Transcending Individualism & Collectivism - David Hoffman, Erik Voorhees and Kevin Owocki

Transcript

What's up, everyone? So, if you guys have been paying attention to both Eric and Kevin on Twitter, every once in a while they get into a debate around public goods. And if you guys know, Eric is a very big libertarian and Kevin is really I guess I'd call him a collectivist. I'm not sure if that's true or not. Anyways, while these two men have done so much for this industry and they are 99.999% the same, they tend to disagree on one thing and that is the priority of individualism versus collectivism. So, we're going to unpack this today on this Bankless podcast. And so, I'm going to start with you, Eric. Eric, why is individual- individualism at its very essence good and how does crypto

enable individualism? All right. Well, first I want to clarify something that I am only an average-sized libertarian. I'm 5'11", so there are bigger ones than me. Um all right. So, rephrase your question. Why is individualism good and how does crypto enable individualism? All right. Uh so, I'm actually a little bit disappointed that even answering why individualism is good has to be a thing now. This This used to be This used to be like understood by most people, at least in America, that all individuals are, you know, people with different preferences and to respect individuals as themselves

with their own preferences is like a really good basis for civilization. Um somehow it's become an extreme position to advocate for individualism and uh one of my favorite things about the crypto world is that it's starting to bring that back and empower people as individuals. And Kevin, a very very similar question to you. Why is collectivism good and how does crypto enable collectivism? Hello.

Um first off, I want to say ShapeShift is awesome. Thank you for everything you've done for this space, Eric. You're a legend. Um Kevin, a little closer to the mic, please. I love ShapeShift. Thanks, Kevin. Uh sorry. I love ShapeShift. What So, your question was why is collectivism good? Why is collectivism good and how does crypto enable it? Yeah, so um collectivism uh is the idea that if we uh is that a lot of the value that we get out of society is from things like public goods and things that are in the commons. So, things like clean air, like transportation networks, uh this whole space is enabled by the internet, which

was uh researched at ARPA uh through a government grant. And so, the idea uh here is that public goods are good. 80% of the value that we get from our lives is from public goods. What good is a Lambo if the sky is on fire? And public goods are good and we tend to we tend to take them for granted until we don't have we don't have them anymore. You don't realize you don't have clean air until you're breathing toxic air. You don't realize that our digital infrastructure is underfunded until there's a black swan event and there's a huge hack. And so, basically the idea is that we're all standing on the shoulders of giants and even the most successful

entrepreneurs in the space have been standing on the shoulders of giants. They've been enabled by the generations before them contributions to humanity and that we should recognize and respect that. Uh crypto and web 3 allows for greater combinations of strength and intelligence to come together and to fund public goods. And I think that that's one of the really great opportunities within the space. Eric, do you think that cryptocurrency enables individualism more than it enables collectivism? Is it Is cryptocurrency inherently an individualist technology?

Uh yeah, cryptocurrency is absolutely fundamentally a individualist technology. It provides every individual with sovereignty over their wealth, their finances, and now far beyond finance. So, absolutely yes. Um at the same time, I mean, I agree with a lot of what what Kevin is saying. Uh public goods are very important. I think what we disagree with is like how they should be funded. Just because something is a public good doesn't mean you need to steal from your neighbor in order to fund it. So, um I think that's where that's where we tend to disagree on things. But yeah, cryptocurrency, I mean, you can you can tell just from this event like how individualistic it is, right? There are people here from

all different backgrounds, all different places in the world. They see different things when they look into the prism of Ethereum. And um I think that that's a beautiful thing. Eric, I want to make a counterpoint to that. So many people from so many different walks of life are all here. We're all So, all the individuals of many, many different flavors are all in the same room sharing the same vibes. Is that not collectivist? I guess we have to define collectivism, right? Uh there's a definition of collectivism, which I think is the dangerous one, in which groups of individuals are coerced into certain behaviors that they wouldn't otherwise be doing.

I think the most dangerous forms of collectivism tend to turn into war, where hundreds and thousands uh or millions of people are literally murdered under the banner of collectivism. Wars always happen under the banner of collectivism, under the banner of nationalism. Um I'm completely opposed to that. And so, for everything that you can say about how the internet got funded by the government, yes, okay, what other things has DARPA funded, right? The same organization literally built the nuclear bomb and and murdered 100,000 people in Japan. So personally, I want to find different ways of funding public goods than giving it the money forcefully or taking it from my neighbor and giving it

to like the most atrocious organizations on Earth. Kevin, do you want to respond to that? Uh Well, I I I'm happy to respond to that, but I think generally what we're trying to do is create a synthesis, not a a tit-for-tat conversation between me and Eric. I guess I'll just say that there are different ways that collectivists and individualists define each other. So an individualist will I think define themselves on the basis of mutualism and cooperation, whereas a collectivist will focus on group goals, what's best for the collective group and the interpersonal relationships in in

them. And I think that an individualist would define a collectivist as being willing to accept force coercive cooperation in order to meet those group goals, and that's the primary sort of like axis of disagreement is whether or not coercion is an acceptable means to an end. And I guess, you know, the the real question for me is would you accept a 20% tax on your income to create a 10,000% better world? Kevin, we we started this industry with Bitcoin, which is I think the most individualist part of this whole entire industry, but I also kind of think that this Web3 phenomenon and these

community-based organization phenomenon is much more collectivist. Do you see that the Web3 side of of the crypto revolution as we are currently in that phase. Is that the collectivist side of things that's coming out? Um I think that Ethereum First of all, I don't know much about Bitcoin. Is that even still a thing anymore? Rude. Ethereum is a programmable Turing complete global uh transparent and immutable substrate for human coordination. And when something is programmable, you can program your values into your money. And so I think that there will be different

parts of the web 3 ecosystem that will program different values into different monetary systems. And some of them will tend more towards multiplayer games and collectivist type things. And uh some of them will tend towards more single-player games. And I think that that's great. The great thing about crypto is that it's founded in a root of of not your keys, not your coins. And that allows you to fundamentally have sovereignty over your bank account, which is [ __ ] cool.

And then from there, from that foundation, we can build more non-coercive collectivist systems. And so imagine a global uh web scale infrastructure for funding public goods that is non-coercive. I think that that is the synthesis of Eric's value set, my value set, the synthesis of what's possible in this space. And I think we should reorient the conversation around how to create a synthesis of cypherpunk values and solarpunk values and realize that world together.

So in search of that synthesis, you guys I think have both articulated a pragmatic argument but coming from two different angles. Eric said that um we we DARPA made the internet but it also made the nuclear bomb. Or uh well we can create one good thing out of uh out of a collectivist government efforts, 10,000 evils come after that. But, then Kevin says that what good is your what good is your Lambo if the sky's on fire? And so, we need some sort of government management or public goods funding to make sure that the the sky is not on fire. Both of you guys seem to be articulating pragmatism as as your arguments. How do you guys square this thing? Eric, can we start

with you? I think when I when I look into into the crypto world, I see I see people ultimately cooperating peacefully with no central coercion. And I think it's a it's a beautiful example of of what public goods actually can be created without uh coercive funding, right? There's so many things that the public here use in terms of infrastructure, code, mathematics, language. Uh all of these are public goods and they're not, you know, funded coercively. So, I think a lot of people maybe just don't quite realize how much actual spontaneous order exists around them that isn't coercively funded in the

first place. Kevin, you want to answer that same question? Do you want me to repeat it? Uh sorry, could you repeat the question? Yeah, both of you guys seem to make pragmatic arguments to justify why perhaps you should prioritize collectivism over individualism. Eric said that well, well, we can produce the internet via collectivism, we might actually produce wars as a result. And the tradeoffs, Eric and what I think Eric says, the tradeoffs just aren't worth it. But, then you say pragmatically, it's actually just worth it if the government can take 20% of my money if they can make my roads not bumpy and my air very clean and my water very clear. So, how do we how do we square these things when both of you guys are making pragmatic arguments?

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess it sort of just depends on what you think the biggest threat to human thriving is. You know, I think that we're in this space to create a a thriving of a global citizenry that no matter where you're from, no matter who you are, what your background is, that you can create thriving both economically, emotionally, socially, and and and so I think that, you know, it really just kind of depends on whether you think the biggest threat to your comes from coercion of a collectivist actor, or if you think that the biggest threat to your thriving comes from global coordination failures

like climate change, underfunded digital public goods, transportation networks, clean air and water, herd immunity, and those type of things. And so, depending on which one of those things you think are the biggest threat to your thriving, I I think that maybe that's where the chips fall. All right, guys. In your opinion, what's the best way to find a non-coercive way to fund public goods? How would you prefer it be done, Eric? First, you have to define what public goods should actually be, right? So, my main one of my main issues with government generally is that they simply get bigger and bigger and bigger, and they're always providing more and more things under the under the

guise of public good. So, there's probably a lot of things that that Kevin and I both think are like legitimate public goods that need funding, but that's such a small portion of what government money actually goes to. So, limiting the scope of what is an actual public good, I think is important first. I think we all know like if the only thing the government did was make sure the air was clean and build roads, like there would be no libertarian movement, right? That wouldn't be a thing, but that's not actually what your money goes for. That's just such a a tiny piece of it. Um so, yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Yeah. Um yes, I mean I think the uh the question is how do we coordinate to fund public goods? And one of the things that I see with uh Okay, so the government uh the the the the government uh definitely has a large administrative state that is slow and bureaucratic and way less efficient than a lot of the technology that that we see in this space and in technology in general. Um I do think that one of the big opportunities that I see is is uh with Ethereum we've got a transparent, immutable, programmable

substrate for global coordination. So, nation-states cannot do global coordination around global coordination failures. Nation-states, because they don't have a transparent transparent, incorruptible ledger for you to check on what they're doing, um the you have an opportunity for this administrative state to really grow and to get really bloated. And so, what if we shifted the foundation of funding some of these public goods onto something that was more transparent uh and could not be corrupted? Uh you know, the smart contract, once it's deployed, cannot be uh cannot be changed even if the values of the person who could deploy it changed. Whereas, you know, with with a lot of these governments, it depends on

what bureaucrat is in charge of administering the system. And so, I I really just think that we've got a foundationally better substrate for human coordination with blockchain-based systems for creating transparency and therefore accountability and therefore we can build systems to coordinate without a large administrative state. And maybe that's the synthesis of where we're going. I want to lean into the the where we're going part of that. Um Eric, how do you think that this could the crypto industry's role, how does that uh our How does this industry play a role in funding public goods over the long term?

We're We're still in the very nascent phase of crypto, a lot of experiments going around. Do you think that uh this industry actually has uh a role to play with making public goods funded and safe and and secure for the long term? Uh I I may be stuck in the past, but my my generation of crypto people are still focused on sort of the first mission, which is removing money and finance out of the hands of government. Um that that is um that is a monumental undertaking and is is starting to work, but it's going to be like a decades-long process.

Uh I I love that there are people now in crypto that have different missions and are using this technology in other ways, so you know, that's great. But when when someone says like how should crypto be used to fund public goods, that's such an alien concept to me, um because it seems like a question that might be appropriate uh in the future, but today today we still have the Federal Reserve. Today someone born in a certain country can't send money to someone else uh just because of like their their background. Today everyone here and their fiat currencies are being debased at 10% a year.

And until we stop that cancer, um I think it's almost futile to start talking about the public goods that also do need funding in some other way. It I I think what your answer was just that money is a public good and government is uh ruining that public good for the rest of us by debasing the fiat currency. Is that Is that right? I'll carry this cancer metaphor a little further. If you're If you're dying of cancer, you don't want to talk about like what what clothes should I be wearing right now, right? Like that might be important if you're not dying of cancer, but when you're dying of cancer, you stop the cancer.

I believe that fiat currency is a cancer upon the world and one once that gets solved, um I will be the first one to start figuring out other important problems that humanity has to tackle. Is Is money the meta public good? Uh no, money is not a public good. Uh money is a private good. It should be a private good. Everyone's money is belonging to them and themselves. But we all use the same money and so yes, I have my money that's in like that I own, but I only own that money because everyone else also owns that money because it's a global utility system. Do you not consider that the the instantiation of gold, for example, is a system that exists all across the

world that we are all collectively using as a utility of transferring value. And so when you say that we're debasing money, I hear that we're we're ruining a public good. Yeah, go- gold wasn't instantiated. Gold emerged through the trading of goods uh by individual private parties based on their individual self-interest. Right? So this is actually an example of something that is useful, but that is purely private. It does not require government funding. It does not require it to be like it's not a public good. It's just individual commodity that individuals use as and when they see fit.

Um I think something like something like air is a much more difficult challenge because it is shared among everyone. Uh it's very hard to like limit and uh and contain it. So there's a lot of important questions of like how to keep air clean. I think that's a that's a fair point to debate. Kevin, I want to go back to the question of how crypto can help fund public goods over the long term. And you have a book right there called green pilled uh talking about regenerative crypto economics. Regenerative crypto economics, is that another word for helping fund public goods?

Yeah, I mean I think I yes is the answer and thank you for shilling this book about how crypto can regenerate the world that I wrote so that I don't have to. Uh, the reason why the book is called green pilled and not uh, it doesn't have the word public good in the name is that you need a lecture in economics to understand what public goods are but everyone viscerally understands regen regenerative systems. Systems that recover over time and are anti-fragile when exposed to stress are regenerative and public goods are a subset of that but I do not want to be overly technocratic and get into economics and definitions with people

when I'm trying to explain how crypto is good for the world cuz that is a good way of losing people. So that's why we're talking about green pills and regenerative crypto economics instead of public goods in the book. And the answer to your question is that the atomic unit of how crypto can regenerate the world is an impact DAO. An impact DAO is defined only as something that has a positive externality for the world. So basically that positive externality can be financial like Gitcoin grants creating funding for open source software. We funded $53 million worth of open source thus far.

Thanks Sarah. Not non-coercively. Um, and uh, so that is one example of an impact DAO. Uh, another example of an impact DAO is uh, I think like KlimaDAO is a really great example of an impact DAO that is tokenizing carbon credits in order to allow us to purch purchase purchase carbon credits using Ethereum and therefore pay down the carbon impact of not only the Ethereum ecosystem but eventually the entire world uh, using using uh, Ethereum technology. And I think another great example is proof of humanity, identity, and the ability to transact as a human,

uh, is is regenerative for the world. There are people in Argentina that because they have civil resistance on proof of humanity, are living off of UBI. [ __ ] yeah. That is the world that we want to create. So, the impact DAO is the atomic unit of how we build a regenerative crypto-economic system. Impact DAOs have positive externalities and they can be on many different vectors: financial, material, social, intellectual. Shout out to Gregory Gregory Landua, who is around here and uh, talks about eight different forms of capital, of which financial is only one of them. And by stacking these impact DAOs on top of each other and choosing to invest our financial resources, our

intellectual resources into them, that is how we build a non-coercive, regenerative infrastructure for the world. And I really hope to see this community at ETH Denver and beyond investing in creating positive externalities with the projects that you are all building. Because the book is called how crypto could regenerate the world, and in order to get us to a world where crypto will regenerate the world, we all have to choose it, and that means all of you. Yeah, I I love everything that you just said, Kevin, because none of it is coercive. I love that. And I love that crypto technology has allowed that kind of thing to flourish and for all this creative energy to go to these problems

with technology that wasn't around a decade ago. Yeah. [ __ ] yeah. Kevin, when you talk about regenerative crypto mom economics, I picture in my head a mesh network of many, many systems that all have positive externalities upon the world. And you you rattled off a bunch of different categories where if we can make impact dials in all these different categories and they can grow to fill the void of the world around us, all of a sudden the engagement in these things start to produce some sort of basal level of funding for the world around us. As these this mesh network of dials grows out and and

uh comes to maturity, does that strip away some of the responsibilities that governments currently have? we're not there yet and I don't really speak bureaucrat, so I don't really know. Sorry. All right, guys. I want to close out and and turn this conversation to something a little bit more topical, which is ETH Denver. You guys are both veterans of ETH Denver. Eric, what does ETH Denver mean for you? Um so, I'm from Colorado and uh it's I mean, for me it's been really fun to see the this branch of crypto, which is

Ethereum, it's become a a major branch uh like come back to my hometown and where I'm from and for every for all of you to visit this beautiful state is just very special to me. Um you know, like back in the day when I would go to Bitcoin conferences, it was always in other far-off places and that's that's great. But, to see to see it come full circle and come back to Colorado is just kind of um just kind of special for me being from here. Kevin, same question. What does ETH Denver mean for you? Uh ETH Denver is a shelling point for us all to come together, commune with our collective possibility, build the future, and we are going to put Colorado on the map as the place to move to when

when you want to build the future. Miami's got nothing on Colorado, David. All All I want to thank my two guests, Eric and Kevin. I appreciate both of you guys are here a personal heroes of mine and every time you guys speak, I always listen. So, it's an honor to be able to ask you questions directly face-to-face. Cheers. Thanks, David. Cheers. Thank you so much.