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This is an opinion editorial by Logan Bolinger, an attorney and author of a free weekly newsletter on the intersection of Bitcoin, macroeconomics, geopolitics, and law.
“I’m more interested in asking the question, is the world we want to live in one where we need to hyper-finance every aspect of an individual’s life because macro-level financial conditions are such that you have to finance your entire being in order to keep up or get ahead? Is that really a victory for democracy and for the kind of psycho-spiritual well-being for all of us and the lives we want to live? Compared to something like Bitcoin, that’s a defunding force that basically says because we think a world could be better where you can actually save money and not just have to spend it or invest or speculate on some things, would that be? unlock ways for you to feel more fulfilled or satisfied as a person and then be able to pursue other things? I think ultimately the end of Bitcoin is that we all collectively think less about money and more about other things that interest us.”
I made these statements in a recent episode from the “What Bitcoin Did” podcast in a discussion of Bitcoin and the ways I believe it can catalyze positive change in our inner lives, in contrast to the contemporary state of Web 3.
We frequently discuss and theorize about the ways in which Bitcoin can reshape or reconfigure our external realities, be they political, monetary, legislative, etc. But I don’t think enough attention is paid to how Bitcoin can initiate a similar monumental reshaping of our inner lives, a process that, taken together, can lead to a trickle down. up of priorities and values.
I want to talk about two different conceptions of freedom to illustrate why I think we focus so much on one of them. When people describe themselves as “freedom maximalists,” they are primarily referring to the idea of negative freedom, a freedom of intrusive external restrictions. This kind of freedom is obviously of paramount and fundamental importance. Without freedom from certain external constraints, the meaningful pursuit of self-actualization, what we would call positive freedom, is difficult if not impossible to achieve.
We tend to focus so much on the negative aspects of the freedom of Bitcoin that we fail to fully appreciate the positive freedom that Bitcoin facilitates. Which is to say that we are so obsessed with the ways in which Bitcoin avoids external intrusions or restrictions (freedom of) that we do not explore the ways in which Bitcoin can create an environment that allows us to more rigorously seek the highest expression of ourselves (freedom a).
[N.B. for my humanities/philosophy friends: Yes, I am drawing on the work of Isaiah Berlin with these positive/negative freedom terms]
I would argue that liberty maximalism is not being met sustainably in the long run, because it’s not really an end state. It is a necessary liminal stance, a means to achieve a certain environment in which positive freedom can be exercised productively. However, negative freedom without positive freedom is like having an infinite number of TV channels but having no idea what you want to watch. It’s like having the freedom to pursue what you want without any way of determining what you really want to pursue or what is worth pursuing.
Americans are particularly in tune with ideas of negative liberty, but they are not particularly adept when it comes to positive liberty. We can see this everywhere, including in the Bitcoin space. Whether one makes a living, builds a following, or builds an entire identity around being a “freedom maximalist,” one’s livelihood and sense of self depend on the continued existence of external constraints for one to denounce. One can unknowingly (and mostly unconsciously) become the bird that has come to love its cage, as author Lewis Hyde once wrote about irony.
So while the maximalism of freedom (negative freedom) is vitally important, we must also seek and prioritize what my wife has aptly coined. intentionality maximalism (positive freedom), which is a perspective and a way of living our inner life. Bitcoin doesn’t get enough credit for its ability and potential to foster this kind of introspective change.
What does intentionality maximalism look like in our everyday experience of life? A prominent example is our relationship with the rampant consumerism endemic in a fiat monetary system.
Let me share some statistics that illustrate just how distorted this relationship has become:
According to the Los Angeles Times, there are 300,000 items in the average American home.
By nprthe average size of the American household has nearly tripled in the last 50 years.
Yet one in ten Americans rents off-site storagewhich is the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry in the last four decades.
British research found that the average 10-year-old boy owns 238 toys but plays with only 12 a day.
The average American family spends $1,700 on clothing annually while pulling, on average, 65 pounds of clothing by year.
You get the idea. There is virtually no end to the data showing the absurd amount of shit we own and the increasing space (physical and mental) that shit takes up.
Americans are consuming more than ever.
Source: FRED
Despite the fact that their purchasing power does not grow significantly.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What explains this? One factor is that we measure our economic health by how much we spend, a uniquely fiduciary and Keynesian way of measuring economic vitality. Consumer spending is about 70% of GDP. If we spend less, the metric we use to measure economic health falls.
There’s also the fact that we’re seeing more ads than ever before.
But more importantly, there’s a huge pervasive time preference that I think is part of the very fabric of our culture.
This is where I think Bitcoin comes into play. Much of this rat race consumption orgy is high time preference behavior incentivized by the fiat monetary system, which guarantees that your money loses value over time. Since your purchasing power is sand in an hourglass, and since you work harder than ever to keep up, consumer spending serves both a practical and reassuring purpose. In other words, we are incentivized to spend because not spending or investing means our money just hangs around and loses value. And if we work so hard, many of us in jobs we don’t particularly enjoy, just to keep up, shouldn’t we also buy all the cool new stuff to feel like it’s all worth it?
If we get away from some of the rat race stuff, it opens up space for us to think less about money, which means we can be more intentional about everything else. Hence the idea of maximalism of intentionality. Somehow we claim our positive freedom, our freedom to seek the maximum expression of ourselves. Bitcoin, in my opinion, is ultimately about finding a sustainable alternative to the rat race model.
It’s really a contrast of values. Consumerism is a value of the fiat system. It’s literally a value, as we measure economic health largely by measuring consumption, and also an entrenched mode of behavior. By discouraging mindless, thoughtful consumption and incentivizing lower time preference, Bitcoin, if it continues to grow in adoption, offers the promise of a cultural foreground of deeper things such as fulfilling activities, relationships, creativity, community contribution, presence etc
When it comes to this inner transformation, this maximalism of intentionality, and the ways in which Bitcoin moves us in that direction, I believe that Bitcoin shares some fundamental principles with minimalism, a movement that has long and deep roots, but has been gaining momentum. most popular boost. in the last decade or so. Advocates of minimalism, aware of the restrictions that rampant consumerism can place on our lived experience, pursue lives with fewer unnecessary and unused possessions to reclaim the freedom and mastery over one’s life and the space to pursue what is important. That is, the search for a more intentional life.
Joshua Fields Millburn, co-founder of losminimalistas.comdescribes minimalism as “that which takes us beyond things so that we can make room for the important things in life, which are not stuff absolutely.”
The promise of Bitcoin, to borrow Millburn’s articulation, is to be the money that, through its strength, allows us to stop thinking about money all the time so that we can make room for the important things in life, which tend to get lost, neglect , and/or sacrificed in consumption and the systematically coerced search for more and more money.
We spend a lot of time thinking about money (how to get it, how to get more of it, how to make it grow, how to keep up with inflation, how to invest it, how to spend it, what to spend it on, how to get rich quick, how to pay the bills, etc.). . And to some extent this will always be true. I am not advocating the Platonic form of communism here.
But when money does not hold its value, when it is continually debased, when sovereign debt is so huge that it must be inflated, and when a country’s economic health is measured by how much it consumes, it creates an environment in which money is virtually everything. what we think.
This is why I have been so critical/skeptical of some of the proposals in other corners of the crypto world, many of which seem to be looking to financialize every corner of our lives. I think this perpetuates, and perhaps intensifies, our environment of high time preference.
By contrast, the implications and downstream effects of collectively lowering our time preference, which I think necessarily implies less consumerism, simply cannot be underestimated. Imagine an entire population finally able to save money and spend more time and energy on the things that mean the most to them.
Now again, I’m not imagining some utopian end state here where we’re all singing songs around the campfire (although I do enjoy the songs and the campfires). I’m talking about giving back some headspace and presence to people who, out of necessity, have gotten used to spending every waking moment thinking about money and consumption. I’m talking about a transformation of our inner life, one that clears the space for a more intentional life. And I think an underappreciated aspect of Bitcoin is its potential to catalyze such a transformation.
So be a freedom maximalist, because it matters. But don’t stop there, because that alone won’t keep you full in the long run. Also be a maximalist of intentionality.
Many people live lives like this: forced, restricted and involuntary within a fiat system:
I think Bitcoin is about escaping from this.
This is a guest post by Logan Bolinger. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
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