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I missed this event on X somehow.
Sympathetically, Andreessen and others like him are simply reacting to years of being yelled at by overly woke progressives. They’re just refusing to be lectured any further. But in that refusal, they’ve started making an equal and opposite error. They now assume that any idea that’s transgressive, that’s edgy, or that pisses off the morality police must be good. It’s the nihilistic idea that anything that makes the woke gatekeepers mad must be based and worth defending. No criticism can ever have a legitimate point.
This is how you get JD Vance defending the “I love Hitler” crowd and it’s why Andreessen reacted so viscerally to the pope’s idea that morality should be a part of developing new technologies. It’s the attitude that says ‘Because someone gave me an annoying, moralizing lecture, I don’t have to pay attention to morality’.
How does Bitcoin fix the problem pmarca represents?
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What bitcoin fixed for me was saving my money. I no longer have to be an investor to store my past effort. I suspect bitcoin will dry up the pool of LPs funding these guys.
Also most of this stuff is funded by low interest debt which bitcoin should destroy as some nth degree consequence.
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So you're saying VCs will be obsolete because money will be at rest?
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I know it's obvious, but what bitcoin fixes is not really my thing. That said, I don't think they'll be obsolete. I think there will be fewer of them seeking upside uncaringly. It's hard to explain why you're funding scams for a 20% return when you could have bought bitcoin. When there's no upside to compromising your morals, you won't.
imo changing base incentives is going to change all kinds of shit. Bitcoin is not a butterfly flapping its wings causing a tsunami. Bitcoin is a tsunami causing every butterfly to flap its wings and whatever else. VCs (and the financial class) are pretty close to this tsunami so the industry will probably change a lot.
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I'm still wondering about this. I know the common saifedean based narrative where a bitcoin standard fixes everything but I'm not convinced.
A bitcoin pmarca could become an even bigger concern than a fiat one. Especially since he's already rich, and unlikely to go down. Maybe even more because all morals seem to have been shed. Its not hard to imagine what a 19th century like world of haves and have-nots could turn into with guys that already behave like this today, when they are still fiat slaves themselves.
Besides sovereign money, we need sovereign everything else too, to prevent being chained again. From software to manufacturing. I don't see any other way to preemptively defeat the future ruling class.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 17 Nov
Besides sovereign money, we need sovereign everything else too, to prevent being chained again. From software to manufacturing. I don't see any other way to preemptively defeat the future ruling class.
I think most technology terminates as a commodity and assists non-commodities become commodities. The ruling class, when it's morally good, helps this process along. When it's morally bad/neutral, the ruling class attempts to prevent technology from commoditizing.
To disrupt a ruling class, we need to either accelerate this bootstrapping process with meta-technologies or provide alternatives ways to bootstrap technology and its commoditizing effect.
One of my professional obsessions is figuring out how to use bitcoin to decentralize incentivizes of other systems so we can commoditize things that are resistant to commoditization, where we might currently default to a ruling class or we're overly reliant on few good natured people.
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we're overly reliant on few good natured people.
With all the "play-good guys" turning their non-profits into commercial spinoffs 1 I'm afraid there's no good incentive to be a good guy right now. Probably this will eventually give rebirth to the proper countercultures and -movements. If Bitcoiners want to stay relevant in the counterculture, we're going to probably have to invest more time into this.

Footnotes

  1. Like some we shall not name, but as I just learned also FutureHouse (#1284910), which is fwiw funded by one of the OG "play-good guys turned evil", so not surprising,
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I’m also skeptical of bitcoin fixing everything.
How much of human depravity historically was caused by fiat? How much by lack of technology and scarcity of human essentials like food/water/energy? How much is just our nature? It’s got to be a mixed bag.
The tricky part for me is that I think pmarca is morally neutral and I’m still not confident bitcoin fixes him. I do suspect that in a bitcoin world, fewer young pmarcas move to moral neutrality. I don’t think moral neutrality pays well on a bitcoin standard.
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Basically the same mistake of the New Atheists
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For anyone out of the loop (like me) regarding that meme
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