Blockchain Radicals Book Launch Event in NYC

This episode is coming out on August 8th, 2023, aka publishing day for my book, "Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It"!

On July 23rdI had the privilege to present my new book  in New York City at the offices of Metalabel for the official book launch event! I was also interviewed by the Chief Insights Columnist at CoinDesk, David Morris about the book and the outlook of crypto. Around 20 to 30 people came out, received signed copies, and had some refreshments. It was a fun time!

If you're interested in getting a copy, you can find multiple vendors across countries and geographies to find the place for you to order your copy from here. Additionally I'll be doing book signing events in Dallas, TX on August 10th, MetaFest in Pula, Croatia, the Crypto Commons Gathering in Austria, and in Berlin during Berlin Blockchain Week if you happen to be there.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone. This podcast episode is coming out on August 8th 2023, aka the official publishing date for my book Blockchain Radicals how capitalism ruined crypto and how to fix it. What you're about to listen to is a recording of the book launch events in New York City, which took place July 23rd at the MetaLabel office. As you'll hopefully hear, it was a fun event and was hosted by David Z Morris, the Chief Insights columnist at Coindesk. I first give a short presentation about the structure of the book and then he interviews me and facilitates a Q&A with the audience. Afterwards was a book signing and hangout with food and drinks.

Speaker 1: 0:36

In the show notes, be sure to check out the link tree, where I've listed out several different places where you can order the book in different countries and regions, so be sure to check it out if you haven't ordered a copy yet. I will also be continuing my book tour, as I'll be in Dallas, texas, august 10th, at HOOSE books at 7pm, as well as MetaFest in Pula, croatia, the Crypto Commons gathering in Austria and in Berlin in mid-September selling and signing books if you happen to be going to any of those places and as well. I'd like to give a very big thank you to everyone who supported me over the past years financially, via Patreon or the TBS subscription NFT, who, without I, would not have been able to get this far. No doubt there's still a lot more I'm wanting to do related to the book, so be on the lookout for that through the newsletter, crypto Laugh, this Discord community and the other usual places where you can keep up with me. Alright, and with that, I hope you enjoy the recording from the book launch event.

Speaker 2: 1:43

It's that the business press is the only place that you will actually be told the truth, and I will tell you that's mostly true and I also, because it might be of interest to you all. I have a PhD that I learned a few years ago in the history of technology, which is kind of what led me to blockchain, and it is my privilege tonight to introduce Josh DeVila, author of the new book Blockchain Radicals, and he'll tell you the subtitle, because I forgot to write that part down. Josh is a technology theorist and writer who, much like the book that he's written, bridges a series of contradictions. He has been active in left-wing politics and political theory. He also has, for a few years now, been a consultant on blockchain technology applications to businesses in Europe. I will leave it to him to reconcile the two wolves inside of him, but what's most important about Josh is that for quite a few years now, he's been building a community of leftists and progressives I use that word cautiously who also happen to be interested in cryptocurrency, on blockchain. He first tweeted pseudonymously as the blockchain socialist, probably about two, three years ago, and has now come out of the shadows to publish this book with repeater.

Speaker 2: 2:55

Josh is here with a preview of the book or a presentation from the book. That will be about 15 or 20 minutes. Then he and I will have one-on-one conversation for 20 or 30 minutes and then we'll reserve the balance of time. So plenty of time for questions from the audience, perhaps an informal discussion.

Speaker 2: 3:13

Obviously pretty small event, so we'll keep things loose, but everybody, please welcome Josh DeVila to Medallia. Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Hi, I'm Josh. I wrote a book called Blockchain Radicals how Capitalism Ruin Crypto and how to Fix it. It came out of sort of the, I guess, synthesizing a lot of the work that I've been doing over the past three years with the blog and podcast, kind of like exploring these spaces and niches and research that people were doing that I felt like was not getting much attention to and, more specifically, usually having related to do some sort of more left-leaning or progressive kind of view of the use of technology. So about me, in case you need anything more, my name is Josh. I wrote, or I have been working in blockchain for about five years. I started the blog podcast around three years ago. I have a project called Breadchain Cooperative that I've been working on for a while as well, to kind of synthesize and put into practice a lot of the things that I've been learning and experimenting with. I'm also filming a documentary on crypto. That's taking a little bit longer than I thought it would take. And, yeah, I've been most recently, I guess, on the podcast focusing on giving critique on the network state, a book by Bellagie, who's a tech VC, think boy. And, yeah, and that's like the logo that I've been using on social media and such for a while. So what I want to do with this presentation is just kind of give you a taste of kind of the overarching framework and structure of the book. And so when I was asked to write the book, I kind of didn't. I wasn't like given a thing to write about. They're like, yeah, I'll just write something, like I'll write the left and like blockchain stuff, like write a little pamphlet or something. But it ended up becoming kind of like a bit more of that. And that was after I kind of made this connection with the work of Gilles Deleuze, who's a French post-Marxist thinker and the sort of thing that he's really well known for is, or one of the things, besides being very difficult to read, is what's called the critique of representational thinking.

Speaker 1: 5:18

So what he says is that oftentimes, in order to understand new things, we use models of the old and sort of impose on it in order to try and think about how it can work and like to make predictions about it and such. And he's saying this is wrong and bad and we shouldn't be thinking this way, people of. This would be something like the drum machine I like to use. So the drum machine was a piece of technology that was created in order to allow people to create or to be able to play music without needing a drummer with a drum set. So you can get the machine, you buy it, you press the buttons and then it'll play the beats that the drummer was supposed to play, but he couldn't make it to practice. So in this kind of like conceptual model of what the drum machine was meant to do, it was a representation of a drummer with a drum set. That means it was a lesser version. So like a lot of like platonic philosophy focuses around like the ideal forms of things, and so he describes this as thinking like a tree that you have like the trunk, which is like the ideal representation of whatever it is, for example a drummer with a drum set, and then you have the things kind of going around it that are representations of it, but lesser than the ideal form. And so the loess is obsessed with potatoes, because potatoes have what's called a rhizomatic structure to their roots, so do like mycelial networks of mushrooms, but essentially it describes a shape that doesn't have a clear center to it, that it's kind of like overlapping and has different, it's kind of like a heterarchical structure, different centers and so kind of.

Speaker 1: 6:52

The thing that I connected with the book and with crypto is that this type of thinking is endemic in crypto since, basically the start of it, bitcoin was created as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. That was its intention, that was kind of like the representation, that was a model that Satoshi or whoever they are sort of made Bitcoin to be, and inside was infused this narrative of being similar to gold and this kind of metaphor or this model of using Bitcoin as a kind of extension of like thinking that the gold standard was the best form of monetary system was thinking about Bitcoin as digital gold. And so, since there had already been sort of this existing political group of people who we call them gold bugs or people who believe this, it was like an easy kind of like way to get a lot of people who are already connected believing in this one thing that thinks should exist and willing to pay money for it. Especially, they became attracted to Bitcoin. So that's kind of like the beginning of it.

Speaker 1: 7:56

You can also, if you go through, just like a ton of things code is law, so equating code and law together, decentralized finance it's kind of like this thing to like let's do finance, but decentralized. The network state is also something DAOs used to be called the centralized autonomous corporations. So like the way that we kind of like conceptualize these things was already modeled on things that already existed and that had certain implications to them. This is endemic. So this is I like this quote from Alfred Krasibski that I think kind of goes well with this that the map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a semantic disturbance is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized, just saying that this kind of representational thinking or this metaphorical thinking in certain ways like creates a map and imposes a map on the territory, which is the thing that actually exists.

Speaker 1: 8:58

And the second quote that I really like is that all models are wrong but some are useful. So it's nice to have a map of Peru whenever you're in Peru. It's nice if you need to like find out where you need to go. You're following the streets or whatever, but the map of Peru is not the same as Peru. We shouldn't like confuse those things together.

Speaker 1: 9:20

And so I think in crypto we have many different types of maps that oftentimes people try to impose upon what it is in order to try to understand it better, but also as well in order to attract a clientele and in order to get people to separate them from their money essentially to buy their product and to buy their tokens or whatever else because it adheres to an already pre-existing model of way that people think, and I think this is like a very like political choice. So like I like the work of Gramsci and he has this concept called cultural hegemony that oftentimes this was used to explain that social control structures of society that the working class kind of gets imposed this world view by the upper classes as a way to like, impose a certain way of thinking about the world and understanding of the world. Like the map of our world is one that was modeled after those who have the power in order to model that world, and they impose that through structures, through institutions and whatever else. And so in the book, kind of what I went through and applied this to cryptocurrency was I kind of listed out the most common representational models that are used in the cryptocurrency world and I've divided the book into three sections. Section one is crypto as money, section two is crypto as finance and section three is crypto as coordination. So these are kind of like the three ways that I've seen, just like in my time kind of keeping track with it how it's kind of evolved more In the beginning, before Ethereum, for example, like money was kind of like the main thing that people were like trying to tackle and like creating making Bitcoin, like this monetary system.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Then, with the advent of smart contracts, like financial infrastructure became to be more of a thing that people wanted to emulate. And then, I think, more recently, you have people who are kind of like I think there's been a some amount of self reflection. The crypto world like oh, that we can't be financializing everything and it's not so fun to be only about like trading digital beans with one another, and so what you're seeing is kind of like this expansion of the representational model. Money and finance could be thought of as different coordination mechanisms, and I think part of this is just like this evolution of people being like oh wait, that's not what it is. Oh wait, that's not what it is. It's always something bigger and bigger because we're exploring more and more of the territory as time goes on and people use it and then through all of that, in the end I try to lay out a new concept for thinking about technology that I call techno probabilism.

Speaker 1: 11:59

That's meant to kind of push back against the idea of techno determinism or like the idea that technology is like the only thing that determines reality, and try to provide some more context to that question and problem about structure and agency and whether or not we have the ability to change and influence the way that we think about technology. And so, yeah, this is kind of like how I horribly kind of want to represent what this kind of looks like. You have the terrain of all the things that are possible, which is kind of like unknown or impossible to really know fully completely because we can't do it all at once, but that the kind of the main sort of mental model representation that we've been thinking about has expanded more and more to cover more of the terrain. I think a lot of that terrain has still not been covered probably, and that's kind of like the things that I'm interested in or want to point out a little bit more sometimes, and I think this is important and it's kind of like a repetition of, again, like what has happened over the internet.

Speaker 1: 13:10

The internet was one thing at one point I really don't like the whole like web one, web two, web three type of narrative, but it is like safe to say that the internet looks a lot different now than it did a long time ago, and we can also see that, like the internet is not forever, so the internet has kind of evolved and adapted and changed based on the conditions and what has become like tooling available for different types of websites and content over the internet.

Speaker 1: 13:40

And so yeah, so one of the things I really like David's tweets a while back that I think was really like really resonated with me as far as how to kind of I think we should be rethinking these types of things is to just build things more collectively. I think one of the kind of main maps or models of the world that I think we are constantly imposed upon is one like that is very individualistic, one that is very isolated and alienated, and so one of the things with you know, for all his flaws blockchain and cryptocurrencies it does provide, I think, for a lot of people this like sliver of hope that like maybe we can create more collective ways of building things together.

Speaker 1: 14:23

Even though a lot of people may not be doing that or thinking about it that way, I think that this is something that is like very could be very, very fruitful as far as our relationship to the internet and technology, because I think, like everybody, kind of hates their relationship with the internet.

Speaker 1: 14:38

I think everyone's kind of like ambivalent towards it at this point, for good reason. I think we also are reliant on it in certain ways that we would not want to give up, because we like to have connection with people that are on the other side of the world or whatever else. That is a nice thing that we can do as humans, and so, yeah, with the book, I got a bunch of really nice quotes from people, including Vitalik, nick Cernick, primavera, the Philippi and a bunch of other people that were really influential for me when I was writing and like doing my podcast, and I found out that doing a podcast was a really nice way to network with people. So I was lucky to be able to have connections with these guys. And, yeah, so the book comes out August 8th, but if you ordered a book online with a book event, then you get a book here a little bit earlier than the launch event, or than the official launch. But yeah, I think that's it. There we go.

Speaker 2: 15:35

Awesome. So I think we can probably just grab the opposite of the counter. So you, the first question I wanted to ask is kind of one of the big. We're trying to eliminate ourselves to big questions here so that we can get to everything, but the big one that you alluded to with that nice circle graph is that crypto is sort of fundamentally especially if you understand the security model of whether you're talking about proof of work or proof of stake there is like a monetization aspect that is truly fundamental to the way a lot of these things work, and so I would just love you to expand a little bit on that graph and kind of how it actually works in a practical sense, to expand out from that core of money to something that is more abstractly about coordination in a general way and perhaps in a less individualistic way, while building on that platform that is really about money or something very much resembling money.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Yeah, so I think the I mean I would not personally characterize something like Ethereum or Bitcoin as money at all or like any really cryptocurrency as money, just like comparing it to like what the actual definition is. The like thing that I think is interesting when it comes to cryptocurrency and relationship to money is more the like, the governance of, not money, but like currencies or tokens which maybe you can put money as like you know one aspect or like one type, and so like I like, like I think of Ethereum, for example, or Bitcoin or really any of these, as first and foremost, as like kind of vouchers for using the network. And yes, it's monetized because you have to buy it most of the time. That's like the 99% of people, that's how they interact with it, that they buy it first and so it has like a clear price. It's a kind of commodity and I think that's kind of you know, in the book I go through as well like there are a lot of properties of these tokens that mimic things about money and people will kind of like cling on to those things and say it's money because it can do this, like I can send it to someone. Therefore it's money, but it's kind of like.

Speaker 1: 18:04

I mean, yeah, I don't know, they haven't spent the time to kind of like understand what the kind of like social institution that money kind of inhibits.

Speaker 1: 18:13

And what I find interesting for me personally is, like I said more about on the governance side Right now, kind of the monetary system is a very like technocratic institution, like there is no kind of like democratic input for what it is. There is like a certain imperative of like keeping liquidity in markets or something like that as being like the one thing that they need to do, and this has like a lot of downstream effects to our situation now. And so I think, yeah, thinking about ways and these examples of different forms of money is more interesting to me than like trying to like like the gold standard type of narrative about money is one that thinks of money as like a type of commodity or like a natural commodity that has like intrinsic value and you know this a lot because you've studied gold bugs before which is just like a very it's a shallow way of understanding money and how it works and not thinking of it instead as like this kind of social institution For the, for the, for the heads out there.

Speaker 2: 19:14

it's a very great example of reification.

Speaker 1: 19:19

Yeah, oh no, I mean, I think that's basically. It's like I'm more interested in these like experiments of like basically democratic forms of monetary system.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Well, so so can we like look at specifics. If we look at kind of historical examples of you know, the things that come to mind for me and I know you write about them in the book include, like co-ops, community currencies I'm sure there are other that I'm forgetting but these kind of like attempts to build alternative structures within what we already have. And kind of what is it that you know crypto or blockchain brings to the table? That, for example, would make those experiments more viable than they have been in kind of like the analog era or, or you know, obviously we can't predict the future and your rhizome metaphor is perfect, but you know what are maybe some potential new forms of similar collective organizing efforts.

Speaker 1: 20:19

Yeah, I mean, I think that's like, like for me, mutual credit is a very interesting system to think about.

Speaker 2: 20:26

Yeah, and you have a great analysis of an example in the book.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, so focus on circles. Ubi, which is based in Berlin for that one, but like, yeah, so, like you know, all models are wrong but some are useful. I think there are kind of. What has happened is kind of like the hegemonic models of money, of finance, are the things that generally people are wanting to build in the cryptocurrency world, because that's like that's the quickest way to making money and that's like the imperative of capital and if you're going to invest in a business, there's like a lot of like you know, neoliberal brain in the cryptocurrency world of like that's, basically, in order to change the world, you have to make a startup that makes money itself and takes venture capital and whatever else when it comes to money, you know, yeah, I think taking.

Speaker 1: 21:13

I think it's become an interesting place of experimentation where you can take other types of models that have not been able to get the same amount of traction as a dominant one, because it is an alternative space where people are trying to experiment and filled with people who are very skeptical of the current institutions and want to create something different, and I think it makes like a fruitful space.

Speaker 1: 21:36

So like I really liked a recent article from Brett Scott, who was like a money researcher, where he kind of talks about the synthesis, like he's like kind of like a crude dialectical synthesis of like the monetary, like crypto token world or commodity money thinking of crypto world, with kind of like the more alternative, like historically more progressive kind of monetary and currency experimentation space with community currencies and so forth, and kind of like mixing those two together to create something where we use the models of these kind of alternative currency and community currency spaces but get the affordances of the technology as well.

Speaker 1: 22:19

So, like I think, for him, it's a lot to do with scale. I think the kind of the one of the critiques of a lot of these kind of localized attempts at doing these is that they oftentimes don't last too long or they're reliant on, like a particular person who spends a lot of time administering the system. I think, like you know, being able to automate so that you're not reliant on this type of thing but people can just use it, is something that's powerful, and being able to create a space where people can kind of collect if they govern is something else.

Speaker 2: 22:51

That's that's very and I would add to that list to like transparency also would be, I think, a pretty big one, because I think of you know, probably a lot of people are familiar with Berkshares the probably the most successful community currency, I would say.

Speaker 2: 23:08

But I always think, like, you know, how do you actually know that they're not just like printing it, you know, so that's one very small brain way of looking at it.

Speaker 2: 23:17

So there's the kind of like structure of the technology and there are certain biases that one might think, at least we're kind of baked in there.

Speaker 2: 23:27

And then there's kind of the history of the technology which is very specific and we know, and you know, going back to like the 1990s and the cypherpunks, aka crypto anarchists is another term that sometimes applied to the same group, who I have quite a lot of sympathy to and are kind of privacy focused and really foresaw some of the issues I think that we're now really facing with the internet. But that did sort of, during especially the early years of Bitcoin adoption, kind of fed into some very specifically libertarian, like people who are obsessed with Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, and that really became very strongly identified with Bitcoin and there were even books written about it, and so I'm kind of curious for your read of, I guess, the relationship between politics and technology, both coming in and going out, in the sense of is the politics that that fed into this technology determinative of what it's good for, you know? And if like, if not, where does that lack of determination come from?

Speaker 1: 24:40

Yeah, I mean I don't think it's like it's not deterministic, but it is like getting way ahead of the game. That makes sense, like the unfortunate truth about Bitcoin, I think, for me is that it was successful as a technological implementation of a particular politics and it is playing out that politics in its structure and in the way that people are interacting with it and so, yeah, I mean I don't think like that determines the entirety of what will happen is kind of the point that I'm on. It's like a more difficult job, of course, after the fact, but it's something that I think is worthwhile kind of pursuing. So, like I kind of like I have like a couple of influences, I think, with this. Like one, I really like Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto.

Speaker 1: 25:41

She's like a feminist writer and she talks about how, basically, like technology is not, or say like faithful to its creators or to its parents, oftentimes that you can take it and use it for something else, which is like what happened if you I don't know, you did a PhD in history of technology. I imagine so many things that were built for one thing ended up like not being the thing that it was used for.

Speaker 2: 26:05

Yeah, your example of the drum machine was really good. I like that.

Speaker 1: 26:07

Yeah. So I think this is sometimes lost, like when it comes to crypto. For me, this is like the like. I very crudely try to separate people one side as like the hype men, the crypto hype men, and the other side as like the critic, the hype man being like this is going to change the world, do it, let's go. And then the other one being like this is all stupid, don't do it and stay away from it. And I guess I'm trying to use, like you know, thinking about models and maps as like a way to be nuanced in between these two kind of like very hardcore positions, I feel, so that we can find the cracks in both, the cracks in the ways that, like, the hype men are explaining it, because I feel that the critics, they kind of like, are reacting to just the way that hype men kind of explain it to them, and then you kind of like lose out on a lot of like potentially like very, very interesting things and like radical potential for the use of this stuff.

Speaker 2: 27:04

Yeah, I mean, that's a very interesting way that you put it in terms of, like, the people who are motivated to profit from something often explain it. They're motivated to explain it in the dumbest possible way. And then the people who are, you know, opposed to it are responding to that already reductive framing and I love that as a I'm sorry.

Speaker 1: 27:29

No, go ahead. Well, I was going to transition, I was going to agree, yes, okay.

Speaker 2: 27:33

So so I love that as kind of like a way of analyzing the dialectic. I mean, I would kind of maybe offer like two other categories that can go alongside, which are like the more nuanced categories of like, maybe like true believers probably including some people in this room who are like actually trying to build something and are, you know, maybe not trying to make a million dollars as their primary goal and then I would say there's also a class of critics that is at themselves quite nuanced, paying attention to specific things and and you know, maybe they're skeptics of the entire thing but they're actually like focusing in on here's how it's going to fail.

Speaker 2: 28:13

But but I'm most interested in some like psychological way in the, the sort of more knee jerk critics that you're talking about people, and often it seems like at various moments, you know, obviously like media sort of follows a cycle, so at particular moments there is definitely a surplus of people saying, like all of this is fraud, like the like crypto has nothing to offer, like none of this means anything, and it often, you know you're, you're delusional, I'm like most fundamentally affraidy in, and so when I look at things like this, I feel like there's a sort of like reaction construction happening of like.

Speaker 2: 29:03

So I guess the question is, like in your read, and this does tend to be sort of centrist liberals, I think, and maybe to kind of beg the question a bit, institutionalists, who are most reactive against crypto in this, like everything, all of it is fake way. So I'm curious kind of what your take is on that aspect of of the dialogue, like where is that coming from? Where, especially, you know, often it's people who haven't necessarily looked at the technology very closely or thinking from a very US centric perspective Like where but where does that like sort of knee jerk I don't mean reactionary in the same sense, but like sort of reactionary response to crypto come from? In your opinion.

Speaker 1: 29:52

Yeah, maybe like reactive is a it would be the right ones. But yeah, no, I think, like I think Elizabeth Warren is like the obvious kind of like person right now.

Speaker 2: 30:02

This banking reformer.

Speaker 1: 30:05

Yeah, I mean, I think it's like a very I think it's a worldview about like I mean just a lot of trust in the status quo and in institutions themselves and that like it's a very much like we can fix it from the inside belief, which I mean in some cases maybe you can and you know, go for it. But I think it's this kind of very limiting view of kind of like only thinking of politics as like electoralism, I think is a big aspect of it, like thinking of being presented with the system and like a map of the system, usually being that being like the main institutions for electoralism is a big, is a big one.

Speaker 2: 30:43

Yeah, speaking of mistaking the map for the territory. Right yeah, and so like.

Speaker 1: 30:48

I think that there is this like people and it's a difficult thing, I think, for a lot of people to wrap their heads around that like to think outside of these institutions and ways of like in order to create influence or power, like doesn't have to go through these institutional pathways, and that may be scary for some to do that and it may.

Speaker 1: 31:10

I mean there's just a lot of of course, our brainwashing is the right way at word, but like thinking that anybody who does try to do that is like some crazy anarchist who wants to destroy the world, and you know, is it like Joker or something like that? But there's like plenty of like instances in history where that was the way that people change the world and interact with it. You know like I think you know the way that democracy has manifested itself today, especially just like in the US and in Europe and as well in the West. It is kind of like a democracy has become a kind of like justification machine for the status quo, that like, oh you, you know you elected, you tried and you voted really hard, but, sorry, you can't do anything about it next time, wait another four or five years, and I don't know. I think. I think it has a lot to do with, yeah, thinking, thinking in this type of map of the world, I guess yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:05

So sort of relevant to that and maybe sort of to conclude on a totally personal curiosity kind of note. You know, as I said, I have a lot of empathy for the viewpoints of, like crypto anarchists, even, to a certain extent, radical libertarians, for the, for the very reason that you're you're outlining that there is this like institutionalist situation that we find ourselves in, I guess, and I guess my question would be more to your, more to the socialism side of it than the blockchain side. But, you know, given that this comes out of such a libertarian, anarchist milieu, leaving the technology to one side for a second like is there, you know, is there an overlap in that then diagram? Is there like strategic common ground to be found? Or maybe not strategic, maybe just kind of like, you know, mental, creative common ground to be found between you know people who want to end the Fed and and people who, like you know, just want socialized healthcare, you know?

Speaker 1: 33:16

Yeah, sure, I mean, I think. I think, yes, there is. It's a very complex game at the same time, like, like, for me, I like to understand politics as like like all politics is a is coalition politics that, like it's usually, I mean, unless you have like real, like a huge base that you're able to mobilize in order to make change where you have, like, the majority of the population. Usually, if you have that is because you have a coalition of different groups, like usually, you can't, you can't make the change that you want to do without it. And I don't know, I think of like. You know, like Yanis Verifakis was the Minister of Finance in Greece during, like the Greek crisis and like he was giving, you know I mean, he's a Marxist giving like recommendations for policy on what to do, like to fight against, like the austerity being posed by the ECB and everyone else, and like, like libertarians loved him. You know like American libertarians loved Yanis Verifakis because, like they were actually aware of that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:23

It's like I'm reading a book right now like they're able to find common ground on kind of like their hatred for certain types of financial, like the ways in which certain financial institutions have been playing the game, because libertarians have this certain I don't know like fairness in financial markets, as like a, as like a big thing, and so like I think there is there's a space to play in there. Of course, it's just like a very it's a complex one and it's a one that requires politics, like it requires like having you know relationships with people that you like don't necessarily agree with on everything, because to find enough people who agree with you on everything is just like to me, a silly game to play.

Speaker 2: 35:03

Yeah, Thank you, Very enlightening so. So I think we can start opening it up to just a broader dialogue and I'll try and keep things horizontal. But are there is there anybody in the audience who has a question? Go for it.

Speaker 5: 35:21

So thanks for the talk.

Speaker 5: 35:22

The book seems really interesting.

Speaker 5: 35:24

I've been following you for a little bit so, as somebody who's been in like the kind of like left protect space, I've seen that, as has kind of been pointed out, that there's this almost resistance against tech being integrated, tech movements being integrated into movements, as we pointed out, into institutional spaces, into institutional politics, and it seems like the biggest base would be people that you get called the liberal communists, the corporate redistributors who are, you know, early adopters of technology, like Bill Gates, right, and that you know he's really into, like nano reactors and this type of thing, right, but it.

Speaker 5: 36:14

But in my experience, people like Nick Schoenig and left accelerationists and these types of people have had a really hard time moving past technocratic speak and also integration into culture, and that the movements you know around these things has largely, like look at the Bernie Sanders movement been against really basic technologies like nuclear. So I'm just curious if there's a strategy and what kind of politics would be connected to that strategy of you know, of a socialism that is connected to people as opposed to kind of, like you know, a PMC type of politics.

Speaker 1: 37:00

Yeah, I agree with the criticism. I think it's it's a tough one, but ultimately, the thing that does probably need to happen is just like engaging with the communities that you are wanting to like build the technology for the most Like I mean, it's pretty common, you know, even I've done I've done a lot of like projects. You know Technological project management or something like in corporate spaces, and even they, like you know you do like surveys or like whatever you understand, like the thing they're trying to do, like it's a basic thing, and like anthropology that you like you know fine, identify, like the group of people that you want to identify and like understand, like Use, use that type of framework to understand, like, maybe, the problems that they're facing and whatever else. A big also. I think one of the biggest obstacles, though, is that, like technical education is very Low in like a lot of the world that we don't like it's not common knowledge how the internet works, but Everybody is using it all the time, but nobody is just like it's just like a little magic box that like no, it gives you the, the text or whatever that you want to see, that your friends sent you and this and I think this has been on purpose, like it's been created to be this like, almost seemingly, that it requires like years of intense study in order to understand like the basic things of how the stuff works, when it ever like it, like some like some type of like I guess reform you can call it that I think would be interesting To have.

Speaker 1: 38:35

I think that would change this a lot is is if you know, as you know, as part of the education system, you like, understood, you are taught like how these things work, and that's one thing that I think the kind of like the left accelerationists and like other types of, I guess, left-wing movements that I've tried to be more open to the use of like digital technologies have kind of Kind of miss is that they do use a lot of like they tend to recreate then like the technical jargon that they're like you know, because they're trying to like, they're understanding the, the technology on the tech, the original creators, technologists, like their own turf, I think, and we're not really doing much of an effort to make it like and our mass education program and how this shit works and why it needs to be changed and like like.

Speaker 1: 39:19

I think there is this kind of like paternalism of like, oh well, we can't, really, they can't understand it because it's too difficult, or something like that. Whenever I think, if I don't know, I've just found that if you sit someone down and they're willing to learn and want to participate or whatever else, they Are willing to learn about it, and and that can go a long way and like creating then the framework for how they interact with their, with their apps or whatever else. So, yeah, I've said a couple of things there.

Speaker 2: 39:48

I mean I can't speak to. I would add a little bit to that, which is I can't speak to the specific Sort of portions of the movement that you're talking about but, like, on top of the, the actual technical education, I think there is still a ton of room to grow in. You know what you're basically doing, which is you know critical analysis of technology that is kind of socially informed and actually is able to think through the implications of something. I mean, and and this is where you know you can't necessarily teach the entire package at a social level, but also like we're dealing with it on both sides, because you also have the technocrats themselves actively engaged in the process of dismantling an education system that is oriented towards Incocating any kind of critical, like awareness, into people.

Speaker 5: 40:48

I I'll just wrap this up, but no, yeah, thank you. Both of these are really great answers. I think too, like, I think one of the things that like, if we look at like the early Maoist movements I'm not a fan of Mao but I do like some of the strategies Of mutual aid right, people didn't understand the politics, but when their life was benefited from the actual act of being benefited from a technology they are political technology in this case that they maybe didn't understand. Maybe that could be a micro politics that you could push for. That would, you know, make meaningful change and real people's lives. And I don't think they have to understand. You know quantum computers or whatever you're using to make this technology real.

Speaker 7: 41:32

So I think that's a great question, yeah, sure, so this might be an unfair question to ask you. Let me ask you at anyhow, but I think there's probably impossible to predict. But I'm just kind of curious what your view is on what like. What do you think like the the sort of like socialist endgame is for Incorporating blockchain technology into society? So like, let's fast-forward 10, 25, 50, 100 years, however long All the breaks go in the direction of the left? Where are we? Are we still Living in a society like similar to today, but the block change is occasionally used for Mutual aid and co-ops? Or is it like all of society full on On the blockchain?

Speaker 7: 42:24

or like on chain socialism yeah on chain gay communist socialism or whatever. Yes, I'm just kind of curious, like what your, what your projection is assuming the best.

Speaker 1: 42:38

I mean, like for me it's I, to me this, like when it comes to socialism, like we could have had socialism without blockchain for sure. Like I think that can exist.

Speaker 7: 42:52

Like I don't think it's like we need to have like the block, we need to have a cryptocurrency to make socialism, like I think that's kind of like a silly idea, or Maybe not like socialism per se, but just sort of like it all moves in the direction of sort of like leftist Whatever as far as you mean like starting from now, like what would be the influence or what would what would ideally would like to see happen yeah, maybe framing it less in the the context of like socialism or leftism, but just like if the, the breaks all move in the direction that you'd like it to move into all right in 50 hundred, however many years, like what do you, what do you sort of view as the end game?

Speaker 1: 43:31

I Mean the end game is socialism. But I think that I don't know, one time I wrote like a big list of like things that I wish existed, that people could Could do. But I mean I think it's more about like, because for me I think, like we're I really hate saying this, but like we're really early that's Because there hasn't been very much like experimentation with like. Specifically, this technology is with a, you know, progressive lens on it or Socialist lens on it. So, and I think part of that, I mean there's a lot of reasons for that. One is because of all the libertarians in the space, like socialist kind of generally, kind of rejecting it in a lot of ways. Socialists now, like never having money and like you know, a lot of these types of things, that kind of have been like huge obstacles to making that happen. But I mean, ideally I would love to see just like. I mean the biggest thing is like a whole lot less reliance on venture capital and like the idea of capital in itself generally like to me, like a post capitalism, it means that we are less reliant on capital as like a social institution for how we kind of reproduced ourselves and like the things in the world, which means that you know, people are just not doing things solely for, like the profit motive, and that's really hard Problem to solve because, like cryptocurrencies are so monetized and like the main reason, like 90% of people buy it generally is to speculate and to make money off of it. So it's like, it's it's difficult, but I think, like and and there is, I think, another problem to solve as well is that, like the consensus mechanisms of basically every blockchain is based on a profit motive, like Economic incentivization is just like profit, like we're reliant, so like I think what, why blockchains Work is because they comply with kind of like the, the expectations of capitalism, of like you are accumulating capital and that the world is moving forward because of that. Again, another very difficult problem to solve, like whether or not we need, like the consensus mechanism should be changed to something that doesn't allow that but also still have the same kind of safety and security guarantees that it gives us. Maybe that means that it's like like not a blockchain and is like some other type of distributed ledger Could be.

Speaker 1: 46:01

I think just blockchains are the ones that the like kind of infrastructure that has become the most popular and the most like Interesting people developing on it and that's why, like, I spend so much time looking at it and thinking about it. But I do think that there are. There is like Like a non insignificant chance that like we need to rethink. Like blockchains themselves, and maybe that means that they are not blockchains anymore and, you know, are able to do the things that they do without necessarily relying on capital. So those are a lot of things that's like, and I think part of so. Like getting rid of venture capital basically means that there is funding available for people to do work. That's important. That doesn't involve Making a deal with the devil. I think that's a huge part. Yeah, cool.

Speaker 7: 46:42

Follow-up question to all that. It sounds like you're less a blockchain rack on more of a decentralized ledger technology. Right, maybe, but doesn't roll off the tongue as well, so I guess on that note, Are there any? Dlts that aren't Ethereum that you're excited about. That might, yeah, they're not Ethereum or not blockchain or something that, yeah, I guess, like aren't.

Speaker 1: 47:07

Ethereum aren't Bitcoin, like me.

Speaker 7: 47:10

I guess the definition of blockchain is a little loose, but I guess I'm just curious If there are any technologies in the, in the, in the rough family of blockchains or DLT that you think sort of conform to what you're describing. Yeah, so I mean there, one of the last chapters is compares a couple of like alternatives, since the book is pretty like, I don't know. 90% of examples are on, like Ethereum or something like that, but I do look in like.

Speaker 1: 47:36

The definition of blockchain is a little loose, but I guess I'm just curious if there are any technologies in the, in the, in the, in the, but I do look in like.

Speaker 1: 47:43

I think I mean, cosmos is a really interesting like ecosystem in itself, just because of how they've thought very differently about how the different chains relate to one another, but it's still I mean, it's still based on capital.

Speaker 1: 47:54

No doubt Holochain is another one that I think is interesting that doesn't doesn't have this type of consensus mechanism. I think one of the things that I'm waiting for from Holochain at the moment, though, is like just more use and more production, like I like, you know, I've spoken to like the founders before, and I like I think a lot of their ideas are really interesting, even though they, like really don't describe themselves as socialists or whatever, but I do think that there are some things that they say that are that are really Interesting, that like I'm interested to see what the you know what's going to come out of it, and like I'm kind of like for me, I'm just kind of like waiting and observing and seeing like what is coming out, and keeping track with those, but Holochain is one of those things that I'm like I would like to see, like, do more and succeed. But we'll see.

Speaker 2: 48:46

And if I could just like expand a little bit on what I think is like the point that I agree with the most out of all you just said is which is trying to get rid of VCs, right, like and I'm sure this is no news to most of the people in this audience if you're paying attention to technology at all but like there was a moment when Venture Capital kind of did a pretty decent job of allocation to new ideas and new technologies lasted maybe 10 years, and for the last 15 we've really been living in this kind of like hallucination of capital where narrative dominates so much and like you're just trying to collect money from people and really the money isn't in building a business that works or building a new technology that enhances people's lives. Like the money is in creating the narrative, running the fund, collecting the investment and then cashing out as quickly as possible and so like to. Again, I think we're sort of just expanding on each other's ideas here, but for me, one of the visions of the future is this ability of maybe even relatively small groups of people to form communities online that can direct capital towards projects that actually, like benefit them, and they then also have a literal stake. In as much as that is like a sort of capitalist metaphor, I think there's some value there.

Speaker 2: 50:05

Of course, the tricky part is that when you're looking at it on a day to day basis, the difference between a like the law cannot necessarily see the difference between a community engaged in a collective enterprise and like one guy running an exit scam who's going to take all the money from like the 20 people he attracted. So that really, for me, like that's like the how do you make that distinction and make it in a lasting way that works is one of the real remaining challenges of this thing, because once you take like face to face community out of the equation and stuff can happen online. Obviously, we've seen that what it does as much as anything else is like create opportunities for fraud and scams that are, you know, mostly smaller than the macro societal scale fraud and scam that is venture capital over the last 10 years, but it's still, you know, it's not the future that I think either of us want. So that's a hair that is very difficult to split.

Speaker 1: 51:06

I love hearing that for me because I mean I'm just being at coin desk for so long and seeing that the increase in venture capital the past few years must have been, I mean, yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 2: 51:19

Like I've been writing about crypto for like it's going to be literally a decade in like two months, which is crazy, and the I was talking to somebody as we were getting ready here even in like the 2018 blow up, like there was the first hint of like full, like like people in the finance industry actually getting interested. That's why I love the subtitle of your book so much is because, as much as it like sort of you are, you're required to think nonlinearly to make sense of it. But like how capitalism did destroy crypto right like that that it really involved like people who were in mainstream finance seeing an opportunity again, like I said, to create a narrative. Narrative didn't have a lot to do with the reality, frankly. And then you get this like horrific public blow up that damages the I don't know reputation of the technology even more than it already had. So it's very frustrating.

Speaker 6: 52:22

So so I'm an optimist and I think that looking at blockchain from a socialist perspective in our world is fundamentally optimistic, and I think, in order to get to a place where socialist infrastructure is built on the blockchain there in our world, it would seem like that would happen in tandem with A world is also hyper financialized, and so, and in and in that world, in that scenario, the critics of crypto really do have a role to play, and so my question is what do you think needs to happen for more? So the crypto capitalists on the on the other side, to see that there is an option to use crypto in a different way, so in a different lens, a different way of allocating capital? Because I think that there's. It's not just that socialists need to build, but it's also that what is being built needs to be torn down as well. So how do you, how do you, you know, navigate that?

Speaker 1: 53:40

very, very carefully. I think it's a. It's a really, it's a. That's a really hard problem.

Speaker 1: 53:44

I think it's kind of like the ultimate, one of the ultimate problems that needs to be solved is like I go back to this a lot, but like like living within capitalism but also working against it is like not easy thing to do and like you know, one of the things, another kind of idea that like those gets into, is like the how capital In one hand de territorializes things, like capital has de territorialized like pre existing social structures that used to be the thing that, like people relied on for help or support or whatever else that's been destroyed, while at the same time re territorializing or then creating new types of social structures that now we're dependent on. To like I kind of just use the like kind of metaphor of like a double edged sword that like on one end you are, you are removing, and on the other end you're always adding, and that's like a difficult, it's a difficult thing to like plan everything out and for it to happen exactly as you intended, I think, but like is something worth doing it's. I don't know if, like, of course, yeah, I don't know if you just like ask a capitalist like hey, can you please like give us money and not expect returns? Like it's like very unlikely, they're going to do it a lot of the time, and but I think if you are in a situation where you're lucky enough to like convince them to give you a bunch of money, I think it's kind of it's imperative to try to be that, I guess, to find ways to de territorial, de territorialize capital itself and and re territorialize other things. I mean like.

Speaker 1: 55:30

I think to me this is kind of like also the essence of like other concepts, like do power or something like that, that there has to be like this interaction with the world as it exists and as well as like creation of, of the new in order to like supplant it or to create, you know, to overcome it and yeah. So I think. I think it's it's very context, specific, of course, and like what thing is actually that you are trying to pursue? I think those are it's kind of like the. I think people need to be more comfortable generally in thinking about contradictions or like like acknowledging the contradictions of the things that they may be doing and like kind of working through those things because like yeah, the world is full of contradiction and it's like not an easy thing to kind of get over. So I think at least being aware of it if you're the one trying to build this stuff and like being honest with yourself, is part of it.

Speaker 2: 56:25

Being willing to confront the contradiction. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think the use the word build, which I think is really crucial, because you know another way of I'm paraphrasing somebody here it's going to escape me but like one very effective way to like tear down the existing structure is to just go ahead and build the new thing that's going to replace it, right, and so I think that you know building and then also like being in that process and engage with it in all of its complexity and sometimes like compromise. Perhaps I mean to give the really like basic example. I think we probably have different views about Bitcoin, but personally I view Bitcoin whatever else it is as like potentially a useful counterbalance to certain practices by certain governments, and so I think that's a pretty decent example in my mind of if you build something that actually works and does something for people, then it can have effects that you know, if you're strategic enough, can accomplish your ends by actually just offering the alternative.

Speaker 8: 57:35

I have a question if that's cool. We've talked about venture capitalism and how the legacy models and narratives present an obstacle to thinking about how the tech can be used. But what I found is some of the loudest voices for socialist concepts are actually venture capitalists, like Lee Jin has a podcast called means of creation, as talked about creator on platforms, universal creator income, like things that sound on the surface level like actually very leftist, but it's now VCs that are promoting like an investment thesis.

Speaker 2: 58:21

Let's never forget who sold us the quote. Unquote sharing economy. Like I have to jump in here because I have an answer, but I'll restrain myself, sorry.

Speaker 8: 58:30

Well, I also want to tie into your point about coalition building. So, like all politics are building a coalition, so if some radical ideas are shared with venture capitalists, do you see a path of building a coalition with VCs somehow? And also, what do you think about the co-opting of radical language by people that are, at the end of the day, just trying to get a return on capital?

Speaker 1: 59:01

Yeah, I mean, it's a tough problem as well. Like, yeah, it's not surprising that language gets co-opted. In my opinion, it's not something that I think we can really just prevent, like tell them no, you can't do that, don't do it, that's not going to happen. Nazism is the co-optation of socialism through a nationalist lens. The reason the Nazi party was created was because socialism was on the rise and there was a need to co-opt that movement and turn it into a fascist one. So I think this is constantly going to happen.

Speaker 1: 59:46

There is always this battle back and forth. It's hard because I think, if you purely think of things as like, there are two sides and we're each pushing back and forth between one another and whoever is pushing hardest is going to get more and more. I don't think that's how it works. It's a lot more multifaceted. And there is this you probably use some metaphor of Asian philosophy about moving with the water or something like that finding ways to kind of acknowledge that this is a possibility, that this can happen, and how to mitigate it, because you can't completely defend yourself from all these things.

Speaker 1: 1:00:28

I know of people who are working on specific projects, who believe, who are taking venture capital, for example, and they are trying to find ways in which that kind of reduce their power or their influence over them. Right now I'm kind of in the phase of waiting to see what they do and how that pans out. Right now I'm more on the side, personally, of I personally wouldn't do a project that accepts venture capital, because that's not the thing that I want to do. To me it's kind of like that's what neoliberalism over the past several decades has been very good at, especially technology and big tech. There was a pretty good amount of time where people were thinking Google is this big progressive force that's going to change well for better. I remember people thinking Elon Musk was the leftist billionaire because he's making electric cars or some shit. Obviously now it was very stupid, but that was for a long time that's been happening.

Speaker 1: 1:01:31

I understand people being a bit traumatized or a bit fed up with that type of thing. We're in conditions not of our choosing and it's a difficult game to play to choose to want to make radically different new ways of being and structures, to accept a pretty big task in the first place. I think that kind of has to be acknowledged, that you can, of course, come up and make decisions on what is a good way or a bad way of doing it, but I think there is a space that you can play to, where people can try different strategies, because I don't think we've really figured out what is the way to move forward on all these things. I still think we're really at a point that we're in need of experimentation in this, because we haven't figured out the thing that's rapidly creating, the thing that we want.

Speaker 2: 1:02:37

I love your point about alluding to sharing economy rhetoric, for example, as this kind of co-optation of an existing social impulse, maybe towards something like socialism, but instead we get like we work which, like the we, was like a huge part of their whole marketing thing. This is slightly changing the topic, but I would just kind of like issue a call of warning, I guess, because in my mind I'm paying attention to obviously, everybody's paying a lot of attention to it right now. If you're in tech, but in artificial intelligence, you're now seeing the deployment of a certain kind of, I would say, perverted socialist rhetoric being deployed around creativity, for example, this idea that an algorithm that ingests other people's work is really just doing the same thing that all artists have done. All artists steal, all artists are, like, inspired by each other. We're all one, we're all part of the same thing. But in fact it's actually like this cover for intellectual property theft, in my opinion, on a huge scale, and I think that like to bring it back around in a way that doesn't really match any political orthodoxy that springs to mind.

Speaker 2: 1:03:52

But I think, as we see this like predatory AI approach to intellectual property, it kind of, I have to say, as somebody with socialist or leftist tendencies. It perversely kind of like reminds us of the value of property and of individual property and of being able to maybe place some limits on how people use certain things that certain people created and have actual rights to, and I think that crypto does offer that as a different viewpoint that can be useful in certain strategic circumstances, to be able to say like no, this belongs to this group or this person, and like in the digital age, it's the capitalists who really have the most reach to come in and take things that are just kind of in the commons right, like I mean, we're seeing with AI, essentially like a replay of the real tragedy of the commons, which is the partition of it and the appropriation from it into private hands, and so like thinking about ways to limit that pulling out of the commons. I think is also another potential, very theoretical at this point application of blockchain through certain rights management things.

Speaker 1: 1:05:14

No, I really like what you said, but one of the things that part of this question to acknowledge, I think, is that oftentimes it's phrased as in how can we prevent the right from co-opting us? And like that's kind of like the framework that's generally used, without acknowledging that, like I don't know, like Marx, he co-opted like right wing philosophy. Like Hegel was not a leftist. Like David Ricardo and Adam Smith were not leftists, you know, like they were. Like the liberal philosophers who, like then ended up greatly influencing the way that we think about capitalism today and you basically co-opted the use of their theorems, of their labor theory of value, and used it and applied it in a different way to create what ultimately became, like, you know, marxist socialism at the time. And so, like there is, like there is also a history of the left being able to do that as well.

Speaker 1: 1:06:13

I feel like we kind of forgotten or like don't do very much. So, yeah, I don't know that's that's something that I would, that I would keep in mind as well. It's a, of course, like it requires like critical thinking in order to do that. It's not, like you know, an easy thing to do. At the same time, Hi Josh.

Speaker 3: 1:06:33

So I know, josh. So before I ask my question, I want to share with you guys my perspective, because it's kind of my framing as to where the question kind of stems from. So we talked about tech being an expression of our political beliefs. So that's one. My belief is competition and coexisting ideologies. I believe in this. I believe in that kind of as a means of global learning. You know, we don't like that ideology because X, y, z happened. We like ours because you know Y, z, x happened, whatever, but more as a means of global learning.

Speaker 3: 1:07:10

The third one my belief is, you know you're talking about representational thinking. I think it's kind of the easiest way for people to grasp something especially. You know it's just easy, it's memetic. But also, if we're thinking about, you know, the burden of our information age, we just have everything coming at us all the time, everything all at once, everywhere, sort of situation. So those are the three things I kind of want to frame before we jump into my question.

Speaker 3: 1:07:42

So my thinking is you know, what do you think about the perspective that you know the best direction of in implementing? You know socialist blockchain might be kind of, you know, leveraging this current state that we have, you know, in this representational thinking, but maybe doing this with the public commons at scale like water, air, land. You know a lot of this. You know, with ideologies and tech, it's all kind of an evangelism game. You know who can you get to follow you on board in your direction and your ideology? And if we're thinking about bringing socialism to blockchain at scale, you know what are those largest examples. So my thinking here might be that direction. So you know what's your perspective on that.

Speaker 1: 1:08:38

So what are like influences? You mean that are moving towards socialism on the blockchain? Is that kind of thinking?

Speaker 3: 1:08:47

Like my thinking is, the best way to evangelize people is to do things with them at scale that have immediate utility. So an example could be you know public utility blockchains that are leveraging data on water that we use. You know books that we use, things that are generally public, but you know just kind of are being leveraged by and managed by the government.

Speaker 1: 1:09:15

Right.

Speaker 1: 1:09:15

No, I think this, I don't know, might be an unpopular opinion, but I do think that there is like a really interesting place to play potentially with like partnering with certain governments or like local municipalities to use the technology in a way that like helps govern already existing, like shared resources in a particular locality. I think that would be a very fruitful place and like a very immediate thing. Of course, it is sort of like we haven't found yet. I don't know if there are like so many. I know of a couple of projects. I've kind of done this, but some of them are kind of like the vaporware a lot of the time. But yeah, I think, being like I'm not afraid to say that it is interesting to like partner with governments to do this type of thing and should be considered a lot more, just because it's already a preexisting institution that has access to like all these people and who, like, are reliant on them for a lot of their services. So, no, I think that's like one place to play.

Speaker 1: 1:10:23

Like one of the one of my like articles that I wrote quite a while in like beginning of the pandemic was like how to? Because in the beginning of the pandemic everybody was afraid of being kicked out of their of their homes and apartments because they were not working and their landlord was going to kick them out if they didn't pay rent. And this is happening at like a massive scale and so, like, for me, one of the things like thought experiments I had at that point is like how to how to use like blockchains to kind of like create a different type of relationship with housing, for example. So I just you know it's called the housing for all token or something like that where the token is representation of a political rights to housing. So, like you could use the token to, based on you know what your like particular conditions are at that moment use your token to purchase a house or not really purchase a house. It gives you the right to use the house. So it's like a different relationship with property that you don't need to buy a house in order to live in it or rent a house to live in it.

Speaker 1: 1:11:30

The housing is kind of held in Commons, in the public, and you use the token as just a system of allocating, like who is able to live in which particular apartment or house, because, and at the same time, you can, I think, pretty easily programmatically put in, like if this is a single mom or something like that with with kids, their their token would give them a right to a house with more rooms for their children to play in, versus I don't know someone who's like a single guy who doesn't need that much space. So I think that's like that is decommodatizing housing and relying less on the markets and is something that, like I think in a world where we aren't so like reliant on free markets, could be possible. Or utilizing kind of like public housing already existing public housing systems around the world. I think is like one thing that I'm that I thought about. That thing is is interesting. What do you think? The government?

Speaker 3: 1:12:32

welfare structure is. How different do you think it is from what you're presenting?

Speaker 1: 1:12:40

here Quite different. I mean, the logic in a lot of welfare systems is very like me. It's, I mean, there's means testing in a way that is like quite like needlessly punitive. I guess that a lot of in order to get welfare, especially in the US, like you have the amount of paperwork they have to give them before you're even able to get anything is like pretty monstrous. It's sort of like just kind of like punishing people for being poor, like they're already in a bad situation and then like also, you want to like they have to come in, you know, once a week for, like a drug test or whatever else. Like that's taking away time for them to be able to like care for their families or to like find a job or whatever else. I think it's quite different. It's just like yeah, it depends on like the logic that's embedded inside of it, because what is another great fear of mine actually is that blockchains do get used by existing public institutions, but in the logic of the already existing system, that's quite punitive. So, yeah, I've got answers. Question.

Speaker 9: 1:13:44

I guess start off, I would say, like what you said about working with existing institutions, because you talk a lot about this parallelism, right, with these new structures. But I'd be curious to know what your thoughts on of crisis playing a role in this shift. If you look at Bitcoin, you know this can't. This was spun out of a crisis, right, banking crisis. It was a direct response to that. And so, yeah, and to the sort of original like delusion point, when you're doing this kind of schizo analytic framework with rhizomes and the systems and how you, how you present them, what kind of prevents not your own personal politics but politics in general devolving into essentially being a pirate, right, like you're kind of riding, you're building the ship with the small group that you've coalesced and you guys are just trying to get through the storm. So I wanna contrast that with sort of the conventional, you know, notion of socialism as a movement, a real collectivist movement.

Speaker 1: 1:14:59

So, to your earlier points about crisis and the role of crisis, I think, yeah, what brought about neoliberalism was the crisis in the 70s of like stagflation, like that was ultimately like the moment when things like really shifted. The entire world was like under a crisis and people were just like looking for new ideas, and the one that already existed was neoliberalism. There was already a huge movement I mean not a movement, but like a lot of money behind this type of thinking of like free market fundamentalism that began way before, you know, 1970, whatever it was whenever it started to come up, and so, like I think there is At least the meme is 1972, right yeah?

Speaker 1: 1:15:42

yeah, but yeah, I mean like it's a so like I think it was like Naomi Klein or like Shockdachtchen I think she wrote a lot about this that, like in moments of crisis, that it's like used as a point whenever like nobody's kind of like able to pay attention, or looking for like massive changes to happen, a lot of times for the worse, in the benefit of like those already have a lot, and that's how, like, we tend to have really big changes in the world, just like after these crises, like so I think, considering that, I think that means sort of acknowledging that there's a need to like build, collect, like a collective of sorts, a movement of sorts, before the crisis happens, because by the time the crisis happens, it's too late, like you're not ready for what's happening.

Speaker 1: 1:16:37

Like if there was some sort of greater movement before Occupy Wall Street that was more organized and more you know, whatever, it probably would have been a lot more successful than it has been or than it was, even though it was a well-intentioned you know, people were angry, but it's this like constant thing where there is this reaction to crises happening. So I think that there is just like, yeah, the need to build infrastructure before the crisis and to so that you're ready for whenever the crisis does happen, because I mean, if you, I mean just capitalism, just like guarantees crises, that's like par for the course.

Speaker 9: 1:17:19

Yeah, yeah. So, like, I guess that's kind of why I was going to the whole Schizel analysis, right, because I wanna kind of pick your brain about what your teleological view is of this right. Like, is it that there will be a crisis and then, you know, society is sort of remade in this new image, or is this something to help not promote the status quo, right, but is part is a mechanism of stability, right? So you know, is this socialism a stabilizing, you know equalizing force, or is this socialism something that arises after the crisis, right, when you know there are these tools lying around for others to pick up and continue? And so I guess that's sort of my main point, yeah, point.

Speaker 1: 1:18:11

I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not like I wouldn't be able to make the prediction on that. I guess I'm more interested to just see. Like I don't know what works essentially Like, and it's for me still hard to say how exactly that will pan out.

Speaker 2: 1:18:31

Like my take on that and you know, like, leaving aside an immense amount of complexity, but my entire fascination with, like Bitcoin specifically, and to whatever lesser extent these other systems have similar features but this idea that there it's put dismissively but it was like a meme that became a collective action that actually built something, and obviously it's rooted in a lot of stuff that I think you know a lot of us would dispute on fundamental ideological grounds, but nonetheless, in terms of you know, speaking to the crisis, like it really does appear to now be something that can at least have, as you said, not necessarily status quo, but like some sort of protective effect, something that, in particular, if you're coming from like the neoliberal institutionalist perspective and you believe that, like the government is gonna take care of everything, basically there is now this model for, in a digital way, building an alternative that can be you know, maybe it's not the structure that we would like it to be, but it is nonetheless this structure that can exist past the crisis and it does exist.

Speaker 2: 1:19:51

You know, it's really there and there are obviously I'm leaving out a ton of complexities, but and I think that, like, if you go down to a more granular level and maybe it's about money and maybe it's about other things, but there are these other structures that you can build outside of the institutions that then can be, yeah, there for the crisis, or mitigate the crisis, or however you wanna put it. And I think that's one of the, for me, really fascinating things about all of this is that it's a model for exactly, I think, part of what you're talking about, with all the hairy downsides and not quite things that we would wish them to be. That comes with that.

Speaker 4: 1:20:34

Thank you for the book and podcast. I guess I have a couple short questions based on your sense of the ecosystem, sort of demographic questions like what percentage of builders in the space would you say identify as being leftist? And then also what percentage of builders are women and what percentage of them are not from the global north?

Speaker 1: 1:21:02

All of them are lower than I would like them to be. It's really hard to say. I mean I think it has changed interestingly over the years, like I don't know. I was at ETH Barcelona a couple of weeks ago and there were like a surprising amount of people, who at least considered themselves to be on the left, that I was able to meet or find I don't know, just kind of like by accident, I guess.

Speaker 1: 1:21:27

I do remember, like when I lived in New York for a year, when I was first getting into stuff and I would go to like these crypto events and it would be like I mean pretty horrible like the type of like politics a lot of the people were espousing. It's still the case a lot of the time, the politics that people are espousing, no doubt, but there has been like a growth in like these pockets, I think, of people who are not thinking about it in that way. So yeah, and I do think I mean I don't know my impression talking to women at some of these conferences is that they do think usually they're ones who come from like traditional tech or traditional finance or something like that Like I've heard that they've said that there are more women at crypto things than at the traditional, whatever financial tech things that they would normally go to.

Speaker 1: 1:22:18

I can't really confirm that necessarily, and I guess there are I don't know at least in Europe, the places that I've been to, I've met quite a few people who come from a lot of the time. I mean, there's a lot of people from, like, south America who are building that. I've probably met quite a few. But yeah, ultimately there needs to be more or there should be more.

Speaker 4: 1:22:39

I think so, like in terms of elections, would you say it's 1%, 5%, 10%.

Speaker 1: 1:22:46

That's really hard to say, I think.

Speaker 1: 1:22:47

But the thing is that, like a lot of people don't label themselves, they don't say like they don't want to be labeled to be a certain thing, and I get that, I understand it.

Speaker 1: 1:22:58

I've sort of taken on the horrible duty of labeling myself who I am and just being honest with it, because I feel fairly confident in it and like willing to engage in discussion about it, and I don't mind it. But I think a lot of people don't have a coherent politics generally and that's not like meaning I'm not saying like like they're dumb or whatever, because they have that, it's just that we don't. It's not like everybody takes the insane amount of time it takes to like read whatever big political theory books to then say like oh yes, I am this and I can defend all of my positions for everything all the time, because it's like a weird sort of responsibility to put on yourself, you know. So it's hard to say. I think a lot there are a lot of people who have like progressive tendencies and like have kind of like good intentions and wanting to create things that are more egalitarian and democratic and whatever else, but that they don't necessarily put it under the bucket of a particular political name is what I find most often.

Speaker 2: 1:23:58

I would just add one thought to the question about demographics, which is having sort of to echo what your informant told you, which is that having kind of been in the traditional tech space and being in some of those spaces and then kind of looking at what's happening in crypto, I mean just the simple fact that it is set up in a way where you know political borders don't have that much influence, does have a genuine impact, and there are major projects that come from absolutely every corner of the world.

Speaker 2: 1:24:33

I mean, an example that I try out a lot of the time is I don't know if people know this, but the team that built Etherscan is based in, I believe, malaysia or Indonesia. I might be getting that slightly wrong, but that's like a key clutch part of the entire ecosystem built by people way outside of the Silicon Valley venture capital sphere, and there are a lot of examples of that, and so I you know not to try and simplify it into percentages or whatever, but there really is some expansiveness to the space and the people who are involved that I think can be for very material speaking of let's be materialist about it right, for material reasons in terms of the way the technology is set up, that does have an impact in opening doors and you can really see it if you're out there kind of interacting with people in the space. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:25:25

I have to agree with that. That tends to be missed by a lot of critics.

Speaker 2: 1:25:31

I think that seems like a good stopping point. I think we'll all many of us will be hanging around for a little while longer here, so I'll be signing this. If you wanna chat with Josh, he's here and do you have books for sale?

Speaker 1: 1:25:45

If you've bought the $30 ticket, then I will sign a book for you and give it to you. I have the box down right there. We can do that right now, more or less. But yeah, and then if you didn't I don't know you have 20 bucks I'll give you a book.

Speaker 2: 1:25:58

And then just for the purpose of the recording, if you wanna follow me, I'm on Twitter at DavidZMorris and is there anything you wanna kind of plug on the way out here? Uh?

Speaker 1: 1:26:10

no, please buy the book, I guess. Yeah, you have one thing to buy. Okay well.

Speaker 2: 1:26:16

Thank you so much, Josh DeVila, for writing the book, for coming out and doing this. It's been great and we'll be hanging out, thanks. Thank you so much.