Andrew L. Wilson is an Author and Professor of History of Christianity as well as host of The Disentanglement Podcast, exploring privacy tech and the surveillance state.
We discuss in detail severals books about the origin of the state and money, including James C Scott’s, “Seeing Like A State”, Rees-Mogg and Davidson’s “The Sovereign Individual”, and David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”.
We discover some interesting parallels between the unconfiscatable nature of Bitcoin and the origins of state power with its ability to tax easily countable grain crops versus something like a potato which grows underground.
We also talk about the history of the printing press as it relates to inflation within the church, and Andrew's personal proof of work undertaking a 1000-mile pilgrimage in the footsteps of Martin Luther from Germany to Rome.
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Links:
Here I Walk: A Thousand Miles on Foot to Rome with Martin Luther Andrew L. Wilson - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28280211-here-i-walk
The Disentanglement Podcast - https://podcastindex.org/podcast/5245113
libgen.is - The Pirate Bay for literature
The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature by Gilbert Highet - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1731808.The_Classical_Tradition
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20186.Seeing_Like_a_State
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34324534-against-the-grain
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. , - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/164154.A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6617037-debt
The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/82256.The_Sovereign_Individual
The Network State - https://thenetworkstate.com/
e-Residency of Estonia - https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/
Mother Earth Mother Board by Neal Stephenson - https://archive.is/19Msi
Andrew Begin is Director of Marketing at Galoy, a company building Bitcoin-native banking infrastructure for organisations. We talk about Galoy’s Bitcoin projects including the open-source Blink Wallet, made popular through Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador. I learn about the vision for the product as well as its Stablesats functionality and how this work. We discuss the power of communities taking ownership of their financial infrastructure, and the opportunities for grassroots Bitcoin adoption in Africa and Latin America. Finally we talk briefly about permaculture and regenerative farming and the connections with Bitcoin thinking.
I talk with Rob Clarkson about scaling Bitcoin’s Layer 2 Lightning protocol, and how changes happen to Bitcoin more generally. Rob provides a technical introduction to some of the proposals such as ELTOO, APO, CTV, and we talk a bit about what covenants and vaults mean in Bitcoin.
I talk with Rigel Walshe, who gave a speech at the Baltic Honeybadger conference this year titled “Bitcoin as a Religious Phenomenon”. We explore this topic and how in many ways Bitcoin provides meaning and purpose in a chaotic world. Whether it is the rapid growth in local bitcoin meetups post-covid, the spread of ideas such as self-sovereignty and rules for moral action, or the state of Bitcoin Culture on Twitter, the development of the social layer of Bitcoin is undeniable in recent years.
I talk with Kevin Whitmore from Callaghan Innovation. We discuss payment innovations with the Lightning network, Bitcoin, Nostr, and more. I am encouraged to see an interest in Bitcoin technology from the New Zealand Government. I welcome Callaghan’s approach of objectively looking at everything that comes their way and making judgements based on first principles. Ultimately having a vehicle like Kevin’s work at Callaghan Innovation could be one of the ways New Zealand becomes a first mover in adopting Bitcoin. I am quietly encouraged to see the label "Web3" reclaimed by genuinely decentralised tech such as Nostr, Lightning Zaps, and Fedi.