WBD639 Audio Transcription

The Bushido of Bitcoin with Aleks Svetski

Release date: Friday 31st March

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Aleks Svetski. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Aleks Svetski is an entrepreneur, author and Bitcoin advocate. In this interview, we discuss his upcoming book “The Bushido of Bitcoin”. We cover the negative impacts of wealth, how Bitcoiners can mitigate such negative influences by becoming virtuous and disciplined, and why famous warrior classes are examples to follow.

“Now that we’re in a time of peace - and we don’t need war anymore, and war is bad, and all that sort of stuff - we can do away with the whole warrior culture, the warrior ideology. And what do we become? We become fat slobs who don’t believe in reputation or morality or honour or any of that sort of stuff. And then the world decays and turns into shit.”

— Aleks Svetski

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: You're looking trim, man; I've gone the other way!

Aleks Svetski: December I was trying to lose some weight because I got fat while I was in Europe eating like a fat shit.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I need to lose some weight; I stopped drinking.

Aleks Svetski: You stopped drinking?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I haven't drunk in -- what's the date today; the 8th?  I haven't drunk in 39 days.

Aleks Svetski: Well done.  Do you know what you've got to do, you've got to get the year and then you start to identify as a non-drinker; that's the switch that you need.

Peter McCormack: Are you a non-drinker; do you never drink?

Aleks Svetski: Nothing.

Peter McCormack: That's interesting.  So, I wasn't doing dry January, I always said I'm going to do more than January and see how far I go, and I think I'm going to do the whole year.  And the reason I didn't say I was doing dry January, because whenever you go anywhere, people are like, "What do you want to drink?"  I don't want to say, "Oh, I'm doing dry January", now I just say, "I don't drink".  They're like, "What?!"  Yeah, say, "I don't drink anymore, I've stopped drinking".  I'm going to do the year, I think I'll come back, but maybe.

Aleks Svetski: Seriously, that's what I thought.  So, I did a crazy version of stopping myself when I was young, I used to drink a lot, so I quit when I was 18 by actively giving myself alcohol poisoning.  I drunk everything in my fucking uncle's cupboard, poured wine, Tequila, fucking Ouzo, like the whole lot; I was sick for three days, then I couldn't smell the shit for ages, like it just made me sick.  Then, after about a year of not being able to smell it, the reaction went down a little but by brain was like, "I'm just not interested in drinking".  Then, after two years, I'm not a drinker, and then I don't drink, yeah.

Peter McCormack: You've never drunk again?  Wow!  See, that's why your trim and in shape.

Aleks Svetski: 16 years.

Peter McCormack: It's why I'm a fat slob; I drink like a fucking idiot! 

Aleks Svetski: Alcohol's the worst, man; the shit fucking ages you, man.

Peter McCormack: I know but I like it.  I talked about this on the podcast recently, so my dad's staying with me at the moment, I don't know if you know, my mum died a few years ago, so he gets stuck in Ireland on his own and he doesn't fly as well which is also funny because he was an aircraft engineer for 35 years.

Aleks Svetski: And he doesn't fly?

Peter McCormack: Doesn't fly, hates it; he was a really bad flight once.  Anyway, so I hadn't seen him in ages, like, "Dad, come over and stay for Christmas".  When he got here, he wanted to see -- you know I've got a football team?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: He came to see them play, loved it, and I made him the kit, man, and I was like, "Why don't you stay until the end of the season?"  So, he's been staying with me for ages.  Anyway, we went out with him and his mate; Chris, sorry if you're listening to this.  But basically, my dad is not a big drinker, he didn't drink for three years after mum died, I've never seen him drunk, he just doesn't care for it, and he's 74 and looks great, he looks really good; I was like, "Trigger".

Aleks Svetski: The shit ages you.  So, for me, I've been through my own fair share of stress and made every mistake in the book, whether in business or all sorts of stuff, and I've really pushed myself, and if it wasn't for the non-drinking I think I'd look probably ten years older.

Peter McCormack: I'm actually 26; that's why I look like shit!  I've drunk a lot, man, I've done a lot of drugs as well.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah.  I skipped both actually.  The first time I had weed was when I turned 30 and my sister spiked my birthday cookies.

Peter McCormack: I don't like weed; I think weed's for junkies.

Aleks Svetski: It is, it sucks.

Peter McCormack: It's the worst drug.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, it just makes you dumb, it makes you slow. 

Peter McCormack: Hungry.

Aleks Svetski: Hungry as well, yeah, makes you fat.  I would argue that there is, for me, the times that I have done it, which has been quite rare, it's like a sensory enhancement, so I hear things in parallel.  So, I could be listening to a song and I could just hear every single thing that I just genuinely wouldn't hear; taste is obviously fantastic; touch, so like sex on weed or whatever is like --

Peter McCormack: You smoked weed to fuck!

Aleks Svetski: Basically; that was my whole thing in 2020 and 2021 when I was locked down, that was just all I did.

Peter McCormack: What, smoked weed and fucked?!

Aleks Svetski: Well, I've never smoked weed, I've never smoked, I only do edible, so that was it.  But now that I'm a little bit older and kind of gotten past that, I don't like the shit because every single time I've ever done it, I have a hangover for two or three days after weed; I don't know, I guess I'm a lightweight or it has some sort of weird effect.  So, I just avoid the shit altogether, so I've never touched any other drug, that's it, just done that.

I've done mushrooms a couple of times which was an interesting experience in a very good way.  But I also have my reservations about doing any of that stuff because I think when you open up the apertures of the mind or the sensory apertures and stuff like that, I think there's a hidden cost involved in that and I don't think we understand what the cost is and I think we pay for it in weird ways.  I have a feeling ideas even like communism and stuff like that come from the mushroom realm.

Peter McCormack: Okay, that's a huge leap!

Aleks Svetski: It's a huge leap because here's my thing, that sort of opens you up to the spirit realm and I think, in the spirit realm, things like property rights and stuff like that just don't exist, they're irrelevant over there.  So, you come back to here with these ideas of, "Oh, we're all one, Kumbaya, we're all in this together.  You know those things, property rights, let's just all be one". 

You kind of see these hippies, and I know a lot of people who have been doing psychedelics for many years, and the membrane between the physical material world where things like property rights and stuff like that exist and the spiritual realm where that sort of stuff is irrelevant, that membrane sort of dissolves; I don't know, they're half here, half there and just become sort of fucking wishy-washy, relativistic and they turn into kind of psychos.

Peter McCormack: I don't buy it.  I tell you why I don't buy it, but I do see a connection, I do see a correlation between the personality types of people who are more socialists and the hippy types, yeah, I totally get that, but I think that might come down to a little bit more like Jonathan Haidt wrote about in The Righteous Mind, that kind of mindset of the type of person they are.

Aleks Svetski: So, already a high in trait of openness you mean?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: So, they're predisposed?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, they're more of that type of person who comes from the care side.  So, a lot of that stuff from the kind of left, which has now become called the woke left, comes from a place of care, misguided care and misguided about sometimes the externalities that come from that, but I think it more comes from that and I think perhaps those people are then more predisposed to being the type of people who maybe will try psychedelics. 

I don't buy like some dude does psychedelics, becomes a hippy and then stops giving a shit about property rights because they've been in that.  I don't think they'd rationalise that; I think you could post-rationalise that though.

Aleks Svetski: Maybe they feed into each other.  That's the thing about this stuff, it's like maybe you're already slightly predisposed in that direction and then it kind of takes you a little bit further; all these things are virtuous loops anyway.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: That's how we end up so divided as well, because if you're more conservatively minded or your constitution is made up that way and you sort of, inch by inch, move in that direction, then someone else, inch by inch, moves in the other direction, and then all of a sudden, you completely see the world differently and there's no bridge to communication.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's interesting you should say that because you sent me a message a couple of months ago and you were like, "I want to make a show".  I was like, "Cool".  You were saying to me, "I'm kind of turning my back on being a toxic asshole", I can't remember your exact words, I can get the tweet out, let's get it; can I embarrass you and read it?

Aleks Svetski: All right.

Peter McCormack: This is why I wanted to talk to you most of all, look, I know you're writing this book, but this was kind of interesting because, hold on...

Aleks Svetski: I don't remember what I wrote.

Peter McCormack: Here we go, you go, "Hey, Pete, I hope you're well, buddy.  I'm turning a huge new leaf for 2023, moving on from the stupidity, noise and so-called toxicity and leaning more into education", and then you talked about the other stuff, but I thought was the super-interesting because you cannot do the job I do without experiencing some form of toxicity.

Aleks Svetski: Totally.

Peter McCormack: My YouTube's brilliant, right.  So, one week a while ago, I had Anita Posch, who is very clearly more of a left-wing bitcoiner, and I had a Laura Loomer who, bitcoiner or not, she's clearly from the right, and then my YouTube is people who are ideologically opposed to both of those coming in saying, "Why are you having this person?" and neither group able to recognise that I'm actually trying to talk to everyone and learn. 

So, I find myself pushed to the middle, but in doing that, you butt up against people who are -- you can get toxic and have toxic right, toxic libertarian, all kinds of different people who struggle with accepting there are other people in the world who have different views, or different world views from them.  So, when you said to me, "I'm kind of getting away from the stupidity of that", I was like, "Well, I want to talk about that".

Aleks Svetski: Well, okay, so you notice I said "so-called toxicity", right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: So, I am still very clearly in the camp of my thinking around all of this stuff hasn't changed, I still think whether it's masks or experimentational government and all this sort of stuff, I still would be labelled toxic to all of that sort of stuff.  What I'm just doing, this is more like a personal decision, is that I'm just getting off all the screeching on Twitter. 

Over the last couple of years, out of frustration with the dumbness of the world -- I started on Twitter, I was writing really good articles, and it was funny, I went back and I read some of my early Bitcoin articles and there was no "fucks" and "shits" and "stab this person", obviously I don't write that stuff, but it wasn't angry, I could just see the tonality was very different; I was genuinely out there just telling people about why Bitcoin matters, for example, or how we could look at Bitcoin through an anthropological lens, and I wasn't getting political.

Then, just over 2020, got radicalised and all I was doing was talking about how dumb the world is, how stupid everyone is, the sheeple, this and that; probably 95% of the things I pointed out where accurate in the end.  We did a podcast, remember?  

Peter McCormack: We did a three-hour podcast --

Aleks Svetski: On that stuff, right?

Peter McCormack: Remotely.

Aleks Svetski: Yes.

Peter McCormack: During COVID.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, 2020.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: It was actually March, we were talking about it, and it was just as the lockdown started.  You remember my position, so I've always been consistent on that.

Peter McCormack: I haven't been, by the way, my position's evolved.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, so your position's evolved, and I'm happy that it has because I think it's evolved into a better direction, whereas my position's stayed the same the entire time, I've hated all of it, lockdowns and all that sort of stuff, but the price that I've had to pay for that stuff, I've had to move away from my business, I've been cancelled on every single platform, I've been de-banked.

Peter McCormack: Have you?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, man, at some point.  I think I'm on my third Twitter account.

Peter McCormack: Okay, let's work through that.  So, hold on, you were moved away from your business; what do you mean?

Aleks Svetski: That's a longer story, that's a different one.

Peter McCormack: Can you tell it?

Aleks Svetski: No.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Can you tell us when the mics are off?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, sure.

Peter McCormack: All right, okay.  You were kicked off Twitter for saying what; what are you now, @GhostOfSvetski or @GhostOftheGhostOfSvetski?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, I'm @SvetskiWrites now.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Aleks Svetski: So, trying to do the whole moving into just back into content stuff, but yeah, I was @GhostOfSvetski at some point; I think that one got banned as well for whatever, I don't know, maybe I was reposting some vaccine stuff, who knows, something.  So, it's just the amount of effort, the amount of headache, the amount of effort and having to sort of hold that the entire time, it just sucks, and I don't know, the return on the energy and effort invested is just not there.  So, for me, I'm looking to remove that and cleanse that, and plus it just makes you an unnecessary target. 

I was reading somewhere it says, and I'm going to butcher this, but it was something along the lines of a high-value man just keeps his opinion to himself.  These are all my opinions at the end of the day; I believe they're consistent; I believe they make sense; I believe I've figured them out from first principles; I believe that the principles around what I'm discussing are generally consistent across -- you could probably find similar principles in people who talk about how to succeed in business or how to succeed in relationships or all this sort of stuff.

What I've found through life is that most principles are actually quite similar, and that's essentially what this book is about, we're going to talk about later, is the principles of how to live a virtuous, moral life; they're pretty damn similar across the world, it doesn't matter.  Why the hell was I talking about that?

Peter McCormack: Coming away from toxicity.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, exactly.  So, you find these principles and then you can deliver them in a real edgy way, which I have been, but I've just found that it's just, I don't know, man, it's not worth it.

Peter McCormack: Sometimes Twitter sucks you in.

Aleks Svetski: Totally.

Peter McCormack: It's gamed in a way and it's designed in a way to suck you in.

Aleks Svetski: Beat the shit out of each other.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, been there, done it, yeah; I was doing it yesterday with Ben Shapiro, like you get sucked in and then at the end of it, like, "Do I feel good about this?"

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, man.

Peter McCormack: It's like --

Aleks Svetski: What the fuck for?!

Peter McCormack: It's like eating a whole pack of Oreos, right, at the time you're enjoying it, and then after you're just like, "I feel like shit, why the fuck did I eat that pack?"

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, I did it so many times, like I did the Richard Heart thing in 2022, and that was a waste of time.

Peter McCormack: Who's that?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, BitBoy as well, that was a waste of time, all that sort of crap was just a waste of fucking time.

Peter McCormack: It is a distraction; the algorithm was designed to suck you in, man, get you do that shit, but it distracts you from what you could be doing.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, so I will tie that off though with, I think there is a place for those who want to expend the energy on doing that, and what they essentially do is they remind us of I guess the really hardcore version of the truth or the hardcore version of a position.

Peter McCormack: Of a position, yeah, not the truth; truth is subjective.

Aleks Svetski: I wouldn't say truth is subjective.

Peter McCormack: Some truth is subjective; two plus two equals four isn't subjective, but versions of the world can be subjective.

Aleks Svetski: Versions of the world, yeah, so they're not truths then, they're like I guess opinions in that sense, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it does mean you can focus and be in a better mental state yourself.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, absolutely.  You're not going to find people that you're going to agree with on everything anyway.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: If you have to agree with everyone on everything, you're going to end up a lone wolf, and that's also another thing in this book. 

Peter McCormack: But what a boring world if we were all the same and all agreed.

Aleks Svetski: Well, exactly, and that's communism right there, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: Like equalise everyone, we're all the same, we're all proletariats, we're all just another cog in the machine.  It's funny how individualism reks itself in the process because it sort of, I don't know, you have these people argue, "This the only right way to be as an individual and everybody else should also be like this", and then essentially that creates this tendency towards everyone is the same and you end up back at this one big homogenous blob of sameness.

Peter McCormack: Well, look, I made a show with Danny recently with Mark Moss, and Danny did a lot of the prep for this, and one of things Danny kept coming back to me with the notes, he was saying, "He says, 'Ironically, there are parallels between the behaviour sometimes of some bitcoiners and communists'".

Aleks Svetski: 100%.  You know one that drives me fucking crazy is the, "We are all Satoshi".  It's like, "No, you're not Satoshi, shut the fuck up, you are someone else".

Peter McCormack: Wasn't that a meme though about CSW?

Aleks Svetski: It was a meme, but it's kind of like the -- man, I'm going to get some fucking backlash over this, but I hate the word "pleb".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it sounds like a 12-year-old on a playground.

Aleks Svetski: "I'm a peasant and I'm proud of being a peasant".  No.  Literally, bitcoiners in the next coming decades are going to be the socioeconomic elite of the world.

Peter McCormack: Maybe.

Aleks Svetski: That's my presumption and I think that Bitcoin just wins through its sheer force of economic gravity at the end of the day, and if you're smart enough to hold your Bitcoin over that period of time, you are actually not going to be a fucking pleb, you idiot, you're going to be --

Peter McCormack: Maybe it is though, because a lot of the people in that self-identifying group of plebs, I think that's like a minority group.  I've clashed against them, a lot of them I think are morons, I just think a lot of them don't really have much Bitcoin; I think a lot of it is virtuous behaviour.  They might not be the elites, they might be the plebs, they might be the peasants of Bitcoin.

Aleks Svetski: Maybe of Bitcoin, but still, even if they've worked up to have half a Bitcoin, they'll probably have a hell of a lot more than a person who starts buying Bitcoin, say, in 2030, so there is going still be a gap.  So, my whole point is you need to start acting and behaving, first of all, like an adult, but then, secondly, like an adult with some level of nobility, and nobility is kind of an amalgamation of higher virtues.  Degrading yourself and calling yourself a Plebeian, like a peasant or something like that, I just find stupid.

I guess maybe I've been reading too much Nietzsche lately, but I have this distain for glorifying the averagisation of man.  For me, just being a pleb is pathetic.  Be something great, aspire to greatness, aspire to difference, aspire to do something useful in the world.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I don't disagree, I don't like the word any more because if I'm trying to introduce my friend to the world of Bitcoin and teach them about, "This is the best form of money and in a Bitcoin world, we're rewarded for prudence and Bitcoin is a serious financial asset, come and join the pleb Telegram group", it just sounds fucking childish.

Aleks Svetski: It is childish.  I think also I will say I think you and I probably dislike it for slightly different reasons as well though.

Peter McCormack: Well, just most of my interactions with the people in there haven't been good.

Aleks Svetski: Correct, yeah, that's why, mine have been, so my call to them is to actually rise the fuck up and stop calling yourself a pleb.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you probably align with them on a lot of issues.  My main issue is this coercive pressure to come be like us otherwise we're going to try and cancel you.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, exactly, that's the communistic thing.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, like, "Don't have this belief".  We've talked about this a lot, you know I am somebody struggling with it at the moment, but somebody who has been a historic believer in democracy; I think it's the best way to organise large groups of humans.  Struggling with it at the moment for obvious reasons because the country I live in is a fucking dump and it's going to shit, but historically, I think democracy's done a lot of good for the world as well, and it's that whole, "You're a statist cuck", thing from people who are living some of the best countries in the world but not willing to have the discussion, "No, you're a statist cuck, fuck that guy, let's cancel that guy".  It's just like, "Well, hold on a second, that's a coercive pressure you're putting on me". 

Look, Aleks, I can get away with it and carry on doing what I'm doing because I've built up a big enough platform in order to get away with it, but if there are new people are coming in and creating podcasts or content, they've going to feel that coercive pressure to, "Don't be like Pete, be like us", and that can really influence who they become, who they are and the content they create.  You want people to express -- be wrong, I've been wrong on so much shit, but I have the ability to be wrong and apologise; these people don't have the ability to be wrong and apologise.

Aleks Svetski: Well, why not?

Peter McCormack: Because they don't want to get kicked out of the group, out of the tribe, they don't want the tribe to turn on them.

Aleks Svetski: That has pros and cons though.  If the position is valid, then that sort of pressure from the tribe, and I talk about tribalism in this book, is that tribes work through the process of shame not guilt; how do I explain this?  So, shame is a powerful tool because it creates a situation where an individual within a tribe doesn't want to be left out of the tribe, so then they look to adapt and conform their behaviour.  Now, that has obvious dangers; if the position of the tribe is invalid, then everyone else starts to behave in a format that's invalid.  And then the thing is, that tribe generally doesn't last very long, the tribe sort of falls over and dissolves or disappears. 

Now, Bitcoin, even the pleb tribe, while I would argue that it needs to evolve and at least drop the word pleb; if they want to be toxic, they can actually reply, I have no problem with that.  I actually have less of a problem with the toxicity than the pleb thing.  I am just stopping my own action of toxicity because it's just the fucking energy drag, like someone else can do that.  That sort of tribe actually has its place because at some point in time people will need to figure out why. 

A lot of them, whatever people say, they've actually been right about, whether it's Craig Wright or whether it's shitcoins, whether it's Vitalik, whether it's all of that sort of stuff, they've generally been on the right side or their opinion has generally been valid and it's been vindicated.  The delivery is probably not nice and probably scares people and probably freaks people the fuck out.

Peter McCormack: Or like my friend, Tom.  I'll tell you what, I've known Tom for 37 years, he's one of my best friends, love the guy, and he lives near me in Bedford, we talk all the time, he's like, "Those bitcoiners are a bunch of fucking morons".  He's like, "I like you, Pete, but they're all fucking idiots".  He's got no interest in Bitcoin because all he sees, his entry point is he sees it as a bunch of crazy idiots yelling at each other, and he's like, "I don't care about that shit".  So, he's got a barrier up because of it.

You hear it, Rogan is often talking about Bitcoin or CryptoNet these days, that keeps coming up; it was coming up in the show I was listening to today with Saagar and Krystal Ball.  Anyway, they were talking about it in there, and it's always coming up, but it's very rarely being talked about seriously.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, but I guess that's just the stage we're in.  So, once again, that tribe needs to exist, so if you think about it, you could argue that that tribe is kind of like the Spartans and the Spartans need to exist because --

Peter McCormack: They are not Spartans, dude!

Aleks Svetski: I'm trying to use an analogy, I'm trying to find an analogy, okay, maybe the Thebans, I don't fucking know, but some form of extreme version of tribe that maybe takes themselves a little bit too seriously and has valid and consistent series of points but probably poor delivery, and as we all do, has a bunch to improve on.

Peter McCormack: What is it that we're getting from that tribe that's effective; what change is that making?

Aleks Svetski: It helped me a lot, man.  During 2016, 2017, I climbed Mount Stupid, I did my fucking altcoin thing and realised how fucking ridiculous it was, and then on the way down, it was actually that group, I entered the toxic pleb group in Telegram, and that really helped me fucking sharpen my position on Bitcoin big time.

Peter McCormack: But how many people are we talking about; are we talking about a couple of thousand people here?

Aleks Svetski: The group was like 200, 300 people at that time.

Peter McCormack: Okay, it's a rounding error, it's not making any difference to the world of Bitcoin?

Aleks Svetski: If you look at the sharpening of my position on Bitcoin that I had, then I affect more people and then my stuff might hit like a Mark Moss or you or a Jack Dorsey or a Michael Saylor or something and then that has a bigger effect, so these effects are concentric.  One of my actual favourite bitcoiners in that entire space is Rory Highside; I don't know if you've ever come across him.

Peter McCormack: I don't know Rory.

Aleks Svetski: So, Rory's a fucking legend and he and I bumped into each other back in the day in Australia and we were like two of the only bitcoiners at that time, there was a small group, there was like Stephan Livera and Hass McCook and John Pratt, but there were like ten hardcore Bitcoin maximalists in Australia, we didn't know any others. 

Me and Rory, he actually brought me into that group and he really helped sharpen that, and the thing is, I think a lot of the toxicity comes from having to repeat yourself a million fucking times to try and initially help people from getting scammed or doing stupid things or promoting shitcoins or affinity scamming people and everything like that.  So, it just builds on itself, man, and it's a hard thing to do.

Peter McCormack: That's almost like they're wasting their time because people don't listen, they make their mistake and then they learn.

Aleks Svetski: They learn, but at least, along that learning path, there is this cohort of people, there is this tribe that they can go and maybe even just do a rite of passage through, maybe that component of the tribe is a rite of passage.

Peter McCormack: Maybe.  All right, well listen, is the book written?

Aleks Svetski: 95%; I'm going through editing now.

Peter McCormack: Just explain to people what the book is about and why you wanted to talk to me about it.

Aleks Svetski: So, I've been doing a lot of thinking on a question of not whether Bitcoin's going to win, how it's going to win or when it's going to win or any of that sort of --

Peter McCormack: You assume it is going to?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, I make the assumption that, okay, if we're all right about this Bitcoin thing and it's the most important economic thing to happen, by its very nature it's also going to be a huge social event; it'll transform the way society is structured.  Well then, are we just going drive around in Lambos in Louis Vuitton jumpsuits?

Peter McCormack: Hopefully.

Aleks Svetski: Maybe the Lambos are okay but the Louis Vuitton jumpsuits are a little bit strange, but are we going to become just like rich losers?

Peter McCormack: Why would that make someone a loser?

Aleks Svetski: I think the kind of people who generally go out and just try to make money for that sake are generally trying to fill a gap in themselves.  So, looking through the lens of like, for example, Tony Robins' Six Needs Structure, they're trying to feed significance and they're out of kilter on all sorts of other things.  So, they think by buying a Lambo they're going to fill a hole in themselves.

Peter McCormack: Okay, what if you just like driving fast cars?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, that's different, but I think most of them don't.  I know a bunch of people, from particularly back in Australia, who can't drive for shit, they have zero understanding of what a car is, how the fucking engine works, but they're flashing it around because they think it's going to get their dick wet, and that's probably the majority of them.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: There's a difference between an appreciation of the machine.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think the point I'm trying to get -- well, there are two points; firstly, are you anti-status and status symbols?

Aleks Svetski: No, not at all, I think people can do it. 

Peter McCormack: Is there a use for status symbols for projecting status?

Aleks Svetski: I think it depends what level of status you're at.  So, Jack Dorsey, for example, doesn't need to drive around in a Lambo to have status whereas maybe an up and coming --

Peter McCormack: Fake it 'til you make it?

Aleks Svetski: Kind of, yeah, 20-year-old entrepreneur or something like that might need to do that, and I was like that in my 20s, more with motorbikes; actually yeah, I was never really like that with cars.  There were multiple times I could have bought an expensive car but I never did, I reinvested into my business or something like that.

Peter McCormack: And you like bikes.

Aleks Svetski: And I like motorbikes, exactly, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Have you got a bike now?

Aleks Svetski: No, unfortunately.

Peter McCormack: What's the dream bike?

Aleks Svetski: I had my dream bike, I had a Panigale.

Peter McCormack: Really?

Aleks Svetski: Ducati, yeah, it was gorgeous.

Peter McCormack: What's that, like 1,000 cc or something?  I don't know much.

Aleks Svetski: It was 1,199, yeah; at the time, it was one of the fastest production bikes in the world, it was incredible.

Peter McCormack: And did you project status with it?

Aleks Svetski: Not really, no.  So, that's why I'm thinking back now, it was never really a status thing for me, nobody knew, like a girl would look at it and go, "Oh, that's a nice red bike", I'm like, "Do you not understand the" --

Peter McCormack: Engineering.

Aleks Svetski: Exactly, I was like, "I can go zero to 150 kph in second gear in like 4 seconds", and she's like, "What does that mean?"  So, yeah, for me, I don't think it's ever been a status thing but for some people it is.  I would argue that still like maybe the pursuit of status is probably quite hollow anyway and you end up in a situation where you're lacking the substance to then substantiate why you're in that level of status.  So, if you're looking to just get symbols that represent status without actually building yourself up to naturally have that status without the symbol, you probably are one of the shooting stars, you're collapse sort of thing, so maybe that's my nuanced position on status.

Peter McCormack: So, in your book, your position is that Bitcoin will win the economic war.

Aleks Svetski: I just take that as a given.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, take that as a given, and what's next; also, even saying that sounds very binary, "All right, it's happened, we won, all right, what the fuck are we going to do about this?"  Clearly, the economic win is a transitory period.

Aleks Svetski: Totally.

Peter McCormack: What happens, what we do now is also a transitory period which, by the way, we are seeing.  You asked me how much work Danny did to help prep the show, we were discussing it on the way down and we were recognising the changes that have happened to us both in our lives but also in the way we think about things because of Bitcoin, and the example I gave is that it's the time preference.

The time preference thing for me, I said, "Do you know what the funny thing about time preference is, I see it on diet, I see it and I can't change".  I am still 30 pounds overweight and I see it, and when I eat, I know I'm making the wrong decision on the time preference, but before, I would never have seen it as time preference, I always say, "I have a shit diet".  Now, at least I make the link, I go, "I have a time preference issue with my diet.  I am wanting the satisfaction now of smashing a pack of Oreos or whatever it is or a burger and accepting that slight increase in weight that happens every day over the space of five years and suddenly I'm 30 pounds overweight".

Aleks Svetski: Well, yes, it is a time preference issue, but in this book, the 11th virtue that I write about is self-restraint or self-control, and I think that's most likely the most lacking virtue in the world today because people, and even libertarians are to blame with this, is that this idea of just go for it, just do it, you're free, live in a free country, say what you want, do what you want, etc, has its drawbacks.

I think there was a saying, I don't know if this was Nietzsche or something like that, but the person with real strength is the one who can get a hammer and swing it at an egg but stop it just before you crush the egg.  So, real strength is not in crushing the egg, real strength is in the ability to be able to do that but hold the hammer and --

Peter McCormack: I want to smash that fucking egg!

Aleks Svetski: There you go, see!

Peter McCormack: I want to see that shit go everywhere; I do!

Aleks Svetski: But that's something we each have to train in us, is the ability to actually self-restrain.  But coming back to time preference, and we can kind of make our way back to these virtues later, but I think that, yeah, Bitcoin's very existence adapts our behaviour in such a way that we do start to have a better appreciation for time preference, definitely in the economic dimension, and then also it seems to be affecting other dimensions.

Now, I don't know how that's going to evolve over time; does that piece actually turn us into virtuous human beings or something like that?  Maybe, maybe not, as you said, this is going to be a process.  There's a word called interregnum which basically means the transition from one king to another sort of thing, so an interregnum is the gap between.  So, we're in the interregnum; we're going to go from the US dollar being king to Bitcoin being king.  I think it's at least going to take three generations, so like 60 years, and I'm doing some thinking around this.

Peter McCormack: And we're what, 13 in?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, exactly.  So, we're sort of in the infection stage.

Peter McCormack: We're not going to see it, you might with your good diet.

Aleks Svetski: Maybe, we'll see.

Peter McCormack: I'd be 104!

Aleks Svetski: Wait, hold on, no.

Peter McCormack: 60 years from now or 60 years from the advent of it?

Aleks Svetski: 60 years from 2008, so 2068.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so I might just make it, "Here's my Bitcoin, son".

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, exactly.

Peter McCormack: "Enjoy it".

Aleks Svetski: Done.

Peter McCormack: "Be virtuous!"

Aleks Svetski: If you do it in an English accent it will actually work.

Peter McCormack: "Little prick!"

Aleks Svetski: "Be virtuous".

Peter McCormack: I got my son a job today.

Aleks Svetski: Oh yeah, that's good; a man's got to work.

Peter McCormack: He won't work; I keep arguing with him and I think I've made life too easy for him.  So, I keep saying, "Get a job", and he won't get a job, and so I've got him a job now; he's working essentially with builders tomorrow from 8.00am.

Aleks Svetski: Good, I was literally about to say he should have a shovel in his fucking hand.

Peter McCormack: He's waking up tomorrow morning and he is working from 8.00am until 4.00pm for the next two days and then next week with a fucking shovel, and he doesn't know the big surprise.

Aleks Svetski: What's the big surprise?

Peter McCormack: The big surprise, he's not even getting paid!

Aleks Svetski: Perfect.  Dude, that is the best thing.

Peter McCormack: Do you know why he's not getting paid?  He came back and he's like, "Dad, can you insure me on my car?" and I was like, "Okay", and I did it.

Aleks Svetski: You insured him?

Peter McCormack: On his car.  He's been away at university so he doesn't need the insurance and he was like, "Will you insure my car?"  I was like, "Yeah".  I was like, "Have you got a job?"  He was like, "No".  I said, "Have you phoned up Sarah at the pub to see if you can work?"  He was like, "No, I've got loads of artwork to do".  I was like, "Dude, I know what you're going to do, you're going to stay up every night and then you're going to sleep until 4.00pm, you're not going to do shit; call her up, do some work".  He was like, "No, I've got college work to do". 

I guarantee right now, whatever time, he's going to be in bed right now.  So, he's going to work, I'm going to say it's paid, it's like, £7.20 an hour, and then the other week I'm going to go, "Right, that money's paid off your car insurance, it's paid off this, you little fuck!"

Aleks Svetski: There you go. 

Peter McCormack: He's going to go back to uni like, "I hate my dad!"

Aleks Svetski: No, this is how young men need to grow; they need to actually put some sweat into stuff, because if they don't, then they'll become entitled brats when they're old and they won't become adults until their 35 and that's too late.

Peter McCormack: He's actually a lovely boy.  If you met him you'd be like, "Oh, you're like Pete but nice", but he's just fucking lazy.

Aleks Svetski: You can't be lazy.  The thing is, if a man is going to raise kids, provide for his wife, provide for the family and all that sort of shit, you can't put that responsibility on your wife, like what the fuck; she'll resent you, disrespect you, etc. 

Peter McCormack: All right, Tate!

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, okay, fine, let's just not go down --

Peter McCormack: "Sign up to my LMM, boy!"

Aleks Svetski: "Sign up to my Bushido course".

Peter McCormack: "What colour's your Bugatti?"

Aleks Svetski: Okay, let me just finish the first thought on this thing so that we've at least got this. 

Peter McCormack: Sorry, I really like just like shooting the shit today just because we haven't got Danny here; Danny would be like, "Fucking rein in it, Pete". 

Aleks Svetski: It's all right; so, I'm reining it in.

Peter McCormack: You rein in.

Aleks Svetski: I'm putting on the Danny hat.

Peter McCormack: All right.

Aleks Svetski: So, we're taking Bitcoin as a given that it's going to win, we have this interregnum, things are going to evolve, behaviour's going to evolve; the question is do we become a bunch of entitled rich little brats or whatever, and whether that's us or our kids, it doesn't matter, do we become the next political elite class who are trying to write the rules in our favour; or do we try and develop virtues that, at least from looking back on history and looking back on different cultures, represent some sort of moral predisposition or moral picture or moral thread? 

The question I ask myself is, I look back at warrior cultures in particular when I was researching this book, so the Spartans, the Ancient Macedonians, the Samurai, the sort of Arthurian Western English class, the Romans and all that sort of stuff, and what I've come to realise is that the highest virtues generally come from warrior cultures, not from peaceful cultures.  Peaceful cultures usually emerge in the weak men build bad times out of the cycle.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, post-war crazy young men.

Aleks Svetski: Exactly. 

Peter McCormack: Would you therefore include World War II soldiers as warrior culture?

Aleks Svetski: World War II soldiers is an interesting one.  I would definitely World War I soldiers, and then World War II soldiers were probably still of that class, but because there was such a proximity between the two wars, the kids of the parents were trying to more prove something.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Aleks Svetski: I did a huge deep dive on World War II as well and what you find is that, even the veterans of World War II, they say, "Our parents went to fight the Great War and we were itching to prove ourselves", so it came from a different place whereas there was a noble call, for example, for World War I and that was the call it; World War II was like, "Our parents went and did it so now it's my turn", so there's a slight difference.  I actually think that all the best men basically got wiped out in World War I and World War II and then that's kind of what eroded the West in a big way, but that's a whole other topic.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, there's a lot I'd want to pick up there and I'm not sure I'd agree with all the best men got wiped out.

Aleks Svetski: I mean not all the best men but a big chunk of them, like the ones who are probably predisposed to being brave and courageous and going out and fighting on the front lines; fucking how many millions got wiped out?

Peter McCormack: Brave or had no choice?

Aleks Svetski: No, a lot, like World War I, they were actually willing to fight for their country.  While there was a different type of conscription that came about, the kind of men that went to fight, they actually had a love for country that they wanted to fight, it wasn't just they were sort of poked at to say, "Hey, come on, fight"; it was a different sort of mentality.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Anyway, I railroaded you there.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, you did.  There was a strong theme, and the more I read about these ancient cultures the more I found that, holy shit, there is something very powerful here that I think we've lost in the world of peace basically.

Peter McCormack: So, when you talk about this will we end up little rich brats, when you say "we", are you talking about the new elite class in the Bitcoin world, those who got in early enough who managed to amass substantial wealth?  We're not talking about Michael Saylor, we're not talking about the people who've got that, it could be somebody who has maybe 100 Bitcoin but in this world it's the equivalent of having $50 million to $100 million now, this shift in power?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, I think possibly even less, man, I think anything 5 Bitcoin and over in the next couple of decades.  You take that out three or four decades, something like that where someone who's 20 today is sort of 50 at that point, even if they've only got 5 Bitcoin, I think 5 Bitcoin is going to be a significant amount.  Now, 50 Bitcoin will be extraordinarily significant.

Peter McCormack: But do you not see it like this will get chipped away at?  So, in 10 years, 50 Bitcoin could be significant and that gets passed down and that's --

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, totally.

Peter McCormack: And during this transitory phase, different people -- and it will all depend on how much gets passed down, how much gets spent.  If you give my son 100 Bitcoin right now and I die, I'm not saying I've got 100 Bitcoin, but you give him 100 Bitcoin, he's going straight out and he's buying new trainers.

Aleks Svetski: He's going to spend it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: And it's going to filter out, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so it is a transitory phase but we're talking generally about whoever becomes wealthy elite via Bitcoin during these periods.

Aleks Svetski: Correct, yeah, exactly, and they all of a sudden find themselves from one socioeconomic class catapulted into another, and that's a big shift.  I was reading somewhere, it's like someone said the lion, for example, behaves majestically because he's been at the top of the food chain for millions of years and he's had time to evolve, basically the lion doesn't go out and just fucking kill everything so that he can't eat anymore. 

So, there is like this natural evolution of territory and how the lion behaves and everything. Human beings went from the middle of the food chain to the top in like 70,000 years and we haven't learnt to evolve this majesty around how we deal with stuff.  Now, whether that's true or not, I was listening to some anthropologist talk about that, but I thought that an interesting thing, and it's the same on a micro level, as if you're some dude who's… 

We see it, some of these early bitcoiners who stumbled in and tripped over and fell into Bitcoin at 10 cents then, all of a sudden, have $1 billion, what are they doing with it?  Like Brock Pierce is an example; the guy, he's a vacuum cleaner basically and what good has he done? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, not a fan of Brock.

Aleks Svetski: Me neither.

Peter McCormack: Okay. 

Aleks Svetski: Imagine a bunch of those running around.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but maybe not Brock, but the term, "power corrupts", absolute power corrupts, absolutely, for some reason, good people turn bad in power or with power.

Aleks Svetski: Because they haven't developed, I think, the virtues. 

Peter McCormack: I just disagree, I think it's a couple of things, I think some people do and I think power changes you and money is power, wealth can be power, and that's why I talked about that kind of like expression of status, that projecting status that comes with money; because, maybe you get money and you still aren't getting some form of respect that you think you want, so some people feel the need to project that. 

Some people are like, "Oh, he's got money, he's something", and I'm wondering whether there's, in the end, the incentive structure of money or what money does to people, whether it's Bitcoin, pounds, dollars, yen, whatever the fuck it is, I wonder if humans just act the same; I wonder if we are kidding ourselves with this time preference thing because the time preference really is a lesson for accumulating Bitcoin and accumulating wealth, that if you don't rush, if you're patient, if you just stack your sats and you keep building, every four years you get that bump and at some point you get rich. 

Once to get to that point, you might not give a fuck anymore, and this Bitcoin world, it might be exactly the same on a human level and just different with different incentives based around the governance level and central banking level.

Aleks Svetski: And that's a danger and that's actually a question that I broach in this.  So, there's actually an entire chapter in the book that asked the question, "Does wealth corrupt?" and I dig into that because you look at Rome, you look at the West today.

Peter McCormack: I think power corrupts and wealth can lead to power.  Wealth can corrupt the mind maybe.

Aleks Svetski: Well, no, so think about it this way, so if you have excess material wealth and you don't need to work or pursue a mission or something like that, you generally get this case of the mind degrades because it's got nothing to push against.  Often rich people, flying around on first class and eating all the food and then eating at the airport, what do you call it, the lounge and then getting -- I just went to a conference right now which was like one of those fully inclusive conferences, and even me, someone who considers themselves pretty strict with the way I eat and all that sort of stuff, I ate like a fucking slob, and everyone there was just overeating and sort of restraint goes out the window. 

So, when you have a lot of material comfort, and the evidence is there, it's like you look at Rome, this is what happened with the Roman Senators, they became extremely materially affluent and it's said that when Rome governed by iron it was strong, but then when it started governing by gold, it became weak; that's sort of the material wealth piece, is that you end up with such a cushion that you become soft and it eats you alive. 

Then someone who is more Spartan in nature, so you look at Attila the Hun, for example, who brought the Romans to their knees, Attila and the Scythians, or the Huns at the time, I think the Romans called them the Huns, they couldn't be bought off with gold, it wasn't money that they were seeking.  Attila specifically wanted to bring down Rome and there was a whole story behind why he wanted to do that, but they were far stronger, far sharper and they did what was considered the impossible.

It was the same with the Macedonians in the early days, they were a bunch of basically mountain tribal leaders that came together until Philip and then, after Philip's death, Alexander took over, and then they basically blitzkrieged the entire Persian empire when the Persian empire, at that time, was affluent. 

So, they went from Cyrus the Great, who was the guy who unified the Persians and actually defeated the Syrians, and then I think it was like 200 years later or whatever, 300 years later, a certain number of generations, you ended up with Darius who was the guy running away from Alexander who had a 40,000-person army against what was said to be a million.  So, the Macedonians came in as missionaries who were there to take the empire whereas a lot of the people fighting on the Persian side were mercenaries, they were just sort of paid, so they didn't have to be there.

So, I think there's something about this material wealth thing which ties back into what you were saying before about do we just end up a bunch of rich turds who only care about status and don't care about anything else and then --

Peter McCormack: Maybe not just status though, Aleks.

Aleks Svetski: Comfort, status.

Peter McCormack: Comfort, consumption, money.  I've been broke and I've had money, never been rich but I've had the freedoms that come with money that, if I want to get on a plane, I can, or I can go and do my shopping or I can go out to a nice restaurant, maybe just life gets easier for these people and that's what I'm saying. 

We talk about, most bitcoiners, they talk about come for gains, stay for the revolution; I like come from the revolution and stay for the gains.  Either work, but there is always that kind of idea that your material wealth is going to massively increase, and everyone enjoys the price going up of Bitcoin, right; why?

Aleks Svetski: Well, because it does make things easier. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: So, this is why I draw from the whole warrior culture thing, is like in a warrior culture, ease is not valued, adversity is valued.  I'll use the Samurais as an example.  In Samurai culture in the feudal culture in Japan, you sort of had the Emperor, then you had the Shogun when he existed.  Then you have had the Daimyos who were kind of like the noble lords that served the Shogun.  Then you had the Samurai, they were the warrior class.  Then you had the artisans, you had the peasants, you had the merchants underneath the peasants, and then you had the Eta who were like the ones who were considered the dirty people, so they would deal with the dead and everything like that.

The merchants were sort of despised by the Samurai and the upper classes because the merchants, they would sell their word or they would sell their mother for wares, they were traders, whereas Samurai believed in the reputational currency of honour, more than reputation; I think reputation is like a subset of honour.  You couldn't buy a Samurai off, that was the whole point; they actually had a disdain for this idea of material wealth.  So, warrior classes try and value these other things that material wealth cannot buy.

Peter McCormack: But at a time where material wealth can buy some people and not others, how did they come to be that they, as a group of people, held these virtues; and why did the warrior class die off?

Aleks Svetski: As a class?  Yeah, so there's a whole thing here.  First of all, feudalism lasted the longest in Japan than anywhere else, so feudalism fell apart in the West right around the French Revolution, probably a little bit earlier in England and things like that.  In Japan, it didn't finish up until the late 1800s, and the class structure and the hierarchy in Japan, there are still echoes of the feudal nature in Japan and that's why I think you get a lot more of this cultural respect and politeness and that sort of stuff because a lot of this Bushido code in Japan, it impacted the cultural norms in Japan.

Now, why did it last so long?  So, I mean it guess it worked in Japan, it really, really worked.  There was this particular warrior class that essentially not really policed but they were the -- to be a Samurai, you're meant to behave and act in a way that embodied these virtues, it didn't mean that you just had a fucking sword and you could chop someone down.  There were things that you needed to work on and things that you needed to embody, and those virtues included courage, honour, compassion, respect, loyalty.  You look at how some of these things manifested, if you dishonoured yourself as a Samurai, for example, really, really think about what that actually means, is you did the wrong thing, and to claim back your honour, you would give your life and do it in such a way that it was --

Peter McCormack: Fucking painful!

Aleks Svetski: -- painful and you would disgrace yourself if you showed pain in your face.

Peter McCormack: Really?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, that was their point.

Peter McCormack: I didn't even know that bit.

Aleks Svetski: Exactly.

Peter McCormack: You had to fall on your sword without any expression of pain?

Aleks Svetski: Correct, without screaming, without any of that sort of stuff.

Peter McCormack: And were you considered to have saved face in such a scenario?

Aleks Svetski: Correct, and then that's how you brought your honour back and your family would be spared from being wiped out or whatever the case was.  It brings some sort of chills down my spine at the moment just thinking about it and talking about it, that is lost today and it was particularly lost as we transitioned from a world that went from the feudal structure into what we sort of have today, this capitalist, money first, material first sort of world that we live in and we've thrown away a lot of that.

Now mind you, some of these virtues and values have found their way into the business world, so people who are generally thought of in high regard in the business world, people who keep their word, for example, who do the right thing, who don't backstab either their partners or do the wrong thing by their competitors and stuff like that or who don't rip off their customers or who don't pour cheap chemicals and say that it's something else. 

There is a reputational value, there is a level of honour in some business operations, and those people we come to respect, naturally, we come to buy their products more, etc.  But there is sort of mix with people who will forget about that and they'll try and make money at all costs and screw the virtues, screw the morality and whatever, and we see the results of that.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: One kind of pathway actually makes the world worse; the other pathway makes the world better.  We've gone off on some tangent.

Peter McCormack: Well, no, so I want to go back to that Samurai thing.  What was the role of the Samurai in the society; was it an army?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, they were the knights basically.

Peter McCormack: So, would you not say that the consistent thing here is that it's to do with armies, whether it's the Marine Corps right now, the Samurais, whichever one it is, and there's like an understanding that for an army to be effective to has to have some form of discipline, and that discipline is based around specific rules, specific virtues, some form of brotherhood?  You can talk about the saving the honour of a Samurai falling on his sword but you can also talk about the Marine Corps, "We will not leave one man behind".

Aleks Svetski: "And death before the sun, I'll take a bullet".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so is this not really a soldier class that has existed through any form of army, that there needs to be a discipline with an army for an army to be able to fight; is that not what we're just talking about there?  But outside of that, you have a functioning society which has its own culture outside of the army.  I'm not going to operate like a Marine Corps soldier, I should maybe because I would get in shape and I'd have better discipline, I'd eat better food and I'd sleep better, but these are armies.

Aleks Svetski: But see, that's my point there.  So, my whole thesis is that if we, in civilian culture, adopted some of these virtues, I believe civilian culture would get stronger and not degrade and turn into the weak men bring bad times.  I think that's the thing, is that we think it should be reserved for the warrior class, and now that we're in a time of peace and we don't need war anymore, and war is bad and all that sort of stuff, we can do away with the whole warrior culture, the warrior ideology, and what do we become?  We become fat slobs who don't believe in reputation or morality or honour or any of that sort of stuff, and then the world decays and turns into shit basically.

Peter McCormack: We're talking about good parenting as well.

Aleks Svetski: Exactly, good parenting.  A parent should be trying to inculcate better virtues in their children from a young age and not do whatever the hell parents are doing today, which is a whole political thing that I probably don't want to get into here.  You basically answered it, the highest virtues are found in those environments, the warrior environments, because you are actually at the edge.

Peter McCormack: Well, it might cost you your life or it might cost you a comrade's life, it might cost you a war, it might cost you your homeland.

Aleks Svetski: Stakes are as high as they get.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  And then when you talk about it does exist within business, it's a similar scenario.  I know, as an employer, I have to treat my staff well, I have to put their interests first and they will work hard for the business.  I know if I shake a hand on a deal, I should keep my honour otherwise that person won't do business with me again.

Aleks Svetski: Correct, yes.

Peter McCormack: But it seems like outside of armies, business, like general civilisation, no one gives a fuck because it doesn't really matter.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, and that's the sad part and that's what I'm trying to put forth.

Peter McCormack: But there are also other screwy incentives.

Aleks Svetski: For example?

Peter McCormack: Like the incentives of media to lie and spit out propaganda to sell advertising, that exists which corrupts us all.

Aleks Svetski: Totally.

Peter McCormack: There's a lot of corrupting influences on our mind.

Aleks Svetski: There is, and this is part of if your North Star is just to make money, for example, or to increase your material wealth, if that's your own North Star, if it's just Number Go Up, for example, I think that you end up with a world where you're skewed towards where we are now with media and all this sort of stuff, it's just sell the next thing and squeeze the maximum amount of juice you can out of everything like that. 

It's hard for me to say this because I'm such just a proponent of capitalism, Austrian Economics and all this sort of stuff; praxeology is at the centre of all human behaviour, that needs to be recognised, but see, that's on the material realm.  What I'm sort of grappling with in this book is like is there something that is not on the material realm? 

Steven Pressfield who wrote The War of Art and a whole bunch of others; my favourite book from him, by far, is The Virtues of War, it's a fictional book where he writes about basically Alexander the Great's exploits through Persia and everything; it's fucking fantastic.  I wouldn't even recommend reading it, I'd just recommend just get the audible and just listen to that; you won't be able to put it down, you'll listen to the whole six hours.

Peter McCormack: Okay, what is it?

Aleks Svetski: The Virtues of War.

Peter McCormack: The Virtues of War?

Aleks Svetski: Yeah.  You get a flavour.  It's historic fiction but it's real but obviously the words and what's being said throughout is different, but there are real anecdotes.  There was a famous story about Alexander the Great coming back from India with his army crossing the desert, and he had had his lung punctured from an arrow because he was the first one to climb over the fucking wall, and this is the king, right; imagine Joe Biden going and doing this today, it's just not going to happen.  So, he's the first one climbing over the wall and encouraging his men, through his honour, through his courage, and that fires them up to climb and do the same, and his lung gets punctured and he almost dies. 

Anyway, he survives that, and then on the way back, still sick and barely breathing, with a punctured lung, through the fucking desert, everyone's dying of starvation, there's no water, they're running out of food and everything, a couple of soldiers find some water somewhere and they kind of like put it in a helmet and they carry it back like half a mile or a mile or whatever through the cavalcade to him so that he can drink; they're like guarding it with their swords and everything and they pass it over to him. 

He takes it, he looks at them and looks at the army, he lifts it and he spills the water out into the desert and the whole army erupts in this idea of, "If that's the king that's leading us, there's no way we're ever going to lose"; he's willing to face adversity and go through everything that they're going through, and that's real leadership.  But that kind of leadership you develop through adversity, through facing that sort of stuff and through trying to develop and inculcate these sorts of values. 

Peter McCormack: But that's what you do as a parent as well.

Aleks Svetski: Correct.

Peter McCormack: You face adversity so life isn't as hard for your children but you take something away from them by not giving them that adversity.

Aleks Svetski: Yes. 

Peter McCormack: It's a real paradox.

Aleks Svetski: It is hard.  This goes into a conversation of rites of passage, which there's a whole section in the book about rites of passage, but we have forgotten about these rites of passage that kids used to go through, particularly boys.  When they had to go from sort of the age of 13, 14 and become men, they became men far younger than we become men today; we become men at fucking 30 today, still living with our parents and still going to fucking university and all this sort of stuff.  We behave like kids for an extended period of time.

In the ancient times, or in these warrior cultures and everything, there was kid and then there was man, there was no adolescent phase, or the adolescent phase might have been a year or something like that; that was the rite of passage.  We've got adolescents now that are fucking from the age of 16 until the age of 30.

Peter McCormack: 44!

Aleks Svetski: There you go.  So, I don't think that's healthy for civilisation.

Peter McCormack: No, I agree.

Aleks Svetski: It's really not.  What parents need to think about is what sort of rites of passage can give their children adversity such that it forces them to grow?  Probably the most famous rite of passage that people might know of is the Agoge which was the Spartans, they took the kids at I think it was 7 years old and then they had to fight and live and fend for themselves until they became men basically.  I'm not saying go take your kid and go through him out in the fucking forest now and say, "All right, come back".

Peter McCormack: "Find your way home!"

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, "Find your way home", that's probably not functional, but something of that order or something of that flavour, and maybe not at the age of 7, maybe at the age of 13 or something like that where they're starting to come of age or come to a point in time where they need to actually start to grow up.

Peter McCormack: Pick up a fucking shovel!

Aleks Svetski: Pick up a shovel, that's it.

Peter McCormack: "Start digging, boy".

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, "Build something with your hands, do something".

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: "Go and fight", particularly for boys, they should go and fight when they're younger, they should go do some Jujitsu, get punched in the face; it's that classic Mike Tyson one, everyone's got plans until they get punched in the face.  So, that sort of stuff needs to be done and the young men need to learn discipline. 

I used to be totally against things like military service and everything like that, but you look at Switzerland, there's something about the flavour of the way Switzerland was run which seems to make sense, and hey, there's military service there still, and maybe that is what you need to do as a young man to learn these sort of virtues, and then you go and apply these virtues in other areas of your life.

Peter McCormack: Military service is part of your education growing up.

Aleks Svetski: Correct.

Peter McCormack: You do your maths, history, geography at school, your military service teaches you discipline.  I think a lot of this comes down to discipline.

Aleks Svetski: Well, yeah.

Peter McCormack: And mental strength.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, discipline is the act of practising these virtues and inculcating.  Also, you don't want to become someone who, for example, and this is why there are 11 virtues in here and not 3, you don't want to become someone who's too overdeveloped in justice, for example.  The Samurai talk about this, justice is kind of like the framework, if you think of a body, like you've got the skeleton, justice is sort of the skeleton, but benevolence or compassion or magnanimity is like the flesh; you can't have one without the other.  So, if you're too justice-oriented you basically become like the "Nazi", so everything's black and white, so you need to temper it with compassion.  But then you need courage as well, so you need this sort of whole well-roundedness. 

In the Japanese culture, there were generally 8 virtues, and they were never written down, it was a moral code that was passed by word and represented through action, through how your elders behaved, but I've got 11 because I added a few in there; I think responsibility, moving forward, I think is extraordinarily important.  I know a lot of bitcoiners are liberty or freedom maximalists, I'm trying to teach myself to become a responsibility maximalist because I think that's, if not just as important, as important as freedom.  If you want to actually take people's freedom away, take away their responsibilities first, which is what's really happened over the last 50 years, especially over the last couple of years.  You take away their responsibility for themselves, and as you do that, they have no more freedom because they become dependants.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: So, responsibility I threw in there, I threw in excellence as well because I think that is so important in the world moving forward, is that we have such an anti-excellence bent, and this is one of the things that pisses me off about democracy, it pooh-poohs excellence and it reveres the average or the participation award; the participation award, I think, killed the --

Peter McCormack: I disagree, I disagree with participation awards, I think they're bullshit, but I disagree that democracy does away with excellence.

Aleks Svetski: It does, it really does, it hurts excellence because the perception is one of the collective or the public is revered, democracy is the doing away with nobility and aristocrats and all that sort of stuff.  Now, in doing so through, what actually democracies create is they create power vacuums in those positions and then the parasites actually just go in there and then they convince everybody that it's okay to be a Plebeian, it's okay to be average, it's okay to be just another number, so that way they kind of mask --

Peter McCormack: I think the media does a lot of that as well.

Aleks Svetski: Well, of course the media does that because the media is a very useful tool in a democracy.

Peter McCormack: I think brands do it as well, I think brands have seen the virtue of promoting average.

Aleks Svetski: Totally, but see brands are downstream culture though.

Peter McCormack: But all these comes back to incentives.  Okay, look, better thing to say, this is fine, how do we get there; what do you see that needs to change?  It's almost like a collective change needs to happen, but that means a coordination.

Aleks Svetski: No, no, no.  Yeah, so I'm still definitely Austrian and libertarian in coordination, so my position is, be the change you want to see in the world, sort of thing.  What that means is, if you are a bitcoiner and if you are one of these people that will likely see a disproportionate increase in your social and economic status, then you don't have to worry too much about money; what you actually have to worry about is becoming a virtuous person, so you should build that in yourself.

Peter McCormack: Why should you?  I'm testing you because you're saying you should but why should you?  If I, as a free man, don't want to, I just want to be a fat slob who drives around in a Lambo, why shouldn't I?

Aleks Svetski: Okay, yeah, fair.  If you agree that things like time preference and lowering time preference are a good thing, if you agree that there are problems in the world today that we live in an age of weak men create bad times, if you agree that we need to hold ourselves to better standards, be more responsible, seek greater excellence, and if you agree that these kind of virtues are important to embody, then you should.  If you don't, if you're of the opinion that you should be a fat slob and you should just spend all that sort of stuff, then --

Peter McCormack: No, it's not that.  So, I agree I should and I want to, but I can't be bothered.  I'm not saying I am that, I'm just saying how does this happen?

Aleks Svetski: I'm trying to get clear on your question, because if you agree that it's good, then you should do it. 

Peter McCormack: But what I'm saying is money makes life comfortable, makes life easier.  There are a lot of distractions I can imagine coming with money.  If I was worth £20 million, Aleks, I could tell you where I start spending that money, I'll have these great holidays, and then these become distractions from being that person.  What I'm trying to say to you, I think the point I'm trying to get is maybe nothing changes, it's just a different money and there's a transition of wealth from one group to another, and the next group is just the same.

Aleks Svetski: Possibly.  Okay, so there are two parts to that thing that I think you're asking me here, is like why should I?  I could just go on holidays, I could just eat whatever I want, I can just be fat, lazy and I've got everything I want, I can just get hookers and coke and do whatever I want, and you could, but we all know what that sort of path leads to, it leads to --

Peter McCormack: Happiness?!

Aleks Svetski: Maybe fleeting happiness in the moment, that's what I mean.  So, you pay a longer-term price for the shorter-term thing, and this is, again, you mentioned about the Oreos, like you eat the Oreos now, you feel good and then later you feel like shit.

Peter McCormack: Maybe it's humans, that's how we are, maybe our brain is taught that way.

Aleks Svetski: No.

Peter McCormack: Well, no, it is, if you think about the evolution of humans and animals, it was about food, food was the number one thing every day, "Where do I get my food?" and then we found ways to collect food, and then we found a way to collect possessions, and then, when you have money, you've made all that easier.

Aleks Svetski: You've got all the food you could ever want.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Aleks Svetski: It's solved your problem.

Peter McCormack: And I want a world of people who are virtuous who have lived by a very strong moral code who are good parents, but for some reason it's not happening, and that's what I'm trying to get to.  I'm agreeing with you but at the same time kind of cynical about whether we will actually see any change.

Aleks Svetski: Okay.  So, the tendency is to fall into entropy, entropy is fucking easy, it's just sit back and do nothing.  So the question is, is there a higher calling for us; and I believe there is.  You watch someone perform a great feat, just even the sense of inspiration, like you fucking bought a football team, how does it make you feel when they have performed excellent or they've fucking put in sacrifice, training and everything and they actually win something?

Peter McCormack: Love it, man, there's no greater feeling in the world, love it.

Aleks Svetski: There you go, so that's what I'm talking about.  So, it's like we have that inside us and that's kind of the balancing force against entropy.  So, entropy is like this idea of just don't anything but that's not inspiring, so we sort of have this spark inside us that incentivises us in the opposite direction, but we actually have to exert effort or exert energy to move in that direction.

This whole philosophy of a warrior ethic is that you recognise that, and I'm sorry but you fucking force yourself to get up and actually practise the things that you have to practise.  If you want to be the best football player, you're going to have to go out and fucking kick goals, you're going to have to go out and practise, you're going to have go out and do sprints, you're going to have exert the effort even when you don't want to.  If you want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and fucking win Mr Olympia eight times you have to get in the gym and you have to lift weights, so this is a call to do that.

Now, to your point, will people do that; will that happen on a Bitcoin standard?  I have some hope because one of the issues we have in the current standard is that because material wealth, like the money, is just able to be printed by someone, you end up getting a skewing of the game.  It's like if we're playing poker and a good poker player is prudent, doesn't go all-in all the fucking time, reads the game, he actually tries to employ a bunch of skill in the process of playing the game, but if one of the players on the table was just going in all the fucking time, going all-in every single time, but whether he went all-in and fucking lost or won, the dealer just gave him a bunch more chips.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Aleks Svetski: So the game's rigged like that. 

Peter McCormack: What are you talking about; government?

Aleks Svetski: Correct.  So what happens to the game is that, if you're someone smart on the fucking table, instead of playing a smart poker game or a prudent poker game which might actually involve some of these virtues, prudence, patience, etc, you'll actually make friends with this dude and say, "Look, I'll fucking do something for you but you give me some of your chips each time you go in and we'll both do something here".  So, it changes the incentives of the game for them to become friends with that.

Now, on a Bitcoin standard, so to sort of tie this altogether, is why I think living on a Bitcoin standard may actually help here is that, if you are a rich elite and you just go and get fat, become a slob, whatever, the chances are that because we have a fixed amount of money and the money filters through, younger, hungrier, more prudent people or individuals or groups of people might actually outcompete you and actually suck the amount of Bitcoin and bring it over.  That may create a scenario where you might actually have an incentive to adapt your behaviour because you're losing money, you're burning it and you can't just print it from someone and you just can't use political methodology to bail out your poor decision-making. 

So, that's my hope, so that's why I think something might, but I still think we can't just rely purely on the economic incentives, and this is why I'm writing this whole thing which is, "Hey, bitcoiners, we're talking about low time preference, we're talking about being better individuals, we're talking about revolution".  There's actually more that we have to develop than just getting the economics piece fixed up, we actually have to start to embody, practice, inculcate these virtues and we need to develop a praxis, so a set of practices, around trying to develop these.

I've put forward 11, someone might disagree, they might say, "Well, no, I don't think excellence is a good virtue", or whatever the fuck they might, build your own fucking set of virtues and develop those, but we have to do something and it doesn't need to be enforced -- you mentioned before, like a coordination level or a government level or something, no, you need to be the change you need to see in the world, you need to develop this for you and you should be doing this for yourself.  You should be going out and inculcating it into your children if you want them to continue your lineage and actually have, I would argue, a higher possibility of economic and personal success in the future if they were to have these values and also have sound money, is sort of my theory.

Peter McCormack: Well, I do agree with you, I'm always beating myself up about these things, Aleks, all the time, like I should be better, I should do better, make better decisions, be a better person, I do.  When I hear you talk about the warrior class, I think there is a bit of a contradiction in that with who you are as well, in that a warrior class is a form of army, and an army is an expression of a state of some kind; it is a group of people, collectively, working together.  So, whether they are within a geography or going into a new geography, it is a state, and as somebody who is libertarian, that doesn't work for you. 

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, it's a challenging one.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's a really challenging one because what you're saying is the thing you like is the thing you are against.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, I think there's a big misconception and I'm evolving my position.

Peter McCormack: Oh, you've become a statis cuck?!

Aleks Svetski: Maybe.

Peter McCormack: Listen, the point I'm trying to get to is that when people are like, "Pete, you're a statis cuck", it's like, "No, I believe in democracy".  I don't think we have democracy right now; I think we have crony capitalism; I think we have a corrupt system where the incentives are completely fucking screwed, but on a sound money standard, the centralising force that helps coordinate society and maybe educates people, it cannot print money, you cannot have, and certainly to the levels we have now, the kind of corruption and crony capitalism and perverse incentives, they kind of hopefully go away. 

So, within that, then maybe there is a change to the education system or the way we educate.  That is what is my hope, is that that's what we get from this, that we become a better functioning society that within that, we as humans, we realise we have to pick up a shovel and we have to teach someone to pick up a shovel and we have to a teach a moral framework to live by.  Look, I'm not religious but I love the moral frameworks that religions have.

Aleks Svetski: Totally.

Peter McCormack: So, I know myself, I have to do this myself for my children, I have to teach them now, but I see so many other children, they're not going to be taught this right now because they're not open to this.  So, I believe in what you're saying, I've had to pull all the different threads on it.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, there are big outstanding questions like, okay, all these virtues are important, etc, so how do you do this?  I think this is sort of where we have to sort of think through, how do I put it, how do you try and emulate, without having to go out and essentially kill each other in battle, how do we emulate some of that stuff? 

There's a lot of cool shit happening in the subcultures of the manosphere, there's a lot of Christian-oriented men's groups growing, and when men hang around with men and they have some sort of mission, that mission could be to develop more courage or to develop more self-control or to do all this sort of stuff, they either inspire or they shame each other into becoming better and they actually drive each other up; it's the whole iron sharpens iron thing.  I think that's a far better, more grassroots method of doing this.  We kind of used to do that, obviously, in battle, but that's sort of evolved to doing it in the café or the pub, like we would talk about ideas and we would push each other.  Those sorts of associations are really important and associations of women doing their own thing. 

The feminine nature and the masculine nature are very different; the masculine grows through competition, the feminine grows through praise, so that they have their own thing to do, so I'm more speaking in a masculine dimension here.  If you were to hang around, like if your friends group was a bunch of, say, people that were more like me in a physical capacity, that were really strict with how they eat and when they train and all this sort of stuff, and you hung out with that kind of a group for a year, you wouldn't have this fucking problem anymore; you've get fucking shamed, you'd get pushed.

Peter McCormack: I get shamed daily being a fat --

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, but on fucking Twitter.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I'm saying, look, it still hits you.

Aleks Svetski: It does, but see, you need to actually be in an environment, like you need your little tribe.  If you want to fix this, you need to be in a small fucking tribe that is where you want to be.

Peter McCormack: I don't agree, I think I need self-discipline.

Aleks Svetski: Yeah, but that's how you build the self-discipline, you need to be in an environment of self-discipline with other men that you respect; because when you get bashed on Twitter, for example, the way you'll rationalise it in your head is, "They're fucking losers, fuck them".

Peter McCormack: No, it's not that, it's not, it's just the makeup of my lifestyle isn't one that allows me to do it; I work long hours, I've got too many businesses.

Aleks Svetski: So, the thing is you're just valuing something else.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and that's what it is and that's why I'm trying to shift it; step one, no alcohol, did it, step two was actually today, step two, today, I decided to drop all coffee and go to water.

Aleks Svetski: Okay, well done.

Peter McCormack: Drunk water all the way down, I'm going to do that for a month, and I'm gradually, just one step at a time, I am going to shift this.

Aleks Svetski: You need partners to do it with, that's what's going to keep you on the path.  If you try and do it yourself, completely lone soldier, you'll fall off the bandwagon at some point.

Peter McCormack: We will see about that, son, we will see about that, mate, let's see if I can do it.  Conscious we're coming to an end of our time; I forgot how long you and I can rattle on for.  How do you want to finish this out?  Close this out for us and then tell the listeners that you want them to --

Aleks Svetski: Okay, so I think the premise of this book, so someone asked me, they said, "What the fuck do we need another Bitcoin book for?  We've heard about the history of money many times".

Peter McCormack: This isn't a Bitcoin book.

Aleks Svetski: Exactly.  So, this isn't a Bitcoin book, it's called The Bushido of Bitcoin and it's a call to that specific class of people because that's where my audience is, but this is me trying to say, "Hey, there are other things that we need to also work on", and if this has been of interest and you think that there's something valuable to read here, and particularly if you like history and shit like that --

Peter McCormack: Buy the fucking book.

Aleks Svetski: Buy the fucking book, basically, but depending on when this goes out, I'm going to do a Kickstarter on it.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Aleks Svetski: So, if people are listening to this during the Kickstarter, please come and support.  Actually, we're going to do an experiment, so if there are bitcoiners listening to this, you can support on Geyser, and so I'm going to do it on Geyser and Kickstarter simultaneously, and we're going to try and do an experiment to see which platform actually raises more money for the book.

Peter McCormack: Well, we will put that all in the show notes.  I will definitely check it out, everyone else, go check it out if you like it.  Yeah, we needed Danny here, this is weird not having Danny.  So, you actually see how important Danny is these days; Danny rules the show, man.  Aleks, always good to see, man.

Aleks Svetski: Good to see you, buddy.

Peter McCormack: See you in London.

Aleks Svetski: Thank you.

Peter McCormack: And yeah, catch up soon.

Aleks Svetski: Absolutely.