brockm
Mike Brock

tbd.website

@TBD. Some people have said I'm extremely reasonable person. Others strongly disagree! #bitcoin #tbd

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Last Notes

2024-04-28 01:04:35

Some Thoughts on the TikTok Ban And Liberal Democracy. https://medium.com/@mike.brock/some-thoughts-on-the-tiktok-ban-and-liberal-democracy-ed6b4ce70fd6

2024-04-21 18:56:08

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So once again, you're just so certain this world of yours will be so much more just and market forces will deliver just outcomes. You're so sure, you just shrug and say these regressions I bring up are not worth thinking about. Neat!

2024-04-21 18:37:43

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In an anarcho-capitalist future, what exactly does the poor person appeal to when the billionaire doesn't honor their commitment? What if that billionaire owns the private court for dispute resolution? The obvious problems with this extreme property maximalist view are quite simply not that hard to think about. You're just asserting moral prefepts, and acting with indignance that anyone could disagree.

2024-04-21 18:11:53

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An economic dominance can never be a form of authoritarianism, because you believe property rights are the highest moral good. Yes, I know all your arguments. And I'll just say, you've just treated my entire critique as irrelevant, because you're so certain of the objective correctness of your views based on a priori reasoning.

2024-04-21 17:47:39

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You haven't really addressed anything I've said here, so not such how to respond. You've merely just restated the case I'm criticizing and not attending to my arguments at all.

2024-04-21 17:36:48

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I actually got distracted and didn't proof read that. Here is an edited version of what I just said for clairty:
I never said that Davidson and Rees-Mogg advance the praxeological justification. I said the best attempts to justify that kind of thinking do. In fact, that the Sovereign Individual is silent on its normative foundations, and simply tracks a technological determinist argument — that to your point, the incentives leading intractably towards a certain outcome — is the entire basis for my charge of epistemic authoritarianism.
An example of what I’m saying would be the notion that say “the welfare state won’t be possible, even if people want it” in the future that is an intractible logical consequence of the incentive structures. That’s an implicit normative constraint that takes arguments about a common good that isn’t merely a feature of revealed market preferences off the table. Which, I say betrays a very extreme right-libertarian view at the bottom of the whole thesis.
So I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough in the following paragraph to separate the critique of the argument from the praxeological argument for the normative foundations of such a view. But I’d argue, if anything, I am trying to bring my critique against the strongest form of the argument. Which I don’t think Davidson and Rees-Mogg make, by the way.

2024-04-21 17:33:05

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*Rees-Mogg. My bad.

2024-04-21 17:29:51

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I never said that Davidson and Rees-Moog advance the praxeological justification. I said the best attempts to justify that kind of thinking do. In fact, that the Sovereign Individual is silent on its normative foundations, and simply tracks a technological determinist argument — that to your point, the incentives leading intractably towards a certain outcome — is the entire basis for my charge of epistemic authoritarianism.
An example of what I’m saying would be the notion that say “the welfare state won’t be possible, even if people want it” in the future that is laid out. That’s an implicit normative constraint that takes arguments about a common good that isn’t merely a feature of revealed market preferences, betrays a very extreme right-libertarian view at the bottom of the whole thesis.
So I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough in the following paragraph to separate the critique of the argument from the praxeological argument for the normative foundations of such a view. But I’d argue, if anything, I am trying to bring my critique against the strongest form of the argument. Which I don’t think Davidson and Rees-Mogg make, by the way.

2024-04-21 16:43:07

Technological determinism is a real mind virus that afflicts way too many people in my field. It’s pervasive and has led an incredibly large group of people to make dramatic philosophical errors. The book, the Sovereign Individual, has played at outsized role among many people — especially in the “web3” space — at convincing people of the inevitability of future outcomes. Balaji’s “network states” are really just another revision on these philosophical errors, born of foundationalist a priori notions about moral truths.
The best attempts at defending these moral truths — such as things like praxeology — are completely unconvincing and are just tautologies that assume the things they set out to prove. In particular, property rights as intractable consequences of the moral necessity to enable human action by a fundamental — not social — right to the product of one’s own labor.
These arguments all also boil down to “this future is going to happen whether you like it or not”, which really betrays the epistemically authoritarian nature of this thinking, which denies the possibility for, and the normative possibility of collection action in defense of a common good.

2024-04-21 16:08:16

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Yes.

2024-04-21 16:00:13

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We don’t use cash for everything.

2024-04-21 15:59:54

I will also say, this same argument, when generalized brings into question the whole concept of digital contracts as workable at all. The idea of self-executing contracts that can be used to revolutionize everything from property titles to equities trading. But any sane workable system is going to rely on truth oracles that have some social component to deal with disputes. And if that’s true, then we’re probably right back in good old regular law courts.
At which point, the question just immediately needs to be asked: why do we have these digital contracts in the first place?
I actually think this is a completely fatal blow to the entire idea of Web3. The intractable problem is staring you in the face, if you do some philosophical exploration of the people. #note1np9…3ejf

2024-04-21 15:43:07

I’m somewhat skeptical that there’s some technological solution around the corner, where the scaling issues around bitcoin are going to be solved to such a degree, that all payments themselves can be trustless.
The main reason being that all of the solutions being pursued thus far, achieve trustlessness by giving up on the possibility of recourse in the transaction. The only real counterparty probelem being solved then, is eliminating the possibility of settlement default, once a transaction has been arranged. But this has never been the only trust issue in payment arrangements.
Most of the kinds of default that people think about in the real world, have nothing to do with the possibility of non-settlement, and everything to do with the possibility of breach of contract on the delivery of goods or rendering of services. To the extent that bitcoin scaling discussions set these issues aside, and instead center the discussion around durability in only the most adversarial situations (resisting state overreach, usually) — a broader understanding of the way economic advancement comes about is ignored.
Economies don’t flourish simply because they have reliable money and payment schemes. They flourish because social trust is possible — that people will honor contracts, commitments, won’t resort to violent means of dispute resolution.
This is actually why I find the anarcho-capitalist frame of thinking around bitcoin so distracting to moving bitcoin forward. The target it’s aiming for, simply bypasses all of these notions, and is really just an exercise in question begging.
“But if we have recourse on payments, how will that prevent the government being able to regulate or censor it?”
If that’s what you think is the highest good to be considered in the project of finding ways to scale bitcoin payments, then I’d suggest that none of the solutions you land on are going to be satisfactory for mainstream use — ever. Because there can never be a way to control for matters of social trust through cryptographic protocols alone. We are not digital light beings that live inside computers, that can be forced to act or not act based on computational rules. Our interaction with any technology is always analog and mediated by a social context — where all the interesting problems of counterparty risk exist.
This is, of course, what the insight was that led to the creation of tbDEX. Instead of any doubts being raised in me about this observation, the stridency of my stance here has only increased, as I’ve watched the conversation move forward.

2024-04-21 14:37:29

Elections are a legitimizing function for political power. That is the role they play. Approaching electoral choices like a purity test and one of cosmic significance to your character, is downstream of some very impoverished understandings of both democracy and society itself.
Ultimately, we have to confront the pragmatic reality that we are ultimately navigating a hierarchy of good. If you resist this notion, you’re actually participating in a fairly dangerous game of reducing the umbrella of interests the political economy will be responsive to, to the most craven — if for no other reason than smaller polities are easier to capture.
For me, character is just as important as policy in thinking about these things, because the question I ask myself about who I want having power, is not one merely about “what policies does this person support?” — but a more subtle one: “who would I feel more comfortable disagreeing with, knowing the conversation can continue, and that our current policy commitments remain, in perpetuity, provisional?”

2024-04-20 02:23:20

People wonder why I have chosen to infuse philosophy so deeply in my work style and even professionally. Daniel explains the power of this better than I can, in this 10 minute video. He is one of my personal heroes. I got to meet him once, and it was one of the few times I got genuinely star struck. He was gentle, patient and kind and seemed to enjoy answering all my dumb questions.
https://x.com/bigthink/status/1781367395107357144?s=46&t=8zspgFtU1sQttMY8dBvhOQ

2024-04-13 19:01:37

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You seem to be reaching a very violent conclusion.

2024-04-13 18:27:49

Are we a fragmented society of hostile factions fighting for dominance, or do we contain and retain some collective capacity for maintaining some conception of the common good? And I note that both external and internal arguments are being made to undermine that notion. Some of you, are taken by those notions, and for that I can only express my sadness. Even I hope for your redemption and return to the project.

2024-04-13 18:20:54

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*With absolute seriousness. Damn typo!

2024-04-13 18:19:26

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And I would suggest, without absolute seriousness and concern, that only the conclusion of the necessity of violence is left once you foreclose the possibility of argument. The totalitarian impulse is revealed. And the liberal like me, is trying desperately to convince people that in order for us to hang on to our freedom, we must also cradle and nurture some conception of the common good.

2024-04-13 18:15:43

The problem with identity politics often isn't the social injustices they highlight. Those things are often quite obvious and hard for us to ignore. The problem is when we close off the possibility of redemption. Because if we can't see each other as redeemable, then we really have no basis for sharing a civilization. And I make this same general argument as harshly to my right as I make it to my left.
And I'll complete the thought for you: if there's no redemption possible, there's also no point in having an argument at all. And from that conclusion, nothing good comes.

2024-04-13 17:37:23

Just because someone is wrong about something, doesn't make them a bad person. What matters more, when it comes to character, is if they're open to having their mind changed.
... and if you're not, in principle, open to having your mind changed, we're having a whole other conversation all together.
I would also suggest that people be preoccupied with this basic insight, because I might suggest it's actually the basis for civilization existing at all.

2024-04-11 15:40:31

The thing about the stability of systems, is it has absolutely nothing to do with ossification and everything to do with adaptability. People misunderstand this to their peril. In all domains: politics, economics, and yes: bitcoin.

2024-04-09 23:11:40

Was happy to speak at the Bitcoin Policy Summit in DC this morning about why I think Bitcoin is valuable. https://youtu.be/1yzuEipN-D0?si=jdY1gmagoD4xi4Zj

2024-04-03 17:59:58

I have an incomplete essay on my criticisms about the Austrian school. It's not complete. I might finish it. I might not. But the core thrust of the argument is there. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R2YqH4kTtVhoZdtFT5t8TPEsdUAKchSOU2V1U1eMC5I/edit?usp=drivesdk

2024-04-03 16:19:25

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Not an argument. Thanks for playing.

2024-04-03 16:15:54

Land taxes are the most defensible form of taxation. Fight me.

2024-03-31 19:20:49

Uh, my essay taking on The Sovereign Individual is getting very long. It's greater than a 20 minute read at this point. And I have also found myself bringing in Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia" into it. I am approaching my critiques very much through the lens of Epistemic Liberalism, that I've been kicking around. But yeah, this is going to be some deeply academic reading.

2024-03-31 01:09:06

More thoughts. docs.google.com/document/d/1cc…

2024-03-30 18:52:34

Re-reading parts of The Sovereign Individual for the critique I'm writing about Davidson and Rees-Mogg's arguments, and the thing that really stands out at me -- and I think this is also a problem that the hyperbitcoinization crowd suffers from -- is this almost religious belief in technological determinism, as the way to predict the future.
Technology is a powerful driver of culture, and in some respects can just be considers part of culture, so it goes without saying that technology helps shape and influence society. I'd never argue against a thing. But I would generally argue against any thinking that views culture and politics as *downstream* of technology. It's a complex interplay between human nature, individual and group differences, economic conditions, political climate, etc. These things interact with each other. Technology doesn't just drive all the others towards some deterministic end. I think that's actually silly!

2024-03-26 04:26:24

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I think Trump is a pretty dangerous figure. And if you think that's TDS, I'm not sure that I care.

2024-03-26 03:55:23

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*externalities

2024-03-26 03:54:11

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But I'm not trying to reach it from the top down. I don't know what you're insisting on a directionality. Individual and collective interests can be in tension with each other, and the maxima of the latter seems to be highly contingent on some concept of the former. As demonstrated by collective action problems (see: tragedy of the commons, uncaptured negative exterbalities, incentive structures for non-violent dispute resolutions like rule-of-law).

2024-03-26 03:46:12

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The idea that freedom means solely pursuing one's own chosen purpose, without regard for any broader social or ethical context, is a shallow and ultimately incoherent view. True freedom involves more than just individual choice - it requires taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions, recognizing our obligations to others and to society as a whole, and working to create the conditions that enable all people to pursue their own flourishing in a meaningful and sustainable way.
My personal opinion, and what I'm gesturing towards in all my arguments here is that a genuine conception of freedom must be grounded in a sense of shared purpose and common good, not just isolated individual preferences. It's about balancing personal autonomy with social responsibility, and understanding that our own well-being is deeply interconnected with the well-being of our communities and institutions.

2024-03-26 03:41:46

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I think America has a surprisingly concordant view of the common good, when you look at opinion polls 60-70% of Americans generally agree on most things. There's an institutional failure occuring in the two-party system with minority constituency capture. An even bigger problem is one of the parties has collapsed into a personality cult.

2024-03-26 03:36:02

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I think this is true. But the problem is even worse than this. I think things like anarcho-capitalism are basically a kind of neo-feudalism that is obsessed with self-justifying itself around a conception of property rights maximalism that claims to be libertarians on a first principles basis, while only paying attention to initial conditions and then falling back into a cold transactional logic from there.

2024-03-26 03:26:57

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Liberal democracy is supposed to be a political answer to that question.

2024-03-26 03:16:15

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I don't claim the common good exists in a foundationalist way. I am arguing that conception of it, is necessary for a stable society. You're the one that's insisting that any ethical foundation must be derived from purportedly self-evident truths or objective truths about individual rights. I make no such claim. Either about individual rights or collective rights.

2024-03-26 02:41:53

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This might be the dumbest thing I've read all day, to be honest.

2024-03-26 02:39:56

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I sense you are a fan of Rothbard, et al. -- who, quite frankly I have almost nothing good to say about.

2024-03-26 02:38:28

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How am I suffering from an ontological fallacy, exactly? I'm not the one insisting that the normative grounding of my ethics needs to be erased in any universalist natural rights theory. You're doing that. Not me.

2024-03-26 02:27:28

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It's just as "real" as any social construct. Like language. Which is once again, why I think you're engaged in a kind of ontological fallacy.

2024-03-26 02:10:19

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I think you're engaged in a kind of ontological fallacy here, where you insist there's something necessary to directionality. The collective interest and the individual interest can simply be in tension, and mediate each other. Insisting on a simplistic grounding, as say praxeology tries to do, to me, is just weird. It just rejects any kind of dynamical notion around competing equities, and demands a universal starting point.

2024-03-26 00:38:28

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I am advancing my own category of what I call the “fascist impulse”, yes.
For me, fascism is better understood as an impulse in people to wield permanent political and economic power, by capitalizing on cynicism of polities, and using cultural control (propaganda) and pseudo-religious mythos to contain the political conservation in a cultural envelope, that leads to extreme depoliticization of the average member of the polity.
I think this more intellectually robust characterization of fascism was always staring political science in the face, if you just came at it from a little category theory, and some analytical moral epistemology.

2024-03-26 00:23:43

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You have the play the political game and push for reform. I don’t know what else to say. Just throwing up your hands and excising yourself is exactly the kind of depoliticization that fascists pray on.

2024-03-25 23:36:51

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Kind of. And I think unconstrained libertarianism, particularly propertarian forms of libertarians are just outright fascist. See: Hans Hermann-Hoppe.

2024-03-25 23:12:54

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Sure, I am trying to tighten up the category of what I think a fascist is. Guilty as charged.
I just think when you think about fascism as an impulse or a tendency and ground it in things like a the desire for strong leadership, the fear of social chaos and disorder, the resentment of perceived enemies and outsiders, and the longing for a sense of national or ethnic identity and purpose, you can kind of make sense of the apparent contradictions in someone like Gabbard, Trump or Bannon.
Basically all intellectualism boils down to just trying to formulate better categories, ultimately.
In other words, I’m trying to set aside the idealistic frame in which most political science tries to operate and say: guys, we’ve learned a lot of about human nature and how it operates in political economies, so there might be a more useful framing for understanding the apparent ideological contradictions we see … which are only contradictions in the idealist notions of these ideologies. But not contradictions at all, if reduced to core tendencies.
What I think is when you do this simple reframing, you can see the fascist golem for what it is. I actually think we try hard not to see it, and make bad mistakes trying to categorize it, because a synthesis like this has better explanatory power, in my view.
In conclusion, to me, fascism is better understood as an impulse in people to wield permanent political and economic power, by capitalizing on cynicism of polities, and using cultural control (propaganda) and pseudo-religious mythos to contain the political conservation in a cultural envelope, that leads to extreme depoliticization of the average member of the polity.

2024-03-25 22:50:35

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I think you’re mostly getting my idea. I think it’s also worth mentioning that in many ways, classical liberals like say Locke and Jefferson, were in their own ways, skeptical of libertarianism (even though they didn’t have a word for it) as a standalone ideological orientation, hence the fact they were social contract theorists — which by definition is trying to mediate individual rights against some conception of the common good.
I’d go further and suggest that the emergence of state capacity libertarian and liberal nationalist thought are both re-evaluations of these insights by a bunch of former libertarianism and neoliberals who have recognized this very danger and are now trying to cope with it, in a contemporaneous conversation.

2024-03-25 18:42:00

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I will try to respond with as much academic clarity as possible, to avoid any misunderstanding of exactly what I mean when I talk about uncontained libertarianism:
Libertarianism, while a vital force for individual freedom and resistance against tyranny, can become self-defeating and enable fascism when taken to an extreme and not constrained by a commitment to the common good. The libertarian focus on individual liberty and skepticism of collective action, when unmoored from any conception of public interest or social responsibility, can erode the very foundations of a free and open society.
By making epistemic arguments against the possibility or knowability of the common good, radical libertarianism can fuel a market fundamentalism that concentrates power in the hands of the wealthy, dismantles social protections, and undermines the capacity for democratic self-governance. This atomistic individualism creates a vacuum of meaning and solidarity that is easily exploited by fascist demagogues promising a return to unity and purpose through authoritarianism. Thus, an improperly contained libertarianism that rejects any notion of the public good or legitimate government can paradoxically enable a far greater threat to human freedom in the form of fascist tyranny. The libertarian impulse must be balanced with a commitment to the rule of law, democratic institutions, and some conception of our shared responsibilities and interests as a society.

2024-03-25 16:31:54

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Of course it has to be contained. The individual is not the only equity in a society. There must be a social interest considered, as a prerequisite to encouraging cooperation, rather than violence.

2024-03-25 00:12:45

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Oh, I would argue that praxeology is complete epistemic nonsense. And thus, anything that rests upon its axioms, is not truth-reifying by definition.

2024-03-25 00:07:12

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Liberal aristocracies can form, can be corrupt, and can run amok. But that doesn’t make them fascists. It’s why they’re haunted by their mistakes, and waste away painting dead soldiers. It’s not that it’s not a failure of liberalism. It’s just that, well, it maintained the pretense. That at least counted for something. These fascists … there’s no pretense.

2024-03-25 00:04:05

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None of these people served the fascists, actually. But Nixon was a cheap date, to be fair.

2024-03-24 22:58:34

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It’s not a wrong take, I suppose. I’d frame it much differently. But, yeah.

2024-03-24 22:57:30

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“He is, after all, very stupid and very easy to control. And he’s ours. Good boy, Donald.”

2024-03-24 22:29:11

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Mine involves two precepts: cooperation is better than violence. And the truth can be known. The fascist doesn’t really care which one of these he needs to disabuse you of. It only takes one. He’s happy to talk the language of Capitalism (Putin) or Communism (Xi) to you. Whatever it takes to get you to take a knee, and admit there’s no point in fighting it.

2024-03-24 22:20:39

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Although, I can imagine having it framed this way, could conceivably cause one to question for themselves, whether they want to be one?

2024-03-24 22:19:16

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If you read my narrative here, and your sentiments are the exact inverse of how I framed it here … then you are a fascist.

2024-03-24 21:44:40

The liberals thought we did a pretty good job at fascist containment. But the fascist laid low and found weaknesses. It always knew if it was going to take down liberalism, it was going to be from the inside. So it buried itself in its institutions, and started looking for weaknesses.
When the time was just right, the fascists surrounded both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party (and yes, this is very much an America-centric conversation), and out popped populists on the left, and populists on the right. The 2008 Financial Crisis was the moment they waited for.
This is where all the famous “libertarians” line Rockwell, and Block and Hoppe, send out their troops to seize the Republican Party. They knew what they had to do. Goebbels had it all written down for them. He passed on the fascists knowledge of how to weaponize the human spirit against itself.
So it sought to establish the media infrastructure that would ultimately become the replacement media, having fully discredited the establishment, elevate a fool like Donald Trump, who we can control, with his stupid narcissism. But we’ve made the masses just so mad enough at the elites, and fueled this culture war, so expertly to bring us to this moment … that in your anger, which they so expertly controlled, as their father Goebbels intended of you, that you will hand control of your precious stupid little liberal institutions over to us. And our friends Putin, and Orban are waiting for us guys. “Let’s put these liberal fuckers down for good. We just need to get rid of thjs Trump guy, right after he blows this whole constitution thing up.” Then they’ll figure out what to do with Beijing and their Eastern totalitarianism, which they think is way less sexy than their paeanistic stuff. So they’ll fight that out later.

2024-03-24 20:32:56

It’s what makes the Austrian school such a pernicious school of thought in my mind. It’s why its produced so many outright fascists! Its goal is to convince the liberal by their predilections to reason, to give up on any notion of a Greater Good.
Its goal is two-fold: to convince you there is no Greater Good (to sell you on cynicism). But if you’re just too romantic for that, convince you it’s impossible to know what the Greater Good is (so why try? Leave it to the market!)
The fascist wants to convince you of that, because he’s got big plans. And you’re in them. #note10u7…9n5a

2024-03-24 20:29:21

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It’s what makes the Austrian school such a pernicious school of thought in my mind. It’s why it’s produced so many outright fascists! It’s goal is to convince the liberal by their predilections to reason, to give up on any notion of a Greater Good.

2024-03-24 20:25:55

It always made perfect sense that fascists travelled in libertarian circles. There should have been, in retrospect, nothing at all surprising about it. If libertarianism is not met by a representative of the collective interest, fascism just comes out the other side. It should come as no surprise to true liberals that the fascist would want to convince you there is no collective interest. They’ll never convince socialists of that. That’s why they whisper in your ear.

2024-03-24 20:10:53

The libertarian impulse is a beautiful, necessary and emancipatory part of the human spirit. Without it, we’d all already be in bondage. Or dead. But the libertarian impulse, improperly contained is ultimately self-destructive and closes in on its own contradictions. It should actually not that all be surprising, to find that when, uncontained, its contradictions emerge in the fascist tendency.

2024-03-18 19:44:32

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This is actually beautiful.

2024-03-18 17:04:56

When the crux of your argument is to just start demanding the other party subscribe to more simplistic categories of thought, you’re through the Dunning-Kruger looking class.
When they start dismissing nuance and complexity as a lack of critical thinking skills, you know you’ve come face to face with the golem of anti-intellectualism.

2024-03-17 13:23:23

Is it true because you want it to be? Or is it true because it fits the facts?

2024-03-16 14:47:18

Culture is an emergent epistemology. The relationship between an emergent epistemology and a person is the person's belief that it is best for their sentiments and goals.

2024-03-14 00:28:06

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How is forcing the sale of TikTok to a U.S. successor owner doing that, exactly?

2024-03-13 18:12:50

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I do think that people who think everything the government does is instinctively a slippery slope towards totalitarianism is moronic. I'm sorry. It's paranoid stupidity. What do people want from me? This chaos climbing is exhausting.

2024-03-13 18:06:21

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Well, unlike a lot of people in this space, I actually think we need to protect our institutions in order to protect liberty. I think the people who argue the government should have no power to mediate any of these issues, are literally the useful idiots of authoritarians around the world.

2024-03-13 17:55:51

I have literally no problem with the US government forcing divestment of TikTok by ByteDance. None. I don't see how they can "ban" it without running afoul of the First Amendment -- and should they try to engage in direct censorship of the platform through something like mandatory filtering by ISPs, I'll be right there with you all.
But if you think forcing a Chinese company, serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, that wants to spy on our kids, and manipulate their worldview, with the goal of destabilizing our institutions is "all's fair love and war", due to some highfalutin libertarian principle, than you're actually a moron.

2024-03-12 18:03:11

My latest Medium post (I’m basically at one-per-year at this point) https://medium.com/@mike.brock/bitcoin-maximalism-is-dead-long-live-bitcoin-36df4ba12eff

2023-12-14 15:06:27

Saying you choose to abstain, because you don't believe in settling for the least bad option is political equivalent of saying "the cancer will definitely kill me. But the chemotherapy is really bad for my body, and I want nothing to do with that. So it's tragic if the cancer eats me alive, but I want nothing to do with my hair falling out."

2023-12-02 13:44:09

The more certain you are, the less you know. This isn't some throw away line. The more you foreclose the possibility of being wrong, the less likely you are to listen to arguments against your beliefs, or believe evidence that contravenes it.
I look around, and I see more and more people enslaved to a rabid certainty of what's right and what the future holds.
If you start a sentence with "nothing can convince me ..." you might well say "let me warn you, I'm a closed-minded zealot on this particular topic."

2023-10-28 17:31:31

One thing that doesn't get talked about ever, is what left-progressives, libertarians and anarchists all have in common: they all have excessively romantic notions about unconstrained human nature. The power structures they're focused on don't necessarily overlap in big ways. But the mistake is the same.

2023-10-27 12:11:44

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My point is the temporal nature of savings is a social construct. Even with sound money, it's not a perfect proxy for the availability of capital, nor does it account for capital depreciation across time, relative to the production in which the savings were accumulated.
You can do some basic thought experiments here to realize how this concept is purely normative.
Let's say you diligently saved up bitcoin for your whole life, and then suddenly, one day, every factory in the planet shut down. For whatever reason. Alien mind control, whatever. The point is you just have to imagine everyone stopped making "stuff" all at once.
What would your bitcoin be "worth"?
It's a silly example, but it reveals the socially contingent nature of all of this.

2023-10-27 12:05:12

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People don't climb out of poverty by saving. They climb out of poverty by climbing the income ladder, and then diverting excess income into savings.

2023-10-27 11:53:44

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It's a major a fallacy that the poor tend to stay poor. We have longitudinal data on income mobility we can look at to see if this is really true. And it's not.
Based on long-term income mobility data, we can see that about 80% of the people who were poor in 2010, are no longer poor today. About 20% of them have moved into the top two quintiles for income.
So the argument that there's an intractable poverty trap that's been created by fiat currency just isn't true.

2023-10-27 11:50:30

There's no such thing as an objective measurement in macroeconomics. You're always measuring from some normative frame. In other words, relative to what you think *ought* to be true about the world.
There's no such thing as objective value. There's no such thing as objective measure of inflation (no, seriously).
Prices emerge from our preferences. Value emerges from our sentiments.
Sound money doesn't change this. Because the whole concept of sound money emerges from a normative foundations, on how money ought to work. Why should money retain its value across time and space? The only reason is because we all want it to! Not because that's objectively more efficient.

2023-10-27 11:12:57

One of the biggest fallacies I see when talking about inflation in terms of savings debasement, and in particular, focusing on how it disproportionately hurts the lowest percentiles of income earners, is the fact that the lowest percentiles have no savings. That's what being poor is. If they had excess income, they'd have savings and assets. But they don't. And the poor never have! So the only meaningful way to judge if the poor are being disproportionately affected by inflation, is to compare their income across time, to prices across time.
When we look at income data from the past few years, it actually turns out, that the poorest Americans saw their incomes grow by over 20% since the pandemic.
The massive rise in wages for low-skilled workers was actually one of the major self-reinforcing drivers of inflation.

2023-10-23 02:16:03

Yep. https://image.nostr.build/168e74efbdc3208150efd417bf9e4a82ebf60714c7bb2a87e0123fd6a179ee56.jpg

2023-10-22 17:04:23

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The vast majority of humans will give up liberties in exchange for security if they’re afraid. History shows us this time and time again. Bitcoin isn’t going to change this. There’s going to be no spiritual awakening on this. We are hard wired — literally in our DNA — to have a tendency to close ranks with our tribe when the tribe is threatened. It’s bedrock human nature shit.
This is why maintaining stability is so fucking important. People embracing collapse and chaos as an opportunity for some libertarian or anarchist awakening are in la-la land.

2023-10-22 16:39:10

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People need to wake up from their fairy tales. Bitcoin can make the world a better place. But the idea it’s going to stop these forces from rolling over us and killing us all, is so beyond naive, I don’t know what else to do, but start using more expletives. 🤷‍♂️

2023-10-22 15:42:39

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US real GDP is positive. And wage growth has actually, in 2023, referred to its long-term mean. https://image.nostr.build/b043d967eb3cfafff0526a49db741d35f67cebe83d02601c077d2caefebedc6c.jpg

2023-10-22 15:37:48

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We are not currently in sub-inflationary wage growth. Wage growth has been outpacing price growth for some time now in the United States.

2023-10-22 15:20:06

We are neither in any economic recession or depression. The fact people keep saying this makes me think we need to turn the whole Internet off.

2023-10-14 21:40:35

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If you can't repatriate your money, then it's a pretty shitty alternative to the dollar!

2023-10-14 19:45:56

Last year, America declinists: "Look! The dollar is finished! India is buying Russian oil in rubles and has signed a currency swap agreement!"
Today, Russian capital controls: "Hold my beer!"
https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/oil-gas/indian-oil-companies-unable-to-repatriate-300-400-million-in-dividends-from-russia/amp_articleshow/99871824.cms

2023-10-08 17:23:58

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If you find my prose to be too prolix for you, I apologize. If you'd like to say something substantive or constructive, I'm happy to engage. But otherwise, I'll just step away from this thread.

2023-10-08 05:58:06

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Well, it's an empirical question at the end of the day. I'll either be right or I'll be wrong. I think a lot of people are hopelessly naive and wandering astray in the fog of misleading vividness. But that's just my opinion. Take it or leave it.

2023-10-08 04:33:41

I think the situation in Israel is going to be dramatically destabilizing to global security.

2023-10-06 16:44:22

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There's an oddly persistent narrative among some quarters that seeks to attribute the complexities of the global stage directly to the doorstep of Washington, D.C. Nowhere is this more evident than in the discourse surrounding the global oil industry. A fluctuation in oil prices? Blame the Fed. A shift in OPEC's stance? Surely, it must be the result of a Federal Reserve policy.
Such attributions aren't just overly simplistic, they're fundamentally misguided. The Fed, while influential, is not an omnipotent entity controlling every ebb and flow of global oil prices. The oil market is dictated by a myriad of factors — geopolitical tensions, supply-demand dynamics, technological advancements, and yes, sometimes, monetary policy. But to single out the Fed as the solitary puppet master is not only intellectually lazy but also flies in the face of the intricate workings of global economies.
Furthermore, it's telling how this narrative — that every significant world event has its roots in U.S. policy — manages to simultaneously overinflate American influence and undermine the agency of other global actors. Consider Russia's actions in Ukraine, or the socioeconomic dynamics of the Global South. To ascribe these solely to U.S. policy or, more specifically, to the Federal Reserve, is to view the world through a severely distorted lens. It glosses over centuries of regional history, deep-seated nationalistic sentiments, and local political dynamics.

2023-10-06 16:31:45

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The oil crisis is an under-talked about factor in the general trajectory of inflation, the automotive industry, and even urban development in the US. It’s underplayed just how much the OPEC bloc reshaped the economics of the 80s and beyond. The profound economic consequences of the Oil Crisis rippled across sectors and daily life. The sharp rise in oil prices introduced pervasive inflationary pressures that directly impacted heating, transportation, and production costs. This not only contributed to global economic downturns but also significantly altered trade dynamics, exacerbating trade deficits and leading to greater foreign debt for many oil-importing nations.
In the automotive realm, there was a marked shift in consumer preferences towards fuel efficiency. This trend, in turn, opened the door for Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda, known for their compact and fuel-efficient cars, to secure significant market shares in the US. The crisis also catalyzed the introduction of stricter emissions and mileage standards, pushing automakers towards technological innovations.
Urban development too felt the ripple effects. The burgeoning cost of gasoline posed challenges to the rapid suburban expansion witnessed in the post-WWII era. Commuters began to reconsider the feasibility of long drives to work, leading to a renewed interest in public transit as an energy-efficient alternative. Furthermore, the increased costs associated with heating homes drove a push for better insulation and overall energy efficiency in construction.
The way some portray the "petrodollar" system, suggesting that it's predominantly a golden ticket for the United States, really misses the mark. Yes, the pricing of oil in dollars does generate a certain demand for the USD. However, to suggest this has been a unilateral boon for the U.S. while ignoring the significant windfalls OPEC nations have enjoyed, is a bit naive.
Let's break it down. OPEC nations, via this arrangement, have not just stacked up substantial revenues but have transformed their economies, cities, and geopolitical positions. Just look at the vast sovereign wealth funds they've built over the years, all driven by petrodollar influx. These funds don't just sit idly – they're active, global investors and have a significant say in global financial markets.
Furthermore, this dollar-for-oil setup also inadvertently ties America's hands to the fortunes and stability of oil-exporting nations. It's a double-edged sword. On one hand, yes, there's a demand for dollars. On the other, it places the U.S. in the midst of geopolitical quagmires and demands a continued diplomatic, and sometimes military, engagement in often unpredictable regions.

2023-10-06 00:27:58

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I think it’s mostly a fallacy that product quality has been falling across the board. It’s been a common trope. Even when I was growing up in the 80s, my parents would say the old adage that “they don’t make things like they used to”. But this relies on an incredibly distorted false nostalgia.
How often does a television repairman come to your house and replace the vacuum tubes? When was the last time your radiator in your car exploded because you were running the air condition in hot weather? How often does the compressor in fridge break down, and refilled and re-pressurized with coolant? When was the last time you heard of a car needing its transmission to be rebuilt when it had less than 150,000 miles on the odometer?
These things were all common occurrences and were considered par for the course in the past. But people will swear up and down that all these things were built to much higher levels of quality in the past.
People’s common retort is to point out that a lot of these goods have a lot of “plastic” in them, instead of metal. As if, it’s always preferable to make everything out of metal than plastic. Metal is heavier. It bends. It conducts electricity (when maybe you don’t want it to). When it bends, it doesn’t bend back. But people will swear this is a hallmark of “quality”. Which I think is complete nonsense.
Anyways, I know you’re talking about food, here. And there is some reason to believe that fruits and vegetables have become somewhat less nutritious over time, as a result of nutrient-depletion in the soil from intense industrial farming. However, to attribute that to inflationary monetary policy, instead of the Green Revolution — which by the way, has almost completely eliminated famine from the entire planet, would be a very silly thing for people to argue.

2023-10-05 22:42:13

Kind of surprised: a lot of the people I thought my most recent WBD interview would really irk, have had pretty positive things to say about my arguments -- even if they didn't fully agree with me!

2023-07-07 01:25:11

Tried Threads. If I'm being honest with myself, I think it might be widely successful. But not necessarily because I think it's good. I think it's because they've clearly chosen to go all-in on algorithmic dopamine hits, and engagement farming to maximize addiction. Which, let's be honest, is bad for humanity and democracy.

2023-06-21 15:39:32

Lot's of exciting things happening in Lagos! https://nostr.build/i/8b23ab948652c51a9515b64419513867b80da3525b9fd285bafffecf8c42ddb0.jpg

2023-06-18 16:24:45

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Well, the politics of virtue is not terribly logical. It’s filled with arbitrary lines being drawn all over.

2023-06-18 15:35:18

Hey, it’s my first blog post in like 20 years. I feel like I have stuff to say. https://medium.com/@mike.brock/the-politics-of-virtue-versus-the-politics-of-consequence-dfbe6932ab83

2023-06-13 12:00:30

It really is time to end the app store monopolies.

2023-06-10 05:12:18

My daughter Autumn, has released a studio recorded version of her original song, Out of Line. Give it a listen! https://tidal.com/track/299043672