TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #213: Jimmy Song

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Join Marty as he sits down with Jimmy Song, educator and Co-Author of Thank God For Bitcoin: The Creation, Corruption, and Redemption of Money, to discuss: - Sound Money as a moral imperative - How easy money corrupts society - The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil - Serving money or God - Positivism v. Natural Rights - Jesus flipping the table and kicking out the moneychangers - much more Follow Jimmy on Twitter Buy the book Check out Jimmy's podcast Shoutout to this week's sponsors. Cash App. Start #stackingsats today. Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to OWLS Lacrosse when you download the app.

What is up, freaks? It's your boy Marty here to introduce this episode of Tales from the Crypt. This one's a long time coming. Can't believe it took me over three years to get Jimmy Song on the podcast. We sat down to talk about a new book that he co-authored with a bunch of Bitcoiners. Thank God for Bitcoin. Creation, corruption, and redemption of money. Tying Bitcoin to Christianity. Maybe triggering for some of you freaks. and there's a lot of atheists out there i know there's a lot of god haters but really like this episode enjoyed it diving deep talk about positive positivism versus natural law theory sound money versus easy money uh the societal ills that that leak when you have a

society built on easy money and how a sound monetary standard lowers time preference collectively and it makes society better off overall so you guys are gonna like this i'm not gonna spoil it too much again long time coming really happy jimmy and i were able to get this in the bag here uh speaking of in the bag how's your bag looking these days are you stacking sats are you stacking sats are you not if you're not it's time to look at the motherfucking cash up cash up I hope you stack sats

send sats receive sats and sell sats if you so pleased we're saying sats sats sats sats sats for you freaks who don't know maybe new to the podcast what are sats what the hell are sats Uncle Marty what is this sats you're talking about sats is short for satoshis and one bitcoin can be broken down into 100 million units

known as satoshis or sats so 100 million sats equals one bitcoin you don't have to buy a whole bitcoin you can stack sats instead of buying a fraction of bitcoin we're stacking whole sats on the cash app and on top of that you can dca in the sets what's dca uncle marty what's that what's dca dollar cost average you can set it and forget it automatically on the cash app you can buy daily weekly bi-weekly you put in the amount you want to buy on that set cadence that you choose and you're automatically

stacking sats in the background on top of that you can stack slivers of stonks via cash app investing if you so please because all this is connected to your bank account there's no four to five day waiting periods you can start stacking today on top of that they have the bruce program connected to their uh debit card their boost card accepted anywhere visa is accepted personalize that card uh initiate a boost with a partner merchant go shop there save some money use that save money stack some stats that simple top of that cash app can even be your bank account if you want to they're allowing individuals to get accounting numbers routing numbers so they can direct deposit their paychecks into the cash app want to cut out the old evil banks you can use

cash app and if you do download the cash app make sure you use the code stacking sats s-t-a-c-k-i-n-g-s-a-t-s you're going to get ten dollars and ten dollars going to go to our good friends at owls lacrosse that's owls lacrosse i know we said owls lacrosse but i was driving to pick up breakfast this morning and I saw a bald eagle so I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna do what I think a bald eagle would say to an owl I used to cut stacking stats download the cache app today enjoy the sub set freaks I thoroughly did you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free

if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all 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 if you're not paying attention you probably should be what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt it's your boy marty bent here wednesday night rip very excited for this actually embarrassed jimmy i'm sorry it's taken us this long it's about three years into this podcast and this is your first appearance well uh you know if um there's anything that i have to say i forgive you it's it's okay

very fitting for the for the conversation we're about to embark on indeed it is yes so obviously sitting down with jimmy song prolific bitcoiner educator uh host of the bitcoin fix of this podcast author and co-author of many books uh including uh the little bitcoin book and uh programming bitcoin but tonight we're here to talk another book about another book thank god for bitcoin creation corruption and redemption of money i'm very excited for this conversation because as i was mentioned to you jimmy i've opened up recently on this podcast i've been getting a little closer to jesus recently just because uh the world out there seems a bit nihilistic i've had a son enter my life that really sort of uh i guess grounds you as you know

you you you have many children yourself um and i think this topic particularly is very interesting it was uh i was actually on a phone call with a friend of mine telling him uh that i was about to interview you about this subject particularly we're talking about the parallels between bitcoin's inception uh and and christianity specifically um so thank god for bitcoin you uh graciously gave me a free kindle version so i could uh skim through it uh before this conversation and the content i think is going to be eye-opening for a lot of people first of all russell oku right in the forward yeah yeah um his uh his brother-in-law george uh george mikhail is one of the co-authors so he uh he offered to write it he was very excited about the project like it's it's kind

of crazy like uh i don't know if you want the backstory of how it came about or whatever but now let's rip it let's get into it yeah uh so we uh so george and i met at uh in la uh when russell held his uh bitcoin conference bitcoin is and um and we were talking and we both discovered that we're christian and we kept in touch after the conference and he and i just started emailing each other and we're just sort of asking interesting spiritual questions about Bitcoin and eventually we brought in a third guy and we started doing like a Bible study and after we had done like a like a little bit of a study of just you know money in the Bible and there's a lot of scripture about money so we we

did like three or four of those after that we were like you know what we should invite more people and see what happens um pretty much everyone i asked said yes and everyone he asked said yes and we ended up getting you know we we had at one point like 10 people in the bible study uh towards the end we're just like okay well and we we started uh studying um your guido holzman's uh the ethics of money production which uh is uh you know is an austrian economics book but there's just so much like church history in there and so much moral arguments about it uh are you familiar oh yes that's one of my favorite books on money production actually again the friend i was having a conversation with before i was telling him i

was like this reminds me of the ethics of money oh yeah yeah it's definitely inspired um the the book that we read next was honest money by gary north um and i don't know if you're familiar with that one but he used to be an advisor to ron paul um he he calls himself a christian economist and he goes through various biblical verses and argues for sound money basically and uh towards the end of uh going through both books uh what we can't the conclusion we came to was both books are great right like they they argue essentially for why the current system is just so corrupt but that we we found both books endings pretty depressing because like this was both were written before Bitcoin pretty much and the call to action was something like we need to get more people to

understand the importance of the gold standard and we need to take political action to put us back on the gold standard which Nixon took us off in 1971 and we were like that is not going to happen and we need to write one that has something uh with bitcoin in it because bitcoin is the missing piece for both books we felt like and that's essentially the book we ended up writing yeah and the i love the uh the excerpts from the bible that you pull out and i think we could start the conversation around one specifically that's commonly uh misquoted which is uh the love of money is the root of all evil people usually drop out the first half of that and just say money is the root of all evil right and i think another particular quote that you guys pulled too is you

can't serve two gods at once god and money being money essentially turning into a god driving everybody's life especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck in an inflationary environment trying to stay up you're basically serving the debt-fueled fiat system and I think let's focus on the first one the love of money is the root of all evil how is that misinterpreted in your opinion and what does it actually mean yeah I think for Christians especially that or and even non-Christians there's a sense in which like money is kind of beneath them right I have two principles for money right like it's as if it's something that they should be above and pretty much everyone acts that way but when you actually watch their behavior they care very deeply about

money and they do everything that they can for money and if they can get just a small raise they'll go and switch jobs in a completely different industry and everything their actions belie what they actually believe despite what they sort of like say they believe um and uh and that that's one aspect in which money is the root of all evil if you misquote it that that's what it becomes it's like oh it should be beneath me uh but if you actually study scripture if you study the bible yeah money is not put into this like place beneath us right it's it's a it's very much a part of being human and it's it's how we relate to each other it's how we um you know make a living it's what it's a way to store up value that you've provided through your work uh through the

work of your hands and you know a large part of what it means to be human uh you know the the whole concept of dignity comes from bearing the image of god and and that essentially means that you create things with your hands with where you you have that power that pretty much nothing else has is as humans we have the ability to create something or make order out of chaos and money is a critical part of that because when we do that and we provide value for others we get to store it up in money and then get to spend it in some way that uh in the future as a hedge against uncertainty so um my love of money is the root of all all kinds of evil not all evil right all kinds of evil and uh and that i think is uh is definitely true because there is a sense in which

you can serve the created thing instead of the creator and that is something that we emphasize in the book is that, you know, if you do serve money, then you're doing something wrong. And it leads to all sorts of spiritual pathology, as I would call it. But if you, you know, if money is in its proper place, then all sorts of things are really good. And good things come out of that, of civilization and and it's a it's a wonderful thing so yeah that that's how i would uh you know put that verse unfortunately the current system makes it very difficult to put money in its proper place it's either too far beneath us or too far above us and that's not the right place no and i think this ties in perfectly to the introduction of the book or the forward of the book uh by

russell which he he um lays out the story of of the two houses or buildings that were built one with a solid foundation another built on a foundation of sand and it's becoming glaringly obvious that our current economy and the whole pricing mechanism of the world the money is built on a foundation of sand and the transition to the bitcoin standard will hopefully get us back to a solid foundation like how important is a quality foundation uh in society like we were like the love uh the love of money uh these all kinds of evil is focused really on the individual but when you think about a foundational aspect for a whole society and how that matriculates uh from individual to individual to create something vast like a global economy like

how important is money as a solid foundation yeah um i mean i'm a i'm an engineer so i think like an engineer and it's it's uh i i remember back in 98 when i started my uh programming career um i had to program with two different web servers for some websites that i was building and things like that one was on windows and it was um iis and one was on linux and it was called apache Now, I knew that Apache was far superior. And if you've ever built web apps, I mean, there are many better things now, like Lighty and Nginx and many other things. But back then, Apache, it was either Apache or IIS. If you built anything on Apache, it would scale pretty well.

If you built anything on IIS, it got dicey really fast because the Windows server world was just horrible. And it sucked up too many resources, and it couldn't handle that many concurrent users and all this other stuff. I'm sure it's better now, but at least back then, it was terrible. And that's how I kind of see money, because if you build it on the wrong foundation, then everything on top of it suffers from that bad foundation. I mean, we've built lots of great things, but they're built on this really terrible foundation. And it makes it very difficult to upkeep a lot of those things. I mean, we've made air travel pretty much ubiquitous and internet ubiquitous as well. But those things are on kind of a terrible foundation.

It's not a coincidence that a lot of airlines are near bankruptcy or go through bankruptcy every five, seven, eight years or something like that. The bad money creates these bad industries. Whereas a good money creates much more solid footing by which these things can grow. And I think that's how I would understand that analogy with respect to money. Yeah, that was one thing your Guido Holtzman really drilled on in the ethics of money production is the misallocation of capital that proceeds from a fiat debt-based monetary system leads to the crappy economies that we have. Yeah. I mean, not just the crappy economies, like that, that's one aspect of it, but that's, uh, they're, they're far more significant second and third order effects. And I think those, those things that affect character, that affects society, like that, that affect time preference,

that affect, you know, how we view things. Um, like we, we were talking earlier, uh, about, You know, you started to value your relationship with Jesus more because you had a son that that very that choice of having a kid that in itself is largely today driven by money, right? Like the first question that every couple ask themselves when it's like, oh, we want to have kids, but we can't afford it, right? Like that. How many times have you heard that? i mean i'm 29 that that conversation is pervasive throughout some some some of the couples that i know yeah and and it's uh it's the first question that they ask and and like what one of the questions that we ask in the book is okay well if you are doing that then what are you trusting right if you're a christian what what are you trusting there because presumably if you had enough money then you're trusting that the money will take care of the kid but it wasn't always

that way right like that's putting money uh like sort of uh trusting money to do things that it can't which is to take care of your kid you never know what the future is going to hold but if you think you oh well if i just make a little more money then then i can afford a kid that that's not the right way to look at it, at least biblically or as a Christian. It's very much more on faith in God. And like for a lot of people in the past, that's what they did. And they had lots more kids than we do now, because it's not about affording it. It's about doing what God says. And there's a pretty clear mandate, be fruitful and multiply. He wants you to have market. So that to me is a very clear indicator that money has a place that it shouldn't be in

pretty much everyone's life. Yeah. And that's how you start out the book with chapter one is understanding money and trying to define how people should understand money. And so I guess we can jump into how people misunderstand money and how they should view it. Yeah. I mean, they i for a lot of people it's um it's become sort of like this means to an end and uh and because of the way that uh that money doesn't allow you to save they they tend to have a very um you know a high time preference uh instead of saving uh and they they consume a lot more and that has an impact on your soul right like uh there are things that if you continue to indulge it just it rots from the inside and you don't have the proper perspective anymore on certain

things and i think it's pervasive throughout society and this this one of the points that we make in the book is you know when you have a bad money it like it causes everybody that uses that money to go in a certain direction um and it's towards more debt and more um high time preference thinking and doing all of these things that that you wouldn't otherwise if you were under a different monetary system you wouldn't necessarily spend on the newest iphone or whatever it would be you would have different priorities and you would think about things more long term a lot easier and the thing is if you have an entire civilization that's that's uh that's thinking very short term then you're the civilization's gonna collapse uh but

if you have people that are thinking long term then it builds up and yeah these are the second and third order effects that we explore uh in the book yeah no that that line of thinking has me thinking just like going back to the misallocation of capital and creating things that may have otherwise not been created companies particularly if we were under a sound or monetary system just thinking my early 20s hanging like myself included working jobs i didn't love just for a paycheck and so yeah millennials i'm going to focus on millennials my my generation working these jobs they don't like in cubes pushing excel sheets doing things they don't want to do working for that paycheck typically working paycheck to paycheck until 25 you get a pay raise maybe

can save some money um get a new apartment or whatever but during that time like the misallocation of capital creating these companies where people are working and they don't want to work there creates like a sense of dread there's like an existential dread that nobody really wants to talk about which forces these high time preference activities like you hit friday even during the week you're quizzo going to the bar every night dollar beer night whatever it is you're living for the weekend so that you can get frankly hammered to forget to forget like the the woes of the work week yeah yeah i there there's definitely a component of working a job you hate just because it makes a lot of money because you've essentially made money your god

at that point it's just i will do anything for money and money is a very cruel and harsh master like that that that forces you to work and gives you no rest whatsoever and you know puts you in a position that's always going to you know enslave you and um and the modern monetary system is essentially makes making uh like claims dominion over you very easily um and that that's not a very good that's not a good thing at all especially with the advent of like credit card debt and things like that, because the government can print money whenever it wants. And whenever a credit card company extends you credit, that credit does not come from somebody else's savings. It comes out of nothing. It's always printed for your benefit. So because that like sort of valve is

there, people end up using it and it ends up corrupting their souls and they have this existential dread. But I would point out another aspect of that existential dread, which is that So there's a lot of jobs that are more or less meaningless in our society today because of the easy money policies, because of all of the money printing that's always constantly going on. There's a lot of rent-seeking jobs, and these don't add value to anybody, but you end up doing them, and you might even be making a lot of money. But it's not a coincidence that like the investment bankers in New York are like the biggest drug users. Like there's that existential dread is real and you can't ignore it for very long before you go crazy. And for that reason, those people end up having to numb that voice inside that's saying you are not doing anything that's useful and that you are ultimately detracting from civilization and that you are a drag on everybody else. And in order to quiet that voice, you end up getting addicted to almost everything, like, you know, whether it be drugs or, you know, food or sugar or, you know, sports or, you know, pretty much anything is addictive these days. Yeah. It's crazy. Are we a wayward society?

Yeah, I would say so. And money got us there. And it's been going off in this weird direction of making money God, essentially, in order to serve ourselves. And it's kind of a weird way to look at life as if it's something to just, you know, dread for one part of it so you can sort of numb out the dread from the rest of the week and the weekend. Like that doesn't seem fulfilling to me at all. But that's the reality of many millennials, like you said, but probably a lot of other people as well. Yeah. It's mandated too. So I was thinking this conversation, this part of the conversation is making me think of a Twitter thread I saw. It was a conversation between Vaigaraj and Malal Yank.

Sorry if I'm butchering your name. But they were talking about, like, jobs being a goal, right, and not, like, economic efficiency. and so i think the i think um one of the two reference i think it was um friedman who took a trip to china and witnessed like a hundred people digging digging a ditch and and he pointed out to the person he was visiting like why do you have all these people digging a ditch one bulldozer could do this job he's like well what would happen to everybody else's job he's like oh well if your goal is more jobs you should give them spoons yeah and that's that's unfortunately the the attitude of a lot of the elite people it's like

they they have no conception that people can have a purpose outside of themselves so they kind of have to give them a job or something uh as if it's uh as if people have no creativity whatsoever or can't figure out what uh what they would be doing uh without the government's help yeah but everybody's caught in that trap like you gotta get a job you gotta get a job no matter what get a paycheck get your degree go into debt get a job and obviously some of us have broken free of that that mindset but it's the dominant mindset particularly here in america yeah well It's more about like corporatism, I think. And there is the sense that you don't have a real job if you're going to go work for yourself, unless it's, you know, sort of like the approved VC model or something like that, where you're having to apply. And it has a lot of the same dynamics as like a normal job, which is based on not necessarily your performance, but on the impression that you make on other people.

And that's what you're judged on. So everybody kind of learns how to display those job signals or, you know, like cultural signals or whatever it is to get those jobs and then perform just well enough not to get fired. And if you're particularly ambitious to look good to your superior so that you, you know, you can move up the ladder and so on. And unfortunately, this is a large part of American society, right? are these jobs that have a a um a spin to them right like you you have to constantly present yourself a certain way rather than it being by merits at all i mean like even even stuff like sports it's it's like uh okay well if you're a good teammate then you're going to have get a better chance at a job unless you happen to be like a transcendent talent or something like It's not really about a meritocracy. Whereas in a real market with lots of entrepreneurs, then it really is about, you know, the value that you're providing. And that's, I think, how it's supposed to be. That's God's intention for the world is for people to interact in a way where you're contributing things to other people.

And it's not about like sort of like the impression that you make on people or I mean, unless that happens to be your job, it's much more about the value that you're providing to others. And that's a lot more real than this like, I don't know, smoke and mirrors thing that everyone has to do when they're in a quote unquote job. And unfortunately, we get trained for it from a very early age, starting, you know, in the 12 years of government-mandated prison that we put our kids through. And, you know, you get trained to, like, do something, appear a certain way, and then eventually you go and do the same thing at a company, and maybe you make it up the ladder to VP or something like that. and then you retire and die it's it's what what a what a horrible existence i don't know all right i agree but so i guess where we could take this right now particularly is like how does sound monetary system sound money allow people to lower their time preference and focus on providing value to others instead of chasing paycheck after paycheck in a easy monetary system

yeah so once you have sound money you uh well first of all you get rid of all the unsound money because sound money wins over unsound money every time um if you're going to save in one um and this is something that we've talked about i think uh in the bitcoin community for a while is this whole idea of hyper bitcoinization when everyone just takes the good money um that just gets more and more expensive whereas the bad money which is the u.s dollar or whatever fiat currency it gets worse and worse and it drops in price um at some point it's going to bitcoin's just going to win because no one's going to take dollars um now that might happen five years from now for a hundred years from now i don't know but at some point that's going to happen because

the harder money is going to win and we have really hard money with bitcoin now when you have that uh it takes away the power of the dollar and the power of the dollar is that it can be printed for almost any purpose at any time in the form of loans and it's done at every single level it's not just done at the level of the federal reserve but it's all their member banks and all their uh all their operations which include commercial and retail and investment banking all all of them get access to printed money on whim through loans uh and there's no not even a reserve requirement anymore. Not that that was ever really a barrier to begin with. But basically, anytime anyone is qualified and wants a loan, they get the loan and more money comes into existence. And that's how

it's been for quite a while now. So that is a major structural part of the world today. And that means that you can pretty much get everything now and pay it back later. That's essentially what a loan is so anybody that's sufficiently powerful can get whatever they want uh and right now and not have to wait so it's a mentality of very high preference all across the entire spectrum of people and this is from the very rich people all the way down to the very poor people who have access to loans they're just way more expensive they're called like payday loans or something like that. And the debt service on those is significantly higher. But they can do that too. And when you get rid of that, now you kind of have to save. You have to do something or

rely on the charity of others or whatever. And that makes you appreciate money a lot more, I think. And in so doing, that makes you want to save more money because you can see the value that it has for other people. And that means that in order to earn that money, you actually have to go out and provide value to other people instead of a rent-seeking job because all of those are on too once you eliminate all of these uh you know weird inefficiencies that come out of fiat money so in that way i think you get something much more akin to the gold gold standard you know the gilded age where they built like entire canals and railroads and well not railroads in particular in the u.s but in other parts of the world they were able to build them um through without any

public money whatsoever it was it was it was uh through like entrepreneurs that were like okay we could make a profit and things like that are you saying we could build roads without the government i would say so i hope so i mean that the ability to build the roads who's going to build the roads jimmy i never knew it yeah yeah that that's always like uh like a talking point of the anti-libertarians isn't it yeah well i mean and i get i guess that segues into like the transition to a hard money is scary for a lot most people are scared of it like oh we're gonna lose all these crappy jobs deflation like how do we transition i think the the thought of a transition and the uncertainty that would come with that scares a lot of people and how can we

sort of lower those fears or remove those fears from people yeah i we we have the main strategy i think from the book is basically showing you all of the consequences of the current system now and get you to like just recognize all of the costs that we're paying almost at a level of the soul, right? Like, cause if you, if you do have very high time preference, um, well, you're kind of losing your soul a little bit. Uh, you're, you're, you're always kind of like, um, doing things that aren't in your long-term best interest. And ultimately that leads to a brokenness, a dread, uh, um, uh, almost like, um, a spiritual bankruptcy that, uh, that, that comes from a financial bankruptcy that ultimately, you know, is not just unsatisfying, but

like a break in who you are. It's a terrible place to be in. And hopefully that scares enough people to say, okay, well, that means that we need to do something else instead of this fear of uncertainty that comes from like not knowing what a future with sound money might be like i mean we try to paint a good picture of that too but ultimately once people recognize all of the spiritual consequences i mean there are lots of really miserable billionaires and i mean imagine if you like even if you made a billion dollars and you are completely miserable Most people think that they would be really happy when they're billionaires. Like, if you look at facts, that's not the case at all.

Like, they're just as unhappy as any other sort of segment. It's just that we worship money, so we think that money will solve whatever problems we have. You know, newsflash, it's not money that's going to solve your problem. You need something deeper than that. And this is the spiritual aspect of it that I don't think a lot of people really have grasped or digested and really made real for themselves. And that's something that we hope to do with this book. Well, I hope you're successful because it seems like God is dying in today's day and age. People, let's be honest, there's going to be a lot of freaks out there listening to this and sort of roll their eyes like,

ah marty's talking about jesus again like god damn it but people are repulsed by religion um not even christianity just religion spirit like believing in a higher being and living for a greater good uh with that higher being in mind why do you think that is i don't know like uh well i have some thoughts yeah i mean maybe people don't want to admit that that their life has not had meeting up to this point to have to to pivot and admit that there is a higher being that you should live for is a hard pill to swallow yeah hedonistic tendencies and stuff like that and turning towards a higher being is maybe something people don't want to do yeah i it reminds me of uh what nichi wrote with

the whole god is dead stuff right like um and and like that dialogue i think is pretty misunderstood today like you know he he said god is dead because here are all the consequences of removing god from you know your moral framework and what are you going to do about it because this is this is a monumental thing you remove god from the equation which pretty much the enlightenment and thinkers did but then they they kept all of the consequences of god which is the moral framework by which you know civilization was and nietzsche was like okay well you you remove god but you kept this but that's all going to crumble and i think that's that's what you're describing here with uh you know like people that are kind of rolling their eyes or whatever is that once

you remove God from the equation you remove like a lot of meaning a lot of morality a lot of what what it means to be human or what what it means to actually achieve something or have a purpose or anything and this is something that Nietzsche pointed out and you know Nietzsche's solution was completely off the rails because he basically said you need to be a sociopath and have like this will to power morality where you know might is right and you get to do whatever you want to other people and whatever right like that that that's his like nietzschean superman or whatever um and i i that's a very dark and nihilistic world and that's unfortunately the spiritual bankruptcy that we have to deal with right now and it's it's a sad and dreadful kind of reality

for people to have to deal with and instead they go and drown it in alcohol or something it's yeah right and this year is really driving this home right we have sociopathic people in charge who are forcing the masses very few people forcing billions of people to act in a certain way that is that is unnatural um it's it's very weird i think a lot i think some people are waking up Yeah, I mean, that's a transition that I think that has happened over the past couple of hundred years is post enlightenment, it went from the rulers had at least some idea that there was an authority above them, right? like uh or before the enlightenment rather there was a sense that okay well i may be king but i'm still under the authority of god and if i do something really evil he's going to punish me something like that um and there was at least that fear or i have to represent him in what i do and

make sure that i am ruling justly and kindly and all this other stuff um once you remove god from that equation, then it really becomes kind of this Nietzschean rule, right? Like very much, I get to tell you what you are allowed to do. And I think from a legal standpoint, that's called positivism. It's this idea that you only have rights that the government gives you. But if you think from a ruler's perspective, that's extremely nihilistic and Nietzschean. It's, I have the power to enforce this, and you can't do anything about it anyway. So practically speaking, this is the morality that you have to subscribe to is that if i give you that right then you have it if i don't give you that right then you don't have it uh right to you know cut hair uh for money or or

drive taxis for money or whatever like these are all things that the government can give you the right to do or not whereas if you live in a world with god in it then or where you believe that god exists then there's this whole concept of natural law uh of having rights that belong to you because you are created in his image and that you have dignity because you bear god's image and so on and and that those are completely different views and what we're seeing is this nihilistic like controlling uh uh you know government and authority that's come to the forefront as a result of essentially removing god from the equation you know starting during the enlightenment and uh you know getting worse and worse um you know up until now yeah no i'm very happy you

brought up natural law theory because i know we've both spoken about this and said this that bitcoin is the greatest extension of natural law theory in quite a while right preserving personal property rights and endowing the individual with full control over his digital bearer asset this is a massive this is going to have massive implications on society and the fact that natural rights have been extended now in the digital age via bitcoin um thank god right thank god for bitcoin indeed indeed and and and that's the thing it's a natural rights are ours. And if somebody takes them away, that is morally wrong. If I take your property, right, you have the natural right to property. If I take your property, it's wrong, regardless if I'm a

robber or if I am the government. Either way, it is wrong because it is yours. And if somebody takes it, then they are committing theft. At least this is according to Christian theology. I think most people would say the same even the most i think this is a quote from the book even the most ardent communist if something is taken away from them they will feel angry or sad or both because it's property that's being taken away like to to a large degree most people agree that natural law exists and that but you know to justify that without god is a very very tough thing um i've seen it done but usually they rely on some sort of um rhetorical sleight of hand to some degree and it's uh and if you remove god then then you have positivism you you have no natural rights

you you have only will to power you only have you know those in authority and those that are not and it's it's a horrible horrible world yeah that's why thomas aquinas is probably one of the best philosophers the real natural right theory natural law theory excuse me because he ties it all back and he does it from a very rational perspective which i really appreciate and and you know summa theologica is like steel man argument after steel man argument here's the best argument i can make against what i believe and let's let's figure out like you know here's my response to all of those things and it's um absolutely brilliant uh i like one of the most underappreciated thinkers but then again in a nihilistic society uh i read this the other day you you end um it is the end

of history right uh like you don't study history anymore for the sake of learning what it is it's it's it's become very nichian it's it's history as a discipline has become whatever the winners want it to be in order to fit the narrative that they want to advance um which is very 1984-ish but that's exactly what's happening uh like one of the things that was that was pointed out in the book i was reading was you look at the history classes available at harvard right now it's like you know queer theory uh you know african-american studies um you know asian american studies uh colonial uh i don't know like some negative word like colonial violence or something like that like you learn nothing about them there's not a class on the renaissance yeah uh reformation

yeah any of these things that we would normally put as like some of the most pivotal things that happened in history not a class on those because it's now become like this narrative shaping thing um very 1984 instead of learning about what actually happened yeah part of the patriarchy you can't you can't talk about the picture like today today youtube announcing they're gonna pull down videos that run against the the grain of the narrative about the election right now you can't have wrong thought about the election yeah i mean doesn't that sound very Nietzschean. There's no objective standard that anyone goes to anymore. It's we're going to do this and we're going to rationalize it maybe according to whatever code of ethics that you

might believe, but it's we're going to impose this on you and you have to take it. And that's what this whole coronavirus crisis and lockdowns and masks and everything, it's been that way the entire time the justification comes afterwards only as a way to appease people that already believe uh already want you in power it like for for anyone that disagrees with you it is you have to take this it's not an argument made from uh i mean even even the arguments made from public safety i think are not done in like uh with with any integrity at all it's just here's what we're going to do and we want to do this and therefore you kind of have to take it and that it's like ever since like even like the jeffrey epstein's thing right it was we're not even gonna bother

covering it up or making it sound like remotely plausible it's just yeah he died oh the cameras weren't working oh and you know nobody was watching uh and yeah um yeah that's what happened um go on with your lives go on with your lives nothing nothing to see here yeah it's it's extremely Nietzschean. It should be frightening because it's a bunch of sociopaths that are running this whole thing. Thankfully, we have Bitcoin, so we have some measure of being able to resist this nihilistic future that's coming. Well, it seems like everybody's in a trance because just look at the response. The majority of people are docile, or at least from my perspective maybe there's some closet non-docile people out there who who do want to fight back

with the amount of people who are just running with the narrative that's shifting from week to week and parroting it to everybody else is it's pretty mind-blowing scary you know well i mean to be fair they had 12 years to learn how to do exactly that and well i mean maybe even like 16 or 20 years right like where basically the only correct answer was to parrot back to the teacher what they wanted to hear this is we've been trained for this man right it is crazy and thank god we have bitcoin right and it's crazy the parallels of stories in the bible what's going on now and like the bible i mean it's it's a book of of a moral framework from which to live lived by and filled with stories that sort of explain why you should live that way and how

you should view the world and try to be a good person and i think in the context of bitcoin one of the most famous stories that we probably touch on is is jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple um like that that story alone into the money changers and people were selling pets correct well so they they were selling um the the things that you would need to sacrifice so doves for poor people i think and uh and lambs for uh slightly richer people um yeah i and one of one of the you know i think it's uh the chapter on the church uh we have a whole chapter on like how like that that money fiat money affects the church and towards the end of it what um we we quote that exact story and say you know now might be the time to flip over some tables because

because things are pretty bad right now and uh and that kind of indignation uh that kind of passion about it is sorely missing instead you get lots and lots of compliance lots and lots of people just sort of meekly well not not even meek in a biblical sense but almost like weakly going with it. I'm sure you've seen the picture on Twitter or something like that, where it's like 65 AD, Emperor Nero, I will throw you to the lions. And the Christian says, I will gladly do that for the glory of my God. 2020, Gavin Newsom, we're going to fine you $5,000 for attending church. And then, you know, the Christian says, thank you for keeping me safe, which is like, oh god how wimpy have we become this is like you need you need more indignation right now you need

more um anger at what's going on uh we're we're watering deserts of uh i don't know like passionless people uh and it's it's a very sad situation are you optimistic we could turn it around I hope so. I hope so. I like part part of part of the job of I don't know, like, the way I see this book, it kind of I'm not saying we're prophets or anything. It's just like, it's supposed to have that kind of like prophetic voice, right? It's, it's a call to turn things around. Because the monetary system is just corrupting absolutely everything. And if you look at various trials and tribulations that Israel went through in the Old Testament, a lot of it came through things that you wouldn't necessarily think would corrupt them, like intermarrying with foreign foreigners or something like that, which eventually ended up making the Israelites go worship another god and so on. I think that's essentially what's happened with fiat money is that it's corrupted all of society in ways that are just absolutely mind boggling. And we point out some of those in the book. And as a result, like, we really need to turn things around, like recognize that and realize that there is redemption available. But it's not as easy as just going and buying Bitcoin, though that's going to help. But it's a whole mentality shift. It's a whole, it's a call to repentance, right? like it's a it's a call to you know potential redemption uh through um recognizing the evil

uh for what it is yeah and people are gonna be like ah you condescending people christians talking about repentance and stuff but it's like look around it's the number one song in the the fucking world right now white ass pussy is that really the number one song i don't pay attention at least it was at one point this year and i forget um yeah there was a meme going around uh of like a radio dj um saying hey we're not gonna play it we're not allowed to play baby it's cold outside but here is wet ass a song asking you to shove your dick in her mouth if it's yeah uh and yeah it's it's a very um power mad world right now and and i think people can sense that uh and if if you care about liberty if you care about freedom if you care about

any of these things uh you know like the the nice thing is like bitcoin is the resistance currency for all kinds of evil that's going on. You know, like if love of money is the root of all evil, Bitcoin is the sort of antidote to a lot of that evil. And hopefully it can help a lot of people to get a different mindset. And I certainly know it's true for me and I'm sure it's true for you.

Once you get Bitcoin, you know, things change and you start thinking differently and you start prioritizing different things all right let's pull on this thread a little bit particularly for people are probably screaming at their at their device in which you're listening to this podcast there's so many people that love bitcoin are obsessed with bitcoin how how do those uh the love of all money is a root of all kinds of evil and people's infatuation with bitcoin particularly how do you cross compute those yeah and uh there's a whole section in this like uh you know, Bitcoin doesn't fix our souls, right? Like it helps, but it's, that's ultimately not

what, like the temptation is to think that it is salvation for our souls. And it's not, it's, it's one of the many ways in which it's a blessing. It's something that we can use to enhance our lives and to make it better. But it is not Christ. It's not God. It's the redemption of money, but it's not the redemption of our souls, if that makes sense. That is something else. And that requires something completely different. So there can be the temptation to worship Bitcoin as well. And I've certainly seen that. But it's not merely as much, i think as with fiat money but that said um you know putting money like bitcoin is not putting it too high and not putting it too low right like this is what we talked about at the beginning it's

uh it it's like uh discounting everything that money does uh that's not healthy and worshiping it like it's the only thing that matters that's that's not right either it's putting it in the right place right that's what we would call temperance or moderation or something like that. It's doing it the right amount or loving it the right amount. And that's a subtle and nuanced thing that requires a lot of maturity to learn how to do. And I can't claim to know exactly what that point is because, you know, honestly, this is something I struggle with is figuring out exactly where to put it and placing it in the right place. I will say, though, that a lot easier to do with bitcoin than with fiat money because it like fiat just it's very hard

to put in the right place uh because of the effects it has and all of the evil that it contains uh with with the power that comes from being able to steal from other people um it's it so i'll leave it at that does that make sense yeah it makes a lot of sense no i i too i'm guilty of finding that temperance sometimes uh over overexpressing or over depending on my love for bitcoin but it's like weird so like let's try and put this in the context of our current condition like we were born when bitcoin was created and like so we obviously want bitcoin to succeed more importantly we think it's imperative that it does succeed so we can fix a lot of what's wrong with society how imperative are these early years in bitcoin's

life cycle that that we do champion it to a certain extent yourself you're educating people i have this podcast you have a newsletter i have a newsletter you have a podcast like how how important is this advocacy do we get to a point where it's unnecessary at some point in the future Yeah, and that's a difficult question because that's essentially, I think, at least somewhat dependent on your personality, what your gifts are, what talents you might have, and, you know, what stage you are in life. it's it's one thing to be promoting it when you know you you have relatively a lot of um free time and savings and things like that where you can kind of do that um it's another thing if you're you know like trapped in under a lot of debt and you you're you know in a lot of uh you you have a lot of bad habits and you need to break like there it really depends right and

And it's the degree to which Bitcoin, I think, is like a monetary imperative or a moral imperative to fix the monetary system only goes so far as your capacity to be able to earn that. And that's, I mean, I'm not sure where you draw. I don't know if there's like a single rule that will cover all people that are, say, listening to the show. like with that okay you need to do this amount of promotion of bitcoin before you are absolved of any uh evil that might come out of uh you know doing x y or z so yeah well i'm not i don't mean in that context i mean like in the context of if there is a window of opportunity through which we can ensure bitcoin success not for individual um quote-unquote salvation or whatever but just to ensure that this system survives like yeah i wish i knew the answer right uh if only we put in this

much effort it will ensure bitcoin success i think like to have that kind of insight into the possible futures would be prophetic i i don't claim to have that so but uh but i think it's overall very good thing and it fixes a lot of ills that are almost passed over or ignored by a lot of uh christians even so like going in that direction uh is i think ultimately a very good thing and hopefully something that we can achieve with this book a little bit yeah um so much we can go into here it's uh so people like to draw parallels between the launch of bitcoin and the book of genesis obviously we have the genesis block uh wasn't there seven days between um january 3rd and

january 10th when the first block was officially mined um what do you think about these parallels do you think it was intentional or i think yeah i i don't know you'd have to ask satoshi and uh and i don't really know um i will say though that there there's uh something of a self-sacrifice that i think satoshi did in disappearing that's kind of parallel uh with you know quite sacrifice Not nearly as much, obviously, but there is that sense in which at least how I choose to interpret his disappearance as sort of gifting this tool to the world by disappearing. And that was really the only way that Bitcoin was ever going to be decentralized was after him leaving. And the fact that he did is a gift to all of us. And I don't know, there are some people that might even go further and say, you know, that was a gift from God or something like that. I don't know if I, I mean, in the sense that everything is a gift from God, I would agree. I don't know if it was like special revelation to, you know, Satoshi Nakamoto and, you know, God raptured him away or something like that.

I wouldn't go anywhere near that, but yeah, recognizing it as a gift that it is in the same way that being saved is a gift, that Christ's grace is, God's mercy is a gift, that's, I think, a useful way to look at it. I agree. I agree. It's certainly a gift. I mean, I've talked to a number of individuals on this podcast alone who've described how pessimistic they were before they found Bitcoin. I think it's a common, common theme between Bitcoiners that there was almost a, again, an existential dread of pessimism and no hope for the future that Bitcoin sort of changed. And it's something that the world could use right now. i i don't know if you guys are you're like receiving christmas cards yet but man some people they look like they aged a lot in the past couple of past 12 months or something like just like being indoors and without human contact and you know just having to process like bad news

pretty much every day it it's it's taking a toll uh and what they're missing is kind of hope uh bitcoin is hope right now um at least for those of us that hold it yeah it certainly is i guess like how do we get people to to drop their trust in these institutions these nietzschean evil institutions that are telling them how to live taking away their free will and put their trust in god like i know it's no one path it's a personal journey for each person but again we talked about like people will probably get freaked out that we're even having this conversation people hear jesus religion christianity they put their holes in their ears they don't even want to listen

to the opportunity to potentially find salvation through god for the freaks that are still with us and maybe a bit curious and um interested in exploring this like what advice would you give to them well if you're at all curious um the first thing i would do is pray if god exists then and he is a if he's a personal god and if you pray he hears you and um and if you were god what what like you know would you refuse a request from somebody that says okay if you're really there, then reveal yourself. Um, I think that's a very reasonable prayer to say, okay, something is really weird right now. And, uh, and I, I I'm depressed and I don't feel like my life is meaningful and that I'm depressed or whatever. Um, but I, uh, I, you know, my worldview has

always been atheistic or something else but if you if god is there and he's listening like reveal yourself to me i i think that's a perfectly fine prayer to have um and that that's a that that's a way in which you can sort of test the hypothesis if you will um i i personally know a bunch of people um that have prayed exactly that prayer and were extremely surprised at the results um you know from every ethnicity and uh uh you know people from all around the world that that have prayed that prayer and said okay yeah i found out and if you do it sincerely i i don't think he would refuse so yeah i would say start there and and explore what you need to explore but you know i it's it's an open invite but no one's forcing you where god is not a nichian god

that says i'm going to force you all to worship me that's not how he is um whereas our our authorities unfortunately have taken that nietzschean ethic and are essentially forcing us to do whatever it is that they want us to do uh and if you think that there's a better option then i would suggest you look into it that way and why should we fear god well um if defining god is like the uncaused cause right um and this gets into a little bit of philosophy about like what what that means um right yeah it's misunderstood a lot isn't it yeah uh it's uh you know like the atheists do this like slight

of hand uh i i just believe in one less god than you no no you don't it's it's at least by the definition of uncaused cause there can only be one uh and you can logically prove that if there were more than one thing that was uncaused then you know you'd have to figure out what the difference is and then um there's there's a whole set of arguments that aquinas makes along these lines there are modern translations that you can look up i won't waste your time with those particular arguments but uh there there is god and um and in doing uh whatever it is that you need to do to understand uh what's going on um there oh gosh did i just lose my train of thought i think i did can you cut that part out i don't know we don't we don't make edits here but

hour at a minute or an hour four minutes and 32 seconds i'll write it down um yeah like what is the common misunderstanding with the phrase you should fear god or yeah uh yeah sorry yeah that that was that that was where i was going um so fearing god is is just knowing what he can do right like what what he what like what position he holds in the universe and that is literally sustainer of all things all life everything um and if you don't fear that in some way then uh then like you don't actually get the concept or you don't really or or you have a sense of entitlement that's way too large for your ego does that make sense i i would say it that way yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense and that's another thing i talked about with brian

harrington when he was on this podcast um a few months ago he shared um the story of jesus going to save the one sheep that was left on the mountain he left the whole herd and really what that story drives home is that jesus is there for the individual for you um and is here to empower the individual and let you know that you are special and you can bring value to this this world this this humanity that you're a part of which a lot of people seem to have lost track of that yes we are a society but the individual is special you are special created in his image you do have a purpose at the end of the day if you're willing to to search it out and explore it yeah i i think um c.s lewis put it this way uh like for most of human history that it was thought

that the you know the empire would live on so the empire is more important than any individual or something like that um and this is sort of like a common theme through any every civilization um the thing that christianity makes different is that we are all eternal beings and uh we're all living forever whether in hell or heaven or whatever and that means that each individual is of infinite importance whereas an empire or a country or a party or whatever is at best temporary so like you just do the math and infinity is greater than something finite so um that's another way to look at um you know how god sees things yeah which is just trying to tie this back to bitcoin like the way the blockchain works like

if it does sustain itself into the future these transactions are going to be imbued in this ledger for eternity and everybody in the future is going to be able to prove something that happened in the past and know that it objectively happened is a pretty mind-blowing fact when you think about it yeah well it's uh it's a log of truth um and it's uh there's there's uh so robert breed loves one of my co-authors so one of the things that he likes to sort of chew on is this idea of truth uh being uh a very good description of reality right or at least that's how i would define truth um the thing about uh you know like what we were talking about with uh nietzsche and epic and sort of like the end of actual history

And it's all just sort of like twisting narratives. You don't get the truth at all. And in fact, to a large degree, truth doesn't matter in those contexts. I mean, you look at what's going on with the election. You know, you have one side that basically watches the network news and believes whatever is coming out of their mouths. And then you have another side that listens to talk radio and believes whatever is going coming out of their mouths. It's almost as if like they believe what they want to believe rather than what the actual truth is. There's no real respect for truth anymore. And this is something that happens when it's all about power. The truth is a means, not an end. It's not about discovering truth at all. It's about using it to further your own power. And that's what politics has essentially become when you remove God from the equation, because, you know, Ninth Commandment, thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor, right? Like, it's part of respecting reality by describing it truthfully. That's part of the Christian ethic that's been removed as a result of removing God from it. And the thing that having a blockchain or having some record of truth brings back is that there is an objective reality and you can't deny that. You can't just be like, oh, well, you know what? My reality is that I actually didn't give you 10 bitcoins in, you know, 2012 or something like that.

it's uh there there's no such thing it there's an objective reality that you have to um abide by um and that in itself is should be very obvious but in in the world today that sort of thing isn't and you you have lots of conflict over stuff like that i mean like i don't know if you saw like the stupid two plus two equals five thing on twitter a while back oh my god yeah like two plus two equals four is oppression yeah so that that that's where like we're we're getting to almost like a post-truth society where like the truth actually doesn't matter and this is like straight out of 1984 um you know where the guy says you know if i tell you it's two plus two equals five then you're going to believe two plus two equals five now for science and stuff we're still going

to believe two plus three plus four but if i make you if i tell you that two plus two equals five you will believe it and i mean it's the most sociopathic uh you know authoritarian thing but that that's kind of the reality that we're headed towards very quickly uh and that i mean hopefully that scares you to at least take a look at what natural law is and everything else because that's where you end up when you remove god from the equation to a large degree uh i like i i respect a lot of atheists uh that that are able to have sort of a moral code without god but like logically speaking this is where it leads and it's it's a very scary place yeah no it's i mean it's happening it's happening we're talking about youtube like they're

thing i mean i think like you just described you get multiple talking heads people just confirm their bias but when you even i mean you just shut down the the ability to have a conversation about it and let people explore and try to discover truth by their own means you're ending up in that 1980 we're here it's here it's here and the scary thing is um like words start losing meaning and you you we've already like removed the ability for people to like meet each other and stuff when you when words lose meaning then you lose the ability to communicate and i mean how fundamental is that to being a human right like to be able to communicate with other people oh that's something that's been the most dismaying for me this year

particularly again having an infant toddler now son's 10 months old it's like everybody wearing masks and not being able to read faces at such a formative age like not being able to see people smile only see mask in their eyes and it's something like that is why i've been searching for playing i've been traveling to places that don't mandate mask outside and try to give him the ability to see facial expressions actually have his brain form in a way that it should taking that fundamental human connection away it's insane well it's dehumanizing it's debasing humanity and uh and that this whole year has been one long debasement of human dignity uh and and what well in terms of like natural law rights and things like that but also just

like very basic communication and need for other people and things like that it's it's a debasement of all of that uh and unfortunately a lot of people are okay with it because they prioritize you know i i guess physical life over any sort of you know purpose or meaning to their lives um and i i think that's a terrible trade-off it's on par with bitcoin cash yeah right and let's see even though we're being very pessimistic here it seems like people are waking up like you see the new yorker cover i know yeah yeah i i saw the cover with uh with with basically like a messy room on zoom or something like that yeah woman in her early 30s drinking wine hanging out with her cats talking to somebody over zoom i think that's

where society is right now and and how meaningless is that right like you're not even like actually talking to somebody in person um you know you're you're not doing anything meaningful your your your room's a complete mess and uh and your your communication is through like this little window on uh on a screen instead of the entire experience of your full being um that that just seems so like it limits the human soul so much it's it's it's projecting onto like two dimensions what's like eight dimensions and it's it's mind-boggling that people are standing for that or or i don't know maybe maybe like humans have been debased in so many dimensions so much that it doesn't feel like that much more of a debasement to be forced to stay inside and and do like just zoom

chats well it's funny i have um page 86 of your book right now up on my on my screen here hyperinflation therefore this inequity will be to you like a breath about to fall a bulge in a high wall this collapse comes suddenly in an instant talking about the debasement of humanity like is there a hyperinflation of humanity debasement going on right now yeah tipping point yeah i would say so because uh like what what is so the question i would ask first is the government is debasing humanity right like or human dignity to a degree through its exercise of authoritarianism what are they getting back for more control yeah well it's it's sort of like being god or something like that right like it's

this idea of uh of power or something else and it's always inevitably for a few particular people and they're all hypocritical too yeah yeah i'll tell you stay home wear a mask don't gather with more than five people and yet they'll go to michelin star restaurants dining without masks indoors with 15 people will go on trips they don't abide by yeah and that hypocrisy is a symptom of that Nietzschean like ethic of I'm gonna do what I want to you and uh there's nothing you can do about it because the rules can be different for me and you because of course I'm the one in power that that that's sort of that that that's there there's a weird status game at play here right and and really by pushing the dignity of other people down they're raising themselves in status

a little bit and they're willing to do that because status is zero sum you push enough people down just a little bit you you go up yeah but what's the end goal there you suppress everybody else and everybody else lives in misery and you are able to say you're in power and then you die and society is just a wasteland behind your death yeah i something like that i like i i still remember like the ending or towards the end of the book 1984 it's like uh you know why we do this winston and then winston's like yeah it's because it's for our own good blah blah blah and and the guy's like no we do this for power we do this for power only and it the party exists only so that it can have power and it's a it's a very pathological like way of looking at things

well it's it's literally sociopathic um but that that i think is like what you get when you don't have god in the picture is there's no higher authority so you are that authority and exercising power is its own drug almost um i think the the phrase is called like libido dominandi the lust for power it it's a it's an addiction in of itself that perpetuates and it it causes i mean i think you're seeing it right now probably in a lot of governors and and think and people like that that are like doing obviously hypocritical things but it's about power to them and um and it puts them higher in status somehow despite like actually not like they're not getting to enjoy life like they were before covid either but at least from a relative standpoint they're

doing way better than us plebs that are having to stay home yeah that's just a question in my mind like has the debasement of the money you know society led to a lack of god in people's lives or is a lack of god in people's lives led to the former hmm which which which came first the chicken or the egg huh um yeah or more precisely like destruction of the egg or the destruction of the chicken because they're both sort of like negative things um yeah uh it's hard to say yeah i i i would suspect that yeah it would be really interesting to trace sort of like enlightenment thinking and uh you know which is really what started the whole atheism craze basically and uh and the advent of central banking and sort of like creating that fiat money

because i i do think they run together somewhat um right yeah the destruction of the nuclear family slowly but surely over the last five decades which nuclear family is probably more likely to be god-fearing try to replicate try to go forth uh and multiply um yeah i i i'm sure there's a correlation i'm not sure which causes which or even if it's that simple it might be a non-linear relation um but there there's definitely something there about um like a lack of belief in god uh i mean so one of one of the things that we point out in the book is uh in post um that's a play by goth or whatever his name is um but there you know basically there's a king and uh you know there's an advisor named mephistopheles who's basically

the devil saying like okay you can go and debase money uh and he was unwilling to do it because he was like well but that doesn't exist well it's just gold that you haven't dug up yet just issue those um and he eventually does it and and it leads to all sorts of evil but i imagine that those two have some correlation because if you believe that you will be punished for not respecting reality um then then you're less likely to create something as evil as fiat money um but if you do respect god and all of the moral consequences that come out of that and then then you wouldn't do that right like the the whole of the current central banking fiat backed monetary system is based on debt and that as we argue in the book is is a form of slavery

so you you're able to enslave the entire population through this money and that is really scary uh that that is essentially what's happened to a lot of us especially if you're in a rent seeking job you you really have no recourse yeah and that's something i'm very happy that robert breedlove has really honed in on in recent months is is the fact that we're modern day slaves due to the the monetary system that we're under um and due to the slave trade in the 1800s here in the u.s 17 1800s people sort of shy away from from going as far to say that that we are subjected to some form of slavery today but there's no doubt about it we are yeah and i i think that's what usury really is and that's uh another popular topic from the bible what what the heck is usury

It's a way of enslaving someone with money. And, you know, I mean, that sort of thing is very common in, say, like India today where, you know, somebody is in financial trouble and they'll lend them like $100 worth and basically the way to they'll make them work to pay it off. But then the interest is too much that they can't pay off the original principle because the interest is growing faster than they can work it. And that sort of thing is very common in different parts of the world. That's what I think is usury. And if you think of loans here. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I mean, it's being done at sort of like a societal level where we're made to pay for, you know, stuff that we didn't even get the benefits of. it's it's really like that from you know uh the 1960s or whatever and it's uh it's a perpetual

slavery of an entire people um and the u.s does it to all the other countries where they're able to export fiat money in exchange for goods and services like i i don't know how the u.s is able to do that and get away with it basically they send out money that they print and they get goods and services what what he's going back to jesus taking the money changers out of temple flipping the table like yeah having a child and realizing that the system and qe what's going on today m1s increased by i believe 35 to 55 this year i forget whether m1 or m2 but yeah there's like something like a third of the money that's ever been printed was printed this year is what are you doing you're pulling future production to the to the present and you're

forcing or taking current savings into your you know honeypot i guess uh and not not just from the u.s people because all the money's in other central bank books and stuff you're pulling it from all over the world from some of the poorest people the the ones that experience hyperinflation they're the ones paying first yeah and as a parent it makes you literally want to flip a table and be like i don't want my child my future children to come after a singular child that i have now to live under the system yeah and this is one of the questions that we ask in the book is like man like we're we're taking out mortgages right that's money that's being printed just for us but really that's that from all the other people that have saved money because it's not coming from

one particular person's savings because it's created out of thin air you're expanding the money supply for your own benefit the bank benefits you benefit society does not every loan is like that and uh and it's like well if that's the case is that licit right like uh to use sort of like a catholic term like is that licit is that is that a good thing is that something that that god would allow i don't i don't think so i like if if it's a loan from somebody's savings it's one thing but if it's a loan if it's a loan in the conventional sense which is money printed out of nothing for your benefit but at the expense of the community i don't think so and i i speak somebody that has a mortgage i'm like dude um i'm part of the problem

well is it is it possible not to be part of the problem today yeah if you if you don't have that i i think you're pretty clear on at least on that front but but uh i mean pretty much everyone is entangled in this massive sin of fiat money uh and like and i include like churches on this too because they take out mortgages on their big beautiful buildings so like and it's not just stealing from the savings of people in the united states you're stealing from the savings of people all over the world right like wherever there's a dollar standard you're probably stealing from them

i mean a tiny amount but it's still some amount this brings up an interesting topic a topic that's been hot on the twitterverse this week is it a moral imperative to speculative attack the dollar and hyper bitcoin eyes faster um so that all that debt can be essentially demonetized and debased yeah i mean this is where um like sort of uh this is this is where i think you have to sort of have the attitude of the prophet like if you've warned people and then they they all ignore you and then then it might be okay for a speculative attack i don't know but um i don't know if people have been sufficiently warned um hopefully this book helps them but that that that's it's

the like iniquity that that we're all in is this weird system of fiat money that's just a cesspool of thievery uh that that we've all more or less kind of participated in um yeah like how much are we culpable i don't know like that's that's a hard question but it's one worth pondering yeah one should be at least a bit inquisitive right um or else you'll just leave that life of existential dread that we've been talking about you wake up one day be like what the hell did i do with my life it's another thing like we should drive home too it's like maybe a bit scary to put yourself out there and try to provide value

in a world by try to provide value to the world by trying to find purpose that may not uh may not provide a direct line of income or financial security at least as you presently perceive it but i don't know where i'm going here i sort of lost my well so so that that whole idea of like working with your hands to provide value to other people i i think that is what a lot of people's purposes it should be right like it's it's uh i think it's in ephesians it says uh you know work with your hands right like hughes deals should steal no longer but you know working with his hands to produce something good right like um that's what we should be doing but too many people

would rather go find a rent-seeking job and which is really doing nothing and getting paid for it um because of their desire to because work is essentially a disutility they they don't want to do it and they they would rather not provide value and still collect an income which unfortunately is true of way too many people i agree that's that's good that i mean that that's that's the existential dread that those are the people that are seeking purpose and meaning it's right there you just need to go and work and do something with your hands that that actually provides value to others and that that's um that's where i think entrepreneurship is i think biblical it's it's something that when you do create something that is of value to other people it is a lot more

satisfying and that existential dread goes away to a large degree instead of feeling like you're useless at doing nothing yeah no i agree and i'm clicking and moving my mouse here because i want to pull up a tweet again i'm not trying to toot my own horn or what we're doing at great american mining but that's something i tweeted out right before we hopped on is that i love working at great american mining because we're actually building things physical things that potentially have a profound effect on our economy and that's another opportunity provided by the bitcoin network There is a that many people discredit or completely overlook in the Bitcoin network, which is the act of proof of work consensus mechanism that dictates that you have to plug in physical machines and create physical infrastructure with your hands. And again, I feel very grateful to be part of the Great American Mining teams.

We're actually building things with our hands, not me personally, but I'm helping the company as we build these physical things to help oil and gas producers and the Bitcoin network at large. Yeah. And there's something noble about that, right? Like about adding value to society through capitalism, like getting paid what you're worth because what you produce is actually like useful to others. And that's something that we talk about all throughout the book, is that money is a representation of how much value, or it should be, ideal money should be a representation of the value you've provided other people. and that it's storing up the value for later consumption and and like accumulating that capital you can you can actually use it later to start another business or to provide even more value through through a bigger supply of money being used for something or other that that's real that that's real value

And that's how the civilization gets built up. And unfortunately, that's been deprecated in favor of sort of like the government model, which is, you know, fund a few companies that employ everybody. And it's way more kind of socialist than capitalist in that way. Yeah, that's one thing I really appreciate about Bitcoiners, especially when they're thinking long term and people like Bitstein, like Michael Goldstein, who think about the future they want to build, particularly around buildings and things that will be around forever, which isn't necessarily something that they'll build for themselves, but for society at large. bitcoiners talk about building things that last generation centuries things that will provide benefits to people after we're dead um bitcoin itself as you're building it out right it's it's a long-term goal it's sort of selfless because you're you're ensuring the future generations

have this very important tool that preserves um dignity and the ability to live a good life as we've been describing throughout this whole conversation yeah there were all these like um families back in the renaissance and stuff that you know had like two year 200 year plans to like irrigate like particular lands and stuff like just public works that basically would take many generations and um you know i mean even cathedrals and things like that they were they were built by people, usually fairly small numbers of people, which is surprising, like a giant cathedral built by like a village of like 100 people or something like that. And it took like 130 years, but that's more than the lifetime of any single builder. And they did it because that was something

that they wanted to last. And those buildings are still up today. Whereas like, buildings now, they're all kind of utilitarian or uh done for the sake of uh you know usage instead of beauty or or something like there's no purpose beyond the lifespan of a single person yeah i think hospitals are a great representation of this right like hospitals used to be beautiful places um especially in europe huge buildings with tall ceilings a lot of natural light and everything is just completely desanitized and uh very i don't know how to describe it bleak if you will yeah or sterile or something like it's sterile sterile is the word i was looking for yes yeah just just uh kind of kind of gross uh in a weird way um you know describing a

hospital as gross is a little bit weird but yeah it's um and you know you lose that that beauty that comes from that and uh that that idea of something that's transcendent um and you know that that's something honestly that we've lost there there there aren't that many timeless sort of transcendent beauty things anymore um which is uh which speaks to the fact that a lot of people aren't looking for to make those things or value those or enough people that value those things um so very very sad uh but let's make sure to uh add that bitcoin is something that does seem like it will last so that at least has you know is something that is being created now that is going to be there for future generations and so on that's something that

can be rallied around yeah and so i guess we can end it on this like so bringing it back to the beginning of the conversation we're talking about ethics of money production um and what was the other book you mentioned um uh that um honest money honest money both having sort of negative endings and not really optimistic endings how how does thank god we have bitcoin provide an optimistic view of the future for your readers well the the main thing is uh well we we first of all point out that gold has failed um and it's failed multiple times uh and the the reason why it's failed is because it's central it's very easy to centralize because it's physical and it's hard to secure. What Peter Schiff thinks is the main advantage of gold is its actual ultimate weakness

is that it's very hard to secure. So everyone puts it in a vault that leads to fractional reserve lending that leads to lots of bankruptcies, which leads to central banks, which leads to it being converted to fiat money. And then that it's just sort of like step after step after step of iniquity, of doing things the wrong way in order for things to be convenient for those in power. With Bitcoin, we have the ability to do things differently than we did with gold, because gold is, in a weird way, led to fiat money. But with Bitcoin, we have the ability to be our own banks. We have the ability to run our own nodes. We have the ability to verify ourselves instead of trusting somebody else. And there's no third party that sits in between that

can be regulated, that controls everything or whatever. And that is very, very powerful because it means that the money can be separated from the state and we can opt out of all of this. So instead of trying to get a political consensus around the gold standard, we don't have to do that with Bitcoin. We can all each opt out on our own. And we can do things slowly instead of needing one major political push in order to get it done, kind of like what they had to do with abolition in England or whatever. You know, I mean, it took Wilberforce something like 22 years before he was able to abolish slavery and he introduced it every year. It took a tremendous amount of political will to do. Bitcoin is not like that at all.

it doesn't require that level of tremendous political willpower. It just requires individuals to opt out on their own. And it's, in a sense, almost inevitable, because hard money wins over bad money. And what we have right now is bad money. And that's the hope is that, you know, the people that read it will say okay i believe this and it does seem inevitable i'm going to make it happen a little earlier by getting into bitcoin myself and that's all it takes some powerful stuff thank you for writing this book thank god we have bitcoin well thank you for having me on the show it was a pleasure to uh speak to you about it and And, yeah, it's six months of coronavirus Zoom calls, essentially, that made it happen.

So, yeah. Where can the freaks find it? It's on Amazon. Thank God for Bitcoin. Just search for it. Eight authors, including myself, Robert Breedlove, Julia Turiansky, George McHale, and many others. So it's a pretty short read, 120, 140 pages, something like that. Um, and, uh, yeah, it, it shouldn't take more than a couple hours to read on a, on a lazy

Saturday or something like that. And we, you know, we have all have lots of lazy Saturdays with Corona. Yeah. Well, thank you for writing it. Thank you for coming on. It's a long time coming. And I think I have a, an Austin trip coming at some point in early 2021. So I'm definitely going to hit you up and we can meet in person and we don't have to

talk via the zoom call. Well, then maybe we can record something for my podcast. We'll see. That would be awesome. Bitcoin fixes the oil and gas industry. That would be interesting, actually. Yeah, we can dive into that. I've got a lot of material on that particular subject.

All right. Well, let's do it then. Awesome. Well, we'll coordinate that off the record. Jimmy, thank you for coming on. It's been an incredible conversation again. One that I don't get to have too often. And I'm very selfishly happy that we had this particular conversation because

people tend to shy away from this stuff. Anytime, man, anytime. And you know, even offline, just let me know if you ever want to talk about it. Cause that's, it's something that I feel is a big part of who I am. And I don't mind talking about it at all. Awesome. Well, thank you for that offer. Thank you for coming on. That's all we got today. Freaks. Peace and love.