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The Blockchain Socialist

Latest episodes

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Apr 13, 2023 • 33min

BONUS: Join Monetary Activists at Collaborative Finance!

BONUS EPISODEI spoke to Matthew Slater (@matslats) about an upcoming event happening at the  Commons Hub in Austria from May 22nd to 28th called Collaborative Finance that he is helping organize with the Crypto Commons Association, one of the projects part of the Breadchain Cooperative which I co-founded. We spoke about what Collaborative Finance means, how money actually gets created in the private sector, and what you can expect at the event. To Learn More and Get Tickets to Collaborative Finance Click HEREIt is clear that crypto's promise to be or become money has not touched the real economy. An unregulated commodity could only ever serve as money during economic collapse. The whole blockchain sector, driven by speculative capital, has been issuing tokens and then looking for suckers to hodl them."Anyone can create money... the problem lies in getting it accepted." Hyman MinskyIf we start from money, not as a long-term store of value, but as a facilitator of trade and exchange within existing networks, then an entirely different class of bottom-up, private, decentralised, member-governed monies can be envisaged.Since quantitative easing became a way of life, the real economy needs access more than ever to fiat denominated credit. It is a question not only of economic power but also political powers and freedoms. With a financial system designed to drive the majority into debt, the only source of credit we have is each other. The challenge therefore is to build social and technical infrastructure that enables mom & pop businesses to issue, circulate, clear and redeem and insure non-bank credit amongst themselves.At the Commons Hub in Austria, May 22-28th, leaders and innovators will gather to share practice and progress on systems of collaborative creditmutual credit where members provide each other with trade liquiditymesh credit, which is backed along ‘trust-lines’voucher credit, issued by individuals against future products.multilateral obligation clearing in which a outstanding invoices are ‘netted’ out, to dampen cashflow.Some are working with blockchains, others not. Come and chill with us as we break the DeFI impasse and explore new avenues of financial activism.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) MaSend me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Apr 9, 2023 • 56min

Inside the Cybernetic Forest: Terra0's Vision for Nature to Own Itself

In this episode I spoke with Paul Seidler (@brachlandberlin), a member of the Terra0 artist collective. Terra0 has been around since 2016 when it released a whitepaper outlining how a technologically enhanced forest combine with blockchain could own itself and exert autonomy. Since then the collective has organized several exhibitions exploring this theme including Flowertokens, an experiment with tokenization and verification of natural commodities, and an early attempt at creating a combined crypto-collectible physical asset in 2018. During the interview we talk about how Paul's thinking has evolved with Terra0's experience with various art installations, dystopian sci-fi, and Regenerative Finance. We also discuss how DAOs could be a trojan horse for introducing employee ownership into the economy. More SourcesOriginal Terra0 whitepaperSeed Capital, a sculpture that suggests ways to rethink the economic and ecological relationships between viewers, the institution and the artwork.Two Degrees, a NFT that burns "itself" when the average global temperature reaches 2°C above average.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Apr 2, 2023 • 1h 12min

OTNS: Maximum Freedom in Complex Social Organizations

For this episode of OTNS, Primavera and I spoke to Eric Alston (@IncompleteRules), a researcher at Block Science  and Scholar-in-Residence at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, focused on the study of institutions, namely property, constitutions and blockchains. During the interview we spoke about formal vs inform institutions, organizational complexity, and the issues of maximum freedom.Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State  by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. You can find the first episode of OTNS where we give our initial criticisms and  alternatives here.Blockchaingov is a 5-year long, transdisciplinary research effort aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on chain and off chain distributed governance practices. Throughout the series, each discussion will include me and a member of Blockchaingov with either a new guest each episode or just a discussion between us to tackle various topics from the book.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) or Lens  and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Mar 26, 2023 • 1h 17min

OTNS: How to Optimize for Reality

Michael Zargham (@mZargham), the CEO of Block Science comes back on the show to help us continue to overthrow the ontological framework of network states from the perspective of complex systems engineering. During the discussion we talk about how network states don't optimize for reality, not confusing the map with the territory, and how an alternative to network states should handle infrastructures. Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State  by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. You can find the first episode of OTNS where we give our initial criticisms and  alternatives here.Blockchaingov is a 5-year long, transdisciplinary research effort aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on chain and off chain distributed governance practices. Throughout the series, each discussion will include me and a member of Blockchaingov with either a new guest each episode or just a discussion between us to tackle various topics from the book.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) or Lens  and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Mar 19, 2023 • 1h 4min

Lens Protocol: Creating a Web3 Social Ecosystem with Stani Kulechov

We all know that the current landscape of social media is not ideal for various reasons, but one of those reasons is because the revenue model is based on the client-server model giving companies access to massive amounts of user data. For this interview I spoke with Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave and Lens Protocol, a new attempt at creating a decentralized social media solution. Generally in the past blockchain based social media has been done quite poorly, but Lens seems to be a bit a step forward as it works quite differently from social media platforms.During the interview we discussed the issues with social media today, the implications of creating a social graph on a blockchain that anyone can build on top of, and platform risk. If you would like to access Lens then send a message to Stani on Twitter and you'll be put on the allow list.You can follow me on Lens now as well and even collect this episode as an NFT on Lenstube. If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Mar 12, 2023 • 1h 12min

Overthrowing The Network State: Dictatorship by Tech CEO with Nathan Schneider

Nathan Schneider comes back on the show to speak to Primavera and I to continue Overthrowing The Network State. During the conversation we talk about his experience at ETH Denver, the issue with using tech venture capital as a model for governance, and being intentional when exploring new political possibilities.  Mentioned Writing from NathanWeb3 Is the Opportunity We Have Had All AlongLighten the Load of the Nation-StateOverthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State  by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. You can find the first episode of OTNS where we give our initial criticisms and  alternatives here.Blockchaingov is a 5-year long, transdisciplinary research effort aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on chain and off chain distributed governance practices. Throughout the series, each discussion will include me and a member of Blockchaingov with either a new guest each episode or just a discussion between us to tackle various topics from the book.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Mar 4, 2023 • 1h 20min

Overthrowing The Network State: Colonize the Memes, the Narratives, and the Land

Primavera and Morshed Mannan from Blockchaingov join me to speak to Raymond Craib, a  historian of modern Latin America who recently published the book Adventure Capitalism:  A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age. We spoke about the neocolonialism inherent to network states and previous attempts at utopian libertarian exits, the colonization of history, and Praxis Society. Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State  by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. You can find the first episode of OTNS where we give our initial criticisms and  alternatives here.Blockchaingov is a 5-year long, transdisciplinary research effort aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on chain and off chain distributed governance practices. Throughout the series, each discussion will include me and a member of Blockchaingov with either a new guest each episode or just a discussion between us to tackle various topics from the book.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Feb 26, 2023 • 1h 7min

Overthrowing The Network State: Untangling Balaji's Helical Theory of History

For this episode, I'm joined by Kelsie Nabben from Blockchaingov to speak to Quinn DuPont (@quinndupont), a historian of technology who recently gave a talk about his criticisms of TNS at the Commons Stack Unconference. He also recently published an article titled A Progressive Web3: From Social Coproduction to Digital Polycentric Governance. During the episode we interrogate Balaji's misunderstandings of history and proposing the commons as an alternative framework for what is already happening in some parts of web3.Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State  by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. You can find the first episode of OTNS where we give our initial criticisms and  alternatives here.Blockchaingov is a 5-year long, transdisciplinary research effort aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on chain and off chain distributed governance practices. Throughout the series, each discussion will include me and a member of Blockchaingov with either a new guest each episode or just a discussion between us to tackle various topics from the book.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Feb 19, 2023 • 1h 8min

The Commons Engine: Collective intelligence, non-monetary currencies, and Holochain

For this interview I spoke to Ferananda Ibarra (@fer_ananda), the Director of the Commons Engine, a Holochain Ecosystem service agency aiming to create a community of Regenerative Economy practitioners capable of designing ethical tokens and currencies to enable healthy flow, incentives, and feedback loops in order to evolve the economy and culture of their own communities and organizations.During the interview we spoke about what constitutes a commons both in the physical and digital worlds, her work with the Commons Engine, and the differences between monetary and non-monetary currencies (or current-sees). While this episode is not technically part of the OTNS series, we did also have a chance to talk about the commons as an alternative framework than what is used in The Network State.(w)hologram of the Holochain EcosystemIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Feb 12, 2023 • 1h 4min

Overthrowing The Network State: Survival of the Richest with Douglas Rushkoff

For this episode, Primavera and I speak with Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff). Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, which we found to be relevant for understanding The Network State. Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State  by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. You can find the first episode of OTNS where we give our initial criticisms and  alternatives here.Blockchaingov is a 5-year long, transdisciplinary research effort aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on chain and off chain distributed governance practices. Throughout the series, each discussion will include me and a member of Blockchaingov with either a new guest each episode or just a discussion between us to tackle various topics from the book.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

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