Digital scarcity, money's role, and Bitcoin's mimicry

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 337 (May 23, 2021).This is my appearance on Join the Wasabikas: A Bitcoin Privacy Podcast, Ep. 15.0, with Max Hillebrand. Update: See also thoughts on the nature of money, the barter problems solves, etc., in: KOL402 | Austrian Economics Discord Conference: Inflation: Its Causes, Effects, Parallels and Death in a Bitcoin World Am I a Bitcoin Maximalist? On the issue if why money needs only solve these problems, and why the idea of smart contracts as one of the useful features of functions of an advanced money is confused, see: my facebook post  https://www.facebook.com/nskinsella/posts/10158404058053181; comments on this in LIBERTARIAN ANSWER MAN: Smart Contracts  and KOL401 | Sazmining Twitter Space: Bitcoin & Property Rights. Transcript below. From the shownotes: Stephan Kinsella is an incredible scholar of the Austrian school of praxeology, his major contribution is the advancement of the arguments in favor of property of scarce goods, and against intellectual property of non-scarce goods. He applies his in depth wisdom to how Bitcoin can be explained in this view. We discussed a variety of topics related to bitcoin, property rights, Austrian economics, and so on. Shownotes for the full episode: Stephan Kinsella is an incredible scholar of the Austrian school of praxeology, his major contribution is the advancement of the arguments in favor of property of scarce goods, and against intellectual property of non-scarce goods. He applies his in depth wisdom to how Bitcoin can be explained in this view. Watch all Highlights Watch all full episodes Website: https://WasabiWallet.io Blog: https://blog.WasabiWallet.io Documentation: https://docs.WasabiWallet.io GitHub: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi Podcast: https://anchor.fm/Wasabikas YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/WasabiWallet Full episode on Youtube: My version (with professionally prepared captions): Wassabikas version: Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction. / Scarce vs non-scarce goods. 02:38 Stephan's background. / What property rights should be. / Intellectual property. 06:50 Why do we need property rights for scarce resources? / Praxeology: the logic of human action (Mises). / Assignment of an owner to anything that could be contested. / You own your body. / Homesteading. / Patents and copyright. 13:43 The purpose of law. 14:46 The definition of scarcity. / How much is the abundance of a good tied to its actual scarcity? / Superabundance. / Rivalrous or conflictable resources. / Production. / Dispute. 19:48 How to behave towards the aggressor. / Rules that promote peace. / Appeal to norms. 22:57 Retribution of the victim. / Empathy and evolution. / Being part of a community. / Crime is impossible to eradicate. 26:24 Entropy. / Creation is more difficult than destruction. / Defence is easier than offence. 27:48 What is the qualitative difference between retribution and pre-emptive defence? / Non-aggression principle. / Punishing people is expensive. / Restitution. 31:36 Juristic/legal ownership vs economic ownership. / Right to use vs ability to use. / Self-enforcing systems. / Ownership vs control. 33:48 Why don't you own the private key? / You can't own information. / Information is always the impatterning of a substrate. / Information is a feature of the owned thing. / Ownership can only be applied on physical things. 39:26 Craig Wright wants a property right over other people's computers. 40:41 Non-scarcity in cyberspace. 42:21 Using cryptography to enforce access rights. / Money is rivalrous. / Money has a network effect. / Bitcoin mimics real-world scarcity. / The purpose of money. / Non-coincidence of wants. / Economic calculation. / Any amount of money will do. 47:38 Absolute scarcity in the monetary medium. / Sacrifice. / Low supply. Low stock-to-flow ratio. / Gold vs Bitcoin. 50:11 Permissionless write-access to a central ledger. 53:43 What defines the absolute scarcity of gold? / Why did gold become money? 56:31 You verify that a transaction is valid based on the rules to which you opt in. / Verify the sacrifice of someone else. / Everyone is verifying according to the same rules. 58:54 Divisibility of bitcoin and sidechains. / Consensus. 01:02:22 The way users will act in the context of hard-fork. 01:03:03 Is the "digital gold" metaphor misleading. 01:04:47 A system bordering on chaos but thriving. 01:05:31 Being one of the founding fathers' of America. 01:06:24 Theft is a correlative of ownership. / Bitcoin has no terms of service. 01:08:02 Fear of losing keys. / Personal responsibility. 01:09:51 An extra-terrestrial/solar civilisation. 01:11:07 Intergalactic mining. / Energy. / Latency. 01:13:36 Correlation between civilisation and efficient energy usage. 01:14:46 Alignment between the morals of society and the rules of Bitcoin. 01:15:54 What if a better Bitcoin comes along? / Productive assets. 01:17:24 Is Bitcoin the best money that humans will ever experience? 01:19:43 How will Liberty/Libertarianism work? 01:21:01 Will the society of Bitcoin change in a way that becomes evil/leeching? 01:22:36 Conclusion. ❧ Before release of the full episode on May 23, several Highlights videos were released, to-wit: Highlights video 15.1, The Basics of Property Rights. From the shownotes: Property Rights are a method to answer the question of who can decide how to use a scarce resource, and who bears the responsibility for the good. Ownership can be obtained peacefully, by either being the first one to use it [homesteading] or by contractual agreement with the previous owner. However, these rules do not apply to non-scarce goods of cyberspace Highlights video 15.2, Why Do Individuals Follow Property Rights? From the shownotes: Every human must use scarce resources, in order to reach the end goals that the individual wants to achieve. Property rights are used to ensure social peace in regards to having a clearly defined record of who can use which scarce goods. This is a social concept among multiple individuals, to ensure long lasting mutual beneficial prosperity. Highlights video 15.3: Non Aggression and Self Defense Highlights video 15.4: Do You Really OWN a Bitcoin Private Key? From the shownotes: A physical key is a scarce good that can unlock a given area in meatspace. A cryptographic key is also used to unlock things, however, the key is non-physical and non-scarce, just a long random looking number. Information is only the feature of an owned scarce good, but data can never be owned in it of itself Highlights video 15.5: What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve? From the shownotes: Money is a technology to enable trade without barter, and thus without the double coincidence of wants problem. Any supply of money will work to enable this function of medium of exchange. Further, when entrepreneurs price their goods and services in money, it becomes possible to calculate the cost of deep production stages, and thus find out the profitability of a project. Highlights video 15.6: Change the Rules of Bitcoin at Your own Peril! From the shownotes: Bitcoin is a set of rules that every participant of the network follows. Thus changing these rules is extremely complicated, and can be very dangerous. A gold atom has 79 protons, and this definition is not man made, and thus cannot be changed by men. This is where gold is seemingly superior to Bitcoin. Highlights Video 15.7: What if a better Bitcoin 2.0 emerges? Shownotes: Bitcoin had an immaculate conception, a steady software development progress, and a solid monetary stability. It seems to be very difficult for a new project to have similar, or even better, fundamentals as Bitcoin has. Yes, Bitcoin is beautiful, but it for sure is not perfect. It is yet to be discovered if humans will find an even more beautiful solution to the question of money. Links: Website: https://WasabiWallet.io Blog: https://blog.WasabiWallet.io Documentation: https://docs.WasabiWallet.io GitHub: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi Podcast: https://anchor.fm/Wasabikas YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/WasabiWallet ❧ TRANSCRIPT You Don't Own Bitcoin—Property Rights, Praxeology and the Foundations of Private Law, with Max Hillebrand Stephan Kinsella and Max Hillebrand May 23, 2021 00:00:17 MAX HILLEBRAND: What’s up, peers?  And welcome to Join the Wasabikas, a Bitcoin privacy podcast.  And today, we deviate from the bit more technical side and into the philosophical and praxeological domain.  I am joined by the one and only Stephan Kinsella who has been one of the most influential people on my understanding of the beauty of Bitcoin especially.  Really he is great in articulating the difference between scarce and non-scarce goods meaning scarcity being a potential conflict over who can control these resources. 00:00:55 And there are many scarce goods like wood or food or oil, and there also infinite non-scarce goods like ideas or numbers where anyone can use a number without anyone else needing to sacrifice the use of those.  And this already leads us down an interesting discussion of can we even own information, and do things like patents or copyrights even make sense.  Well, spoiler: no, they don’t.  That’s why we love free software. 00:01:28 But we can strive this way of thinking even further, and I think this conversation here today shows exactly that because we get into the nitty gritty of what it actually means for Bitcoin to exist.  What is the actual problem that it solves, and how unspeakably beautiful is the solution that it comes up with.  It is crazy, complex, and very scary to think about, and it could go wrong and break in 1,001 pieces, but nevertheless,