to these cliches of like, oh, do the things you're fearful of. Right? Well, you have these fear based things that are wired into your defense mechanisms and your survival mechanisms for just how your human brain functions. And you want those things to function well in a balanced kind of way. You don't want to be scared of walking down the street. That's not a chemical balance. That's probably a healthy chemical balance in somebody's brain. But I think that if somebody has something that early on in their childhood that created some type of fear induced reaction to their environment for something that just doesn't make sense. I knew a person scared of balloons. For me, it was very, very strange, right? They had a dream or something like that and just wigged them out and that for some reason they got wired that that was something to be fearful of. That's something that you can deduce just logically and say, hey, this is something that you got to overcome. This is not going to harm me. So let's come up with some type of system or some type of way to overcome this and then go through that process of remediation, of trying to start to become comfortable with that. So that would be a healthy way of addressing a fear that doesn't really logically make sense. And I think people need to really distinguish between is this a fear that logically doesn't make sense, or is this something that you really should be scared of? Should I try to skydive without a parachute and land on a slope in Las Vegas like some people do to overcome some fear. No, that is stupid. The odds of success there are not high enough that outweigh the thrill that you have to acquire or the thrill that you're seeking. People have to go through it in a thoughtful kind of way.
- [03:29]
A
Yeah. Even I'm reflecting on Jordan Peterson's clinical psychology where he's saying he uses exposure therapy to treat people. If you have a fear of elevators, you know, it makes you look at the elevator, then get in the elevator, then. Yeah, you can do that yourself. Right. You can program yourself through an awareness of your fears and over time, really, I think forge them into strengths even. You know, I can think of things. When I first got into boxing, actually getting hit in the face was pretty fear fear inducing. And just by repeatedly exposing yourself to it, you can learn, channel that energy in a different way. I guess.
- [04:11]
B
Somebody, some people never experience that pain of getting punched in the face. I think everybody should get punched in the face at least. So when you're a freshman at West Point, everybody has to take boxing and like you're going to get punched in the face and it's not pleasant. You've never been punched in the face. But I think everybody should be punched in the face at least once.
- [04:35]
A
Yes. Like Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face in the face.
- [04:41]
B
And if you get punched the face hard, like, I don't know what I would describe it, it's not seeing stars, but like you're not there.
- [04:49]
A
Yeah.
- [04:50]
B
You're kind of out of the mix for a little bit.
- [04:52]
A
Yeah, I definitely had the bell rung a few times.
- [04:54]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody needs. Everyone needs to have their bell rung.
- [05:02]
A
Yeah. So courage, I mean, it's so important. I love the way it's framed as the foundation. But then the author, like, he really dives into what I guess we would call the source of virtue. So there's virtue built on top of. Courage is kind of like the foundational virtue. But then courage itself is coming from the soul. And I'll read an excerpt here just to introduce it. And the way I'm thinking about this is like the soul is almost that part of us that transcends space and time. And it sounds like a lot to take in at first, but I think the author impacts it really well. So he says, quote, describing the soul, a concept which I found in my youthful years in the spirituals, which confused me because the lyrics suggested that pain and joy, weeping and laughing were all together when death came and that they came together to go into death. So he's reflecting on a spiritual tradition here that describes the lyrics describe, as you approach death, pain and joy become one. So it's like whatever is beyond our own life, your soul or whatever's leaving your body, it's this place beyond paradox. And the author, like he anchors this and a lot of science later, if we ever talk about his other book, the Dancing Woolie Masters, which is about.
- [06:26]
B
Quantum physics, which is amazing.
- [06:29]
A
It's an amazing book. This kind of a big leap to even think about things beyond space and time. But I think it's necessary to have the open mindedness that that's where we're going in the rest of this book because it gets pretty far out there.
- [06:42]
B
Well, and I think it's important to highlight that, that although this book comes across as. And people, a lot of people get very uncomfortable when you start talking about this stuff, right? And they're just like, oh, this is such garbage. Like it's such qualitative, like nobody knows what the, what the real answer is here. So why are we sitting around talking about it? You'll have those opinions out there. What I find so interesting about Gary is he writes this book which is very spiritual in nature, but then his other book that was a bestseller was about quantum mechanics and breaking it down for people to understand. And it's kind of neat to see the parallels between the two books. Yeah, there you go. And boy, you talk about a really, really good book too that we're not even discussing is this Dancing Wu Lee Master, which is all about quantum mechanics. I highly recommend. If you don't know anything about quantum mechanics, the book is written for you to break it down and make it understandable. But I'm sorry to go off on a tangent.
- [07:42]
A
Yeah, no, no, no, that's. It's really important. I think if you are rash, if you're materialist, mechanical worldview, which as a lot of us are Newtonian, clockwork universe worldview, you tend to think all this soul stuff is a bunch of mumbo jumbo. But when you get really to the cutting edge of science, you get into quantum physics. And quantum physics sounds a lot like that mumbo jumbo. You know, things, they're all probabilistic. There's a lot of paradox which we can get into some of that at some other point that's a whole other can of worms. But what I think is relevant, I want to tie this discussion of the soul to economics to some extent as well. So one of the things that occurred to me was that the author is describing the transition from external power, which we'll get into and define, to authentic power. And a lot of this has to do with which we could say this is like acting from the soul instead of acting from the ego or personality as he describes a higher part of yourself. It involves treating people as ends in themselves instead of means. And this is very pertinent to economics because we're all. That's what economics is. Right, the science of means and ends. But the big shift here is looking at human beings as reciprocal relationships, not as maybe chess pieces to be moved in your game.
- [09:13]
B
Bingo.
- [09:14]
A
And that is the relational evolution the author's describing.
- [09:18]
B
Yes.
- [09:20]
A
I'll give one more quote here and I'd love to just hear your thoughts on this. He said, quote, describing moving to authentic power. He said, quote, spiritual relationships, richness of co creation and awe of life have slowly replaced my experiences of people as things and my tormenting journeys through anger, jealousy, despair and unworthiness, Unquote. So this personal transformation he has embarked on, he hypothesizes that the world at large is embarking on a similar transaction or similar transition.
- [09:56]
B
Yes. Yeah. And that's one of the things I really took away from the book that I really hadn't given too much thought beforehand was just how fractal based everything is. And what I mean by that is what's happening to you at an individual level is happening then at a group level, which is then happening at an even bigger level. And it wasn't something that I really had put a lot of thought into before reading this book. But boy, you spend the time to read this book and really comprehend it. And I mean, I've read this book a lot of times, not just once or twice, but quite a few times. There was one period of time where I literally had this book sitting next to my. Right next to my bed. And I would read parts of this book almost every single night. But those are some of the things that have definitely changed just how I, how I view things. And I think a little bit of what he was getting on with, that quote that you just read is when something bad maybe happens to you in your life, he's not looking at it as being like a negative. It can actually be transmuted into a positive or you're experiencing it for some type of reason and you have to ask yourself, why is this happening? What can I learn from this thing that's happening to me right now that I can then harness and use in a constructive way? So yeah, and I, and I totally buy into all that and have you.
- [11:33]
A
Had these transformations in your life, then this, you know, I guess this is almost like an emotional upgrade. The way he's describing it, saying by moving towards a way of being where he's primarily focused on how he formulates his intention or trying to act from his soul, I guess you could say that he has had anger and jealousy and despair and all these negative feelings. He's been able to dissipate them or remove himself from them to some extent. Have you had similar experience after reading this book?
- [12:06]
B
I definitely have. I just have periods in my life where I do it a whole lot better than others.
- [12:11]
A
Of course.
- [12:13]
B
Yeah. It's one of those things where I feel like when I go back and read this book, I turn into a better person for a period of time after I'm done reading it, it's like, okay, hey, I need to go back and read this book again because I've been on a rampage lately.
- [12:29]
A
I experienced the same, actually. Sorry, yeah, sorry to interrupt. I had the same thing, by the way, when I read this book, I was a better person for like a month. And now that I'm getting back into it, I realize I've come off course since. So that's funny.
- [12:43]
B
It's one of those books that it's like, for me, it's kind of like a go to. To re cage myself and to really kind of think deeply about what is it that I'm trying to accomplish and truly what are my intentions. Because, man, they can get off the rails real fast.
- [13:00]
A
Yes. Yeah. So I want to revisit this means and ends. This may sound like. This may be a blunt instrument, maybe an overly simple way to think about it, but if you just think about choice, everyone always has choice. If you treat people as though they always have choice and you honor their choice. Freedom of choice. This is what really capitalism in its purest sense means, what it used to mean. We've destroyed the word so much. I'm now using the word sovereignism to describe this. I think it's also been called agorism, where it's just unlimited free choice in trade and no coercion. It seems maybe overly simplistic, but in my mind, if we just honored the choice that we all always have, you know, that final. You can't even give it away. Right? You can't give away your willpower, your ability to choose. If we just honored that reality, we would move towards something more like this versus the world, the fractured world we're in where there's so much egoic behavior and so much, I guess, just fighting in the world, you know. Yeah, yeah.
- [14:20]
B
Desire for dominance. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you don't see it in the plant or the animal kingdom. It's very unique to human nature. And I think what happens more in nature is that when things evolve, it kind of happens more in a balanced kind of way where the transition to whatever the new DNA is or the new dominant animal or plant or whatever, it kind of like ebbs and flows in a more linear transition where I think in human nature it happens more in an exponential kind of way because of. Because of the dominance and how subservient human beings can actually become to these dominant powers. And maybe it's because of these fear mechanisms that are wired into our human brain and how that can drive the changes much more dramatically and they last for these long periods of time where there's just this total dominance. I don't know. But it is definitely something that I see very different with human beings versus every other living thing on the planet.
- [15:46]
A
Yeah. Which is, I guess, sort of symmetrical because even that fear response, it's coming from the same place as the pursuit of power, or external power, let's say, where you're either trying to protect your ego or expand your ego, whereas what the author is describing is just coming from this higher place. So I wanted to ask this because at first this does sound like you're eating a bunch of granola, whatever, but I've been talking with cognitive scientists about psycho technologies recently and how we undergo these updates with literacy and numeracy. We're always updating our software that we run on. So it occurred to me that perhaps this transformation of consciousness that Gary is writing about is potentially something like that. Like, what if. What if it's less of a granola eating fantasy and more of like a real, you know, technological upgrade we can make to ourselves over time. Do you think humans could, as you described, and go up this exponential curve of transformation and we could, you know, I don't want to say world peace, but, you know, move something, move that direction very quickly and suddenly.
- [17:08]
B
I'm not quite sure. I don't know. When I think about all the progress that we've seen in the last hundred years versus the millennia that preceded it. I think one of the main reasons that we've seen so much technological progress specifically in the last hundred years is because of the. The monetary policy, the global coordinated monetary policy. I think it's created an incentive structure for growth. Because if you're debasing the current and my argument Is that the debasement that we've seen on a global level, on a coordinated global level, really takes you back to the 1940s when the Bretton woods system stood up. You look at the debasement that the basement has been systematically coordinated since then, and I think that it has been so well managed for that long period of time that we're just now seeing the impacts of that system starting to fail now in the year 2021. So that's a system that has been well managed, but it's been managed in a way that created an incentive structure to invest and to grow technology at an unprecedented pace, faster than anything we've seen in the history of mankind. I'm sure a skeptic would say, oh, that's just your recency bias that you're looking at, Preston. But maybe it is. I suspect that bitcoin supplying the polar opposite of what we've experienced for the last 80 years could potentially really slow things down a lot from an incentive structure of investment. Jeff Booth disagrees with me on that. And him and I have had a lot of off the record conversations about that idea, and he's somebody that I respect immensely when it comes to just the critical thinking that would be around that idea. I think if you try to create 2% inflation and you get in this idea, which is a theme in his book about technology growth, is very much like Moore's Law, where you're taking these leaps and you're folding the piece of paper and you're folding it again and you're folding. Next thing you know, you're at the sun. What happens if you have deflation of 2% over a 50 year, over 50 folds? Does it slow things down in an exponential way? I think it might, but I don't know. So to answer your question, that's an idea that I believe in and I think will play out. It's going to play out over a very long period of time. And so when I think about technological growth, I think that of course you're going to have it continue to go because, I mean, the trajectory right now is going exponential. So it's going to take a lot to pull that back. But when I think about this idea that you're throwing around right now, this is like, are we going to basically merge with like, AI, artificial intelligence and human race or whatever? Like, I don't know. And I think that. I think the monetary policy that's about to be supplied to the world might actually not be conducive to that acceleration moving forward.
- [20:48]
A
Interesting. So I guess I was less saying that there would be a merge with AI or technology, but just literacy itself in the wake of the printing press, it changes the way we all think. Now the big difference between you and I today we use literacy and numeracy in a way people 1000 years ago probably didn't in their day to day thought process. I'm wondering if this transformation of consciousness, which I think is what Gary calls it, if that could be a similar type process. And do you think Bitcoin then I hear what you're saying. With money changing our patterns of economic action, do you think it will percolate up into other areas of human action as well?
- [21:40]
B
Yeah, I think it will. I think what it's going to do is it's going to incentivize global cooperation like it has never been done historically. Because you're doing away with currency arbitrage with Bitcoin. If Bitcoin becomes the settlement layer, this whole, hey, hey, this country has a huge advantage and they can get labor really cheap and materials really cheap from country, whatever. And there's all this frictional arbitrage in the finance space that's taking place. All that just evaporates and everybody's working off the same unit of account. And somebody who's picking 10 apples here is getting paid a very similar unit for 10 apples picked somewhere else. And so I think that the reduction of that friction of exchange for currency is going to create a whole different layer and level of global cooperation that the world has never seen. I think the incentive to build military might to protect the network effect of whatever currency is in mass circulation disappears with time, it's not going to be quick, but it'll eventually disappear on a global level and it'll almost look very barbaric. I think 40 to 50 years from now when people look back at our generation and be like, you used to get in war machines and kill each other. What the heck was that? I think that that's going to be something that people just won't even understand 40 to 50 years from now.
- [23:27]
A
Interesting. Yeah. I've often thought that looking back on paper money will seem pretty barbaric. Like you had a ruler's face and they could print as much as they wanted. It's just silly. Okay, I'll read just another quote here from the author. I believe in reference to this transformation of consciousness, he says, quote, the transformation of consciousness, is that it? That is expanding our perception beyond the five senses, redefining power and showing us the potential of a universal Humanity proceeding in full force. And so he gives this other. There's a little chart here, I'll just kind of describe it. He says this is terminology, comes back to we're moving from being the five sensory human which has a single object of detection, which is the physical world which we experience as touch, hearing, taste, sight, smell, therefore we pursue external power. This would be very much an animalistic mindset. We just think space, time, ego, self preservation. Moving from the five sensory human to the multi sensory human who uses five senses plus an awareness of non physical reality, which he says is made up of intuition, insight, purpose, meaning and clarity. And therefore the multi sensory human creates authentic power.
- [24:56]
B
So this is where I'd say I differ from the author just because of my research on the brain a little bit here. So you get into intuitions and I mean you can read some amazing books about what intuition is, how it's kind of wired, when it's wired. And I think we talked a lot about that when we were covering the book on the brain. And Gary takes more of a spiritual take on this. Almost as if there's guides that are whispering sweet nothings in your ear about what is the right thing for you to do. There's no way to prove any of this, but if I was going to test an experiment, you could take somebody who was maybe brought up in a very harsh setting early on in their life from parents that basically conditioned and wired that person to be a total taker, especially that first six to 10 years of their life were surrounded by people that were takers and then take another person who was surrounded by people who were givers. And I would be really interested to see what the intuitional difference would be between those two people. As Adams. Right. And so that would be something that I think could disprove some of Gary's ideas. And I have no data, I have no evidence on that. But I kind of suspect that, that if, that you could find two people like that that would have very different intuitional moral compasses because of how they were wired at a very young age.
- [26:43]
A
Yeah, and again I'm drawing on Peterson where he, he argues that actually by engaging in deception or falsehood, you're corrupting your intuitions, your own, not only your moral compass, but also your sense making machinery. Yeah. Yourself, you're less in touch with reality by deceiving someone or yourself. It actually leads you to more self deception. But that's interesting. Yeah, it's definitely sets up good language to follow the rest of the book. But it's hard for me to disentangle my mind. Like, what part of this is brain and what part is soul? You know, Almost impossible to say, but I do. Again, I think it's interesting. Oh, here's the other thing I wanted to talk about. So the seen versus the unseen. I don't know if you've read Economics in one lesson, Hazlitt's book.
- [27:43]
B
No.
- [27:44]
A
So he talks about the seen and the unseen. And to make it quick. And this goes back to Basset, I think, before him. He gives the example of the broken window, where a kid comes to the neighborhood and breaks the window, that people think, oh, well, you now had to hire someone to get the window fixed. So that's a boon for the economy. You increase consumption of the broken window. So that's the scene. But the unseen is what that money could have been used to purchase. Had you not had to spend it on the broken window. It could have been invested for growth. So he argues in his book that to understand economics is to understand the unseen above the scene. Like, you have to think one layer deeper than first order consequences. And I, this whole Soul book just resonated with that model for me, where it's like we have the scene which is life and space and time and all these things, but there is an unseen world. I mean, there definitely is. The world of economics is provably unseen. But there could be something even more than that, you know, like the moral dimension or dig into the physics.
- [28:52]
B
I mean, there's, there's stuff happening in the dimensions that are passing through you right now. You have no awareness of whatsoever, so.
- [28:59]
A
Exactly.
- [28:59]
B
There's a whole lot more going on behind the scenes than any of us. I mean, we're just, we're sensing just the nothing. Right. Of, of the energy and matter that's, that's taking place around you.
- [29:12]
A
Yes. And it, the. So that was an interesting model for me to consider this. And then I thought it was interesting too, that in economics is the same thing. If you increase free choice, you increase wealth creation, which is kind of like what we talked about earlier, where this thing is about optimizing for choice, that if you treat people like they have free choice versus treating them as a means to an end, you'll have better relationships with humans. So I've just found so many interesting parallels between these spiritual kind of books or even spiritual texts, religious texts and first principles economics.
- [29:49]
B
Yeah, I just like, if somebody's listening to this and they're like, this sounds like a bunch of crap, read the book, because that's the best way to challenge whatever belief structure you have, I would tell you, read the stuff that you have the opposite opinion of, especially if you're not. Well, read on the topic and just put it out there. And you know what, if even 10% of it kind of changes your mind, like, that's. That's what you should be trying to do is destroy whatever mental models you have, because that's how you really kind of uncover the truth in life, is by trying to seek out, all right, what do I really hold near and dear to my heart that I. That I think is really true? Now let me try to smash it with a. With a sledgehammer. What book will potentially supply that?
- [30:37]
A
Yeah, yeah. Constantly be willing to challenge your worldview, your frame. Yeah, it's the only way to learn, frankly. And, you know, I. This book sort of falls in that category with, like, Daoism, where it almost is calling you to destroy all your mental models. In a way, it's the thing. There's. There's something beyond knowledge even. Like he's laying it out with words and knowledge, but he's pointing to something that that language can't even get to. So he did talk about money. And so I thought it would be relevant for us to visit some of his views on money. And Gary describes. Gary says, quote, money is a symbol of external power. Those who have the most money have the most ability to control their environment and those within it, while those who have the least money have the least ability to control their environment and those within it. Money is acquired, lost, stolen, inherited, and fought for. Education, social status, fame, and things that are owned, if we derive a sense of increased security from them, are symbols of external power. Anything we fear to lose, a home, a car, an attractive body, an agile mind, a deep belief is a symbol of external power, unquote. So that's interesting. I mean, I think he's looking at money as the highest form of external power in the world. But he definitely fails to go beneath the surface on money itself as far as describing good money and bad money and its consequences. But not many people understand that, Robert.
- [32:23]
B
It goes back to what this whole conversation has been about, your intentions. So if you intend to have a billion dollars, why, what's the purpose? Why do you need to have a billion dollars? Why are you working towards having a billion dollars? So you can run around and tell everybody you're a billionaire? So that you can stroke your ego? Or are you using it towards something that can benefit a billion people? It's your intentions. Why truly if you have to ask yourself, why am I doing this thing to amass this energy, it's energy. Why do I need to store all of that? And what's the intended purpose of all of it? I can't answer that question. But each person has a reason, so figure it out. And so what he's getting at is if you're doing those things for external power, if you're doing those things to impress others, instead of use it in a way that's constructive so that it's a win win for others. Well, his view is that it's, it's your prison. And I would have to agree with that.
- [33:55]
A
Yeah, it's interesting. So I thought about this as well. So Max said this the other day. He said, in a free money, hard money world, the pricing system actually perfectly reflects the collective value structures of individuals. But he was saying not just economic value, but also interpersonal values. When you run a large company, the values you hold become imprinted on that company, the culture and all of this. So in a marketplace where you can only be rewarded by satisfying someone else's wants, wouldn't that push human morality more that direct? We'd just be more virtuous because that's also how you make money in the world. Does that make sense?
- [34:49]
B
I look at allocating capital. So let's say you got a bunch of Bitcoin and the market's resetting and you actually have real interest rates and you have a person who's taking that stored up energy and they're allocating it towards projects that they think are going to be better for mankind, that are going to improve lives or tools or resources that are going to assist and improve people's lives. And there's a win win for the people that are running the organization so that they get some, some profits that are respectable but not so massive. And even if they're massive and you're being selfish with that, it's going to attract a competitor to come in and eat it up. So the universe is going to figure out a way to distribute things in a way that is most beneficial for the highest number of participants. And when you figure that out and you start positioning yourself in a way where you are maybe there's going to be tons of people with a whole lot of buying power that have never had anything close to this buying power on the other side of this thing, they're going to very quickly lose that buying power through selfish actions or things like they just have no clue what to do with all that pent up energy. That they're sitting on and they're going to make very bad selfish decisions and the universe is going to figure out a way to take it from them and reallocate it to people who know how to allocate it to create the most good for the most number of people. I just look at it like that. Now. Whoever that button pusher is at the fulcrum of that energy flow, who's allocating it, maybe the person's just great at allocating it to the greater good of humanity and in a way to businesses that are actually going to succeed. And so they get to sit at that fulcrum and enjoy the benefits of being a great allocator of that energy. I guess I just see it that way. I don't even really get into the moral piece of it because people who, who enjoy that process, I enjoy that process. I'm not going to lie. People who enjoy that process, are they really using it for themselves if they're always reallocating it to something else that's going to benefit society? I mean, maybe a little portion of it. And as the pie gets bigger and the flow of that energy gets larger, sure, they can afford a million dollar house. It's not a big deal if you're throwing around billions. It's just, it's not a whole lot of energy relative to what they're managing and what they're reallocating into society. So I don't know, I don't see it in the light of like, let me throw this out there. I think some people have conditioned themselves. People with a lot of money are bad. No matter what I do, I can't make more. And I work all day. I'm here slaving away, punching these things or whatever, right? And they have wired, they have conditioned themselves in a way that they see the world through a very negative lens. They see the world that every person around them is a taker and they have more than me and I'm never going to be that person. And all that money they got is evil, right? So is it the conditioning that the person is doing upon themselves that's the issue. Maybe that's being flavored with this moral judgment because it fits their narrative and it fits their thinking. I kind of think so in a little bit of a way. But now let me just totally flip this on its head. You have billionaires today that are so selfish that a lot of them really haven't added much value to society. But they sit in this architecture of a system that is so broke and Their privileged position in that system has afforded them many luxuries and has allowed them to just really do spectacularly selfish things. You have other billionaires that are not like that at all, that they're actually sitting there at the fulcrum of the energy and they've created it all themselves. They've built up this energy from literally nothing. I can give you examples all around the spectrum. And so it's really at an individual level of how you view that optically. And what are your intentions as you sit in that seat of control as you manage this flow of energy?
- [40:02]
A
Yeah, I think it's important, I would love for more people to understand that trade itself is antithetical to theft. Right. When you look around, a lot of people think that whatever someone's earning is being taken from them. It's a very zero sum mentality versus the positive sum reality of economics. And yeah, again, if you insert more free choice there, you just get more trade and more wealth creation. But the fear that restricts choice is actually it backfires. Right. So the people that actually are takers, it backfires on them.
- [40:43]
B
There's situations where one party might want to get rid of, let's say I own an asset thing is totally worthless to me. I want whatever price you're looking at that asset saying, oh my God, what a steal. I could bolt this onto the company that I own and it's going to give me this strategic advantage when I combine it with these other things that I have. So for you, the value of what I'm selling is very high because of how you can then apply it for me. I don't have that asset that you're going to combine it with. And so for me, it's a dying asset and I just want to sell it. I want to get off my books. So there's a situation where that is a win, win situation. I can't do anything with it. You can combine it with something else to make it better. And so who's the winner and loser in that exchange? Well, I would tell you both of us are winners in that exchange. Right. And so to sit down and say, oh, that guy over there is totally screwing this other person because they're exchanging something that is worth way more, way less or whatever, I don't enter into that. If you're willing to sell it to me for whatever and I've got what I think the value is and I think it's higher and I buy it from you, well, so be it.
- [42:00]
A
As long as it's voluntary. Creates a value on both sides.
- [42:03]
B
Yeah, I'm not forcing somebody to sell me some type of. I see that line of thinking of being a victim mindset, total victim mindset. And you see so much of that today.
- [42:16]
A
Hey everybody. As you've no doubt learned by watching this show, Bitcoin is the single most important asset you can own in the 21st century. And one of the most important companies in Bitcoin today is NYDIG. NYDIG's mission is to get Bitcoin into the hands of as many people as possible. One of the ways they are accomplishing this mission is by empowering banks and financial technology companies to offer their own bitcoin products and services. As a true game changer in the industry, NYDIG is safely unlocking the power of Bitcoin for forward thinking individuals and institutions alike. Led by Robbie Gutman, Yin Zhao and Ross Stevens, NYDIG has absolutely exploded onto the bitcoin scene recently and has quickly become a leader in this space. So whether you are a professional investor looking for asset management services or a company looking to white label your own Bitcoin product or service, consider NYDIG your single source solution for everything Bitcoin. So I'm going to come back to a couple of things the author said about money and power and I'll read another excerpt here. Says, quote, when power is seen as external, the hierarchies of our social, economic and political structures, as well as the hierarchies of the universe appear as indicators of who has power and who does not. The perception of power as external splinters the psyche. Whether it is the psyche of the individual, the community, the nation, or the world. There is no difference between acute schizophrenia and a world at war. There is no difference between the agony of a splintered soul and the agony of a splintered nation. Back to your original comment about fractals. I mean, the individual psyche is a microcosm of the social psyche. And you know, I, I can't help but think that again, the perception of power, if you, if you do put the individual first, then it fixes all of this, this, this splintering he's describing. And it's funny that it's just that simple. I was thinking earlier, someone tweeted that bitcoin's important because it serves the most important minority, which is the individual. It seems again, simple to me that if you just honor this reality of you own yourself, I own myself, every individual owns themselves. Leave each to their free choice such that they don't impinge upon the choice of one Another that we actually move towards this world of authentic power that Gary is describing.
- [45:14]
B
Yeah. I think that when you think about the magnitude that's placed on somebody when they have, let's just say, huge financial wealth, some might even call it a burden. If you're not centered. I just think about the center of gravity. When you get into the aviation side of things, center of gravity is very important for a plane to fly. If you start putting a load, which would be the wealth, and then you have a significant amount of wealth. If you have any type of blemish in your personality that's not centered, it's going to be exposed like a magnifying glass immediately to who that person is. So when I see people that are harnessing tremendous amounts of energy on this planet and they're wielding it around, if you have any type of blemishes of who you are on the inside, they're coming out in full force. There's no way around it. And I think maybe that's what he's getting at with it. And if you have a deep desire to wield this power, what are the reasons why? And it goes back to intentions yet again. And they'll be exposed and everybody will see for what it is.
- [46:33]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's reminds me that, quote, sunlight is the best disinfectant. This is kind of different, though. It's when you put a man or person, we'd say, in a position of power, it does put them under the spotlight. And as you say, it can show some of their personal blemishes or cause them to show some of their personal blemishes, perhaps. And it seems interesting to me as well, that we honor those who maximally follow a moral path in those positions of power, like Marcus Aurelius comes to mind. It's like the guy that had the keys to the kingdom, literally, but still followed this very devout, stoic. Good. You know, let's see, positive character path for himself. He didn't abuse it. And he was revered. You know, he's revered to be one of the greatest leaders ever. So, you know, I think so. Power is interesting too, because it has this dual meaning in a way. A lot of ways, like most people think political or coercive power, authority. Right. Someone who gets to make decisions on behalf of others. But there's this other principle of power, like the physics sense of power, which is just the ability to do work over time. And it's interesting to me that we really do, we come to gravitate or regard those positions as powerful. That Actually can wield the most power, can actually channel the most energy over time, as you're saying. So like a billionaire today would be, I guess, the most powerful person you could imagine. But back in the days of Genghis Khan, it was a different type of figure, different type of personality that wielded power in that way. So we do need to wield power. That's what technology is doing. We're getting more returns per unit of labor, energy by using capital and creating capital and trading with one another. All these things are actually about increasing human power. But then what gets complicated is the systems themselves. How do we store the power, how do we allocate it? And money clearly is the most important system for moving and allocating that power. But that's why it always has become corrupt over time. People can't resist putting their hands into the cookie jar. Add a little monetary elasticity here, go to war there. It's just something that we've been unable to resist as a species, which is one of the many reasons I look at bitcoin as so important. Just something that we ourselves cannot manipulate, cannot change. I guess it changes our relationship with power.
- [49:23]
B
Well, I don't know if I would go that far at the individual. I think collectively it definitely does. I think at the individual level, you're still going to have people, especially during this transition, that lived a very humble life before, and now maybe they have the financial means to pretty much be a total prick and all the things that go along with the ability to be that way because there's no repercussions for your actions because you have so much buying power at your disposal. The question really comes down to for the individual level is how can a person guard against becoming that person? That I think many bitcoiners are looking at today as these fiat type people and saying these people are the worst, they're the scum. How do they guard against not becoming that person? Because I think a lot of them will. I think a lot of people will. They're going to be tempted by and it's going to expose their core. It goes back to the example their core is not centered. They're not actually there for other people. At the end of the day, they're very selfish. And all that's going to be exposed with the buying power will expose it. And I don't know that you get away from that. I think maybe with time, maybe you do. I don't really know how that's going to change human nature, because, boy, the track record on that one Is that it doesn't change. But collectively, I think that we will see changes going back to some of the ideas that I was throwing out there, like just war and just the incentive to globally coordinate and work together is going to be very different than what we've ever seen in the past, because you don't have fragmented currencies that are vying for dominance. That's what you've seen throughout history is that scenario now, for the first time in human history, we're seeing a scenario where that idea might be totally supplanted by a global dominant network effect that everybody's going to use. That's what makes it different.
- [51:49]
A
Separation of money and state, basically. All right, I hear you. Then more transformative at the collective than the individual levels. Does that mean you don't so much buy into the personal transformations of bitcoiners? There's a lot of people reporting this Lowering their time preference, Becoming a cleaner eater or more focused on fitness or family. You're less bullish on the personal transformation side of bitcoin.
- [52:19]
B
No, I think it will, but it's all about for how long does it last five years? Does it last 10 years? How about 40 years from now? Is that the same person who's had kind of a cakewalk because they bought Bitcoin for 10 cents and they got a thousand of them? I just don't see that person maybe being the same person after 40 years. Now some of them will, but I'd say on the collective, some of them are going to be corrupted by the burden of that energy that they wield. I see it as a burden. I don't think too many people would agree with me.
- [53:06]
A
Heavy as the head that wears the crown, as they say. The author talks about responsibility too clearly. Bitcoin enables the radical responsibility in a way, to take possession of your own keys and being able to cross a border with a billion on your brain. All these things, these powers bitcoin gives you clearly come with a great deal of responsibility. Do you think that encourages people to become more responsible? I mean, you're saying maybe in the near term, but less so in the long term. How do you see? I get. There's this old. In Austrian literature, there's a long literature of the connection between morality and money. I'm just trying to get a sense of whether you buy into that connection or not.
- [53:58]
B
When you have, let's just say you got 300 Bitcoin, you are incentivized to become very responsible. Now, let's say you got 1,000 sats and that's all you got. You're not incentivized to become very responsible. It's kind of like, oh yeah, I got it here. Oops, I lost it. No big deal, no life changing event for you. So I think we can get wrapped up in all these fancy narratives that it makes you want to be more responsible, but does it really make you more responsible or is it more of a function of how much you have to lose that is driving you to this level of increased responsibility? I would probably argue that that's more of the case.
- [54:55]
A
I agree with you. But I also think that taking on that responsibility in one area of your life may encourage you to do so in others. I mean, I'm not saying this is like a deterministic principle, but maybe it just increases the chances of you becoming more responsible in other places.
- [55:13]
B
I'll take it a step further. If you are growing and you see and there's a path that you can visibly see towards your growth, you want to be responsible, you want to take ownership of that. But if you're starting off at zero and you're looking at the path ahead and it's flat or going down, you pretty much want to. Human nature for a lot of people is that they just want to blame everybody else for their woes and not take responsibility. And just this life sucks. It's like playing it. Going back to the video game example, you're playing a game, you're never going to get past level one. In fact, each time you try to play level one, you just get worse. Worse. You don't want to take responsibility for that. What you're saying while you're playing it is this game sucks. Whoever coded this thing blows. Right. What were they? And that's the key word because it's somebody else's issue and problem and not my responsibility that I'm terrible at this game. This game sucks. I think there's a lot of that in the world right now. I think people are playing a game, their life and it kind of feels like they're not getting through level one. And in fact they're not even getting halfway through level one where they used to. And so I think the growth piece of it is a very substantial portion of taking responsibility as well.
- [56:49]
A
Yeah, that's another aspect of the individual really. Right. When you blame others, you're taking the spotlight off of the individual. Like how you contribute to the scenario. You're trying to look outside yourself. External power.
- [57:04]
B
Right.
- [57:04]
A
It's the same thing looking outside instead of within.
- [57:09]
B
And Robert it's important to consider this. Maybe you are playing a game that's rigged.
- [57:15]
A
Yes.
- [57:17]
B
Right. Like, I'm not saying that the game is always fair. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that if you want to grind something out, you've got to be of the mindset where you're conditioning yourself that the game is fair or that there's some way to figure out a way around whatever games being played, that you come out on top. You have to wire yourself that way or you just done. Right.
- [57:41]
A
Yes.
- [57:43]
B
And I think for right now, I think I can understand and I can empathize why so many people are frustrated because this game is so rigged right now. So rigged, super rigged. But there is an outlet and there is a way around it and there's a way to smash the game cartridge. We all know what it is, right? Because we've smashed that thing a while ago.
- [58:03]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [58:05]
B
Boy, was it sweet.
- [58:09]
A
It is quite liberating. And the game is most certainly rigged, perhaps the largest rigged game in human history that we're all, most of us denominating our lives in day to day. But back, kind of back to the author's point, it's like instead of just. And to your point too, looking outside of yourself and getting mad the game is rigged or upset about the proverbial hand you were dealt, it's incumbent upon the individual, every individual, to find a workaround, right. To either play a different game or figure out how to play the game better or bend the rules, whatever you have to do. And this all points to how important Bitcoin is too. It's an unriggable game. That's the value prop. For the first time in history, we have an unriggable monetary system. Whereas throughout history, every monetary system has always been rigged in the favor of the state, typically. But you're going to.
- [59:10]
B
So when we start going through this black hole and we're coming out the other side, the broader population of people are going to start seeing hope and they're going to start to see this glimmer of growth opportunity. And I think that that's naturally going to transition the victim mindset to the, hey, I can play this game. I can take responsibility for this. I can take responsibility for my actions. Because they're seeing a path, because they made a dollar and it's still worth a dollar. I mean, there's an idea, in fact, it's actually worth more than a dollar. And that transition isn't going to be long term. That's going to be a short term thing as we're pushing through the center of this thing we're going through. Once you get to the other side, that's going to disappear. That buying power transition will quickly transition to I can go out and buy some bubble gum for 50 sats or whatever it might be. Three years later, I'm still buying the same bubble gum for 50 sats.
- [60:21]
A
Yeah. Which would be such a nice benefit in the world we live in today. So I agree with you. I think there's this account on Twitter, the $1,200 stimmy check is now worth this much in bitcoin. Have you seen that? Yeah, I think it's over $10,000 now. It's very important for getting this into the psyche of normies that there's a way to denominate yourself that really just putting the wind in your sails frankly instead of inflation being this constant headwind that you're always trying to navig, literally just turn the ship around and it just propels you forward by holding bitcoin.