I was on a productivity bender and somehow wound up dumping this shower thought on LinkedIn (???). Figured it might be worth discussing on SN.

War is the continuation of politics by other means. Bitcoin is the continuation of state philosophy by other means.

For centuries, humanity has wrestled with the awesome power of the state and the monetary printing press combined.

Nietzsche said “God was dead” and the Übermensch he spoke through one of his characters implored for “this-worldness”.

These aren’t dead battles - they live every day.

One of the leading Chinese state philosophers, Jiang Shigong, cites Nietzsche and the German philosopher Carl Schmitt and “Nazi crown jurist" in arguing that geopolitics today is the "unceasing, deadly struggles of different gods”.

Carl Schmitt ultimately empowered Hitler’s rise.

But to dig deeper beyond his grave error and to attack the principle and not the person:

Schmitt spoke of an executive wing being crafted in the Constitution as the embodiment of a class of “state sovereign or king” in his Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy.

It is not the exclusive domain of Chinese state mandarins to think in this way. The American presidency has been manipulated in this way, from Bush's “strong executive” to Trump’s attack on the “bureaucracy” - of which the “deep state” is another cyclical example.

Looking deeper beyond red vs. blue, one can see Schmitt being invoked for cracking down on Hong Kong protests, to silencing those who disagree with climate change being a “state of exception”.

It is a continuation of the question of freedom and justice within the state - a modern “god":

Should a state try to achieve freedom for its citizens or justice?

While a seemingly simple, perhaps naive framework, it has led to a classical philosophical dialogue.

This dialogue has gone from the Legalists vs. Confucians, to Camus vs. Sartre (“How we loved you then” Sartre reportedly told Camus before they split over the issue of freedom and justice) to the modern-day battle between Rawls and Nozick.

Freedom - and the ability to choose?

Or justice - and a potentially enforced one based on righting inequalities?

Nozick and Camus argued that freedom would bring a better justice.

Rawls argued that his justice was a “paramount value” imbued with some “inalienable freedoms” - but that justice trumped freedom.

Where to go from here?

Bitcoin is a tool that separates state and money - in its network form.

It is a way of living without the state - and combined with tools, some of which are present, and others being imagined - perhaps a way of defraying from it.

Combined with the ability to work remote, Bitcoin moves agency to individuals over states, and gives the ability to some (and hopefully more in future years) to define their own justice and to take their own liberty rather than warring within “civilizational gods”.

While I believe AI gives people interesting capabilities, ultimately how we choose to govern and be governed will determine human freedom and justice - in my mind. For me, this is a more interesting question.