Last night, I stayed up until 3AM chatting with a close friend of mine from Los Angeles about the current state of affairs in the United States. In truth, I could not believe the words that were coming out of my mouth; I wondered out loud whether I had become a conspiracy theorist.
But we are living in the most bizarre times. The President of the United States is demonstrating the power of the executive branch to erode our institutions. If dislikes an agency or finds it politically expedient for that agency to disappear, he can simply defund it and place a loyal insider into a senior leadership position to enforce these changes. As a result, ahead of the election, post office boxes are being removed from city street corners.
Should USPS be defunded? Probably, because it’s archaic. The fact that our country is even dependent on mail-in ballots in 2020 is in itself ridiculous when there are far superior technologies to deploy for voting (cough blockchain, cough cough). However, defunding USPS as a political maneuver to manipulate the upcoming election is a HUGE red flag (regardless of your political affiliation)! Naturally, Democrats are up-in-arms about this, but the truth is they could have made changes to our electoral processes when they were in power and chose not to. There is clearly no incentive from either political party to improve the transparency of our democratic processes when the opacity of these processes benefit those already in power.
In my opinion, the difference between the two parties in our country are cosmetic. There is only one party - the party of insiders and power. Democrat vs. Republican is the illusion of choice. Forget all of the surface-level narratives, both parties consistently choose to:
Expand the power and reach of the federal government
Erode our freedoms
Destroy the value of the dollar for political expediency
Enrich their friends, donors, and other insiders
This is probably a good real of thumb to follow when trying to make sense of our current political maelstrom.
Because questions like: “Is Trump a puppet of the alt right, a pawn in a bigger game, or truly in charge of this ship (possibly crashing it ashore)?” are unanswerable - you just won’t ever know and by the time you do, it’ll likely already be too late. It also feels impossible to determine whether political narratives of both the right & left are emergent, or manipulated by foreign powers and corporate interests to stoke the flames of civil unrest?
The fact that making sense is impossible these days is unsurprising. We once had a clear source of truth in the US and trust in our institutions, but now we have a cacophony of voices who want to tell us what is and isn’t real. Separating signal from noise is a full-time job, and the human brain is wired to find the path of least resistance (via social proof or trust in authority). I often ask myself if we were better off with 4 companies owning all media in the US than we are now?
Finally, it’s possible that we are already in the middle of World War 3 (or the Second Cold War, as I have called it in previous posts). WWIII is not a hot war waged by violence, but one waged by mimetic narratives and economic chess moves, and this war may be over before any of us even realize it happened. This is the nature of an Information and Economic War.
I don’t claim to really understand what’s going on - it’s actually the opposite. I have no clue. And as someone who considers himself “spiritual,” I know that my mental programming is highly susceptible to conspiracy theories. That said, I think it is important for us to have these conversations to determine our next right actions; it would be even better if we could have them across party lines. While tribalism is human nature, we do have the power to rewire our mental models to see the other as part of our tribe, rather than as part of “theirs.”
Until next week, good luck out there friends!
Let me know what you think of this post
This Week’s Podcast:
Privacy, Governance, and Blockchain with Jake Brukhman, Partner at CoinFund
Was on vacation last week, so do not have a new podcast episode for you. Decided to bring back this gem from October in which Jake Brukhman from CoinFund and I discuss the future of the cryptocurrency industry. This was recorded in the depth of a bear / sideways market - interesting to consider what has changed and what has stayed the same.
I’d like to have a few more cryptocurrency experts join me on Look Up! in the future; preferably those who can make the concepts digestible for those new to the space. DM me if interested.
What I’m Reading
IDEAS
The Consilience Project: Exec Summary, Daniel Schmachtenberger
The Story of Humans of New York, Kevin Lee
Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans, Kyland & Prescott
STARTUPS
Susa Ventures New Venture Fellows Program
MARKETS
Blockchains will Replace Networks with Markets, Naval Ravikant 2017
1720s England vs. 2008 Reaction to Financial Crises, Miles Suter
CRYPTO
YFI Investment Thesis, Maple Leaf Capital
7 Indicators to Evaluate DeFi Projects, Spencer Noon
Trading Strategy Assessment for Ampleforth, Gauntlet
Everything You Need to Know About Handshake in Two Images, Steven McKie
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