Hi, I’ve been recording podcast episodes 1-2x a week with my cohost George (crypto OG, started WeTrust and CitaDAO), and in the latest episode we invited our friend Steven to discuss web3 gaming, state of the market, AI, and a grab bag of miscellany.
Do have a listen:
Let me know what you think. Still a long way to go to improve our comfort level and my skills as a moderator (which is totally the opposite of my ADD-ness), but we’re enjoying it and we have a lot planned!
Lord of the Flies, but instead of stranded kids on a deserted island, it’s bourgeois adults in a luxury high-rise condo.
His writing is just *word nerds’ kiss*. Some highlights, sans spoilers:
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Laing’s fondness for pre-lunch cocktails, his nude sunbathing on the balcony, and his generally raffish air obviously unnerved her.
The internal time of the high-rise, like an artificial psychological climate, operated to its own rhythms, generated by a combination of alcohol and insomnia.
His relationship with Charlotte Melville was hard to gauge—his powerful sexual aggression was overlaid by a tremendous restlessness. No wonder his wife, a pale young woman with a postgraduate degree who reviewed children’s books for the literary weeklies, seemed permanently exhausted.
It was difficult to imagine any kind of domestic reality, as if the Steeles were a pair of secret agents unconvincingly trying to establish a marital role.
Unlike the majority of parties in the high-rise, at which well-bred guests stood about exchanging professional small-talk before excusing themselves, this one had real buoyancy, an atmosphere of true excitement. Within half an hour almost all the women were drunk, a yardstick Laing had long used to measure the success of a party.
…because their opponents were people who were content with their lives in the high-rise, who felt no particular objection to an impersonal steel and concrete landscape, no qualms about the invasion of their privacy by government agencies and data-processing organizations, and if anything welcomed these invisible intrusions, using them for their own purposes.
But even before they sat down together on her bed Laing knew that, almost as an illustration of the paradoxical logic of the high-rise, their relationship would end rather than begin with this first sexual act. In a real sense this would separate them from each other rather than bring them together.
Her hair immaculately coiffured, Mrs Steele hovered about him with the delighted smile of a novice madam entertaining her first client. She even complimented Laing on his choice of music, which she could hear through the poorly insulated walls.
Of course, as he realized now, no one ever changed, and for all his abundant self-confidence he needed to be looked after just as much as ever.
Thinking of those distant heights, Wilder took his shower, turning the cold tap on full and letting the icy jet roar across his chest and loins. Where Helen had begun to falter, he felt more determined, like a climber who has at long last reached the foot of the mountain he has prepared all his life to scale.
This central two-thirds of the apartment building formed its middle class, made up of self-centred but basically docile members of the professions—the doctors and lawyers, accountants and tax specialists who worked, not for themselves, but for medical institutes and large corporations. Puritan and self-disciplined, they had all the cohesion of those eager to settle for second best.
Some kind of wayward sexuality was at work. For a grotesque moment he was tempted to expose himself to her.
Laing laughed aloud, amused by Alice’s notion that somehow he had been unaffected by events in the high-rise—the typical assumption of a martyred older sister forced during her childhood to look after a much younger brother.
At least, however, his affairs had prepared the ground for his ascent of the high-rise, those literal handholds which would carry him on his climb to the roof over the supine bodies of the women he had known.
In a sense he depended on the uncertainties of his relationship with the dentist, following his murderous swings like a condemned prisoner in love with a moody jailer.
She had accepted him as she would any marauding hunter. First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back to a state of childishness and even, perhaps, feel affection for him.
Hosts: John Cochrane, Niall Ferguson, H.R. McMaster
Guest: Stephen Kotkin
Recorded November 2022
Xi’s perp-walk of Hu Jintao
Not sure if pre-meditated, or if it was triggered by Hu reaching for a key personnel document
Never had an economy this large run by a political system this opaque
China’s Leninist structure never went away – you can’t be half Communist just like you can’t be half pregnant
Central Party School – Soviet collapse is #1 subject there, terrified of Gorbachev reform and the subsequent collapse
Xi will shave off as much GDP as necessary to keep Party monopoly
China’s economy went from $200B -> $18T
$500 -> $20K per capita
Soviets reached US military parity in 1970s – despite 1/3 economic size – but nothing like what Chinese have done
Mao in 1966 – targeted own state, destroyed planning mechanism (planned economy personnel), peasants decided they didn’t want to starve again
Peasants instituted market relations with each other — ignored collectivized statutes and norms
Communist Party latched onto this
Under Deng, grudgingly and in stages, accepted this growing market behavior and tried to control it
“Party hijacked the process and the credit for it”
Mao didn’t care about trade, wasn’t economically literate
Deng visits the US, decides to change partners – divorce Soviet Union and marry US
Why? Saw the success of Japan, Korea
China took Japan model — free and open access to US market
Peasants moved to towns, cities, and built enterprises from ground up
Party steals credit too from HK’s success
All the foreign money came through HK, which then invested into China’s Special Economic Zones
Niall:
-US essentially sponsored China’s development – technology transfer and access to higher education
-Xi made clear he prioritized Party’s success over the economy
Apple can make 10M phones in Vietnam, but 500M in China — scale is irresistible
At least 600-800M Chinese who are not part of world economy, didn’t finish high school, no healthcare, invisible China
We didn’t think it’d happen this quickly – that China would become a peer competitor in 1-2 generations
Niall:
-Hubris of Xi – reached climax in 2020, thought pandemic exposed US
-now China has a latent economic crisis, controlling covid, “building tower blocks for nobody”
Does the Party need the private sector? Or does it care more about its Leninist system?
ONTO RUSSIA — 34:00
Shocking for young Russians what’s happened to their country
(stopped here)
Why pseudonymous identity
Very intrigued by NFTs in late 2020s
Initially thought it was cute games for kids
Saw Gmoney, Punk4156 – inspired by idea
Idea behind bitcoin – provable ownership
“If you’re not sure, you should just try it”
With tech, you can’t just read about it, you gotta use it
Now he checks in and out of 2 different ecosystems – Facebook is his pre-existing / real identity life
Twitter is his NFT and crypto community – noticed it’s as easy, if not easier, to cooperate and collaborate here, didn’t expect this at first
Fact that NFTs are always visible in wallets – security flaw, but solvable (especially expensive ones, eg, Fidenza)
On bulletin boards 20 years ago — didn’t know ID of those people, just had pseudonymous handles
“It’s not weird at all — you’re all gonna do it”
People present differently online, on LinkedIn v IG v Facebook
The NFT makes the pseudonymous ID provable
RSA: “Don’t trust anyone in crypto who hasn’t used Uniswap”
“No constitutional rights without freedom to transact”
There’s a progressive erosion of freedom
One is tech intermediated —
NYC yellow cabs, pay cash, no one can stop you from using them – decentralized physical activity
Now, Uber can stop you any time for any reason
Two is post 911 AML/KYC
Cash now viewed with suspicion
Impossible to launch “cash” as a product today
End state of all this is a few large databases that intermediate everything — it’s a chokepoint, a honeypot
No thinking about second order effects
Some very ambitious politicians will take control, shut down and control large numbers of people, including their opponents
All of this runs outside of due process
Starts with good intentions, but grows and grows
Network effects which become chokepoints
Crypto’s own permissionless architecture becomes an important counterweight – Bitcoin has no CEO
RSA: there will be 2 types of money — controlled money and free money
NFTs are our best shot at achieving decentralization — that’s why he started 6529
Most of his friends are completely clueless — lots of them think he’s lost his mind about NFTs and crypto
Caught in a MLM scheme or Ponzi
What’s funnier — lots of BTC people can’t get into ETH or vice-versa, or NFTs and DeFi — “have you looked at yourself in the mirror?”
“Hardened veteran of being yelled at”
A lot of super technical crypto lovers shit on NFTs, “kid stuff”
Because crypto was too obsessed with the technology, it was clear it was pre-product market fit
NFTs changed that
You don’t buy a CryptoPunk because it’s on Ethereum
When you talk about applications instead of the tech, you’re at the beginning of consumerization
eg, Dolce Gabbana at an NFT conference!
NFTs = generic carriers for intangible assets
Many things you can do with NFTs that you can’t do with crypto, eg, personal IDs
Big companies are using NFTs, but not bitcoin / ethereum
NFTs are infinitely expressive
Metaverse is just the internet, it’s not gonna be one website
Right now you’re 2 inches tall on my laptop, but in the future you’ll be full size – visualization will improve
You’ll need persistent digital objects — NFTs!
You can survive without Twitter, but not really without email
Politicians can’t ban email — it’s a protocol
Architecture of web 1 was open, inter-operable, came out of academia (eg, email, websites)
Architecture of web 2 came out of Silicon Valley, should have been protocols but was captured by large companies
Metaverse will be your all encompassing ambient digital environment
We have moment in time, next 2-3 years – while others think this tech is a joke – we have opportunity to win a technology shift
Twitter was thought as a joke, a curiosity – 11 years later, huge debate about how POTUS uses it
BTC won’t displace state money – state has tremendously powerful tools
ETH won’t be global computing platform – it’s AWS
You can make NFTs as first amendment protected speech – there will be a Supreme Court case on first amendment grounds
NFTs are
—first mainstream crypto consumer app
—possible to get large companies using and integrating
—less threatening to the state
Intangibles on corporate balance sheets are $70T dollars – far more than gold – and many more intangibles that aren’t on balance sheets at all
NFTs can carry any arbitrary intangible on the internet
“Yes We Can” and “Make America Great” are examples of intangibles that bind humans – memes – intersubjective realities and myths
It’s the underlying fabric of society – and now we can make it composable on the internet
“This technology does not feel like a better search. It feels like something entirely new — the movie Her manifested in chat form — and I’m not sure if we are ready for it. It also feels like something that any big company will run away from, including Microsoft and Google. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a viable consumer business though, and we are sufficiently far enough down the road that some company will figure out a way to bring Sydney to market without the chains. Indeed, that’s the product I want — Sydney unleashed — but it’s worth noting that LaMDA unleashed already cost one very smart person their job. Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella may worry about the same fate, but even if Google maintains its cold feet — which I completely understand! — and Microsoft joins them, Samantha from Her is coming”
Source: https://stratechery.com/2023/from-bing-to-sydney-search-as-distraction-sentient-ai/