Money is an Attention Allocation Technology (Part 8)
Asking yourself "What is Money?" is the 1st step into a philosophical rabbit-hole that could prove to be the most fascinating intellectual journey of your life…
The question “What is Money?” is deceivingly simple. One would expect the answer to be abundantly clear given its prevalence in daily life, but upon further reflection, most find money to be mysterious. Money is pervasive economic phenomenon, an interpenetrating field of energy influencing human perception, thought, and action. Yet despite the all-encompassing nature of money, its deepest truths remain hidden in plain sight. Here, we explore yet another answer to this curious question—money is an attention allocation technology.
The Ultimate Celebrity?
In light of Bitcoin’s unparalleled brand recognition globally, it makes sense that its creator would be propelled into the limelight as well. This is not too unlike the brand Apple Computers (which also enjoys superb recognition) being inexorably bound to the celebrity of its founder Steve Jobs. However, if Bitcoin succeeds in becoming global base money, the celebrity of Satoshi will far outshine that of Jobs. This is because, if Satoshi’s invention succeeds to its fullest extent, he will have successfully created a new paradigm for human civilization by accomplishing the separation of money and state.
In the wake of Bitcoin’s success, market actors will no longer be subjected to the perennial uncertainty of inflation, and citizens would no longer be oppressed by overly bloated, fiat-funded bureaucracies. With inflation as a revenue source in decline, The State will necessarily shrink, and more human attention will flow out of administrative activities and into productive activities. The success of Bitcoin means the global redirection of human attention toward the problems consumers most urgently want solved. Highest among these—indeed, the foundation of civilization itself—is the preservation of private property.
It is ironic that inflation and other forms of taxation are the sole means by which The State generates revenue, considering the express purpose of states is to preserve private property, not violate it! Since time immemorial, humans have been caught between the “rock and a hard place” of securing their own property against criminals or outsourcing said security to that most organized criminal enterprise—The State. In essence, statism is institutionalized criminality, as each and every state across history has given in to the temptation to violate the very property it was charged to protect. In other words, before Bitcoin, there was simply no way to secure a property relationship without self-defense or outsourcing its defense to the monopoly on violence wielded by The State. In this way, The State has always been a “necessary evil”: but fortunately, it seems that the goodness of Bitcoin may significantly curb the “necessity” or relevance of The State going forward.
The sole purpose of The State is to preserve life, liberty, and property. This statement may sound pithy, but it is true, assuming the term property is understood properly by the reader. Property is quite simply the relationship between an owner and an asset, which includes the relationships between individual consciousnesses and their bodies. Seen this way, it becomes clear why Natural Law can be summed up by the mantra “do not steal”: to kill someone is to steal their future freedom, to incarcerate someone is to steal their present freedom, and to violate someone’s property is to steal the fruits of their past freedom. Therefore, any state engages in the violation of life, liberty, or property contradicts its essential purpose.
So, The State exists to protect the relationship of people to the fruits of their labor, which could equally be called the fruits of their attention, since attention is necessary for performing acts of labor! In a hypothetical world where you can’t hurt anyone or take their stuff, The State becomes irrelevant because life, liberty, and property could not, hypothetically, be violated. In this way, the relevance of The State, and the commensurate attention allocated into its administrative affairs, is tightly correlated to the violability of property. Said simply: the more expensive property is to violate, the smaller The State will necessarily become.
When property is difficult, expensive, and risky to violate, the less profitable it is to steal. Less attention allocated toward violating property leads to less demand for state services, and to a concomitant rise in peace, cooperation, and wealth. As a great man once said: “the government which governs best, governs least.” In other words, the less “necessary evil” in the world, the more goodness can come into being. Now, when it comes to the most important form of property in the world, money, Bitcoin is the government that governs least! This is why central banks fear Bitcoin, just like they feared those who have stood against this corrupt institution in the past…
In 1963, an important man was killed in Dallas, TX. In my humble opinion, this man was the last true “leader of the free world.” As such, he garnered A LOT of attention during his time in office, and became quite the celebrity. Of course, I’m talking about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.
A few months before he was killed, on June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed by President Kennedy with the intention to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business. President Kennedy was allocating his attention, and drawing the attention of his followers, toward a dismantling of The Fed. He was questioning the justification of its existence and acting accordingly. In doing so, he threatened to end The Fed’s business of confiscating human attention, time, and energy through inflation.
President Kennedy was shining a light on the practice of inflation, which is used to surreptitiously steal the “fruits of our attention.” But while he was working to reveal the scam of central banking, he was killed by an assassin. Thankfully, Satoshi has created a new money—a superior attention allocation technology—that promises to put an end to the theft of human attention, time, and energy perpetrated by The Fed and all other central banks worldwide. Today, Bitcoin is catalyzing a rising frenzy of attention allocation toward studying the corruption of money and its consequences. And unlike President Kennedy, Bitcoin cannot be shot and killed. In this way, Bitcoin carries the torch of President Kennedy’s attitude toward central banking, but in a form that cannot be assassinated.
Those who study Bitcoin long enough soon turn their attention to the systemic theft being perpetrated through inflation. In this way, I think Satoshi might be on his way to becoming the ultimate celebrity: the mysterious innovator that gave us an incorruptible attention allocation technology, that gave us inviolable property, that gave us the one-and-only pure money. And his creation Bitcoin deserves all the attention that it gets, precisely because money is the ultimate attention allocation technology, and Bitcoin is the ultimate money. Bitcoin rightfully absorbs so much attention because it is the ultimate satisfaction of the age-old human desire not to be robbed, defrauded, or deceived! Bitcoin liberates us from falsehood and leaves us free to pursue truth. As a system of 100% veracity and 0% belief, Bitcoin frees human attention to flow away from fear and toward love. No wonder Satoshi and his creation have received so much attention over the past ~13 years!
If Bitcoin succeeds in becoming global money, Satoshi may need to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing an end to the systemic predations of The State. Bitcoin’s final triumph will be seen in the diversion of human attention away from armed conflict, which hard-to-steal money makes less profitable, and therefore less prevalent. In other words, the scale and scope of WWI and WWII would simply not be possible on a global Bitcoin standard. If Bitcoin succeeds in this way, this would, I think, make Satoshi the ultimate celebrity. Ironically, Satoshi would have earned all this attention and catalyzed the attendant paradigmatic change worldwide by radically changing the ways in which humans allocate attention toward the satisfaction of desires.
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That’s the end of this series of written work—what did you think? Is attention allocation an important aspect of economics and money? Will Satoshi successfully separate money and state? Will Satoshi’s celebrity continue to grow alongside Bitcoin? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!!!
Thank you for reading Money is an Attention Allocation Technology (Part 8).
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Central Banks have created an imbalance between good and evil.
Bitcoin restores that balance.
Robert your work is super fascinating!!!! I was just thinking about the assasination of JFK and its relationship with executive order 11110 and The Creature from Jekyll Island. Thank you for putting your thoughts in paper and sharing it with us.