Bitcoin Tech Talk #476
Interesting Stuff
Chinese Empire - One of my favorite book reviewers
has a review out about China and its long history of being an Empire. It was, for me, a deeply insightful review, writing much about the historical mentality of the region as a way of explaining its historical pull toward a single nation. To summarize, idea of “all under heaven” looms large over Chinese history and Confucian identity and the scholarly/intellectual class has, over thousands of years, created a society that values unity, even under a foreign sovereign (!) The mentality explains, for example, the large minority in Taiwan that want to unify with the mainland, despite having the large historical enmity. The intellectual environment of China throughout history, as the article argues, truly impressive and has shaped it to what it is today.- has another insightful article on the current societal pressure on young women. Specifically, she makes the claim that the pressure is for young women to stay single, rather than have a serious relationship. The conventional wisdom, of course, is the opposite, that they are pressured to get married and have children, which may have been true 30 years ago. As she points out, the expectation is that young women live an entire life in their 20’s before settling down, having a career, finding themselves and so on. It’s an inversion I hadn’t thought of, but rings true and contributes greatly to falling fertility rates.
- writes about the many ways in which modern historians get US history wrong, both liberal and conservative. The main complaint is that history focuses way too much on Washington DC, which for most of US history didn’t matter to most citizens because the federal government was so minimal. He also chastises the conservative historians’ tendency to take the liberal historians’ stances on a lot of historical figures like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and more. Lastly, the actual things that mattered, like religion and family are rarely covered, yet had an enormous impact, particularly with respect to the culture that developed in the US. For me, historical revisionism around a lot of historical figures, particularly those around deified ones like Lincoln and FDR are valuable for this reason.
- writes about the modern, and not-so-modern movement to not die. It’s an ancient movement because such desires to live forever is part of every culture’s myth, but it’s modern in the sense that the Bryan Johnsons of the world are attempting to do this through “science” and live as though living forever is not just possible, but probable. As he points out, the sad thing about the modern tendency is that it’s a deep existential burden they have as a result of a materialist metaphysic. Without meaning, living forever is about the only thing to live for, which is a weird kind of circular logic. As every culture has discovered, some deeper meaning is a life necessity.
- has a new book out about family dynasties and what’s unique about them. As he points out in the article, the 1000 wealthiest families from 1900, if they had invested and gotten normal returns while reproducing normally should have, by 2025 should have resulted in 16,000 billionaires, but there are only 700 in the world, suggesting something amiss. Part of it is the enormous growth of government, of course, but there’s also the distinct lack of culture around these families which have led many of these descendants to squander the wealth left to them. The article is a distillation of what successful families, the ones that last many hundreds of years do differently.
What I'm up to
Noblesse Oblige - This is my talk from Bitcoin Historico, similar in theme to the last article in the above section. I argue that the current batch of elites are the worst in history, abusing the public purse for their own benefit and essentially stealing from the populace, and that the reason for the lack of beautiful things is fiat money. Under Bitcoin, we can and hopefully will build up civilization instead of eating its seed corn.
BitBlockBoom - This is a conference taking place in Fort Worth, TX next April. This is the next Bitcoin conference that I’m scheduled for at the moment, but it should be a banger. There is a Thank God for Bitcoin conference that will happen around the same time and I will be speaking at that as well.
Thank God for Bitcoin Second Edition - We are nearing completion on the second edition of Thank God for Bitcoin. We have a new foreword and some updates that have become dated in the book. Stay tuned for some goodies that we’ll be offering.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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