If you still happen to think Bitcoin and democracy are somehow related, then you’re either wilfully ignorant or you’ve missed parts one and two of this series, in which case, please read them here and here first.
You will understand exactly why tyranny prevails in the democratic state of Canada, led by its once again and recently democratically elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who is supported by an entire swathe of people incapable of critical thinking; see #StandWithTrudeau).
But, if you’ve been following and have come to your own internal dismantling of the idea of democracy, and viscerally severed its relationship to Bitcoin, let’s explore what a world beyond political order, on a Bitcoin standard may look like.
By no means do I have any idea how any of it will play out long term, but I’ll do my best to inspire thought experiments across topics such as the law, autonomy, values, virtues, capital creation, violence, methods of organization and their scalability.
The Separation Of Economy And Politics
Much has been discussed on Bitcoin’s “separation of money and state.” I’ve personally done so in detail in my 2019 article “Rise Of The Individual, Fall Of The State.”
Today, I posit a potentially greater separation: The Separation of economics and politics.
Bitcoin Magazine hosted a debate between Alex Gladstein from the Human Rights Foundation and myself almost two months ago when the first part of this series came out.
During the discussion, we built some common ground on the historical connection between economic and political power. Attaining one opens doors to obtaining the other, and in a self-reinforcing cycle, concentrates each. We agreed that Bitcoin fixes this, but I’m not sure the gravity of that truth is appreciated deeply enough.
Separating economics and politics may just be the most important socio-evolutionary step our species has made in millennia.
In a world where economic primitives can be influenced by politics, both economics and politics will be corrupted. Their corruption will last until reality catches up, forcing both both economy and politics to collapse, resulting in the emergence of a new order,, closer once again to truth.
The cycle then repeats.
Now … in a world where politics is subject to economic primitives that CANNOT by any means be changed, altered or manipulated by one player, for their own advantage (and subsequent disadvantage of others), we have accountability. And not the kind of long-term-cycle accountability experienced by the fall of corrupt institutions such as The Roman Empire, The Catholic Church or the modern State.
I mean fast, direct, clear accountability due to high fidelity feedback loops which occur as a result of there being no means by which to socialize mistakes, losses or poor economic behavior (such as taxation, unhinged debt, monetary inflation).
This sort of rapid adaptation has profound long-term implications for the very fitness of our species.
When we lie to ourselves, and have no link between economic reality and political method, we structure societal incentives in a way that morphs us into unfit, slow, weak, cheap, pathetic, sinful and immoral subhumans. These errors catch up with us on a long enough timescale, but because time preference is so high, nobody actually gives a shit when it matters.
This is why Bitcoin is so important. By reintroducing economic consequence, it makes it so that no amount of politics can ever again make us all blind men without a purpose.
Note that none of this means we do away with politics, or economics for that matter (some people are delusional enough to think that we’ll one day “transcend economics,” as if the product of one’s labor and inter-subjective value will disappear. Those same people also believe in leprechauns and the metaverse as “progress”).
What I’m talking about is something far more practical. The separation of economics and politics means the placing of politics on a short economic leash. People and the groups they form will ALWAYS have their own politics. What matters is whether or not they pay for their own mistakes and reap their own rewards.
By fusing economics and physics, Bitcoin orients the train tracks themselves (economics) in such a way that we do not fly off the edge of a cliff, no matter the train (politics) or conductor (leader).
Power, Work And Morality
The concentration of power is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s agnostic and often useful. It’s only when power is combined with hubris or stupidity that it becomes evil, and when evil can concentrate, we quickly discover hell.
This hybrid of power, stupidity and hubris runs naturally rampant in politics, because it lives in the vacuum of economic feedback. How can accurate (intelligent) value judgements be made when you’re ignorant to the feedback of your environment?
You’re like a blind, deaf man flying a plane.
This is why the concentration of political power and its use in attaining economic power always devolves into coercive means or transgressions on private property. By definition, it has to. The more rights that emerge as a function of ever-expanding politics (this is in fact what politics boils down to), the more plunder of the responsible party’s time, energy and resources must occur in order to balance the equation.
Hence Aleksandar Svetski’s “first maxim of political order”:
You cannot escape reality, but you can obfuscate it long enough to pick someone’s pocket.
As Frédéric Bastiat pointed out, labor requires an expense of energy and time. If I can acquire wealth or resources without work, i.e., a lottery, or through confiscation, whether direct or through some elaborate scheme (democracy, proof-of-stake in cryptocurrencies, etc.) then it’s relatively clear which I will generally choose (show me the incentive, I’ll show you the outcome).
Trust me I get it. We all want free things. Work is hard. Why work when it’s so easy to just take? The answer is simple:
Morality.
- Morality is work-infused, anti-entropic behavior.
- Morality and time preference are fundamentally linked.
Morality aligns with natural order (reap what you sow, Pareto distribution, property/territory, etc.) and moral behavior results in a higher probability of long-term prosperity.
It’s not just about what you can get now, but about what you can together produce over the long term. This is why collaboration and the economic means always trump coercion and the political means on a longer timescale. Morality is more robust and wins out over stupidity, gluttony and unhinged greed.
I’ve studied how philosophies, constitutions and entire religions have formed not because God told them morality was better, but because their founders and prophets sought the best meta to live by.
When the principles of the moral meta (the way) are skewed or discarded, which occurs in the process of its institutionalization, short-termism sets in, and we fool ourselves into thinking we can be immoral because “God is not watching.” Little do we realize that God is in the outcome, God is in the behavior, God is in the labor, God is in the meta.
We are so comfortable eating the fruits of labor that came from adherence to prior morality, that we only realize we fucked up when it’s too late.
Hence why continual “taking” is possible on a short enough timescale in a sufficiently wealthy and complex society. Entropy always catches up and forces the system to either correct (adopt morality) or fail.
Therefore my “second maxim of political order”:
Whilst you can obfuscate reality long enough to pick someone’s pocket, soon enough there are no more pockets left to pick, and we all suffer.
This is why Bitcoin’s relationship to work is such a significant part of its constitution.
If energy is the “universal currency,” then “work” is one of the “universal laws of economics.” It cannot be simulated, counterfeit or faked and because its existence (or lack thereof) results in immediate feedback on a Bitcoin standard, the incentive is to adopt morality as a means to wealth, power and prosperity (innate human drives we should never seek to remove lest we want to end the human race).
Work is economic.
Stake is political.
One is reality oriented.
The other is opinion oriented.
One adapts the map to reality.
The other is attempting to mold reality to the map.
The long-term liberty and prosperity of the human race depends on the separation of economy and politics
This is why we Bitcoin.
Enlightenment Values
The Age of Enlightenment (aka the Age of Reason) was an intellectual and philosophical movement spawned in the 15th and 16th centuries with the Renaissance and went on to dominate Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.
The ideas and values that emerged during that period transformed the world and laid the foundation for the preeminence and greatness of the original “West.”
Some of the ideas, values and virtues included:
- Sovereignty of the individual
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of association
- Private property rights
- Pursuit of knowledge
- Separation of church and state
- Reason and science
- Right to defend oneself
- Freedom of belief/of and from religion
The great thinkers of the west came to realize that the atomic constituent of a society was the individual, and that he and his private property must be held sacred above all.
They realized that in order for truth to be discovered, these sovereign individuals must be free to speak, free to explore ideas, free to challenge each other and as such either correct their errors or build upon the principles and ideas found to be true.
They sought the development of a responsible and robust society, whose members had the capacity to defend themselves, and to voluntarily organize around causes, ideas, beliefs or philosophies they personally valued.
The founding fathers made significant attempts to encode these values into what has been the greatest political Constitution to date, in particular the First and…
Read More:Bitcoin Is Not Democratic Part Three
2022-03-04 21:00:00