TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #516: America & The Art of the Possible with Chris Buskirk

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Marty sits down with Chris Buskirk to discuss the destruction wrought by ESG and moving forward with positive vision. Chris on Twitter: https://x.com/thechrisbuskirk 1789 Capital: https://x.com/1789Capital 0:00 - Intro 0:50 - Start - ESG destroys innovation 3:53 - Conservative vibe shift 8:38 - River & Unchained 09:54 - Positive vision 15:58 - Positive vision specifics 24:24 - Gradually, Then Suddenly & Zaprite 26:01 - Broken money 28:39 - Electric cars 31:20 - What DC does to good people 35:31 - Take the white pill and think big 41:40 - What regulation did to capital allocation 45:49 - Generational groups and the remnant 51:37 - Energy 55:24 - Exploring causes 1:02:21 - Stranded gas 1:05:53 - Wrapping up Shoutout to our sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠River⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Zaprite⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Gradually, Then Suddenly⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TFTC Merch is Available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shop Now⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the TFTC Movement: Main ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clips ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Marty Bent: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

this rip of tftc was brought to you by river it's the best place to buy bitcoin go to river.com tftc and enjoy this episode 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 chris thank you for uh for joining us here my pleasure thanks for having me um like i was saying

i met uh your partner omid earlier this year he gave a great speech on this panel uh at the young global leaders event hosted by scott atlas in palm beach and i became a big fan of 1789 capital what guys are doing almost immediately um because i think what you're doing is is very important uh fading esg leading in to eig or egi eig entrepreneurship innovation and growth yeah and i mean i think it's desperately needed right now i've been fighting the so in bitcoin uh i'm in the bitcoin mining industry upstart a bitcoin mining company we're doing off-grid oil and gas flare mitigation on upstream well pads in the bakken and so i got introduced to the esg fight pretty early in like 2018 2019 where they really came at the bitcoin mining industry for

for using too much energy and the wrong energy too using natural gas or reliable energy sources is is something that most people don't like these days. Yeah, I mean, look, ESG is like the innovation destroying industry. It's literally just using the major financial institutions in this country in order to kill innovation. It's like it's completely absurd. And, you know, I think, like I'm sort of optimistic, might be overstating, but like maybe cautiously optimistic

that people are starting to figure out nobody has made money on their ESG. investments um in fact nobody's not lost money everybody's losing money on their esg investments and yet those mandates are still out there they're in all kinds of fun documents they're in the documents that asset managers have to live by um and yet the dirty secret is um they don't work and by the way losing money is the best thing that esg does it's like like if you if you're an asset manager you invest a billion dollars in esg you might lose five percent a year you know five years you're gonna lose 25 30 or something that's the best thing you just did with that money actually the the second order effects are worse than

the first order effects because the misallocation of capital um it it's the the opportunity costs associated with that misallocation is really huge right it incentivizes all kinds of bad destructive behavior and it stifles actual innovation the only way that we have any sort of sustainable prosperity in this country as we continue to innovate yeah you can't virtue signal your way to returns which no you can't virtue you can't virtue signal your way to returns you can't virtue signal your way to increase productivity and you can't virtue signal your way uh to to to increased uh national or individual wealth try as people might yeah well it seems have we become a nation of virtue signaling obviously the returns for esg have been bad and the concept of the vibe

shift has been big particularly in conservative circles and i would argue that it seems like people are starting to wake up especially as the pain of price inflation begins to weigh on everybody particularly the middle and lower class people are throwing their hands up but with that in mind like it feels like in the u.s over the last two decades we've been a bit complacent and you see bricks countries making a big move particularly post russia u.s treasury freeze um it seems like we're at a massive inflection point and particularly at the federal government level the u.s seems to be sleeping at the wheel uh again i kind of feel like the same thing with esg i wish they were asleep at the wheel that'd be an improvement

like it's like it's like it's like uh the hippocratic oath first do no harm like we got to get them back that's neutral right we have to get them back to where there's they stop actively doing harm you know just to pick up on something you said a second ago he's like sort of like conservatives have figured out uh that esg is a scam and a harmful scam at that that's true that's true but actually you know i i was at this dinner with president trump a couple weeks ago and he uh he made this kind of side comment um as he does what you know he just he gets up there and he riffs you know if you talk about the president by the way you have to it's obligatory you have to it's obligatory impersonation it's too fun not to do um but he says you know like no girls and

women's sports like um secure borders uh sound money more like more jobs he says conservative just sounds normal to me yeah that's that's it like is like i there's some part of me that thinks i mean i'm i'm a conservative happy to say it but there's a bunch of this stuff that doesn't or shouldn't have like a political ideological valence like if you want to have like low crime rates and stable money and like lack of inflation like is that is that a concern is that like an ideological position now i don't i don't think most people think about that so i just always wonder when we're thinking about these things and like these stark right left terms it's true that it's associated with with people who have a particular political point of view but

there's also a bunch of sort of apolitical people like i don't know i think maybe it would be a good idea if people could get good good paying jobs and we had industry in this country like so i don't know i i just uh i've just been thinking about that a bunch since the president made that like totally a side comment i'm like yeah that actually makes sense that just like basic american normal person values yeah well it's like the meme going around twitter i think it resurfaced i think it went around a couple years ago too but it has like the the spectrum the political spectrum on the line it's very short yeah somebody's left of center and then everybody on the left just ran all the way to the left side of the page yeah if you were left

of center 10 years ago you're now a neo-nazi in the u.s there's a there's a there's a there's another sort of form of that what i just saw it's like it's kind of has this like it's now it's a distribution graph it kind of goes like this um so people listening on audio can't see that but like but there's like 10 it's like um left and there's like another five percent that's like moderate and then it just shows like this huge distribution that's far right yeah with i mean that is the most disconcerting thing for me is that everything has become hyper-partisan hyper-polarized or at least the media and conversational social media a lot of times has become vitriolic and hyper-partisan i think it's because we've been boxed into this frame

particularly with four-year election cycles and the drama around the last two elections specifically three elections really if we go back to 2016 maybe you can argue even earlier but this focus on this four-year election cycle which has caught people sort of in this whipsaw of going from one extreme to the other over the last eight years and looks like we're going to do that again potentially this year um it just seems really discombobulating we're over indexing on the government to solve our problems where i think a lot of effort that's why we focus on bitcoin here and i view bitcoin as this external apolitical network that we can use to build our way out of the problems that the political class doesn't seem either capable or

or willing to sell themselves. Yeah, both. Not capable, not willing. This episode was presented by River. River is the best, most secure place to buy Bitcoin in the United States. Go to river.com slash TFTC, set up an account today. You'll be able to DCA into Bitcoin without paying any fees. You'll be able to give people Bitcoin via River links.

You'll be able to send and receive Bitcoin over the Lightning Network. And you'll be able to set limit orders. If you want to buy Bitcoin at a particular price below or above where it is now, you can set orders to buy Bitcoin when it hits that price. Go to river.com slash TFTC and set up your account today. This rep was also brought to you by our good friends at Unchained. Unchained is building a financial services platform for a Bitcoin standard. They have over 7,000 clients that are securing over 90,000 Bitcoin with 12,000 keys on their platform. Their platform leverages Bitcoin's native multi-sig properties.

their cornerstone product is their vault product a two or three multi-sig volt which allows you to hold two of three keys in a multi-sig quorum that gives you full control over your bitcoin they also have an ira product a lending desk and they're rolling out a bunch of other products including inheritance protocol and sound advisory so go to unchained.com set up a call with our concierge onboarding team today tell them that tftc sent you and use the promo code tftc at checkout unchained.com tell tell a story on that uh point which just goes to to your point like i remember when i the first um the so i bought a tiny amount of bitcoin back in the day like like other people it's like why didn't i like sell everything i had right you know but so i wouldn't even count it was

such a small amount it was like it doesn't even count okay so the first actual meaningful transaction in crypto that i made was in 2017 in eath um and my bet at that time was a very simple bet which was there's actually a lot of really smart people working in crypto broadly bitcoin and then you know it was relatively new at the time and it was just a bet on the people and the talent and the people who actually had a really big vision for what was possible and i thought i don't know like if you put like it wasn't like betting like my entire financial future trauma but it was a meaningful bet on it and it was bet on basically vision plus talent plus energy equals something good i didn't know what the something good was going to be but that seemed

like a decent bet for and it was a bet at the time but which which worked out well and i still think that same thing which is that you have if we have a big vision for the future that we want like the phrase i use a lot is we have to and this is like a phrase we use in a i use it in a political context he's in a business sort of tech context too which is we have to build the country we want to live in and bitcoin is is undoubtedly a big part of that because it's trying to um it is trying to actually have a positive vision of the future and what it is you want to achieve and it's building a tool to try and achieve that like it's and this is one of the frustrating things for people who aren't you know sort of brain damaged to spend much time in politics by the way which

is a tiny tiny amount of those people um which is it's frustrating because nobody actually knows what they want like they speak in slogans like if like kind of at a first approximation people on the left talk about justice and people on the right talk about freedom um but generally don't have a lot below that now i would say actually the left has a much more substantial um constructive vision or destructive vision or in other words they have concrete things they want to achieve but people in the right store want to be left alone right like why can't we just like i can't it's kind of like i feel like there's like a deer in the headlights a moment that's been going on for like 120 years on the right it's like what do you mean they want to do fill in the blank

whatever this like crazy thing is what do you mean they want to do x you know i can't believe that like why do we have to fight this fight but you you do and that that's actually my one um sort constructive critique of um sort of the like the the i don't know if you and it's probably not like a bitcoin maxi position but like the the position that like it can be unpolitical because all there's a way to understand politics and human life which is everything has some element of politics which is choices good and bad how do you want to live um and there and i would i would say bitcoin is an instantiation of a positive vision of life but it is but it is it does have it's not purely neutral and i think we should understand it as not being purely neutral as being something that is

um gives people the power hopefully to be left alone it's not it won't i think it's not a silver bullet it's uh it's not an orange bullet either but it's uh but it's it's a bullet and a powerful one if it uh if we're able to continue um building on the achievements that have occurred so far yeah yeah when i say bitcoin is apolitical like the network itself the protocol is apolitical where it has no idea right but the implement the vision behind it yeah and the implementation i think is where the implementation of the scarce monetary um system seeped in austrian theory that's definitely a political divergence from the keynesian neoliberal model that we've been living under for for decades but to your point actually i'm happy they brought up vision because

i released an episode last week with a gentleman named matthew pines who works in dc and is um basically a political strategist and that was the one thing i asked him towards the end of the episode is what do we need to do to get out of this morass in the united states because it It seems like, like I mentioned earlier, BRICS countries are beginning to form their own coalition and really paint a good vision of the future, whether we agree with the different leaders and countries and their governance structures. it is undeniable that uae emirates um well the emirates uh saudi iran even to an extent they're really seeing that the u.s is becoming complacent they're making a land grab for talent and capital and resources particularly as it pertains to energy and ai um and that's the one thing i said like i can see because we've seen it um just in the fund space within bitcoin with 2022 2023

pretty terrible years for venture um a lot of the institutional capital uh was over indexed to private equity so they weren't they weren't giving off a bunch of capital to funds that were raising new funds and so everybody went over to the middle east and uh it's a lot of money there and they're willing to give it out and you have massive funds raised um and matt's basically prognosis of what's going on is like yes they're giving all this money to american venture capitalists because they want inside information on what's going on in terms like innovative technologies that are being built here um and i asked him what the solution to that was he said we need long-term vision we can't go back and forth ping-ponging from election to election

without any decade multi-decade long vision and so in your mind what would the vision that you would put forth um fortunately i came prepared for that answer because i wrote a book on the subject so it's like i think that if you want to if you want to um so actually let me let me just start with like an anecdote of how i arrived at this answer first because i um so i wrote this book that came out last year um it's called america and the art of the possible um and i've told the story a couple times but i wrote the first draft of the book was like 400 pages and it was one really long complaint of everything that was wrong and it was like sort of cathartic to get it out i was writing i started writing it during covid um and when i got to the end of it i

just felt like such a loser for right for writing it i'm like you wow you just spent like a self indulgent like 400 pages doing nothing but complaining um and it was like i basically like that's like just not helpful um it may actually literally be helpful in selling books because people love like books that yeah totally yeah like just yeah doom porn i'm like but no that's like that's not satisfying at all and so i basically scrapped about probably 80 of it and thought well okay like like what i said i like in that first draft i like i think it's true like those like these criticisms of things that are are going and have gone wrong i think are is right but that only can be the predicate right you have to have a diagnosis and then you have to have

some type of a therapeutic and so that became effectively in a slightly different form the first half of of the book and i thought well if you think all these things are going wrong what would it look like if it was going right and so and just my business background you know it's always always you tend to in some one way or another you tend to think of these things almost like an engineering problem like what is it what is it we want how do where do we want to go what is it we want to have and then you can build the tools or the infrastructure to get there and so that and so that's when i said okay well we got to make like our goals really concrete which is what kind of that's where this phrase came from that i said a minute ago which is build the

country you want to live in yeah well let's like make super simple things like what would be the what's the good life so you know uh number one um you should be able in this country to live uh a little basically a family life an ordinary family life uh husband wife two kids own a house own a car have health care have education just basic like what you kind of think of as like classic middle american american dream type of life not extravagant but like a totally decent life uh where you also have owned some assets you know car or whatever uh and house and um you should be able to do that on a single median wage um the last time that was possible in this country was 1989 had been possible basically throughout the post-world war ii um era until 1989 and then

it slowly got worse and worse and worse and now um it's been this way for like the past maybe five six years there's not a single msa in the top 25 msa's in this country where you could afford to buy the median priced home in that msa on a single median wage so well that's problem um so that's one thing we should um have as a nation we should have a fertility rate that's at least at break even so about 2.1 we're at about 1.65 1.7 that's not good um there's something strange about that just as a side note here and by the way this is happening all over the world like fertility rates have been falling every place and have been for for decades there are countries that are still not many but there are countries that are still above replacement but you look at places like in

even in sub-saharan africa or in places in the middle east where like 15 20 years ago fertility was like eight with children per women which is a lot you know and they're now like maybe three and a half and then you've got places um like south korea which south korea is like but you know last person out turn off the lights like i mean their fertility rate is less than half of the replacement rate so they're like economic or demographic collapse so you should be able to at least replace your population um you should have one like lifespan that's growing um lifespan the united states has been declining for like 10 years um so it was and by the way here's a weird stat um but true um all of our peer countries in the oecd say take france as an example their longevity is

increasing in the same time period where the united states longevity life slash lifespan has been decreasing fall materially too i believe because i tweeted about this it had to be like six months ago at this point and i didn't believe it when i saw the stat and i had to go fact check and i was like holy i think it fell from like 76 to 72. it was so we were we did i think we peaked around 80 or 81 and now we're now we're down in the mid 70s yeah um and and declining by the way it's like it's been just consistently down down down and down meanwhile increasing in like western europe um fun fact uh fun fact is that uh lifespan in france continues to rise while our lifespan continues to decrease about 35 of all french of all frenchmen are daily smokers i don't know you

do the math life was better before the smoking ban exactly exactly um but also but here's the here's the other thing because i've i've thrown that out there like i don't know i'm pro nicotine but like i'm sort of neutral on smoking um as well yeah adds 10 points of iq maybe for temporarily i know lots of people who might want to double up on the nicotine or triple up uh but the um the other part of it is not just is not just longevity it's well it's what uh some people started calling healthspan which is a term i really like um just book outlive another austin i peter attia wrote i think he may have actually coined the term it's a great term basically just it's meant to encapsulate not just how long you live but how healthy you are during your life

and so yeah it's great to live to a hundred but like not if you look like theoretically you could be on life support from 60 to 100 and that would still wouldn't be great but um like the incidence of all of the sort of four horsemen diseases um you know cancer alzheimer's um diabetes and uh arthritis um you know they continue to increase in this country um and so what is again going back to what is uh what does it look like well you should be living longer and you should be living healthier like and then you know you should be secure in yourself like there should be low crime your borders should be secure of the country and people you know all in all when you think about like what does the country look like that we want to live in it's one that is cohesive so we have

the capacity for collective action like if we want to put a man on the moon again like we could come together and say like this is an important national priority and we could do it and that you know the baseline for that is or the foundation for all that is i think all these other things right you have to have a society that's stable that is sustainable that is prosperous and then you have the predicate to do great things and so we have to have that that sort of uh that that's you know sort of well i guess i consider baseline stability it's somewhat unusual in human history that's like one of the things that's made america so great and so unique it's not the only time it's happened it's happened in other times and places but like you know a lot of the a lot of human

history is just history of like savagery death and misery right and we need to really fight to encourage you know and make sure that we have a sustainable country that's able to produce that type of you know peace and prosperity for additional generations and then as i say then you can do the big things right and those are i don't you know it's i said this at the end of the book unclear what those are right um because we but we can't do them now like i don't think it's i don't think we have the capacity to do them um and we need to at least get back to having the capacity to do them yeah quick break here freaks this rip is brought to you by gradually then suddenly a framework for understanding bitcoin is money by parker lewis i wrote the forward to

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payments with ZapRite. Go to zaprite.com slash TFTC to get $40 off their annual subscription. zap right.com slash tftc 40 off i think it all stems from the money that's what we have out here fix the money fix the world because going back to like single income households like if you look at the trend like the site wtf happened in 1971 yeah.com it's when you lay it out like that it's like yeah it makes sense because you have both parents in the workforce they're not able to focus on their kids maybe they'd be able to give them a better education or be more nurturing to create better psycho analytic state for these for these children they're all gypped up on adderall since we've gone off the gold standard quality of food has gone down because you have the cpi

substitution where it's like they want to they want people to notice that the price of a ribeye or ground beef's going up so i'm gonna switch out the soy slop into the cpi and kids are eating all this hyper processed food which is leading to diabetes heart disease arthritis all that and we're just like a nation that is on the hamster wheel and so you have both parents in the workforce barely making enough money to survive for the people in the middle in the lower classes their kids are being indoctrinated in public schools they're eating they're not getting outside and you look up a generation two generations later it's like holy we've got massive health problems obesity problems uh wealth inequality problems just quality of

life problems all around and at the same time going back to misallocation of capital right the fact that we can print all this money and then it bleeds in other areas like energy is something i'm very focused on like we should we should be spinning up all the nuclear power plants that we can we should be spinning up natural gas and coal plants as well but the misallocation of capital particularly from renewable energy credits is really perturbing the pricing signal in energy markets which is leading to less reliable grids i mean we have experiences here in texas in the last couple years like we have massive expansion of capacity but that capacity is unreliable wind and solar at times when you need it most desperately um particularly in the middle

winter and middle of summer apparently it gets a lot a lot hotter in the summer because the wind doesn't blow and so you don't have that wind generation the sun goes down every day what breaking news and uh it just blows my mind that we've gotten to this point where even in texas we've allowed this misallocation of capital to seep in and really corrupt the market it like the like the electric car thing is a complete regardless of what you think about it i mean like it doesn't work in trucking for instance like sorry everybody but it's like physics is still real um i see you had where is it you had atlas shrugged up here someplace a equals a right um it still does you know electric cars i don't know they've got to probably have a an

appropriate place in the in the mix of the national fleet it is a complete and utter pipe dream with amount of with the amount of electrical generation capacity that we have in the country right now like this isn't this isn't like higher mathematics this is arithmetic like how like how much power generation do we need uh versus uh how much do we produce and we don't produce near enough for the goals that um that the folks in washington seem to have stated for like like just electric cars alone so there's like those ends don't meet um and you know they're not going to start meeting because you throw a bunch of uh wind farms out on the texas prairie either yeah that's funny i saw again referencing twitter i feel like i'm doing that a lot this episode but somebody tweeted out

they did a road trip from florida up through new york over to chicago down back to florida and they were presenting the stats and i think it was they would have had if they were filling up a car with gas that car would have to uh get 30 miles per gallon to be commensurate so he's like presenting it as cheaper than a gas car but then one of the stat lines was like time weighted charging car it was like 11 hours on the trip where it's like if you're just filling up gas it would have been 20 minutes collectively right and like you're not factoring but the value lost in that time you waited for your car to to charge um and then on top of that you think of if we went to a full ev fleet before we even get to like the electrical infrastructure it's

like just think of the logistics of people having to wait 15 30 minutes to charge their car and god help us if apple ever made a an electric car they change the charger every on every model and you'd have to buy a new charger every five minutes it's uh but it's it's like common it's like we've reached a point in this country where politicians are able to say yes we're going net zero by 2030 and they present it as something uh incredible virtuous and something that we should strive for and then like you spend five minutes thinking about second and third order effects it's like this doesn't make any sense at all um and that's this that that's what worries me about where we are today um i'll give like i'm full of these anecdotes but uh you know on the

political class i've got a very good friend who's um been a super successful investor like really smart guy like good guy like he's like you think about the person you're always thinking why don't people like this why don't they run for office god we need people like this he's that guy okay a family guy like you know just everything good is about this guy so he he a couple years ago was thinking about running for congress and um what he would have won in the district he could self-fund it was a republican district etc etc and um ultimately comes to the conclusion he's not going to do and the single biggest reason was that he couldn't stand to be around the people he would have to work with which i i don't blame him right it's that and this is like part of the

problem is that you know the the system we have does not optimize for excellence um and that's it turns out that's a problem yeah well i went to an event um last fall and it was basically like people getting together trying to say like all right how do we affect change at the federal level there was a whole panel about um a think tank out of dc that's like we can get the problem that we've had and affecting change is uh people like your friend who you point at you're like you'd be great um as a congressman senator like somewhere in the federal government to affect change and they they said the biggest problem is these people get into office they have rosy eyes and they have really good intentions and then they get there and they don't know how to operate within the

bureaucracy so like this is true too this whole think tank is like we're going to train these people how to operate throughout the bureaucracy and i'm sitting there thinking like like you like that's the problem is that this system at the federal level isn't what most americans think it is where it's you vote for your congressman your senator president vice president whatever it may be and like you think that's who's actually representing you but this whole administrative bureaucracy layer has been embedded that makes it right somewhat impossible to actually affect change for the uh you know people who got four or five on the ap us history exam they know that uh structurally we supposedly have three branches of government but there's really four

right the administrative state is uh is nominally a part of the executive branch but it operates almost autonomously and that's where that is where you know if you think about like it's like the iceberg theory right you know the the three stated branches are just the tip and then the bureaucracy that actually runs everything is that is the massive iceberg that's below the waterline you know bellagio had a post it's a few years ago now but he and he went through and he counted um i think at the time he said it was probably he was probably way understating it but the number of people who had these unaccountable positions with budgets that they exercised discretion over that were a billion dollars or more um so basically you

know these little fiefdoms and it was like it was hundreds of people right and that you think about where like why is government so frustrating why is it so inefficient why is it not responsive um well that that's part of that's part of your answer because there's no way to no easy way let me say it that way there's no easy way to affect change upon these mandarins who control these enormous budgets almost without over so you can't fire them um you know at least not easily you need like a malay like character to come and say la fuera and just yeah start ripping it out forcefully yeah yeah which is like uh do you think they're like it's do you think it's possible to do something of course it's possible i actually think you know i actually think that it's really a paper

tiger it's got there's need to be somebody who's just willing um who's just willing to push through and do it um you know all these this is like the again you know the phrase learned helplessness like we've got you know that like everybody's been lulled to sleep thinking like you know gosh it's so hard the problem's so big and people taking too many black pills yeah it's like and it's just not true like these things can be done because the among other things not only just is human agency real like we have agency we have the ability to do the the things that we want to do um but also the remember the people on the other side also have learned helplessness so they're just sitting there and if you sort of just force your way through uh through the um

through the problem you can fix them but you know people are always sitting back and this is where um i think this is like my biggest critique of of it's like and i don't mean this like in a negative way it's constructive but people think way too small like there's a lot of things that are that are possible if people understood that they actually really do have agency and if they and if they just think um about again i always come back to this like what's the world you want to live in what's the country you want to live in what does that look like just go build it you may not get you may not get it exactly right but you're going to get a whole lot further um by thinking about the thing you want like don't negotiate yourself down like i

want it like this but i'll take 20 of that like just figure out what it is you want and go try and get try and get that um and that's really been like i know that sounds like almost like too cute a little bit like i feel like it's a little too sweet to say that but i don't like don't mean it that way because that's actually been the history of this country um you know you've got this book lone star which you know i'm obsessed with but like this is like this country was a frontier country really imbues the ethos and the personality and the psychology of americans like you've got you know this tight these tiny settlements like clinging to the atlantic coast 400 years ago and like i don't just take like the mayflower um settlement the mayfell mayflower

pilgrims they knew exactly how they wanted to live like they started off as a congregation in the in the midlands of england they sort of that didn't work they emigrated to the netherlands got kicked out of the netherlands moved back to england and they're finally like well there's some really crappy land and we're not over on the other side of this water but we know what we know the way we want to live we're just going to go build build that and it turns out they attracted a ton of other people who were thinking sort of different versions of that um you know jamestown or the settlements in florida roughly the same time and then just push forward push push west and this is like one of the one of the things i think um has implicitly confused the american

psyche for the past like 40 or 50 years is like the frontier closed basically like we're frontier country it's like conquer the continent build this new new country new society and then you like you get to the you go from east to west get to the pacific um and then and then it's like fill-in time that you gotta like even in my lifetime like places like denver were like very small cities like when i was when i was born i mean even like into the 80s or 90s like denver wasn't that big a deal right i mean you hear people talk about this city only a decade ago only a decade ago right so there's still that still is still sort of going on but when the frontier really closed a lot of the filling got done and then that sort of coincides with the end of world war ii

and now it's like oh damn like what do we do now like what's our huge national project um because like we did it um and that's where like that has to sort of that has to sort of of morph i think it like it like i think the cold war filled that role for a while and then it was like after that and this is where i think we've really gone off the rails it's like well okay it's like okay country found it check continent conquered check um world war ii won check cold war won check it's like now the best thing we could do is like fight stupid pointless winless wars like in the world shitholes yeah like that's like that's like we're better than that we should be figuring out a lot better things to be doing than that yeah like take back our privacy i mean

like that would be nice yeah right for starters let's uh let's abolish the bank secrecy act the patriot act and uh just get back to a point where like that would be a great american story is like we've gotten to this point where the pendulum swung and civil liberties have been eroded to such a point where the nature of the relationship between the governed and the government has completely flipped from or maybe not completely flipped but it's certainly shifted a large degree in favor of the government where it's not supposed to be that way there would be nothing more american than people to wake up and say you know what no this is wrong we're taking it back um and to your point that's that's actually one thing we've been talking about on this show and

i've been talking about on other shows um in recent months is yeah many people are blackpilled need to take the white pill and recognize that even though everything that stands before us is daunting it may see like an impossible task we can do it like we can win a hundred percent and i think people would be surprised that we see this within bitcoin is like bitcoin's like yeah going to replace a dollar as a world reserve currency like we truly believe that and once you get immersed in an industry or a group of people like that who are working towards a big goal it's infectious and i think if that were to extend beyond just the little bubble that i operate within and into other people's minds and i think people would be surprised with just a few small

examples of people doing big things can lead to engendering a sense of confidence in others and I think we're beginning to see this with SpaceX, obviously Andral, many other companies that are out there really pushing the limits in aerospace and defense technology. So going back to the 1789 Capital, my investment firm, but look, this is part of our thesis, that ESG has really caused a massive misallocation of capital, which is, you know, there's a couple things that spin out of that. One is it's actually quite bad for the country. in our in our like narrow little slice of the world it's actually great for us because it leads to really good opportunities and so while we're sitting here talking like that's like as people love to do complaining a little bit about like all these things are wrong when we're out

there investing in these companies i haven't it's actually super encouraging because there are just like some of the greatest founders out there like smart driven just like good people and they just like they may not have a vision for the what the whole country should be like nor should they by the way like that's like too much for almost anybody but they have a vision for the thing that they're doing and they're single-minded in it they're really good at it i mean the best ones are anyway but the point is there's a lot of really good ones out there um there's you know people talk a lot about defense tech we do a bunch of defense tech we've made some investments in companies that i really like and i look at these founders i'm like these guys are amazing like we

should not like people if people should meet them like we should do like some type of i don't know like a symposium with these guys because it's like it is actually inspirational to see what they're doing and they're not sitting back like people are too obsessed with politics i think they black bill themselves like they just get paused on their own like complaining um and then you go out and see people who are just like i need to build a better rocket motor now we're invested in a company that does this up in up in up in dallas um and guess what they did you know and oh well we need a better fuel to go in that motor did that too we need a better way to uh manufacture that fuel yep check did that too now let's scale it and there's a there's all kinds of instances

of that going on in this country it actually so when when you say like there's all these problems can we fix them yeah because like there's like i don't know what percentage of the country who are just like amazing builders and those people like need to band together and build and not only that but it's never been easier to build when you think about i mean outside of the red tape that can be put in front of you by the government like if you ignore that which is sometimes hard to ignore for a lot of people particularly um if you're doing something like nuclear reactors or something like that but tough in biotech right i mean this is why a lot of people and a lot of money flowed out of to my point earlier about like we want people to live longer healthier

lives like there is a health care component of that really hard to get deal with the fda time consuming expensive they're super risk averse and so what happened money and talent float into things like sas right so you got more software because like a single guy could just sit there in his room and like you know pound red bulls and like listen to you know listen to edm for 35 hours um and the next thing you know he'd build like instagram or something no yeah i mean we see it in bitcoin as well particularly on the financial regulation whether it's ny dfs or finson or the super national unelected bureaucrats at the financial action task force putting out all these guidelines really constrict but again stripping all that away like particularly

as it pertains to bitcoin like open source protocol with all these other open source tools and developer kits that are being brought to market like when you talk about building sci-fi freedom preserving money and banking technology like it's never been easier and it's just waking people up to that like yes this is daunting and yes parts of the government may not like it but like if we if we're looking about what's possible like it has never been easier and more possible than it is today yeah yeah for sure more people need to be doing they really do how much of this comes so do you uh like thinking generationally here like i'm a millennial 33 10 when 9-11 happened senior night school in 2008 happened um young father when covet happened so i've had

back to back to back and um throughout my life like ah what the hell is going on 2008 jaded me that's probably what led me to bitcoin then 2020 completely uh radicalized me and like oh the government is completely off the rocker here um and so what are your thoughts on like younger generations are you seeing younger builders come to market and like trying to get a perspective on gen z and whether or not they understand the problems that exist and are they going to be the ones to solve it i sure hope so um yeah it's like i just like the general like the generational explanations are good at like a first approximation i think um but it always comes back to like it's it's always like dedicated minorities that change history

or that or the build the things that uh change history and i think that's true regardless of these generations like you look at the boomers um the worst generation right literally the generation that destroyed this country um and continues to do it um but that's a first approximation right that's not like every boomer because there's like there's you know there there's this way where there's like there's like two really distinct subsets of boomers um and and like the narcissism is pretty broad in boomer world which in a way is like just arithmetic like there's so many of them right that the world actually always did just conform to them so So they just have, like, that sense of entitlement.

But there's, like, somebody explained this to me. I wish I had come up with this on my own, like, 10 years ago before people started with the OK Boomer thing. But they explained, like, they were basically in the 60s, there were two types of boomers. Like, they were in their teens and 20s, right, at the time. They're the ones who, like, were listening to the Beatles, and they're the ones who were listening to Frankie Valli

and the Four Seasons. and the latter were the traditionalists right they were just normal people they wanted to go get a job have a family they were like but nobody talks about them as boomers they're just like kind of forgotten and the point is is that like the radicals were a minority and they everybody thinks about them as the boomers um but in actuality they were a small subset of the boomers they had a vision for how they would destroy the country and they have executed on that vision pretty well uh because they worked together um they knew what they wanted to do is like if there's any if there's any standard of decency let's tear it down that was sort of their reason for being

and they had a long-term vision that they implemented they did and they were working a long time but my point is is that it's like you think about that what are the zoomers going to do it doesn't take all of them like with the boomers it was a small group of them um with like i'm gen x um really like the forgotten generation it's like a relatively small generation compared to the millennials or or or boomers like um a friend of mine told me like five six seven years ago like super well known like you would know his name if i said it but like vc been very successful also gen x so gen x is like the late bloomer generation which i actually think is true because the boomers won't move on right like they're gonna die in their ceo seats or whatever

like i mean there's he's not a technically boomer but like look at biden um but like so gen x sort of comes into its own like later in life probably like late 40s and 50s um and then there's like millennials and gen z but i guess just to come back to the direct point it's going to be like a faithful remnant in each one of these generations that is going to figure out how to work with the faithful remnant in every other generation and like you know and just basically build the better country and to hell with everybody else like don't even worry about what they're doing just overcome build yeah and that's it's funny you mentioned the remnant And that's, I mean, Mises has, Isaiah wrote the story of the remnant

and that floated around Bitcoin a while ago. That's what a lot of Bitcoiners gravitated towards that piece and that view of what it's going to take to win. Just don't worry about the brainwashed masses, just find the remnant. And that's one thing, I think as it sits today, particularly in 2024, again post covet i think i was talking about this with somebody else a few weeks ago but i feel like a bunch of people in many different verticals basically went into the foxhole like how did it get this bad and they've all since popped their head up and like all right i know my vertical i

know how um i know how falching crew like covered it up others were um you had the gamestop crew and wall street bets bitcoiners obviously doing their thing defense tech guys being like all right like there needs to be disruption here and now i think we're at the point now and i think independent media is really helping to um make this happen which is all these different groups that are looking for the remnant in their own vertical need to like pop their head up and like look at each other like hey we may be able to help each other out totally i've seen this most particularly um between bitcoin and energy um that's interesting because of the bitcoin mining right it's a natural alliance but yeah and so there was a time in like 2021 2022 particularly

oil and gas firms who i dealt with a lot um because of the nature of the company that we were running but um they say like the esg completely i don't want to say emasculated but there was there's a lot of people like in oil and gas particularly the bigger companies have sort of bent the needy issue like oh we're going to help you transition and i went in i was like no like energy's good like i would say a good rule of thumb in life in the 2020s if somebody says i'm going to help you transition just say no hey wake up without a dick or text you gotta be careful there it's like just edward scissorhands stop right where you are but it's and i think i don't want to i don't want to say it was all bitcoin but i do think like some of the conversations

we have we're like confidence inducing for you like i had to shake some oil gas people up like slap them like stop putting up with this totally give us like we're going to work together bitcoin mining will help make you as efficient as possible you'll monetize all your wasted and stranded resources not all of them but we'll start monetizing these wasted resources will make you more efficient and don't bend the knee you're providing probably arguably the most needed service to the economy which is reliable cheap energy yeah um and we would not be where we are without hydrocarbon so stop saying sorry for producing oil and gas oh yeah like sorry for producing all this wealth safety prosperity and security for everybody like no yeah like the uh

you know there's um my wife's from michigan and uh like the the uh the conceit in in detroit which is partially true is that like detroit was like the arsenal of democracy that won world war ii there there's a there's enough truth in it too we'll give it to the detroiters like you know like chrysler was just like rolling tanks off like german tanks off the line like every five seconds or whatever and that that like there's truth to that but you know i think actually the thing that in a way is it's equally true if not more true is that like texas oil is what uh not only won world war ii but actually produced all of the prosperity afterwards because it was abundant and it was cheap and a cheap abundant energy is the key to prosperity yeah which is to go back

to what you were saying earlier about like nuclear like whoever has the most the abundant source of low-cost energy among the major powers on the planet will win period no it's triggered and this is why i've been on an esg vendetta for years because you look at the larp like we're gonna get to net zero 2030 it's like number one that's impossible number two i don't think carbon dioxide is pollutant i don't think i don't think there's a climate crisis like i don't think we need to pause the global economy to save ourselves from the weather um and And despite everybody's well-intent to go to net zero, even though I think it's psychotic, it doesn't matter.

India, China, the Middle East now, they're all going to spin up. I mean, China's spun up more coal plants in the last five years than I think exist in the U.S. alone. They're spinning up nuclear, and yet we're completely constricting ourselves here, not even just in the United States, in the West more broadly, And it's not even a Pyrrhic victory, so it's a total loss. We're going to get completely leapfrogged if we keep on this energy policy trajectory.

I've just been thinking about, on a related topic, I've been thinking about this. I'm not sure what the answer is, but some of these idiotic decisions that our country makes around energy, for example, or like in covid um just like the extreme like sociopathic risk aversion like one like one possible explanation is it's a consequence of an aging society like median age from like median age in 1970 was like 27 years old or something like that and right now it's like 37 or 38 in this country like so okay like older people just by you know naturally become more risk averse over time um but china has a higher median age than we do by like two two and a half years but they seem less risk averse so maybe that's like that like that that answer seems appealing but

maybe it's wrong um or maybe it's a combination of the risk aversion that comes with with age with i don't know like there's like a disease of affluence or something i think it's yeah i think it's complete again it's a complex answer yeah i lean more towards like virtue signaling like we restaurant laurels and if you look i mean where we stand today and you like juxtapose it to empires that have risen and fallen in the past like the analogs are all there you go back to ancient rome spread the empire globally um completely uh debased their currency the daenerys and it got to the point where they had expanded their military and debased their currency so much that um people in the military like this isn't money like we're done we're not working for

you barbarians come in sacrum fast forward weimar republic um has to pay back their debts for world war one they start printing um marks at the same time they have this crazy uh socially liberal demographic that is trying to erode the social fabric within and they debase the currency and debased their society and boom paper inflation collapse of weimar jeremy um and it just seems we're getting there too and obviously with the amount of debt the amount of money we printed and then you just look at the the health statistics alone are just like literally fat and getting dumber by the day it just seems like the reversal of the flynn effect yeah it's like it's like yeah no it's crazy and it's like across it's the like the you know the flynn effect was like

the like basically broad-based rise in iq and then it reversed sometime maybe 15 or 20 years ago but not just here right it's also happened it's also happened in western europe too um yeah there's something like there's like a i don't know if there's something about post-modern life that seems like anti-life that's sort of like dysgenic that's malthusian yeah like people are getting like fat or dumb or living longer you know or living shorter lives more lethargic um or depressed there's this um there's a scientist in the 50s and 60s named john calhoun um not the south carolina senator that there's i guess rep um but he did this series of studies on warsaw rats where he wanted to see the uh effects of basically overcrowding he was trying to like

simulate uh high density urban like modern urban life um and so when you put these warsaw rats into these high density um uh environments they get all of these uh pathologies that so they become they overeat um they become really lethargic they stop reproducing they become like occasionally like weirdly violent they eat their young like and it's like by the way this study has been reproduced like there's not a replication crisis with this study it's like well that sounds a lot like san francisco or you know or new york right and this was 1960 ish um so there's like i don't know there's a it's a there's something going on that like i feel like we just have like a glimpse to what the problem is um but if you do like the like you do the overlay like the county overlay of

uh fertility rates they're not really great any place in this country utah they're decent uh shocker i know um like there's some places in rural texas where they're decent uh but they're always they're basically the worst always in high density urban environments and it's like you can drill down not just a county level you can drill it down to like zip code levels too so it's like it's sort of it doesn't entirely cut across um income but you know it it does it affects all incomes yeah except except the very highest by the way like if it's super high income tend to this is like the other thing super incomes tend to still have like intact families or relative to the to the median and be having a decent number of kids yeah so i mean

I mean, talk to millennials, I'm lucky I have two boys and plan to have more children, but a lot of people my age, they don't think they have the economic opportunity to. Is that why? Is that the answer? A lot of the time. Can't afford a house or can't afford the expenses that go along with it. Which I think is actually dumb,

because what I found when I had my first son was I was more motivated than ever to go make some money. So it's a bit counterintuitive. It's like, oh, they're going to be expensive. So it's like, I think you'll be surprised at how motivated you become once you have a child. Many men have found this over time. We've got a friend we do some business with. He's like roughly your age.

Just found out he was expecting like maybe, well, he's probably actually the baby's due pretty soon. Always good. You want to talk about somebody who is like on the job, now like super laser focused. it's amazing what a focusing effect it has on you yeah and then once they're here too it's like holy crap like yeah you need to live a good life so daddy's gonna go work harder yeah um no it is yeah there's there's a lot of distractions too um and then the job the job market's absolute shit as well despite what the biden administration would have you believe um there's a lot i've been led to believe it's never been better yeah it's never been better and the ai there's no inflation

either yeah yeah we've solved inflation because they passed the inflation reduction act marty so now everything's fine yeah you just solve inflation by uh giving out a bunch of subsidies and yeah crippling our reliable energy infrastructure that's the way to go by the way on the flare gas thing i meant to make this point have you ever been to midland i have not yet um i flew into midland for the first time about like maybe eight months ago and um the flight came in at night and it is you'll appreciate this just because you use flurry glass but when you're flying in at night for the last like maybe 10 minutes you're flying over west texas and coming into the airport just as far as the eye can see you just see flare yes every place

an orange shoe it's i found it totally inspiring it's like see what you can do see what you can build see what you can find in the earth that can make life better yeah and i see that and i see bitcoin all right how many gen sets can we get how many data centers can we get and plug it in you see just see like orange btcs out there on the permian no because uh we operated predominantly in the balkan in north dakota and we had some really cool videos of when we would set a site up and and then initially turn it on and it'd literally divert the gas from the Flare to the Gen Set that would power the Bitcoin mine

and you could visibly see the Flare go off and the mine turn on. It's just like you were literally burning a resource and now you're still burning it but monetizing it and not having to pay EPA funds. And Flare gas is a very, very small amount of overall network hash rate, but I think, again, if people are motivated

enough and are allowed to like we could be as energy efficient as we want to upstream downstream on grid off grid my personal miners one thing i want to do is solve the stranded gas well problem that exists particularly in appalachia where you have the shallow oil basin they truck the oil out over the course of a couple years three years never built pipelines for the natural gas to get midstream and you have tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of wells spread all throughout appalachia producing on the back end of their decline curves producing like 21 mcfd that small amount of gas is enough to power probably like 40 bitcoin miners right now no kidding and the stranded well problem is a big one some maintained wells just leaking methane getting into water

sources um there's no economic incentive outside of subsidies to try to maintain those wells and now with bitcoin we have pure economic incentive to solve it um because you monetize it on site what what's the sort of what's the inhibitor from from doing that yeah it's a logistics problem if you have multiple of them scattered but um i think if you solve that logistics problem which i think is very solvable um there's no reason that we shouldn't be tapping these these stranded wells and mining bitcoin with them and you have supply chain not necessarily supply chain issues but If oil and gas is going up, demand for generators in the field goes up, prices for generators goes up. So you have to sort of, time you probably need to expand the generation production to make it make sense at scale.

But it's there. There is a solution to it. Just trying to figure it out. We can solve all these problems. We can do it. Yeah. See, just everybody's got to pick their lane and just fix what they can fix. build what they can build yeah to show you a video of uh the operation we have going up in tennessee

it's uh it's really cool um it's been fascinating thank you it's been great thank you for having me last minute um any words of advice final thoughts for anybody listening to this uh yeah i will uh so i'm there's this conference i probably i don't know when this uh episode will drop it there's a conference going on in detroit called re-industrialize and i've got a um sort of still drafting my talk for the group up there but you know the eac thing online and by uh the title of my talk is going to be acceleration is not enough and hyper acceleration yeah like this this is like a constant theme i just keep thinking people just are thinking too small like whatever you know we think about like i see your bookshelf here like obviously a student of history like

we have to like regain our sense of agency and of purpose and then just raise our sights by like at least an order of magnitude because the things that were that people are doing even the people who are doing really good stuff often are just not big enough they're capable of a lot more but have been so lulled to sleep um by you know whether they black pill themselves or it's kind like the warsaw rat thing they're like in these dense environments and so they're like their vitality is somehow being drained out of them just get it back and do it because there's just so much that can be done and when people realize what they're capable of uh then they realize that it's actually way more than they thought yeah and so yeah that that that's my word of advice

just build yeah build and on reindustrialization that's did you see thomas massey coming out after to that gop meeting thinking that uh no what did he say he said that trump in the meeting floated like eliminating income tax and increasing tariffs which i think oh yeah yeah i did see this which i think is a very smart way if you want to re-industrialize um here's a simple maybe this is my final thought um if in the bible god only wants a tithe one in ten why does the government get to have more yeah well i think it's at 50 40 whatever it is yeah right yeah seems like a heresy we'll end on heresy chris thank you peace and love freaks