{"id":7398,"date":"2022-08-21T23:36:57","date_gmt":"2022-08-21T23:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02a95161200025f2"},"modified":"2025-01-28T14:57:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:57:53","slug":"why-we-need-a-monetary-constant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/why-we-need-a-monetary-constant","title":{"rendered":"\u20bf ~ c: Why We Need A Monetary Constant"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

This is an opinion editorial by Aleks Svetski, author of \u201c<\/em>The UnCommunist Manifesto<\/em><\/a>,\u201d founder of The Bitcoin Times and Host of the \u201cWake Up Podcast with Svetski.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

If life could be described as some form of anti-entropic force, then humans could be regarded as the most advanced, complex structure that has emerged from it (at least that we\u2019re certain of).<\/p>\n

This force of \u201clife\u201d <\/em>seems to transform chaos into order. It manifests as the very edge line of this universal substance we call energy and like \u201cenergetic fingertips,\u201d it reaches for greater order. In this sense, we are the very fingertips of life.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an extraordinary thing to think about.<\/p>\n

I know I risk getting a little \u201cwoo-woo\u201d here with all the energy talk, but I do mean it seriously and in the physics-like sense of the word.<\/p>\n

We are composed of matter, which exists in a particular order. Throughout our lifetimes, we consume and transform energy, move in temporal and spatial directions of all kinds and do our best to locally defy entropy before passing the torch onto the next incarnation of life to do the same.<\/p>\n

Why? Unfortunately, this I cannot answer for you. It\u2019s my belief that we must answer that question for ourselves individually.<\/p>\n

My closest approximation is that we\u2019re part of a cosmic balance between entropy and life. You could call it light and dark, Yin and Yang, positive and negative, or heaven and hell; but do note that both will co-exist. Forever.<\/p>\n

As humans, we represent, on net, the life side of the equation. So whether we like it or not, we all possess some internal, intelligent volition to build, order, create, produce and, in some way, defy entropy.<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019d like to call this volition to order \u201cGod,\u201d \u201clife,\u201d \u201cconsciousness,\u201d \u201crandomness\u201d or \u201cintelligence,\u201d it matters not. You cannot deny its existence and if you stop for a moment, you cannot help but marvel at its defiance.<\/p>\n

So why am I talking about this?<\/p>\n

Art And Science<\/h2>\n

In The UnCommunist Manifesto<\/a>, Mark Moss and I argued that capitalism is not a \u201cpolitical modality\u201d but an organic process that all complex living species undertake. <\/p>\n

In this sense, economics is the study of capitalism. It\u2019s an attempt to try and understand this process, measure it and use the data to make better value judgements and decisions in the future.<\/p>\n

John Carvalho calls it<\/a> \u201ca game.\u201d I call it life.<\/p>\n

The goal of the game is to economize. To economize is to literally maximize the efficient and effective use of scarce resources to a particular end; survive or thrive.<\/p>\n

Humans happen to be the most adept at this game, hence why we are the apex species.<\/p>\n

Engineering As A \u201cPursuit Of The Divine\u201d<\/h2>\n

We engineer to economize.<\/p>\n

Michael Saylor argues that humans are engineers by nature. I wholeheartedly agree. It\u2019s in our DNA. Being the highest incarnations of life, we operate as vehicles for this same progressive, transformational force.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re like that nexus point between chaos and order, consistently using a combination of analysis and imagination to produce something new.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re a blend of art and science. Incredibly designed, emergent, biological and spiritual machinery that is simultaneously unique (there is nobody like you) and similar (we are all alike).<\/p>\n

As engineers and artists, we\u2019ve managed to architect the world around us using a blend of math and intuition. We use games to sharpen our skills and value-judgment processes in order to play better at the grander game of life.<\/p>\n

Each accurate intuitive leap has taken us to a new threshold of understanding, which in turn enables the conversion of our environment into a new static, higher-order pattern that is reproducible.<\/p>\n

This upward-ratcheting standardization \u2014 so long as it is not based on fairy tales, but rooted in reality \u2014 becomes a foundation upon which to build greater and greater social and physical monuments.<\/p>\n

Functional standards come in two forms:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Those which have lasted the longest time. They are known as lindy-compatible, because the longer they\u2019ve lasted, the longer they tend to last.<\/li>\n
  2. Those which are empirically, energetically or mathematically sound.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Number one and number two are often the same, but not in every case. Some standards are a little more arbitrary, for example: the QWERTY keyboard, the width of a railway gauge or 21 million bitcoin. So long as its arbitrary nature is not incongruent with some physical law, then it\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n

    In other words, the width of the chariot axle could\u2019ve been a little more or a little less than 4 foot and 8.5 inches and it wouldn\u2019t have made a difference. That alternative measurement would then have been the standard we used for railway gauges and so forth. What matters is that a consensus forms over time and becomes the standard.<\/p>\n

    The same goes for Bitcoin. I\u2019m not sure we\u2019ll ever know why 21 was the number. Maybe there is some hidden meaning (half of the answer to the ultimate question<\/a>?), maybe not. Either way, the importance lies in the fact that it is a fixed and verifiable standard.<\/p>\n

    The genesis of this standard occurred in 2009 and 13 years later, it\u2019s not just still there, but is exponentially more sound socially, economically and thermodynamically.<\/p>\n

    This is an extraordinary feat and a foundation we can build upon.<\/p>\n

    It is engineering at its finest.<\/p>\n

    Playing Pretend Leads To Poverty<\/h2>\n

    Problems arise when functional standards are ignored or when arbitrary standards are simply decreed, with no regard to the conservation of energy or the natural order of things.<\/p>\n

    \u201cYou cannot pretend your way into prosperity\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

    Politicians spend their entire lives playing the worst kind of pretend; they do so with everyone else\u2019s resources.<\/p>\n

    Therefore instead of impoverishing themselves, which would be the case in a free market, they impoverish <\/em>all of us. Worse yet, by virtue of the political apparatus, they actually enrich themselves in the process!<\/p>\n

    There\u2019s something deeply wrong with this.<\/p>\n

    But I ask you. Is it entirely their fault? Of course each individual is responsible for their actions and in time shall be held accountable, but in a world where power, economic force and macro decision making is so concentrated, does it not make sense that such actors believe that they can will their way into fixing everything?<\/p>\n

    They\u2019ve surely drunk their own Kool-Aid and, sitting atop their perch in Davos, Brussels or D.C., they see the problems of the world as a lack of their supervision and involvement.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf only they could direct us all better.\u201d If only they, like The Almighty, decreed it so, then all the problems shall be gone.<\/p>\n

    Unfortunately, reality doesn\u2019t work like this and every time we go down that path, every time we play along and pretend our way toward empty promises of prosperity, every time we build atop a lie or a false premise, our structures have come crashing down.<\/p>\n

    The time has come to change this. The point of maximum leverage in the modern age is the money.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Engineered Energy Money<\/h2>\n

    The one area where we\u2019ve never had a perfect standard \u2014 and it\u2019s about time that we do \u2014 is the money. Humans, being social, and money, being the most important social invention of all, makes it critical for us to engineer a standard that is closely representative of that which it measures.<\/p>\n

    In order for us to advance as a species<\/a>, this is a necessity.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Vaclav Smil calls energy the \u201cUniversal Currency.\u201d<\/p>\n

    I would argue, as would Saylor and many others who intuitively and viscerally understand it, that bitcoin is \u201cEnergy Money,\u201d and thus a perfect Universal Currency for use on Earth.<\/p>\n

    We\u2019ve had the zero-to-one moment for this invention. All that came before was a necessary experiment. All that will come after shall be structures built atop this bedrock discovery\/invention.<\/p>\n

    I call it that because it is both. As a species, we had to discover energy money<\/a>. It is a crucial part of a sentient species\u2019 pathway through the Great Filter.<\/a><\/p>\n

    Bitcoin is humanity\u2019s version and, although we invented it, it was something we had to discover, like electricity, the internet or the speed of light. It lives in those realms. It is the first \u201cinformation-element,\u201d as Knut Svanholm would call it.<\/p>\n

    The convex nature of what comes next is unlike anything we have seen before.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe money\u201d is the sacred ledger-in-the-sky that accounts for all energy, action, time and resources. It\u2019s the ultimate scorecard and is not just important for a society to function, but is the keystone. If that is compromised, the entire structure fails.<\/p>\n

    Achieving practical perfection of such a deep (if not the deepest) layer of the societal stack, has far reaching consequences, farther than any eye can see or mind could imagine. It shifts the very course of humanity \u2014 something I do not say lightly.<\/p>\n

    The speed of light changed everything for physics and engineering alike.<\/p>\n

    As the \u201cengineers of life,\u201d working within the overlapping realms of the physical, economic and social, we\u2019ve not had a tool like bitcoin, ever. The alchemists were in search of it for hundreds of years, long before it was a technical possibility.<\/p>\n

    They laid the philosophical groundwork for what it would be and what it would represent. <\/p>\n

    \n

    \u201cThere abides in nature a certain pure matter which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself all imperfect bodies that it touches.\u201d <\/em>\u2014 Aron Villanova, <\/em>alchemist from the 13th century<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    John Vallis discusses this in much greater detail in his magnificent piece, <\/em>\u201cMoney Messiah<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Now that we have this substance, everything changes.<\/p>\n

    Physics is how we discover universal scientific truths that we can apply to engineering.<\/p>\n

    Economics is how we examine action, incentives and what matters in order to make value judgments and decisions.<\/p>\n

    With bitcoin we have something that bridges the gap between the metaphysical nature of money and its physical, energetically-conservative reality.<\/p>\n

    Bitcoin is economics meets physics.<\/p>\n

    As such, we can apply a physics-like approach to engineering civilization locally, within a framework of value that has true consequences and delivers accurate feedback.<\/p>\n

    For the first time in human history, we have real money.<\/p>\n

    I know I sound like a raving lunatic, but this is absolutely monumental in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n

    I refer to a chart from the \u201cFire, Bitcoin, Teleportation\u201d piece I wrote for The Bitcoin Times<\/a> last year:<\/p>\n

    <\/figure>\n

    Before all the pessimistic keyboard warriors come out in force to denounce my utopianism, what I am saying does not presuppose some unicorn-laden utopia<\/a> where we\u2019re all just \u201chappy and peaceful\u201d all the time.<\/p>\n

    We\u2019ll have just as many problems, but they will be better, higher quality problems.<\/p>\n

    And this may in fact be where the true definition of evolution exists, at least in a social, \u201cintelligent\u201d or \u201cconsciousness\u201d sense. What we are striving for is not the elimination of problems (that\u2019s a load of Marxist garbage), but the enhancement of the quality of our problems.<\/p>\n

    Akin to the force of life I described earlier, we seek to reach further or, perhaps better stated: life seeks to reach further through us. As I said, we are but a vehicle, the very fingertips of life.<\/p>\n

    Monetary (B) And Physical (c) Constants<\/h2>\n

    So back to the speed of light, and its relationship to bitcoin.<\/p>\n

    We have a universal standard that we can now use as the basis of functional civilization-level engineering. I hesitate to use the term \u201csocial engineering\u201d because it comes with so many bad connotations, but the truth is, we are always going through a process of engineering our societies. The questions simply are: <\/p>\n