Don't Poop In The Well

Bastiat, The Law, Part II, Episode 20

This is the first part of our reading of Bastiat's The Law with a short introduction by Brian tying the ideas in the essay to the properties inherent in Bitcoin. www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529]

Bastiat Series Part 1, The Law

In this opening episode, we introduce a special series on one of the most important political essays ever written — The Law by Frédéric Bastiat, published in 1850 in the final year of his life. Bastiat wrote with one urgent question: what is law actually for? His answer — that law exists solely to protect life, liberty, and property, and that any law which does otherwise is legalized plunder — is as relevant today as it was in post-revolutionary France. In this episode we also trace a thread that runs through the entire series: how Bitcoin and Bastiat are, at their core, making the same argument. Where Bastiat diagnosed the disease, Satoshi Nakamoto built the cure. Where legal plunder runs through the monetary system, Bitcoin closes the door — not through better laws, but through mathematics. We also introduce the Cantillon effect (it's can-TILL-on, not the Spanish way) and why newly created money is itself a form of legal plunder — one that has been running continuously since 1913. Over the next six episodes we'll read the full text of The Law together, with commentary connecting Bastiat's ideas to sound money, Austrian economics, and Bitcoin. Read the full text: The Law — Mises Institute edition: https://cdn.mises.org/thelaw.pdf [https://cdn.mises.org/thelaw.pdf] www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529]

I Do What I Want

LOVE & HARD MONEY — Episode 18: I Do What I Want - Why freedom of money matters more than freedom of speech The Episode in One Line A man in Saskatchewan kept every word of his free speech and lost everything that mattered. The order of our rights is backwards — and this episode is the argument for why. What This Episode Is About Brian makes the case that freedom of money is more fundamental than freedom of speech — not equal to it, more important than it. Working from first principles, he argues that freedom is the capacity to act on your values in the world, that human beings act through only two channels (speech and exchange), and that money is the dominant medium by which values become consequences. Speech is the signal; money is the action. From there: why a regime that controls the money can afford to grant generous speech rights, why the historical record keeps proving it, and why Bitcoin is best understood not as an investment but as a political technology — the thing that restores the substrate on which every other freedom is actually exercised. It opens and closes on the frozen account of one Canadian trucker-convoy donor, and runs through a steelman of the opposing view that Brian takes seriously before dismantling. In This Episode * The Saskatchewan donor: full First Amendment-equivalent rights, a frozen account, and a bounced mortgage — the cleanest demonstration of the thesis in living memory * The standard hierarchy: Mill, the First Amendment, and why "speech is the master key" is a serious position, not a stupid one * A first-principles definition of freedom — and the two channels through which anyone acts on their values * Speech is the signal, money is the action: folk philosophy, Hayek on prices as information, Mises on the impossibility of calculation without honest prices * Breedlove's "crystallized time" and inflation as compelled speech — the state forging your signature * The steelman ("speech is logically prior") taken seriously, and why logical priority isn't practical priority * A firsthand story from Shanghai: cameras in every hall and a supplier brave enough to whisper the truth behind a sheet of paper * The historical record: the Canadian truckers, Operation Chokepoint (1.0 and 2.0), and FDR's Executive Order 6102 — plus why privacy software prosecutions like Samourai Wallet are the modern echo * Self-custody as the monetary equivalent of free speech, and the permissioned stack that real "free speech" actually runs on * Why the founders wrote the First Amendment first — and why that choice no longer holds References & Further Reading * John Stuart Mill, On Liberty * Friedrich Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society" * Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (economic calculation problem) * Robert Breedlove — money as "crystallized time" * Hans-Hermann Hoppe — property as the foundation of rights * Canadian Emergencies Act account freezes (Feb 2022) * Operation Chokepoint (2013) and "Chokepoint 2.0" (2022–23) * Executive Order 6102 (1933) * The Samourai Wallet developer prosecution Connect Find me on Nostr — tell me what's landing and what isn't, or share the episodes that are worth a stranger's time. Next week we break format for something a little different. Stack sats. Speak hard truths. And remember — the order matters. www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529]

Am I A Social Justice Warrior?

What if the most powerful tool for human dignity in our lifetime isn't a policy or a protest movement — but a money the state can't reach? Brian takes the values of the social justice movement seriously — lifting up the marginalized, protecting the vulnerable, resisting tyranny — and runs them through John Rawls's "veil of ignorance." If you didn't know who you'd be born as — a Manhattan banker or a single mother in Lagos, a Connecticut homeowner or an Afghan coder in Herat — which monetary system would you choose? The answer, Brian argues, isn't the one being defended by people who use the language of justice. It's Bitcoin. What We Cover * Rawls's veil of ignorance applied to money * 1.4 billion unbanked adults, and reserve currency as an 11% global privilege * Roya Mahboob paying Afghan women in Bitcoin in 2013 * Fereshteh Forough and Code to Inspire feeding 100 families via Bitcoin after Western Union pulled out of Afghanistan * Argentina, Zimbabwe, Lebanon — inflation as a regressive tax * Lightning at the till in 1,500 South African Pick n Pay stores * Fadey's two-hour escape from Kyiv with everything on a USB drive * The Canadian truckers and why self-custody is the right to financial speech * Gridless electrifying Bondo, Malawi where charity has failed * Bitcoin Beach / El Zonte and the remittance problem Key Quotes > "The worst-off don't need a more powerful state — they need a money the state can't reach.""A memorized seed phrase doesn't ask permission.""Self-custody is the right to financial speech.""Bitcoin isn't a financial product. It's a piece of human rights infrastructure that happens to also be a financial product." People & Projects Mentioned Alex Gladstein (Check Your Financial Privilege), Jason Maier, John Rawls (A Theory of Justice), Roya Mahboob, Fereshteh Forough (Code to Inspire), Anita Posch (Bitcoin for Fairness), Mike Peterson and the Bitcoin Beach team, Gridless, and circular economies in South Africa, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Behind the Veil — Who You Might Be A Filipino fisherman. A network manager in Kabul. A Zimbabwean teacher who's watched her pension die three times. A 20-year-old two hours from a closed border. A Canadian who donated $50 to the wrong cause. A kid in Bondo doing homework under a light bulb. A grandmother in El Zonte. Or a guy on an island with chickens and Bitcoin. You don't know yet. That's the point. www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529]

Don't Poop In The Well

SHOW NOTES Episode Summary Brian traces the tragedy of the commons from medieval English pastures through Venetian banking to the modern dollar network, arguing that monetary history is the history of shared resources getting captured by whoever is closest to them. He connects this to the deepest pattern in biology — every organism consumes until collapse — and asks what it means that humans are the only species capable of seeing the constraint and choosing differently. Bitcoin is examined as the first monetary commons that is structurally, not just legally, protected from capture. Key Concepts Covered Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons — The iron law of commons capture — Fractional reserve banking as upstream pollution — The Cantillon effect as toll extraction — The 2022 Russian reserve freeze as the Cuyahoga moment — The biological default of consume/peak/collapse — The prefrontal cortex as evolution's most expensive investment — Bitcoin's 21 million cap as collective constraint-encoding — The Ordinals/inscription debate as commons contestation — Network vs. unit distinction in monetary theory Recommended Reading The Tragedy of the Commons — Garrett Hardin (1968) The Bitcoin Standard — Saifedean Ammous The Sovereign Individual — Davidson & Rees-Mogg What Has Government Done to Our Money? — Murray Rothbard The Selfish Gene — Richard Dawkins (useful biological frame) Debt: The First 5,000 Years — David Graeber (useful foil)   www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529]