'Self-ownership' is one of the most intellectually and morally incoherent ideas in the complex mix of bad ideas cohabiting parasitically with good one that afflicts our society. To 'own' something is to be separate from it so as to exercise control and influence over it. Robert Nozick used this logic to argue it is OK to voluntarily sell oneself into slavery. Most libertarians loved his book 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia.'
But who exercises control over your self so as to own it?
A self exists as an in individual expression of relationships, some of which, were they different, would result in a very different self. My self is what it is because of where I grew up, the key people who influenced my life, my physical capabilities, and more. It is a pattern emerging from its history, not a thing to which events happen. It is more verb than object. One can own an object but not own a verb.
That means I cannot separate my self from anything but its immediate context, and the thought that I can arises from pretty superficial thinking.
I used to be a libertarian myself until I finally grasped that all its good words about freedom and such completely ignored the contexts within which we acted. At that point I finally grasped why so many libertarians are actually more sociopaths than respecters of human well-being.
I'm so grateful that you wrote this, I took a position in Bitcoin and Ethereum awhile back and was totally ignorant of this. I know what my nature is too and this Bitcoin position will have to go. Is Ethereum in the same Category?
I'm in the same boat. Except I knew it was wrong from the off. I ignored my ethics because my friends kept showing me how much money they were making. It was going up 20% a day. They made me feel like an idiot. 'Have fun being poor' came up a lot. They were laughing at me that I would ignore free money just for some dumb moral objection. So I'm ashamed to say I folded. Anyway, it's not going so well now, so I get what I deserve. Happily it was just play money, but even so, I feel bad about it, because it's the principle of the thing.
Excellent piece. I honestly know little about Bitcoin, but I do know how currencies work; and this isn’t it: Bitcoin is a ponzo scheme.
That said, freedom for guys like Thiel appear to be only about two things:
1. Freedom for them is to do as they please; completely unregulated, regardless of what they destroy.
2. To create a monetary system which would give them control over nations. They aren’t just trying to destroy democracy, they’re trying to destroy the world order.
Bitcoin is not just a Ponzi scheme. It’s either a Ponzi scheme disguised as a money laundering operation or a money laundering operation disguised as a Ponzi scheme.
Most currencies today are fiat currencies including Bitcoin; they aren’t tied to an asset like gold or silver or other commodities.
That said, they derive their value based on a country’s wealth, health, interest rates, capital inflows and outflows, etc…And especially its ability to tax and raise revenue from its citizens. Yet, Bitcoin doesn’t reflect the characteristics of any of these other fiat currencies.
And unlike most currencies, it can’t be exchanged for goods and services; just other currencies based on the value of the US dollar.
Sure, some businesses will accept bitcoin for payment, but most businesses won’t, and given its volatility, I doubt they ever will; again!
So someone needs to explain to me how this fiat currency actually works and why it’s so incredible. It derives its value from what exactly? A belief system or trust? Perhaps Both?
Bottom line, belief systems will be the death of us all. In fact, we’re in this position today thanks to a belief system; our country is currently being run by a bunch of White Nationalist fascists with a depraved belief system.
And just as the destruction the religious fascists are doing to America, Bitcoin will be the cause of the destruction of us all, because it doesn’t take much to destroy trust or one’s beliefs; especially in this day and age. IMHO..:)
100%. Thanks for making me think about this in more depth, Mike.
I work in an industry adjacent to the crypto/blockchain industry. I view it as a Ponzi scheme that limits expansion and is not inclusive. My 80+ year old parents would hate crypto. I purchased $100 of crypto to test it and never got all my money out. It’s expensive to transact in, and slow. And you can’t sell unless someone is willing to buy and vice versa. Thiel and his comrades want to get their money out of crypto, so they want us and the USA government to buy in, making us poorer and them exponentially richer. Then since our money is locked up, Thiel and company can dictate to us what we purchase and who we buy from. It’s a system created to control us.
I've never been anywhere near the industry but even when I first heard about it I thought Ponzi scheme. Additionally, I was immediately concerned about the amount of energy needed to even mine it. I can't imagine that mining bitcoin is a good use of our global resources.
Exactly. Advocates think it's great because governments don't control it. Bollox. They do. Look at Trump's influence. A tweet from him or Elon can move the market by billions. How is that a good thing? And of course it's run and influenced by a host of bad actors, crooks and conmen like Saylor and Bankman Fried and CZ.
This is brutal in the best way, Mike. You basically walked through the whole “I’m just a nice guy helping teachers in Africa” costume and showed there’s a Curtis Yarvin hiding underneath, taking notes.
I keep asking Bitcoin people the same question you do: if this is freedom tech, why do all the aspiring feudal lords love it so much more than the single mom at the grocery store. Funny how “sovereignty” always seems to mean capital gets a passport and everyone else gets austerity.
The Arendt framing is dead on. The danger is not the cartoon villain in a cape. It is the guy who insists he is pro democracy while building the plumbing the anti democrats need and then demanding we judge him only by his vibes.
Never look away is the line. Especially from the projects we are secretly hoping will save us from having to do the slow, boring work of actual democracy.
There was a structural risk, in neoliberalism, yes. Not because neoliberalism is fascism, but because it undermined the power balance in the political economy, that permitted capital to defang labor interests, yes.
I was referring to the immediate wake of WWII, when leaders like Truman, Attlee, King and St. Laurent, and such were in power, when the decision was made not to overthrow Franco, to let Salazar's Portugal into NATO, to leave Vatican City (which exists because of a deal with Mussolini to end the Prisoner in the Vatican era) alone, to leave Hirohito on the throne of Japan instead of at the very least forcing him to abdicate in favour of Akihito, to let Unit 731 walk free after their horrors, to let a bunch of low-level Nazis stay in the West German government.
The fascists, from what I can tell, were allowed to stay in the room by the very people who'd just defeated fascists on the battlefield.
Neoliberalism came later; the rot of fascism was allowed to fester right from the start.
(Another example of this further back in history, specifically in the United States, was the Amnesty Act of 1872, which likely ultimately ushered in Jim Crow and destroyed multiracial democracy in the southeast by letting a bunch of ex-Confederate oathbreakers back into political office.)
You are most likely right about the demographics of Bitcoin leadership (a strange term for a 'decentralised network'). However, focusing on demographics allows the 'fascists' to throw the argument back at you: "If BTC is so fascist, then why do self-identified progressives work on it and use it?"
This doesn't disprove your point, but it highlights the risk of attributing the 'fascism' of BTC solely to the intentions of its supporters.
We could conduct empirical sociological research on BTC, but we don't need to. As you state in your first post, BTC's monetary policy ('hard money') makes the point for us. Regardless of anyone's intentions, BTC's design means it cannot be used to serve the demos; it is built to serve those who own the most (i.e. plutocracy).
One way to apply Arendt here is to note that the system, not Eichmann, determined Eichmann's morality. Of course, Arendt's goal was to highlight that individual agency and the ability to think remain our responsibility. These remain one of the biggest barriers to normalising evil.
We must distinguish between the operator and the architecture. An individual might act with good intentions, but if the architecture is designed for plutocracy, their intentions are eventually subsumed by the system's logic. Refusing the system needs to be an option and, depending on context, needs to be prioritised.
A crucial variable is how accepted the system is. As long as it isn't mainstream, it is presumably better to refuse it if its design is to cause harm. But if it becomes inescapable, the ethical calculus shifts to how one operates within those restrictions.
The bottom line is the need for thought and awareness—something that neither 'critics from the outside' nor 'reformists from the inside' are doing particularly well.
Thanks again for these thoughtful contributions and the self-critique at the tail end, it's often times the most valuable and most effective critique we can do!
I don’t know why you’d subject yourself to a Libertarian version of “Surrounded.” Trying to convince Libertarians of anything is a fools errand and even questioning their dogma tells them that you are an inferior life form.
I spent deep time trying to listen to what’s going on with Crypto and its existence is justified by declaring government “fiat” currency invalid by its very nature. But Cypto is also based on nothing of “real value,” so it is a form of Fiat Currency as well.
Every argument they make about Government Fiat applies to Crypto, no matter how long they explain the Blockchain and all the algorithms that supposedly make it more secure and stable. All these measures were set up by people. Every artificial system is manipulatable. You’re just pitting the “Full Faith and credit of the US government” vs. Libertarian’s full Faith and credit in the Broligarchy.
That is to say, it’s all premised on the axiom that Private power is more legitimate that Government power, no matter what form government takes. They aren’t going to budge from that point and if you point out that could lead to occasional Hitlers, they will find that more acceptable than, say, an Income Tax.
When Thiel says that Democracy is incompatible with Freedom, it is clear he only expects freedom to be something accessible to certain people. Protecting the world from the oncoming hordes is just new fangled Hobbes. Grok, or the Blockchain or whatever is their Leviathan.
the real issue that people who advocate for the "good" use of crypto never grapple with is the fact that "good" uses like nonprofits, iranian dissidents, etc. tend to be poor while the evil people who want to move money around the world freely tend to be incredibly rich.
as a result well north of 99% of the actual utility of bitcoin/crypto/etc. accrues to kleptocrats, oligarchs, drug cartels, etc. etc. compared to russian billionaires and the sinaloa cartel using crypto to move their yacht money around sanctions, nonprofits are a teeny tiny blip.
There are as you say, people who can cross red lines into what some might call moral hazard territory on the grounds that their intentions are good. When they see that you will not cross such red lines because the moral hazard is more accurately termed an abyss, they are made furious because you have (in their eyes) ripped away their self-justifications.
But for some of us there really are uncrossable red lines. I lost years of employment stability because, long ago, I would not in two situations (unfortunately in the same job) step away from the moral high ground, knowing full well what damage I was doing to my business interests. But there are more important interests, for me. I was never vain but I needed to be able to look myself in the eye in the bathroom mirror every morning.
And Arendt is brilliant. There's a section near, I think, the end of The Origins of Totalitarianism, where she describes at length the function of Nazi concentration and death camps completely to strip each prisoner of any sense of himself or herself. It utterly terrified me. I recognised it as the most malignant imaginable iteration of the abusive gaslighting that many of us have met in some lesser degree. In fact it is the most chilling thing I have ever read.
Side issue, raised in the post in passing: In what way is the "classic liberal" tradition not "progressive"? The classic liberal position has never been fully implemented -- anywhere. The story of the last few centuries in many polities is of progress (and regress) in that direction. The classic liberal goal, half-realized, is what (at least some large portion of) progressives pursue. Without engaging in progress toward that goal, are you a classic liberal? Nobody's said "We're there!" yet (except maybe, briefly, Fukuyama). So how can a classic liberal not be progressive?
At this point anyone still on board is either lying to you as to why, or lying to themselves. It is hard to look back at something you built and then you either walk away to live with yourself or let yourself die a little inside and keep your wealth and status. I don't know what choices I would make, but they know what is up or they are fabulously dense.
"Instead, this post is about Lutnick. Yet, since Lutnick and Tether are so closely intertwined, it’s important to recap some of what we’ve discussed in the first note in this series and also in past notes about Tether. Tl; DR, North Korea, Russia, China and drug cartels all love Tether."
'Self-ownership' is one of the most intellectually and morally incoherent ideas in the complex mix of bad ideas cohabiting parasitically with good one that afflicts our society. To 'own' something is to be separate from it so as to exercise control and influence over it. Robert Nozick used this logic to argue it is OK to voluntarily sell oneself into slavery. Most libertarians loved his book 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia.'
But who exercises control over your self so as to own it?
A self exists as an in individual expression of relationships, some of which, were they different, would result in a very different self. My self is what it is because of where I grew up, the key people who influenced my life, my physical capabilities, and more. It is a pattern emerging from its history, not a thing to which events happen. It is more verb than object. One can own an object but not own a verb.
That means I cannot separate my self from anything but its immediate context, and the thought that I can arises from pretty superficial thinking.
I used to be a libertarian myself until I finally grasped that all its good words about freedom and such completely ignored the contexts within which we acted. At that point I finally grasped why so many libertarians are actually more sociopaths than respecters of human well-being.
I'm so grateful that you wrote this, I took a position in Bitcoin and Ethereum awhile back and was totally ignorant of this. I know what my nature is too and this Bitcoin position will have to go. Is Ethereum in the same Category?
I'm in the same boat. Except I knew it was wrong from the off. I ignored my ethics because my friends kept showing me how much money they were making. It was going up 20% a day. They made me feel like an idiot. 'Have fun being poor' came up a lot. They were laughing at me that I would ignore free money just for some dumb moral objection. So I'm ashamed to say I folded. Anyway, it's not going so well now, so I get what I deserve. Happily it was just play money, but even so, I feel bad about it, because it's the principle of the thing.
Excellent piece. I honestly know little about Bitcoin, but I do know how currencies work; and this isn’t it: Bitcoin is a ponzo scheme.
That said, freedom for guys like Thiel appear to be only about two things:
1. Freedom for them is to do as they please; completely unregulated, regardless of what they destroy.
2. To create a monetary system which would give them control over nations. They aren’t just trying to destroy democracy, they’re trying to destroy the world order.
Bitcoin is not just a Ponzi scheme. It’s either a Ponzi scheme disguised as a money laundering operation or a money laundering operation disguised as a Ponzi scheme.
Fair enough, and well said!
Most currencies today are fiat currencies including Bitcoin; they aren’t tied to an asset like gold or silver or other commodities.
That said, they derive their value based on a country’s wealth, health, interest rates, capital inflows and outflows, etc…And especially its ability to tax and raise revenue from its citizens. Yet, Bitcoin doesn’t reflect the characteristics of any of these other fiat currencies.
And unlike most currencies, it can’t be exchanged for goods and services; just other currencies based on the value of the US dollar.
Sure, some businesses will accept bitcoin for payment, but most businesses won’t, and given its volatility, I doubt they ever will; again!
So someone needs to explain to me how this fiat currency actually works and why it’s so incredible. It derives its value from what exactly? A belief system or trust? Perhaps Both?
Bottom line, belief systems will be the death of us all. In fact, we’re in this position today thanks to a belief system; our country is currently being run by a bunch of White Nationalist fascists with a depraved belief system.
And just as the destruction the religious fascists are doing to America, Bitcoin will be the cause of the destruction of us all, because it doesn’t take much to destroy trust or one’s beliefs; especially in this day and age. IMHO..:)
100%. Thanks for making me think about this in more depth, Mike.
I work in an industry adjacent to the crypto/blockchain industry. I view it as a Ponzi scheme that limits expansion and is not inclusive. My 80+ year old parents would hate crypto. I purchased $100 of crypto to test it and never got all my money out. It’s expensive to transact in, and slow. And you can’t sell unless someone is willing to buy and vice versa. Thiel and his comrades want to get their money out of crypto, so they want us and the USA government to buy in, making us poorer and them exponentially richer. Then since our money is locked up, Thiel and company can dictate to us what we purchase and who we buy from. It’s a system created to control us.
I've never been anywhere near the industry but even when I first heard about it I thought Ponzi scheme. Additionally, I was immediately concerned about the amount of energy needed to even mine it. I can't imagine that mining bitcoin is a good use of our global resources.
Exactly. Advocates think it's great because governments don't control it. Bollox. They do. Look at Trump's influence. A tweet from him or Elon can move the market by billions. How is that a good thing? And of course it's run and influenced by a host of bad actors, crooks and conmen like Saylor and Bankman Fried and CZ.
This is brutal in the best way, Mike. You basically walked through the whole “I’m just a nice guy helping teachers in Africa” costume and showed there’s a Curtis Yarvin hiding underneath, taking notes.
I keep asking Bitcoin people the same question you do: if this is freedom tech, why do all the aspiring feudal lords love it so much more than the single mom at the grocery store. Funny how “sovereignty” always seems to mean capital gets a passport and everyone else gets austerity.
The Arendt framing is dead on. The danger is not the cartoon villain in a cape. It is the guy who insists he is pro democracy while building the plumbing the anti democrats need and then demanding we judge him only by his vibes.
Never look away is the line. Especially from the projects we are secretly hoping will save us from having to do the slow, boring work of actual democracy.
The liberals let the fascists into the tent (or let them stay there) after WWII because at least they were also anti-communist.
History doesn't repeat but it sure as hell rhymes a whole lot.
There was a structural risk, in neoliberalism, yes. Not because neoliberalism is fascism, but because it undermined the power balance in the political economy, that permitted capital to defang labor interests, yes.
I was referring to the immediate wake of WWII, when leaders like Truman, Attlee, King and St. Laurent, and such were in power, when the decision was made not to overthrow Franco, to let Salazar's Portugal into NATO, to leave Vatican City (which exists because of a deal with Mussolini to end the Prisoner in the Vatican era) alone, to leave Hirohito on the throne of Japan instead of at the very least forcing him to abdicate in favour of Akihito, to let Unit 731 walk free after their horrors, to let a bunch of low-level Nazis stay in the West German government.
The fascists, from what I can tell, were allowed to stay in the room by the very people who'd just defeated fascists on the battlefield.
Neoliberalism came later; the rot of fascism was allowed to fester right from the start.
(Another example of this further back in history, specifically in the United States, was the Amnesty Act of 1872, which likely ultimately ushered in Jim Crow and destroyed multiracial democracy in the southeast by letting a bunch of ex-Confederate oathbreakers back into political office.)
Both posts are great. Thank you for this.
You are most likely right about the demographics of Bitcoin leadership (a strange term for a 'decentralised network'). However, focusing on demographics allows the 'fascists' to throw the argument back at you: "If BTC is so fascist, then why do self-identified progressives work on it and use it?"
This doesn't disprove your point, but it highlights the risk of attributing the 'fascism' of BTC solely to the intentions of its supporters.
We could conduct empirical sociological research on BTC, but we don't need to. As you state in your first post, BTC's monetary policy ('hard money') makes the point for us. Regardless of anyone's intentions, BTC's design means it cannot be used to serve the demos; it is built to serve those who own the most (i.e. plutocracy).
One way to apply Arendt here is to note that the system, not Eichmann, determined Eichmann's morality. Of course, Arendt's goal was to highlight that individual agency and the ability to think remain our responsibility. These remain one of the biggest barriers to normalising evil.
We must distinguish between the operator and the architecture. An individual might act with good intentions, but if the architecture is designed for plutocracy, their intentions are eventually subsumed by the system's logic. Refusing the system needs to be an option and, depending on context, needs to be prioritised.
A crucial variable is how accepted the system is. As long as it isn't mainstream, it is presumably better to refuse it if its design is to cause harm. But if it becomes inescapable, the ethical calculus shifts to how one operates within those restrictions.
The bottom line is the need for thought and awareness—something that neither 'critics from the outside' nor 'reformists from the inside' are doing particularly well.
Thanks again for these thoughtful contributions and the self-critique at the tail end, it's often times the most valuable and most effective critique we can do!
I don’t know why you’d subject yourself to a Libertarian version of “Surrounded.” Trying to convince Libertarians of anything is a fools errand and even questioning their dogma tells them that you are an inferior life form.
I spent deep time trying to listen to what’s going on with Crypto and its existence is justified by declaring government “fiat” currency invalid by its very nature. But Cypto is also based on nothing of “real value,” so it is a form of Fiat Currency as well.
Every argument they make about Government Fiat applies to Crypto, no matter how long they explain the Blockchain and all the algorithms that supposedly make it more secure and stable. All these measures were set up by people. Every artificial system is manipulatable. You’re just pitting the “Full Faith and credit of the US government” vs. Libertarian’s full Faith and credit in the Broligarchy.
That is to say, it’s all premised on the axiom that Private power is more legitimate that Government power, no matter what form government takes. They aren’t going to budge from that point and if you point out that could lead to occasional Hitlers, they will find that more acceptable than, say, an Income Tax.
When Thiel says that Democracy is incompatible with Freedom, it is clear he only expects freedom to be something accessible to certain people. Protecting the world from the oncoming hordes is just new fangled Hobbes. Grok, or the Blockchain or whatever is their Leviathan.
the real issue that people who advocate for the "good" use of crypto never grapple with is the fact that "good" uses like nonprofits, iranian dissidents, etc. tend to be poor while the evil people who want to move money around the world freely tend to be incredibly rich.
as a result well north of 99% of the actual utility of bitcoin/crypto/etc. accrues to kleptocrats, oligarchs, drug cartels, etc. etc. compared to russian billionaires and the sinaloa cartel using crypto to move their yacht money around sanctions, nonprofits are a teeny tiny blip.
There are as you say, people who can cross red lines into what some might call moral hazard territory on the grounds that their intentions are good. When they see that you will not cross such red lines because the moral hazard is more accurately termed an abyss, they are made furious because you have (in their eyes) ripped away their self-justifications.
But for some of us there really are uncrossable red lines. I lost years of employment stability because, long ago, I would not in two situations (unfortunately in the same job) step away from the moral high ground, knowing full well what damage I was doing to my business interests. But there are more important interests, for me. I was never vain but I needed to be able to look myself in the eye in the bathroom mirror every morning.
And Arendt is brilliant. There's a section near, I think, the end of The Origins of Totalitarianism, where she describes at length the function of Nazi concentration and death camps completely to strip each prisoner of any sense of himself or herself. It utterly terrified me. I recognised it as the most malignant imaginable iteration of the abusive gaslighting that many of us have met in some lesser degree. In fact it is the most chilling thing I have ever read.
Great piece. Appreciate it.
Side issue, raised in the post in passing: In what way is the "classic liberal" tradition not "progressive"? The classic liberal position has never been fully implemented -- anywhere. The story of the last few centuries in many polities is of progress (and regress) in that direction. The classic liberal goal, half-realized, is what (at least some large portion of) progressives pursue. Without engaging in progress toward that goal, are you a classic liberal? Nobody's said "We're there!" yet (except maybe, briefly, Fukuyama). So how can a classic liberal not be progressive?
At this point anyone still on board is either lying to you as to why, or lying to themselves. It is hard to look back at something you built and then you either walk away to live with yourself or let yourself die a little inside and keep your wealth and status. I don't know what choices I would make, but they know what is up or they are fabulously dense.
Mike, you have certainly got my attention. Thank you.
"Instead, this post is about Lutnick. Yet, since Lutnick and Tether are so closely intertwined, it’s important to recap some of what we’ve discussed in the first note in this series and also in past notes about Tether. Tl; DR, North Korea, Russia, China and drug cartels all love Tether."
https://open.substack.com/pub/dekleptocracy/p/howard-lutnicks-custody-relationship
I had a go at self-ownership here, starting with the example of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Lots of interesting discussion.
https://crookedtimber.org/2014/07/28/uncle-toms-cabin/