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July 30, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:22:20

2761 Bitcoin vs. War: Can Bitcoin End War?

Without government run central banks and inflationary currencies, engaging in war is much more difficult. Stefan Molyneux speaks about the potential of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to end war and brainstorms on how it would be possible start a war in a bitcoin economy. Speech recorded on April 12th at the Toronto Bitcoin Expo 2014.

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	Thank you.
	I guess I'll start up here.
	It's a challenging topic.
	It's a very big topic.
	Anyone here from Europe?
	Yeah?
	Okay, so...
	You know, in that family history, in the not-too-distant past was a lot of war.
	War is the greatest curse and affliction on mankind.
	If cryptocurrencies can do anything To lower the chance of war?
	They deserve our undivided attention as a species.
	It is the greatest calamity of our species.
	You could tell tales like the few I'm about to tell you forever.
	But here's one.
	In the city of Königsberg, which was annexed by the USSR, in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, the food supply broke down.
	Completely.
	People were reduced to eating awful, and human flesh was offered for sale as fried meatballs.
	Seven centuries of German civilization in the city that had nurtured philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Gottfried von Hürden ended in cannibalism.
	What made that possible?
	In Czechoslovakia, more than 2.2 million Germans were expelled and their property was expropriated.
	At the peak period in July 1946, 14,400 people a day were being dumped over the frontier.
	Because in war you hear about the deaths, you don't hear as much about The displacements.
	So does anybody know of the Iraqi death count for the invasion from 2003?
	Official with 500,000 estimates on the ground put it closer to a million.
	But a million and a half Iraqis have had to flee the country.
	This is in a country of 30 million or so, which is unimaginable.
	When you multiply by 10, roughly, and you get some 15 million.
	If 10 million Americans have died as a result of an invasion and 15 million had to flee the country, what makes that possible?
	We will be talking about that.
	This is from Okinawa.
	As soon as we arrived in Mabuni on June 20th, a bomb exploded nearby, whose fragment is still in my forehead.
	The next day I found my mother alive.
	We did not know where to go, so we followed other refugees and encountered a hell on earth.
	We saw dead bodies, crying and screaming people, and a person who was begging to be shot to death.
	It was total chaos.
	Mabuni was a dead end.
	We could not go any further.
	The area was under attack incessantly and the body count increased every day.
	The bodies and pieces of bodies were on the ground everywhere.
	After fleeing from the hillside, my mother, grandmother and I were hiding in a small natural cave on the coast.
	We had no food or water.
	Despite killing up to 20 million people, including many savagely, such as in the infamous Nanjing Massacre, and creating between 80 and 100 million refugees, China's war of resistance against Japanese aggression is often treated as a World War II sideshow.
	Refugee stories from Korea, where Seoul changed hands four times during the Korean War.
	Civilians trying to cross the Hai, that's the river, are told to stop By the police, the roads are full south of the Hang, but the poor people of Seoul cross anyhow, and as they do so, South Korean policemen begin to shoot.
	The ice cranks and swallows up people and animals alike.
	Bombed-out bridges are not possible, but people attempt to cross them nonetheless, in some cases traversing the girders above the stand.
	But the railroad station in Seoul, the scene is the same.
	The train to Taegu in the south of Korea is not only full inside its cars, but also sees people clinging to the sides and the roof of the train.
	Those on the top of the train are killed when it reaches the first tunnel.
	Many on the sides froze to death during the seven-hour journey south.
	As you can imagine, are repeated endlessly throughout the 20th century and of course in the 21st century as well.
	War is the greatest calamity of the species.
	And the degree to which people who are interested in Bitcoin, and this is my invitation to the group here today, the mainstream media is interested in Bitcoin.
	It's like a novelty, right?
	It's like, it's interesting.
	It's, you know, geek money.
	It's what you use to buy the tape for your glasses when you can.
	It's put forward in that kind of way.
	But I would submit that Bitcoin has the power to end war.
	I will make the case for that today, with your participation.
	I don't want you guys to just fall asleep and, you know, stack yourself up like dozy cordwood next to each other.
	Or make this a conversation.
	If Bitcoin could cure cancer, we would be insane with joy.
	We would be thrilled.
	There would be little nitpicking at all, right?
	If Bitcoin could cure cancer, that would be on the front pages of every newspaper, every magazine, or for those under 40, every website.
	But we don't hear much about this because the causes of war remain somewhat unclear to us.
	But I think that the causes of war are quite clear.
	Thank you.
	And Bitcoin solves those problems.
	So, if the revolution that we're engaged in can end the greatest scourge of humanity, which is war, what a wonderful movement to be involved in.
	You know, nothing really could be better in terms of how you spend your time.
	So, here's where you all can chat a bit.
	So, costs of war.
	I mean, the obvious costs of war, bombed out buildings, destroyed and shattered human beings, fatherless children, worn out machinery, worn out cultures, worn out people.
	What are some other costs of war?
	Feel free to pitch in at this point.
	What are some other costs of war that pop into your mind that if we could solve them, what a great act of heroism and generosity towards the species as a whole we would be completing.
	Opportunity loss for that money going somewhere would be going into more productive fields and endeavors and technology.
	Opportunity costs, right?
	So all the money that is spent on guns is not spent investing in machinery or some sort of productive thing that raises worker productivity and so on.
	Opportunity costs can't be calculated.
	You know, what if Steve Jobs had been drafted?
	There would be no Apple, right?
	And, you know, then I guess all the cell phone manufacturers would allow Bitcoin apps.
	But that's it.
	What if Alexander Salk, the guy who invented the polio vaccine, what if he'd been drafted?
	So the opportunity costs are incalculable.
	What else do we have here?
	You can't quantify it, but now it's massive.
	Yes, sir?
	Yes, that's what you're saying.
	They say at the end of the Second World War, we'll get to those numbers in a second, That it costs X dollars, which is nonsense, because the costs go forward.
	Up until the 1980s and 1990s, there were still men whose lungs had been burned away by mustard gas from the First World War being cared for by the state as a burden to the taxpayers.
	So, yes, the long-term medical costs are enormous.
	And pensions.
	Yes, sir?
	There's 500,000 vets on the streets of America today.
	It is totally homeless, you know, broken.
	Half a million vets on the streets?
	What could they have done if they weren't psyched or destroyed?
	Right.
	And how much human energy is poured into caring for these people, both publicly and privately, which otherwise could be doing something else.
	It's not just the people who are wounded, it's everybody who has to care for them that could be doing something else.
	How many people are not getting a cure for cancer because they are focusing on taking care of people whose bodies and souls have been shattered?
	Yes, sir?
	Tribalism, like the fragmentation of The us-versus-them paradigm that is set up in wartime.
	Yeah, you have to slaughter your own heart before you can slaughter other people.
	And so, yeah, we're not brothers and sisters on the same planet.
	We are, you know, friends on this side in this costume, enemies on that side in that costume, so I think there is a depth of empathy for sure.
	Anything else?
	The cost of integrating people who have been into war into a civil society, like a criminal or just...
	Post-traumatic stress disorder, all the different things that they can have that keep them from being productive and also may make them hurt other people.
	Right.
	Anybody know the suicide count every day in the U.S.? Veterans?
	Twenty-two.
	Twenty-two?
	I think it's just been revised upwards to twenty-three.
	Twenty-three a day.
	One in an hour.
	Almost.
	It's higher than the body count from war is the body count from suicide.
	Well, and one of the reasons for that is in the Second World War, a Pacific infantryman in the South Pacific, he spent about 10 days a year in combat.
	Anybody know what it's like in Iraq?
	How many days a year do you think they're spending in combat?
	290.
	Right?
	29 times more combat exposure for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars than there was for the Second World War.
	It is a human being.
	You know, we've got this fight-or-flight mechanism, right?
	Lion!
	Run!
	You know, or fight.
	It's supposed to be peaking and then, right?
	But these guys, every day.
	And there's no enemy.
	It could be anywhere.
	It could be bombs coming into your compound.
	Any other classes that you can think of?
	Yes, sir?
	Destruction and rebuilding of infrastructure.
	Yeah, and also in a war, people don't invest, right?
	They just, because you don't know who's going to win or how long it's going to go on for.
	So there's a suspension of investment and capital improvements, and machinery gets worn out.
	Government takes over your car factory to produce tanks, and when you get it back, I mean, it's not like they've done really great maintenance on it or something.
	I mean, this used to pay to raise it and start again.
	There's somebody in the back.
	Disturbance to education.
	Yeah, because the guys are basically not going to school, they're going to war, right?
	Yeah, I mean, the Vietnam War is not over.
	I mean, they're still dying.
	Asian arms are still producing massive birth defects.
	Mines all over the world are still detonating and blowing people up.
	The war, there's no closure.
	In the Middle Ages, the war was done and the war was done.
	Now it just goes on and on, and the cost of remediating this stuff is incalculable.
	Right in the back.
	Oh, the propaganda campaigns?
	Yeah, you have to divorce people from empathy, from reality, and from an understanding of the causes of the war.
	You have to say, well, here we were, just standing around.
	That's what America said after 9-11.
	We just...
	Just standing around, minding our own business, with only 720 military bases overseas, with only propping up, say, two or three dozen tyrannical governments around the world, with only being the biggest arms dealer and arms seller in the world, just minding our own business.
	And I don't know what happened.
	It's weird.
	Yes, sir?
	Interest from the dead, yeah, because the war is never paid at the time, right?
	The war is paid through these, what do they call them?
	Liberty bonds.
	It's like, you know the word bond means chain, right?
	Freedom chains.
	You know, if there weren't so much suffering, this would be the worst, like the blackest comedy in the world.
	I think your friend next to you, did you have a comment?
	the wartime legislation that cramps down on the similarities of countries that are engaged.
	Yeah, in the First World War, you would go to jail for criticizing the government.
	Obliquely, during wartime.
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, the technology that it's shifting towards weapons and instead of going in other sectors, like USSR, actually they had the best tanks, the best weapons, but the worst cars.
	Right.
	War.
	Here's why you can't have cool stuff.
	Right.
	Absolutely, yeah.
	And all the human intelligence that goes into that.
	Weapons of destruction.
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, I was just talking...
	The First World War was the first total war in modern history.
	Destroyed almost all the wealth that was created through the Industrial Revolution.
	Almost down to exactly the last dollar was destroyed in the First World War.
	And one of the reasons they had to pursue total war is 10 million people had been murdered.
	And if they'd just gone back and said, well, we're just going to leave the boundaries pretty much where they were at the beginning, they would have faced revolution.
	So they had to press for total war, which means demonization, propaganda, and all other kinds of wretched stuff.
	Yes, sir?
	Well, the First World War led directly to the pandemic in 1920.
	Which killed more people than the war itself.
	Yeah, there was a flu pandemic from all the troops returning home.
	You never hear them equating the First World War with that.
	And a weakened population.
	Germany had been surrounded and starved.
	Everyone was living in a squalor.
	Plus, they weren't getting any sunlight.
	And sunlight is being linked by the deproduction, which is being linked to resistance against the flu.
	So they didn't have any food.
	It was absolutely sordid.
	And they weren't getting any sunlight.
	So all of those things led directly to the pandemic.
	You never hear a conference today talking about that.
	That's an excellent point.
	Yeah, so I think we can...
	I mean, anybody else has any unit burnings?
	Yes, sir?
	Disruptions to global trade.
	Disruptions to global trade.
	trade.
	Yeah, the first thing they have to do is shut down the borders of trade.
	As Bastia pointed out, if goods don't cross borders, armies will, because you have to unite each other in trade.
	Here's a hint, currency.
	Because remember, it's Bitcoin.
	So what happens to currency when war is contemplated?
	Thank you.
	It's debased.
	Yeah, this goes all the way back to the Romans, right?
	They all know what happened to the Roman Empire, right?
	The Romans debased their currency to ridiculous levels to fund all of the far-flung outposts of the Empire.
	It's a great thing to know that 2,500 years later or 2,000 years later, we've learned our lesson, isn't it?
	It's horrifying the degree to which this stuff repeats itself throughout history.
	In the First World War, America went into the First World War, which created such an imbalance.
	Anybody know what Germany did in order to...
	America went into the First World War, which put a huge amount of men and resources into the Western Front.
	What did they do with Russia?
	How did they take Russia out of the First World War?
	How did Germany do that?
	Does anyone know or remember?
	Anyone not knows through the 20th century?
	They said then, through Finland, armed and well-funded, to overthrow Nantrotsky, to overthrow the Russian government.
	Nantrotsky ended up hiding in Mexico, I think, and he got a knife picked to the head from Stalin's thugs.
	So, by entering into the First World War, America created the Soviet Empire.
	These are the unintended consequences that always happens when you unleash the demon of war.
	So, how is this conceivably possible?
	How can there be a business plan in human society called, let's create a giant human disassembly plant, destroy everything we can see, and call ourselves winners?
	How is this possible?
	I had a researcher.
	The cost of war, again, the stuff that we're talking about, you couldn't really calculate other than to say, oh my god, that's like hell on earth.
	But you can calculate things more effectively.
	So they'll say, well, here's how much we spent on the war, but it's all lies and nonsense and so on.
	But what you can do is at least take that number and compare it to gold.
	So we're going to compare the cost of war to gold, and then we're going to compare the cost of war to Bitcoin.
	And then we're going to try and be really, really evil.
	So if everyone has their little Fu Manchu mustache, we've got some bald cats.
	We'll be shipping out for you to stroke throughout the course of the presentation.
	Some squibble chairs and some, I believe, sharks with lasers.
	But we're going to try and talk about whether you can wage war through Bitcoin.
	So we're going to try and use...
	Let's turn Bitcoin to evil.
	evil.
	That's our goal today.
	We're going to see if we can achieve that.
	Does anyone want to guess If you know this, that's amazing.
	But does anyone want to guess?
	Metric tons...
	Oh yeah, metric.
	I said it to our American friends.
	I don't know what that is in Klingon for you people.
	Metric tons of gold refined throughout all of human history.
	Anyone have an idea?
	You don't.
	You don't.
	You're guessing, right?
	You don't?
	Well, I've heard it many times.
	Oh, you've heard it many times?
	Okay.
	Well, you're going to hear it once more.
	Got a problem with it.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, did you want to?
	Oh, about 175,000 times.
	Wow, you take the mic.
	No, that's good.
	Yeah, 174, 175,000 times.
	I think it's like 20 meters by 20 meters by 20 meters or something like that, which I believe Kim Kardashian is currently dragging around on wonderful fingers, if I remember rightly.
	Kanye, not known for his understatements.
	So, the war on terror, right?
	The American War on Terror.
	It's about...
	What's been booked is about 1.4 trillion dollars.
	What is unfunded, in other words, what's been passed along, is around $6 trillion.
	Do we have any rain men in the audience or rain women who are going to do this math?
	So basically, the war on terror in America costs 291,000 metric tons of gold.
	Right?
	Which is close to twice all of the refined gold ever produced in human history.
	How is that possible?
	I mean, the math just doesn't seem to add up.
	In World War II, America at the time spent $211 billion and about 161,000 tons of gold How is that possible?
	That's more gold than it's ever been mined in human history.
	And that's America which wasn't even invaded.
	No bombs dropped on America.
	The CN Tower is 18,000, 118,000 tons.
	So, the War on Terror is almost two CN Towers worth of gold.
	How is that?
	I mean, it's inconceivable how much money is.
	And these are just the direct costs, none of the other stuff that we're talking about.
	The real cost, I would argue, is many times that.
	I just want to get a sense of how much money is spent on war.
	We would be unfathomably wealthy as a species without war.
	Like, we would all be bazillionaires.
	And I don't just mean the early Bitcoin adopters.
	I mean, everyone would be, like, bazillionaires, right?
	I mean, and there are statistics that are stunning for people who don't know them.
	So, I'll just give you one tiny one.
	And this isn't even to do with war.
	This is just another form of government aggression, right?
	If you remember, you know, just after the Second World War, it was not, you know, a Mel Gibson-style Thunderdome hellhole of, you know, cannibalism or anything like that.
	Fairly civilized society in its own way.
	If the government had kept the regulations in place in the post-war period and hadn't added to them...
	The current GDP of America is about 12-13 trillion dollars a year.
	Does anyone else know what the estimated GDP, gross domestic product, of America would be if regulations had not increased from the post-war period?
	53 trillion dollars.
	53 trillion dollars.
	That's astounding.
	That's five times the wealth.
	If the only thing that had not changed was the amount of regulation in the U.S. economy.
	In America, it's insane.
	Like, one out of three people in America need government permission to do their job, a license or some sort of permission.
	Without war, we would all be making millions of dollars a year.
	There'd be no involuntary poverty.
	Everybody would have jobs, you know, whatever.
	I mean, it would...
	This is the cost.
	of what has happened before.
	Bitcoins.
	So, let's say you want to fund the war on terror through bitcoins.
	If that were even conceivable.
	A current bitcoin price as of...
	Oh, it's changed.
	Wait, no, changed again.
	A war on terror would cost 14 million bitcoins.
	Does anyone know why that might be a problem?
	Right?
	Of course, then it would be 21 million and, what, some change, something like that.
	So it's 1100 times the total bitcoin price.
	I'm sorry, the total bitcoin is currently in existence.
	500 times the maximum bitcoins that can be at current prices.
	We're not talking about the war on drugs.
	We're not talking about the war on poverty.
	We're not talking about social security or the Ponzi scheme of preying on the young like a pair of elderly vampires.
	We're talking about just the war on terror.
	Anyone know how many Al-Qaeda the war on terror is supposed to have killed?
	About 50?
	And it costs more than the Second World War.
	Those guys are tough.
	No, seriously.
	It costs more to kill 50 Al-Qaeda than take down the entire Nazi empire.
	They're like Transformers.
	I mean, are they bulletproof?
	Do they fly?
	Are they invisible?
	Do they ghost?
	It's astounding how much is being spent.
	But of course the purpose is not the war against the Al-Qaeda.
	The purpose is the war against the domestic population.
	War is an effect of war against the domestic population because war is funded through taxation, through theft, if I repeat myself.
	So first you must declare war against the domestic population and only then you extract enough resources to declare war against foreigners.
	So how is it possible for people to spend on some ill-defined conflict like the War on Terror?
	Vastly more gold than has ever been refined in human history.
	Yeah, money press.
	You print money.
	You borrow from the population in the form of bonds and loans and so on, right?
	Which is great, because then it creates a massive constituency of voters who want tax increases, right?
	How do you pay back The government's not making any money.
	They're not investing in anything.
	They're not entrepreneurs.
	So if you get a bond and, you know, 10 years later, your 100 bucks is supposed to be 150, where do they get the extra 50 from?
	They tax it or they print it.
	The researcher that is working on the presentation did a really strict analysis and found out that water bonds always lose to inflation.
	Of course they do.
	It's math.
	Hey, I'm going to crank the printing press and give you 100 back and 50 in Monopoly money.
	I mean, of course it has to lose to inflation.
	The government has to...
	I'm sorry?
	Even though they've lost in inflation, then they're still going to charge you capital gains tax on the bullshit amount they get when they're leaving.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's fun when you get to write your own rules, isn't it?
	I mean, you can't lose, right?
	They confiscated gold as well, do you think?
	They did.
	Yeah, this is the stability of government law, right?
	So, I think it was 1934, whiskey was legal.
	No, whiskey was illegal, gold was legal, then the next year, gold was illegal, whiskey was legal, you know, because regime uncertainty is never a problem in economics.
	So...
	Yeah, so if I came to you and I said, hey, guys, I know you don't look that bright, so I really wanted to make this pitch to you.
	You do actually look very bright, but I'm just being a character.
	I've got a great idea.
	We've got this war on terror.
	And you guys have some Bitcoins, right?
	So can you give me 30 million Bitcoins?
	And we're going to have this great war.
	There are 50 guys out there.
	I think I can get them all.
	And all I need is 30 million Bitcoins.
	And I guarantee you that I will give you 20% return on investment in your Bitcoins.
	Take my money?
	You serve it at the front of the line.
	Yeah, okay.
	It's not really a pitch, but the alternative is going to jail.
	But, you know, let's pretend it's a pitch, right?
	Right?
	You'd say, well, there aren't going to be 30 million.
	So A, we can't give you the 30 million.
	And B, you can't give us more bitcoins back.
	Because...
	Right?
	But this is what they offer when they control the currency.
	Right?
	When money is just another goddamn government program.
	Money, which is the lifeblood of civilization.
	You can't have cities without money.
	You can't.
	End of the Roman Empire, which was also a debasement issue.
	Population of Rome went from 1.5 million to 17,000 people.
	In a year or two.
	Why?
	Because the money cracked and broke.
	Without the money, farmers aren't going to send their food into the city.
	Cities live or die in currency.
	And Rome...
	Well, Rome had this empire, which we may be familiar with, not looking through history, but looking south.
	Rome had this empire and needed to pay for it, and they couldn't get enough taxation, because they could only tax cities.
	You can't go into the countryside and tax people, because, you know, a lot of tax collectors just get lost.
	I was heading to the farm.
	Turned out the farmer did have a use for me.
	I'm fertilizer.
	So you have to tax the city.
	So what they did was they kept cranking up the taxes in the cities.
	And where did they conscript the Roman soldiers?
	Being a Roman soldier was like absolute hell.
	I mean, you were conscripted for 20 years, and then you got like an acre of land where you could come and bring your shattered, pus-ridden, corpulent, smallpox-laced body back for six months before you died.
	So, and they can only conscript from the cities, because again, you go out to the country, and you try and conscript people, and, uh, don't buy a return ticket, is, you know, my suggestion.
	And so they drove all the people out of the cities, right?
	All the young people, all the young men went out into the cities, right?
	Say, well, wait a minute.
	So the best option I have if I'm conscripted is to be out there in the middle of God's green hell acre for 20 years, and then I'm going to get a plot of land?
	Why don't I just go be a farmer now?
	Skip the 20 years of killing people.
	So they all went out of the cities into the countryside.
	So then what did Rome have to do to maintain the empire?
	Had to hire mercenaries, right?
	So you can't collect enough taxes and you can't conscript enough people, so you have to increase your expenditures.
	Well, how do you cover that?
	Well, you debase the currency.
	They don't feel paid anymore.
	So then they come to Rome to get their money, and that's the end of the Roman Empire.
	It's all currency.
	It's all currency.
	I would argue, you know there's always some idiot who has some incomprehensible theory of everything?
	I'm an idiot.
	The price of magnesium determines the future.
	Let me tell you how.
	We have some Glendex-style lower-intestine chart up on a blackboard.
	But I would really argue that the history of currency is the history of the world.
	Why do you have economic freedom?
	You have some, right?
	I mean, we can choose our own occupation.
	We're not serfs tied to the occupations of our fathers.
	We have some economic freedom.
	The question is why.
	The libertarian answer is we've got really great arguments.
	Right?
	I mean, we can show that trade is win-win.
	Praxeologically, we can prove that we should have these freedoms and it's virtuous and it's good.
	And it's not true.
	That's not why it happens.
	Why do we have economic freedoms?
	Let's just say, agree with me for the moment, just for the moment, humor me.
	Why do you think we have economic freedoms?
	They don't care about our freedoms, otherwise they would not enslave us in debt and send us to war.
	A productive worker.
	A happy worker is a productive worker.
	Excellent.
	Sounds like you listen to your kindergarten class teacher.
	False happiness gives false productivity.
	Yeah, we all know the Lego movies, aren't we?
	Yes, sir?
	Collect taxes.
	Yeah, you can collect taxes.
	So the more productive people are, the more taxes you can collect.
	Right?
	Yes, sir.
	Because they're remorse.
	Because they're remorse.
	Yes.
	He's been listening.
	Excellent.
	that.
	I wish I had kibble right in the back there.
	Yeah, because all modern wars are wars of attrition, right?
	I mean, until you run out of gold to sell, you run out of bodies to blow up, you run out of oil to put and gas, right?
	It's all resource wars of attrition.
	So, the first two countries to really develop modern economic freedoms were the Netherlands and England.
	And they got very powerful.
	I mean, England had an empire which was a third of the entire planet.
	They said the sun never sets on the British Empire.
	It never did.
	It goes down one place, it's still new, and it's the other place, where there's some stuffed-up British shirt defining that his laundry would be exactly right.
	So the other countries are like, whoa, these guys have a lot of resources.
	They can make a lot of bombs and they have a lot of people.
	Population goes up when wealth goes up, right?
	So they had more population, more money, more weapons.
	This tiny little island ran the world because of economic freedom turned to the use of the state.
	So the other countries are like, hey, I think we'll stop listening to these economists too because that gets us more stuff.
	If you're a chicken, you're some tiny little, you know, tiny little cave somewhere, and then the farmer figures out that if he puts you at free range, you produce five times as many eggs, he'll put you at free range.
	Does that mean the next step is to let you free?
	No.
	Of course not.
	Right after free range comes like a chicken McNugget machine.
	So, there's a competition in economic freedom between states because the more economic freedom up to a limit, the more resources available to wage war.
	Now, the wars can be external, or you can make up internal wars, like the war on terror, which is waging war in an adjective.
	The war on poverty, right?
	Let's have a war on drugs.
	Anyone know what the budget is for the war on drugs in the U.S.? 60, 70 billion?
	Oh, it's more than that.
	Last I heard, it's been a while since I did research, about 150 billion.
	And again, direct costs, not counting opportunity costs and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
	Now, I've always sort of had this fantasy that you say to people, are you for the war on drugs?
	Everyone, put your hands up.
	Who's not?
	This audience, I'm sure most of you are not.
	But put your hands up if you're for the war on the drugs.
	Great, you get the bill.
	Right?
	People are like, ooh.
	Wait, my outrage has a price?
	It's not free outrage?
	Ooh.
	I think I can find it in my heart to have some tolerance for people who watch Cheech and Chung films.
	Plus, you know, Floyd, man.
	Can't do that stuff straight.
	So, yes, and of course, if a half the people put their hands down, let's say half the people afford the war on drugs, half them say, ooh, really?
	$8,000 bill a year for the war on drugs?
	I'm out of it, man.
	Then half the people get $16,000 bill, because money's got to be, then they put their hands down, and then the last guy is like, it's you, sir, $150 billion.
	Are you ready?
	He's like, hmm.
	No.
	No, not really.
	Who doesn't like?
	Yes.
	So when you can't socialize your outrage, when you can't make other people pay the bills for what you're enraged about or up in moral arms about, it becomes a very different equation.
	You see, even ethics, to a large degree, is run by money.
	Patriotism, that's run by money.
	Oh, God.
	How many Americans here?
	Amen.
	Not ours, right?
	No.
	Okay, good, then I can be honest.
	Anyone in America here who was pro-war in 03?
	Like, 01, you can kind of understand it was retarded, but at least, you know, something happens, we think it's...
	But 03, like Iraq?
	No justification.
	And now Americans are like...
	Our economy sucks!
	I can't get a job!
	I lost my house!
	It's like, yes!
	Blood is expensive, isn't it?
	Did you cheer as the rockets rained down on the Iraqis?
	Well, that cheering is expensive, isn't it?
	They don't make the connection.
	They're explicitly not allowed to make the connection and they're diverted from it by the media, right?
	But blood is expensive.
	And that's when...
	There were no tax increases for the war.
	No tax increases for the war on terror.
	They just printed money, had a housing boom, housing crash, destroyed a metro of manufacturing overseas.
	And that is the result of your bloodlust.
	So, here's the time where we get to see if we can bend Bitcoin to evil.
	So I think we all understand.
	If you can make up money, then you can wage war.
	If you can force people to lend you money...
	I don't know.
	I think it's just...
	I'm forcing you to make love with me.
	Well, it's not making love, then is it?
	If you can steal from people.
	If you can steal from the unborn.
	if you can make up whatever money you want, then you can wage war.
	Total war.
	And people can then indulge in their petty ape-like bloodlusts to people they have much more in common with than their rulers.
	Who has more in common with each other?
	Two subjects of the tax bombs known as countries?
	Or the average cattle and George Bush?
	God Almighty.
	The fact that they think that the Iraqis are different and George Bush is like them just shows you how insane we've become as a species.
	Much more in common with the people in Iraq laboring under the ruling classes than we do with the ruling classes.
	So let's say we want blood coin.
	Amen. - Yeah.
	Murder base.
	What's a good name for an alt coin for war?
	Fiat coin.
	Sorry, fiat coin?
	Whoa!
	My brain can't handle it.
	Sorry.
	Sometimes it's just, that's great.
	Anyway, so fear coin.
	I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't say that.
	It just blows my mind too much.
	Alright, anything else?
	Gladiator coin.
	Gladiator coin?
	It's a kind of lengthy business card.
	It has to be like landscape, but...
	I'm sorry?
	Evil coin.
	Evil coin, alright.
	Evil coin.
	Hey, I think I just discovered my rap name.
	Anyway, what...
	A what?
	Rothschild.
	All right, so blood coin, death coin, whatever it is.
	So we want to do this, right?
	Ape coin.
	What?
	Ape coin.
	Ape coin, yeah.
	Ape coin.
	Can only be used for bananas.
	Okay, so let's say that we want to make this case to people.
	How are we going to make the case for war?
	When we can't pay for money, when it's limited, how can we do it?
	Alien invasion.
	Alien invasion?
	Yeah.
	Okay, but without CGI, you know?
	Without Bruce Willis and...
	No, I mean, yeah, we could say there's an alien invasion coming.
	But I think before people pour over their Bitcoins...
	They're going to want to see one.
	They might want to see, you know, something that Captain Kirk would ban in a New York minute.
	I don't know, right?
	But they would...
	They want to see some proof.
	You know, give me something with a weird orifice that's going to want my dreams going on, depending on the credit elections.
	So, I think that might work to get people's interest, but they need something to...
	So, what else?
	What story could we make?
	And how could it work?
	I couldn't figure it out.
	I mean, which doesn't mean much.
	But, you know, I figured a room full of experts.
	If we can't figure out how to make Bitcoin evil, that's important, right?
	I mean, you can't promise return on investments for breaking shit, right?
	I mean, you just can't.
	Right?
	Hey, invest in this.
	Right?
	I mean, wow, okay, now we've got some broken glass, right?
	I mean, yay.
	Right?
	Yes, sir?
	You pay to invade another country and steal their land.
	Okay, so you say, give me money, and I'm going to hire a bunch of mercenaries, and then we're going to go and invade...
	I don't know who's annoying lately.
	Give me a country.
	Tunisians.
	Tunisians.
	Oh, boy.
	Got a lot of haters.
	Oh, me!
	I hate all these countries.
	Let me give you this alphabetically or reverse alphabetically.
	I'm sorry, I didn't cross that.
	Okay.
	Canada!
	The Arctic?
	Yeah, I think we want to see a land that doesn't flood away or melt.
	That would be sort of my input.
	I'm sorry?
	Oh, Iceland.
	Can we do Iceland?
	I mean, they annoy a lot of people in the banking industry because they put their bankers in jail, right?
	So, okay, let's say we're going to invade Iceland and we're going to Take their land.
	Geothermal energy and take their aurora.
	I'll take that.
	Aurora coin.
	Sorry, I thought you meant that.
	Alright.
	Okay, so Iceland, you're screwed, right?
	You're in our sights.
	So we've got to go and get guns through ships, right?
	Obviously, I don't think that you can...
	You've got a ship, you've got to get It's too far and planes are too much fuel, right?
	So we've got to go buy a ship, a bunch of ships, get a bunch of mercenaries, and we're going to go and take Iceland, right?
	So how are we going to make money at this point?
	Use it as a mining farm.
	This is Iceland, not an asteroid.
	Oh, geothermal energy for Bitcoin mining.
	Dude, there's a lot of strong evil in this room.
	This is great.
	It's like, well, let me see if I can take you to the dark side.
	Wait, I'm coming!
	Good.
	Excellent.
	Alright, the Bond villain is this guy.
	OK, so we're going to go in and we are going to put up geothermal energy stations.
	Right, OK.
	Now, OK, but we're competing with guys who just will go and buy the land, right?
	Who don't need massive military and a fight.
	Because remember, you're competing with people who might do it without So how are we going to make money at it relative to not having the...
	Because the other people are going to go in to say, oh, we'll buy the mineral rights, we're going to make some geothermal stuff, we're going to sell it.
	They don't need weapons, they don't need armies, they don't need all that risk, and they're not going to get into these fights and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So I don't think you can really compete.
	Sorry.
	Do you have a tiny mustache?
	I can't see back there.
	It's important.
	Okay, good.
	Yes, go ahead.
	Can you do it in a Transylvanian accent?
	I'm sorry, say that again?
	They bought the land in Iceland and we invaded it, so they lost their business.
	Yeah, yeah, so somebody else could just come into Vegas as well, whatever, right?
	So, plus the Icelandic people aren't going to really like it, right?
	I mean, you're going to need the cooperation of the local population to get anything done.
	You're going to need food, gas, you know, whatever it is, right?
	Yes, sir?
	From history, Germany invaded countries to get their gold reserves.
	So it is conceivable that you go somewhere to take something.
	Yes, that certainly is true.
	Okay, so, complicated questions of history.
	You know we have no end time for this.
	Like, you're all just going to pee yourselves.
	Lock the door from the outside, the room handles.
	Because basically it takes, I think historically Mike, what, three or four security guards to bring me down and I'm a total biber.
	Seven, he's had a coffee.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, no, they said talk as long as you want, so I'm sorry that you guys are stuck in this situation.
	Okay, so yeah, so Germany would go and take gold, right?
	But they weren't using bitcoins, right?
	So Germany could go and take gold because they had a whole bunch of children beaten from birth, thrown into the Hitler Youth, who swore allegiance to Hitler and would just go off and be free labor.
	And they got to socialize and steal all the money that was required for the Wehrmacht and all that.
	They would go and steal all this stuff too.
	Plus, stealing gold is really bad for the economy as a whole.
	Right?
	Anyone know the Spanish story?
	Anyone here with a tan and some rhythm?
	Anyone?
	Okay.
	So, yeah, so Spain went over to the New World, right, in the 16th, 17th centuries, and they brought back tons and tons of gold.
	What did that produce in Spain?
	Massive inflation, which caused the intelligent people to flee, and 400 years the Spanish economy was in the shitter.
	Sorry for grabbing.
	400 years!
	That's not good.
	Okay, so, okay, you can go steal gold, but you can't Bitcoin that profitably.
	Does that make sense?
	Or if you can, I'd like to hear...
	It depends what scale of people.
	You've got a small group of evil people.
	They can go and steal rich resources in some other place.
	I don't think you're going to get country-sized walls from them.
	So like an Ocean's Eleven kind of thing?
	Where there's like a hardy band of good-looking people who are going to drive cars?
	I don't know.
	I've watched a lot of movies, but...
	So, like a small criminal group is going to be like, we're going to get that diamond, so give us money for suction cups and cool jackets.
	Okay, all right.
	So, I could see that, like, Matthew Coin 101 or something like that, right?
	Luigi Coin, or Guido Coin, or whatever it would be, right?
	Bril cream coin, whatever, shiny suit coin.
	I don't know, stop me when I've done too many.
	But, so, yeah, okay, I could see that when you have a specific object.
	To go and steal one particular thing, and you need some resources to go and do that, and then you're going to split the profits.
	You could do that through some sort of cryptocurrency.
	Does anyone think that's not the case?
	I can see how that could work.
	Yes, sir?
	Okay, so let's assume, for example, that we...
	Oh yeah, this is the first assumption, by the way.
	Everything else is done.
	Your scenario.
	So we go in, we go to Islet, we beat them up, we put all the resources.
	And then what's the consequence, right?
	On the world political market, they're going to see, say, Canada or the U.S. go into another country, bomb them up, take their stuff.
	They're not going to want to trade with the U.S. Wait, because we've got, like, we've mixed 90,000 scenarios there.
	Do you mean if they're doing it through cryptocurrency?
	I'm talking about some group of guys, or even a government.
	How could they fund a war through cryptocurrency that's going to provide a rate of return?
	Okay, so in this scenario, you don't have hybrid inflation or inflation or central bank, right?
	Yeah, you can't socialize the cost and privatize the profits.
	So you tax people because they got tricked.
	Remember, you were talking about 2001, right?
	The approval rate for the war was really high in 2001, after 9-11.
	Yeah.
	Makes sense.
	So we start from there.
	Thank you.
	Okay, so what I was saying is, in 2001, there was a high demand for war.
	So, hypothetically, we, I don't know, false flag attack.
	Yeah, yeah, okay.
	Okay, and then we go to Iceland, we take their stuff, and then other people from other countries are going to observe this.
	And they're going to say, well, if USA or Canada is going to do things like this, Well, but couldn't you, theoretically, couldn't we just be, let's say we're all just evil guys who want to go steal Iceland's stuff, we would all encrypt it and be anonymous and poor-based and nobody knows who we are and we've got, you know, black face masks and stuff like that and, you know, we put stanks on or whatever, so hide her forms or whatever.
	Then we could conceivably do it anonymously and then people wouldn't know not to trade with us, if that makes any sense.
	Well, if you didn't rewrite it to be like, how about I just beat up some guy in the alley?
	He's knocked out.
	He doesn't recognize me.
	Well, then I got away with a crime.
	Right.
	Because Bitcoin doesn't allow this level of anonymity in his hands, right?
	But the thing is that this scenario of let's get the hope diamond with whatever we're going to do it with, that scenario is not the same as war.
	Because the risks are born by the people involved.
	Only.
	Right?
	Because war is when other people have to pay the costs, right?
	I don't like a lot of what Canada does on the international stage.
	You know, unless I want to go to jail, I have to pay for it either way, right?
	So if people want to go steal some diamond or invade Iceland, they take the risks themselves.
	If it succeeds, then they get some money, right?
	If it fails, they don't, or they get shot, or they go to jail, or whatever it is going to be, right?
	So, the war scenario is the socialization, which means the pushing off to other people of the true costs of what is going on, not counting the dead and the wounded who obviously pay the costs directly.
	And it tends to be a one-time thing.
	It's not a war of attrition.
	You either get the diamond or you don't, right?
	You either go and get the Iceland geothermal bubble tapioca pudding, whatever it is, or you don't, right?
	But you don't get this ongoing war of attrition that you push the costs off to everyone else while privatizing a lot of profits.
	Yes, sir?
	Maybe one idea we could use to get everyone to pay is to appeal to the fact that a lot of people don't understand large numbers and lotteries, so we'll make a lottery.
	We'll make Greenland or Iceland and then everyone who can digitally sign that they contributed will be part of the lottery and then we'll give out lands to you.
	We'll keep 90% of them, but we'll...
	Okay, so everyone contributes...
	That's good.
	Everyone contributes $10 to the invasion of Iceland, but you get some profit from the geothermal thing once we...
	Right?
	Okay?
	What do people think of that?
	Would you...
	I mean, not would you sign up.
	You guys obviously understand math.
	But are there any challenges to that?
	I'd ask, what are my odds of winning?
	And if the odds are too high, I'd be like, no thanks.
	Right.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right, right.
	Okay, so what are the odds of winning?
	Obviously the odds would be fairly low, right?
	And they certainly, I would imagine, would be lower than a lottery because the lottery doesn't have the overhead of an army, right?
	Government lotteries accepted.
	So I think that it would be less than a lottery in terms of what you would win because it's got more overhead.
	So I think it would be tough.
	even for people who couldn't do math, they would say, well, I have to pay more for this ticket to cover the costs behind me while I'm willing to the same amount, or I pay for the same yet less payout, right?
	So they can still compare those two numbers.
	So good, thank you, you saved me, I couldn't think of one.
	Yes, sir?
	Oh, can you get a mic?
	What if the argument was that you couldn't hide behind a supervolvement?
	Meaning that if you're voting for the war in Iceland, everyone else around you knew you didn't.
	But the cryptocurrency architecture supports you being anonymous, right?
	so they would probably want that.
	Come on, you war mongers.
	Work it.
	So let's say that Iceland has a really big mining farm, a big mining operation already up and running.
	And we, as Canadians, can convince the populace that we want to go take over this mining farm of theirs.
	And your investment is sort of an investment in a perpetual mining bond of sorts.
	We, as captors, colonial invaders of Iceland's mining farm, will continue to reinvest in mining equipment.
	I can see the brochure already.
	I think we get Alan Thicke to do the infomercial.
	And there's not much opportunity to just skim off the top or just say that there were losses, maybe not in fee terms, but in Bitcoin terms, from the operation as there are in pretty much every professional mining bond operation.
	So the idea is you just go and take over the existing mine?
	Exactly.
	Right?
	And then you divert all the profits to yourself?
	Right.
	But I still argue, if you don't take over the whole country, you have the problem of an unwilling population around you.
	So you can't get your food, you can't get your oil.
	You have to airlift everything in, because the population...
	And you have to maintain You wouldn't respect your property rights.
	They'd vandalize.
	They'd steal.
	All of the insurgency warfare that is currently taking down America, right?
	Because it's really important to have a giant military that can be taken down by an IED, right?
	So I think you still have a problem.
	Unless you take over the whole area, you've got a problem with the unwilling population around.
	And it's a lot of overhead.
	Sorry, we did you again.
	You have glasses, so I assume that the evil is even stronger.
	Do you annex a scarce resource?
	Yeah, annex a scarce resource.
	So like, if there's like, for example, a feature where fresh water is only confined to a very small geographical area, it might make sense to, you know, popularize a wall to annex that particular area.
	Okay, so if there's like an area, there's only one freshwater source, we could go and take over that freshwater source?
	Yeah, but it won't be so much about the profitability.
	It would really be a goal that everyone would agree with.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I mean, so it's the argument from natural resources, right?
	People say, well, why don't you do a rack because of the oil or some sort of control?
	The difference is though, in this scenario, there's no way to get that resource from anywhere else.
	And I believe that that resource is not absolutely necessary.
	All right, so you would then try and raise money through altcoins to go and get this freshwater source and then what, you would charge like hell for everyone else?
	That would be the idea.
	Yeah, but I mean, this is an old argument from economics, right?
	Which is that, you know, it's the one store in town and they're going to jack up the prices because there's no other store.
	Like, if you gain control of the scarce resources, that you can somehow exploit everyone else.
	Generally, it doesn't work that way.
	People would just ship water in or build a pipeline.
	There's too many ways to bypass an exclusive monopoly these days.
	People can find other substitutes.
	It's going to rain at some point, right?
	So people can collect all that stuff.
	Or people can just move away.
	There's a ceiling on how much you can charge for a scarce resource when people aren't directly chained to it, you know, like in prison, you can whatever, right?
	But when people can move away or other people can bring substitutes in, it's really tough to make the kind of money that would...
	It's really worthwhile to hire, right?
	Armies are expensive.
	Violence is expensive.
	You know, people aren't likely to fight for you if you don't provide insurance for them, right?
	So, I mean, if they get killed, you've got to pay, you know, a million dollars to the widow.
	I mean, it's really expensive.
	Compared to trade, violence is really expensive.
	And it would never be profitable, again, if it wasn't fiat currency.
	So, I mean, I know we could do that all day, but the point that I want to make is that it's hard to come up with a good, easy scenario.
	Hey, if you've got fiat currency, war is a no-brainer.
	How do we do it?
	Well, we print as much money as we want.
	We propagandize the kids through public school, which is also paid through monopoly money.
	We sell war debts.
	We, you know, as Herman Goering said, it's easy to make a war.
	You know, you stir up some foreign conflict, and then anyone who's a pacifist, you grant them a traitor, and, you know, it works to save in every government system that you can imagine.
	War is a no-brainer if you're Amoral or evil, war is a no-brainer in a fiat currency system.
	But as we can see, it's tough.
	This is a high IQ room.
	It's really tough to figure out a way that you can make money from war through Bitcoin, through alt-currencies.
	You don't have inflation.
	You don't have coercive taxation.
	You don't have intergenerational debts enforceable at the point of a gun.
	You don't have conscription.
	You don't have the option of not paying people.
	You have to entice them, which means you have to offer them enough to risk death.
	But that's not easy.
	So, if this...
	I'm not saying the case is completely closed, right?
	We're just sort of exploring the idea.
	But if it's true that you can't make money through war through Bitcoin, then the greatest plague on humanity is not Colorado.
	It's not smallpox.
	It's not polio.
	It's fiat currency.
	Fiat currency is the great ghostly predator that stalks the planet.
	Fiat currency is the guillotine with an endless line-up of humanity going through it, like water through a pipe.
	Fiat currency is the great enabler and subsidizer of the greatest evils on the planet.
	So the war to replace fiat currency with something else is, as Wilson memorably said, about the First World War, what we are engaged in is the war to end war.
	That the general adoption of Bitcoin marks the end of the most savage activity of the ruling classes.
	It marks the end of war.
	Not a diminishment of war, not a cessation of war, not a paralysis of mutually assured destruction, which is why nuclear-armed powers don't attack each other.
	I mean, the genuine, by God, nail in a coffin, staked through its heart, end to war.
	What we're fighting is not inflation.
	That's just an effect.
	What we're fighting is not death.
	What we're fighting is war.
	And if we can be part of a revolution that puts an end to war, That is the greatest moral achievement that our species is capable of.
	It dwarfs even the end of slavery.
	Because the end of slavery, while obviously fantastic for the slaves, was really just transmuted into the free-range livestock that we've become now, which is really not the end of slavery.
	We got slavery down from like 100% to like 75%.
	You know, but if we can get war from 100% down to zero, there is no greater achievement in the history of mankind.
	And we're just talking direct inter-country war.
	And I really, I genuinely believe that these are the stakes that we're playing with, with cryptocurrency.
	No more free evil for the sociopaths in charge.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	That is an incredible opportunity to be part of.
	And so when I'm out there evangelizing about this kind of stuff, literally, this is insane, but this is what it's like.
	It's like having the ghosts of half a billion people behind me saying, maybe I could not have died for nothing.
	You know, if we can get people to adopt a currency that can end war, it doesn't bring anyone back to life, but it puts some meaning.
	To their deaths.
	Because we are piled high on bodies as a species.
	Ants and human beings make war on their own kind.
	We have a little less excuse.
	But I think that's the stakes that we're aiming for.
	To end war.
	Not in some hippy-dippy kumbaya bullshit.
	You know, ants across the water, you know, that same photos of each other and Exchange recipes and try and understand, like, a genuine end to the possibility of war existing.
	I think that's a six of what we're involved in as a community.
	And this is not out there in the general population, this argument.
	Is it Ironclad?
	I think it's close.
	I can't think of an exception.
	I've asked experts.
	This is a smart room.
	We can't come up with scenarios where it's like, well, it's a no-brainer.
	For evil, I've got it, right?
	Can you imagine what it would be like?
	A world without war?
	A world without war.
	There are currently, what, 80 wars going on in the world today?
	A world without war means a world without the need for defense.
	Right?
	So we're not just talking about, oh, well, we're not at war.
	We are!
	Because we're afraid.
	And so we need massive armies, even in Canada.
	It means we don't have to spend all this money on weapons of war if there's no war.
	Right?
	I mean, how do you buy polio insurance these days?
	No polio!
	Yes?
	It will be perfect.
	Was that a high five?
	No, no, no.
	It will be perfect, but the thing is, like, war is a good seller, and people are seduced, like, they want it.
	I'm not sure that...
	Because they don't have to pay for it.
	Yes, exactly.
	right nobody gets a bill for war America's been at Warren Alfred 12 years 13 years?
	Anyone get a bill?
	No.
	Anyone get a line item?
	No.
	Well, the butcher's bill, the dead.
	People get sent a flag instead of a father or a mother.
	But nobody gets a bill.
	Blessed artists and peacemakers will come when the bill goes to the warmongers.
	Now the veil is there, it's just diffused.
	Nobody can trace it back to the source.
	As they're saying, I don't have a job, my house is gone, and so on, right?
	Well, yeah.
	Because dead Iraqis will haunt your financial assets, right?
	Yes sir?
	What if a country would still use fiat and so therefore they would still be able to wage war against a country that uses Bitcoin or the rest of the world that uses Bitcoin?
	Then you would like to get some defenses against that country because even though those people there use fiat and don't agree with the war, because of their system it makes the war inevitable.
	It's a great issue to raise.
	I'm very sorry that you raised it because it means we have to go longer.
	It's a great issue to raise, which is okay.
	Canada goes fiat-free, right?
	We get a priest to come in with a giant sprinkling geister hose of holy water and get this god-awful thing off our necks, right?
	And then America's like, great, we're still a fiat-based country, we've got a giant military, let's go north and invade the land of friendly cannibals just over the border.
	Alright?
	I don't think that could work.
	I don't think it could happen.
	And I'll tell you why, and then you can tell me.
	I'm not sure, but I'll tell you why.
	Why does a country invade another country fundamentally?
	So let's just take Germany.
	May of 1940, they go and invade, and successfully, six weeks or something, right?
	French told it because it's like they remember the World War I, and they're like, forget this.
	No way.
	Right?
	So they let the Germans take over.
	What's the first thing the Germans do?
	What do they take over fundamentally?
	They take over the tax system.
	Right?
	That is the great prize in another country.
	It's the tax system.
	Right?
	You're all entrepreneurs, not politicians, right?
	So you're all, you know, thinking about geothermal, what's its lobby, and mines and stuff.
	No, no, no.
	You take over the tax system.
	Right?
	And then everyone sends their money to you instead of the last asshole who was there.
	Right?
	That's what countries invade other countries to take over.
	Right?
	Right?
	You get your lifestyle, and you get the tax system.
	I mean, sometimes you'll get weapons of war, like in Czechoslovakia in 1938, they went to take over the student works and take all of the Czechoslovakian war machine, which was the biggest in Eastern Europe at the time.
	So you go and get the resources, but the most important resource, the renewable resource, is the tax base.
	So if you have a Bitcoin country, Well,
	in the U.S., at least, I'm not sure about Canada, but they've declared that all Bitcoins are considered realized income as soon as they're mine, and you have to sell your Bitcoins and pay taxes on them to send a fiat check to Uncle Sam.
	You've diverted me to a ranch.
	You've just extended your stay.
	So, do you remember this thing where Barack Obama was like, well, you may have done this, you may have done that, but you didn't build that.
	You didn't build the roads.
	Yeah, like you, Barack Obama, you built the goddamn roads, didn't you?
	The government doesn't even build the roads.
	They just subcontract out to people who know what they're doing.
	And pull Martin out there with a shovel.
	Right?
	So, I mean, the government is like, ooh, there's something new and cool.
	Let's tax it.
	Yeah!
	Did you build it?
	No.
	No.
	Did you program it?
	No.
	Do you understand it?
	Not a clue.
	But we got some guns.
	So we got it.
	I hate those guys.
	Everyone who comes up with anything cool, give us some!
	Okay.
	Did you make it?
	No!
	Sorry.
	I could do that for a while, but in deference to the people who want to stay dry in the first row, no, just everything cool that comes along, the government with guns, they just jump on it and it's like, yeah, now we can make money from it!
	Would you like to be an entrepreneur?
	No!
	We've got the military!
	We've got jails!
	Towers!
	We should play Bioshock.
	You and Andrew Ryan wouldn't get along possibly.
	That may be a compliment I'll take it that way.
	Wasn't this an anti-objectivist game?
	Anyway, stay on target.
	Great branch, thank you.
	Appreciate that.
	And nothing to do with what we're talking about.
	Because we're talking about invading a country with all Bitcoin.
	No fiat currency.
	What does a tax system look like in an all-Bitcoin country?
	Oh, you're on the verge, aren't you?
	You're like...
	Spill it.
	Spill it.
	Zero.
	Yeah.
	Well, what is taxation?
	Forcible transfer of property.
	Well, theft, right?
	It's theft with a flag.
	And how are you going to enforce taxation?
	In a Bitcoin currency?
	Yes, sir.
	You have an idea.
	Consumption tax.
	Consumption tax?
	So when you buy stuff, then...
	You can't trace it.
	You can't...
	It's untraceable.
	Yeah, I mean, why would any store put that in, right?
	It's uncollectible.
	Yeah, I mean, you don't know a transaction has occurred and who...
	You might know what's occurred looking at the blockchain, but you won't know who's doing it or what it was for.
	Like, good luck finding them, right?
	You're like, ghost hunters, you know, there.
	Isn't that kind of like saying that you can't collect taxes when all money is based on gold like it was for...
	Oh no, you can collect taxes when all money is based on gold.
	Yeah, you can bury gold and nobody's there to watch when it changes hands.
	It's untraceable.
	It can't be found.
	Yes, but the amount of labor involved in keeping that gold and doing it under the table and trusting people...
	I mean, you have to trust that the guy's not an IRS agent.
	You don't have any of that stuff going on with Bitcoin.
	The labor to hide your transactions, not that I'm suggesting it, but technologically the labor to hide your transactions is infinitely less than it would be in a gold environment.
	Yes, sir?
	Well, no, but you couldn't do that for online stores because you wouldn't know who to arrest.
	Yeah, you would, because they have hooks into the financial system.
	So if you buy Bitcoin...
	It's all Bitcoin.
	All Bitcoin.
	Financial system?
	What are you, from the 19th century?
	All Bitcoin.
	I'm talking like wall-to-wall Bitcoin, right?
	People are wearing Bitcoins.
	They've got Bitcoins in their hair.
	That's all they eat is Bitcoins.
	It's all Bitcoin, all the time.
	Did I mention Bitcoins?
	There's two taxes, wealth tax and head tax.
	You sound very assertive with that, I'm just waiting to see where that goes.
	Two forms of taxation, head tax and wealth tax.
	Yes, there are two forms of taxation that are still possible under cryptocurrencies.
	Okay, and how do you enforce wealth tax?
	You go and say, you've got a nice car, you can afford to give us X amount of money, or X amount of big coins, and head tax The labor to go point guns at people is not free.
	Taxation has to be profitable.
	If you've got to walk up and down the street with a bunch of guys with guns, A, it's too obvious.
	People like to think that they're being patriotic, when it's not so patriotic, right?
	I mean, that's an obvious shakedown.
	And the people you have to hire, like taxation is only possible at its profit levels at the moment.
	It's taxation at source.
	No labor involved.
	The money goes straight to the government.
	You never see it.
	No human hand touches that transfer.
	If you've got to walk around with a gun and get people here, I'm going to go to the bank with you.
	Oh, there's no bank, there's a Bitcoin place.
	So let's go to the Bitcoin place, there's some paper wallet, shave me up some of the Bitcoin, tap my phone.
	There's just no way.
	It's too expensive.
	You can't cover the cost.
	The labor is too intensive.
	I mean taxation has to be relatively friction free to be profitable.
	As far as taxation you can tax, you can go to factories that produce goods and tax the income that comes to them directly, like literally for one of the guys, okay, give you this cash or you can go and tax mining farms for Bitcoin because they have a location, they have a location to buy.
	But then you have to send guys out there to go and get the taxes.
	And plus, then all that'll do is drive manufacturing offshore.
	Oh, wait, that already happened.
	So it's very labor-intensive, and you're going to risk capital flight, right?
	Isn't that my word for analogies?
	There's a subtle threat, and if somebody opposes it, then you would potentially pursue legal action, right?
	I mean, you would chase them down.
	Right now, it's like a threat, a subtle threat, and people just pay, like, once a year, right?
	yeah but what if they don't know where you live what if you have no address you could set up different trusts, legal walls this would be a huge incentive I'm just saying it's really hard to figure out how taxation works in a cryptocurrency environment, right?
	And since taxation, as we talked about earlier, is the first cause of war, right?
	You have to have the taxes too.
	That's the collateral by which you're selling people off is their future productivity.
	If you eliminate taxation, for sure you've eliminated war.
	Whether it has eliminated other things that people like is another question.
	Oh, sorry.
	I was afraid that you were going to do some moderation there and tell me I was running low on time.
	It's way too interesting.
	So what if the, my mic's not working, but what if, say, Bitcoin deflates like it does, but does not become a global, sorry, global, it is limited to How do we tax in a Bitcoin economy?
	That's the land.
	Sorry?
	That's the land.
	So you're sending people out?
	No.
	You really know who owns the land.
	How do you know who owns the land?
	Well, you have the property deed.
	So?
	Property deed is tied to a Bitcoin entrance.
	How do you know who that is?
	Who lives on the land?
	Oh, but then you've got to go out and send people with guns and, you know?
	How do you enforce registration?
	Either they register or it's owned by the government.
	If it's owned by government, the government can seize it and put someone else there.
	Okay, how are you going to enforce owned by government?
	Well, if it's a loan by Normandy...
	Because you've got to send guys out there.
	I mean, how much money is the BLM spending on this Bundy fellow in Nevada at the moment, right?
	It's three...
	What's it, three million dollars just to round up his cattle?
	Because he owes them $300,000?
	How can they actually stop doing that today while you're here?
	They were reporting that they actually...
	The governor told the land management to back off.
	Hopefully that's one thing right today.
	But it's been hugely expensive, right?
	It's simply not profitable to go and enforce property rights.
	You can say, well, the government...
	So how are you going to know who owns it?
	We don't even remember what it's like to be anonymous as a species anymore.
	I mean, did you know the turn of the last century, you didn't need a passport, you could just go work anywhere, travel anywhere, no papers, nothing?
	I mean, okay, if you were coughing up half a squirrel, they'd probably put you in isolation until they figured out whatever the hell was going on inside your body.
	But we don't even remember.
	We're so used to just everything we do being exposed and invisible.
	We can't even remember.
	So how are they going to know who owns anything?
	Yes, sir?
	The attacks of Bitcoin, you shut down the internet, and in order to allow people to have access...
	You shut down the internet.
	That's right.
	Okay, how's that going to work for you as a government?
	No emails, no communication, how the phones don't work, the cell phones...
	I mean, how are you going to do it?
	It would be very crippling.
	Yeah, it would be.
	So I certainly shut down Bitcoin, though.
	It's like, I've managed these accounts by blowing up the farm.
	Now that takes you...
	That's the smoky meat.
	Yes, sir.
	Look, the bottom line, and you started off by talking about war, and that's the whole, that's the entire point.
	The bottom line is you need a huge, the country in the United States, over 300 million people, you need a huge administration, and you need literally an army of people to enforce the tax code.
	And if you don't have that, because you're not collecting taxes, you can't do anything.
	can enforce if you possibly.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	The reason we're talking about this is related to war.
	You invade a country to take over its tax base.
	In a Bitcoin country, there's no tax base.
	There's nothing to take when you can go take someone's car.
	There's nothing to take.
	Anyone is saying you can go and you can check people's computers, you can go and check their cars.
	You need an army of people.
	Think about 300 million people.
	And it's the government.
	How efficient is it going to be?
	I mean, even a private company would take a lot of manpower, but the government...
	Forget about it.
	Yeah, but if there's a country that's running only, let's say, on Bitcoin, right, it's not going to magically go from fiat to Bitcoin the next day.
	There's going to be a transition.
	Oh, no.
	It's magic.
	It's going to be a transition.
	It is magic.
	It's going to be a slow transition.
	So it's in this transition we could learn.
	Right.
	So in that transition, there's no faster way to accelerate that transition than for people to think that there's an invasion coming.
	Right?
	They'll be like, oh man, let's get to that Bitcoin trip.
	You know, fuck, man.
	Shit's going down.
	Get me to a lifeboat.
	Right.
	But you know, like those people, okay, who owns this land?
	You need people with guns to go down, right?
	Okay.
	Well, the fear part.
	The fiat currency part of the country is going to take care of that, while the rest of it that's already being registered and found out...
	General, the closer you tighten your fist, the more star systems will support you.
	Come on, I can't be alone in this.
	You're not that old.
	It's like Venezuela, right?
	It's what?
	Venezuela.
	You have some people who can exchange for dollars at the real rate, at the black market rate, which is the free market rate, and you have a bunch of other people who are earning worthless paper.
	How does that work?
	You can't have a sound money supply and then an unsound money supply to expect people without the threat of force to keep using the unsound money supply.
	Yeah, I mean, people gravitate to what works.
	And so, the question of transition, you know, we'll do at the next conference, because the question of transition is huge.
	But we're just talking about once we're there.
	And we need to know what we're looking at once we're there, right?
	So, you know, 400 years ago, people said, okay, so for the entire infinity of human history, we've had slaves.
	What if we didn't?
	And the popularity of the abolitionistic movement, even in 1850s America, was 2%.
	2% of people were abolitionists.
	But they had a goal which was a slave-free society.
	And I think, by their standards, they completely achieved that.
	And how did it happen?
	It happened through war and through bribery.
	The British Empire had its moral mission to end slavery, and it went and bribed the living crap out of anyone who owned slaves and said, we'll buy them from you, we'll pay.
	There was a bishop in Leicester who paid 26,000 pounds for all his slaves, because, you know, he's a good Christian man.
	And it's like, it's true I own God's creatures, but at least I can profit from it.
	So, you just, the transition, we've got tons of examples from it in history, how you transition from an immoral to a moral state.
	But we have to have a vision of what it is we're looking for.
	Because the vision of where you go can't be incremental.
	Right?
	You say, I want to go to Paris.
	What do you think?
	No, I want to get to Paris.
	And then you do all the shit that you have to do to get to Paris.
	But first of all, you have to know that you want to get to Paris.
	I think we want to get to a cryptocurrency world.
	Like, you literally can't conceive of it.
	And they'll look back at this life and say, oh my god, what a sewage system these people lived in.
	What a wretched hive of scum and building these people...
	Anyone?
	Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
	So, anyway.
	But we have to know, this is why I'm sort of trying to paint this portrait of what the world looks like without fiat currency.
	No war, no taxation, no national debt.
	No bankers.
	Barely any financial industry.
	No stockbrokers.
	Oh, yeah.
	Except a few will keep frozen in tungsten like in...
	I got a theme going here, right?
	But this is where we want to get to.
	This is the mad vision I think we need to propagate in society.
	Because the world's future runs on enthusiasm.
	That's the only wind that shoots It's enthusiasm.
	And you have to have a mad goal.
	I mean, well, you're going to die either way.
	You might as well have a big goal.
	You go to the same place whether you dream big or you dream small.
	So my argument is, boy, you know, no taxation, no national debt, no war.
	Let's say, and there's many more, but let's just say those three could result from the revolution that we're contemplating and working on.
	Boy, if that doesn't get people's juices flowing, they're already six feet under.
	And the great thing is when you have a fantastic, world-changing goal, ending war, ending debt slavery, ending the predation on the unborn known as national debts, Do you know what you're not going to hear?
	What if the blockchain gets too big and it can't probably be the president?
	Fuck you!
	We're ending war!
	Fuck you!
	Brandy War!
	What have you done today?
	You've nitpicked.
	We've got a bigger plan.

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