SKZ - Episode 10 - Bitcoin & Just War Theory

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

In this episode, I discuss my idea that bitcoin = just (righteous) war theory, while fiat = just (only) war theory. Let me know in a comment / boost if you liked the episode!

Hey everybody. My name is Joe. This is the SKZ podcast. This is going to be episode 10. And today we're going to be talking about just war theory and how that applies to Bitcoin and Fiat. And I've been thinking about this and working on it for a while. And basically the main idea I'm trying to get across here is that Fiat is just war theory. And by just, I mean only war, right? Bitcoin is just war theory in the traditional sense of the term just. just war theory, meaning there's some righteous cause for a war. Now, people have had opinions on what constitutes a just or, you know, maybe a righteous war for basically all of human history, understandably. There are writings dating back to ancient Egypt in 3,000 BC, and the idea was debated in ancient India and China as well, and I'm sure in other people groups.

the specific idea of a just war theory or that, you know, terminology, and the kind of definition is like what constitutes a morally acceptable reason to go to war, that idea began with St. Augustine in the late 300s, AD. And even more recently, the Austrian economist Rothbard, who's pretty popular among bitcoiners or those are more economically oriented, know about Austrian economics, he had his own take on what a just war. is, so I thought I'd share that. A just war is when a people are overthrowing a dominant force. An unjust war is when a people are trying to impose domination on another people or retain

existing coercive rule over them. So basically, in summary, a just war would be overthrowing some coercive tyranny versus an unjust war would be that, you know, coercive or tyrannical power kind of exercising military force to maintain that coercive rule. Now, ultimately, philosophers can debate all they want about what ought to be done by the state, but we know that ultimately incentives determine what will actually be done by the state. And oftentimes the state will pretend like they're doing things in a moral way or come up with some moral reasoning for why they're doing something. but just as like a fun fact, I don't know if fun's the right word, but an interesting fact

example of how I don't really think there's much thought about how righteous a war is and stuff like that, even in the United States, which I would say I'm not the biggest fan of the United States. I live in the United States, but I mean, I think it's a lot better than China or Russia or something like that. But the United States, the last time that they actually formally declared war as in Congress, or people who were elected democratically declared war on another country was back in 1942 so this had to do with world war two right but since then the united states has been involved in a lot of different i don't even know if they call i think they would call them wars in a

lot of situations you know korean war vietnam war things like that but the last time they actually declared war by congress by people who were elected was in 1942 since then it's been basically the state deciding to go to war for a variety of reasons, we could say they're moral, right? But they weren't really consulting with the people on whether it was moral or not. When it comes to things more recently, like Iraq or Afghanistan, I mean, a lot of people recognize now that those were kind of pointless wars that we spent a lot of money on and didn't really accomplish very much.

So anyways, just go and show we can debate about what constitutes a just war, but ultimately the state is going to do what the state does. Now, I think that's an important point here, right, is that Fiat kind of upkeeps that system in which the government can do whatever it wants and doesn't have to be accountable to the people. And I think that Bologi, I don't know how to say his last name, Belagie S on Twitter, and he's been on a lot of podcasts recently, somewhat adjacent to the Bitcoin space. And he's been interviewed by a lot of Bitcoiners, things like that. but he's a pretty successful investor. He's called a lot of things early, like called COVID, like before it led to shutdowns and things like that.

But anyways, he put a poll on Twitter and to his followers who listen to him, and this is kind of a big, he talks about this type of thing and just the fragility of the United States power and things like that. It's really worth listening to his interviews. But he asked his audience, this question can or these two questions I guess in a poll can the US print infinite money and does the US have an invincible military so you have four options you could say yes in the US has infinite money or can print infinite money yes the US has an invincible military yes to both or no to both and

there was not one answer that had more than 50% the 44.5% of his audience, who is really aware of this type of stuff, said no to both, that the U.S. cannot print infinite money and it does not have an invincible military. But that means that 55 basically percent or 56 percent of people said either yes to both or yes to either they can print infant money or yes to they have an invincible military. And I think that a lot of people, they don't think about those specific questions because I think even asking that question, like phrasing as infinite and invincible, shows how ridiculous it is, because obviously to that extreme, it can't be true.

But there's still a lot of people that would say yes to one or both of those questions. And I think a lot of people who don't even question it do like subconsciously believe that, right, about the United States. Well, we can just keep printing money as long as we want. It won't really have an effect. It hasn't had an effect so far. We're super deep in debt. It hasn't caused any problems.

which I would definitely dispute. And yeah, I mean, we've never, we, the U.S. military can accomplish whatever goal it wants to, right? I think a lot of Americans just like subconsciously believe that, especially if they're not the type of person that would go down these rabbit holes and really question authority in a sense. But yeah, just to kind of summarize, I think that the world as a whole, not even just the United States, right? I think the world believing this almost becomes a self-ful thing. filling prophecy to make it true. So the world believes that the United States has an invincible military because it can continue to print money and buy more bullets, more bombs, planes, tanks, etc.

And the U.S. can continue printing money because they have bullets, bombs, planes, tanks, et cetera, and can use that to maintain the dominance of their currency, as in forcing other countries to trade with the U.S. dollar. and forcing other countries to hold their treasuries, things like that. And I think the more that people around the world basically believe that the U.S. can print infinite money and has an infinite military, the less that these premises will ever be challenged, right? People just continue to believe them. But as the national debt increases, as countries around the world have been stockpiling gold,

and a lot more countries have been trading in other currencies, particularly the Chinese yuan. Right. There's rumors and some confirm smaller cases of other countries mining Bitcoin, right? So that's, of course, another option that I would advocate more than the Chinese Yuan. But I think all these things are going to show that people are believing in these two premises less, right? That the U.S. can print infinite money and the U.S. has an invincible military. I think these two things are very much tied together to maintain the United States as basically the global hegemon or hegemon as Balaji would say. I think it's hegemon, but whatever. So I think it's important to point out that, you know, the U.S. can continue.

I mean, now we just have a currency that's not even linked to gold. We don't even pretend anymore, right? But back in the day, we pretended like we were on a gold standard, not just the United States, but European countries. I'm sure countries and other places around the world. But Bitcoin is truly the first currency in history that cannot be printed in wartime. So even when there was a gold standard back in the early 1900s, gold-back currencies were debased in both of the World Wars, World War I and World War II, by basically all countries involved because, you know, it's hard to transact in gold, so everyone accepted paper currencies, right? That's a nice thing about Bitcoin being natively digital, that you can transact it for groceries or whatever really easy at any kind of kiosk that's connected to the internet, you know.

so anyways I think that because gold couldn't be used with the benefits of fiat with just being really transactable things like that then people use fiat and they wouldn't use gold

so then the government could basically print more of the fiat and pretend like it's still on a gold standard but eventually they change the standard and I don't have the exact numbers in front of me because I actually gave the book to a friend but the book of Progressive's case for Bitcoin that came out a few months ago, it has a really great chapter about all of this. Basically, they don't say specifically this concept of Bitcoin is just war theory

versus Fiat being just only war theory, but I think that's kind of a summary statement of that chapter. So I think it's chapter nine in a progressive case for Bitcoin, but that's definitely a really worthwhile reference. Regardless if you identify as a progressive, I think it's a really great Bitcoin book. So anyways, I think that the money printing enables the government to continue waging war without any accountability by the people. And on the other hand, Bitcoin being not printable by the government.

They can mine it, right? They could tax people. We can get into whether taxes are fair or not, but that's kind of besides the point right now. They can mine Bitcoin, they can tax people, and they can do bonds and things like that, but people still have to, there have to be buyers out there for the bonds. If it was in a Bitcoin, hyper-bitcoinized world, then that would actually enable this somewhat democratic form of a just war theory, as in a righteous war theory, because a country would only go to war, if it's on a Bitcoin standard, a country would only go to war if the people in the country are actually willing to fund that war through taxation or war bonds that occur, right? So let's say there is, and I'm assuming there's some level of democracy, right, in this country or nation state, whatever, or citadel, whatever you want to think of it as in the future.

It could be more localized. It could be as big as countries are right now, not really getting into that point right now. But just thinking it through, I mean, they, any kind of state or, you know, group of people would only be able to fund a war through things like taxation, through mining Bitcoin itself, or through bonds. They wouldn't be able to create more Bitcoin and fund it through that. And I think this is also why it's important to not ever accept some kind of Bitcoin backed currency, like at the United States had all the US dollars backed by Bitcoin now. You can redeem it, you know, one sat to one dollar or something because the

custodian and in this case a nation state can always debase that currency just like they did with gold. So I think it's really important to stick with Bitcoin. It doesn't have to be base chain Bitcoin, right? We still want to build things out like lightning, other layer twos, things like that. But yeah, just that's the idea here that I'm trying to get across is that basically Bitcoin enables a more kind of democratic and in a sense like free market definition of what a right war is because in that hyper-bitcoinsized world, a country would only be able to declare war if its country, you know, if its people were into it and like we're able to, uh, we're like

willing to fund it, right? So maybe World War II would be an example of a war that people were willing to fund if it's like, we need to stop this Hitler guy, right? But I think there's a lot of other wars like Afghanistan and Iraq were recently that I think a lot of Americans would have either not wanted to get into initially or we would have been like, okay, let's stop this after a couple years when we realized that it's not going anywhere because you'd actually feel the losses as a nation. You'd feel the increased taxes and you'd know where it's coming from. It's not this invisible inflation that people don't really understand where it's coming from. So yeah, thank you so much for listening. Kind of went off script towards the end there, but hope you still

enjoyed and got some value out of this. And again, just trying to get it. get the point across that I think fiat is this just war theory. It's an only war. They got to continue going to war to maintain their dominance. It goes back to Bologi's tweet, you know, if people really believe the U.S. can print money infinitely and associate with that, they believe that we have an invincible military that can always back up that currency. And those two back each other up. But anyway, so that's fiat, but I think Bitcoin actually does enable that just war theory as in wars would only be gone to if it was truly a righteous cause or something that all the people in the country really were getting about obviously not 100%, but 100% of people

in the country have to be behind it. But it would be much more democratic in a sense, at least in my opinion. Now, feel free to share if you have a different opinion, right? I'd love to hear that. And I encourage anyone listening to listen on the Fountain podcast app on fountain, you can stream sats to me or any other fountain enabled podcast, which means that basically every minute you could send one sat or every minute you could send two sats or whatever you think the show is worth. Or another option that in a lot of cases might be cheaper, right,

is you could also just leave a comment in the form of a boostogram. And I don't know if there's a minimum. It might be like 150 sats, which would be, you know, a few cents, something like that. but let me know in a boostergram what you think of this episode and or what you think war would look like in a hyper-bitcoinized world. Do you think I'm right? Do you think, you know, would you want to live in a country or people, network state, whatever you want to call it? Would you want to live in some kind of citadel or something that only went to war defensively or only went to war if there was someone as bad as Hitler out there in the world? Like doing something? I don't know.

these are just different theories of what it would look like. Obviously, we don't know what the world's going to look like in 20 years, 100 years, whatever it is. But I think it's interesting to theorize about. And I think we can almost definitively say that the world, or the world when Bitcoin is more adopted will be a lot safer, I guess, in terms of just fewer wars going on because it won't be able to be funded by Fiat. So anyways, thanks again so much for listening. Have a great rest of your day. listen on Fountain and share the podcast as anyone else you think might find this interesting.

And leave me boost to Graham if you have any thoughts about the episode. Take care.