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Explore the interplay between eroding cultural and economic value and the potential resurgence of meaningful, creative value in modern society, as hosts JD, Bondor, and Anton dissect the past century's shift from creation to consumption, highlighting the importance of transcendent storytelling and the challenges we face in the age of AI.
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Hosts:
JD - @CypherpunkCine on ๐
Bondor - @gildedpleb on ๐
Anton Seim - @antonseim on ๐
Sponsors:
Unknown Certainty - The Bitcoin
Ad Company
IndeeHub - Reshape the Business of
Storytelling - @indeehub on ๐
Bitcoin makes everything better. Join the team and our guests as we unpack how, why, and where we go from here.
Hey friend, listen. I know the world is scary right now. Corruption, war, inflation, demographics,
degeneracy, disease, unrest, hatred and despair. We didn't come here to tell you how it is,
but that it's going to get way better.
Better. Bye, Bitcoin.
So groovy. It's groggy. Every time. Every time. You want to tee us up in?
What we're talking about today is value in a world of eroding value. Basically, some things have gotten better.
Some things have been designed better.
You know, we have we now have very powerful computers and powerful iPhones.
At the very same time, some things have gotten objectively worse from a quality standpoint.
Specifically in the United States, we've forgotten how to manufacture things well.
Some things are not manufactured in the U.S. and as a result, the craftsmen have been lost.
And that's essentially what we're talking about today.
How do we figure out what is actually valuable in a world where value has been eroded?
So do you guys have anything you want to add to that?
So one of the things that. Just to continue to preface this.
One of the things that we had before the call was like you are essentially you are trained.
And why we titled this this episode as its title is because you are literally trained from the moment you're born to consume.
You know, you are you exist not to create value, not to not to improve the world, not to do anything.
But you are trained, you're brainwashed to consume, to just be a cog in the system that only consumes.
For me personally, it's like it took me at least a decade to try and like get out of that mentality as an adult.
It was like, oh, yeah, I'm working a job now.
But really, I'm just I'm sitting at my desk and drinking my latte or whatever the thing is.
Right. Like you see the LinkedIn videos of the person like walking through their day and it's like, bro, you haven't done any work.
You have contributed no value to society.
You've literally just been consuming the LinkedIn offices, the LinkedIn lunches, the LinkedIn like juice maker, the LinkedIn.
You're just going down the thing. You know, it's just like this is not you. No one here is creating value.
It's all about consumption. And whoever plays the game, the best gets to consume the most.
I'm like, that's how you win the game. And it's like, why on earth is it set up like that?
Not necessarily why. I mean, we know why, but like it's so messed up.
That's what that's my addition.
Even taxes. Right. If you think about it, you're as a business owner in the United States,
you are given deferments or deductions based on consumption.
You can go in and buy a camera or a truck or a building or whatever it is,
and you get to depreciate based on the amount of consumption.
And that only exists in a world where you have an inflationary currency, period.
Because before we had this monetary structure that we were kind of born into, it's probably the best way to say it.
You know, you had to have things that were qualitative and quantitatively additive to society
in order for you to actually be respected.
You know, like let's take somebody who was an artist.
You know, if you painted the Sistine Chapel, your art form of like, hey, I can manipulate these pigments
and turn these pigments into beautiful tapestries of artwork that people want to actually like,
sit there and look at and kind of gives them an existential moment where they can ponder existence.
You are adding value to society.
And now with the advent of AI, and it's no events that, you know, AI,
I think there's a lot of really cool, interesting things about to happen.
But now the value addition you're doing is a completely new and wide open frontier again,
because now we actually have to ask the question, what is value?
And is having, you know, 47,000 versions of the movie Back to the Future valuable?
I don't know.
No.
I want to state, I don't want to go back to a world pre-iPhones.
I love having a smartphone.
I love having very, very fast internet.
I'm excited by the future of AI.
There are just other things that now we need to tackle fixing and making better.
I'll give a couple examples.
Something I think about a lot is how many cars I've had in my life.
You go and buy a car, and if you buy a new car at 50,000 or 60,000 miles,
there's going to be some maintenance at 100,000 miles.
You have to change the timing belt.
There comes a certain point where the car is just, it's worthless at that point.
And you might as well just get rid of it.
Give it to whoever wants to buy an old used car.
Go get a new car.
Start all over.
I've done that five or six times in my life.
Why can't a car be made where the component, when the component wears out,
you pop a new component on, and you essentially rebuild the car over time,
and you have a fresh car?
Well, an auto manufacturer doesn't want that.
They have to put out new inventory and have you buy the new models.
And there's planned obsolescence in all of our appliances and in our electronics.
And another thing, just one more real quick.
I live in a neighborhood in Los Angeles where almost every house on my street
is either an Aladdin home or a Sears home.
What those were, it was essentially like Ikea for homes.
You would look in a catalog.
You'd find the home you wanted.
A truck would come, dump all the lumber, all the plumbing, all the electricity,
all the wiring on your lot, and you would build your house by yourself.
This is something that's almost unimaginable to us today.
Nobody I know thinks about building their own house with their bare hands,
unless you're talking about a tiny house.
But these houses aren't tiny houses.
They're beautiful.
They're really sought after.
Every house on my street is $1 million to $3 million now.
It's the same house.
It's 100 years old.
Why is that not being done anymore?
It's ridiculous.
They probably threw the instructions out.
They're like, I'll figure it out.
Yeah, exactly.
There's also this weird amount of specificity to everything.
I don't know if you guys have ever read East of Eden,
but in East of Eden, they talk about how one of the guys,
I forget the name of the characters, Samuel knew him.
Maybe he was Samuel's cousin or something like that.
But he went to Stanford at the turn of the century and was getting into advertising.
Wait a second.
We need advertising.
Because why do you need advertising?
Everyone knows the horse goes to there.
This is what a horse does.
You don't need to advertise a horse.
This is what the grain does.
We know you don't need to advertise the grain.
But because of the expansion of civilization
and all the different things that are out there
and the weird little components that make things better in various ways,
you all of a sudden need advertising to tell a story of why this thing exists
or to explain it to somebody.
You're going to have 20% better X, Y, Z,
which you wouldn't know otherwise.
The thing that's fascinating about that for me
is that there's this crazy amount of specificity.
And when the specificity explodes,
everyone just gets overwhelmed with everything.
And so when you look and try and build a house,
well, I know an electrician who's telling me like,
no, he could build basically anything.
And he's like, yeah, except for maybe when I come to a house,
I wouldn't try and build a house because it's too crazy.
It's like, what?
Really?
A hundred years ago,
you could literally have a house shipped to you
on the back of a truck in pieces
and you'd build it over the course of the next couple weeks or months
or whatever.
It's like, it's bonkers.
I think one thing to that though is actually
the problem with eroding value
is everyone's trying to figure out where they can add it.
And the issue is the government.
The government cannot add value
if they don't give you boundaries.
And so you have now all of these inspectors
and inspections and building codes
and not saying that they're all bad.
I would say that there's probably,
I know in a lot of different parts of LA,
they're trying to protect historic homes
and there's different ways you can feel on that.
But the thing is,
if you are an entity trying to add value
and the only way you add value is by adding obstacles,
there's the problem.
And I think that's one of the issues
that we've started to come up against
with a society of eroding value
that's predicated on the foundation of our monetary system
or our value system, the money.
Because we don't have a monetary foundation
that's additive in value,
but it is kind of destructive in value
because it is literally stealing and destroying value.
It forces you to think about how you can extract value
as quickly as possible
versus adding value for as long as possible.
And that lensing is really important
because you have a high time preference
and for people who don't know,
high time preferences is fast.
Low is slow and high is fast.
You have a very high time preference
because you need to go spend that money.
It's burning a hole in your pocket
because it's not gonna be as valuable
by the time you would go to spend it
if you were to sit on it for a couple of days.
And so I think we're seeing an interesting resurgence
with SpaceX as an example.
Elon's goal is a multi-millennial society
and civilization for humanity.
It is the lowest time preference idea you can have.
And his idea for that
is spawning off all these other companies.
Like people don't realize,
but the goal of getting to Mars,
that's where Tesla came from.
Because in order to get to Mars,
you need to have electric vehicles.
The goal of getting to Mars is where SpaceX came from.
The goal of getting to Mars
is where the Boring Company came from
because you're gonna actually need to be
creating these underground,
air-proof civilizations to a degree
to be able to go between the different habs
that they're gonna put on Mars.
And so all these things
are actually focused on a single goal, Optimus.
But because his goal
is actually outside of the monetary system,
it's built on a foundation
of a low time preference idea.
It's super constructive.
And so I'm curious,
do you guys think,
you know, where are we right now?
Like, can we ever get back to that?
There's a Bible verse.
It's a proverb that says,
a good man leaves an inheritance
to his children's children.
I gotta throw the boomers
a little bit under the bus on this one.
Their generation does not live that way at all.
So many boomers have,
they have zero intention
of leaving anything to their kids.
They lived and planned for a retirement
that would let them essentially vacation
and spend their money to zero
and just have enough for them.
And I don't know if 100 years ago,
if people were actually planning,
like the house that I'm living in right now,
this house was built over 100 years ago.
I don't know if the person
who built this house
was thinking three, four, five generations.
There's probably been five generations
that have lived in this house so far.
But I do know when I look
at the buildings in downtown LA,
the new ones that go up,
I cannot imagine those buildings
even lasting 30 years.
They're essentially,
they seem like they're just made
to last long enough to where,
I don't know if you take a mortgage out
on a skyscraper,
I don't know how they finance these things,
but it seems like they're made
to last just long enough
to pay off the financing
to sell it to the next person.
And so we need a generational change to,
I mean, speaking of value,
we need a generation to have values
to value passing things
onto the next generation again.
And I have hope that our generation
is feeling that right now.
The idea that you should be
creating value in your life,
for me, it's huge.
And it literally takes,
considering all the brainwash
we've gone through,
it takes you a long time
to actually process it, internalize it.
Like, am I actually adding value here
and aligning everything in your life,
trying to figure out a way where it's like,
no, no, no.
If I'm not adding value,
there should be consequences for that.
Or if I'm not adding value,
how do I know I'm even adding value, right?
I think Safedine talks about this.
He's like, if you're young,
the best thing you can do
is figure out how to improve
the value of other people in your life,
improve, add value to the world,
because that's going to return to you later on.
When you're old, it's super hard to do.
We're all super old now.
It's much harder for us to add value
if we haven't been training
for the last however many years
to try and do that.
But we've been literally brainwashed
to not add value.
And just recognizing that as step one.
Step two is like,
you have to figure out,
you have to learn some skill
that's a desirable skill,
not like a completely,
like a great example
of a brainwashed consumption mindset
is like, go to college
to study women's studies
or transgender studies
or something that's like,
you literally invent the major
while you're there.
Like you have invented the major.
Like you, who know nothing,
are deciding that you are going to
put this value into the world.
Like, it makes no sense.
That is not creating value for anybody.
It's like the complete opposite
of creating value.
It's literally just you
consuming a college degree
and then graduating
and thinking that you'll be
creating value,
working at whatever thing,
but you're not.
You're just consuming the value
of the thing.
You're just continuing
the cycle of consuming value.
So you have to retrain yourself.
Start with recognizing
that you're not creating any value
and then do like,
try and get feedback from people.
Is this valuable?
JD, you do this all the time,
which is fantastic.
I love you for this.
You ask people like,
hey, what do you need?
Hey, how can I help?
Hey, is this help?
Hey, how are we doing?
Is this a good idea?
Here's some more ideas
if this one wasn't that great.
You're just constantly trying
to add value.
And it's definitely,
it adds value.
And then you're training yourself
to think that way.
So you're adding value
because you are
training yourself to add value
and it just turns into a cycle.
It's awesome.
But you have to break
the brainwashing.
I think what's interesting is the,
we were talking about this before,
but it's the idea
of transcendent like storytelling
that's transcendent value.
Like I never thought about,
I thought about transcend,
transcendental stories,
right, like the Bible.
Like the Bible can add value
to your story,
to your life,
like the story of your life,
whether you're a Christian or not.
It's just so chock full of wisdom.
But I'm actually curious
your take on this, Anton,
because, you know,
that is your craft, right?
Your craft is storytelling.
But I'm curious, you know,
how you approach it
in the current world,
because some of the topics
you've covered in the films you've done,
I'm not saying that
they're not long term topics,
but they are a little more,
you know, contemporary.
And so I'm curious, you know,
is there an angle that
when you guys are either
breaking these stories
or thinking through
how you would do it,
you know, is it to kind of like
call something out
and be like, hey, you know,
this is not the direction
modernity should be going.
And so if we can ridicule it,
we can maybe get it back
on the right track
for a longer term thing.
Or were you guys thinking of it
more of, you know,
just in the way
you've been programmed?
Like, all right, we need to,
you know, tell a story,
get maybe some laughs.
And so it was like, you know,
maybe unintentionally
a little higher time preference
than maybe you would have liked.
Yeah, I was laughing
as Bondar was talking about,
like, willing your major into,
I don't know how you describe it,
but I was a film major.
So yeah, I have a little guilt
over that, like,
what value am I adding to the world?
But I do look at film as a calling
and just personally,
I am trying to add value
to the world through film.
I feel like there is a purpose
in the type of films
that I'm making.
They're not just pure entertainment.
They are made to motivate
and inspire and help people
to be better through the experience
of watching a movie.
Because movies do, especially,
I've done mostly documentaries,
but especially narrative scripted film.
I feel like you're more likely
to have a significant change
in your life after watching a movie
like Shawshank Redemption
or, I don't know,
Forrest Gump or something.
Then you are watching a documentary.
There's great documentaries out there,
but it just stimulates something different,
a fictional film.
For people who don't know,
I did the movies No Safe Spaces
with Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager,
and then I did What Is A Woman
with Matt Walsh,
and I did Am I Racist with Matt Walsh.
And maybe a topic like transgenderism
isn't a totally evergreen thing
or maybe the battle for free speech
seems to be this pendulum thing
that swings back and forth.
I also just recently did one for PragerU
called Laughter on Lockdown.
I'm trying to, I guess,
defend my own filmmaking a little bit
to just say we are trying
to change the culture and better the culture
through our filmmaking.
Specifically for the Matt Walsh movies, though,
I was just focused on making
a really funny movie
about the subject matter.
And I think comedy is one of the hardest genres
of moviemaking,
and if you can genuinely make people laugh out loud,
there's something healing about that.
And so if the culture is broken
and you're making a movie
to shed light on a subject matter
and hopefully change people's opinions
to some degree,
the best possible way to do that
is through laughter.
So that was more my purpose
in those movies.
And yeah, I think,
especially What is a Woman,
I feel like it's funny
because the transgenderism thing,
maybe it's not the most evergreen topic,
but I feel like that movie's
a near masterpiece for a documentary.
I think it's great.
I think you did a solid job.
And I'm very curious, though,
you know, is there a
thing going forward
where it's like,
I really hope to do X,
like really want to inspire people
or really want to,
because I do think making people laugh is,
I think comedy is the highest
of all the art forms
because you're right,
is the most difficult.
It is so difficult to get people to laugh
because you kind of have to meet them
on this journey where it's like,
they're going this way
and you're going this way
and you kind of have to hit them at that point
and then just like push them
in a brand new direction
and kind of like,
you know, rejigger it.
And whether it's a dark comedy
or whether it's just kind of like
calling out the cultural stuff
like you guys were doing,
you know what?
And let me actually get to a question here.
But in the current society
with AI and all this stuff coming up
and and eroding value,
you know, do we need to have
a complete cultural reset
to actually get towards
like great filmmaking
or even great music, right?
Like classical music
had so much math in it, right?
Like, you know, look at it
and look at the way
that these things were made,
whether or not they were thinking
about the math
when they were making these,
you know, these great orchestral pieces.
But do you think we need
like a full reset
in terms of like culture and money
before we can actually get
on the right path?
Bond or Jim, anything to say
because I have something to say on this,
but I'll let you go if you want.
Real quick, I think,
or hopefully I can get it across quick.
But I don't think we have a reset
or hard reset.
I think when you look at it,
it's been a slow degradation
in value over the last 100 years.
And you can kind of pin it
to the turn of the century,
start of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Now, every generation
that has basically traditionalism
was the M.O.,
apart from very small sects
of liberalism that were,
you know, that served a decent purpose.
But traditionalism was essentially it.
Everybody was traditional.
You had a traditional family.
You had traditional relationships.
You had traditional friendships,
traditional schooling,
traditional like everything, right?
The first generation
to come out of the Fed
was the boomer,
or not the boomers,
the Roaring Twenties.
It's a different boomer.
What's the...
There's the Jazz Age,
the Roaring Twenties.
The Lost Generation?
Or is that the...
Zoot suits and all the...
They basically said,
well, wait a second.
We can kind of do way more
with this traditionalism.
We don't have to...
I'm a girl.
I can just go out on a town
if I wanted to.
You couldn't do that before.
The Lost Generation.
Yeah.
Ernest Hemingway,
Gertrude Stein.
Yeah.
World War I.
So, yeah.
But then that generation
becomes the parents
of the next generation.
The generation's like,
yeah, it was great
that we got to go out on the town.
I hope you get to go out on the town.
Or I hope you get to go further.
Or whatever the next thing is.
You can actually see it.
You can literally see it
or listen to it in music.
You brought up a music example.
You go from orchestra
and folk music
to big band
to a rock and roll style band
like Elvis.
And then you go to a more...
What we understand as rock and roll
like Rolling Stones or The Beatles.
And then you go to...
Well, we don't even need the band at all.
We started with an orchestra
and we're now at the place
where we don't even need a band.
We're just going to sample things.
We're going to do hip hop
and we're going to sing over it.
And then you get into electronica
where it's like,
no, you don't even need
live instruments at all.
You don't even need to sit.
You don't even need to be able
to perform in any way.
You just press play
and everyone goes crazy.
So there's this slow generational decline.
And each generation,
in particular with the case of music,
I think it's fascinating.
In the case of music,
it's just awesome
because each generation hated
the next generation's music.
My great-grandparents hated
the fact that my parents liked The Beatles.
My parents hated the fact
that I listened to
whatever random rock song
or rock or rap song
was on the radio.
That's inappropriate.
You can't be listening to that.
Right?
And it's just like,
wait a second,
that's three generations
and you can just kind of extrapolate.
Sorry, this is a really
long-winded answer, Anton,
but I don't think there is a
flip the switch reset or anything.
I think it's the incentives in the system.
And when you switch the incentives,
people start pushing the other way.
Culture is so important.
And not all cultures are equal.
Cultures can be very different.
Some cultures can be way worse than others.
Some are better in some ways.
Going back to movies real quick,
when you watch the movie Stand By Me as a kid,
aside from what the story
of Stand By Me is about,
you want to go hang out with your friends
and go venture off in the woods
and walk down railroad tracks
and jump in a pond
and tell jokes with each other.
When you watch The Sandlot,
you want to go play a game of pickup baseball.
Is that what you call it?
Baseball on a sandlot?
You want to make s'mores.
You want to build something
out of an erector set.
And I think about cultures
and mountaineering is very important.
Ocean exploration is really important.
Not every culture around the globe
values those things.
And so people need to be inspired,
and especially kids need to be regularly inspired.
And I'm not going to say
that just because these things
that have to do with getting outdoors
are important.
I think the VR world also is great.
The Internet is great.
Writing code is great.
You just have to have a balance.
And especially for kids,
they just need to be inspired
so that they even know
how to balance these things out.
So they know that if they put on a VR headset
and they play with their friends
in the virtual world,
they should take it off at a certain point
and go get on their bike and ride
and go play with friends in real life.
And very easily,
generations can lose sight
of what is truly valuable.
And part of what has made that happen
is essentially fiat money.
Our culture has degraded
as our money has degraded.
So as far as Bitcoin is concerned,
if Bitcoin truly is better money
and is hard money
and is going to reset the system,
then we have an opportunity
to reestablish values.
And so you need people like filmmakers
and people that are making art
and storytellers
to help inspire the next generation
and basically tell them
what is valuable.
And I think that's what we're doing here.
And that's kind of what we're all about.
Yeah.
They don't want you to be valuable
because if you are not valuable
in and of yourself,
you can be controlled.
Period.
If they are telling you
where and how to add value,
they can control you.
They can control your effort.
They can control anything
and everything that they want.
It's one of, I think,
the greatest tragedies about abortion
and of all these other things
is they are telling you
that your unborn child
is not valuable
and they've convinced you of it.
They've convinced people
that there is a binary
and that binary starts
as soon as the baby has passed
through the vaginal canal
of it is not a baby
and now it is a baby.
Whereas, you know,
if you would take
any understanding of basic science
or biology to the animal kingdom,
that would not be the case.
And so it's really interesting.
The.
You know, C.S. Lewis
talked about the battle for language.
And I think that's a world
where you cannot cede
any ground whatsoever.
I posted earlier this week
about, you know,
the stuff going on with
with Bitcoin right now
about the book.
If you give a mouse a cookie.
Right.
That's literally what's happening
in Bitcoin world right now.
And that's also what happened,
though, with the creature
from Jekyll Island is, you know,
you gave these bankers
and these senators
and all these, you know,
people who had authority
at the time, the small cookie of,
oh, yeah, we'll let you,
you know, it sounds like a good idea
that we should have
a group of people trying
to make sure the economy
can constantly grow.
That sounds like a great idea.
I don't face value.
Sounds great.
But in actuality,
you know, economic
and ecological systems
are way too complicated
for anybody to to to control.
You know, there are too many
unknowns like earthquakes
or asteroids,
you know, weather in general
and just accidents.
And so I think one of the biggest.
Things we need to come
to terms with as humans
is that the greatest way
you can add value
is.
To actually understand
that you're adding value.
You listen.
OK, we lost audio
on JD.
I'll jump in
until JD gets back.
I think that one of the things
that's that that Anton,
you mentioned this and JD,
you definitely touched on this as well.
But it's the idea of like
with the measure you use,
it will be measured back
to you and more.
And that's that's 100.
But that's it right there.
That's literally the words
Jesus telling us what's happening
with the measure you use
to measure value.
Use it to you know,
this is not strictly
applicable to value.
It's applied applicable
to a whole bunch of other stuff.
But with the measure you use,
it will be measured
back to you and more.
If you measure value
with a currency
that debases in value.
That's going to return to you.
You will be debased.
Your value will be debased.
Your civilization will be debased.
And it's just for me,
that's the crux of the whole thing.
And.
It really, for me,
also is the segue,
the perfect segue to
how does it get better?
How do we see it get better?
How does Bitcoin make this better?
And Bitcoin
does not devalue in nature.
Therefore, when you measure in Bitcoin,
it returns to you.
And you it's not only
that you are not devalued.
It's that.
Oh, you the right,
a righteous judgment
of value returned to you.
But then there's more, right?
So we're talking about.
We got you now, JD.
So we're now we're talking about.
The reversal of.
The the destruction
of value in civilization,
because we now have
our measuring rightly,
so we're going to get back rightly
and more.
And it's like, bro,
this is it.
It's awesome.
It's probably pretty confusing
to people who
haven't really done
a whole lot of research
about Bitcoin.
Why that is the case,
I think.
It's just like me
kind of looking out
at the sea of people
who are not like us
and haven't fallen down
the Bitcoin rabbit hole
and studied and studied
and studied.
We all are pretty confident
that over time,
Bitcoin isn't only going
to preserve value.
It's actually going to grow in value
because it's scarce
and the value is being eroded
out of all these other things
that maybe seem like
they're preserving value,
whether it's real estate,
whether it's the gold,
whether it's bonds, pensions.
And we realize that Bitcoin
having a fixed supply,
having nobody
who wants to control it,
all these people,
they would love to
to increase the supply
and do what the Federal Reserve
does to our currency,
but they can't.
And so all of these
different things that now
are how we preserve value
are going to start
breaking off a piece of themselves
like the gold market
and putting it into Bitcoin.
And so Bitcoin,
the value is literally
going to go up over time.
We're all very confident
that that is going to happen.
And a lot of people can't,
they just can't wrap
their mind around it.
And part of the reason
why they can't wrap
their mind around it
is because we've had
over like 111 years
of the Federal Reserve system
and people just have never seen
anything that they can compare it to.
So, I mean,
we're doing our part
to tell people
that you can preserve,
not just preserve your value,
but have your value grow
simply by having
a low time preference,
not buying a bunch
of poorly manufactured junk
and trying to just burn
through your money
and instead creating value,
taking that value,
putting it into Bitcoin
and just chilling out
and enjoying seeing
your value increase over time.
I think it actually gets better too
when, you know,
I have a very specific take
on the opportune stuff,
but my take is
people need to care
about other people.
And I think the most important
thing about Bitcoin
is if you are only operating
within your own,
or for yourself,
if you're only self-interested,
that is the best way
for you to interact with Bitcoin.
But it's also one of the worst ways
to interact with Bitcoin.
And so what I mean by that is
if you're not thinking
about that proverb
that you brought up of,
you know, leaving something
for your children's children
or leaving a better world
for your children's children,
we run the risk of losing this.
This is actually
the only time this has ever been tried.
And, you know,
we're still in infancy
and we're still not out of the woods.
You know, we're still in this place
where we're figuring it out.
You know, it's the digital age.
You know, this is kind of like
that moment where people
finally invented bronze armor
and like, cool,
we're going to go fight those guys
who have sticks now.
Maybe this will be better
and it was better
and then the Iron Age came.
And so it's like we're kind of
in the first iteration
of how this works.
And as we know,
with like the Bronze Age
and the Iron Age
and then we had the, you know,
the Industrial Revolution,
you know, all these things
just were additive
and they kept building
and building and building
and getting better and better.
And so I don't know
if Bitcoin's going to look like
what it looks like now
50 years from now
or 100 years from now.
But I think what's cool
is we have this opportunity
to try and actually have
a deflationary currency
for the first time in human existence
that can't be futzed with
if we can get everybody to agree
that that is a core fundamental truth
of value that transcends time
is valuable.
And I think if we can get people
to agree on that,
then they'll set their sights
on super low time preference activities
like building cathedrals again,
building products that actually last
without planned obsolescence.
So we're going to make this thing
that actually lasts forever,
which I do actually think
you see with Tesla, right?
Tesla just makes one thing
and they don't brand it
as this new thing.
You don't have to upgrade every year.
They just push software updates.
And so I think the digital age
is actually really, really poised
to move people
towards a low time preference again.
Can I say one more thing on this?
Because you just brought up something
that what we're doing
is we are telling the story of Bitcoin.
We are establishing the culture for Bitcoin.
And in the same way
that we saw the block size war,
you had a group of people,
you had on Reddit,
you had rBTC,
which were the people
who ended up going with Bitcoin cash,
a worthless altcoin scam, essentially.
And then you had rBitcoin,
which was pushing
for what is Bitcoin today.
And we have a similar thing
happening right now in Bitcoin.
So people need to be taught
what the real values are.
I'm going to use the dumbest example ever
because I've been itching to talk about it.
It's just what I'm into right now.
I've gotten into a rabbit hole
of the restoration of vintage bicycles.
Most of them were made in the US
and there are these people on YouTube
who are essentially rescuing bike frames
off of Facebook Marketplace.
And then they're fixing them up,
adding value,
and then they're reselling them to people.
And now people get a fixed up perfect bicycle
that is literally better than a bicycle
that you could go buy at a bicycle shop
for thousands of dollars.
It only cost them $500.
But the thing is,
why would somebody go buy
this old 90s bicycle
when they didn't value it before?
But because of the popularity
of these YouTube channels,
they're being taught to value something
that is actually valuable.
And that's what we're doing
and what more Bitcoiners need to do.
We need to teach people
what the values of Bitcoin are
and just continue to tell the story of Bitcoin
and spread this message.
And that is how Bitcoin will continue to exist
in 50 years.
I don't know.
That may be a horrible analogy.
No, it makes sense.
It's the low time preference stuff.
I mean,
the up return stuff is like
you can kind of see it in the cultural
as a cultural debate.
Just that alone, right?
There's people who are like,
no, we want this to
have a low time preference.
And then there's the other side of the debate
that's like,
no, we want wizard dick pics.
It's like these MS Paint pictures.
It's hard to paint a picture
of the disparity there.
People who have embraced
low time preference
versus the people who have embraced
and have just been brainwashed by fiat
for high time preference.
Consumption, consumption, consumption, right?
That's really,
that kind of sets a standard.
One of those is literally just a fiat paradigm
that they're trying to continue fiat.
We just want fiat all over again.
Fiat, fiat, fiat.
All the way down.
Bright, shiny colors.
Turn your mind off.
Consume as much as you can.
Get the sticky fingers.
It's just fiat all the way down, right?
The other side is like,
no, wait.
If we actually are deliberate,
if we plan,
and if we think about long-term consequences,
and if we organize and design accordingly,
we're going to have real opportunities
that are going to really shape civilization.
As J.D. said,
we're going to be set up to,
it's not just going to be that,
well, maybe we'll be able to build cathedrals again.
It's going to be like,
no, every town is going to start building cathedrals
because that's what everybody in every town
is going to want to do.
That's the low time preference culture, right?
It's not just one guy.
It's not an Elon Musk being like,
I'm going to be the guy that goes to Mars.
It's like, no, no, no.
Everybody in culture thinking like that.
Every single person.
That's what Bitcoin does.
It literally changes,
it completely from the ground up changes
who you are,
what you think about,
all the stuff.
For me personally,
I may have told this story before,
I grew up listening to,
as I mentioned,
rap, hip-hop, rock,
and then I got super into electronic dance music,
and I DJed for a long time,
and produced,
and the whole rest of it.
Since I've gotten into Bitcoin,
there was at some point,
there was a shift where it was like,
wait a second.
None of this is actually interesting as music anymore,
and I just have basically just been listening
to classical music ever since.
It literally changes your time preferences
about what you consume in culture.
You know, like,
oh, actually,
what I was just thinking about this,
this is actually just boring to listen to now,
versus,
oh, this is interesting.
They're doing some interesting stuff.
I've never heard something like this before.
It really changes how you think about the world,
and how you participate in the world,
and it goes back to,
how do you create value?
Well,
if you've just been like,
if you listen to the same thing over and over on repeat,
electronic dance music,
versus something where it's like,
you're constantly being challenged
about all sorts of new interesting things,
well,
how are you going to be able to create value?
Well,
it's easy,
because you have so much more,
so much bigger,
larger repertoire to pull from,
right?
They are not trying to shut you down
with their just monotonous brainwashing.
You can then have an original thought,
have an original idea,
like,
create something for somebody
that they didn't know they needed,
or that they've been trying to do themselves,
but weren't able to,
like,
because you now have a larger skill set,
a larger,
you know,
jumping pad to jump off from.
It's,
and Bitcoin does all of that.
It's,
it's unbelievable.
Having a long-term mindset,
or a low time preference,
proclivity,
changes how you think.
And so I'm curious for you guys,
like,
how has Bitcoin changed how you think?
I was just thinking it would be super interesting
to hear different Bitcoiners talk about,
after discovering Bitcoin,
and really learning about it,
how certain patterns change.
The same way for Bondur,
his musical taste changed.
For me,
I hear people talking about the latest series,
and there's some great series on,
you know,
Apple TV,
Netflix,
Amazon,
whatever.
I just don't have any interest
in watching pop culture stuff,
for whatever reason.
And for me,
I've,
I've wanted to,
basically,
read really old books,
and watch older classic films.
And that's pretty much all I'm interested in right now.
And I just,
I don't know.
The,
I don't find as much value
in the current stuff that's being made.
And I have a feeling that a lot of Bitcoiners
are having a similar experience
in all kinds of different forms of art,
and intellectual stuff.
Absolutely.
You literally just start to see,
like,
almost like the scales fall from your eyes, right?
You start to see,
oh, well,
that,
that song is literally just the same song
as the one that came out the year before.
Or that politician
is literally the same platform
that his opponent had four years before.
Like,
we're literally dealing with the same,
you just,
it's like all of it's just,
you're just,
somehow,
the fiat world is just blind to all of it.
But when you become a Bitcoiner,
your time difference is lower a little bit.
You think a little bit more.
You're like,
wait a second.
This was,
I was into that garbage?
Like,
how was I into that garbage?
That's crazy,
right?
Do you have one,
JD?
Have you had a similar experience?
I did.
The biggest thing,
JD's a baby Bitcoiner,
so he might not be.
I am.
These things take a long time.
Like,
it's,
it really does take a long time.
I will say the biggest shift
for me moving to a low time preference
mode of thinking
is
embracing pain.
And so what I mean by that is,
I started taking cold showers
and taking cold showers has been the single
most transformative thing I've done in my life.
I can have a really crappy day
and go take a cold shower
and I force myself,
like,
it's not fun.
Like,
cold showers are not fun,
right?
But the discipline of standing there
and just reasing yourself out for a minute
and just focusing on your breath,
because the only way to get through a cold shower
is to focus on your breath.
You kind of have to get rid of everything else
and just center yourself
and then just stand there.
And then,
you know,
for me,
I intentionally like,
all right,
this is the least comfortable position.
Do that.
It continues to remind me that no matter
how bad something can go,
I can do it,
I can get through it,
and I can find a way to win.
It's,
it's,
it's it.
And
I think that has been so helpful.
I'm not perfect at it.
You know,
I'm still having moments where,
you know,
without vision that people perish.
And so I'm doing a lot of like vision seeking right now.
What do I want to be doing?
How do I want to be adding to this world?
I think the biggest thing for me is I do want to be telling Bitcoin stories
and helping people move into a higher version of themselves
with a,
a lower time preference mindset and stories to kind of move your lore to move you in that way.
But it is not,
it's not easy.
Every day is a battle.
Every day is a battle.
But having a low time preference mindset or a long term vision for the future
that can be better for your kids and your kids,
kids that you will never experience.
It's interesting because you realize it's like,
it's the butterfly effect.
My cold shower today that sucked might make the world a better place tomorrow.
I think one thing that's coming to mind.
Now you're saying that.
Did I just lose it again?
I got to pay more attention to my own thoughts.
I have something.
I'll take a second.
Go for it.
I was just going to say,
you know,
as far as leaving,
leaving inheritance to your children's children,
it's honestly,
it's hard for me to imagine Bitcoin two generations from now.
It's just hard for me to picture it because Bitcoin has only been around for not even half of my life.
So I'm like,
how could it be around two generations from now?
Like,
what are computers going to look like?
What's the Internet going to look like?
So that's just I'm just being honest.
That's just how I feel.
But when I think about actual inheritance,
what the process of inheritance looks like as a U.S.
citizen of taking an amount of money and then giving it to your children,
how do you divvy it up between your children?
How,
how much of it gets does is the state going to capture as a death tax or an inheritance tax?
Well,
with Bitcoin,
I literally took some Bitcoin and I put it on a couple of open dimes a while ago.
I can't remember how much I put on it,
and I just made an open dime for each of my children.
They will be able to take that,
that Bitcoin.
It's a quiet asset.
Nobody knows it exists.
And then apart from everybody online now.
Yeah,
everybody knows.
Maybe I'm talking theoretically.
I don't know.
Maybe I'll lose them.
Maybe they fell in the lake.
I don't know.
But gold,
yeah,
gold has been the same way where,
you know,
if you had a gold coin,
you could,
you could give it to your to your kid.
But it does at least give you the power to have an inheritance that is not with a trusted third party,
that you can literally give to your children or your grandchildren with nobody else being involved.
And aside from gold that hasn't really existed ever before.
And that's just cool.
So I got my point now.
Um,
you mentioned this,
Anton,
you're skirting around this as well.
And the point is like,
why?
Who cares about low time preference?
Like who cares about high time preference?
We're all in the postmodern world.
It's all just postmodern.
Nothing matters.
Whatever you do,
it's cool for you.
And it's like,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
you're not.
You're not getting it.
If you're coming at it from that angle,
what we're talking about is adding meaning to your life.
Postmodernism is devoid of meeting.
There is no meaning in your life.
And part of that is because of high time preference.
When your time preferences are high,
all you can think about is me here now,
drug,
sex,
violence,
there is no tomorrow,
or maybe there is.
I don't know.
We're going to roll the dice and see.
But when you think I'm low time preference,
all of these things have meaning.
All of a sudden,
it deeply matters what you do.
It deeply matters that you add value to people's lives.
It deeply matters how you spend your time.
And,
well,
wait a second.
We bit like me,
a millennial who grew up in a postmodern society,
and like went through all of that.
Brainwashed by all of us.
Like,
I mean,
just do whatever you want.
Whatever.
It's all good.
But,
all of that,
you lose the value.
There's no more value anymore,
if that's what you want to believe.
But if you lower your time preferences,
and you start thinking about kids,
you start thinking about long-term stable relationships,
right?
All of a sudden,
so much more of life just has meaning.
And there's purpose.
And there's reason to get up.
There's reason to get up early.
And even earlier than that,
right?
Like,
so much stuff just starts to connect about who we are,
and what are we doing here.
It's really incredible.
And not in failing to go through these things,
and like failing to see it,
it's just like wasting your time,
wasting your life.
Unbelievable.
Yeah.
The greatest waste of the current era is human potential.
Period.
Because we have been trained that what we do doesn't matter.
We're told that we'll never buy a house.
We're told that we'll never make enough money.
We're told that we'll never get that car,
or whatever it is.
And the truth is,
you don't need the house.
You don't need the car.
You don't need any of that.
What you need is to figure out where you can add value,
and who you can add value to.
And that starts with who's directly around you.
You should be adding as much value as possible to your family.
You should be adding as much value as possible to your community.
And you should be adding as much value as possible to your friends.
Because at the end of the day,
that is literally what this is all about.
We will all be stories when it's said and done.
That's it.
We will just be stories.
We tell stories of George Washington.
We tell stories of Jesus.
We tell stories of all that in this world.
We will go to the next world and heaven and all that.
But in this world, we will only be stories.
And so the most important realization is,
a low time preference makes your story matter.
I'm thinking about people who,
they're basically forced,
because the world is getting more and more expensive around them.
Inflation is outpacing the increase of their income.
And they're desperate.
And they're having to just work more hours in order to live.
They're having to live further away from where they work and commute in.
And high time preference makes you gravitate towards things that are easy and convenient.
Because you just don't have the time to put in the time for things that are more valuable.
And so rather than smoking a brisket for 15 hours,
you had to commute to work.
You're going to grab an Uncrustable out of the freezer.
Rather than making a delicious pour over coffee out of good beans and grinding them and weighing it out,
you're going to grab an energy drink and pop a Zen in your mouth
and probably have an Adderall prescription and not exercise.
And then sit in your car for hours.
And it just degrades the quality of your life as you're desperately just trying to keep up.
The value of Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin has to go up over time for all this to work out.
And so check back in a few years if my predictions about this have been correct.
But my understanding, my belief, where all of my research has led me,
is that by living a more modest lifestyle,
by adding value to the world and taking a little bit of the money that I make for my labor
and continuing to invest it in Bitcoin,
the price of Bitcoin is going to go way up over time.
And eventually, I'm going to have more time to do the things that I want to do.
And as I have time to think about that, then I can decide what is truly valuable.
And I can live in a way that's a little bit slower paced where I'm doing the things that are healthier,
better for my brain, better for my family, better for my relationships.
And Bitcoin is going to enable us to do that.
And it's one of our greatest hopes as far as money goes.
And as far as our, you know, you could call it your retirement or however you want to label it.
Bitcoin gives us that hope for a future.
And that's a beautiful thing.
And it's hardly a hope either.
It's like I'm a real person who has really experienced the things that I'm telling you about how Bitcoin makes it better.
This is not like just pie in the sky.
We think it's going to work out this way.
It's like, wait a second. No, no, no.
This is actually real.
Like, I have time to think about these things.
It already has made it better, too.
Yeah, it's already better.
It's just incredible.
So, yeah.
I think if we get properly onto a Bitcoin standard in the United States, there is a resurgence of trains.
And I'm excited for this new generation of and I know there's the whole 15 minute city thing.
Right.
I think that can come about in a positive way versus the negative way.
The negative Fiat 15 minute city is where you can be locked down perpetually and you can be destroyed and just totally co-opted in all of your effort and time and everything, you know, washed away.
And flushed down the toilet of whatever oligarch is in control.
The low time preference city is one that, you know, you can still stretch your arms out and you can have yours, whatever that is, your place to be.
But people are not going to enjoy being stacked on top of each other.
They're just not going to.
And so the cities are going to have to evolve in such a way where you're going to think about, OK, the way I can best add value is over here.
And so I can go to this place that's manufacturing something or coding something or whatever it is.
And so I think we're going to see more of an appreciation for Internet.
And as I say this, it's not going to be trains.
It's going to be self-driving cars.
That's what it's going to be, because you don't need to put in the infrastructure.
You just need to, you know, put the actual automobile on wheels and they can go.
And I think that's what we're just straight teleportation to.
We could just skip all that and just go straight to.
I think that would be awesome as well.
But the net net is what the low time preference world is going to bring is more time to think about.
The. Infinite.
And that is going to bring about a lot more positive change in my mind for everyone in a lot of good ways.
Yep, there's going to be way more because there's more thinking about the infinite.
There's going to be way more thinking about ethics, morality.
My limitedness going to be thinking about God.
We're going to be thinking like the whole the last 200 years of atheism kind of running the show.
And and and also human secularism, just like.
Not having any answers for anybody about anything.
Completely meaningless existence for everyone all the time is ultra high time preference.
And when you when you use an economic force to push people into that and force them to have low time preferences, what you're going to have is you're going to have.
Wait a second.
This is all garbage bogus anyway.
And you look at the science, you look at the math, you look at all the the whole thing.
Arguments on top of arguments on top of arguments.
For the existence of God, who is God?
You go down all the other rabbit holes and it just turns into wait a second.
My life has purpose.
Wait a second.
All these things matter.
I got to start doing stuff.
I got to start making a difference.
I got to start, you know, get married, have kids, like be a good father all of a sudden, right?
Stop doing drugs.
Stop like drunk driving.
Stop all the crazy things that I was.
Stop doing wizard dick pics like all the whole thing.
And it's all coming through because of Bitcoin and what it does to time preferences and civilization.
Ultimately, it's going to be incredible.
Yeah.
Like J.D., you were saying that, you know, there'll be a resurgence of trains and you were you were saying that we might all live in a smaller place, but it won't be like the 15 minute city in the sense of you can be locked down and you have to live in a certain place and you're overregulated.
Think about that little island in France, Mont-Saint-Michel, that gets cut off by the tides, has the cathedral at the top of it.
What's the difference between that and a Soviet block era apartment?
I mean, they both house people.
They're both like little self-contained villages.
But in a future where there's a Bitcoin standard, people will be able to choose to live in their own villages or their own citadels.
There will be such a thing as like a luxury train as opposed to a crappy city bus.
It's just a more beautiful future that Bitcoin is going to enable as soon as this inflationary fiat dies.
And I think we're going to get back to a world of the handshake.
I think we're going to get back to a world where, you know, your effort matters, your word matters, and nobody's going to be perfect.
You know, people are going to make mistakes, but it's going to be really important to think about these things.
Right now, we're all putting our handshake of our word on the Internet, and we're probably going to fall short of some things.
Hopefully not, right?
But the net of that is people are going to be able to find other people that are trying to lead the way out of the darkness and lead it into a much better way.
And I think that bodes well for Los Angeles, that bodes well for America, that bodes well for the world.
Just don't screw it up.
This takes us to the top of the hour, guys.
One thing I would, me personally, just the final thought I'd say is for anybody listening, tell everybody you know, inflation, suffering from inflation is a choice.
You do not have to suffer from inflation.
You can stop suffering from inflation like today, like right now.
It may take years for that to play out fully, but you can start today.
And the solution is Bitcoin.
Correct.
That's the time.
You don't have to suffer inflation if you get on Bitcoin.
That's right.
Stop suffering by Bitcoin.
Correct.
JD, last thoughts?
They don't want you to be valuable.
They do not want you to be valuable.
Because if you are not valuable, then you are not powerful.
And all of your worth and your power in the modern world is derived from the value that you're adding into it.
And that is a beautiful thing.
So go and grab anything and everything that you can do to add value and do it.
Because that's what you're called for.
Work is a good and beautiful thing, is what we were created for.
And it's not the reason we are loved, but it is one of the ways that we can show our love to those around us and to the world.
So go do amazing things.
Love it.
JD, you want to take us out?
Sure.
You didn't need me to do that now.
You did.
You did.
Oh, you mean just push the button?
Peace.
Peace.