How Capitalism Ruined Crypto & How to Fix it with Josh Dávila

Transcript

foreign [Music] pill.network podcast if you're just joining us we are building a coordination and network Society of thousands of hackers dreamers and doers we're focused on using crypto to build positive some digital systems this podcast features those who are doing it and is published every Tuesday and Thursday if you want to learn more visit our website at greenpill.network where you can download the green pill book for free join the Discord or become a member of your local greenpill.network chapter my guest today is Josh who is more broadly known as the blockchain Socialist he runs the blockchain Socialist podcast and he has a new book out today August 8th entitled blockchain

radicals how capitalism ruined crypto and how to fix it which you can get on Amazon or wherever books are sold you can click on the link in the show notes to check out Josh's podcast and also to check out his book so uh Josh has worked in blockchain for about five years and started the blog and podcast about three years ago Charles called the blockchain Socialist podcast really found this to be an interesting conversation because I learned about the Genesis of his political ideology and the starting of the podcast and basically is I kind of felt in some ways that it reflected my own story of being a progressive or someone who cared about pro-social values protopian values building in a

space that was very libertarian to start but now there's thousands of people who are building work pro pro social positive some systems in crypto and I think it's neat that there are multiple movements happening multiple people who are convening pro-social people uh you know blockchain socialist and Josh is one but I also think regen's United and refried out and in green pill and in the impact out at XYZ there's a bunch of people who are trying to stimulate this movement so the fact that it's actually happening uh is really exciting to me so we kind of in the first half of the episode talk about the blog and the podcast and then in the second half of the episode we play jazz a little bit that we talk about the green television we talk about coordination and we talk

about how it does and does not relate to the blockchain Socialist movement and I think that you know I I identify I know someone called me a Content producer the other day uh and I kind of like maybe wins a little bit because I still identify as a software engineer but uh you know the the interesting thing about talking to Josh is that I think he's very articulate and Lucid political and economic thinker and I still feel like I'm coming at things from more of a software angle and like some of the green pill stuff is economics and Game Theory too but we kind of meet in the middle and talk about the similarities and differences between the blockchain Socialist group and the green pill Group which I think both identify as pro-social and protopian ecosystems but go about it in very different ways building the movements so this is a

really fun episode and I think you're gonna enjoy it cheers Valley Dao is an open Global Collective working to finance and democratize the governance of synthetic biology Technologies to protect the future of our planet research and progress address into synthetic biology is critically constrained by the world of nation-state regulations and bureaucracy from middlemen but the potential that synthetic biology has for the world is massive it can produce a world in total harmony with nature we can grow stuff using cells like software it's awesome and the best part is we no longer have to pull carbon out of the ground to grow and maintain civilization don't you think we should be funding this Valley Dow does and that's what they're here to do to try and make the solar Punk World of Tomorrow a reality today so join

Valley Dao right now and save the planet at valleydow.bio all right let's Dive Right In hey Joshua how's it going I'm good Kevin thanks for having me yeah really glad to have you I've been listening to your podcast the blockchain Socialist a whole lot uh over the last six months and really a big fan of the work that you and Prima have been doing around uh creating alternative memes to the network state so it's been a lot of fun could you tell us about your background and how you got to starting that podcast and also about the book that you've got coming out yeah sure so I first got into crypto maybe in like 2016.

um during that time I was like pretty broke to be completely honest I didn't have a whole lot of money I was working like two jobs in order to like make ends meet and I had this like very dumb idea that maybe I could like trade stocks to make quick money so I can make men's meat um that didn't really work out but in that process I came across crypto and that was really when ethereum was becoming more more interesting I think um I had known about Bitcoin before that but Bitcoin was kind of like uh it was described to me as just like something you used to buy drugs online so I was about interested in it but the idea of smart contracts and Dows were like really fascinating to me at the time and at the time I was also involved in like

um you know some left-wing organizing and was sort of going through a you know radicalization politically you know Trump had been elected and you know I had been a big fan of Bernie Sanders and so as time went along I got really lucky and was able to go to um some crypto conferences on the scholarship um I got the opportunity then to work in the blockchain world um and so was able to kind of like uh learn more about it in a way that was like I was able to get paid at the same time to do it um and in the process there's also still like you know politically involved and kind of had a lot of different ideas in my head of like how these things kind of merged together how they complemented

each other um but I wasn't really finding anything out there in the world that sort of like discussed it in the way that I wanted to there had been a lot of like usually when you look up crypto things especially back then I think it's a little bit better now but back then it was really like if you got into crypto you got into it because of like you know the digital gold narrative and like the government like controlling the money or whatever it was a very like a very conservative libertarian type of uh framework for the way that was being talked about but at the same time people were talking about Dao's as being like Oh we can make a company except you know you don't have any CEO you don't have any like shareholders or anything I was like that's kind of like a Cooperative

um then I got really interested in that type of thing and was really interested in what the potentials for a smart contracts in Dallas were so spent a lot of time thinking about it and eventually got so frustrated that there was nobody else doing it I said you know [ __ ] it why don't I try it myself and I you know spent however many couple hundred bucks for a website and started writing down my thoughts because I really wanted to express them um and then that sort of turned more into podcasts because it turns out that it's easier to make podcasts weekly than it is to write something weekly um and so just continue doing that and after a couple of years uh doing that I got to meet a lot of very interesting people um and as well uh you know have an

audience and I was approached by repeater books which is a left-wing publisher in the UK um they're like really like I love I love this like publishing house before they even asked me because I was a big fan of like some of the writers beforehand especially Mark Fisher and yeah they asked me if I wanted to write a book and I was very surprised and very honored and I got to do it so I have I have my copy right here blockchain radicals how capitalism and crypto and how to fix it um so just um they just basically gave me like total like creative freedom to write about whatever I wanted um at first they were like you know why don't you write like a little a little pamphlet for like how to use crypto for people on the left or something like

that but turn into something a bit bigger than that um yeah and yeah that's cool uh Mark Fisher that's the post-capitalist desire uh lecture if I'm not mistaken yeah yeah well he did that one yeah I've fallen down his Rabbit Hole a couple times so uh you're in good company well I'm wondering if you could uh I want to get into the book and by the way for the audience there's a link to the book purchase Link in the in the show notes so you should you should check that out but I want to talk about this sort of political transformation that you went through around the time that Trump was elected can you tell me about what was motivating that what was stimulating that that and sort of How It's evolved for you over the years and I'd love to hear just you know if you get tagged

what what you think your values were during that transformation was it mutualism was it cooperatives and and how that influences your work today because I think that that's kind of getting into the Nugget of of a lot of your a lot of your work yes I mean I'd say that like even like well before 2016 like I was definitely one of those like I don't know like progressives that were like very anti-iraq War like all the things that were back in like the early 2000s were kind of what was associated with um but I was never really I never got into reading political Theory or philosophy or anything like that except for like through I don't know Wikipedia or online videos or something um and then you know Bernie Sanders was

someone who was like very inspirational for me like at the time like uh just having grown up with like not a lot of money growing up and like having to deal with the financial struggler struggles that like a lot of people do and you know the the recession being something that like really hurt my family at the time quite badly um so like I was yeah just really interested in like like I just believed very strongly that things like Health Care should be Universal for everyone like that should be a human right at this day and age whenever we have this amount of abundance in the world there's no reason that people should go without Health Care there's no reason people should go without food without housing um we have like way too much at this

point to be doing this um and so like after I think like when Trump got elected I was finally like okay now I want to like read this stuff and just like learn more I'm just like really someone who um wants to know the truth about things without like any sort of veneer or like any sort of like I think I think that was a shock event for a lot of people that were Progressive Trump selection in in 2016. so I think that was a political Awakening for a lot of people for sure it was um there's definitely a very large increase in like people joining the DSA Democratic socialists of America and whatnot um but yeah so I use that opportunity to like just start reading a lot and you know this it's sort of like this hard like back and forth of well I believe

these things about how the world should be but at the same time I live in a world that uh professes particular types of values that I don't believe in or like I have to do things in order to survive that I maybe don't want to do or don't like doing um and that includes like working you know shitty corporate job or something like that or it can include that um and so yeah I was just kind of like trying to deal with these types of contradictions and just like in the process just kind of uh yeah I had the opportunity to work in like very very corporate settings like very deep into the belly of of capitalism I think and it informed me it sort of like added to like the the political theory that I was

reading which was more theoretical and then like seeing it firsthand in person was something that was like very it was radicalizing to me sometimes I think for some people it's sort of like there's a lot of people that I've met they're like oh yeah I've read I've read Marx and then they like but they still work in like I don't know Mackenzie or something like that you they you know like super corporate jobs and then they like um they kind of transform they're like oh yeah I know like all these political writers they don't get it because you know now capitalism is like this and it's it's good or whatever but to me it was like the opposite it was like an affirmation of what I was reading and like um and the criticisms that they were making about capitalism although the Capitals in there talking about of

course is like industrial capitalism is like a different time and of course it's like transformed and you know it's it's different of course um but I think it doesn't like take away from like the original critique that um a lot of these thinkers at the time were thinking about I mean at the time like I would say I'm more of a I don't know I say like I'm a Marxist with a lot of uh sympathies towards like a lot of anarchist thinkers and writers but yeah I think that's kind of like where I'm at now so you can call it like like a post Marxist although that's like very you know it sounds like so uh obtuse if I say that out loud but like you know I think there's a lot of good things that were written by Marx some things that need to be updated and there's a lot of

people who have written more contemporary things that are like more useful for thinking about time today yeah well it's just so interesting to hear your Genesis story as as sort of a progressive in your political leanings and um you know the thing that's coming up for me and I'd be curious if it's coming up for anyone in the audience is just how lonely it was to be a progressive or someone who cares about just pro-social environmental stuff in early crypto because the Vibes were very like red meat libertarian sovereignty um and I will say that like you know part of my my going through cryptos learning about the value of sovereignty and decentralization which is like not something that's a someone who grew up Progressive that was really talked about in my circles and so it's been sort of a you know understanding both the

ideologies and the value systems and the language of the left and the right has helped me form at least like a bridge in my mind between the the two thinkings but uh there is now a bona fide Progressive Movement people who want to do pro-social stuff in in crypto um and I think that we should just we should celebrate that together the the fact that that even exists because the origins of the space I think probably were slanted pretty libertarian uh do you have any pushback on that is that fair um I think it's mostly fair I think that there's still like I think there's a lot of room for improvements a lot of room to like grow that hasn't happened yet like I think there is a like there's a like I totally appreciate these people they have that they are um well-meaning

that they are progressive and they feel themselves to be Progressive uh sometimes I I like want to provide the kind of like more concrete understanding of like the world I think there's a lot of times when people they want to do things that are progressive and I respect that but the way that may maybe that they're approaching it or doing it doesn't involve like the type of critique that I have and therefore I think they fall into some traps so I've seen like a couple of crypto projects I think have fallen into those kind of traps of like oh we want to be very Progressive but we're also taking like an intense amount of VC capital or you know Venture Capital um which is like a very like I mean maybe you can convince me that that's like you can do that but there's like I

I want to hear like a very like concrete answer as to why why you're doing that so it's a very difficult position to be in and if you just like look into the history of like this type of thing it's not an easy thing to uh to get around sort of like the trappings of of what that involves I guess it's a deal with the devil I would say yeah well um I want to come back to that let's put a pin in that but first let's let's take a tour of your book which I gotta say is is kind of uh the the title for me is a little bit provocative blockchain radicals how capitalism ruined crypto and how to fix it so there's a link in the show notes check it out on Amazon Amazon while we're talking about it but I'm wondering if you could tell me what

inspired you to write this book and what are the primary points that you're trying to what is the change that you're trying to get across by by putting this book out there sure so yeah the the title is definitely meant to be provocative for both of the audiences that I'm hoping to kind of tap into so yeah I mean like repeater asked me to write a book I had not really thought about writing a book at all at that point I thought I was like way too small and insignificant to really do that but um they pushed me um they encouraged me to do it and you know I'm glad I did whenever I first started writing I was kind of like wanting to provide just like a bridge between these two contradictory like worlds or spaces that I'm like involved in and part of and like trying to just

put down on paper the things that I see or the things that I'm feeling about the connections between these two spaces um and the old and so like the kind of uh let's say the two kind of like MiMi like counter opposing forces in this space I think I kind of Define as one as like the crypto hype men these are the people who believe like all crypto is good crypto is going to change the world web 3 is amazing web 2 is terrible whatever and the other side is sort of like the crypto Gatekeepers who are the more like anything related to crypto is bad it's all bad it's like you know right-wing libertarian nonsense stay away from it you know it's all scams and so I'm trying to like by identifying

these kind of like two like extreme positions of this space I'm trying to like in the middle try to find the nuance and like uh you know I use I use the metaphor of like maps and territories so like I try to you know create a math for people to navigate the territory the crypto territory um in a way that is like uh seeing the things that I think that I see at least the potentials that I see that I've been able to make the connections for just through like being in this space for long enough and like dealing with these contradictions um so to help you know people in the crypto World kind of see uh one like deal with kind of like the I think the

mental models that generally people sort of build things and then on the other side people on the left who generally kind of like take the default mental models that they're given about crypto that are like bad mental models I would say um so that they can also I mean one like perhaps see something positive about it if it or maybe even to just like critique it better because I think there's a lot of like critique it generally comes from the left I would say um that is like anti-crypto that is not not at the level that I would like it to be in the sense that like I'm okay with critique I think critique is good I just like it needs to be like better quality and if we want the point of critique should be to like help uh those

who are in the space who are building it to build better things I think to push them to like make things that are more pro-social or whatever you want to call it that are less like extractive and less purely about speculation so that you know that like yeah I just think there needs to be better critiques so that people can do this otherwise sort of the the only thing the critique is doing is sort of like a you know a kind of circle jerk of like you know the things that we already believe in and reaffirmation of of you know the already the existing criticisms that we have and that's like not not a progression in like the discourse or in like the discussion that I think um really necessary to have so what I heard there was kind of like a more high resolution critique of crypto coming

from the left is a big opportunity because then we can genuinely improve the things that are being built in the ecosystem and if the only critique is all of crypto is a waste all of crypto is a Ponzi scheme all of crypto is a scam let's throw it all out then you're not actually reaching the builders that could be helped by the critique and have their projects move forward by the critique so high resolution critique is kind of like a public good for pro-social web 3. yeah I think that's a good way to put it I'm just also like coming off of my parents were in town this past weekend and I went out to lunch with Maya and she was like so you're working in crypto like isn't that all Ponzi schemes I'm like well uh actually there are Ponzi schemes in crypto but not all crypto is a Ponzi

scheme just like you know like in the web there are porn sites but you know not all websites are porn sites like you like you gotta not throw the baby out with the bath water it's like hard to make that intergenerational argument to to someone like that but but um it seems like you're aimed more at the people in the space and helping them improve their pro-social projects than like an external uh sort of messaging about what crypto could be is that fair um I think it's a bit of both like I figure like I I try not to be like I I think there there is room to be like a little bit utopian and like trying to like you know put some ideas out there and see what sticks and what um maybe it doesn't come if someone tries to make it

doesn't come out exactly as the way it was described but yeah I think there's some use in that although I try to be you know more as grounded as I can be through like real examples I guess well um I'll just remind The Listener that there's a link to a link tree and a link to the Amazon in the show notes and and you can check out the book there there's also a link to your podcast where you've done some really interesting work on deconstructing the network state with Primavera de Felipe and I've been really consuming that a lot uh over the last six months I'm wondering if we could take a a little diversion into the podcast and in your critique of of network States because I think there's some really interesting tidbits in there as well so um I wonder if you could tell

me uh the network State came out about six months ago nine months ago and in balji srivasan has been on many podcasts uh describing the network State as a group of Highly aligned individuals who who come together in in order to form a digital movement that eventually becomes uh recognized by by existing States and I wonder if you could take me just like very high level through your critiques of the network State as it's defined by biology and kind of the more uh maybe pro-social Network State coordination that that you and Primavera are trying to move into existence yeah so obligi in case you will know he's a venture

capitalist um he made a lot of money selling his startups uh he worked as a CTO for coinbase uh he was a GP at Anderson Horowitz um he's a very influential sort of think boy on Twitter a lot of people like he tends to be very provocative he had that like Million Dollar Bet on bitcoin or whatever it was but yeah so the network States the sort of the the big problem for me with it is that it is it so like it describes this world view I mean one that is like very very a historical in my opinion like doesn't really deal with the facts as they are it's kind of like a very selective kind of he he tries to like you know create connections between

different little tidbits of facts to create this like grander narrative that don't really fit like I don't know if you were to ask people who actually study a lot of these things I think would not really fit within within the thing that he's describing but um one of those things that he kind of describes the world is having like different leviathans so he said that there are different leviathans really big forces that force people to be pro-social one the first was God then there was State and now there is network and so like God being kind of religion the state being the rise of the nation-state and now networks which to me is not very clear if he means like networks between people or networks mediated through like social

media and technology and Communications that work as a network which people are a part of but then like the word network is a bit is a bit of a vague term it's a very slippery term that I think you can use to kind of like fit into a lot of different things and make it seem like it's something new like I don't know there are definitely religious networks of people like the Catholic church is a network of of different people together you know in religion um but anyways um so yeah he's describing a way in which we can create new countries that are based on sort of people with similar values coming together and buying land and then turning that into like its own country with its own governments and with his own diplomatic recognition so he's saying that if people would just

try hard enough and they buy this land and they just like use their Collective like pooled money and resources they can make this country and like whatever land they bought that country in will just sort of have to allow it in some sense and this is like a very it's not a very new idea actually is actually quite an old one and something that people have been trying for a long time to do with like very little success uh so far and it tends to be done in a way that's like very very Colonial like if you are someone that wants to go and make a new country you are going to have to deal with a geopolitical realities of the countries that you are going to be behind the land next to

um and so oftentimes what happens is people will who are oftentimes it's there's like a huge history of like right-wing Libertarians kind of wanting to do this to kind of create their own libertarian Utopia um they would buy land in very poor countries and then they would use their money money and their resources in order to like influence the existing government so that they can do what they want with that piece of land and whatever else so there's like a huge like Colonial history to it um it's also the book references a lot to um another writer named Curtis yarvin who is like he's a creator of Orbitz but he's also like a very well-known far-right like philosopher um so he was known as like kind of like the father of the altaright so it's like a very he he references him quite a bit

throughout the book and Curtis yarvin has his own book that is was very similar it came out in 2014 called Patchwork um and Patchwork describes basically um a world in which we have much much smaller countries but each country is a dictatorship and each dictatorship has its own rules and laws and you have the freedom of exit so anybody can sort of exit their own dictatorship to choose their own dictatorship that they want to live under so therefore creating like this very highly aligned Society so really is that a lot of like uh gonna say I'm sorry to interrupt your I was gonna say that it feels like you're almost creating like a market for states where because everyone can Rex it then the states have to compete against each other so the dictators won't be so bad because anyone could exit and you'll

lose your tax base when that happens right it's this belief in kind of like free market fundamentalism that like whenever like all things should be like the coordination mechanism that we should be using for everything is a free market um and I think that like there's enough there's like so much history and evidence to prove that that is not the case at like free markets in the way that's being described is like not the way to allocate all types of resources and and everything else and that that can be a lot of downsides to that is it is why you know like I think crypto has moved towards us more like we need to fund public goods type of thing because if everything was on a free market everything was for-profit oriented then like things would not be done actually it would just kind of like solidify the

power of those who are at the top of these markets but so like in the network state is very strange that the Leviathan that he's sort of described being you know God State and network but at the same time sort of like the main mechanism and vehicle for doing anything related to a network state is capital um it is like making investments in things and expecting return um that isn't mentioned in the book at all it's sort of like kind of hand waved the way like um it's just like taken for granted and that's that's not surprising if you think about who he is and what his history is like how he succeeded in life it was purely through like you know Investments it was through like Venture Capital it was through like this very heavily like

Tech capitalism world so like capital is taken as like a default of like everything that as how everything should be should be done um so there's there's like oh I have like you know if you go to the podcast the series is called overthrowing the network so you'd have like probably not like at least 10 hours of us talking about um the problems but then also we're using that as an opportunity to talk about an alternative because I think there are a lot of people who are probably ostensibly Progressive who are probably like nice people who are pro-social who liked the idea of a network States who maybe didn't read the book who maybe didn't like have the ability to think critically about specific things in the book or didn't know about these things that are like kind of problematic

um so we've done like a bunch of research and we've kind of like created our own alternative called coordinations which I think is like um also heavily uh influenced by like I think you use the word maybe perhaps first before we did uh Primavera I really liked it and we were trying to like pick another one so that we didn't like copy you I think at one point but then they're like that's such a good word that we had to use it yeah well um we're all standing on the shoulders of giants and you know like you said uh biology and the network say these are not new ideas forming online societies uh but biology I think has brought it to prominence and um you know what I think maybe as an opportunity is that there's sort of like the memetic layer of network States being a totally Sovereign

digitally digital community at the memetic layer but then there's Network state in one sentence one paragraph one page one book and and I think a lot of your criticisms are are in the nuanced layer of the one page one book layer and there's still not a lot of opportunity to Define how these Network States can be done uh or coordinations can be done in a pro-social way and uh maybe not placing Capital at the base of them valuing voice as much as we value exit in these communities and so um you know I'm just kind of thankful for your critique because it's allowed us to think a little bit more consciously about how we're designing these online community communities and you know for the listener I'd really

recommend checking out the overthrowing the network State critiques that are on Josh's podcast and that'll be linked in the show notes as well thanks I appreciate the the kind words uh yeah well definitely I mean like I said I've been I've listened to at least 10 hours of your podcast and um it's really interesting for me to listen to because I feel like I know I come from this computer science background I've always always sort of been like vaguely Progressive growing up but um I feel like you're coming uh from a much more of like an a priori thinking in in deep thinker thinking from a political philosophy perspective and so it's been interesting to to sort of steep My Brain in that and think about some of the critiques and you know I'd love to I'd love to end the episode in the last 10 minutes by maybe some of

your critiques of of green pill or the coordination meme I know that we were talking before the episode about uh about coordination as a meme and would love to invite some of that critique into the regen web3 space and and I think that that would be a great place to bring it home so so where should we start oh I could start with like maybe I'll start with like the structure of the book because then that kind of like builds up to it the book the way that it's structured is based on the work of who's a French philosopher and he has this thing called the critique of representational thinking and so this forms like kind of like the the framework of the book and what he's saying is that oftentimes in order to understand the new we often use models of the old and sort of like impose upon

it like this old model in order to try to understand this new thing and this is pretty problematic um the example that I like to give in that and like given the book is um the drum machine so the drum machine was a machine that was built as meant to be a replacement for a drummer for your musical Ensemble you could buy the machine you press the buttons and then it really is the beat that you want to play and you can show me along and so in this sort of model of thinking about the drum machine the drum machine is a representation of a drummer with the drum set like it's a less good version right the ideal is the geometry drum sets and this is like uh the drum machine would be like a branch coming

out of this uh coming out of this so it's like the Lewis calls this Arbor real thinking or like thinking in trees and this is like very common in platonic thinking like Plato is like all about the ideal forms of things a lot of Western philosophy kind of came out of that and then DeLuise and before him Spinoza whatever um had sort of like wanting to break out of this and so um like the the problem with the drum machine to bring it back together is that the drum machine was used instead uh like if you pushed up the machine the mo you know moved up the the knob all the way it would play beats that a drummer could never play right so it went it moved past its representation of a drummer's

drum machine could then create a new genres of music it was then added to Old genres of music and it became its own thing it was a never so the idea is that the thinking of it in a representational model was never correct it was never a right to think about that way because it pushed back it pushed out of these boundaries and this is so uh representational thinking like a big part of the argument in the book is uh endemic in crypto like representational thinking is everywhere um you think like even Bitcoin itself was like peer-to-peer cash it was like digital gold we have the smart contracts which are not necessarily related to a law system uh decentralized autonomous corporations which then became organizations um like the idea that it was Corporation in the first place like shows kind of

like the the the place in which the people were first kind of thinking about it but then like metallic made the great decision of you know expanding that to organization to something that's more malleable something that's that's um you know more flexible and like I think that was correct like you don't like a Dao doesn't have to be a for-profit corporation or whatever but we see like this constant sort of like expanding beyond the representation that's that that crypto has thought of like the first so like the book is in three sections the first one being crypto is money that's like the most like the first kind of like representational model that was imposed the next was cryptos finance and then the third is kryptos coordination um you see each time like the way I like to think about it is that there is like

a Terrain that we cannot possibly know like all of we cannot know the entirety of the terrain at one point but we can create maps on top of it to sort of like navigate that terrain and each time we're needing a new map that sort of expands a bigger and bigger uh Circle and so in my view like it's interesting to see this like maturation or like Evolution process over time since I started but then as well I do believe that we're not really at like um like I don't think that crypto is coordination in that in that sense or like that I don't and since I don't think we should restrict ourselves and thinking that it's all coordination even though I do really like like

coordination as a meme I do think it opens a lot of doors for talking about other things um I do think that sometimes coordination because it's like a kind of like a neutral term kind of like a vague neutral term it can be used to kind of cover up what's actually happening in more specific ways like I think a lot of times I don't know like people will say like I'm coordinating when in reality I want to tell them like no you're working you're working you're laboring for like a for-profit entity and you deserve like certain rights and you should be like you know fighting for those rights in within your Dao or within your like web3 organization or whatever um so that's kind of like yeah it's kind of like the base of my uh my critique of

of coordination I guess yeah let's Fair uh listeners who have followed my career for a while know that I give a talk in 2021 entitled it's all coordination so I think we've probably finally gotten to a point of the episode where there's some light conflict between between our Visions which I think is is healthy um before the episode I think one of the things that I think was maybe your critique of coordination was um how the memes sort of glosses over the not income inequality but like Capital inequality of you know is it really all coordination if one percent of the of the people have ninety percent of the wealth if there's income inequality like is really coordination the problem at that point or is it just

the fact that you have two sort of groups that have different incentive structures and and stakes in the system I don't wanna I'd love to hear your get out of your mouth like that critique so that I can respond to it uh yeah I guess I would say that like it's it's not just about coordination it's about power it's about power relations and like how it relate to the things that we're like producing in order to exist in the world um if we are in a position where we don't have a lot of capital then we have we have like less power than those that do have Capital that's like the definition of capitalism is that you know there's there are a few people who own the means of production which is capital and they're able to like use that to push resources in particular

direction they can allocate things because they have the money to do so if a billionaire wants to create a bajillion widgets then he can do that because he has the capital to kind of like invest in that thing so in many ways like billionaires sort of like the economic they're the planners of the economy in many ways and So like um yeah I think that if we want to like the the title of the book is blockchain radicals like if the what I'm trying to get at is like in order to think radically we have to understand the system for what it is and then we have to propose a radically different system uh beyond that I think part of it is like changing the power structures that exist within the system so like a lot of web through your crypto projects they will call themselves radical or

revolutionary but they may not like question really fundamental things about um the economic system that we live in so to me it's about like being aware and being like being able to think critically about like which Maps we are using in order to like understand the territory that we want to play in um and so it's not about like oh you know metaphors are all wrong because they're not exactly the thing that it is supposed to be metaphors are fine like they can help understand help people understand things it's just like we need to be like speaking critically about how how we apply these these Maps these metaphors in order to like understand the larger picture um so like this this is getting at like

kind of like the I think the whole coordination meme was really inspired by like the the essay from the Scott Alexander yeah the meditations on all the coordination failure is a rationalist community would solve its coordination failures um and so if you just invest in our ability yeah meditations on molok is is the uh is the uh the Canon piece there yeah so like in the like in the in the conclusion of my book I I talk a bit about like this this essay that that Scott Alexander gives um and like how you know like using the metaphor of Malik and he uses a poem uh that I'm not forgetting the name like howling something but he uses that poem was about like a critique of capitalism

and then but Scott Alexander kind of like chooses to say that oh it's not it's not just capitalism it's like this larger kind of um you know this thing about coordination failure which I kind of I can understand kind of where he's coming from but at the same time I think it like misses the point and so like what's really funny uh when I was doing my research is that actually like he was not the first person to use Malik as like this guy for coordination failure like Karl Marx actually writes about Malik um in capital volume 3 where he says you know um Capital claims the ownership of all wealth which can never be produced and everything it has received so far is but

installments for its all engrossing appetite by its innate laws all Surplus labor which the human race can ever perform belongs to its Malik so like the this idea of Malik is like a it's actually existed for for a while and it has been like around like philosophers have talked about it it's like really about like it's kind of like this horror picture of like the system that we're entrapped by that we can't get out because of like the power relationships that we're stuck in if we are like purely people who can sell our labor then we cannot like just ourselves we cannot sort of Rage Quit capitalism we have to like collectively realize our power together in order to like move the system in a different direction and change those power relationships we have

to coordinate I agree like it still does involve coordination I'm not saying like coordination is stupid or whatever I'm saying but like you know uh we can't say just coordination in a neutral in a neutral way yeah no this is fun this is the part of the episode where we get to play jazz together and I think that that's what we've been building towards um so I guess one of my mental models and like by the way I like I think I'm a much shallower political thinker than you are um if you read the green pill book it's like you know it's like a picture book and there's a bunch of visuals of like different mental models and one of the my sort of like maybe it's maybe it's just like the nerd and me that that likes to get nerds nerd sniped on all

these things is like I believe that all models are wrong but some are useful and so when I put into the green pill book like a visual about prisoners dilemma and malark and coordination failure and Bento is um and you know if you've read the green pill book then you you know what all these mental models are I kind of think of them as like these models are useful in understanding how humans coordinate with each other but they've got limits to each other or to where they do it it's like it's almost like um you know like Newtonian physics uh can only describe the deterministic relationship between two bodies celestial bodies to each other um up to to a point like until you get to like the quantum scale um in into that point you have to use a

different type of physics in like general relativity describes things as they reach the speed of light both of those models are are useful uh but they're wrong once you get past a certain boundary and I feel like it's the same thing with these economic models with like prisoners dilemma and Malik like they're useful models within a certain container but um it's the in the summation of all the mental models and creating like a pluralism of them that we're kind of grasping the whole elephant of these social movements that we're creating and so the more we can equip people with different mental models to think about things than the better equipped we are and so um if the audience was looking for a it's all coordination versus all it's all not like moment in the episode

I'm not going to give it to you I think it's a pluralism of yes there's some coordination and there's some power structures imbalances and we need to know when to apply the right lens in in different situations is is sort of my pluralistic volley back to you on on this and so you know I'm wondering if you have any any reactions that no I mean I think that's fair like I I love that quote as well I use it in the book all models are wrong some are useful and like as well like the map is not the territory like I love them yeah I I love these like these you know little aphorisms I guess and yeah I think one of the things that people will sometimes get into especially people I don't know

not necessarily just people in crypto but there's like people a lot of times they're like they they find like a new framework or a new structure in order to understand the world and then they like they their music yeah they're heavily invested it becomes their identity yeah right like I don't know like like I I used to be someone who was really into Game Theory at one point just because like I did I studied I studied neuroscience and I did like a neuroscience like um I was in a lab where we studied people doing the prisoners dilemma game while their brain is being scanned um it was like really fascinating but also I realized I was like this cannot be applied to every situation this is just like this is such a purely like in a scientific like you know like very sterile environments where things are

happening um but maybe the prisoner Zama can be like useful for thinking about things in a certain way but not necessarily applied like like a sticker you know like impose an old model imposed on like to something else in order to try to understand it in its entirety um is like a limitation and so like I think as long as we can be like aware of that we can think critically of it like then we're we're moving forward in the space rather than like you know being being a maxi and in whatever model you're you're choosing well one of the things I find really frustrating about social media I mean I love certain things about social media but one of the things I found frustrating is that Nuance is the enemy of common understanding that's another aphorism that one comes from Sam Harris and the

fact that you know well this is why I like having you on the podcast is just great because we can actually apply some Nuance to this but one of the things that I've really tried to do and I have to I find myself having to fight like or to fight for this impulse when I'm on social media is um I when a new situation occurs to me which happens all the [ __ ] time in crypto because it's the frontier right um is I try to think like what mental models does this apply uh like what what lenses can I apply to this situation and sometimes it's bentoism sometimes it's Game Theory sometimes it's just common sense and then I try to stop before I react to try to stop and think okay what are the limitations of these models and where do they agree versus when do they

disagree and I think that can be a really Illuminating um way of exploring the Nuance of of a new situation and so um you know to me like I feel like doing this podcast is like for me it's been like I feel like I'm like Kirby in Super Smash Brothers where I'm like inhaling all these different mental models and now I have the blockchain Socialist lens to apply to things when I when I'm doing things and um and so I don't know I'm just like very thankful for high contact spaces where we can learn to have Nuance because Twitter iterate it and social media ain't it and I think that your book and your podcast uh for me were really useful in picking up some new things yeah thanks I appreciated like being like one of the things that I can say that is really nice about

um specific parts of the crypto space is that people are very open to like new ideas like that people are willing to listen to like even though my ideas I think are very like um not the norm in crypto world I often find that like there's a lot of usefulness in like still engaging with people um because they are open to like hearing what I have to say um so I really appreciate you giving me the space for that yeah well I think it takes a lot of Bravery to to be the first one to the dance and to be beating that blockchain socialist uh drum before anyone else um is there I feel like they're just getting to the part of the episode where we're actually starting to rip and it's just getting good but we are gonna be out of time in five minutes so maybe

I'll ask you my my closing question which is is there anything I didn't ask that that you want to say anything we didn't get to oh man um now I mean there is a I think the big thing that I was really interested in talking to you about was like the whole coordination stuff um because I was curious to hear what your thoughts were on that um no I mean I yeah I I have been doing this podcast and blog for like a bit over three years and it's been like a really great journey and like um I hope that people can get what they can out of it um with the book I am yeah hoping to like build on top of it more like I don't want it to be just kind of like a

book that's sent out and then kind of like forgotten or like hey we do nothing with it so I'm in the works to try to to try to build some more stuff uh out of it I'm trying to make a website so to give a space for people who are maybe already in crypto who are new to crypto to use the tools in a way that's like a safe space that they can kind of like experiment and like begin to think about um new ways of like what crypto is rather than only sort of being you know bombarded by whatever like the mainstream sort of narrative about crypto is let's say be on the lookout for that um and yeah buy the book so buy the book subscribe to the podcast sounds like there's also a Discord community that you're trying to like stimulate and practice some of this

stuff in so people can join that as well yeah so I have uh it's called crypto leftists there's a community on Reddit and on Discord um and yeah we have these types of conversations all the time that's great um well maybe we can do some sort of crossover Network building between the green pill that were Discord and and the crypto leftist Discord so I'm going to join it and I'll be in there as well but uh but I don't want to I don't want to leave the audience hanging do we resolve the it's all coordination for it's versus not thing I can go a couple minutes over if you want to Riff on that I guess so I'm curious what your thoughts about my like my critique is because um yeah I mean it's I don't mean it to be in like a uh uh I don't know to me it's like a way

that I want to like encourage people to think about it in like a slightly different way I don't know I'm curious what your thoughts were yeah so let's go five minutes over let's get into it I think this will this will be fun so my let me let me say your critique back to you and then we can Center on that for the next five minutes so basically it's all coordination misses the Merc because it's not actually all coordination um in a world where there's such income inequality and capital inequality it's it's actually like power imbalances and we need to fight for uh we need to fight for those power to to reverse those power imbalances if we want to build a more Democratic Society is that two reductionists or is that close to your critique I said it's pretty close yeah okay um well yeah so I mean um I guess a

couple lenses we could apply to this and you know taking a a pluralistic view that that some of these lenses are uh helpful but none of them are going to be like the totalistic uh way of thinking about it I think that it's all coordination is a useful like memetic attractor um an attractor being something that like you know attracts people to a way of thinking for highlighting what blockchains are good at and for me the fact that we now have like a global programmable transparent Incorruptible substrate for transferring wealth and state in reputation between each other means that like I guess it's like you know to use your drummer analogy it's like we have had the drummer and then we had the drum machine and now we can turn

the drum machine up to up to 11 and you know maybe acoustically that's really awful when you have a drum machine but if we could turn up our ability to like coordinate and transfer state to each other um with blockchain based systems then we can turn up our ability to collectively organize to create mutualistic societies we can now program our values into our money so we can create better co-ops um and we can create but like faster Network social movements than we ever could before and you know by the way this is also a double-edged sword because if if your values are like I don't know like being a Neo-Nazi or or something that I would never ascribe to then you could also use this coordination substrate for that but also for people who have Progressive values

you can so it's all coordination is kind of like a memetic attractor to that way of thinking it shouldn't be taken literally as it's literally all coordination I guess would be my first volley back to you and then um my my second volley back is just like an acceptance that thinking about power imbalances is actually a really important thing when you're trying to figure out the method of coordinating like I always think about climate change like what the [ __ ] are the oil companies doing by digging up more oil in injecting it into the Earth even though their families and their descendants are going to be [ __ ] over by this as much as everyone else and so the as best as I can surmise is point zero one percent of the population has all the capital the lobbying power and the ability to pull

the money out of the ground and the profit motive not not just the profit motive but the the fiduciary duty to maximize value to their shareholders and they're just trying to create enough they're just trying to muddy the information environment so the 99.99 of us that want to transition to a green economy can't quite achieve it while they can match so they can maximize their gains in the short term and and it's up to the 99.9 of of community to coordinate first within coordinating recognizes that power imbalance in order to dismantle dismantle that octopus um and and sort of coordinate for Humanity not having our planet venusified and future Generations dying from uh any number of the ways that

increasingly heated up planet could die so um I think that coordination if you're going to take a tall coordination on its literal face then coordination requires um understanding polarization and power imbalances and then working around them in order to dismantle uh people like in in order to to sort of solve for the power imbalance as part of coordinating to solve the coordination failure so I know those are two very different volleys back to you on the it's all coordination Meme and I'm I'm wondering you know what your response is to both of them yeah I mean I don't I don't disagree with what you're saying um in large part I guess though that this describing it as a coordination failure to me feels like it it just feels like

you're not we're not we're not identifying what is the problem like we're not identifying that it is like this point one percent that's like no [ __ ] everything up it's just like oh sorry there's a little bit of miscommunication I didn't mean to like extract that much oil like like that that's not like you know that's how people play the things like really work it's like no [ __ ] you I'm going to extract this boil out of the ground because I want to make money off of it and that's like my fiduciary responsibility because that's that's like how systemically like this whole thing works um and so like if if I as a as like a you know singular uh oil and gas executive decides not to do that then they're going to just get rid of me and find someone who will so like it's not

it's not just like this right and I think coordination is getting at this but it's like it's not this like that there was like a personal miscommunication but that there is like like distinct classes of people who have different relationships to like our resources who therefore have different incentives to like extract those things and like you know make a profit so I mean I think I think coordination can be like an interesting stepping stone to having that conversation yeah it like it is it is an interesting like like in in you know some people like they'll call it like they turn them all like they'll like to bring someone in like thinking one thing but then use it to kind of like to push them into like a much more interesting direction or the direction

you would like them to go to by kind of like enticing them with like coordination because it sounds like it's like an apolitical term that can be used to kind of like seduce people into like thinking about like relationships between people and then be like oh yeah and also like we need to stop climate change now or we're [ __ ] so I mean that's that's why I like I like I'm not like to me it's more like it's a yes and type of thing you know sure I always feel like I'm a picture in my mind like these Russian dolls where you put one inside of another and for me the power imbalance doll goes inside of the coordination doll and for you the coordination doll goes inside of the power imbalance doll and like maybe you're calling your work your stuff like blockchain socialist and how capitalism

is evil but I'm more or anchoring on like more apolitical things or actually people know what the [ __ ] they are but like Greenville and and coordination just sounds like a little bit less like they don't have any people don't have as many priors for for those things is an opportunity and also a curse they're like two like two different strategies like I remember like a lot of people ask me like oh you call yourself a socialist but like don't you think that's going to like stop you from like people are going to not listen to you because of that but I mean I feel like someone has to someone has to hold the flag you know someone's got to do it um yeah and I think having just like this plurality of strategies for trying to solve these things is is ultimately a

good thing um I agree plurality uh I've really been plurality pilled by the radical exchange movement in Glenn Weil um you know it's partially maybe because my work I get clay was built on top of Glens but uh you know I do think it's a beautiful value set um I wonder if you could respond to my other sort of volleyball coordination and you know maybe it's it's on me for putting two deep points in in one volley but like uh it's all coordination as a memetic a tractor to uh to to help remind people why blockchains are useful so we have like a global transparent immutable programmable Ledger that has a bunch of capital in it and now we can actually build better coordination games like uh uh like I'm wondering if you could if you could respond to respond to

that that point also because I'd be curious to see if we disagree on that I think in your in your body to me you said the drummer was bad when you turn it up to 11 but for me blockchains turn up our ability to coordinate to 11 is that a good thing or a bad thing uh I mean I think it's still up in the air if that is the case I think there's a lot of like clear like potential that it could be and I would of course I'm on the side of like I would like it that to be the case but I think one of the things to keep in mind uh with crypto and the coordination I think it's like the at the base layer of like basically every public blockchain there are certain economic assumptions about like how people will interact with

the blockchain itself like if you are a Staker or a miner then you are you're expected that through this game theoretical you know kind of setup that you're going to continue continue to do mining or staking and keep the the blockchain alive and like keep it and follow the rules because like you have an economic incentive to do so because you're going to profit out of it so there is a bit of a like and which is a very very hard problem to solve I do not have a solution to that I would really love very smart Engineers to think about but like there is an assumption of like capitalism within a blockchain like they're they're and and that's really uh and that's you know perhaps on one side a problem but also at the same time it's why it works which is like a very like

uncomfortable Maybe like the reason that blockchains are able to continue is because it follows like it follows the like Protocols of capitalism or whatever however you want to call it like the things that Define capitalism it it mirrors through technological code and that's why it's able to work and that's interesting and also problematic um because it it in some ways you can maybe argue that it kind of like reifies the existing system that you want to change in the first place so like there's there's like Finance Finance like capitalism is like a coordination mechanism as well like you I think I think there's an argument for that it's just a coordination mechanism with like very high power imbalances I mean like feudalism before it's like

slavery before that they're all coordination mechanisms with like very very like deep power imbalances between different classes of people so like yeah I mean I I agree that like blockchains can be very interesting for improving like how people can coordinate with one another for sure I agree with that I think there is like a deeper underlying problem that like maybe we won't get to like solve right now and maybe something that we won't be able to like have another solution to for like another decade or so but I think it's something to like keep an eye on and to think about that like a lot of our coordination is happening through the lens of like profit maximizers I mean I don't know I'm like really excited of like what types of economic theories are going to come out of like the analysis

of Mev for example like yeah within within a Blog chain system like I think there is like a lot of very interesting uh very weird like political analysis that could be done with Mev that probably won't I mean it that may like uncover some like bigger problems with blockchains is what I'm um thinking might happen but also I think there's a lot of people a lot of really smart engineers at the ethereum foundation and also they're like um coming up with interesting Solutions or like different ways of thinking about it that you know otherwise people may that don't necessarily align very well with like existing politics I think that's what's been really interesting about crypto as well um there's that it confronts you with

questions that don't happen in like the the meat space or whatever that then it creates kind of like proto-political camps over time but yeah so I'm like I'm curious to see how those happen and just like a lot of the coordination just happens through the lens of like kind of capital and and free market free markets as like being the thing that kind of pushes people and I think that we don't have to do it that way it's just like you know it's the it's the defaults that a lot of people have gone with yeah so I mean I I guess like my volley back to that would be it's another Russian nesting doll thing for me is like are the blockchains inside of capitalism or is capitalism inside of the blockchains and like I guess the question for me is like it feels like to

me you could you could build capitalism socialism fascism or communism into blockchains because they're literally programmable value layers and it's just that capitalism has been what's had the network effects and what's taken off like it's it's the it's the the Mind virus that we've all got like uh when we're in capitalism but you could build socialist uh blockchain based systems would be by volley back it's just not as prominent and it hasn't hit the network sort of threshold that capitalist systems have what's your response to that I would love for that to be the case that we can build like a socialist blockchain like I did I did an episode once on it like how what's what's the like socialist consensus mechanism and I'm not really I'm not really sure what

that is to be honest at the moment like there's like maybe you can argue proof of authority already and so like I think you have a modified proof of authority where it's like not based on like you know people aren't part of the system because they're trying to like um to profit off of it but that they're like sort of democratically going through a process of like you know deciding together collectively like what is the truth of The Ledger that maybe could there could be a case for that but I'm not I'm no expert on like proof of authority that's actually it's interesting because where your mind goes is that the consensus layer of the chains I was actually thinking at the Dow layer of creating more like a one person one vote Dao and for that you have to solve civil resistance like you

know so maybe it just depends on the layer of the stack uh that you're showing in this the more socialist you know which I I'm reading as a quality and fairness and mutualism type of system I think yeah that's that's another open question to me whether or not you can but the thing is like the way I wouldn't like it's kind of complicated like there's the dominance mode of production is capitalism like I would say that you know a worker Cooperative is sort of like a little island of socialism within like an ocean of of capitalism so like even a worker Cooperative has to abide by the the rules of capitalism they have to profit maximize to some extent because they need to stay profitable because that's like how the

system works this is like our main social organizational imperative so yeah I mean I think there is like I think you can make islands of socialism through dials that are really that could be really interesting like places of experimentation that I'm really excited about um but I think if we really want to be like like I mean if anything maybe I'm like a socialism Maxi so like I'm thinking about like how how do I maximize the amount of socialism in the world like how do I maximize the access to resources that people should have access to because we have the abundance to do so um yeah and to me that means that like we have to drastically reduce like if not completely eliminate like this like

profit motive type of thinking that's like embedded in our systems including blockchains and that's something that like I think will be difficult it'll be difficult to have islands of socialism oh to be difficult to build socialism when you can only build islands of socialism within an ocean of of capitalism as the main mode of production um without having like deeply embedded in the technical layer is like an assumption that is very different than in capitalism do you think that it's a start though to create a little island of mutualist values that out competes other creative co-ops because it can attract developers and designers better and therefore like you know do you think it's a start to have a little island of socialist values I mean for sure it's a

start I think that like though there is like a very long history of either States or other corporations like doing everything they can to make it as difficult as possible to make Democratic organization you know like um the legal system in many places in the world like makes it difficult to make a worker Cooperative they make it difficult on purpose for cooperatives to have access to money or capital or whatever else and that's for the benefit of like this already being socially reproduced system of capitalism of like for for-profit social organizations who are the only way you could become a big social organization is by like being a shareholder run like top-down

organization is the only way you can like scale and get big because of like you know the legal system is sort of like making the boxes in which people can sort of like create or organization and then as well just like the imperatives of capital this kind of reminds me of this idea another mental model that's wrong but sometimes useful is the Matthew effect this idea that you get accumulated advantage and that becomes an advantage until the system gets cornered the rich get richer but it also applies to matters of Fame and status and so like you know I think what you're describing in which you've got a political system that makes it really hard to build a mutualist system a co-op is something that's been cornered by the accumulation of capital that has captured the political system and so maybe there's a window of opportunity before an economic

system gets captured to uh maybe build more islands of mutualism in there yeah for sure I hope so I would like want more people to do that I think there is like again there is like this contradiction of like I want to build a system that is different but I'm living within this like totalizing other system that's forcing me to like you know make money and like have to pay my bills pay my rents pay my food like be able to feed my children or whatever else that makes it like difficult for people to want to engage in like these more radical things so I empathize with that it's just uh yeah if you really want to do it like we have to do the work um well I got one more thing I would devolly over to we've gone over over five minutes over but uh maybe we can

wrap in the next five I don't want to impose on your schedule though can you can you go for another five yeah I'm fine cool uh Glen Weil and radical exchange has this take that I wanted to run by you since you're the blockchain blockchain Socialist um which is that like socialism and capitalism and I think they talk about communism uh being they're like Industrial Age political organizing uh ideologies this is I think I don't want to put a word in Glenn's mouth I'm paraphrasing here um and they're basically a basic idea is like as technology becomes a dominant way of coordinating you know as we move to the information economy from the industrial economy then instead of capitalism socialism and communism being the sort of like different ways of

organizing a society we're gonna have uh different political ideologies that are on the basis of who has the technology and who is the technology for and so the three axes that the the the Glenn and radical exchange proposes is um corporate libertarianism um which is focused on individual sovereignty ecstatocracy et cetera synthetic technocracy which is about AI Singularity automated uh like AI abundance Ai maximalism and then the third is like digital democracy which is pluralism digital dignity 21st century participatory democracy and so uh corporate libertarianism synthetic technocracy and digital democracy are

different axes of who has the tech and who is the tech for um and I'm wondering if you've if you've seen that take if you've seen that political ideology map and you know whether you agree with its basic premise or if you if you reject it and you know if you don't reject it what do you sort of think of those of those three axes which one would you relate to yes I mean I I mean I guess I would relate to the third one digital democracy the most but I would say that like I don't think it is necessary that is really a correct um frame description description of like capitalism social encounty being purely like Industrial Age philosophies or whatever I think there is nothing that's that's like specific about socialist thought that's like

Industrial in its thinking I mean to some extent there is it is like highly uh influenced by like the fact that it came like like the fur like one of the like the form of capitalism that sort of like created this huge like sort of mass movements was industrial capitalism because it was like so horrific and so like you know just destroyed and killed so many people in its in its wake sorry yeah like yeah the relationship to the externalities and the power imbalances still exist in the information age sure yeah and so like I think there is I mean I can sympathize with like the increase of the importance of like data and information in the economy of sure

yeah which which is like heavily technologically mediated uh and by like like high technology like digital technology um there is a really interesting book that I would recommend people if they're like if they're thinking in that similar vein and you know maybe uh uh are listening to me a book called um capital is dead by Mackenzie work um so she wrote this book she's a a post-marxist of sorts and she kind of talks about how um that she she kind of like it's kind of like a you know she's kind of like uh using a Marxist framework for understanding perhaps that maybe we're in a different type of economy that isn't necessarily capitalism but at the same time I think what's important is

that like they could be sometimes confusing to think of the economy as like one mode of production whenever I think really the reality is like there are many modes of production kind of overlapping with each other with capitalism being like a dominance one but she's saying that with the increase of use of and like Reliance on digital technology and like information being the way that we like um allocate our resources uh she kind of proposes then that we are in this new form of economy that she calls factorialism where you have the two classes instead of being the worker and the capitalist are now the hacker and the vectoralist so the hacker is the person who takes in information and manipulates it to make new information

and the vectoralist is the one who owns the pipes for where that information is able to go or not go um and so like she'll say so she'll say like you know big Tech is like a major vectoralist in this system whereas like programmers and people who use information are hackers and they're like manipulating data so I think it's like a that was like a very thought-provoking book for me and I think like super relevant for crypto just because like I mean in crypto everything's a digital system everything is like information so like if you cryptographically create like the railings for information to go in a particular direction you know like you're choosing like the vector in which information moves but you're also like with crypto I mean information is always

being hacked there's always like a manipulation of information when you're using a function or whatever you're manipulating information and new data into like a different way so then you are you know you are we're engaging in in this thing and um I know to me I found it very very relevant and it wasn't to me it wasn't a knock or like saying that like oh all these other things that people have thought about are useless now because we're no longer industrial it was like um it was like an acknowledgment of like the economy has changed quite drastically there are now new things that we're reliant on and like that are really important and so we have to think about it in perhaps this way that's beautiful I mean talking about the hacker and the factorialist uh you know maybe it's just because I have a

computer science degree but it just kind of reminded me of oh the three you know pieces of a computer that we were trying to decentralize with ethereum was compute messaging and storage right so compute kind of feels like the hacker and then the vectoralist is is with the pipes in the storage and in sort of the mirror of those into our economic pipes uh felt very very beautiful to me as you were saying that um and yeah also maybe the frame of socialism and capitalism um and communism or are no longer like it feels like it's more of a yes and um now that we're adding the complexity of technology and how information is moved on top of it not a not an either or yeah so um yeah I'm trying to I'm trying to converge because we're running

out of time literally right now but um but yeah anything else to say about that before we wrap um no I think you know one I think if are you still continuing on this thing on like factorialism then I think the imperative is to then have like collectively governed information pipes rather than having a vectoralist which would be like a single entity controlling those pipes and that should be an imperative I think in in crypto world yeah I I feel it and I feel like we've done a high resolution critique of a lot of different Progressive things in blockchains I haven't figured out how to explain to my my great aunt that not all blockchains are Ponzi schemes but I think we'll have to work backwards uh we'll have to show not tell on that yeah I agree with that yeah well um Josh I really enjoyed my

conversation with you and I've just enjoyed your podcast so much if you're listening to this episode please check out the podcast in the show notes also check out the book which is coming out on August 8th which has been this episode airs and Josh thanks so much really enjoyed the conversation yeah thanks so much Kevin appreciate it foreign [Music] you just heard from Josh aka the blockchain Socialist really excited about the conversation that we had because I think that Josh is such a complimentary thinker in building a more pro-social protopian crypto ecosystem and I'm just excited that he's written a book and he is helping to Market crypto

to people who are more on the left helping them level up their critiques of the crypto ecosystem so really enjoyed this episode hope you did too if you liked this episode let me know on Twitter and uh maybe I'll do more episodes like this so again thank you for listening to the greenpill.network podcast we are trying to focus the people we're building or positive some digital systems in the world and I think that Josh falls under that bucket for sure if you value our work please make an offering to our algorithmic overlords Please Subscribe rate and review you must gratify us with likes and sharing this episode because that is the source of all our powers until and unless we rewrite our social media algorithms for the better please subscribe rate and

review peace and love see on the next one goodbye