Bitcoin could change the world and make it difficult for states to exist -my arch nemesis

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Orange Hatter. All right, Eryn, so happy to have you on Orange Hatter. Can't wait to dive into your background and lots of really interesting stories. So welcome to the show, Eryn.

Thank you. I'm really happy to be here.

Thank you for coming Yeah, give our audience a little sense of your background

Okay. So I lived most of my life in North Carolina. I went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, got a BA degree, double major with a minor. I double majored in linguistics and Asian studies, concentration in Chinese language and culture, which is as close as you can get to majoring in Chinese language. And then I majored in cognitive science because I was like, I would really love to be a neuroscientist, and I didn't do so well in chemistry, even though I love chemistry, so what's an alternative way to get in? I know linguistics, and then I did nothing with that. So, it's always fascinated me, like, people, how do they think, how does the brain work, but, you know, it's kind of on a sideburner now. so now I am a translator of Mandarin. I taught Mandarin for many years and then went to live in China, got inspired to be a translator instead and I like doing that. I also am a very artsy person. I'm a potter. I've sold some pieces. I'm building that business up slowly. I would really like to do that. My ultimate goal is to be like a homesteader and potter and do some translation work and just do all the things that I enjoy. So basically. I do gig work right now, and art. And I'm soon to be a mom for the first time. I just turned 35, back in late August, and I will be having my daughter early November.

I actually have a similar story with my major. I went to the University of Virginia and And I spent a year in Japan and I wanted to do a Japanese major, but that was not offered. So I ended up in Asian studies as well. And my specialty was Japanese language. So my first job was also. a translator. So I want to dive into that a little bit. What kind of stuff do you translate?

It's gig work, so it's basically whatever people want who are willing to pay. And it has been across the board. Most of it has been in the video game industry translating texts of video games or advertisements for video games. and I really like that. But some of it has also been, um, like a user manual, or hey, my company shut down that I was teaching for, but I'm still willing to teach your children. So here's my information kind of letters that she then sent out to the parents of the kids she was teaching English to, all over the map, everything.

How do people find you to do their translation services?

Well, a couple different ways. I'm on Fiverr. Um, and I have, my website My website needs a little work, to be honest. But people have found me through my website that is from my teaching days. And, uh, I need to be more clear on it about I do translation now, everyone! But people have actually found me to do translation for them through it, so it still kind of works. but it there's some room for improvement. Anyway. But yeah, various methods. Also, like, sending out to people in person, Hey, I'm a translator! and just kind of word of mouth, uh, networking. And that's actually how I got my... Translation gig that I did for Bitcoin as well. So I have so far done one translation gig paid in Bitcoin. That was actually through like a friend of a friend or somebody that he knew. And I'm like, yeah, this is great.

Are you allowed to talk about that Bitcoin project?

I think so. Um, hmm. So, maybe not so much because... This person was very concerned about doxxing, like, I assumed that he knew my friend who put me in touch with him and knew where he lived as a general rule, like, oh, that's where I live. And he's like, don't doxx this person. I can't know that. I'm like, oh, okay. I didn't realize. I mean, that's a large area, you know, I didn't think I was being bad sharing that, but I'm like, okay, so maybe I can't go too in depth, but basically I was translating a pamphlet that was would be handed out to small businesses to encourage them to accept Bitcoin and become part of this parallel economy. Um, so I, that was actually an English to Chinese project. And, um, most of my work is the other way. that's interesting, like the guy drafted in English and he's like, can you translate this is Chinese? So I'm assuming that it's going to people who speak Chinese, maybe not in China, but maybe in Taiwan, maybe in like Singapore or maybe in Chinatown. I don't know, Flushing, New York or something.

Yeah, that was going to be my question. Is it allowed? Like, can they hand out pamphlets like that in China? I wasn't sure.

I would guess not, I mean, because, I know vague things, even though I lived there for a while, I know vague things about, like, what's legal, what's not, and that might be a little bit because... How things are enforced is a little vague in China. So for example, street sellers, completely illegal, but they're everywhere and nobody cracks it down, except sometimes when they feel like it. Um, there's like a lot of other things that go on too. Like the company that I had worked for when I was there, like, oh yeah, I'm going to work for this company. They're on the up and up. It's fine. Oh yeah, behind the scenes, they're bribing officials to be able to stay in business. everyone has to. So it's, very gray area. What is acceptable what's not, Technically not acceptable to do Bitcoin in China. And yet I know that it is done. So, uh, on Noster, I've been hanging out on Noster a lot. And what that is, is kind of like email as a protocol and I'm not a technical person, so I'm. halfway parroting this and halfway understanding it. Uh, just like email is a protocol and you can have Gmail to use email. You can have Yahoo to use email. You can have whatever to use email. Noster is a protocol for, basically having a social network or actually other things too. It's a little interesting. People are like, what if we did blah, blah, blah with Noster, like Steam, the video game platform, like emulate that sort of thing or like other things that I wouldn't. Normally think of for it, but they think of like, we can use this protocol for this. And I'm like, I don't see how, but okay, go ahead and try. Um, but yeah, it's an interesting thing to be learning about anyway, what it is. It's a circle back around is mostly used to be like Twitter, quote unquote, except it's decentralized and uncensorable, can't be shut down, and that's interesting. And people also love using Bitcoin on it. They'll zap each other's sats. So like, if you write something that people like, then they'll send you pieces of Bitcoin and it's very cool. And you can do the same to them. So. Anyway, I'm on Noster a lot these days, and I was consciously trying to find, Chinese people to follow it's not my native language, so I need it in front of me a lot in order to keep it. So the more Chinese I see day to day, the more Chinese I use day to day, the better a translator I'm going to be, and the less I'm going to feel like I'm just like, oh, I'm horrible, I'm letting this go, I'm losing my skills. So I was finding people to follow and yeah, there are Chinese people who speak Mandarin Chinese, not Cantonese and use simplified characters, not traditional characters, which means they're not from Taiwan. They're on here and they're using Bitcoin. Uh, at least a couple of them that are, like, two out of the three or so that I've so far found to follow, are currently living in Japan. So that might be part of it, but I don't think all of them are. I think some of them are just being sneaky and good for them. So

Yeah, I don't think a lot of people know this, but Chinese characters, there are two different types. There's the traditional, which are used, I believe, in Taiwan and Singapore. And then you have the simplified, a format that was promoted by communist China years ago to make it easier. And like Ping Ying was created to make it easier for foreigners to use their language. And so I was born and raised in Taiwan. So that's the language I know. Those are the characters I know. And so when I have to translate. traditional to simplify, it actually is a bit of a challenge for me. So when you started studying Chinese, were you exclusively exposed to the simplified Chinese and pinging?

yes, I was exclusively exposed to Simplified and, um, kind of funny story at the very first. My Yeah, very first class ever. My teacher didn't believe in pinyin. She's like, I'm not going to use this with you, uh, or anyone else in the class. and I do kind of respect that, but at the same time it also led me to make some silly mistakes. So, um, I appreciate that it forced me to pay attention to what do things sound like. But what I don't like is that it sometimes led me to think the wrong thing was being said. And what I mean by that is, so, zhōng guó, right, China, zhōng, like, that ends in like an ng type sound, right? But because I didn't know anything about Chinese phonology yet, this was my first class, and I have no letters to look at to help me understand what I'm hearing. I thought it was jōng guō with an m sound at the end, and Chinese does not have m sounds at the end of anything. So I'm like, I didn't hear that right. So then when I started learning pinyin later, I'm like, oh, that sounds the same as this sound and oh, nothing ever ends in m ever. So yeah, so Pinyin can help, but yeah, I agree it can also really hurt. And so when I was teaching, I was very, very careful to tell my students, don't let Pinyin confuse you. Please listen to what I say and only let it help you. But primarily listen to what I say for pronunciation guide, because it's. Pinyin is written with English letters and the letters do not always sound like the English equivalent. So for example, R is a really good example. So in English, R sounds like ra. And in Chinese, it's, if it's at the beginning of a word, it's going to be kind of zhe. So it's between R and like the zhe in garage. It's an important distinction. And A U, the letter U, depending on what comes after or before it, it can sound completely different and sometimes be literally a sound not spurred in English ever. Kind of the E, or Uber from German. Um, it's sometimes called the French U as well. So, I could nerd out about linguistics all day. I can tell you, study IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. That will help you to understand whatever sound you hear in any language, this sort of thing. But... Basically, yeah. Um, all this to say, yeah, I studied pinyin, but, um, simplified characters. So I find traditional characters sometimes, uh, stump me. Like, I'll be reading a thing, and then I'll just, like, stop because I don't recognize this character. I'm like, oh, it's a traditional character. What exactly is this again? I know some of them. I don't know all of them. I was never formally taught them. I should probably teach myself at this point, but... Yeah.

When my kids were growing up, I tried to just Play Disney movies that have been dubbed over in Mandarin so that they can just hear the sound But I never actually taught them Chinese now that they're grown they want to learn and they're learning it from the internet My son will come downstairs from his room and he would say does this make any sense and he'll blur out something and I'll be looking At his mouth move without any context. I have no idea what he's saying that's the con side of doing it with Ping Yingrui, is you get stuck thinking about any English, but there are so many nuances that are required in the Chinese

Yeah.

that tells you what the word is. And the same sound can mean 25 different things. So without context, it was. He will always be like, you don't know what I'm saying. No, I'm sorry. I just I have no idea But yeah, when I first graduated I was a translator for a law firm I was hired to translate Japanese electronic Engineering patents to English. And I don't have an engineering background. So I remember in Japanese, one sentence can go for entire paragraph. And they, and that you have to decipher from the edges and then kind of slowly work your way into the middle. And I remember spending hours just trying to figure out what one paragraph meant. And then I'll translate it into English. It wouldn't make any sense to me because I don't have engineering background. I'll bring it to the lawyer who hired me and my boss. And I'll say, does this make any sense to you? He goes, yeah, it's perfect. Keep going. I'm like, okay.

Oh, that, that reminds me of one of my favorite projects I had, actually, um, uh, translation project. Uh, this guy was trying to get into grad school and he wanted me to translate his letter to apply to grad school. And it talked about his, like, what has he done? Uh, he was an engineer. So I, I really, really loved doing this, but at the same time, it was like, kind of, I don't know these words. I have to look up these words, but it was, um, all about technical stuff that he'd done with robotics. And he did some amazing things like from making a trash can that could, I to say in Chinese, it could tie up the bag, by itself when it knew the bag was full. And all the way to, like, he wanted to work with robotic eyeballs. And I'm just like, man, this guy is cool. I hope he gets into grad school and I'm going to do my best to help him. So, yeah, that was probably one of my favorite projects that I ever did. And I, you know, I kind of forgot about that until you said that. Like, yeah, that was a great project. What did your parents, can I ask you a question? What did your, what did your family think of you being interested in learning Japanese? Was there anything like, oh, they occupied us, this is bad, why would you do this? Or was it good for you, this is cool, you're learning about another culture, or this is your passion, we love it. What was this like for you?

You know, that's a really great question. I thought they would be really against it because my mom grew up in Taiwan she was born right after the Japanese left. My dad had bad experiences, during the war with the Japanese. So I thought that they would be really against it. But that was back in the very early 1990s, late 1980s, when the Japanese economy was just really surging. And everybody who wanted to go into business wanted to study Japanese. So it was just a logical choice. And so when I told them I was going to study Japanese, logically, they just thought, yeah, of course, because that's where the world's going right now. But they never tried to stop me. And I don't know what they thought exactly. They didn't share it with me. But

Interesting.

okay, let's jump into a little bit more about your background. You mentioned that you are a libertarian.

Yes. Yes. So. Yeah, um, so, I'm a pretty radical libertarian. Uh, I've, I got into libertarianism kind of end of high school. I was thinking really hard about And at the time I was like, Oh, of course I'm a Republican. But then I kept saying well, they think these things and do I really think that these things, uh, it seems a little arbitrary. And if there's one thing that I hated, it was arbitrary rules. So naturally I became libertarian. And then it didn't take me very long. Cause I kept thinking about like, well. Okay, so, how much government do we really need? And so, I was, like, researching this sort of idea, and, freshman year of college, just in trying to learn about natural rights. Like, there's this thing that I've heard of called natural rights. That sounds very natural and simplistic. Why don't I learn more about that? And there was, just happened to be a link at the bottom of the Wikipedia article, To a, then at the time, free ebook, and I read it and, uh, I was just like, it just walked me through all the steps to why anarchy is a good idea. So now that's what I am. So I could say I'm an involuntarist. I could say I'm an anarcho capitalist. I could say I'm a libertarian. All these things are true, kind of related concepts, but they're not really the same thing. But, um. I am all three. Uh, so yeah. And um, I guess as far as very earliest background of why this philosophy, it would be a shame not to mention my dad was very libertarian leaning. He describes himself as libertarian. and he would occasionally put things in my head, like, uh, I was homeschooled. And I really liked that. I liked being homeschooled and he was like, well, what if everybody voted to make homeschooling illegal? And I was just like, very indignant about this because he was trying to say there's something better than democracy. And I'm just like, there, nothing can be better than democracy. Like this is just a given of life. So, but he tried to put those ideas in front of me very rarely, but I was not receptive until late high school. Late, late high school. but he, like, I was part of the way there, like, he also, part of my homeschooling curriculum was, yeah, I had to learn about economics, and I learned about economics in two different ways. this was intentional on the part of my parents. They wanted me to see, what do most people learn? It's like Keynesian economics. And then also there's another way to think about things. Um, Austrian economics. So... Uh, I read the Keynesian economics book. I'm like, okay, whatever. And then I read, things like, whatever happened to penny candy, I think was the name of one of the books. Um, and then some other things like chats with my parents and there's this other way. And I'm like, oh, okay, whatever economics was really not something I was very interested in, but I think that one made more sense to me, but it didn't seem like an extremely controversial thing, at the time, but of course it is, um, but uh, yeah, so there was exposure to ideas when I was a kid, but that was never really where my focus was, was like money stuff, definitely wasn't why I got into Thank This political philosophy at all either. I think that's not true for most libertarians or anarchists or voluntarists, they often get into it through the economics route. That wasn't it for me. It was about like. Honestly, like an idea of fairness and just a kind of radical idea of, I don't think that it's right to interfere with other people. so long as they're not interfering with me. What does that actually look like taken to its natural conclusion. So, yeah, I guess I ended up at the end of that road.

Would you mind explaining the nuances between those three?

Sure, I can try. it's been a while since this was, like, really, like, laid out perfectly. And I'm like, oh yeah, I get how these things are different. voluntarism basically means that human interactions should be voluntary. You shouldn't compel other people. Force. that's a very important part of my ideas. anarcho capitalism is basically anarchy, meaning no rulers, no rules, no rulers, and in this sense, what we're talking about is again, stuff, rulers who are based in like initiating violence against people. It also embraces capitalism as kind of a natural way to relate to others. that respects property rights. So, basically, like, if we're going to have property rights, if we're going to say things like, oh, well, I made this cup out of clay and fired it, then, it's mine to sell or not. You can't then say, oh, I get to take this. It's like, no. so, you and I can come to an agreement Like, what circumstances will I give the cup to you or maybe that circumstance doesn't exist because I like it. I want to keep it, you know, I think capitalism gets a bad rap because it's like a loaded word for a lot of people. But when I've seen this, as a concept and people are like dissing capitalism, I think that a lot of the time they're wrapping other things into it that don't necessarily belong. And oftentimes have to do with how capitalism presents in the context of the state. So, for example, one recent one that I've heard is the idea of regulatory capture, which is basically like it, like, for example, Kellogg cereal. We'll just say a cereal company, comes up on the scene in kind of the wild west of cereal companies when no one, is really doing that and they make, an amazing cereal kind of empire. Everyone wants to buy their cereal. Then they go to the state and say, Will you pass some laws for me that that makes it difficult, to start a cereal company. we have very, very stringent requirements to start a cereal company now. you have to pass this test and that test, or maybe you have to produce a certain amount. and, oh, it looks like it hurts me, but it doesn't actually, because what it does is it keeps my competitors from even coming up at all. So this is called regulatory capture. And this does not happen in anarchy, because you don't have a state. That can do that sort of thing. You have to deal with your competitors. So it's just like pure capitalism. and libertarianism is basically the idea that we should maximize, we should work to maximize liberty. So, you'll then run into a lot of libertarians who, like me, are also anarchists, also voluntarists. most libertarians are voluntarists, so maybe more or less agree. But, then you'll run into others who are just, who are what we would call minarchists, which means... Oh, we should have as little government as possible to promote liberty, because government cannot give you liberty, government can only give you things that you gave them first, often things that you were compelled to give them. So, these are basically how I could define these things.

I feel very ignorant about these issues. I tend not to think too much about political, labels just because I just, I grow tired of, mudslinging every four years And in between all that it's, it muddies the waters and I don't understand what the heck is going on. I can't sort through what's said as truth and lies. It's just gotten very confusing. And so I tend to just shy away from that. So I'm just going to ask follow up questions out of my and

go for it.

you want minimal government, in what circumstance would you be happy that we have a body of enforcers for, property rights and things like that? Because when there's No law whatsoever the strong oppresses the weak. Can you help me understand how would anarchy work if you need someone to help you protect your stuff from people who are stronger with bad intentions?

so glad you asked that in exactly that way, something that people commonly ask is like, What if warlords took over? And I just want to say, look, around you, the warlords have already taken over. Your rights are under threat. They are... Reduced beyond what they should be. And this is all enforced with the threat of violence. Where I live now, the outskirts of DC, this is where the warlords are. They're here. And they're also literal warlords wreaking havoc around the world with forever wars. So, it's already going on. What I want to do is get rid of warlords. I want there to be, I want this to not be the situation. It should all be based on consent. And so like I would say, we agree that it's important to protect our property rights, right? So I guess not everyone agrees. There are definitely people who do not agree, but. for the purposes of this conversation, I think most people really do on some level. So, this is a service, just like any other vitally important service, like getting food, getting water. Right now, the government does not provide everyone food, and yet we get food. Right? How do we do that? Through the market. So, there's no real reason we couldn't have... We couldn't hire people to protect us, protect our property through the market as well. And this would probably be done better because everything the government touches, they do badly. So everything the market touches can be improved continually and actually suits what consumers really want. So It could be much, much better in ways that we probably can't even predict. It will be fun to see if it can ever happen. There are many different ways in which this could go down. You could hire, a protection agency. Your neighborhood can hire a protection agency if you all agree to pitch in. Like, oh, there's a neighborhood watch and if there's a problem, then you can call them or they may be patrol around or maybe not. It depends on what you guys want. basically the market will provide because that's what it does. and in a better way than things that, because there is no competition, because if there ever was competition, then they would be thrown in jail or killed, it will be better. And just to clarify, a minarchist would want as little government as possible, well, I shouldn't even say government, as little state as possible, so, government is a little more ambiguous of a term, it can refer to, like, we associate it with the state, which is, they have the monopoly on force, they are allowed, quote unquote, to initiate force, I shouldn't even say quote unquote, by and large, we allow them to do this. This is just what we accept as reasonable for some reason. but government can refer to either that because we associate it with that or with like civil governments, which can just mean, Oh, we have these rules. It can be a little of an ambiguous term. So government is not always necessarily a bad word, but I think the state. Is not a good thing.

So. One of the first questions that popped into my mind is, how can we give consequence to people who do bad? If we don't have, that central, whatever you call it, government, group of people how do we give consequences, then, to the market?

Some of them might be like, because we as a community have agreed to a certain set of rules, and you've been outside of that, we don't want you to shop at our store, we don't want you to use this facility that, to the rest of us is public, so you're basically exiled. this is one thing. Another, another thing that I didn't really get into as far as like, Oh, how, how will we have people to protect us? Um, is the idea that this can be done or conceptualized sort of like insurance. So, just Like you might pay into an insurance type of agency. Like, Oh, if I've done something that has gotten me into trouble, maybe I didn't do it, maybe I did, then you'll help me work this out. If you do terrible things all the time, that insurance might drop you. so, then you're uninsured and maybe no community wants you in to be there. Because, just like, you know, you might, this is a bit of a, this is a bit of a weird, one because This is also done by the state, but like an example is if you don't have car insurance, you can't drive on the roads right now, right? So if you don't have, oh, I killed a dude insurance or didn't kill a dude insurance, then you can't enter, right? Because clearly something is wrong with you. If no one will insure you, probably you've killed a dude. Um, so, this sort of thing.

I guess the image that pops into my mind when you're talking about the community either accepting or basically ousting you based on your behavior is the scarlet letter, she did something that the community disagree with and she basically was ousted even though she wasn't exiled. So she was wearing the scarlet letter and she had to live with the consequence of her choices. So. I don't know if that's better or worse than the system we have now because then you're talking about a very small group of people and in that case, it was the village that she was in dealing out the consequence of behavior that they don't all agree with in that in some sense, I feel like that's, that can also be very restrictive, unless you want to leave that village and go to another village. Whereas now, as unfair as we think our system is, you have the freedom To be who you are, depending on what that is, or move to a different city and, because we're not all in villages where people recognize each other, you can go from one city to another and start over, maybe meet people who are like minded, that kind of thing. So I don't know, in my head, I, that scenario comes up when a.

I might see it as easier to... Move away to another village or something even larger or something even smaller Kind of community. I might see it is easier to make that move and it be something radically different that maybe matches your values under anarchy Because what we actually have is we have a federal government and then that enforces a lot of laws across all 50 states Which, I think originally were meant to be a little bit more different from each other than the federal system has caused to happen. and then within the state, those are pretty large areas as well, but if you actually had anarchy, it could be really, really small, granular maps, right? what kind of area is... is doing what kind of system. it could be extremely different from one place to another, or it might not be. There's really no way to know, but I do think that it would be a little easier to start over maybe. my husband is also an anarchist, and he and I have talked about, we love talking philosophy and stuff, and we've talked about oh well, what if all the murderers, because they couldn't get insured anywhere, what if they all went to live on Murderer Island, and everyone on Murderer Island is a murderer, and, I guess they're gonna get along with each other as well as murderers can, but, they're where nobody else wants to be, so, there they are. And it's kind of like the concept maybe of a biblical city of refuge, like there is a place they can go. There's, there's that idea. I, I think that there's more room for diversity under anarchy than there is under the system we have now. Because what you have is a very top down system of enforcing rules that some, average of people have, over time, thought up to set into stone instead of, oh, hey, well, we agreed to do this other way. You know, there's more opportunity with freedom. that's what I think anyway.

What about national security? Then if everybody's just in their own little like minded bubble, what about national security, what do you think?

Well, there wouldn't be a nation. because it's anarchy, there wouldn't be a state. I might also say a lot of what you have in the world today with Wars and conflicts across the globe. What this is, is states fighting each other. If you just had, people, then you're not going to have such a big problem with, Oh, well, we're going to muster all the power of this forced taxation of the entire population of our country, and we're going to make these weapons of war that can take out a continent and cause fallout everywhere. And just absolutely destroy everybody that what reason would somebody have to do this if they are just trying to live their life. Um, so there's that aspect of it. But again, it kind of like the insurance model is a fun one to think about, problems such as this, like, if this is really a problem, like, okay, and Kapistan, as people like to call it exists, hypothetically here, and everyone's just living their best capitalist life. Somehow people, instead of wanting to trade with you, just want to blow you up still, which I find a little less likely. I think that, oh, there's prosperity, let's trade with them instead of destroy them, is probably a more reasonable reaction. But let's say somebody still just wants to blow y'all up, what, what do you do? Maybe you actually perceive this as a real threat. And you have some kind of, insurance system that you voluntarily pay them to, patrol the skies, patrol the seas, and, shoot down missiles. There's no reason this can't be voluntary. It's just, you have to actually believe in it instead of have it taken from you whether you believe in it or not. I

Well, if we look at it from game theory, right now, most of the globe, aside from maybe the really remote villages that are outside modern life, Most systems in the world today are central government systems. So if you want to go the route that you're envisioning, you kind of don't want to be the first one because the moment you don't have a central protector, I want to just call it even though that's really not what we mean, if we theoretically, if we decided to become a anarchist society, but the other countries haven't, they can come in force and we would be just all divided and with no centralized way of, gathering resources with money and with people and with strategy to defend ourselves.

still see the centralized... And it's not even that it's centralized, it's that it's non voluntary as the problem. Oh, some other people want to make a state over you, when you just got rid of your last state. How much worse off are you? You already had a bad state over you. I don't know, I think people might be willing to figure out how to keep that from happening, if that's something they believe in. I don't think being the first one is necessarily bad. I think that, probably somebody has to. You can see that there are many states in the world today, like you said, they're, they already have varying degrees of, how much freedom they allow people to have. Not all of them are at war with each other, so I think there's something to be said for, it's, it doesn't necessarily follow that someone's going to invade you right away, but even if they tried, you could do your best as a group of people, just without aggressing on each other as well, and I don't see why you don't have as much of a chance as a state of the same size, you might have a better chance because you're able to cooperate voluntarily instead of, you know, have disgruntled people who are like, Yeah, I don't want to fight for you. People are going to be there of their own free will.

So it sounds like the keyword is voluntary.

Mm hmm. Absolutely. I would encourage you and anybody else to look up the idea of the non aggression principle. there are other ways to approach anarchy. There are like fully practical ways to approach anarchy that don't involve this idea. But I love this idea. and I hope that people will look into it and just say, Hey, doesn't this actually make a lot of sense? Because I think it does. Um, but yeah, that's the core of it all, is voluntary. Don't steal from people. Don't threaten to hurt them to get them to do what you want. And that's what the state does best.

Well, I'll just, circle back to something you mentioned before. You grew up, you were homeschooled, and you're about to become a mom. And I just remember specifically when my kids were younger, trying to decide between two assumptions. Since you study Chinese, I assume that you know the Chinese three letter poetry. I don't know how it's exactly translated.

Yeah, isn't this called like sansi? Is that it? Okay.

And so what is the first three words say? People are born good. Right. Well, actually the first six words, people are born good. Whereas in the Western culture with Christianity and Judaism, people are born bad. If you make one assumption and you follow it, then you can say, everybody has the innate desire to be good and successful. That's their nature. If you look at children, not the abused children, but. children, they are happy they have to learn the rules of engagement. Of course, because they might grab snacks out of somebody's hand, but they, they show more love more freely than adults, really. But if you make the assumption that they are born bad, and we have to correct their behavior, and now you have the requirement to put in. rules and guidelines and train them out of their badness. So I think it depends on what assumption we follow when we're looking at people in general.

Hmm. So, yeah, I might, as a Christian person, I might give a little more nuance to the Christian position. There are definitely people who do believe that people are born bad. This is a simple black and white issue. My own perspective is... We're all images of God and we were created to be good. We do have a fallen nature. We're not going to be completely good. But to me, this means it's more of a mix. people are born to be good, but also bad. And that's what you end up seeing. So, there is a tendency to long for God, there's a tendency to seek after him, and then there's also a tendency to fall short of that, and to pursue our fleshly desires, both happen, so, I would just add that nuance, but yeah, your assumption of what people are like Is going to color how you see the world and how you raise children and just how you deal with everyone. but I would say this. I would say no matter what you think, if you believe people are bad, then why would you want a government made of people to rule over other people because then you just have the bad leading the bad. This isn't going to work. If you believe people are good, then why don't you want to leave people alone, right? Let them pursue their interests, because, but yeah, from my own perspective is a blend of these two. Because that's, I guess, how I see the world of people.

Yeah, thank you for clarifying the nuance. I totally understand what you're saying. And yeah, I mean, people are a blend. But I do think that as parents and as as the way we perceive our daily experiences, what you assume Gives you meaning to your experiences, right? So I love this discussion. This has been really fun. Let's bring it back to Bitcoin

Yeah!

Let's talk Bitcoin

Cool, cool. Yeah, this is fun.

Let's talk about how you first heard about Bitcoin and Let's talk about your journey from discovery to conviction

All right. so, I was in college and, like I mentioned, freshman year of college, very early on, I discovered anarchy. And I decided I'm going to tell everyone about it. This was just, I had been raised to not talk about anything controversial, don't talk about politics with anyone, don't talk about religion with anyone, unless you're really, really, really sure they're interested, and just be really careful what you say, or people might not like you, and then they might be mean to you, and it's like, oh, yes, yes, of course, this makes lots of sense. I felt very stifled on some level. That was through high school, basically just very carefully reading situations to see who can I reveal my inner thoughts to, and keeping it shallow with everyone else. And I decided because I was sick of that college is going to be different. I'm going to make sure everyone knows the real me. And if they don't like it, then that's fine. And if they like it, then that's great. So I'm going to be outspoken and loud and completely change my personality. So I did. Um, I went around talking about anarchy all the time, and yeah, so people knew that's what I liked, people knew that's what I thought, and my one friend came up to me and said, have you heard about Bitcoin, and I'm like, no, and he said, it seems like something you might like, because it's a different sort of currency that isn't controlled by the state, and it's all electronic, and then that's where he lost me, because I was not an economist, and My perspective was, whatever people want to use as currency, that's fine. Oh, hey, it doesn't involve the state, that's great. But it doesn't sound good to me because I think everything should be based on gold. gold is the only thing that makes sense. Uh, good parrot voice. this is what I thought. cause, like... I guess I had been convinced, it's very hard money, you can't easily inflate it, and it doesn't decay, and everybody has seen it as valuable for most of human history across most Human cultures, of course, not all, but, that sort of idea had kind of default captured me. This is a very common thing to hear in the circles that I was looking at online. And Bitcoin was very, very new. So let me tell you how new it was when my friend told me about this. One Bitcoin was worth ten US dollars. So I could have gone out there and bought Bitcoin. Several Bitcoin if I hadn't been so stingy as a poor student. but also I wasn't really that interested because I'm like, it's not gold. It's just a computer code. People can make more of that. Why would anyone care about this? but I'm like more power to them, find whatever you want to do. I don't think that, currency has to be like legal tender. I think use what you want. And to do the market in whatever way that's fine for you, but I'm going to get gold someday. and of course I had some second thoughts and you know, I'm like, well, what if I'm wrong? And I looked a little bit into, well, how do I get some, like, how do you mine it? And I'm like, I don't know how to set this stuff up. I'm not that technical. I'm basically computer savvy for a millennial, but I don't know how to set up a Bitcoin miner. none of that seemed accessible at all. Like the idea of a wallet even didn't seem accessible at all. So I gave up. I'm like, no, I can't figure this out. And it's, plus it's like 10. So like, nah, I'm going to save that for some concert tickets. So. I slept on that. And then years later, I didn't even think about it really that much anymore. And then I kinda heard, oh hey, there were thousands of dollars now. And I'm like, wait, what? Okay. Still doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but whatever. Again, still thinking. You do you, folks. if you want to trade with computer money, cool, whatever. I don't care. I'll get gold or silver or something or heck even seeds for plants and I don't know These all seemed more valuable to me But you know, it's just sort of I still felt like man if only I had gotten like I had the kind of short term mentality at that point about Bitcoin. I didn't really see it as a competitor to fiat currency that was going to last yet, but I still felt like if only I had figured out How to get some 10 Bitcoin I'd be able to afford land and a house by now because I would could sell it and get land in a house and that's what I really want still to this day. So I'm like, if only I had done that the idea of Hey, this is actually really a revelation that could change the world and make it difficult for states to exist my arch nemesis, right? Um, because. If they can't control your money, it's harder to control you. And you can look into what happened to the Canadian truckers during COVID, their protest to see what I mean by that. I mean, just hearing about that even kind of made me go, Oh, hey. Yeah, okay. So people are using this to circumvent the state. That's great. And then also I heard about there were some women who were fleeing persecution in some country in the Middle East, and I can't tell you which one, but they were being persecuted and they decided to leave. And if they had gone through, of course, their state's official sanctioned methods of getting their money out of the country, they would have lost it all. So instead what they did is they memorized their... keys and they fled and then they went and put in their keys in another country that's safer and they were able to get all their money. I'm like, Hmm, cool. This allowed women to flee persecution from the state. And I'm just like, this is really great. I think this is fantastic. I can't remember if I heard stories like that before or after meeting my husband, but, my husband is the one who talks to me more about Bitcoin as we were getting to know each other and answered my questions about how can this really be valuable? How can this really not be inflated? Things that I didn't actually understand, like, okay, sure. So there's 21 million of them, but they can just change the code, right. And make more it's no, actually that's not. Going to happen and why I didn't know really that until talking to him and I'm not saying Oh, it has to be your significant other who gets you into Bitcoin. It happened to be that for me, but I would say, If you're sitting on the fence and you want to know more, just find somebody who knowledgeable to talk to, find a Bitcoin meetup, there will be someone there who is overjoyed, thrilled to talk to you about Bitcoin and explain all the little details. Don't be intimidated. Don't be scared of asking dumb questions. Ask whatever questions and they'll explain it to you. they're just like anything else in life. If you want to learn it, then you can find an expert and learn it. and yeah, do I wish that I had done that sooner? Yeah, that would have been cool, but it just wasn't on my radar screen. but I think it's important, and I think that as time goes on, it's going to be more important for everybody. It's going to come to mind more. As we see what inflation is doing both here and around the world, and as we see what deep banking is doing very close to home and possibly even here at home, coming soon to a bank near you. this is an important concept. And I recommend everyone look into it through whatever means they can.

I just want to add, a caveat about looking up Bitcoin meetups. There are a lot of Bitcoin meetups that are labeled as Bitcoin meetups, but they're actually not Bitcoin. They're Cryptocurrency trading investment clubs. So just, be careful looking at Bitcoin meetups. One way to make sure it's Bitcoin only is to, attend and listen to the conversations. If they bring out any other coin and say you should invest in this, you should run the other way. you can also go to bitcoinonly. com or bitcoinevents. com. Those are Bitcoin only, so. But yeah, meetup is kind of the wild, wild West, I feel like when you when it talks about cryptocurrency and web three and all that stuff, they all seem like they fall in the same bucket. But you and I know that Bitcoin stands alone. So

Yes. Yes. That was something really interesting to discover. Thank you so much for saying that. I guess I've been spoiled because the only Bitcoin meetups I've been to have been basically run by Maxis. I am approaching Bitcoin no longer from an investment standpoint, like, Oh, I should have gotten them when they were cheap and sold them when they were high. So I could get land. I'm not there anymore. I am like. true believer in like, this is the hardest money that will ever exist. And I think it's really going to do some amazing things that I really like. I'm very much a promoter of it in it alone, because yeah, that was another thing that I was going through too, is Back before learning more about Bitcoin, I was like, well, there's all these other cryptocurrencies out there too. how am I going to sort through which one is the best? Do they make sense? And there's an information overload out there. just none of them have the same qualities Bitcoin does. They don't have, like an important things that the founder is anonymous. So that person cannot be manipulated. another is that it has this network effect already. So lots of people are using it already is what I mean. they're still working on it. They're building things to make it. useful. you don't really see this so much. it's actually not inflatable. There's a cap on how much there is. You're not just making them out of nothing. There's a lot of things about Bitcoin that you cannot say about any other cryptocurrency. or maybe you can say one or two things, but not all of the things it's, it's very special. It does stand alone. So I would Definitely be wary of anyone who's telling you, Oh, I think that you should get a bunch of Bitcoin sell it when it reaches like blah, blah, blah amount of money. This is not what Bitcoin is for. Or that tells you like, Oh, I also hold blah blah blah coin and blah blah blah coin because, they're going places. It's like, are you sure that you understand what Bitcoin does? Are you sure that you understand what Bitcoin is for? if people are saying that, maybe they don't. And it's not that... There can't be anyone at the meetup who is like that, sometimes people will say things like that, but that doesn't mean like the whole group is like that. And so the conversation is is richer and there are people there to talk to about Bitcoin exclusively and using it as a parallel currency and a better currency. so those people are there. And if that's at least true, then it could be a good place to go and get more information to those people. Don't talk to the people who are just investing in it temporarily Like it's any other kind of stock or or something because that's not the point

So how has Understanding Bitcoin changed the way you conduct your life, practically.

Oh, that's a really good question. I guess it's just kind of deep into my understanding of a fiat currency and its failings and of these other alt coins and their failings. I guess most of it has been theoretical, but to me theory is a big part of my life. So, it's given me other things to think about, other ways to see the world. And it's given me some hope for the future because it is good that there is something that can't be controlled through force and violence, that people can turn to and use as money. It is. Really a nice thing to think about, like, oh, hey, this is not going anywhere. and they just learn more and more things, like, people will often say, like, oh, well, what if the electrical grid goes down, or what if the internet goes down, then you won't have your Bitcoin anymore. And it's just... Like on the one, on the one hand, it's like if either of those things happen, you have a lot of problems, do you really think your fiat money is going to be valuable at that point? or even gold, when people are literally starving, you might have some serious issues. Not that starving is the first emergency that comes, but enough emergencies come if either of those things go down. You have very serious problems first. But even then, I have just recently learned things like there are ways that people have finagled to exchange Bitcoin with each other through ham radio. And through something that I don't fully understand, but I'm like, I like to see this article. I think it's some kind of local neighborhood network that you don't need the internet. You don't need central electrical grid. You can still trade your Bitcoin. You can still use your Bitcoin. And of course, like if it's a temporary emergency. You can hold on to your keys and then use them later. This is always true. So that is really great So yeah, It has given me some hope for, the vagaries of life, that there's something that can maybe withstand that. Other ways that it's affected my daily life, aside from, going to meetings about Bitcoin and earning Bitcoin. I mean, those are just some, practical parts of my life that it's affected is, now I do those things. Uh, so,

yeah, before, before we wrap up, let's quickly talk about your pottery.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Not only have I translated and earned Bitcoin, but I've also done pottery and earned Bitcoin. I make pottery, and most of them, most of the pieces, I will accept either fiat currency or Bitcoin. And if you do... Pay me in Bitcoin, then you'll get Bitcoin discount. but then there are the Bitcoin themed pieces that I will only sell for Bitcoin and actually they've been my best seller. Post things on Noster. And I, also go and sell things in person. So far, I've only really sold things in person, but I have hope for the future on the other things, this is all still pretty new for me. But yeah, I've sold every single Bitcoin themed thing that I have made so far, so I'm making more and that's pretty cool. That's a good feeling.

And, can people find you on Nosterf if they're interested in the Bitcoin themed pottery that you make?

Yes, they definitely can, I'll be posting about those things as they come up. completed, and it's a little bit complicated to look someone up on Noster, the best bet is to look for what's called their NPUB, which is a long and crazy string of letters and numbers. So I'll just give that to you, Tali, and maybe we can put that in the show notes if they want to follow me on Noster, that would be cool. And then they will get a heads up whenever I complete a piece of pottery, including a Bitcoin game board if they want it.

Awesome. Thank you so much for spending time to chat with me. That was really fun. I learned a lot.

Oh, cool. Thanks. I had a lot of fun too.

Thanks for joining us today If the discussion with our guests resonated with you and you would like to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin, don't miss out on joining the Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club. The meetup link is in the show notes. Also, if there are women in your life whom you think would both enjoy and benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them. Until next time, bye!