#284 – Saifedean Ammous: Bitcoin, Anarchy, and Austrian Economics
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2022
⏱️ 261 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Saifedean Ammous is an Austrian economist and author of The Bitcoin Standard and The Fiat Standard. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Saifedean’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/saifedean
Saifedean’s Website: https://saifedean.com
The Bitcoin Standard podcast: https://saifedean.com/podcast
Books & resources mentioned:
The Fiat Standard (book): https://amzn.to/3FmNfsy
The Bitcoin Standard (book): https://amzn.to/3LRrcwA
The Blocksize War (book): https://amzn.to/3LORQ9o
The Theory of Money and Credit (book): https://amzn.to/3ykreZT
Human Action (book): https://amzn.to/3w9LzP4
PODCAST INFO:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(07:53) – Money
(20:58) – Gold standard
(34:09) – Collective hallucination
(39:59) – Austrian vs Keynesian economics
(1:12:20) – Free market
(1:28:49) – Monarchy
(1:34:23) – Fiat money
(2:21:13) – SWIFT system
(2:34:03) – Bitcoin
(2:40:20) – Satoshi Nakamoto
(2:48:04) – Criticisms of Bitcoin
(3:03:16) – Football/soccer
(3:06:58) – Criticisms of Bitcoin continued
(3:17:17) – Bitcoin Maximalism
(3:29:40) – Proof of stake
(3:46:46) – Central bank digital currency
(3:57:59) – Michael Malice
(4:00:12) – Advice for young people
(4:06:21) – Palestine
(4:18:00) – Mortality
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with safety and amuse, one of the central and most impactful |
| 0:04.7 | economists, philosophers and educators in the world of Bitcoin. |
| 0:09.2 | He is an Austrian economist, an anarchist, and the author of the Bitcoin Standard and the |
| 0:14.6 | new book The Fiat Standard. |
| 0:17.5 | Safety and does not miss words in his criticism of economists and humans in general with |
| 0:22.7 | whom he disagrees. |
| 0:24.3 | For example, Paul Krugman, who is a neo-acanzian economist and a previous guest at this podcast. |
| 0:32.4 | Safety and opinions are strong and often controversial. |
| 0:36.2 | I do push back in this conversation, playing devil's advocate or trying to steal man |
| 0:40.6 | each side. |
| 0:41.6 | But as always, I do so in the service of exploring the rich space of ideas that safety has about |
| 0:48.1 | human nature and human civilization. |
| 0:51.1 | I trust the intelligence of you, the listener, to come to your own conclusions. |
| 0:56.8 | That is the burden of being a free thinking human. |
| 1:00.2 | It is on each of us individually to dive into this chaos of ideas, and from that chaos, |
| 1:06.6 | discover long-lasting universal wisdom to live by. |
| 1:12.2 | And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. |
| 1:14.6 | Check them out in the description. |
| 1:16.0 | It's the best way to support this podcast. |
| 1:18.7 | We got Give Well for charity, scale for machine learning, uncruse for adventure, by optimizers |
| 1:25.7 | for health and athletic greens for performance. |
| 1:29.0 | Choose wisely my friends. |
... |
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