Erik Voorhees on Understanding Libertarianism

[Music] Podcast hello there from sunny Palm Springs how are you all did you have a good weekend welcome to the watt Bitcoin did podcast which is brought to you by the mighty Kraken the best place to buy and sell Bitcoin I'm your host Peter McCormick and today I've got an interview with Erik Voorhees from shape-shift discussing libertarianism but before that I do have a message from my show sponsors and remember don't skip these it is the sponsors that allow me to travel around the world and do all these amazing interviews okay so firstly today's show is brought to you by my good friends over at block Phi and they have just made a couple of very cool announcements with their interest accounts they have dropped minimum deposits so all interest account holder clients will no longer need to meet a minimum deposit amount in their Bitcoin ether orgy USD to start earning interest additionally block fire is removed early withdrawal penalties from the account and is now offering one free 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teen as Stefan Avera and whilst I'm really coming around to the libertarian principles and an understanding Austrian economics I still got so many questions so libertarianism was pretty new to me when I came to Bitcoin I've kind of always been used to the UK two-party system where you basically vote Labour or conservative unless you're one of those weirdos who votes for the Liberal Democrats so when people start talking to me about free markets or removing government's it's kind of been hard for me to get my head around first try and imagine that because I've only ever lived with and known to have a state so don't get me wrong I understand these principles I think they're kind of obvious and I do think you should be able to do what you want with your own body I do like the idea of removing power from the government but with an anarchist society or even a minica Society really work has it really been tested you know who is gonna regulate business should they be regulated how a rows going to be bill how do we take care of healthcare and with this society just benefit the rich over the poor so I had loads of questions for Eric coming into this interview he knocked them back like he's been answering these for years he did a great job for me and he gives me some very insightful answers so if you do have any questions you want a feedback to me if you like these libertarian shows you want me to do more of this let me know my email address is hello of what bitcoin did calm also just a few notes I've just been out in Wyoming for a few days that was amazing in a real libertarian conservative environment did some great interviews there so I can't wait to get those out and now in Palm Springs a crypto Springs which is gonna be pretty cool after this I'm gonna be heading out to LA for a few days got a bunch of interviews I'm gonna be recording there and then I'm gonna be heading back to UK but I will be back over in October I'm going to Ohio for a few days gonna be hanging out with the drop guys then I'm going to be back in LA for CIS and then I got some other stuff on kind of remember I think I'm gonna be in New York for the Oslo Freedom Forum also defiance its launch in a couple of weeks if you haven't heard about this this is my new show which expands beyond Bitcoin look at human rights censorship freedom I've done some great interviews on that I just interviewed Britney Kaiser the face book whistleblower which was pretty cool and I'm also thinking of launching a defiance event next year so keep an eye out for that anyway got any questions do reach out to me my email address is hello or what bitcoin did I was trying to remember if it was in that film Bank in a Bitcoin I've got this vague memory of your bit being shot outside you got a bike if you've been biking I'm trying to remember it remember the stupid bike scene yeah they wanted like b-roll and like take me out of the New York environment like what do you like to do so I told them I like to mountain bike when I'm in Colorado right so we drove out to New Jersey 30 minutes out of the city and just got b-roll footage of me on this bike and it was totally contrived and out of place it's funny I can remember that I haven't seen the documentary for about two years I watched it well that's the scene it's stuck with everyone yeah but I was trying to remember cuz on the way you know I was doing my planning and I was trying to remember when I first heard in libertarianism obviously heard of it before but never paid any attention to it and it was never a like political option for me yeah UK its conservative right wing left wing label just these strange liberals that's how most Americans feel - well yeah but there I certainly think there's an opportunity now for somebody yeah I don't know I mean art arguably the founding of the u.s. was basically a libertarian founding so at that point like everyone is either a libertarian or or a Brit but since then pretty much most people in the US are dirty status and they they either vote D or R and then it's that's it so well that's the funny thing so with discovering Bitcoin you can discover it and just think here's something I'm gonna make some money with or start to learn about some of the properties of it that may interesting and then you're thrown into this whole libertarian Austrian economics world which I think it takes more adjustment if you're from the UK than the states because you know even at the moment I'm processing guns I've just done his show about guns with Ragnar which was super interesting I'm definitely not where I was a year ago where I was like all guns are bad and they lead to mass shootings in schools I certainly come to appreciate them both as a hunting tool but also for defense I mean neither of those are really the reason to support guns you're gonna go back to tyrannical governments that that is the reason okay and people scoff at it but if you look at you know the entire 20th century government's killed tens of millions of people Oh tens of millions of people it doesn't even compare to anything else really and the slight reduction in likelihood of tyrannical government's killing tens of millions of people if a population is armed is worth defending the right of normal people to own firearms that reason alone I think is not usually talked about it's not really for hunting sure self-defense in in your home is nice but like the real reason is to prevent that kind of tyrannical mass murder the government's commit as a matter of course every decade or two so yeah and I've just been out to Cambodia and Vietnam and I was in Cambodia we didn't go to phenom FEM because of my the age of my children but we did go in to siem reap into one of the museums and you know it's trying to teach my children about what happened there with karma rouge and you know I'm perfectly aware of plenty of places around the world now where people had weapons that maybe they could stand up against their government and their arguments against Sisto like yeah this was a law in the time of muskets now you've got armies but I also see the other defense where well when the US attack Vietnam the Vietnamese weren't well armed but they were able to defend themselves yeah I mean ultimately it's a question of do you want do you want all people to be able to own weapons or only government people to be able to own weapons it's a funny one because even though you say that and I couldn't see a situation changing in the US right now I mean I know there's a some liberals who were talking about the removal of ar-15s it's like one of their political agenda points yeah which which is weird because ar-15 is that people can buy legally or just send me automatic rifles yeah so if you can't get an ar-15 semiautomatic rifle there are many other types of semi-automatic rifles that are basically as lethal it's the semi-automatic rifle function which is which is their concern but the ar-15 looks aggressive that's why they want to ban that gun because it because it's a look which kind of demonstrates that the whole thing is really about show because if they were actually trying to get rid of the function of what the ar-15 does they would be going after semi-automatic rifles well we've reckon our holding the conversation has said you know where's the limit and he said there should be no limit you should be also have anything the government has so I said well so for example if the government had land mines should you be asked for land mines around your house and he said yeah I said okay so if the government as a tank should you be able to buy a tank and he said yep I said okay so should you be able to buy a nuclear weapon so it kind of gets into this kind of unfortunate us get into these weird gray area briefs loaf discussion right well could you put you've got to test the how far the theory goes and I understand that why people have guns and want guns but the same time I still strangely enough even though I agree with the point I don't want the laws changed in the UK I don't want us to have the same gun laws as the u.s. I feel like you know we have our own issues we've got a massive knife crime problem in London but at the same time I don't I wouldn't want us to have the same gun laws as the u.s. yeah yeah it's a it's a tricky issue so there's utilitarian arguments about it like whether it's more helpful for more people to have guns and then there's like ethical and principle arguments like if someone hasn't heard another person do you have a right to forcibly take away something from them or prevent them from acquiring something and that's the argument that I find more persuasive I think it's a very bad precedent and basis for society if you coerce peaceful people just because some people are bad and you harm good people because of that that that's a very problematic basis on which to build a good civil society it might be a cultural thing as well though you know you as Americans might have the PTSD of kicking us out of the country and we might have the PTSD of being kicked out so I I want us to stay powerful and you not have weapons and you want to have the weapons well there's at least at least still in the u.s. there's still a little bit of flame of individual liberty as a as a principle in not assuming that a government or a nation should be in control of everything and that individuals themselves have a certain degree of protection that they should be afforded that's a very that was certainly a radical notion back when the US was formed and it's slipping away and I can limit Aryans are really the the ones who maintain still that that should be the basis on which people organize I actually find it very interesting almost quite exciting when I see these militias it was I was talking about is Iraq not remember the actual war but there was the militia trying to protect the farmland of a guy and a car my board it was were they trying to tax him or they were trying to stop and do something and the militia stood up to him I thought actually that was very cool yeah I mean I wish that kind of thing would happen more often I wish groups of people would organize against tyranny from above like if that was a greater tendency you would have less tyranny from above and again going back to that mass murder question if you're just looking at body counts the most important thing is to reduce the size of national governments because they kill by far more than any other possible type of homicide or murder locally and internationally well what do you mean locally so for example historically we can go and look at the examples of many kind of Marxist governments you've killed a lot of people to enforce their Marxist principles or socialist principles yet you haven't had that kind of mass murder internally in the u.s. in such a way no but that's because the US has not yet slipped fully into a a socialist type state like there's a tendency I think for populations to centralize power in governments some people can call that socialism but it's a tendency toward centralized power that's why national governments tend to always grow in their power and in their regulations and the budgets that they spend and the only thing that really changes that or reverses it is when the government collapses or some type of horrible revolution happens like that pattern is seen all over the place the birth of the u.s. being you know just one of one of those examples so yeah it has not happened within the US and I would argue in part because there has been a decent tendency of Americans to resist centralized Authority but that's weakening and certainly the u.s. is becoming more and more socialist as time goes on but this happens externally by the US government in other foreign lands we've interfered with the foreign policy of other governments you know some you may say it justified others me you may say oh I would say basically none of them are justified night I don't want the US government to exist at all well okay because this is a libertarian principle of it's either small or no government and certainly no for smaller the better and more decentralized the better okay so we should get into that because this is something that's new to me I you know and so it's taking some time to get my head around it is very foreign to me the idea of libertarianism but I definitely find it appealing really appealing but I do struggle in some areas but I tell you why I find that appealing because I've always felt trapped in politics in that I've always felt both this little bit conservative but also felt like not that I'm a socialist but I so need like a social fabric of considering others and helping others and I've always felt lost between who I should vote for I tend to veer more conservative I've never actually voted for a socialist party well I voted for a Green Party once but I have voted conservative the majority of the time I found this quote when I was preparing its you're like this Liberals favor government action to promote equality whereas conservatives favor government action to promote order libertarians favor freedom and opposed an action to vote either equality order yeah that's a vet that's a good way to say it absolutely way to say so it gives you that other option but why do you think it's never been a case where or certainly not right now that libertarian parties are having such a voice because they are very rational arguments to support a libertarian party so I've done a lot of thinking on this tonight I think what it comes down to really is that people most people have a hard time understanding the concept of spontaneous order they have a hard time understanding that order can come about without being top-down controlled and created so they see a government you know building roads and picking up the trash and forming a military and all these things that they think they want and they understand how that can happen they don't understand how rules can happen an order can occur without a government because it's it's weird and it's hard like decentralization is a it's not a it's not an element of life that people really appreciate but it's actually all around them when you look into nature you see decentralized order everywhere there's no central top-down Authority that creates a a tree it emerges from various principles and patterns from the bottom-up and political life can happen in that way also but most people are not willing to allow it to and the emergence of language isn't exactly that's a great one the emergence of mathematics or language are both very good ones the emergence of Bitcoin obviously is decentralized order like Bitcoin has ordered to it it has rules it works in a certain way and that didn't come from any kind of top-down thing it's emerged from a distributed group of people so it's it's actually very common people just don't think about it in terms of like rules for society all of them market an economy is decentralized order it's like a company or a group of people that are building things and selling them to others that all emerges without top-down coercion it emerges from people's cooperation with each other from people's mutual pursuits of profit so order happens naturally all the time without top-down order but people have this tendency to ignore that and want to impose it with violence which is what government is and that's usually where many of the problems in life come from do you feel like most people are conditioned to considering the government as their safety net so you know so a question I like to ask people if they're often on Twitter you get insulted be called a statist right you're a statist yeah we'll take away my guns real status so I always like to throw off a couple of questions back so I like to ask if that person if they vote yeah more often they'll say no I don't vote because I'm another status so then I ask that like to ask them if your house got robbed here burgled would you call the police and I think almost in every scenario they would yeah usually yeah so I think for most people who don't have these libertarian ideals or and not even exposed to it I mean I think there are a vast number of people who aren't most of my friends will not have heard of this do you think if they see government as a safety net because for certainly in the UK you turn to the NHS when you're sick and you get cared for you turn to the government for education you turn to the government for policing if you're out of work you turn to the government for welfare so they're used to having this safety net yeah so then this is that this is the horrible trick that happens government mandates that it provides a certain service people need the service so they use it from the government and over time to get used to it coming from the government somehow they start thinking that only government can provide the service so like health care is a great example in many places government's provide health insurance or flat-out health care and so people think well health care comes from the government thus if the government wasn't doing it we would not have health care but that's very silly imagine if imagine if McDonald's was the only place in the world with a license to sell cheeseburgers everyone likes cheeseburgers you can imagine after a couple generations if the idea of well McDonald's doesn't need to be around like we could have open competition in cheeseburgers maybe that would scare people they'd be like but where would we get our burgers they come from McDonald's that happens in basically every service that the government provide and most libertarians if they're if they're radical enough they basically would just say anything that's important it deserves to operate in a market with competition health care is extremely important thus it should operate in an open market with competition education is extremely important in this should operate in a market with competition instead of having a monopoly provider from the government so would you say the u.s. model for healthcare is better than the UK model the u.s. model for healthcare is a total mess yeah and it's not a market it's a it's a corrupted market it's part market part government it's it's like this weird mutant thing it doesn't work no one likes it the UK system I imagine is some there's also market elements and also state elements most countries have this weird hybrid kind of thing so I mean I don't defend the US system but it's it's a it's a weird combination of the two practices and I can sometimes be worse than than just a government health care system I think with the UK one the the big advantage I always hear about is that having the government negotiate pricing tends to lead to lower prices for drugs and treatments and say in the US that's the one of the few advantages I see a radical difference between healthcare both countries traveling back and forth just speaking to friends I think in some ways I prefer the u.s. system but in other ways it scares the living crap out of me I mean why shouldn't the government do the same for like cars should the government negotiate car prices it's obviously a very fair point I think what it is is with healthcare there is a slight difference in that it's it can be your life so can cars there is I think there are differences and I think there are no answers to this so I think if you fall between the cracks and you can't get health care and die that is that is a big shame I'm not I'm not defending and saying that we should have socialized health care but I understand that there are people in who who are socialist who want to live as a group of people organize together and believe that they want to have a socialized health care well not just that but they want to force people to pay for their system well so that was one of the interesting points I was gonna get to you because I think humans naturally organize themselves I'd always wondered if you if you could go route for radical libertarian get have no government at all which I think you'll struggle will turn 50 million people but just say you could and then I think around certain services or things humans are naturally gonna start to arrange themselves yeah that's the spontaneous order yeah but will it then will it eventually evolve back to the same thing like is this structure just a natural way that humans organize themselves it is a natural structure that humans organize themselves if they accept the premise of coercion against peaceful people so if you think it's okay to use force on someone to get them to do what you think they should do if you believe that and the society generally believes that states and governments and nations will form if you had a society of people who didn't believe that using force on a peaceful person was was ethically justified you would tend to have smaller if any governments and I agree with that but um we still just animals yeah we Selvi Adam we are but also we can change opinions right yeah of course so and I think there are in a libertarian society you could have pockets of socialists who then all coerce each other into providing things by force a libertarian would always tolerate a socialist in its society but a socialist will never tolerate a libertarian in its society a socialist will always force the libertarian to pay for its purposes the libertarian will never force the socialist to pay for its purposes and that that difference is really like the the ethical fulcrum on which the stuff depends that sounds like the arguments have been my brother we've been arguing over brexit recently I'm Pro brexit and he's anti browser and you know so I just because he would naturally vote for labor and Corbin I always call him a Marxist to piss him off so we get into the base but he gets really frustrated with my point of view and I've noticed that I've noticed that for example when I put uh something on Facebook occasionally just provocative to see what my friends react and those who are anti brexit tend to be more socialist and tend to be more angry about what we should do we want to control yeah yeah I mean the the whole brexit premise is that Britain should be more in control of itself it is basically an appeal toward decentralized to centralization of power and anyone who doesn't want that to happen is is trying to centralize power like kind of by definition they want to pull some of the power away from Britain to Europe and it really comes down to whether you think it's okay to use force on people and if you don't if you are okay with that you'll tend to coalesce power and you'll get larger and larger governments and most people unfortunately are okay with that okay so one of the areas I've I've found interesting where I was discussing with Francis Puglia and he is a fan of minica state whereby the police essentially law and order is provided by a very limited government so police law and military has provided how do you feel about that because like Law & Order is a central component of libertarianism so that has to be enforced somehow hopefully with consistency yeah well yeah so libertarians is a big group it ranges from anarchists to to basically like people who believe in most of what the government does but just want lower taxes it's like that whole range is kind of can they might call themselves libertarians where are you I am very sympathetic to full anarchy where there's no central states I also think that I would much rather just reduce the government step by step and move in that direction and I'd be I'm willing to accept the fact that it that that pure anarchy may not work I think it would but I it's so different from the world we live in that I I don't assume it I just want to reduce the government and I want to keep reducing it and I think the world would get better and better and better I think probably find yourself in anarchy in the world would be the best that it could be but if it was something short of that that's an improvement also so I'm a little more pragmatic about it yeah and it reminds me of a tweety cent coin while ago I remember you putting on one that said something like we should strive for less government but every year we've had more government or something on the line there's never been a year in the US with the government shrank other than that you're immediately following World War two because you can't you well you could go for a turkey but if you went full anarchy it would be a low-key I think society because even if you did that immediately they're just the adjustment would be violent and difficult and crazy and and so libertarians always get into these discussions of like Anarchy or menarche or something I think those things kind of distract from the point that it would just be good if the government got smaller okay and I think most people like agree with that like you're just smaller like let's try one percent smaller I think even socialist would agree with that well I don't know I don't know if a Republican was in charge I think a Democrat would want the government and 1% smaller but then they'd just swing back the other direction I just want to see a government shrink okay would you stop what would be a good starting point just reduce all points of the budget by 1% next year just start with that every single every single budget by 1% does anyone think that the world would fall apart no no I mean you you could get rid of like 30 percent to the government and it would be basically the size that it was back in like the year 2000 but government doesn't have to keep the budget that's it that's an actual fundamental problem with that like you can reduce a budget of shapeshift and I guess I just mean spending whatever they spent this year spend 1% less next year let's just start there but I think that's actually I think that's impractical because I think I think the way governments are now in competition like everyone's that our fear of having a currency crash before the other as radical under them they all want their currencies to crash certain they are all trying to devalue their Kesari devalue on the international stage but what I'm saying is they don't want a complete collapse of their currency right and they will keep spending as on when they require it to for whatever whatever purpose they've just keep printing money right so I don't think it's practical but I think a more practical approach would be less let's change one aspect let's change educational let's change policing or let's change regulations well let's change part of welfare if you actually pick something and change that I think that's practical maybe I have zero faith in the political system like I'm very opposed to democracy in principle okay and certainly a lot of people try to just vote and get one part of the government to change and that could be like a lifetime of work and nothing gets smaller like again the whole government just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and I don't think that any amount of like libertarian talking on the internet is going to change that phenomenon so that's kind of fatalistic but this is part of what got me so excited about Bitcoin was that it was a way to take a piece of what the government was doing which was money creation and management and just completely sidestep the government entirely not have to worry about voting not have to worry about convincing any person to try it Bitcoin was a brilliant way to just use something else in sidestep the government eyerly so do you believe that bitcoin is like a stepping stone to completely change in government structure and yes yeah right this was I've held this in since I first learned about it which is I think that that bitcoin or or some crypto or many kryptos will take over the world people will tend to use them as their money instead of Fiat because on one can't be debased and the other can over time people will tend to hold value and the thing that can't be too based that seems obvious and at some point that means the government won't be able to just print money to subsidize its spending which means it will have to reduce its spending it's like the single thing that could actually cause the government to spend less because as Bitcoin becomes more powerful the fiat currency becomes less powerful at some point fiat currencies will fall apart or collapse or go away the world will transition into Bitcoin slowly or in a crisis situation and when that happens the government will will be taxing and spending Bitcoin but it can't print Bitcoin so so it's sort of third tentacle of tyranny is reduced it you can't print has to shrink it can only grow by what it can borrow or tax because it'll have budget constraints yeah right now it's it spends whatever it can borrow tax or print so you get rid of print and by definition you you've forced the government to be smaller do you genuinely believe an alternative cryptocurrency outside of Bitcoin can achieve this can yes your Bitcoin set the obvious likely choice hmm bitcoins the obvious one to put your money on as they say but I don't think anyone should assume that it is impossible that a different crypto surpasses Bitcoin that would be of course but but what I mean by that is like our people focuses on Bitcoin in the right way to create this opportunity you as a libertarian see the opportunity with Bitcoin you see what it can do to separation of money and state do you think people are aggressively pursuing this in the right way or do you think you mean Bitcoin is people that are in me I mean I think I think Bitcoin and crypto people well the group is not homogeneous anymore no like early on nearly everyone in Bitcoin was a radical anarchists are a radical libertarian at least as it's grown and rightly so it pulls in more and more and more people people of different persuasions a lot of people who are entirely not at all libertarian and that's good the whole Bitcoin takes over the world by pulling 7 billion people into it and you're not going to convince all those people to be libertarian but it doesn't matter if the world is using Bitcoin governments will have to shrink and it doesn't really matter what portion of those people were libertarians so does the government that naturally become libertarian now we just get your strength it's a shrinks cuz he can't prove money any more so I you know I don't know that 50 years let's let's say 50 years from now bitcoins taken over and it is the basic unit of money for the world I don't think that the portion of libertarians in the world will necessarily be any higher but governments won't be able to grow as much and that that will be kind of the like the most important win that Bitcoin can bring to the world are there any downsides to this like within libertarian circles to any of you all could like key differences between libertarians yeah yeah that's all they do they just spend their time arguing about like the differences between them what are the conflict points say like where the biggest the biggest one is always there like men are kissed versus anarchists question kissed well yeah before Bitcoin you know like I was part of the Free State Project yeah you know so I was around radical libertarians constantly and they spent all their time just arguing about this point between anarchy and menarche and like to me that's like okay do we want to get rid of you know 98% of the government or 100% of the government I don't care like let's just get rid of something yeah okay so I think libertarians really had spent too much time debating that point and they should all realize that once we shrink the government a significant degree then it's time to have that debate do we shrink it all the way to zero or do we stop somewhere I've got to go to crypto Springs later in the week and I'm doing a panel which is 1984 versus brave new world dystopian futures and prep him for that I downloaded an interview with Aldous Huxley cool yeah very cool very cool I've never actually read the book I've read 1984 and he quite interested in that this is a bit of a diversion piece talked about two forces which encroached on freedom one is overpopulation because of the demand of resources therefore government has to grow to control and manage the people and also because as populations grow there's more social unrest therefore you usually essentially need more government for that I disagree with both of those points but gone well and the other one he was like you've the over complication through the advance of technology by technology allows you to create more complicated systems more complicated structures and that for also encroaches on freedom yeah that last one's interesting today I guess it depends what you what he's defining freedom as well I mean I think this interview was in the 50s so it was very different technology and devices I mean he's talking about radio TV whereas we have but let's this do with the first one the overpopulation world yeah I I think most most people worry about overpopulation they think that's a problem I don't think it's a problem I think the average human produces more resources than they consume and if you hold that then more people doesn't mean less resources it actually means more so that's no reason says cuz some us guess well that's not that obvious so take food for example obviously the world today has vastly more people than it ever has in history and it has vastly more food than it ever has in history clearly something there happened that's because humans create more food than they consume right so you go ahead you grant that yes something like water at first seems scarce but really waters like the most plentiful resource on the planet it's really about desalinated water but any water can be disseminated with energy if you if you spend enough energy you can desalinate water so it's really just a matter of of cost so a society wealth enough at any level of population could just desalinate enough water to to use so water is not really a scarce resource either it's just a question of of how wealthy the population is most resources actually are not scarce that are produced by humans like the US has more lumber and more trees and more forest coverage today than it did a hundred years ago even though its population is like six times as high I never knew that yeah most people don't talk about that that's because most lumber comes from lumber companies which grow trees and they have an interest in creating building forests so there's more wood today in the u.s. than there was 100 years ago even though the populations higher can they not export that to the rain forest down in Brazil well if they privatized the rain forest I bet the rain forest would actually get a lot healthier that's a different problem because the de forests in for farmland were enslaved for the burgers yeah and yeah which gets you back into like government subsidies and people farming the wrong things due to this being a bad incentives but that's a different topic so I'm gonna give through something that takes I haven't come some of the areas that I'm confused with or not totally sure okay the first thing I actually wrote was there are a lot of bitcoiners who are libertarians who want free choice but don't seem to be completely tolerant of other people's free choice certainly on Twitter there seems to be some feels like coercive behavior so here's where you have to define coercion right because timi coercion means you've forcefully made someone do something like you've threatened physical harm or you threatened to like steal from them or or something like that you're coercing them so governments coerce people all the time that's what they do they threaten to throw you in a cage for example if you smoke marijuana that's very different than someone critiquing you that's not coercion that's critique I think that's a much lower level of interference and I think it's perfectly perfectly fine for people to critique each other is one thing but to coerce someone that's unethical okay okay that's a fair point another thing I was considering was if you think about property rights do they in some ways create a howl depor there's like a chronological disadvantage that you know as the population grows you are a disadvantage to those who've come before you who've created wealth and giving it to their families and perhaps created companies which are monopolies there's perhaps less land I mean we know there's less man that's more expensive to buy houses now that it was previously is that less land but there's more property so here again the property's not proportionally more expensive though right I don't know I mean you got a factor out inflation is prop is a normal property for someone more expensive today in real terms than it was 200 years ago I would argue no if you include all the luxuries that the properties have you know like someone today with a with a house that has air conditioning TV internet like all those kind of things versus someone who had a house a hundred years ago which one's more expensive in real terms that would need some analysis but I don't think it's obvious that it's more so would you agree that there are these perhaps a chronological disadvantage or do you think everyone born today has as much of opportunity is someone 10 years ago 15 you know yeah I mean no one should assume that everything's equal in the Aryan world like I think a libertarian simply acknowledges and recognizes that the world that nothing is equal in the world no two people are the same no two properties are the same no - no - life stories with the advantages and luck that the people got are the same it's a little different nothing's equal and trying to coerce the world into equality causes more harms than it solves okay so yeah there are there are certainly disadvantages and unfairness and inequity in a libertarian world the way to solve that is through charity and being a good person not through using a gun to force people to do something okay how about some of the additional benefits you get from a state so for example the regulations around providing access to facilities for those with disabilities there's a it's a big and important thing in the UK without having any form of discrimination for those with disabilities you have to have ramps etc etc there is no guarantee that would happen in the world without a state it's that tough luck sure tough luck in one sense but on the basis of private property if you own property and you don't want to build a ramp on your property you shouldn't be forced to build a ramp now if you're a business and you want customers if you think there are enough customers that might find that ramp useful it's in your interest to build a ramp for those people or maybe you just do it because you want to help those people like there a lot of people are generous like that and maybe some stores wouldn't have a ramp and someone in a wheelchair isn't able to get into those stores but like the point is is it ethical to force someone to build a ramp or not that's I don't think I don't think it is I think if it's your property you do it you want with it long as you're not coercing or harming someone else it's your choice and so you on that basis you would have the option to refuse someone into your business based on their sexuality their race that's freedom so no one should be forced to interact with someone else and so you know the example that people would frown at is like a really racist person with a bakery who doesn't want to serve you know a black person right everyone's like oh that's awful okay flip it around what about a black person who has a bakery and doesn't want to serve the racist I think both people should have the freedom to make their own judgement and I would not if I knew that there was a racist Baker in town I'm not gonna go buy his food cuz the guy's a dick yeah I'm not gonna go there and he's losing out on money because he's not serving us a portion of the population but it should be his choice like that that is freedom and if you okay if you acknowledge that people have the right to their own property it should apply in both cases regardless of whether someone's a jerk so how do you feel in a well therefore where someone like Twitter well censor certain comments and certain speech do you think that's the perfect cenar in that there should be no censorship yet twitter has the right to censor in their own environment so that's fine it's their property their property so they can create the rules there's no public good there's no public service I think whenever you bleed private property boundaries into some conception of public good you get more problems than you solve so Twitter should be able to make whatever rules at once and any competitor should be able to create a competitor and do whatever whatever they want with their own rules so it keeps coming back to almost two clear points no coercion and a free market well yet the to the foundation is is understanding private property yeah and and avoiding coercion like those are the two principles of what libertarianism is next up I talked to Eric more about libertarianism but before that I got a message from my amazing sponsors so as you know as I mentioned I'm going to be heading out to LA for CIS on October the 15th I'm going to be moderating a panel I'm also going to be hosting a fireside chat with travis cling and the organizers are CIS joseph and allan of ghv have just launched a campaign to give everyone free tickets to their conference and also give everyone who shows up $50 in Bitcoin which is pretty cool they are on a tear to spread mass adoption a Bitcoin and I literally paying you to get started this is going to be huge so head over to CIS de la for /wb D to find out how you can get paid in Bitcoin to hang out with me CIS in LA also today's show is 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or seem to occur things like North Korea and South Korea like one clearly more centrally controlled one clearly more free both were similar in their demographics and their people in their culture before the split you know China vers Hong Kong like these kind of these kind of real-world examples but this communism versus capitalism rather than its central is a centralized power versus less centralized power and this is something that I think people they get into libertarians start libertarianism start to see is that normal people see the world in like this left-right worldview which I don't think makes very much sense I think a better way to see it is in how much coercive power or how much centralization you have both Republicans and Democrats in the u.s. are high up on the centralized power and coercion scale versus a libertarian who is much further down so on that scale left-right scale but a an up-down scale of centralization of power China is obviously much higher up than Hong Kong so is it not just a like an ideal world for a rich person it seems to see libertarianism seems to suit the wealthy over the poor why do you think that because I think in a similar way to the Bitcoin utopia seems to suit though who discovered it early more than those who are coming in late because there are certain advantages how many poor minorities are in prison for life because of drug offenses it's a great example and how many four minorities are addicted to welfare but I'm thinking more there has you know especially we saw in Brazil the rise of political parties who support workers you know workers parties you support I don't know what that means workers is my working class you know is the working class like one of those those weaselly turns I think you I think certain people will associate it it tends to be you know those who are I guess when you say working class like lower earning factory workers okay and you know I think's historically these these groups of people have grouped together whether it's unions or political parties to fight for rights for them yes I think that's a problem you think is a problem I think groups fighting for rights for their group is a problem groups shouldn't have rights there should basically be one right which is to be left alone if you're not hurting other people that's really the only right that humans have okay it should be okay how about the argument that a truly free market is terrible for the environment because there isn't without regulation a factory can easily pollute the local lake without any fear of reprisal so this yeah that's oh yeah fair concern and I don't want to paint a picture here that a libertarian society has no no environmental problems it would it's a question of private property and contract law generally so if you're polluting a lake you're doing it maybe because the lake is not owned it's just public if someone owns the lake you can't pollute their lake generally if areas are owned by private parties or consortiums of people pollution is actually a contract violation and would be something that courts should settle you you don't have the right to damage other people's property now land is easier to handle in that way than water and water is easier to handle that way in that way than air like air is an interesting question should someone have the ability to pollute into the air I think that's a fair point of debate and I don't think any libertarians have great solutions there but I don't think states have great solutions there either I think that in a world without government markets would tend to advance faster and there would be more wealth and wealthy people have the luxury of actually appreciating their environment you see this when countries rise through the Industrial Revolution when you're emerging from poverty you do not care about the environment and you will pollute because you're just trying to feed your family when you become wealthier you start to appreciate nature and the environment around you and it's the wealthy countries that pay more attention to their environment I think the for example automobiles would have moved faster through the internal combustion engine toward the Tesla type world of electric cars when you don't have governments involved regulating everything I think that you tend to move through those bad phases to better phases faster so it doesn't mean that there aren't environmental problems it just means that they are dealt with in a decentralized market fashion versus a centralized government fashion what about the establishment of nuclear power factories or should that be regulated is it the downside of not regulating nuclear power the potential that a town goes up in a puff of nuclear smoke and and the free market can't fix that well nuclear reactors are extremely safe first of all I think it world was more nuclear reactors would be much less polluted than one that currently powers by coal and oil and natural gas so if a libertarian world meant more nuclear reactors the environmental problem I think would be significantly less now the risk of an environmental disaster when there is a nuclear explosion is obviously a huge one nobody has more of a incentive to make their property secure than the owner of a nuclear power plant like the capital investment to build such thing is massive so there are all the incentives to make it safe are there it doesn't mean that there would never be incidents but again what are we comparing this to like the the incidents that have happened to nuclear reactors I think are few and far between and I think but devastating when they have happened oh yeah yeah I mean devastating in certain ways not nearly as devastating as much of the other things governments have done so it depends on what you're comparing it to well in other areas also building regulations so I mean I haven't done the actual research but more often than not so one of my favorite artists is AI weiwei there was a certain area actually where there was an earthquake and because of the lack of following building regulations all like a building regulations more the buildings can actually created our work out of this do you think certain things that regulations are important to protect the safety of others most of that stuff if not all of it is accomplished by markets so in the case of property and standards for safety insurance comes into play if you build a property in a place where there are earthquakes you needn't you want insurance right an insurer has an incentive to want you to have certain building standards your insurance rates will be higher if you don't have those standards so there are natural mechanisms by which people will build safer homes where they should be safer without a government involved you've debated this loving you I mean oh yeah all do all these topics always come up I'm waiting for the roads question well so that was funny because I wasn't going to bring up the ROS question but that actually came up during a Twitter debate but I was more actually interested in when I think about that is mostly more interested in the railway because I think practically the logistics of trying to build a railway where's probably the same for ROS by coordinating all the different private landowners I just seems like that would be something very difficult it might be difficult but I think markets can solve difficult things I mean that there is nothing more complex than some of the things that markets already deliver I mean imagine imagine a world where there were no roads and no government what would happen like if all the roads just vanished and there were no government and for some reason everyone didn't want a government if I was a neighbor I'd be able to wrote to you well people would start talking they'd be like what the hell are we gonna do we've got to solve this problem we need to move around and like who owns this land and how should we handle this and people figure it out you can figure it out without coercion the roads might look different they might be built in different places maybe there would be more or less roads the world wouldn't look the same but it's not like the world wouldn't have roads and indeed much of the early history of American Road building it was actually private roads that got built so it's it's it's very silly to think that like only through coercion can you build roads I mean I think frankly without government's we wouldn't need roads anymore we'd probably already be in flying cars okay I'm half joking about that might be right so okay well no certainly someone would have built something drone based kind of flying car there's certainly the biggest impediment to drone technology right now is government regulation okay so I think the only error I've gotyou is that it's open for debate is pollution of the air contentious contention points point the same with with water those are tricky issues are there any other issues that you find tricky that you struggle with yeah so so I personally I think abortion should be legal but doesn't know this is the normal question present well this is why it's I think it's a fair question and and I don't think libertarians shouldn't agree on this this is this is a point where the principle which usually is clear is not clear so generally libertarians believe that you have property over your body and no one else does yeah that's crushing principles it yeah exactly right yeah so obviously a 10 year old it's very clear that their body is theirs and that's not contentious a woman who isn't pregnant that's not contentious but we're from the woman who's not pregnant to the to a new child being born does the does the body essence turn into the child right so like the day after an egg is fertilized is that a child deserving private protection or private property protection that seems silly but I don't have a better answer of when it should be you know the the birth of the child is a certain point at which you could make an argument the heartbeat-like there it's it is debatable and I think it's a it's a difficult issue so even though I think abortion should generally be legal I can totally sympathize with people who think that it's murder this seems to be a kind of general because if you are anti-abortion you kind of have to or if you're going to regulate it sometimes you depending on whether you make it legal I'm not a legal or illegal at certain stages I think the generous about 24 weeks it tends to be around that kind of like age where babies have been born premature but have survived tend to like have that as a starting point I'm in this weird place where I'm I would say I'm pro-life but I don't feel like I want to ever I don't think I've ever said that publicly I don't think I would ever want to enforce on somebody and I think that's a that's a I think that's a fair position you say I I'm pro-life but I wouldn't impose that on someone else I think that's really fair I you know that is the principle of libertarianism is to respect and tolerate other people's view and certainly you know a a woman and her family are much more appropriate to judge those things than any kind of outside party yeah I find abortion very sad though so I got a girl pregnant University and she had an abortion without telling me she told me a year later yeah and it was kind of devastating at the time just to find that out cuz always in the back of my mind I'm like I mean right now I have a 22 year old a big crazy and it does cross my mind occasionally but I find a very difficult subject again it's very emotional yeah as it should be yeah it's a it's a tricky one and I think people that that automatically assume there's a right answer on it and I think that's unfair I think there there can be areas in life that are gray and difficult what about the death penalty yeah so on an ethical basis if I knew that someone did something like murdering some children something horrible yeah would I have any problem with them being killed no if I knew that that they were guilty of it the main problem with the death penalty is that I don't trust the government to make those judgments so I have no problem with people who have killed others being killed I think that's I think that's fair I think they violated the right of others and they don't deserve that this reciprocal right themselves at the same time I don't trust the government in its current form in the current court system to assess that correctly so that's a tricky one another strange one I've got listed here is that with libertarianism it's about the freedom of choice to do what do you want without imposing yourself or others or causing harm to others and I totally 100% support free choice with drugs but is there an argument with the free choice with drugs you can so for example if parents can cause harm to their children just by being drug addicts the way of to define harm like are they beating their children or they're just a bad role model it collects in the collecting their children I think yeah so that's a difficult question at some point that neglect and the abuse of the child should be the crime nasty drug not the drugs so that should be a clear point so any person should be able to do all the heroin that they want if they are abusing a child it doesn't matter if they're on heroin or not the the abuse is what's wrong so I wouldn't regulate drugs just because abuse of children is wrong you should regulate the abuse of the children of course but I mean again I support free choice but you so often see or hear our stories of children being neglected because the parents are high on drugs and also I was watching a Lois through documentary where they were going around treating overdoses if we have the free choice to take as much hair as we want there is going to be bodies left everywhere who deals with the bodies that's who you are you are you are bodies everywhere is a probably a exaggeration but but you are imposing yourself on people having to clear up your mess yeah I don't think that rises to the level of banning something just because some people will abuse it and then their dead bodies inconvenience for someone to figure out sure and so anyone should be able to create any synthetic drug they want to sell to anyone and anyone else should be able to take that whatever yes now important could be clarified is that it is I do not think is ethically okay to to lie about what that is what the thing is right if you tell someone that something is made of a certain thing and then you sell to them and it's poison or whatever and they die that should clearly be illegal I mean that falls under fraud fraud yeah yeah fraud should be illegal so the crimes because I remember is murder rape fraud and theft yeah there's maybe some other few but that those are real crimes I mean if the Ghul the government did was prosecute that there would be no libertarian movement because that would be reasonable the problem is that is like 1% of what the government does but it's it's like 80% of what people think the government does okay it's very hard to argue against most of this rationally because they're all the points you make entirely rational and they make sense I still struggle to see practically how it would work but and then I'm with you on there that the goal is small to smaller bite-sized chunks yeah again I'm just gonna get back to an earlier question why do you think libertarianism has struggled therefore to grow and gain adoption because it feels like it's just better fair way of allowing people to live I mean I certainly think it is but it comes down to people having a belief that it's okay to use force on others or frankly not realizing that they're using force like you know a lot of people that want to advocate you know making marijuana illegal they think they're doing good for society they don't really realize that all they're advocating is to use force on people and throw them in cages for what is actually a peaceful act yeah they don't think about it in those terms I don't know how to get them to think about it in those terms but I think my mom was a quite example actually because of how has been professionalized since it's been legalized oh yeah I mean we're in Denver right now yeah I can tell the audience that society here has not collapsed you know I I knew this city before it was legal and I know it after everything's fine and now you can go into a store there are people who can show you all these different packages of marijuana they have different like THC contents you can know exactly what you're getting and you walk in you talk to someone you get exactly what you wanted and then you leave and like it's just so much more civilized so much more civilized than the whole black-market kind of situation that's happening in the illegal drugs everything every drug should be like that that's why so I lost times here I went to I was in Boulder and I went to Brooks store mm-hmm so that was my first experience of going to buy and it was great because I don't I don't really like weed that much but for the sake of it you know making the show I was gonna I was gonna poor science the sciences yeah I did I ended up what ended up happening is the only thing that I get a little bit of anxiety sometimes so the person behind the tail was like well you don't want that you want this and you know and I try to remember the experience as a kid try to buy weed it would be like meet us in the Sainsbury's car park I'll be there in half a bit of baggie would wait half an hour and they still would be there that could be 15 minutes gonna be 15 minutes and then allow later yeah you get your little bag yeah there's there's no discussion of like which product is better for a certain person it's just so obviously better and to have people thrown in prison because they chose something with their own body is absolutely absurd I'm quite sure that society 50 years from now we'll look back on this practice as something completely horrible they used to happen so they could cocaine well actually we can't had it proven with the Silk Road yeah I mean back when absolutely in my depth of my cocaine addiction I was I was buying on the Silk Road and it was a much better experience firstly because of the ratings which was brilliant and secondly they actually the other really useful thing was the forums at a time when I knew I was doing too much now it's becoming a problem like a real problem that's where I went for help to talk yeah the place to talk had advice like I was having this like weird thing where my chest was feeling hot so as you know there was talking about you know the potential risks and blah blah blah but that that was actually very helpful and when I was doing the show Lynn Albrecht I ended up kind in interviewing this lady Charlotte wash because she was quoted in an article from the drug policy Alliance where they were saying undoubtably the Silk Road led led to harm reduction and less violence yeah obviously why does the government not get this there I mean like there's lots of reasons there's vested interests in the whole you know prison industrial complex like that's obviously part of it because that the prison guards Association have a mess and the police who want there but like if they can't enforce drug laws and there are less laws to enforce which means the police force needed is smaller and their budgets should be smaller but the principle is already IVA streched sure but any any given level a police force always wants more money and so I guess you'd a world with more laws as a world in which a police force gets more and more and more money so there's an entrenched interest there but the real reason is just that a lot of people aren't willing to publicly express political support for getting rid of these stupid laws fortunately it's slowly changing it's like the one area of American life it's actually getting freer yeah so that's great 47 states now legal all decriminalizes that correct or decriminalized maybe yeah it was illegal yeah but the trend is are so obvious and as I believe it I don't know which states but certainly magic mushrooms and now either being thick criminalized I think here in Colorado they are decriminalized yeah yeah MDMA is being used to treat PTSD yeah yeah there's a lot of bright lights in that regard so society is not totally crazy like sometimes it does the right thing in the long arc of human history the tendency is obviously toward human liberty but it goes through these cycles and a lot of noise in a given like life lifespan why do you think it's happened with cannabis I'd like most people have smoked weed yes so it's not an alien thing to most people yeah I think I I think popular culture helps normalize it before weed was legal in a lot of states there were lots of movies where where we just wasn't that scary it was just some people would hang out smoke some weed and laugh and eat some cookies it's like how and that's pretty accurate you know how long does society want to keep spending money throwing those people in jail when they're just eating cookies on their damn couch so some of that I think was their presidents yeah but also there's a lot of work from dedicated groups that have been working on this for decades so it's not like it just happened it came after you know people spent their lifetime working on it do you think one of the biggest changes that's helped also is you know with the internet we have more information information that's power mm-hmm you know I was listened to a thing is on Joe Rogan a Bill Baer on there and he was saying you know cuz he's a drummer who's saying now because of the internet kids now a better drummers because there's so much more information out there that they can follow and never you know and learn to drum do you think there's so much more information out there now because of the internet that that people are starting to without even speak to each other but collectively start to see a different world and a better world because in some ways you know there is it's getting much worse because of the Internet in what ways I mean obviously political discourse generally is much worse now it's more polarized people identify with their group much more strongly and tend to vilify the other group much more strongly on the Internet quite interestingly actually Aldous Huxley talked about that as well he he said the future is where the advertisers paint the picture of a politician to sell votes and not for what they actually are as a person have you watched the loudest voice know there about Fox News about Roger Ailes nope not that is fascinating yes yeah so I didn't know the story of him yeah I know it might be like HBO thing cuz we had it was guy I didn't even know the story was just because it was Russell Crowe watched it and it was a very interesting show because what happened was when they were launched at Fox News he obviously took on the role of whatever head of content or whatever it was of director and the first meeting where they were trying to talk about the content policy you know they were talking about potentially being kind of like centrist et cetera and he said no he said there's no if we're centrist we fight with everyone for the for the same people if we go right-wing conservative then we can get 60% of the population because they would just listen to us so that that's what happened and I was watching that and then see where we are today and I was just feeling it is the media's absolutely destroyed political discourse yeah but not just the media people themselves through you know their Facebook posts and like the the non face-to-face superficial discussion has has made it really bad the media has certainly amplified it but when the government isn't involved in more and more of people's lives then of course the antagonism between people will get higher this is another reason why government should just be involved in less things because there'd be less reasons to hate someone of a different party because you look you party didn't have as much control over your life you know if the federal government was much smaller someone who hates Trump today would have less reason to hate Trump he would be a less powerful person I think that would be good for the world at the same time I think it'd be a better world if Obama had less power but you can't have one without the other and the problem is that each side's once more power for themselves and so when they're in power they get more of it and then the other side gets empowered they get more of it and ultimately get the government grows and grows and grows you know it's about so Aussie because I mean I think Trump's insane and we have another election companies probably going to win but equally I wasn't a huge fan of Obama and I certainly was a fan of Hillary and know Bernie I was thinking well how do things get better but again you're just gonna come back to the same point less government everything comes back to less government yeah I mean how can you look at democracy well when in the US democracy yields its two prime candidates the the cream of the crop that the democratic process has formed and it's Hillary Clinton those are the pinnacles of of conservative and liberal ideology and like that's total nonsense they're both horrible people I can't imagine why people would support a system that yields that and yet they do yeah interfere Stephan avaricum what he said but he was like did he say democracy is soft socialism does it sound about right I haven't heard that yeah but he's an Austrian economist all right well we shouldn't finish without just finding out how things going how's everything here James you have good because you've left me with loads to think about libertarianism and I'm gonna have to go away and trying to wrap my head around this but how's everything going here yeah I think things are good we're just you know we had to do this huge pivot from our post kyc world into the new platform another attack on freedom yeah don't get don't get me started on that hey what was it like when they slowed and talked about that like how that was surreal have you ever spoken to him now so that was just random cuz I was stood next to you when that happened yeah I was it was right after my panel and I was sitting in the back and Snowden gets up there and I was all excited to see him he's oh he's always been a hero of mine but I've never talked to him and he in his first minute he brings up shape-shift and me personally he's gonna aim and I was like I just you know fangirling out there it was cool I think he was using shapes just as an example of that government will try to impose its coercion in any through any medium I can write and so any centralized company is gonna be somewhat vulnerable to that and yeah I was obviously I would have rather come up in a different contexts but but he he's right it would tell you that we were forced to do that and it sucks and it's wrong and and I I think if it can if it can be a story for people to see that that's that's good so yeah I was definitely an honor and so his book recently came out yes apparently the CIA or DOJ is suing him and trying to get the book stopped how are they gonna do that he's in Russia I don't know but I figured they might try to get like Amazon to stop selling it so as soon as I saw that headline I went on Amazon I bought 10 copies and I think the Streisand effect is gonna be in full force on that one uppie did you see his tweet Bitcoin has souls or something he actually tweeted up Bitcoin in reference to the book yeah yeah I mean obviously like the government can prevent Amazon from selling the book and visa from processing transactions but they can't stop Bitcoin exist an echo of the whole WikiLeaks thing that happened back in you know 2011 if they banned it it would actually be exciting I think it would be you would see I mean it seemed like anyway the books out now it's out information boys the point yeah I mean they all they've done is from up a whole bunch more attention to to Snowden I mean that that guy is such a a deserve adhere oh for what he did and that he continued that he could have just done what he did and then gone into hiding and he would have been a hero not everyone thinks that the Patriots don't well got a define Patriot I consider myself a patriot I think a I status Patriot status be yeah people who advocate for the government Yeah right status by definition I'm I consider myself a patriot I love America I love the people I love the culture in some ways and I think what Snowden did was incredibly patriotic a huge risk to himself yeah to basically show how the US government was violating its own rules no he's my I'm not a traitor though I mean it's it's he he is a traitor to the US government he should be a hero to the US people and we've gotten to a point now where the US government is at odds with the people and is adverse to the people but this is always like the inevitable outcome of centralization of power and I the only way it solves itself is when the US government will go bankrupt through a bond market collapse which will happen in our lifetime probably relatively soon I don't know what will emerge on the other side of it but no one's voting the government to get smaller so it keeps getting bigger anyway sorry I interrupted that so anyway health is good yeah good I mean it's it's so yeah shape-shift the new platform is basically a way to interact with your crypto in a self custody way this has been a personal mission of mine to to move people away from these custodians all the exchanges and wallets that are holding people's funds I think there should be some custodians but I think too many people use them and so we wanted to build a great UX that people could use and maintain control over their keys that's the that's the whole point of what we're doing so we are you know trying to rebuild that for crypto winter and after the whole kyc thing and it's been a huge struggle but those who've been using the platform really love it so the early feedbacks been good and I'm just glad to be building a project as part of the this crypto movement because I'm getting back to libertarianism the whole point of this movement is to help advance Liberty in my opinion and so being able to build something toward that end is is really fulfilling and anything out that particularly exploiting a third particularly exciting me I think the defy stuff is really cool and I know I know the the maximalists are hating on it because it's built on it they'd be loving you if it was built on Bitcoin they're gonna give me just having you one again yeah I know I know if I only liked Bitcoin they'd like me don't so they hate me whatever the defy stuffs awesome it has lots of risks like it is all alpha and beta software some of its gonna blow up spectacularly there will be some dowel like incidents fine that's that is pioneering finance when you are building out on the edge of technologies so defy having problems and risks does not mean it's it's bad but the ability of capital markets to form without any central party where anyone in the world can be lending money to other people in the world and like as that capital market forms that's gonna be completely transformative to the whole world people shouldn't dismiss it they're like oh you can make you know like seven percent on your died appositives right now like that's cute they don't realize that over time the ability for people with capital to lend it to be without it and without any intermediaries changes the entire financial system in the same way that Bitcoin changes it from a money perspective this defy stuff is super powerful and it's a shame that a lot of the bitcoins are just dismissing it because it's built on etherion yeah but the team what I'm excited about is I think we're very close to that whole cross and the chasm now we're getting there if you'd look so Snowden between about Bitcoin a reference to his book a lot of people who can to kind of see that we've got a Premier League football club Watford who've got the Bitcoin logo on their shirt yeah we've got Russell lukang talking about it we've got there is an NBA player saying that he's tokenize his contract yeah so that people can invest in his future payouts you know in a token we've got countries wanting to do their own currencies which I know hugely support but but I am seeing just like Bitcoin seems to be just right on the edge of like infiltrating pop culture in a big way and once it becomes I say I think comes cool it's got to become cool yeah I there hasn't been anyone in at least a year whenever they've asked like oh what do you do and I'd mentioned Bitcoin no-one says what is that oh we are well past yeah most people at least in the u.s. have heard of it that's incredible I was at the human rights foundation Freedom Forum in Oslo and I asked to Rooms has anyone not heard a Bitcoin not a single hand went up and I didn't expect Mehdi but I thought one or two more well there would have been one or two but they would have been embarrassed and that's telling yeah because it's now embarrassing not to know about it whereas before it was embarrassing to talk about Bitcoin now it's embarrassing if someone doesn't know about it well I can't remember that the last time I've said to somebody you know what do you do I've got a Bitcoin podcast what what's Bitcoin they'd like everyone's heard of it they still throw some of the flood questions at you but I feel like I feel like we're there I feel like we're just about across the council just it's just Bitcoin will keep growing sort of in this like oscillating growth path until the next financial crisis and when that happens it's gonna be crazy the block chains aren't ready to scale to handle that yet but that's okay there there is an alternative now and the the amount of attention that alternatives to the Fiat financial system will get at the next crisis if it's a serious financial crisis will be immense and really I think it's all kind of incumbent on the industry to realize that we're in a race against time to get things built so that we're in the best position possible to to act as that lifeboat when things fall apart and that that will be when the chasm is crossed that will be when people make the habitual shift from what they're using today in the Fiat world to the crypto world and it's there's gonna be a whole bunch of misery that comes out of that so I don't want to glamorize the collapse but we didn't cause that collapse the Fiat system did and I think we're building the solution so I'm looking forward to helping people after we get rid of that stuff well I think is pretty exciting so okay I think we're about at our deadline do you want to just tell people how to find out more about what you guys are up to and find out more about you yeah I'm always on twitter at Erik Voorhees and you can try out shape-shift with a treasurer or Kiki right now without any account at bata shape-shift comm give it a try I think you'll find it's a really great way to interact and store your crypto and maintain control of your keys so it's right out there and glad to chat is coming on again a third appearance nice one Thank You Erik yeah thank you okay so what did you make Anna did you enjoy that do you want free markets and anarchy for all so for me this really you know really did clear up a lot I've heard all the arguments for an anarchist or even a minica Society and I think there are certain areas of society which would really thrive under libertarian ideals but there are other aspects such as health care animal welfare pollution that I'm still not 100% convinced about and I think Eric's great for this because he comes at it from a very pragmatic viewpoint and I really like the goal of just reducing government for now instead of growing year on year giving more power more money of the government I like the idea of trying to shrink this and maybe Bitcoin can replace parts of the financial system maybe Bitcoin is the tool to facilitate this so yes this chat really helped me Eric definitely clear some things up for me and if you haven't heard the other shows I've done recently was safety in a moose and Stefan the veyron Austrian economics and libertarianism I do recommend you give them a lesson they definitely T this one up and if you got any more questions about this you want me to do more shows like this do reach out to me my email address is hello at what Bitcoin did calm also massive thanks to everyone who supports a show if you like the show if you listened to every week and you want to do something it doesn't matter what you do whether you just listen to the sponsors or you leave my review on iTunes click on the subscribe button all those things really help but if you want to find out more head over to my website it's what bitcoin did calm click on the support section that will explain everything to you right it's actually really early here it's like 4 a.m. and I'm in Palm Springs I want to go back to bed so yeah I hope you enjoyed the show if you got any questions do reach out to me my email address is Hello or what the coin did calm [Music]

Channel: What Bitcoin Did

Views: 4,738

Rating: 4.8125 out of 5

Keywords: Bitcoin, Cyrptocurrencies, Crypto, Podcast, Trading, Investing, Mining, Tech

Id: WCC41xPHjh0

Length: 85min 13sec (5113 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Peter McCormack has no spine:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/co06ml/peter_mccormack_calls_craig_wright_wholly/ewflx4t