Exchange: The First Principle
All of creation sprang from a single act: the exchange of "nothing for everything."
Exchange is the opening act of all creation. In the beginning, creation came in the form of an incomprehensible explosion. A singular, primordial pulse from which the totality of all being burst forth from the absolute void of non-being. The Big Bang was the exchange of “nothing for something”—more precisely, nothing for everything. In this way, exchange it is the progenitor of all things. Exchange is antecedent to our most fundamental notions of reality—it came before energy, before space, and even “before” time. Therefore, the first principle of all creation is exchange.
Action and Value
Since the beginning, if we (selfishly) assume being is preferable to non-being, the universe has continued to trade a less satisfactory for a more satisfactory state of affairs. Although we cannot assign intentionality to the inanimate universe, nor can we say that the universe has always succeeded in this “aim,” we can observe that it has continually evolved. If being is better than non-being, we can say with perfect certainty that the conditions “immediately subsequent” to the Big Bang were less satisfactory than its present state, as the evolution of the universe is ongoing.
Human consciousness is the universe experiencing itself, and the simple fact that I am alive right now, with the divine ability to self-reflect on this entire cosmological chain of events up to this point, implies that I am among the universe’s highest evolutionary forms. Every living thing is a “winner” if only in a purely Darwinian sense. It stands to reason, then, that the principle which incepted the universe continues to propagate through all the “creatures of creation.” All beings—every plant, animal, and person—desire to trade a less satisfactory for a more satisfactory state of affairs—in short, to obtain “something for nothing” through action.
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All action is an expression of value. Indeed, action is the sole means by which value can be expressed—anything less, like talking instead of doing, betrays a lesser commitment to the attainment of the valued end state. The simple act of walking from one side of the room to the other necessitates that the pedestrian value the other side of the room more than his point of origin. Regardless whether the movement of the universe is consciously or unconsciously driven, with or without intent, we can deduce that it is value-driven. Value is the quality toward which all action, and hence all exchange, aims.
Yin and Yang
For humans, value is a quality that is subjectively discerned. No one can objectively determine or assign values to another: all one can do is observe patterns of action, and infer what the valued aim was intended to be. This process of observation and inference is itself inherently subjective. Every self-aware agent has within his mind a list of options: a set of potential actions rank-ordered according to one’s personally held hierarchy of values. Every action taken is an expression of the presently highest ranked entry on this list.
In working towards satisfying their own wants, humans eventually realize that greater value can be realized—a greater quantity of entries on the rank-ordered list of actions can be accomplished, and in previously impossible, higher quality ways—by coordinating and cooperating with other humans. But to be sustainable, these cooperative actions must mutualize value realization, meaning that both parties in every exchange must be convinced that they are receiving more value than they are trading away. Otherwise, exchange never happens. Each trading partner must see something where the other sees nothing. This bidirectional asymmetry of perception—the inequality of exchange—is an indispensable aspect of interpersonal exchange.
Arising from this mutualized, subjective perception of value attainment by each party engaging in a free exchange is also an objective, pragmatic efficiency gain economists call the division of labor. Through acts of exchange, each person is sharing the knowledge that was gained through the experience of producing the good or providing the service in question. As other people interact with the good or experience the service, their own inner spark of reason—the logos—comes into play, further modifying the ideas related to the economic good: “would it be better to place the handle here? perhaps it would be better to move in a circular motion? maybe small wheels attached to the bottom would make transport easier?” etc. Through exchange, human ideas are intermixed, interspersed, and continuously re-implemented in a wide diversity of iterative permutations. These implementations are, again, reintroduced to the same experiential loop which further refines the knowledge structures formulaic to goods and services. In this way, continuous exchange is the action which sharpens knowledge toward further specialization and, therefore, more frequent and significant want-satisfaction throughout an economy.
More specialized knowledge, instantiated in capital accumulation through work, means a more wealthy existence: more options to achieve greater results with less efforts. In sum: more free exchange leads to more attainment of something for nothing. Incrementally, and occasionally, in great leaps of discontinuity, humans achieve gains in productivity through the knowledge sharpening act of exchange. The “kingdom of heaven” is this unattainable state of perfectly specialized knowledge, the Misesian evenly rotating economy, in which all future states are known, certainty goes to infinity, and entropy collapses to zero. In this “imaginary construction” as Mises calls it, demand for money goes to zero as well, as every actor knows with perfect certainty the timing of their economic inflows and outflows, and can match these on the market without any buffer against uncertainty (liquidity). When uncertainty goes to zero, the insurance policy on uncertainty—money—also becomes valueless. Of course, as infinitesimal actors in a universe pervaded by entropy, the “state of perfection” imagined in the evenly rotating economy is wholly unachievable. This principle is also evident in all science: the more answers we find, the greater quantity and quality of questions we can ask.
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Paradoxically, exchange is the non-productive act that fosters a more productive existence among cooperatively and competitively competent (in a word, virtuous) market actors. Exchange is a process that requires energy expenditure but produces nothing new directly, it only facilitates the flow of things already produced between hands, yet it is the singular pattern of action which catalyzes non-linear increases in productivity for the whole of humanity. When rooted in voluntarism—especially when perfected in a social philosophy like agorism—exchange is the action which binds civilizations together. A higher intensity of free exchange necessarily means more value is being created, more knowledge is coursing through the economy, and more economic errors are being cleared.
As above, so below. Exchange is the prime mover of the only changeless quality of the universe, life, and markets—change itself. Exchange is akin to the ineffable Tao: the infinitely dynamic relationship between the yin of nothing and the yang of something.
Abyssal Luminance
A paradoxical dynamic drives exchange: the mutual attraction of “something” and “nothing.” At the Big Bang, nothing (a total lack of something) exploded into everything (a total abundance of something). Echoing “beneath or before” this ancient cataclysmic point of origin is a cosmic tenet: being is derived from non-being. Nothing is at the heart of every something. Something surrounds and defines every nothing. This metaphysical principle, which perhaps exist in eternity or the Platonic realm of forms, shines through in many aspects of reality. In the “language of nature” called mathematics, the number zero is a Archimedean point around which this language of (literally) infinite complexity leverages itself. Deep in galactic cores we find the dark hearts of the cosmos, around which countless stars endlessly dance—supermassive black holes. Here again, a force of absolute destruction is found at the center of all stellar creation. Any mathematical artifact which attempts to transform zero becomes zero in the same way any substance that crosses the event horizon of a black hole collapses into oblivion. Paradoxically, it is the darkness which inspires the light to act. In the heart of man too we find an ever-present void: humans are quite simply never satisfied. It is this lacking in the heart, the impulse toward more lived experience, greater romance, higher adventure, more riches, a larger family, or any other more highly valued potential future state which inspires all human action. A deep dissatisfaction inhabits the heart of man; the dark impetus of his endless actions.
In the same way zero makes mathematics a more useful language for exchanging knowledge, and black holes energize the stellar movements which manufacture the heavy elements of life, the perpetual dissatisfaction in the human heart stimulates entrepreneurial action and free exchange, leading to the creation of all the modern miracles of the market so many of us (easily dissatisfied) people take for granted today. From the Big Bang percolating all the way through to rise of the nation-state-enforced Big Brother, a metaphysical principle of getting “something for nothing” sparks mathematical utility, the elemental alchemy of stars, and the perpetual wealth pursuing actions of human beings. The same impulsion drives the ethical entrepreneur and the unscrupulous statist: both are seeking “something for nothing,” but only the entrepreneur pursues this goal with hard work, creativity, and respect for his fellow man. On the other hand, the statist attempts to take the “path of least resistance” by preying on the fruits of others’ labor. Statism is a resource strategy that involves crossing an irrefutably true and moral line: the apriori reality of individual self-ownership and its natural extension—property.
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Nothing and something are the yin and yang of existence. By emulating the first act of all creation—free exchange—humans create capital that is more abundant, higher quality, and harder-to-steal. This is the essence of pure capitalism, or what I call sovereignism. As capital becomes harder-to-steal, humans are increasingly incentivized to pursue “something for nothing” through the entrepreneurial action of innovation: lazily yet elegantly accomplishing greater results with less efforts. By mitigating the attack surface for others to obtain “something for nothing” through the immoral action of personal property violation, innovation forces human action into more peaceful and productive channels. To this end, Bitcoin is perhaps the most civilizing invention in human history. Let us all be grateful to Satoshi Nakamoto for giving humanity such a profound “something for nothing.” Thanks to his invention of incorruptible money, humanity has been given greater freedom to emulate the first principle of the universe (free exchange) by virtue of gaining greater freedom from coercion, compulsion, and violence (unfree exchange). Bitcoin is the Big Bang of money, the opening act of a more sophisticated and prosperous civilization.
Thank you for reading Exchange: The First Principle.
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Recommended: The Meaning and Reality of Individual Sovereignty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpA5iDpnrbw