All Models Are Wrong

This week I spoke with  Mark Alizart, a philosopher and the author of The Climate Coup, Dogs, and most recently Cryptocommunism which has recently been translated into English  from French and published by Polity Books. In the book, Mark argues that the significance of cryptocurrencies goes well beyond cryptoanarchism. In so far as they allow us ‘to appropriate collectively the means of monetary production’, to paraphrase Marx, and to replace ‘the government of persons by the administration of things’, as Engels advocated, they form the basis for a political regime that begins to look like a communism which has at last come to fruition – a cryptocommunism.

During the interview we discuss his thoughts on whether Marx and Engels would have been interested in cryptocurrencies and where blockchain potentially fits in their narrative particularly in regards to the people taking over the function of banks and the withering of the state. We also delve into some of the topics discussed in his book like socialism's relationship with thermodynamics, how Marx and Hayek were correct and wrong about some things (but how Hayek was way more incorrect and anti-democratic), and the similarities between blockchain consensus and the Leninist's political strategy of democratic centralism in the Soviet Union.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. At the moment I’ve spent more on this 9-month old project than I’ve ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

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This week I spoke with Dr. Sarah Grace Manski, she has a PhD in Global Studies from UC Santa Barbara and is now a professor at George Mason University. On one side she’s done quite a bit of work for unions and written for Jacobin and on the other side she’s the founder of the International Society of Blockchain Scholars, Research fellow at the P2P foundation, and collaborator for RadicalxChange and Holochain.

During the interview we focus on her most recent publication in Frontiers in Blockchain, "Distributed Ledger Technologies, Value Accounting, and the Self Sovereign Identity" which talks about the downsides of capitalist value accounting practices and the blockchain projects that are looking to create alternative / regenerative value accounting systems. We also talk about how many technologists want to change the world but don't have a good framework for understanding the world, her idea around the "Global Technological Commonwealth" that would be ideal for a post-capitalist world, and the differences between DLTs like blockchain and holochain.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. At the moment I’ve spent more on this 9-month old project than I’ve ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

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This week I spoke to Chibu Ichiban, a founding member of afuturemodern, a network of coops delivering liberation tech to the masses through art, culture, and basic services. Their mission is to drive mass adoption of humanity's most radical innovations by shaping them for society's most marginalized and revolutionary communities. They leverage art, culture, service, social justice, and technology such as blockchain and artificial intelligence to the masses for the liberation of everyone, not just the few.

In the interview we talk about how weed can instigate revolution if it was legalized equitably, getting as much information on landlords as they ask of us, and how blockchain gives artists more ownership to their work If you're interested in becoming a part of the cooperative, be sure to reach out to Chibu on social media. 

More about afuturemodern

github: https://github.com/afuturemodern
donate: http://opencollective.com/afuturemodern
store: https://on.replin.com/afuturemodern
cent: https://beta.cent.co/afuturemodern
peakd: https://peakd.com/@afuturemodern
keybase: @afuturemodern
telegram: @afuturemodern
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afuturemodern/

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. At the moment I’ve spent more on this 9-month old project than I’ve ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/

Buy my book - https://linktr.ee/blockchainradicals

This week I spoke to Alleza Howitt (@aleezagroks),  a contributor to the Trustlines protocol. Trustlines is a mPoS (minimal viable Proof of Stake) sidechain to Ethereum and stores transactions for a system of decentralized mutual credit. Mutual credit is an alternative medium of exchange to most money that we use today in which "money" is created through lines of credit that are established between people who trust each other.

In this episode we discuss how Trustlines works from the smallest unit of mutual credit to an entire decentralized network of economic actors using mutual credit, why the Left should care about such an alternative monetary system, and the circumstances in which you may want to consider using this type of system yourself. If you have a community that would be interested in using decentralized mutual credit, reach out to Aleeza on Twitter and she'll help set you up!

Learn more about Trustlines
Trustlines 101
Trustlines App
Using Trustlines for time credits

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. At the moment I’ve spent more on this 9-month old project than I’ve ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/

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This week I sat down with  PhD student at the London School of Economics under David Graeber and Laura Bear in Anthropology and occasional CoinDesk contributor, Annaliese Milano (@AnnalieseMilano).

In this episode we spoke about her current research interests in public goods, or what she prefers to call public things. Her research suggests that studying blockchains and cryptocurrencies as public things which extend political communities in time and space and through which people reimagine various economic modes of collective being helps to reveal how the blockchain industry is creating fundamentally different forms of money and social relationships from what has been discussed in academia before. Examples of this including blockchain projects which create different monetary systems and even constitutions for governance on their platform.

We also discuss her other interest in personal tokens which aren't super popular yet but have definitely been growing in the blockchain space. One example of attempts at this include the NBA player Spencer Dinwiddie's attempt at tokenizing his contract on the ethereum blockchain. We also talk about some of the weirder examples of using personal tokens people are trying, discuss some of the obvious contradictions of them, and wonder if this attempt at financialization of the self is akin to slavery.

Annaliese's "public things" approach is inspired by Honig, Bonnie. “Lecture One: Democracy’s Necessary Conditions.” In Public Things : Democracy in Disrepair, 13-36. Thinking out Loud, 2017.

Link to the Community Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptoleftists/comments/hqgv3o/community_post_the_link_between_blockchain_and/

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. At the moment I’ve spent more on this 9-month old project than I’ve ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/

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For this episode I spoke with Jonathan Harris (@jonone100) aka Money Burning Guy who was recently featured as a panelist at the Consensus: Distributed conference on their panel Soft Money hosted by Joon Ian Wong and Annaliese Milano and was joined by Brett Scott, who was last episode's guest. Jonathan is the author of The Money Burner's Manual, the ultimate guide to how and why you should burn your money in a ritual sacrifice.

In the episode we discuss and make sense of Jonathan's seemingly strange ideas around money and the importance of burning it whether it be in the form of cash, cryptocurrency, or central bank digital currency (CBDC). We also talk about the Church of Burn, the cult that burns money as a sacrificial ritual which when you think about it, isn't as weird as the religion of capitalism. At the end Jonathan then leads me through my own spiritual money burning ritual where I burn my own twenty pound note (BD27 774521). For the money burning at the end, there is a patreon exclusive video where you can see the money burning ritual since on the podcast you can only listen to it.

If you want to learn more about burning your money, click here.

If you haven't already, please write a response for the community post! We need more opinions to have a robust analysis of trends within the community. It doesn't matter if you think your thoughts aren't complete, in fact you can include that as part of your response because it's important to know what areas people want to learn more about.

More on Money Burning
Church of Burn
Burning Issue magazine
Jonathan Harris' Blog

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month so you can watch the patreon exclusive video of me burning my money. At the moment I've spent more on this 9-month old project than I've ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/

Buy my book - https://linktr.ee/blockchainradicals

This week I spoke to financial activist and author of The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance Hacking the Future of Finance Brett Scott (@Suitpossum). His last book was written in response to the Occupy Wall Street protests and is a guide to the world of high finance and the emergent forms of alternative finance, alternative currencies and economic activism that are challenging it in response to the financial crisis. He has a new book forthcoming in 2021.

In this interview we speak about his ideas around the "War on Cash" and how the transition to relying on digital bank infrastructure to pay for things as opposed to cash, while largely described as an organic evolution towards a "cashless society" by mainstream media, actually has been a deliberate push by banks for efficiency gains and is an attempt to privatize the money system or what Brett calls a "bankful society." We go on to talk about where cryptocurrencies fit in this framework, how the Left should embrace going into spaces where they traditionally aren't (like finance and crypto), and how money systems come into existence largely through power hierarchies as opposed to the value of the commodity underpinning it which is a common thought ironically in both cryptocurrency and Marxist spaces. Brett also gives us a sneak peek into what his book coming out next year is about. 

More on Brett
Altered States of Monetary Consciousness
YouTube Channel
Twitter Profile

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. At the moment I've spent more on this 9-month old project than I've ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/

Buy my book - https://linktr.ee/blockchainradicals

This week I decided to do something a little bit different and go solo. For this episode I wanted to analyze the mindset and beliefs in a lot of the mainstream cryptocurrency discourse. In order to do that I wanted to use someone who is a popular figure and thought leader in the space, Erik Voorhees. Erik is the CEO of ShapeShift, an pseudo-anonymous cryptocurrency exchange turned definitely-not-anonymous cryptocurrency exchange in order to comply to new regulations. Before that he also started several bitcoin-ventures including bitcoin gambling site Satoshi Dice and was known for being one of the first people to go "full-crypto".

What probably won't be surprising is that Erik is also very openly libertarian, of the pro-capitalist variety and a lot of people in Crypto World like to listen Erik's opinions. Erik was recently in an interview for Consensus, hosted by Coindesk, one of the biggest online publications for cryptocurrency news, about the Future of Wealth and I think it provided a great window to understand the libertarian mindset a little more. Therefore I thought he would be a good case study for understanding the mind of the average crypto-libertarian.

Keep in mind that this isn't the belief of everyone, but it is for a prominent segment of the mainstream. It's important that we understand where they come from in order to create an alternative.

Sources Used
ShapeShift site
Totally not apolitical cryptocurrency book recommendations for noobies from ShapeShift
Down the Rabbit Hole Trailer
Down the Rabbit Hole Interview with Erik
Consensus Interview with Erik

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. At the moment I've spent more on this 9-month old project than I've ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/

Buy my book - https://linktr.ee/blockchainradicals

This week I spoke with Rich Jensen (@richjensen), Co-op Executive of Resonate (@ResonateCoop). Resonate is a cooperatively owned music streaming platform aiming to give more power to artists rather than corporate record labels and VC-funded tech companies.On average their model gives a larger payout to artists as compared to other music streaming platforms like Spotify. Rich has had a long career in the music industry of starting ventures and has a passion for decolonization.

During the interview we spoke about the recent history of music culture creation, it's commodification, and how the music industry was affected by P2P platforms like Napster. We discuss how blockchain could be used to help in making sure artists receive the value of their work rather than being exploited by companies or otherwise. We then connect how this model could be used to help in efforts to decolonize the oppressed including indigenous and black communities. Since Rich is based in Seattle, we also talked about his recent experience in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (#CHAZ) and the legacy of Kurt Cobain.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. At the moment I've spent more on this 9-month old project than I've ever made so any amount helps. Also, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/

Buy my book - https://linktr.ee/blockchainradicals

This is Part 2 of my interview with Dr. Joel Z Garrod, a sociologist based in Canada and author of a recently published article, “On the property of blockchains: comments on an emerging literature.” The paper focuses on blockchain and property relations in connection to global property relations and the evolution of capitalism. 

For this part of the interview we speak about our thoughts on a recent DeFi Summit seminar on Human Rights (unsurprisingly, they use a very limited liberal conception of human rights), the evolution of property during the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, and what lessons we can take from that for building something else. 

In the last interview we spoke about utopian capitalism, whether blockchain is a neoliberal project, and the history of contracts. The interview itself went pretty long so I’ve split it into two parts. It's not necessary to listen to the first part if you've found this part first but you can find Part 1 here.

If you’d like to get a copy of the article you join the Crypto Leftists Discord group here where I posted a copy of the article since online it’s under a paywall.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you want to see more content like this, please consider donating to my Patreon. I will never have ads to keep independence. If you want to receive irregular updates, sign up for the Newsletter, follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist), and / or join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit to continue the discussion and give your thoughts.

Support the show

Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/

Buy my book - https://linktr.ee/blockchainradicals