A defense of the West
He escrito este artículo en linkedin recientemente, aunque en Inglés pero resume muy bien todo lo que he aprendido estos años, así que allá va para el que le interese.
I've always wanted to work with something that would transcend me, here's why I work in Bitcoin: I'm worried for my kids' future, let me explain why.
Catching up with the West
Spain has been isolated from the rest of Europe for a long time as if the Pyrenees were way higher than they actually are. Then ideas prior to the civil war and the civil war itself separated Spaniards at least until now. Then Franco.
Then a very young democracy and European integration made many hopeful that we could catch up with Western ideas and progress.
When we were starting to catch up and embracing Western ideas and values a couple of decades back, things started turning for the worse. I found myself in a conflict between those that defended traditional Spanish values and Western ones. I wondered if we were still lagging behind the West but then I realized it was the whole West that was becoming worse.
For some reason the West was starting to break with its values, the ones that had made it progress like nothing else in the history of humanity.
But what is the West?
The West is not a geography but a culture. A culture as a set of ideas that emerged during the enlightenment around 300 years ago. A culture where some people realized humans are fallible, that all of us make mistakes.
And that consequently the way to progress was not to blindly respect an infallible authority (Church, emperors or kings) but the ability to criticize ideas, refute them, correct them in an infinite process of error correction, infinite because we can never be sure of reaching the truth also experimenting with reality (trial and error) between rival theories to choose the best by discarding the worst.
That's what science is all about, that's why humanity has progressed like never before: understanding we are fallible is all it took.
European culture progressed and with it movements like the French revolution and US independence established protocols (Constitutions or wet code as Szabo calls them) where the freedom of the individual was protected from the tyranny of the authority, with rights such as the freedom of speech (it should have been called freedom to criticize IMO).
While I used to be in the past terrified by the US's defense of the right to bear arms, I now find it one of the smartest elements of a security protocol such as a Constitution: if you are certain everybody is fallible, then you can't trust your government, you need some kind of fallback mechanism in case things go wrong. (btw, I have not dedicated one minute to thinking how it can be implemented in practice, this is just an argument of its raison d'etre, which as I will explain later, I find fascinating).
So Western democracies assume that its leaders badly suck (they are fallible): so the point of the elections is not to choose the right leader but to easily get rid of them without violence. Again, an error correction process while leaving the door opened to a brief reelection with division of powers and checks and balances.
With the same error correction processes and culture the West evolved its institutions like money, courts, media, elections, contracts, police, markets, laws... to make cooperation more profitable than violence.
Institutions are just rules and protocols that enable trust to scale by being more certain about the outcome of an exchange. By following those rules, the outcomes can fall within a narrower range, so you minimize the need for trust. Trust doesn't scale, so it needs our help to do so.
Violence has been a constant in humanity. If you read Dawkins you'll understand how we are simply wired to it and it's related to game theory. Violence is profitable without evolved institutions.
Many Western citizens have badly misunderstood this in recent years and give security for granted without understanding its massive cost and consequently believe that the West is about respecting EVERY idea, even those that prevent error correction mechanisms.
And for some reason, this misunderstanding seems to be selective: we should not accept nazism, we shouldn't accept fascism and many other -isms etc... yet there are many other sets of ideas (frequently -isms too) that suppress self-criticism, error correction and individual freedom while promoting violence that not only many Westerners accept but even actively promote in our countries.
So we entered an era in which:
Instead of science being an error correction mechanism, it turned into a name: "THE SCIENCE", understood by many as a set of unquestionable truths.
There is such a thing as the right not to be offended. So anyone victimizing itself can claim rights for him/herself that automatically become obligations for others.
Instead of letting markets (a great error correction (and btw humbling) mechanism) decide, many Westerners thought it was a good idea believing that those elected in power could be omniscient entities able to understand everything there is to know, letting them manipulate money, media, markets, laws, i.e. our institutions naïvely assuming either their incentives were similar to those from citizens or that they are not fallible.
With the growing power of those entities, lots of initiatives didn't have to face market scrutiny, so massive amounts of time, effort and money have been wasted in promoting ideas that have never had to face reality.
Instead of bringing immigration and helping them adopt this unique and extraordinary culture, something the US always excelled in, we started being not only friendly but also promoting cultures that not only don't respect the right to criticize, they actively promote killing those that don't belong to theirs.
With the manipulation of the institution of media, multiple narratives have brainwashed people into embracing all kinds of ideas that enable politicians to buy votes by giving out rights left and right to anyone happy to victimize him/herself for the aforementioned reason. But again a right is just someone else's obligation, obligations that just don't stop growing in terms of regulations and taxes that are crippling our economies turning our entrepreneurs into actual heroes.
So the disconnect between governments and citizens is just growing non stop.
One size doesn't fit all any longer
In a world where information was limited you accepted the very limited supply of books of your bookstore nearby of food in your supermarket of education in the few schools around your home but also the very scarce political offer of the few political parties in your country.
Internet has dramatically changed this: the abundant information makes us exposed to multiple other viewpoints and ideas. We discover new ones repeatedly, compare with the existing ones and wonder how could you have been satisfied with the former ones?
But your new ideas are not identical to those of your neighbour so an almost infinite spectrum of political ideas opens up increasing the divide between our politicians and us.
This has profound consequences in a system that is designed under the one size fits all pre-internet paradigm.
In the same way we now can buy literally any book out there with a few clicks, we want now that the market starts supplying a new range of political ideas that better fits our needs. The political spectrum atomizes as a result while the system is not built for this massive shift.
It's not about people but about ideas.
We need to start understanding that ideas program ourselves. We don't see reality the way it is. We see reality through the lenses of our ideas. Think of it as programs that make us understand reality in one way or another.
Milei understood this very well and after adopting his ideas from reputed Spanish libertarian thinkers inheriting the tradition of the Salamanca Scholastics or the Austrian School of economics like Huerta de Soto, he started a battle of ideas that is having a great impact changing the world.
The West needs another fallback mechanism
Founding fathers of the US constitution understood that the ultimate institution is violence. Is the one that solves disputes when all others fail.
Global, fast and effective so ideally work across the internet regardless of local boundaries.
Neutral, impossible to corrupt by others, so they don't need traditional institutions to enforce its rules.
The product of a majority consensus, not a consequence of a dictatorship of a majority so that they work for most.
Where in case you don't agree with consensus, you can easily promote alternatives without again resorting to violence.
Where violence just doesn't work.
Able to protect you from threats that arise from traditional institutions not working.
How could we build such an institution?
Only by profoundly understanding the history of institutions like money, contracts, etc.., how they evolved, how they helped progress and human coordination, also deep security concepts and trying to translate them in ways that make it possible to digitally enforce our rights, like for example using cryptography.
Interestingly that's what people like cypherpunks did. And the result is Bitcoin. If you want to understand the true nature of Bitcoin as an institution I suggest this other post of mine where I discuss that the value of BTC that offsets its lack of liquidity and makes it worth holding is its trust minimization: it enables a new institution of wealth transfer, for the same reason people still hold gold and jewelry (collectibles) to date: poor rule of law makes it worth holding wealth that is not dependent on laws.
Everything that depends on a 3rd party (like laws and any other traditional institutions) is risky (trusted third parties are security holes)
Cypherpunks wanted to create in cyberspace a realm of freedom and progress which can't happen without cooperation, which can't happen without institutions
In cyberspace institutions like laws don't work, so cypherpunks had to "write code", i.e. build new digital ones to enforce our rights based on those that existed before the first laws emerged 1000s of years ago
While digital gold is the most mainstream definition of Bitcoin, I believe the best one is consequently Szabo's "new digital institution or medium of wealth transfer"
Bitcoin is in my opinion the fallback mechanism the West needs if bad ideas take over.
I sincerely hope we embrace better ideas and we don't have to need Bitcoin as an emergency mechanism to cooperate but I also hope that if people ever need it they will know how to.
If you live in a country with poor rule of law or with a deteriorating one, chances are you may consider owning some sort of property that doesn't depend on laws, that you can exchange for value anywhere in the world, that you can fly with, with your family, that you can ideally turn into a secret, that nobody however powerful can manipulate and where consensus can be automated so that you eliminate single points of failure achieving deep security as a result.
We are at a point in history where our information, commerce, literally everything is global except our institutions which are local, human labor intensive and error prone, while at the same time a target for constant cyberattacks.
As Szabo said decades ago, we need to rethink our institutions in a way that enable our trust to scale and our cooperation and progress to flourish regardless of our locality.
That's why I work in Bitcoin building capital markets on it enabling emerging economies to raise capital, reach liquidity almost instantly to finance their growth, bypassing the need for local and hard to evolve financial institutions.
You'll keep reading me fighting the battle of ideas while I write about Bitcoin.
Una reflexión magistral. Te apoyas sobre los hombros de gigantes que has seleccionado tras decadas de buscar señal, sumado al enorme mérito de ponerlo en relación y explicarlo como una solución. Más que un post es una clase,... que podría sustituir la carrera entera de ciencias políticas.