Bitcoin Tech Talk #367
Interesting Stuff
Global Liberal Order - The article makes the case that the global liberal order has been an unqualified success the last 75 years or so and it’s hard to argue that, given the advance in life expectancy and so on. What strikes me is that so much of the benefits are attributed to a liberal order, when it seems much more about technology. Life expectancy improved in large part because China improved, and that’s not a liberal democracy. I also suspect that much of the benefit was gained at the expense of the future.
Seeing Death - The point of the article is to show that there is a natural human fascination not just to think about, but to actively look at and be entertained. The author’s lament is that it should be disturbing and while it is, there’s almost an animal desire to watch. He argues that this is an indicator of the decline of civilization itself and that we really are regressing. I suspect that there’s a propaganda angle which is missed because we tend to react so strongly to visual images, particularly moving ones. Regardless the signs of societal fiat decay seem to be everywhere.
AI Losing Money - An interesting perspective on the economics of AI. Apparently, Microsoft, OpenAI and Github are all losing money on it, as the computing power necessary to run these services is way more than what they charge the users. This is, of course, a common fiat strategy of getting users now and upselling them later, but it’s not clear whether any of these places can keep their lead. As costs for these services come down, it does for the home user and competitors as well, which ultimately looks like a race to the bottom. That may be the real reason behind the push for regulation in this area.
What I'm up to
Jurisdictional Arbitrage - I talked to Stephan Livera and Simon from Mempool about finding a jurisdiction to work and do business and how they chose the place that they live. We discussed how to think about the entire problem and the concerns that led them to relocate. Finding community and finding the right work environments and best handling taxes were talked about as well.
Panel from Viareggio - We talked about training developers and how the fiat mentality has disincentivized building. There was a good amount of talk about gameification, talking about how to help people stop LARPing. There’s a good need to not debase the product and not market too much as well.
Kitco News - I talked to this popular channel to talk about my book. We talked about rent-seeking, time preference, morality and much, much more. I argued that the safety nets of government are causing a debasement of other relationships. Lastly, I made the argument that the ETF is not going to ruin Bitcoin because of the ability to take delivery.
Sovereign Reset - I talked on this podcast to talk about family and liberal cities and the flipping of the demographics of the Republican and Democrat parties. We also touched on real estate and the weird reality of cities which are getting really unsafe on purpose, perhaps to lower the prices of these places. I talked about politicians loving inflation because of the plausible deniability they get.
Nostr Note of the Week
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