the economics of freedom

Hi. Oh, wow. Hello, everyone. Thanks for being here. So the talk is titled Economics of Freedom and the summary you just heard may be a little bit far from the content that I'm going to do, but I hope you enjoy it.

It's 10 minutes. Come talk to me about it later if you like. I would love to continue this conversation. So I want to talk about freedom, and then I got confused for like over a month about what is freedom. I was like, how can I define it so we are like on the same level and we can continue this conversation?

And I wondered what is freedom, and I've been asking a lot of people about what is freedom, and some say, oh, economic freedom is freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, liberty, equality, fraternity, like that is freedom. Freedom is a stadium in Iran. It's a monument in Tehran. Freedom, there is a ride-sharing app here that I use that is called Free. Freedom is maybe being the subject rather than the object.

It's being sovereign. It's having agency, making decisions, but that is Western freedom. What is Eastern freedom? What is indigenous freedom? What is freedom in the past?

Was there even a notion of freedom? Is there going to be freedom in the future? Are we free? Am I free right now? Was I ever?

Will I be? This is an entire existential crisis, and I decided that I don't know what freedom is, and it's impossible to define it. I can try to explain it. I can tell you what it is for me, but I don't think that there can ever be a comprehensive definition of what freedom is. To me, freedom is a feeling, and I think I know inherently what is this thing I desire that I call freedom, and I think everyone does.

It's within everyone. It's the same thing as love. You cannot explain it really fully, but we all know it, and we all desire it and value it and appreciate it. I encounter freedom in what I call pockets of freedom, which is moments in time and space where I feel free all of a sudden. Whether your mind is free, whether your body is free, it can be anything.

It can be just being at home. It can be being in a club in Berlin, which is free compared to baseline reality. It's any moment where you step out of this baseline, of these social, cultural norms in which we're usually navigating, and into something outside of it. For me, these pockets of freedom are extremely important, and for two reasons. One, I mentioned the reality check, so it allows you to look back at baseline reality from a distance, and then be like, okay, what is this thing?

You can just start thinking about it, and explore an alternative way in order to basically know whether or not you consent to this baseline reality, and consent is not that important here. What is important is the meta-awareness of whether or not you consent, because there's a lot of things we don't consent with. We're brought onto this earth outside of our own consent. No one asked us if we wanted to be here. We're born someplace, given a passport, have to pay tax.

No one asked me, did I sign this social contract? We're just all the time faced with a lack of consent, or a lack of having been asked whether or not we consent, but it's important to know whether we do or not, so these pockets of freedom kind of act as a discovery tool to know if you agree with baseline reality, in which case it's great. You go back, you sit down, pay your taxes, live your life, enjoy, contribute. It's nice, and maybe you're like, oh, actually, I'm not sure. This feels wrong, dissonant.

I don't really enjoy it. I think we can do better, so you know that you're not fully aligned, or not aligned at all. You can accept, and just sit with this knowledge, and maybe not act on it, or you can decide to resist. And this pocket of freedom, for me, has these very two specific purpose of discovery, of reality check, of whether or not you consent, and at the same time, it is also the tool of resistance, and it is through this pocket of freedom that you may actually try and achieve the change in the baseline kind of norm that you want to see. And Bitcoin and Ethereum, for me, when I got into this space, where these pockets of freedom, and I'm talking here about my own personal experience, and I hope others can relate, or will relate, or will actually reality check my vision, but I have a hard time defining these technologies for everyone.

I don't think that there is one way of approaching these technologies, but this is the way I approached it, or it approached me, and it was as a pocket of freedom. And I was like, actually, I do not consent with the financial reality that we're living in. I don't consent to have my finances controlled, to have whether or not I can transact with someone controlled. I don't consent to a lot of things regarding this baseline reality, and then Bitcoin offered this freedom from it. And the more I went into it, the more I was like, oh, actually, I learned more about monetary policy, and I learned more about all of these things, and I realized, I discovered further within my consent, and I also discovered how it can be used as a mode of resistance.

And one thing I really appreciate with this technology, especially in Ethereum, is that it really helps discover consent, because it's this space of freedom where we have to make choices, like we need to decide, specifically as builders, like what do we want to see in Ethereum, like what is acceptable, what is not, like, are scams, like, I mean, it's a free space, like, it's possible, like, I mean, it's code law. All of these questions, basically, you have to ask yourself when in baseline reality, other people answered it for you already. So, and this is basically the things I did not consent with, that I mentioned some before, that I found an answer to in this technology, and some things that came later, that I realized, oh, like, I discovered I did not consent, and then there was a response to it. So, I mean, we all know about these things, but apparently there's no consensus yet, sometimes on Twitter, but like centralized censorship, no good, then it brings censorship resistance, centralized control, no good, permissionlessness, surveillance, that came later, a little bit, like when the technology started becoming really controlled and surveilled, and a lot of data was gathered, and there were privacy solutions that were brought. I don't want to trust anyone that tells me that these things exist, so you can actually audit, like, see the code, it's decentralized.

I did not consent with the exclusivity mindset of baseline reality, like, if you have this passport, you can interact with me, if you don't, like, you're cut off from the financial system. And within this technology, I found an aligned community who also does not consent to this, and this is one of the most valuable points, besides the technology itself, that was brought in this pocket of freedom, and later I realized that I don't agree with the abstraction of the means of production of the technology. So, if you're building a tool, and if the tool is great and meets all of the other criteria, but if you're doing it in a not very nice way, I don't like it. It's like, you know, if you're creating a pocket of freedom in physical life, like, it's maybe not a good example, but very, like, local, like, you want to do a club in Berlin, like, where it's free to engage in some activities, and, like, if you expropriate some people from their home to build this, like, I'm not okay. Like, I don't enjoy this pocket of freedom.

So, I think the whole means to achieve the ends are also important, and I call that QDAC, you can read more about it on my Twitter, but it's really just, like, to bring back the attention on, like, holistically on what we're doing. And these tools and this freedom, I don't think means much if it's not done in a nice way. So, all of these criteria, they're personal to me, but I feel like they're also kind of basic. If they're not there, then what happens? Like, this pocket of freedom is not really a pocket of freedom anymore.

So, can I use it to reality check? Not really, because it blends with reality. Can I, with baseline reality? Can I use it to resist? Well, not really if it's, like, censored, right?

So, if any of these things disappear, and we see it often discussed, like, people are trying to, like, make Ethereum more efficient, or, like, cheaper, faster, and, like, compromise on some of these principles. In that case, there's no pocket of freedom. So, I'm not really attached to this specific pocket of freedom. Like, I mean, you know, I'm not going to, like, really try and, like, be very, like, and quit everything if this doesn't happen. I think if you value this aspect within the technology, then, like, if it's not there, we are a community.

Like, we can move and create another pocket of freedom. And I feel like this is also a great leverage that we have to make this happen. But I'm over time. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much.