{ "episodeId": "SLP590", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "stephan_livera": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "guest", "tag": "STEPHAN" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:00", "start": 0.36, "text": "Hi everyone, and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast, brought to you by swan dot com, the best place to buy Bitcoin. Rejoining me today is Alex Zvetsky. Now, Zvetsky has been a guest on the show a couple times in the past, is an entrepreneur, writer, and speaker in the space, and joining me today to talk about his new book coming out called The Bushido of Bitcoin. So, welcome back to the show, Zvetsky. It's been a while, man. When's the last time we did a, we did a riff? It was probably And, you know, this book is an interesting one. I, I just finished reading it just, earlier today. Oh, well. at least the draft you gave me, so I had a, you know, I had a quick go through that. let's start with, who is this book for? This" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "00:44", "start": 43.9, "text": "book is for, I guess, Bitcoiners are definitely one audience, but what I tried to do is bring Bitcoiners closer to this new rising, I guess, for lack of a term, dissident right, or people who are Kind of sick and tired of clown world, sick and tired of all the bullshit going on, sick and tired, like, you know, people who know that there's something wrong and are also tired of playing the whole, \"Oh, I'm not political, so I'm gonna stay out of it\" job. Like people who want to actually move and claim territory back, because in my opinion, civilization's not gonna get fixed by us sitting on the sidelines. It's people who wanna get in the game. So the argument that I make from the outset is that You know, Bitcoin fixes a lot of things, but it's incumbent on us, and particularly those of us who are gonna become more socioeconomically, relevant, powerful, influential, it's up to us to claim back territory, to claim back civilization, to rebuild it. So anyone who's got that kind of a desire, who's got the sense that things are broken, that things are fucked up, and can also sense that a, a better, more vital, more ascendant energy is required, that's who I think this is gonna resonate with most. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:57", "start": 116.9, "text": "interesting. And so, look, I think just being honest, right, people like you and I, we're probably more right leaning, at least culturally, right? Like I'm libertarian, like legally, but I think culturally I'm more right leaning. Now, there will be a bunch of Bitcoiners who maybe aren't right leaning, right? Like they might be kind of more left libertarian or just not right leaning. I'm curious, in your view, does this book not appeal to, not appeal to those kinds of listeners or readers or where are you at there? It, it may or may not," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "02:28", "start": 147.98, "text": "right? So it depends on how they pick it up and how they do it. Like, I, I do take a hammer to things like obviously equality and, you know, egalitarianism. I, I beat the crap out of those concepts, I etc. And to me, I think, you know, left and right is, you know, there's, there's, it's almost like the left and right hemispheres of the brain, right? The, the right is, more holistic, it's, it's the master, and the left is the emissary, the one that deconstructs, the one that, looks at the, you know, the, the individual components outside of the broader gestalt, right? And We all have both left and right in us, but I believe as you, as you mature in life, there's particular- Things that you start to realize, you know, have timeless relevance, right? Like the, the, the right position is a little bit more conservative, it's a little bit more timeless, it's a little bit like, hey, there, there, there are principles that are timeless that we've lived by as human beings, and going- And deconstructing those things just because you can is probably not a good idea. Like, we have gender roles for a reason, you know, it's not just because today, oh yeah, I'm a woman and I decided that I should be a man and I'll ignore biology. Well, you know, you didn't, you didn't win, you didn't score a goal, in fact, you scored a fucking own goal and you hurt yourself. Like, it's- And I guess the, the, the conservative notion or the conservative position is one of more that, hey, there are things that work, there are things that are timeless, there are principles, and, and, you know, the book is really about these ten virtues, I guess, in the, in, in the spine of it. And, and virtues are another name for like principles and behavior. Like if you could fuse the, those two words together, that's essentially what it is. And it says, hey, there are civilizations, whose cultures that preceded them had these virtues. Which, if we place a modern political lens on them, are far more conservative, but guess what? Those civilizations are the foundations upon which we live, so there must be some truth there, and particularly because multiple different civilizations all had the same kind of virtues in their early cultural formation. Despite being, in different parts of the globe, like the, the feudal Japanese and the feudal Christian West, like basically the same, virtue and cultural structure in terms of their feudalism, in terms of chivalry, bushido, and all this sort of stuff, which map very well to the ancient Romans, the ancient Greeks, and all this sort of stuff at completely different historical times. And the overlap is beautiful, and not only is the overlap powerful during their great and ascendant times, the overlap is powerful when they decayed, when they became weak. You know, Rome became egalitarian, it all-- it opened their borders, it did all this sort of \"quote-unquote\" woke shit that we know of today, back then, and lo and behold, the result was- A civilization that fell. So, so the, so the pattern seems to repeat itself, and you can either sit there and be ignorant and say, \"We'll do it different this time, \" or you can realize that there's, there's some truth there and use that to guide. Guide you moving forward, and structuring a new culture and a, and a more, in a more ascendant civilization." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:49", "start": 349.23, "text": "Great. And so, do you then see this kind of like a guidebook? Is that how you've-- you know, that's how you've written it? It's like a guidebook for what happens in the decades and generations to come. That's the main framing here." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "06:03", "start": 363.29, "text": "Exactly. And, and that's how it-- that's what it evolved into. So the book originally was actually inspired By, I, I read a, I read a book called Shogun by James Clavell, which is a, which is historic fiction, and that's, that's my favorite thing to read these days, I kind of avoid nonfiction, but I love history, I love autobiographies, I love, I love this sort of historic fiction that is based on time periods that are real, and I remember listening this, listening to this the first time when I was in Berlin during the lockdowns. And man, the, the book's writing and the narrative is so good, like I was transported back to 1600s Japan, during the age when, in the book is called Toranaga, but the, the real life character is, Ieyasu Tokugawa. So he is the guy who unified Japan under the new shogunate. And it's an incredible story, and I'm listening to this book like the, the honor, the, the, the strength, the courage, the self-control of these people, like held the standards that they held themselves to, and then I'd be walking around on the street in Berlin and like people walking around with fucking masks in the middle of the day, and I was like, \"What is going on?\" Like, and, and like the, the book etched itself into me, and that sort of drove me down the path of Like I read obviously everything from Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, and like, I started going down the, the ancient and feudal history rabbit hole. And where, where I'm going with this is just to sort of give a bit of a history on the book is, Eric Kaysen and I had a discussion in twenty twenty-one, I believe it was, and we called it The Bushido of Bitcoin, and we just spoke about Japanese Bushido, and for those who aren't familiar with what the word means, it basically means a code of virtue. Like, the, the etymologically the word means \"way of the warrior, \" but it came to be known as like this codified moral code that a, sorry, codified way of living or a moral code that. The samurai were expected to embody, in order to be truly considered, more than just a samurai to be considered a bushi, which meant a, you know, a, a warrior as opposed to just the samurai who was given that by, given that rank by birth, right? And in, in the Bushido you have, virtues like justice, courage, compassion, loyalty, respect, selflessness, like that, there's, there's kind of, it wasn't like the commandments where it's written down, it was just a, it was a, an expected thing, right? So anyway, Casey and I discussed this on that podcast, and that's where the original seed of the idea of the book came, and it began more as me trying to compare the virtues of Bushido with the virtues of Bitcoin, but it completely evolved. You know, the, the draft that you got was draft number six. You know, draft number one was thirty thousand words, like draft number six is a hundred and twenty-five thousand, like it's, it's much bigger, and the book evolved with also my evolution as a, as a person, I believe, because you go fast forward, sorry, And I was a raging maniac, I was yelling at people on Twitter and like all this sort of shit, and I think I've mellowed quite a lot, and a big part of that was me just growing up and my energy shifting as well. Like, I'm more mellowed in general, but I'm more sharp and precise in my particular viewpoints, and I think that comes out in the book. And as I progressed from, I would say, draft four, five, and particularly five and six I began to view the book as, all right, this is more than just a, a history lesson. It's more than just lapping about philosophy and all of this sort of stuff. This is actually-- This could actually be a playbook for how we should choose to reconstruct civilization, because that's- What comes ahead, it's like, alright, we're gonna move to a Bitcoin standard. You know, the, the socioeconomic paradigm of the world is gonna change, and people like you and I, and many Bitcoiners, probably the people listening to this, get it, like, that socioeconomic standard is gonna be based on Bitcoin. It's not gonna be based on fucking Ethereum, right? Or like USDT, like it's gonna be Bitcoin. And in such a world, in such socioeconomic framework where Institutionalized lying, cheating, stealing, and all that sort of stuff is much harder. What then is the virtues that we live by? How do we live? How do we behave? What do we do? And These virtues that I plucked from prior ancient feudal cultures and projected them forward are, are, are I believe a good template. For a better world. So, so that's a bit of an overview. I see." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:35", "start": 634.53, "text": "Yeah, I like the idea that it's, you're sort of finding these ideas that independently arose, right? In the same way that, you know, someone like Safdie or others would kind of point out, look, gold became money independently in different parts of the world, even though those parts of the world weren't talking to each other, right? Like, so there's kind of, there's something to that, that it evolved, or the use of gold historically evolved for a reason, right? There was Used gold and in a similar way some of the virtues that you speak of, maybe there's a reason that people independently arrived on similar ideas. And so that's an interesting one, I think. One thing for me is, obviously, you know, I'm super bullish on Bitcoin, all in on Bitcoin, obviously as you and I and probably many other people are, but I guess I'm not as like- It's inevitable, right? Like there's still some, you know, there's still like a very small chance there's something, you know, something else or whether it's fiat or, you know, somehow something about it fails for an unknown reason, right? but, le- nevertheless, taking that as kind of, you know, that's our base, we're kind of assuming that part away, That, I think it's, it's really interesting to talk about, as you mentioned in the book, things like hierarchy and power structures and things like this because I think the, let's say, the naive person or generally like a more left leaning person who has a more egalitarian idea in his mind, they might think of it like, \"Oh, you know, they're against all authority,\" and it's like, \"No, actually, there are certain genuine or certain, let's say, acknowledged forms of authority. Maybe that's the father in the family, or maybe that's, you know, a certain role that a person has to play or a group of people have to play, and it's legitimate that they do so.\" so I you know, where you wanna go with that, with the, let's say, with the role of legitimate hierarchy. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "12:34", "start": 753.78, "text": "there's a, there's a, there's a particular chapter in the book called, Mastery, and I wanna see if there's like an excerpt that I can read here, but Yeah, I can't find it in front of me, but basically the, the premise is this, is all, all things have some sort of hierarchy. You, you can't dismantle hierarchy, doesn't, doesn't work like that, you know? There's, there's always a lead and a follower, whether it's a dance, you know what I mean? Like the, dancers have a lead and a follower, and if, if you have a poor lead, the follower then, has to either pick that up, or they stumble, so, so it doesn't work In organizations, in businesses, why are businesses the most effective form of organization? Well, because they have a CEO, they have a management team, they have a board of directors which keeps them accountable, they have shareholders which they work with, and then they have a team, who within each team, there is some sort of hierarchy of leadership, because it's not modern, modern businesses in some way, particularly these big, fat, bloated, fucking corporations, they've turned into like, you know, management. So like, yeah, the, the managerial part of the state, exactly. It's like an extension of the state. So there's no leadership there, it's just like management. And what I'm, like, it's very important to know, like, I'm not talking about management, I'm talking about leadership, and leadership is a, is a, is an extremely important quality because leadership inspires others to be better, right? When, when someone sees a strong leader They are inspired to, to step up. They, they, they see an example. When you have a micromanager just sitting here right behind you and just fucking yapping in your ear and like making sure you can't do anything, that's like, that's totalitarian. And, Or was it me and McCormack had, had a discussion about this recently in Oslo and I was making the distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian. I said, \"We need more authoritarians. Like Bukelj is a great example of an authoritarian because he is an authority. The word authority etymologically means mastery and competence. Like to become an authority over something means that you've done the ten thousand hours, you've done the work, you have earned, mastery and, respect in your domain. So like this is- This is how civilization has always been built. We had masters and apprentices, right? Like the apprentice, iron smith or goldsmith or swordsmith didn't just like learn how to make a fucking sword overnight. No, he had to work with the master over a period of time and he had to earn that. It was the same as the samurai, it was the same as the, The Spartans and the, and the Greeks and all of these people that we know of, you had to earn that authority in order to become an authority and in order to have the qualities necessary for leadership. And Totalitarianism comes from a different place, it comes from a place of insecurity. So you look at the, the globalist types, the wef types, what they have is this inability to manage themselves. They have a complete lack of authority and competence. They're, they're these like sort of empty husks, weak fucking people who project their own weakness onto everyone else, and just because they can't, you know, stop eating fucking seed oils, they can't stop like being degenerates and everything like that, they expect everybody else to- So they project their own lack of substance onto everybody else, and they wanna micromanage everything, and that creates a civilization of more NPCs, more slavery, more dependence, more stupidity, and it's kind of like devolving, right? This, this is also a big theme in the book is the difference between an ascendant civilization and a descendant one, right? An ascendant one is one that is excellent, is one that takes responsibility, is one that stretches, that reaches, that grows. That is independent, that is autonomous, like all of these words are really important. Whereas the decaying civilization, the one that descends, is one that focuses on safety, on comfort, on participation awards, like all this, you know, soft, cushy shit that makes people feel nice and warm and fuzzy. But each of them- Lead to a different destination, right? And, and I'm not sitting here saying that, oh, there's no downsides of building a, civilization that is more excellence oriented. Guess what, the, the, the drawbacks of building a, a civilization that is excellence oriented is that the civilization is quite hierarchical. It isn't nice, you know what I mean? That, that there's a lot of rough edges to it. You know, climbing a mountain, like going and hiking Kilimanjaro, isn't fucking nice half the time. It's like really difficult, but you create something beautiful doesn't exist. Whereas if you want to make everybody equal, soft and comfortable, it might feel good in the moment, but you actually move away from where life wants to be. Like life is at the edges, life is uncomfortable, life is growing, whereas if you want to stay within the comfort zone metaphorically and literally speaking, you become soft and you are anti-life, and there's a cost to that as well, which is the de-evolution of civilization, which is much of what we've been seeing in the last ten, twenty, thirty, forty years where it's really accelerated." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:43", "start": 1062.93, "text": "Right, and I guess there's also, and I'm, you cover this in the book, but it's also a very popular meme right now, which is the whole strong man, weak time, like weak man create, you know, hard times, et cetera, hard times, yeah, all that. And so there's also an element there where, you know, you talk about ascendant and descendant societies, but I guess that's also just sometimes, you know, at at one time Rome was ascendant and then another time it was descendant. So isn't that just also a natural thing that we just have to deal with." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "18:15", "start": 1095.15, "text": "It isn't, you know, you point to a point which I, like, I grapple with this for like thirty, forty pages in the book, right, where I talk about seasons and cycles, and then I try and talk about how Bitcoin can have an effect on it. And I think the biggest mistake, and this is a real big part of like the central banking flaw and the, and the central planners, right, is that they think that they can somehow defeat the cycle, right? So the business cycle, \"Well, let's just print a bunch of money and it'll be okay and we'll stabilize it all.\" And then what happens is when you try and delay the winter, right? When you try and delay the natural overextensions, you create a bigger problem down the track, right? and we know this with like everything from bushfires to governance to, to everything, right? So I, in the book, I sort of talk about like, look, seasons and cycles exist in everything, from, from the very like orbit that the electrons take down in an atom to like how your cells like grow, you know, decay and, you know, go through a cycle, like- The seasons, the, the orbit of the Earth, like everything, everything is in some way, shape or form a cycle. Now, the, the thing is, if, if we understand that that's a given, that there will always be cycles What we should be focused on instead of trying to either ignore the cycle or to try and, like transcend the cycle somehow, which you can't fucking do, what we should be doing is building structures that can withstand the period of the cycle that is winter-esque, right? So we know that the winter is coming, it's gonna be there. Simultaneously, if you're unlucky enough to have a generation of people in charge of things that is weak at the same time as the winter comes. You could dismantle the entire structure, and that's kind of what we're going through at the moment. So like a good metaphor to think about this is imagine you have like this house built of wood, and the winter comes, and, you know, at that point the monkeys come of age and they're all entitled and they're little brats and whatever, and they, you know, everything is nice and comfortable, but it gets cold, so they're like, okay, they're throwing all the fire in the wood, sorry, they're throwing all the wood in the fire to keep themselves warm because that's" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "20:30", "start": 1229.68, "text": "Start cutting bits of the house out and like warming up the fire so that way that's all they care about. So they end up dismantling the very house that they're in just to keep themselves warm and fuck the next generation. You know, the next generation can go and freeze and starve and die, but at least we were warm. And that's essentially what happened over the last fifty, sixty years with the fucking boomers and just burning everything down to the ground. Instead, the, the argument that I make with Bitcoin is that it could be possible for us to lower the amplitude of the damage during the weakmen stage of the cycle, which is maybe we build a structure with stone and steel and glass and wood, like so, so better materials, so that when the monkeys do inevitably come in, because there will be some generation that is fully entitled. When they come in, they don't burn the whole fucking thing down, ideally. And, you know, the, the last point I'll make here is that no governance structure-- there's, the-- I don't think anything exists That will avoid completely the weak men stage of the cycle, not monarchy, not libertarianism, not conservative, not left wing, right wing, not nothing. Like if there's anything we've seen, and I'm far more a monarchist, you know, so is Saf, I'm sure, you know, you probably lean a little bit that way too, you know, we've read all Hopper's work, all this sort of stuff, like, you know, you, you need that kind of structure, and that structure seems more sound, but every single monarchy also decayed into weakness as well. And at the very least, if Bitcoin can help us in one capacity, assuming obviously that it wins and it becomes the global, monetary standard, then we might have a way to decrease The damage done during that phase, and, and I think that's the best we can do, and I think that's, obviously that's the best we can do economically other than, building" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:21", "start": 1340.77, "text": "a" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "22:21", "start": 1340.89, "text": "culture that is stronger." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:22", "start": 1342.4, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. 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But I believe these devices are great at helping secure your coins, especially as you start to migrate up into multi-signature security. But don't be disheartened or don't be scared away, they are accessible and I think you actually do learn about Bitcoin in the process. So to get yours, go to coinkite. com, use code livera to get a discount on your cold card. This show also brought to you by mempool dot space, the leading Bitcoin and blockchain visualizer. I use it all the time when I'm checking transaction fees and trying to understand what is the state of Bitcoin's mempool. You can search transactions, historical as well as unconfirmed ones, and also see a great way to visualize things across the Lightning Network, Liquid, mining, and so much more. Also, for those of you with an enterprise, they offer a mempool dot space enterprise program. So for those of you as- Part of that enterprise program, you might wanna get increased API limits, and you might wanna have increased access to the team in terms of feature requests. You might wanna have special branding in terms of how your custom instance of mempool dot space looks. So to sign up for that, go to mempool dot space slash enterprise. And now, back to the show. Yeah, okay, fair enough. so I guess I'll point out a few things. So, yeah, I mean, I'm a fan of Hopper, I'm a fan of his book Democracy: The God That Failed. I've Critic of democracy, and I've long, you know, believed that monarchy would be better than democracy. I do, I would say though, I think Hopper isn't necessarily saying he's pro-monarchy, but he's more just sort of saying, you know what I mean? He's saying it's more like that's the second best, right? That would be like, obviously privatize everything, private law society, that would be best, and then, yeah, in practice, monarchy would be better than democracy. And I think there's an argument we could make about that in many parts of the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:10", "start": 1510.14, "text": "It is better governed here than many of the democracies of the world. so, you know, you-- I guess you'll get, little argument from me there. I, I find it Yeah, I mean, we don't know if, if there is even a way to sort of delay the cycle or find a way to manage it. Or I think one aspect that's interesting is that, look, it's a big world out there. There's over two hundred juris-- two hundred jurisdictions out there, just under two hundred nation states, let's say. You don't necessarily have to kind of be in one of them for all of your life, and that maybe some of them are rising at a time that others are falling as well. So how does that, does that play into your analysis at all? It does. Have you read" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "25:53", "start": 1553.28, "text": "Patchwork by, Moebius? I know I haven't. Okay, it's, it's, it's really good. So, I mean, this was written, I think it was back in the either early two thousands or, or even the nineties. It's, it's a fantastic book." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "26:11", "start": 1570.95, "text": "Basically this concept of CEO kings and territories being managed by that kind of an archetype, and you could call that archetype a, more like a CEO of business private, or you could call it more like a, you know, blood monarchy, but the, the two things are quite similar in a sense, and I, I make this claim in the book is like, okay, post-feudalism, what does that look like? And in my opinion, the, the kind of- The kind of leadership that I hope to emerge in the future will be like some blend of Alexander the Great and Steve Jobs, and the, the best, the best example we've got today is probably Bukele. He's, he's not only economically, literate, but he's politically literate. He's energetic, he's young, he's ambitious, he's got vision, he's strict, you know, he lives by many of these virtues that we, that we see, and we're seeing a complete, reversal of the decay that was- Obviously evident in, in El Salvador. And in many ways, like that's what happened in Singapore with Lee Kuan Yew. There's, the, the UAE very similar. Now, they, they've been under a monarchy for many, many years, but, they, they became more commercially oriented this century. I mean, they've always been quite commercially oriented because they were always a port, but like they really doubled down under the, the vision and leadership of, I think it's, bin Mohammed, I can't remember which one it is" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "27:36", "start": 1656.48, "text": "I look at the progress that's been made there. I've got this great time lapse on my phone whenever I, you know, think that things can't be done quickly, like I look at the time lapse of Dubai over the last forty five years. It was like a desert dirt patch and it's become a metropolis. And it, you know what's funny? In the same forty five years, the greatest cities in the world, like the San Franciscos and everything of the world, have literally turned into fucking- Training infested shit holes with piss and shit and syringes everywhere where they've literally now got signs. I saw this, on Twitter, I don't know if it's real or not, but there's a sign which says Stolen goods must not exceed nine hundred and fifty dollars, I was thinking. What the fuck? Like, is this can't be real, and apparently it's real. So like, this is sort of a, a great juxtaposition of, of democracy and, of monarchy. But to come back to your, to your question, I'm rambling a little bit here. To come back to your question. Patchwork, that sort of model suggests that the world will move more towards, a, a multivariant set of governance structures. For territories, and my hope is that with Bitcoin being this incorruptible monetary standard that The whole world will end up adopting, and I don't know if that's gonna take fifty years, hundred years, two hundred years, whatever, but the direction we're heading in and where that leads. is to an age where large scale nation states which are generally economically incompetent cannot subsist and therefore things have to shrink and The, the size that they shrink to is gonna be dependent on multiple, you know, what's the word? Like multiple factors in the territory that they're in. So they might be on flat land, others might be on mountains, they might be in a hot region, others might be in a, you know, very weather varied region, some might be Muslim, Christian, atheist, this, that. So you're gonna end up with all of these different cultures with different, basically operating systems for their territory and location. And as you said, different ones will try different things, and just like the free market of businesses, some businesses succeed, some businesses fail, some operators work, some operators don't. But even so, there seems to be principles in business that apply across all businesses, and I believe there will be principles in governance that will apply across all governance models. And I look forward to the day to seeing, I mean, we're probably gonna be dead by the time that really emerges, but hopefully from heaven or wherever the hell we're gonna be, we'll look down and we'll be like, \"Aha, we were right. There's all these flavors of cultural governance, and that's what I think we want. \" And I- Yeah, I'll, I'll just shut up there for a minute. That's what I, that's what I'm gonna do." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:27", "start": 1827.06, "text": "One other thing I found interesting is, obviously part of the premise of your book is this idea that Bitcoiners are gonna be the new elite, right? At least financially. Now, you know, whether somebody is gonna be the elite health-wise or fitness-wise, you know, that's a different question, but That, that does jar a little bit with some of the online discourse. I want you to touch on this as well, because some of the online Bitcoin discussion is like, \"Oh, you've gotta be a Bitcoin pleb,\" and that's the, you know, \"You gotta be...\" And some of that, I kind, I kind of agree, it kind of veers back towards the kind of egalitarian idea as opposed to just acknowledging hierarchies exist, differences exist. So, you know, I'm curious, what's your, your argument against the, the, the pleb culture" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "31:14", "start": 1874.37, "text": "It does get people riled up a little bit, so I'm gonna read a quick, paragraph from the book. So it says, \"In our pursuit of excellence, we must reclaim this word, and the title of the chapter is \"Elite\"\". So reclaim the word \"elite\". Traditionally speaking, the elite were those who worked to improve their society. They were the leaders of men, leaders of industry, and the benefactors of the art and beauty that fills the old towns strewn throughout Europe. Today's elites are not elite, but parasites who seek to undermine society. They spend their time- time leeching from the producers, bloating the government with a bureaucratic managerial class, revising history and filling the minds of the young with toxic ideology. Their goal is to weaken our culture with degeneracy and ugliness, to sully our history and leave the world ugly, unsafe and uninhabitable while they retire to the opulent mansions and private security. As a result, the word \"elite\" is today erroneously conflated with \"parasite\". But this has to change. We must rediscover its root and take it back. The word \"elite\" comes from The Latin \"elitus, \" which means choice or selected, it is related to the Latin word \"eligere, \" which means to choose or to select. And this is really important, so like I've, I've written an article a couple of years ago which, Dived into the, the, the word elitism. We, we just need to take this back because to be elite like literally means to be the cream of the crop, to be the best, and that is ascendant in nature. Like, you want to be the best podcaster, you want to be the best version of Stefano Verra possible. Like, you have cornered an niche and you'll become the best in that niche, and people come to you and listen to you for what you do. And that's something to be admired, that's something to aspire towards, not like to be Ordinary is nothing, it's, it's not ascendant, it's, it doesn't, it doesn't inspire anything in anybody. And this whole pleb stuff, it just drives me fucking crazy because, like, if you wanna know when Rome started to decay, it's like when the plebeians started to get in action and start to create popular government, right? Like, that's when things started to actually, like, if you wanna really find the root cause of, the, the fall of Rome, that's where it technically started. So, and that's where it They got public opinion to rise up and then to take down the previous noble monarchical structure and replace it with, lo and behold, a new parasitic elite. So, so, so the, the, the funniest part about this is that there, there will always be- A, a ruling class, I don't think that's gonna disappear, right? What you want in the ruling class, you want true elites, you don't want parasites. And in my opinion, Bitcoin is going to be the socioeconomic elite. And, and in many ways, like if you are an economic elite, if you are in the top ten percent or one percent of, people with money, you're also, you also have, you will also be socially elite, and you, you in fact have a duty, like there's a- You know, the noblesse oblige kind of idea. Exactly, noblesse oblige, and, and the, you know, the classic saying from, what is it, Spiderman? Like, with great power comes great responsibility. When you have a lot of wealth, and Bitcoiners will be the ones who have a lot of wealth, assuming we win again, that's, that's the assumption we're basing all this off. What are you gonna do with that wealth? Like, you're just gonna fucking go and buy Lambos and snort coke and, you know, do all that sort of stuff, or like, are you gonna, are you gonna try and like get into politics and like keep like sucking from the system, or are you actually gonna try and build and construct civilization? And that, that's not the role of the plebe, that is the role of the noble. And we need to start thinking about how to act because we become the examples for everybody else. And this is why all great prior civilizations had a standard by which they expected their nobility to behave by. And we've been infected in the modern world, like we look back on the nob-- the nobility, like words like nobility and aristocracy and everything like that, we laugh at that shit, we snicker at it, we're like, \"Haha, yeah, we're fucking better because we got Instagram.\" It's like, no, that's not the case. Like, there is a, a duty to present yourself in a particular capacity. And this, this was really eye-opening for me because I was, as I said at the Swearing, like, I mean, I still remember our one of our first podcasts in Sydney where I dropped the f-bomb like six thousand times in the podcast, you know what I mean? Like, idiot, right? So, and I, I've really- I, I wrote this book a, a lot for myself, as for, as for other people, and, you know, this, this area particularly challenged me. I was like, okay, it's time to stop being a pleb and it's time to be more noble and bearing. And that's not me giving myself, you know, the title of \"I'm a noble now\" or anything like that. No, you, you behave in that way and you earn that. People see that. The Bitcoin is stop being plebs, hey? That's it, stop being ple Of influence and power and monetary strength, like act like it and become a better person and use your, your influence and your example to inspire others to also be better people. It's, it's a simple message." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:30", "start": 2190.5, "text": "Yeah, really interesting. And I, you know, I think there's a lot that, that I can agree with there, because with, even Hopper has a great essay, I think it's called \"Natural Elit- Natural Elites and the State\" or something like this. And basically, part of what he's going through there, kind of what you were talking to earlier, is that just if you have private property and, you know, normal market competition, there will be people who rise up because they are more competent, and what typically historically happened is that they helped out in Making functions. And so that, you know, and that was again kind of like a noblesse oblige, I don't know how to pronounce noblesse oblige, but anyway, it was kind of out of that sense. But then what happens is that the state and certain, forms sort of corrupt that, and then you, what you kind of ended up with, with is this kind of ruling elite or the, and they would kind of corrupt, let's say, the intellectual class to sort of come together with them and sort of have this kind of, you know, populist Against what was previously the natural elite order. Exactly. And so that's kind of where some of this actually plays out, and it's actually quite relevant to, you know, what you're talking about even in your book as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "37:43", "start": 2262.89, "text": "Absolutely. I mean, that, that, like Iron Renn's entire, Atlas Shrugged is about that, right? You have Rourke and John Galt. Oh, I haven't read it myself actually. And Kanyon. So, so the main characters are these natural elites, the, the producers, the We have this, the moochers, as she calls them, or the looters, whatever, is the parasitic government class, and they, together with the intellectuals Build the narratives that weaponize the masses against the industrial, producers, the natural elite, and in the process of doing that, her whole narrative shows how civilization ends up devolving, and, and that's why, like, that story was so powerful and it resonated so much. And it's one of the most read, you know, fictional novels out there because it touched on an archetypical truth, because we've seen that happen again and again and again, and we saw that happen in the past, we've seen that happen, you know, multiple times, and, you know, she saw it happening. During, seventy years ago. Like, and, and everything that she predicted in the fucking book is happening today, and that's why people are so, like, impacted by her book because it's," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:57", "start": 2337.04, "text": "it's there, it's in your face, you know? And so- I guess the idea then is that you have these virtues and ideas that people should, consider. What is the main way that these things can be, I guess, enforced, policed? Is it a shaming culture? Like, it's like, is it gonna be, in a few decades from now, there'll be these wealthy Bitcoin entrepreneurs and they need to sort of shame each other to make sure that they are upstanding and moral? Like, what's the main way? Like, is it shaming or is there some other mechanism? It's, it's" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "39:30", "start": 2369.84, "text": "This stuff is harder, and I guess in many ways, if you look at Japan, so Japan never had a, I mentioned they had this Bushido that emerged, but it wasn't like a, a constitution that was written down somewhere, it's like, you must be, you know, you must have an eight out of ten in courage and a seven out of ten here, like it wasn't policed that way, right? It was just the- It was an expectation, and it was, I don't know, it was, it was almost like ingrained, and, and this is where I guess the, the master-apprentice kind of relationship is extremely important, is that people who've lived that way, who've gone through war, who've gone through challenge, who've, who've lived up and become a samurai, it is their duty in their locale. So Japan was full of fiefdoms, you know, and the f- like we could use, we could replace the word fiefdom with our community And it was the elders and the people who had grown up, the, the, the strongest warrior, the bravest person, this and that. And, and people recognize these virtues, I, I, I should say it's like, this isn't about-- It's unfortunate that virtue signaling is a fucking thing, but like, virtue is a behavior. When you see someone do something courageous. And stand up against the wrong thing, like it moves you internally. I, I, like the, the movie Braveheart, for example, is etched in my, you know, psyche. It is when you see him at the end, when they're, they're torturing him on the rack. And they're like, \"Just say mercy, you know, take him as your king, take Edward as your king.\" And it's like, and he yells out, \"Freedom! I'd rather die than...\" Then admit it, right? So that is courage. We, we recognize these things. We recognize compassion, we recognize loyalty, we recognize these things. So for me, it's more a, it's almost like a- Grassroots to some degree, because human beings, like those virtues are in our blood, they're in our DNA. You can't, they can't, you, you can't lie about that. As soon as you fake courage, people see it and they don't like it. Simultaneously, is the judges of these virtues, they're, they're not police, but they're, they're role models, they're mentors, they're, they are the fathers, the leaders of community, the leaders of business, the leaders of, the family, et cetera, Being examples of this virtue, the young take after. Now, will there be poor examples? Absolutely. Will there be people who don't do the right thing and do virtue signaling? Absolutely. Is there a way to police that out of society? No, there isn't, lest you build a fucking totalitarian state. There's, there's no fucking way to build, police that out. What we, the, the position I take is that because these virtues are better. Because they are more ascendant in the medium to long term, they end up winning. You know, so if you do act by these virtues, you should ascend, you should be stronger, you should be more powerful, and you should, lead particularly, particularly, particularly, particularly on a Bitcoin standard. The challenge today is because we're on a fiat standard, if you go and be honest and, you know, you fight for excellence, you do all this sort of stuff, well, they're not gonna hire you, they're gonna give the job to the fucking token disabled, you know, to" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "42:41", "start": 2560.53, "text": "So, so, so because we live in that kind of a framework, it's all fucking inverted. So, so my argument is that, okay, as that fr- as the paradigm shifts, there's gonna be a new set of things that we need to live by, and that, and that's kind of the- It's a really good point there. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:54", "start": 2573.93, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. The lead sponsor of this show is Swan dot com, and Swan has a mission to onboard millions of people into Bitcoin. I also work at Swan, helping on some educational content for the team. Now, the team have also put out a new version of the Swan Bitcoin application, which is available on your smartphone, whether it's Apple or Android. Now, this app has a really fast onboarding experience. It's now just a few minutes to go from zero to Bitcoin. So if you are standing there with your family or friends and you might have been having trouble trying to get them onboarded, well try this now. Recommend swan bitcoin and you can do this while you're standing next to them, they can click through and most of them will be able to set up and do this in just a few minutes. Also, the team at swan have rolled out a new promotion, there are zero fees on your first ten thousand dollars of bitcoin buys, so this is a great way to go from zero to bitcoin and in a guided and managed way. So reminder. Go to your app store or Play Store and search \"Swan Bitcoin\" to get onboarded with Bitcoin today. This show also brought to you by Nomad Capitalist. Nomad Capitalist is a leading provider in terms of offshore tax and lifestyle strategy planning and implementation. They can help you go overseas and legally lower your taxes. As many of you know, I grew up in Australia, but I left, I was sick of it in terms of the taxes and the COVID tyranny and all these other things. And so that's why I left, and now I live in Dubai. But That's not necessarily the place for you. You have to think exactly what works for you, for your family, for your business. And Nomad Capitalist have worked across dozens of different countries. They've helped people get passports, residences, bank accounts, and all kinds of other things. And importantly, it's not just about choosing one place, it may be multiple places, and it may be also about making the pieces fit together in terms of how your business fits with your family and you as an individual. Nomad Capitalist have helped many, many people in terms of going overseas, and if you're- Interested? Go to nomadcapitalist dot com slash apply. This is applicable for people with a net worth above one million US dollars. That's nomadcapitalist dot com slash apply. And now back to the show. Because we're living in this, as you, as you mentioned in the book, the interregnum, right? And we're living in that period. And I'll, you know, even in the, in shitcoin and crypto world, we see this, right? Like we're seeing celebrities now who are just coming out and pumping random shitcoins, right? Jason Derulo is out here with his own shitcoin, Iggy Azalea, and like all these people, Lance Armstrong, like all these people who are kind of famous from something else, they're realizing, hey, Justification, and they, they created shitcoin. And, you know, it's just, obviously sad and unfortunate that, this kind of thing is going on, but there's very little that can, you know, that seems to be done about it, right? Like these people are oftentimes- Just repeat offenders, right? Like Derulo was like apparently shilling some other shit coins last cycle, right? And so it's kind of like there's not really much, you know, that's gonna be done. Like maybe the SEC is gonna go after these people and so on, not that I support the SEC, but so on, you know. But it seems that a lot of people are just gonna, you know, do this stuff and there's not enough of a reputational shaming mechanism to actually make them feel shame for doing that." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "46:14", "start": 2773.76, "text": "That's it. And, and Thank you for bringing up the shame piece again because I forgot, like, we, we live in a, in a, in a guilt society today and less of a shame society. So, and, and this is an important point, is that in the past, particularly in warrior culture, shaming is huge. shaming was like, you, you- Like, there's a great story of Alexander the Great who, goaded his men into action by basically showing like all of his scars on the front of his bodies, like \"Let no man say that, I was not in the front of every single battle, that I wasn't the first over the wall, that I wasn't--\" Like, he, through his example, he shamed them, and then that's why they fucking followed him. Like, literally, when I think back to the, those times, like, imagine just today in the modern world, just like walking From Macedonia to India, just walking. Like, you would die basically. These people not only walked that distance, but fought battles. They did it up through the Hindu Kush, in the, in, in the snow, in the desert, in the rivers, in like- It's incredible that they did that, but that just doesn't happen by accident, like that happens through example, like through greatness, through, through, through in many ways, shaming in the positive sense, which has to do also with honor, like honor is reputation, it's, you know, the, the words are basically synonymous, and I think at the very least what we can do in, In this world as we shift onto a, a Bitcoin paradigm, is basically remember who are the ones who behaved with honor, with integrity, etcetera, and who aren't, right? And then when we are in charge of building industry, of building civilization, of doing that sort of stuff, you just don't do business with those people. You cut them out, you leave them out because that's the longer term punishment for these scumbags and the parasites and the liars and the cheats. And honestly, with many of these people. Like life bites them in the ass anyway. Like the, the amount of people that I've seen who've like secretly shitcoined or they've done all this and that, like, you know, they, they pretended they're virtuous, like virtue signaling and everything. Like life ends up biting them in the ass in some way, shape, or form because they're not people of character anyway. Like BitBoy is a great example. Total fucking degenerate. Then, you know, his personal life falls apart, this, that, all this sort of stuff. Like there's many such cases, and that" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "48:38", "start": 2918.43, "text": "At the very least, like what we need to be doing as Bitcoiners and as people who consider themselves, those with character, is we need to support and build alliances with those we recognize as also virtuous, as also building, as also creating, and keep ridiculing and shaming as we do, like as this is one of the funny parts of the Bitcoin community, it's natural, it's like we troll the fuck out of all the shitcoiners and all that sort of stuff, and that, you know, sometimes it gets taken a little bit too far, as with everything, like, Things get just stupid, but it, it has a function to play, which is that shaming function, as you mentioned. So, you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:17", "start": 2956.65, "text": "so some elements of it will, let's say, struggle to live into the future, right? Because some of these, maybe some of these practices, cultures, you know, you mentioned in the book, like the culture of seppuku, like this, you know, literally, ritual suicide, some of these ideas won't necessarily be carried into the future, right? Or they would be like this anachronism that kind of doesn't- Makes sense, right? Like, oh, you did something wrong, ritual suicide. But it's like, I don't know, is that really how it's gonna be? So can you kind of spell out how you're thinking about that idea? Which customs and norms will actually remain and which will go away? Yeah, this one, this one's interesting. It's like," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "49:53", "start": 2993.13, "text": "I, I think I write in the book, it's like if your, spouse goes and buys Ethereum, you're not gonna go and commit some, you've dishonored me, like, just slice your belly out. Which customs will go and stay? I mean, honestly, I don't have an answer. Like, I think that customs such as, you know, marriage and, I think things like, primogeniture will probably come back to some degree. Like, there was a reason why the father passed the wealth down to the first born son. it's not because of just some random idea, it was that the, the wealth of the family was entrusted to a single individual instead of- Having all the kids fighting over it, number one, number two, that came with a responsibility to the first child, which meant the other children didn't have that responsibility and they could go out and do other things. So, so there's like, there's customs now. I don't know if it's gonna be exactly true, magenitza that comes back or whatever, but that stuff I believe will happen. I think customs such as, Gender roles are gonna start to increase again because we've just gone through a period, and, and in fact, we're, we're, I think we're right in the middle of this period where you've got a, I think the pendulum is now kind of swinging back. It really is, it really is, and, and people are starting to realize this, but they're realizing it, I guess, in many ways, too late. Like, I, I know so many people, you and I are probably of a similar age, like mid-thirties now, people that we went to school" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "51:27", "start": 3087.35, "text": "An idiot who waited this long to have kids, right? Like I'm one of those morons. And I, I meet people that I grew up with who still aren't even planning, they're like still, you know, thirty-five, thirty-seven, thirty-eight year old nomads, like still traveling around, still swiping on Tinder and stuff like that. I'm like, bro, like when are you actually gonna do something? And then on the flip side, women who've come to that age now, they're thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, and it's just hit Only a couple of years ago, their, partner, their pool of potential partners was massive, and it's gone down by a factor of like ten, twenty, or fifty overnight, and now they're like scrambling to find someone because they need a man older than him, a man more mature, they don't wanna be with someone less mature, but all the good ones are married, and then the ones that are left are these dorks who are still running around on Tinder and stuff like this, so it's like Us as a society, and I, and I feel this in many ways, like millennials, we were probably, in some ways, the most lied to, right? Like we were, we were the experimental generation. Like we were the experiment" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:33", "start": 3153.13, "text": "where the younger, the millennial women got fed Sex and the" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "52:35", "start": 3155.43, "text": "City and all this kind of propaganda, we got fed Backstreet Boys and fucking, god knows what else, and like the Red Pill and, you know, all that sort of stuff. So it's like, it's a, you know, we got technology at a weird time, and, you know, But as you said, I think the generations that are coming after us in many ways are gonna learn from that, and hopefully those rituals, those customs, which are in many ways gonna echo previous ones, you know, minus the sepukus and stuff like that which may not be relevant, like those will come back, because surprise, surprise," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:12", "start": 3191.63, "text": "they work. Yeah, interesting. And so, I guess one other area that I think I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, because it comes to like the remnant, which you also talk about in the book, and Albert Jay Nock, wrote about the remnant, Ron Paul spoke about the remnant, but then it also raises this question. How many people are actually gonna be part of the remnant and actually take on these virtues and these ethics, and how many people are just gonna be part of the masses, right? Is it just-- Are we just kind of always trapped to kind of be in this eighty-twenty, even in the COVID era, even the COVID tyranny era, I should say, there weren't that many people who were speaking out against it, people like you and I were, but not that many. And so are we just gonna always be stuck in this kind of, there'll be the masses and the remnant? I would" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "54:02", "start": 3242.38, "text": "The remnant, right? So if we think about the word excellence, again, ex-excellere, the word, the, the etymology of the word means the mountain in relation to the flatland. The mountain, by definition, has less people on it, particularly the peak, less people get up there. So excellence, the remnant, the twenty percent of the twenty percent of the twenty percent, right? That the true remnant, the zero point zero four percent, or, or sorry, the four percent. They are different, they are unique, and in many ways, that comes with its own costs, right? That comes with its own Call it drawbacks, is that you have to al-- you know, you're generally always against the grain, you are generally, gonna be laughed at or ridiculed or be one of the few, right? But the upside is that you are generally, and this is the story of history, I talk about it in the book, the great man theory of history, is that it is these remnants, it is these natural elites, it is these people that are the, the few who end up changing and shifting civilization, whereas the masses just don't matter as much. The, the masses are more like the inertia that comes later, you know, they lead to the party, they, they, they lead to what really, and they generally just default to whatever the default is, they, they just accept, right? And I, I, I wanna point to something really interesting is even in warrior cultures, so the virtues that I talk about in this book and how I draw them from, you know, the, the parallels across Roman, feudal Christendom and samurai and all this sort of stuff, it was specifically the warrior class that inspired these virtues because that warrior class. They were, they, they inspired all of the classes below them because they were their defenders and they were the strong men, they were the vital men, they were the ones who without. That line of defense, all of the other, classes beneath them would be defenseless, right? So, so the lower classes looked up to them, and the higher classes, so the, the nobles, the feudal lords, and, you know, the, the shogun, the emperor, et cetera, they depended on the warrior class to keep them safe and to strengthen their borders and to maintain them. So it's very interesting that the warrior class in the greatest civilizations set the stage or they set the tone for which virtues were most- Just integrated in society, so the lower classes integrated through inspiration, and the upper classes generally, if they were good and if they were vital, they were strong, they integrated and through dependence. So in many ways, the warriors were the remnant then, and we modern, quote unquote, you know, this archetype of warrior meets entrepreneur meets father meets leader meets all this sort of stuff, like this new archetype forming. I'm not saying that we need to get on fucking horses, pull out a samurai sword, and start chopping people down, right? Like that's not what I'm saying. What I is that we need to take the essence of what these warriors represented, and in my mind, like there's a massive difference between warrior and soldier, right? A warrior is someone who chooses to defend, who chooses to build, who chooses to create, who chooses to lead, versus a soldier is a follower of orders, right? We need to be warriors in whatever context that we live in, and we need to be the few who establish what these virtues are. So to your point, I think- You know, maybe the word stuck isn't the right word. Maybe the word is more like, \"This is the burden of responsibility that the remnant choose to carry, because that's our individual makeup, that's who we are, and we carry-- we, we get the benefit of the power of being the remnant, the few, but we must also carry the responsibility of being that, like we have a duty with that as well. And I think it's probably always going to be like- Like that. Once we win the economic fight and Bitcoin wins and all this sort of stuff, there's gonna be umpteenth number of fights to fight after that. That is the human condition, and it'll be the story of civilization and of life forever, in my opinion." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:03", "start": 3483.28, "text": "Yeah, I think that's because ultimately, Bitcoin is a tool that- You know, those of us believe that it can bring about more liberty and a better world, but it's not the only thing, right? It's-- there are other aspects, and I think that's where some of the intellectual battles may have to be fought, right? So maybe, as you say, it's not as much about a physical war, and, you know, Elon Musk and others are pointing out now that a lot of wars are actually being fought by drones, and maybe that's gonna be the future of literal kinetic war, but actually, it might be more about intellectual battles and more about- Philosophy and understanding, okay, when it, you know, why is it wrong to force someone to lock down or to take this poison, before he's allowed to go to his job or to operate his business, right? These kinds of intellectual and philosophical battles and, you know, communication battles, that might, be, you know, to come because maybe the actual fighting is being done by drones and robots and things like that. Maybe, maybe. I, I mean," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "59:04", "start": 3544.13, "text": "you know what? If I was to run a country, I would make sure that any politician or any, any person who wants to enact a law, they have to fight for it. Like, they have to get in a ring and they have to fight for it and see how much they're gonna lose. I think there's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:19", "start": 3558.7, "text": "a Brazilian, two Brazilian lawmakers who fought about a particular law or something. Like, I don't remember the detail. They got beat, beat the shit out of each other. I was like, \"Man, that's Add" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "59:31", "start": 3570.75, "text": "some skin in the game right there. It's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:33", "start": 3572.85, "text": "beautiful. Yeah, I mean, I guess one other thing I would say, like, I, I don't try to, let's say, big note myself and say, \"Oh, I'm, I'm elite and you're not,\" and I, I, to me, it's more just like- I, I, but I recognize that there will be natural elites in society, right? Like I recognize that that is just, you know, if you believe in freedom and you believe in free markets, there will be some people whose competence so far exceeds other people's, and some people get really triggered by this, right? You see leftist people getting annoyed that CEO compensation has risen a lot, and okay, to the extent it's fiat-driven, you know, it's unjust in that sense, but in a genuine free market sense, yeah, there may be someone who's a Steve Jobs or a Sun- Phenomenally productive developer or entrepreneur or someone who is literally one thousand x, and that's just, you know, the nature of it, and we have to accept that that's, that's going to be the reality, and that there will be some people who are ultra wealthy compared to other people. But the benefit, yeah, but the benefit is that you get the benefit of that guy's productivity, his genius or whatever. So, you know, you have to sort of accept the benefit with the cost." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:00:42", "start": 3642.05, "text": "Yeah, and, and, and you know what, even- More than just the, the social benefit of, you know, benefiting from what they produce, is that, like, a healthy culture is one that honors and admires the people that actually go and produce that, because if those people are honored and admired, then other people who have that same potential will see that and they will be inspired to do the same, and it creates like this- This feedback loop that is, is extraordinarily positive, you know, like if you go and vilify your best people, don't be fucking, confused why you have dumb people everywhere, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, it comes back to incentives, and I think you and I have spoken about this in, in previous, podcasts, it's like incentives actually fucking matter, like you can't just go and, Beat down your best and reward your worst and wonder why things are, things are backwards, things are upside down. So, one hundred percent, like eighty twenty is a fractal that exists in everything, and, and even within eighty twenty, there is eighty twenty, right? Like within the eighty twenty, within the twenty percent, there is another eighty twenty, and then within that, there is another eighty twenty, and that's how you end up-- that's what elite actually looks like. And, and each one, as I said earlier, comes with a cost. Like, you know, if you are the twenty percent of the twenty percent of the twenty percent of the twenty percent, you're actually quite lonely. You know, the, the, the cost is that you're lonely, the cost is that you're bearing so much responsibility. Like, you know, these idiots who go out there and screech about, \"Oh, CEO compensation,\" as you said, to the extent that it's, fiat-driven is, is one thing, but real CEOs who like build real things and like carry the responsibility of, like- People's jobs and their, you know, the fact that there's families there and the product and the promises that they're given to investors and the business that they've got to run and all the shit they have to pull together and hold together, and it's all held by one person. Man, the CEO job is like one of the hardest jobs in the world." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:39", "start": 3759.93, "text": "And yeah, especially at large scale, right? There are large, you know, there are some companies that have more, you know, employees than, you know, some small nations, you know? So it's kind of when you think about the actual impact and the actual responsibility level, it's, it is actually comparable in certain contexts. So, look, we've got to finish up, we're coming up to the hour, so just, just quickly mention, I know you've got a new project called SatLantis as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:03:05", "start": 3785.67, "text": "Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:05", "start": 3785.83, "text": "so" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:03:06", "start": 3786.11, "text": "Satlantis, I'm sure talk about it in the future, but it's basically a travel, no, travel and nomad social networking app. So the way I view Noster is different to how the developers view it. I, I don't, I haven't heard this kind of framing, but I see Noster as a social graph as a service. So the idea is we can take any kind of application, and for me, I've been nomading, traveling, doing all this sort of stuff for many years, and the, the travel space, like, what do Wise, fucking Nomad list, they're a disaster. They're, they're static, they're irrelevant, they're fake, reviews are a disaster, all this sort of stuff. What if we could take the social graph that is Noster and embed it into a travel app? And have everything from locations to merchants to events to reviews to all this sort of stuff be relevant and influenced by your social graph. And that's basically the premise of the idea, and I don't even know what to call it, so we're just calling it a travel and community social network or a nomad and community social network, whatever. But it basically-- on mobile, it's gonna look very much like Instagram, but instead of just following people, you can follow people, venues, places. Places you can even follow cities, so that way you've got like content from that. And on web, it's gonna look and feel very much like a directory where you can find events, you can find merchants, you can find everything that is more relevant to you. So if you're interested in surfing, I'm interested in Bitcoin, I'll see more Bitcoin stuff, you'll see more surfing stuff. So it's like dynamic. Whereas today, like if you and I both go to TripAdvisor, we'll literally see, you know, top restaurant in Prague is an Indian restaurant, and we're both gonna see Where this is gonna fundamentally change that. So I think we're at a, at the beginning of a new era, and I, I find Noster extraordinarily powerful. and this is actually a pivot from what we were doing previously last year, which was the AI project. We couldn't figure out how to commercialize it, so we open sourced it, gave it to the community, so it's like a, you know, spirit Satoshi is like an education tool out there, and we, we pivoted into this, over the last six months. So, you know, later, later this" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:05:18", "start": 3918.56, "text": "Maybe Q4 will have a real live product, it'll be the first image and video centric, platform on Nostr, and super excited about it, man." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:29", "start": 3929.03, "text": "Yeah, alright, well, let's see what happens. I think it's early days with Nostra, but promising, and I, I'm, I, I think I'm excited to see what happens there and will people build out, as you say, this kind of social web of trust, and then it might be more like, \"Oh, your friend has been to this city and this is a restaurant they like,\" that kind of-- So this kind of recommendation engine-ish, might be really powerful. So let's see what happens with that. So, just lastly, If they go" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:05:59", "start": 3959.13, "text": "to bushidoofbitcoin dot com, I recommend people first and foremost, before they do anything else, watch the trailer. The trailer is super powerful, like, you know, me and Helian spent like two months on it, and it's like, it'll really make you get a sense for what the book is about. Make sure your headphones are on, and then you can pre-order it for Bitcoin, on Geyser, and the link is there on bushidoofbitcoin dot com or on Kickstarter. it's cheaper on Geyser obviously because of Bitcoin" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:06:25", "start": 3985.86, "text": "It's half price at the moment for the basic tier, so like a paperback or audiobook and all that sort of stuff, and then there's some high level tiers for like, signatures, et cetera, which, limited edition. So it's all there, but bushidobitcoin dot com." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:06:38", "start": 3998.34, "text": "Fantastic. Alright, well, listeners, links are in the show notes as always, and Spetsky, thanks for joining me today. Thank you, my friend. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up and share it out there with" } ] }