Latest / Monero Talk / LIVE at MoneroKon24 w/ Sterlin Lujan | EPI 315

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LIVE at MoneroKon24 w/ Sterlin Lujan | EPI 315 · Monero Talk

• Doug All right, we are here at MoneroKon in Prague. I'm here with Sterling Lujan. Sterlin Yep, I'm really happy to be here with you, Doug. This is amazing. The event's been fantastic. Doug I'll be honest with you. I didn't catch your whole talk, but I was talking to people here and they're like you got to talk to this guy Sterling he's he's on to big things What what is your background? Doug Why do I need to talk to you, sir? Sterlin How are you? Yeah, that's a good point. So I've actually been working in the crypto industry for around 10 years. I got in in 2015 with Bitcoin.com. I worked with Roger Ver on Bitcoin.com, for three years, but I think what's more interesting than that is how I got into Bitcoin. Sterlin So I didn't come into the space from some, I didn't come into the space from some former institution. It wasn't a, I didn't just happen upon it. But actually in 2009, I was arrested for possession of MDMA and cocaine to the tune of about 500 pills of MDMA. Sterlin And I thought I was going to go to prison for 40 years. I thought I was basically finished. Luckily, I hired the greasiest, smarmiest attorney that I could possibly find. And this was in Texas, so they're very conservative when it comes to drugs. Sterlin And luckily, he was able to wrangle a deal where I would get probation, deferred adjudication probation for 10 years. And so as a result of that, I started studying the Austrian school economists and the liberty activists because I wondered why the, why the hell did this happen to me? Sterlin What is wrong with trading voluntarily a drug on the open market that's consensual for all the parties? Doug What year did you get implicated in that? Sterlin Yeah, 2009, I was 26 years old when that happened, and it woke me up. It made me realize that the system is completely broken. You know, I had my parents and family and friends, they were castigating me, making me feel like I was a bad guy and a bad person. Sterlin It was like, why was my own family members taking the side of the state apparatus and making me out like I'm the enemy, right? When I was just having fun, living my life as a young adult, and yeah, so that happened. Sterlin Luckily I got off, but I had to spend, I spent five years on probation, and then at five years, technically it was ten, but at five years I wrote a letter to the judge asking, I played by the rules, I had people come to my house and I peed in cups for people, sometimes in the middle of the night, and the judge released me, so I got off of probation at that time. Sterlin But I was fully involved in quote -unquote paper prison is what we refer to it as, and yeah, it was a very challenging time, but it's what woke me up to the idea that maybe we need to live in a freer society, maybe we need more anarchism, more volunteerism, and more freedom. Sterlin And interesting, a part of the story relating to crypto is that experience that happened in 2009, funny enough, the same time the year Bitcoin came out, it was around 2013 while I was on probation, that I started engaging online in forums with a bunch of different people, trying to understand what happened to me and people who think similarly or had similar things happen, and I came into contact on a Reddit forum with people calling themselves cypherpunks, crypto -anarchist, so I got involved with Bitcoin around 2013, started talking about it, promoting it, and then I didn't put my money where my mouth was until 2015, I went to the Porcupine Freedom Festival. Sterlin I know it very well. Yeah, absolutely sir, and I met Lynn Ulbrich and we became very good friends, I've been friends with Lynn since that time I learned about Ross' case, and so we bonded very quickly, I told her about my background, and yeah, ever since then, I went back to my wife actually, she wasn't able to come with me, I told her we're going fully into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, so we invested at that time, and ever since then I've been working in the space, started working with Roger because of my views at Bitcoin .com, I did that for three years, and I've been in the space ever since. Doug And so I think I believe your your talk today was kind of bringing us back to those values that that crypto is Created for to begin with these decipher punk crypto anarchists values. What do you what do you see as those values being? Doug What is Crypto anarchy what what does it mean to be a cypherpunk? What is anarchy itself like explain philosophically what you mean by these concepts? Sterlin Yeah, let's start with fundamental principles, Doug, and I think this is gonna be interesting for the audience as well. So, anarchism literally just means without rulers, right? And without, and we're talking etymologically, the Greek phrase, arkos is ruler in Greek, so without rulers. Sterlin So the idea behind anarchy is that we should be able to live free of our own volition and be able to interact with people on a consensual basis. So that's the idea behind anarchy. Crypto anarchy just expands that idea technologically. Sterlin It suggests that we should be able to use technologies to liberate us from having to deal with the nation -state and the system that tries to oppress us and tries to stop us from enacting our rights as free and sovereign human beings. Sterlin Yeah, maybe I missed part of the question too, so. Doug And you mentioned on the outset that when you were originally dealing with your legal situation and discovering these ideas, that your own friends and family were kind of disagreeing with you. What do you see as being that disconnect, right? Doug Where there's so many people out there, the mass is a great majority of people that just, they hear the word anarchy. And first of all, they associate it with chaos, with violence, with the exact opposite of what I think anarchy actually is trying to achieve. Doug What is that disconnect? Why are people so eager to just dismiss it and saying, no, we need the state to take care of us. Without it, it would be a horrible existence. There'd be too much violence in the world. Doug What is the disconnect? Why can't people understand this concept of anarchy? Sterlin Yeah, I think the primary reason is that there's a ton of indoctrination and there's a ton of propaganda that props up the state apparatus and keeps people asleep and numb to what's actually happening because, as I mentioned with anarchy, that that implies freedom from rulers. Sterlin A lot of people don't see the government, they don't even see democracy as a ruler, as people telling them how to live their lives, trying to hold their hand from cradle to grave. Governments in general, even if they're democratic in nature where, quote, unquote, there's a majority rule, right? Sterlin It's a situation where if you're on the other end of that majority, then you're a victim of whatever the majority decides. So to use a harsh analogy, if the majority decides that gang rape is acceptable, well, then that's a democratic process. Sterlin So it's through this operation of governments that work to control people that indenturize people to it. Tyranny by the majority. Yeah, that's right. And there's a tremendous amount of effort put into keeping people asleep, keeping them numb to the fact that their whole life is effectively controlled. Sterlin There's a couple of things I want to mention. One is there's a quote that I'm reminded of when we think of this by the thinker H .L. Minkin. H .L. Minkin said that democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses, right? Sterlin It's the idea that these guys are stealing from you. They're oppressing you. They're keeping you down. And then the idea is that now you just support it. You're asleep to it. You don't totally understand it. Sterlin And just going a little bit back to my how I woke up to this, yet I had that run in with the state, right? That was one impact. But the first thing that happened, I mentioned I had MDMA, it was first taking MDMA, experiencing this intactogenic and empathogenic experience that helped me wake up and start asking questions like, why the fuck is this drug banned to begin with? Sterlin It's helping me think better. It makes me want to even go back to school. It makes me start wanting to read. So I kind of woke up to the idea that I can be more than I'm currently doing. I was asleep. Sterlin I was just playing video games. I wasn't doing anything at all with my life. So this made me realize how strong the propaganda is. And this comes from all quadrants, right? The media apparatus, even the internet, all the politicos, and everything they say, the ideas that they promote throughout society is the idea that government's good, patriotism's good, bow down to the system. Sterlin The system knows what's best for you. And people really latch onto this. They attach to it because they don't know any other way. And there's one other thing I want to mention. One part of this is what Joxo Lul called pre -propaganda. Sterlin It's the idea that the system puts you through a quote -unquote education system. In the U .S., it's the Prussian model. It's brought from the Prussian model, where you're actually taught to not learn or to be a self -actualized individual. Sterlin Instead, you are just to learn rote memorization, to learn the narratives of history as- Programming. That's right, as given by the state. So yes, you're programmed to behave in ways that are expected. Sterlin I mean, the whole point of the Prussian model was to churn out brain dead, unthinking zombies who could go work in the factory, especially during wartime, or join the army and not question that, not question a draft or conscription. Sterlin And that model has just been adopted and actually fully formed and completed under the U .S .S. of A, right, under the United States model. Doug So how do we begin to deprogram? Is there a path towards doing that? Is cryptocurrency the tool we need to essentially disconnect, deprogram, and opt out of the state? Sterlin Yeah, I would say 100% absolutely. I wrote an article once at Bitcoin .com comparing Bitcoin to a psychedelic drug, right? Because the idea, the definition of psychedelic is mind manifesting. And when crypto came out, I had no, this is my personal anecdote, I had no experience with money. Sterlin I was always taught to just be loose with my money, just spend it, the idea of savings or trying to invest money wasn't really on my radar. But when I started using Bitcoin, I also woke up, you know, this is early days, of course, we won't get into what happened to Bitcoin. Sterlin But I started to understand that there's more import to money than just being something that you constantly spend, and that is leveraged as debt. Instead, it can be an instrument to help save and improve your life. Sterlin And I realized that that became my modus operandi in comparison to the government's policy, which is just to spend as much as possible, to print out as much as possible, and to be completely reckless with money. Sterlin So I had no understanding of that. So it was really a psychedelic drug. In that perspective, it woke me up to the idea that money and currency and value can be used to our benefit to help free us, right? Sterlin So that we don't have to be in debt to these governmental systems of servitude, right? So that was hugely important. And just one last point I wanna make. Along with that, there is a thinker that I really appreciated named Samuel Edward Conkin III. Sterlin He talked about this idea of agorism. In order to free us even more, we have to not only take money, you use money for ourselves, right, to improve ourselves and not use government money, but also create a countereconomic environment where we use money to fight back against the system, right? Sterlin And we use the gray markets, the circular markets, and even the black markets to help push back against the system. Doug XMRbazaar .com, which we just launched, things like that. Sterlin Absolutely. XMR Bazaar, any kind of dark net market or darkwag, even just Doug XMR Bazaar is not a dark market by the way. I just want to just sort of make that clear, but yes Sterlin even under the table type gray markets. Markets where the point of governments is to be able to expropriate your wealth and to steal money from the population and that's something that we're trying to get away from. Sterlin That's why we exit into technology is the term that's being used and that's really important. I want to be clear, all these views too are my own, not necessarily Doug's. Doug I'm agreeing with everything you're putting down so far. Don't worry, my man. So do you think this is actually, are we achieving these goals? You were an early Bitcoiner, relatively early Bitcoiner. You arrived at a time when these crypto -anarchist values were running strong, were a real part of the ethos. Doug Bitcoin has come a long way since then, and it feels like it's lost that ethos. Has it lost that ethos? And has it also potentially lost its ability to be cypherpunk money, crypto -anarchist money? Sterlin Yeah, 100%, I think it has. So any time that an incumbent technology appears or something that governments don't like, they're going to do everything in their power to hijack or to commandeer those particular ecosystems and communities. Sterlin Just as an example, we saw this back in the 60s with projects like MKUltra, where they actually started using the LSD and MDMA in different drugs to try to use those as mind control serums. They infiltrated groups who tried to use them as consciousness expanding tools to wake up against the system. Sterlin So governments will purposely try to thwart or stop any kind of program that goes against their system, whether it's monetary or whether it's chemically oriented, doesn't matter. In the case of crypto, we've seen this with Bitcoin, I think, to a very strong degree. Sterlin Co -opting it. Yeah, that's right. It's super co -opting it. Roger Ver just wrote a book called Hijacking Bitcoin. The idea is that, and I'll talk from experience working at Bitcoin .com, there was a goal at one point in time to ensure that Bitcoin could be used as currency for the masses, as money for every person. Sterlin Satoshi, the creator of Bitcoin, enigmatic creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto in the white paper said, Bitcoin is peer -to -peer electronic cash. But you see that narrative has changed, where people are just talking about Bitcoin as digital gold, not as money. Sterlin Because if Bitcoin could have been used as money for everyone, that subverts the hegemony of the US dollar. Because governments, especially in the Western world, want to make sure that the dollar is preserved as the global reserve currency. Sterlin That's what gives them all their power. So crypto coming in and being an incumbent competitor to that is something that they can't abide by. So I think there's been a lot of infiltration of Bitcoin in that ecosystem. Sterlin And even without getting conspiratorial, we do know that Bitcoin was meant to be cash, and it's completely unusable as cash. There's a lot of people argue that we can get into the technicals and all that stuff. Sterlin I don't think it's relevant. Doug The fact of the matter, the dark markets, for example, you mentioned, they're no longer really using Bitcoin if they are. They're doing it at their own folly. They moved on to other technologies like Monero, for example. Doug It's failing as digital cash. Sterlin Yeah, absolutely, and to your point, Bitcoin, a lot of people thought that it was also anonymous or more private at the very beginning. Everyone referred to it as pseudonymous, and yeah, that's true to a degree, but everything that you do on Bitcoin is completely transparent. Sterlin It's what we call a, quote, unquote, solar pump technology. The problem is if you go and KYC your Bitcoin at a centralized organization, then that can be traced anywhere it goes, right? So having actually anonymized technology, having technology that can be used as cash and is anonymous is a key to helping fight back against the system, and I think Bitcoin has been set behind years because of this hijacking, because of the fact that it wasn't allowed to scale, that it wasn't allowed to be embraced by the masses of people. Sterlin Not only that, but also the whole ecosystem has been painted with this broad brush of negativity, right, because now it's all, quote, unquote, fraudsters and schemers and scammers who are involved in crypto. Doug The numbers go up, they're just concerned about the fiat value of this thing. We're supposed to be using to forget about fiat altogether. Sterlin Yeah, absolutely. And this speaks to BlackRock and the recent ETFs on Bitcoin. So I talked about this in my talk. That's just the institutionalization and the commercialization of Bitcoin. That puts more power back into the hands of the traditional financial ecosystem, rather than the hands of Bitcoiners. Sterlin We always talk about this idea, not your keys, not your crypto. Well, if you're buying an ETF, that's even further removed from not your keys, not your crypto, because you're just embracing a traditional financial asset that they can take or steal or negate at any given time. Sterlin And it's just a horrible thing that happened. But I do think that to speak positively with tools like Monero, with cryptocurrency, even like Zcash, we have tools, we have technologies, we have crypto with utility that we can use to break out of this. Sterlin So it doesn't all have to be a downhill battle. Doug Yeah, for sure. How optimistic are you? I mean, we saw what happened with Bitcoin. A lot of it has to do with its fundamental flaws, not being able to scale on chain, not being private by default, essentially being perfectly traceable. Doug And then the largest fall of failure of all is just they just didn't evolve and fix those flaws. I mean, it's software after all, and they didn't evolve, they didn't fix scalability, they didn't make it more private. Doug But these other projects that you're talking about, do you think things like Monero, Zcash, whatever it may be, have a chance to exist and thrive? Or will the state use its ways, use its power, and figure out how to essentially co -opt those as well, or somehow stop them? Sterlin Yeah, I think the state's going to continue to try to fight back against these tools and these technologies, but I think that their fight and their plight is ultimately hopeless because they can't stop the signal at the end of the day, right? Sterlin Even with Bitcoin, they're extremely fearful, right, and of all cryptocurrencies in general, you see this because it's this analogy of the Leviathan, right? It has a death blow struck to it, and it's like it's skimming the surface of the water with its tentacles trying to drag as many people into the depths with it, and I think that that's a clear sign that we can persevere because if they're running scared, even with these very limited technologies, that means that they're worried about what's to come. Sterlin And I think that tools like Monero, cryptocurrencies like Monero, cryptocurrencies like Zcash and some other tools, we're going to be able to allow to run in parallel to the system and continue to usurp and to take power from the system a bit at a time. Sterlin I'm a big fan of this idea of incremental abolition, where we use nonviolent resistance through technology to slowly take power away from the system and the state, and I think it's a beautiful thing. Sterlin I don't think there's a way that we can be stopped, and I use the history, this is a, there's historical precedents for this, right, too. Right here in Prague where we're at, they had a velvet revolution where they were able to use nonviolent resistance, to use Gandhi's term, I use this in my talk, Satagraha, this idea of non -violently resisting, using whatever means necessary to stop the bulwark of the state apparatus, and that's happening now with technology, it is nonviolent resistance on a grassroots fundamental level, and I think that it is impervious to the state coming at it in the long term. Sterlin There's going to be casualties along the way, the state always lashes out, it uses the only thing it knows, which is brute force and aggression, to mirror what Ayn Rand had to say, right? So we just keep pushing forward, there's going to be casualties, but we try to do things as peacefully as possible, and I think that we can't lose this battle in the long term. Sterlin So I'm extremely optimistic, I think technology continues to grow, I do think we can get into more of this if you want, but I do think we have to do whatever we can to opt out of this technocratic state, right, because they're trying to use technology against us as well through surveillance apparatuses and counter currencies with CBDs and those kind of things. Sterlin So there is some, there is a fight kind of that we have to have. Doug Yeah, what do you see as the best way forward towards winning that fight? Like what is, what is the actionable steps that people should be taking? And what is the pitch to be made to those of us that aren't already drinking the Kool -Aid, right? Doug Like everybody here is all for opting out using those tools to do so, but there's not thousands of people here. There's, you know, a few hundred people here and it's, uh, it's, it's currently very niche. Doug How, how do we take it to the next phase? How do we grow this movement? Sterlin Yeah, this was like the main part of the end of my talk. Doug Do we even want to grow the movement? Is it something that we want to remain niche? Sterlin Yeah, I think there's a case to be made for actually trying to grow the movement and trying to freedom pill people. I am a huge fan of leveraging communication. I'm specifically people like Marshall Rosenberg wrote a book called Nonviolent Communication. Sterlin And his ideas were in order to diplomatically solve problems we have to be able to communicate our ethos and our ideas and we have to, but in order to do that we have to access other people's needs as well and make connections on an empathetic level with them. Sterlin So I'm a huge fan of the communication piece of this for growing these movements and getting. Doug You're a great communicator, by the way, so you're doing a good job of that. Sterlin Yeah, thank you, I really appreciate it. I try and work at it. But yeah, I do think we continue to communicate these ideas, we continue to bring as many people into the fold as we can to grow it, because I think there's definitely power in numbers, right? Sterlin I think there's truth to that. I think, to your point though, or to what you mentioned, there's an opposite case that goes, that works in parallel, and it's this idea that if we're building out the technology and people are just adopting it, if we leverage that in conjunction and in concert with our communication efforts, with our development of the community, then we're automatically pushing in that direction. Sterlin But I think this goes hand in hand with our modus operandi to be as peaceful as possible and to leverage that sata, I just call it digital satagraha, right? This non -violent digital resistance that we're trying to foment leveraging cryptocurrencies. Doug What do you see as the next phase being? What does that look like as the resistance gets stronger, more people opt out, start to use these tools, the state still exists? What does that next level look like, the next level of equilibrium? Doug Does the state lose power, this movement gains power, and then what does that next phase look like? Sterlin Yeah, I think it has what is how does that quote go for first they they laugh at you then they then they fight you Then you win right? I didn't know the the full quote. That's what I thought Doug attributed to Gandhi, but I don't know if it really is. Sterlin I'm on the Gandhi path right now, right? So yeah, I think that ultimately what, if I were to get out my crystal ball and try to look into the future, what happens is, so far, and we're seeing this right now in places like the US where they're clamping down hardcore on the crypto economy and ecosystem and developers and builders, we see what's referred to as human capital flight or brain drain, and that is more and more people exiting those jurisdictions to find more hospitable jurisdictions. Sterlin A lot of people have left, including Eric Voorhees, companies like Breadwall that went to Switzerland, i .e. Crypto Valley, to try to pursue greener pastures in terms of the crypto ecosystem. So I think more and more people leave. Sterlin Friends I know left to go to Latin America and Mexico where they're a lot more laid back and you can build your cryptocurrency companies without near the hassle. Really, in the US, you can't even run a legal business that's KYC applicable without having those guys mess with you, right? Sterlin Even if you're doing everything right, they make your life extremely difficult. So I think we're gonna see a lot of brain drain, a lot of human capital flight, and I think the governments are gonna realize if they're losing all their brainiacs and smart people, they're gonna have to pull back on the aggressive tactics a bit. Sterlin They're gonna have to use more diplomacy and politics to try to figure this out. So I think that's where we gain a bit of equilibrium. There's gonna be some usurpation of power, even if it's soft power, from the crypto economy to the government. Sterlin And I think over time what happens, and this is another topic, we create these, not only, we have parallel financial ecosystems right now in Bitcoin, Monero, all manner of cryptocurrencies. I'm not judging each one, but then ultimately we have what I refer to as counter governance, right? Sterlin We have network states, autonomous political formations that crop up, and then offer an unbundled kind of governance service for people to adopt and embrace. And just the main difference with these, these are actual governance services like defense is a good one. Sterlin People will get defense and security via these parallel institutions, and effectively this becomes a competitor. The government already with cryptocurrencies is having to figure out how to compete. Doug Do you see the initial version of those having a physical location or this is all happening online where people, online communities where people are coming together, pooling their resources, living off of each other peer to peer, implementing their own rules but happening virtually or do you see there being physical spaces where this Sterlin That is a fantastic question. I think it's kind of a chicken or the egg question because we have physical communities right now cropping up all over. This is something that's happening right now physically. Sterlin We have places, I mentioned in my talk in Honduras, Rotan, they already had Nick Asinger and those guys did Vitalia and they have physical spaces that they're claiming are- Liberland, right? Yeah, that's right. Sterlin Vidjet Lake is the president of Liberland is in action. The Honduras guys, there's a ton of special economic zones and free cities. There's also places that are stateless already, like Zomia, James C. Sterlin Scott wrote a book called The Art of Not Being Governed based on that area. So all this is actually happening right now where people are relocating physically, but I think it also is happening in parallel in the digital realm in cyberspace, right? Sterlin People are exiting through different kinds of networks, already doing that with crypto, and they're going to soon start doing that with full governance models, and at some point these will reconcile in these physical spaces, and then people will be able to opt in and opt out on a consensual manner, however they see fit, just like they do in crypto right now, except with governance. Sterlin How long this will take, I don't know, but I do think it's likely a multi -generational process. Governments don't cede power easily. We know through any kind of legislation they write, once they take power, they don't usually give that back, right, like the- The ratchet effect. Sterlin Absolutely, and the good example of that is in the US, the federal income tax was not supposed to be, it was a wartime thing that they passed, and that never got returned to the people, right? That just got completely, it got taken to the extreme in the modern times where everyone's just taxed a ton of money, and it's just- Doug the Patriot Act, the list goes on and on. Sterlin Yeah, yeah, with the surveillance state, yeah, every single thing, it's a snowball effect, right? They get power and it just amplifies and amplifies and amplifies. So the way to fight back against, with Bitcoin, its original intention was, was a cypherpunk in my mind, right? Sterlin In the Genesis block, Satoshi etched the idea, Chancellor on the brink of second bailout. So the idea was there that this is a cypherpunk technology to undermine the system, but the government can't fight all these fights on multiple fronts and we see, you know, the US is in fights with the cartel in Mexico, they're in fights with, quote unquote, terrorists in the Middle East. Sterlin Now, cryptocurrency people are cropping up, they're anarchists, so they're on, they're embattled on multiple fronts and as much power as they have, they can't just fight everything at once and I think there's gonna be a real struggle and some capitulation that's gonna happen as we move forward. Doug you see as being kind of the phase, like the ultimate outcome. Does the state become something of the past? Sterlin I think it, yeah, I mean, this is hard to guess, there's two outcomes. My personal goal and my dream and my ideology is that it becomes something of the past because anybody who knows about the history of states understands that states are just criminal organizations writ large, right? Sterlin A proto -state was nothing but a band of barbarians who attacked sedentary peoples, right, who were trying to grow crops. This is also James C. Scott's work I recommend reading against the grain. So states are just... Doug It's a group of people that are coordinating together to screw over other people. Sterlin Absolutely. So my hope is that those states get abolished and we have new opt -in choice governance models. But if not, at very least, I do think that they lose a lot of power in some of their services. Sterlin James Everhart, a cypherpunk, wrote a book called Virtual States, and his idea was the state services get disaggregated. That's the same thing as Trent McDonald's idea of unbundling state services where they get spread across a digital landscape and a physical landscape where people opt in and opt out of different services. Sterlin That means like DROs, dispute resolution organizations, insurance organizations, and different services the state has typically held a monopoly over. I think those all get like disintermediated and decentralized. Doug What would you say to people who are like, okay, but anarchy sounds great, state gets eliminated, but there'll just be a new mafia in town, some new version of a mafia. Maybe it's not in the form of a state, but through anarchy, mafia will somehow find its way. Doug How do we prevent that? Is it possible to prevent that? Will these tools we have be able to prevent that from happening? Will there just be some new tyranny in town? Sterlin So there's an idea that I talk about a lot. I didn't get to talk about it during my talk, but it's called Panarchy. Panarchy is this idea that we should be able to non -territorily exit governance jurisdictions. Sterlin There was a paper written in the 1860s by Paul Emile Dupuis, a Belgian author, and he talked about this idea. So the point is network states or autonomous political formations are similar. If we have these competing governance services where you can opt in and opt out of, now it exists in a market environment. Sterlin It's on the market. And if it's on the market, if these governance apparatuses behave badly, why would customers want to engage with that? If they're out literally extorting people and people have the philosophical rigor and understanding that this is bad, you can't have your money and your wealth expropriated, and I assume that would be a future scenario potentially, they opt out of those states and they move over to others. Sterlin So power is delimited by people voting with their dollar and with their values and with their consent, right? Right now you can't do that. In the modern age states monopolize power, they consolidate power, and they try their best to control and indoctrinate people as we talked about. Sterlin In this environment of panarchic competing states, that doesn't happen. Doug The monopoly on violence no longer exists in that scenario, if things work out. Sterlin Yeah, that's 100 percent right. It was H .L. Minkin who said that even like elections and democracies are sort of advanced auctions of stolen goods. Right. So that's all a democracy is and we've kind of discussed that. Sterlin But yes, they can exist in an open free market. And the Austrian school economists have talked about this a lot in terms of all kinds of different provisions on the market. It's an idea they called catalactics. Sterlin Catalactics is in an open market. Prices find equilibrium. Things find equilibrium all based on subjective value and marginal utility is what they refer to it as. Doug What are some of the tools you're most interested that, you know, we could use right now to get us to this point? Sterlin So, yeah, Monero, huge fan of Monero. Right now, our huge problem is preserving our privacy and anonymity, so anything that can do that, I'm also a fan of Zcash. I think it's a bit more limited compared to Monero, in my personal opinion. Sterlin I do think also leveraging, the big thing doesn't exist yet, but the thing that we have to support, because they're in progress, so we need developers and engineers, is infrastructure. So the things that Darkfire are working on, the things that we're working on at Logos, for instance, Codex is building a decentralized storage. Sterlin Right now, most storage is all controlled and managed by companies like Amazon Web Services and Google, and even for web three front ends, those servers are all housed in Amazon Web Services, so they're all controlled on the front end. Sterlin So we have a lot of gaps and stuff that need to be reconciled, so we need to support these companies that are still in their early phases. But in terms of now, I think things like Monero are perfectly fine. Sterlin Even using things like IPFS is great, Interplanetary Files, my friend Ernest Hancock, who runs the Freedoms Phoenix website, he created his whole website on IPFS, right? He distributed on IPFS, so it actually can't be shut down. Sterlin So tools like that are all fantastic. So there's just a ton of things that we can do and we can use. Doug All right, Matt, thank you so much. Where can people follow you, learn more about you? I think you have a book out. Yeah. Shill your things. Sterlin Yeah, so you can find everything on my website at Sturlan Lujan, S -T -E -R -L -I -N -L -U -J -A -N .com. My book is, yeah, I wrote a book on a lot of these topics, especially as it relates to what I call relational anarchy, that's the communication piece, nonviolent communication. Sterlin You can actually pick that up on my website, I write content as regularly as possible. Doug Can we get you to list that book on XMR Bazaar? That would be pretty cool. Sterlin My book is actually published from a publisher. Oh, OK. So they control it. But maybe, maybe that's a possibility. We'll look into that. And then you can find me on Twitter, slash, X, at Sterling Luhan. Sterlin And I'm on there as well. So you can just Google my name, and you can find all kinds of stuff. I speak at conferences regularly. Doug Very cool, man. Are there any other projects that you're working on? Sterlin Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. So I'm deeply involved with the Logos ecosystem. So Logos, I think it's .io, Logos .io. Anyway, you can Google Logos and also the Institute of Free Technology. And we're working on decentralized infrastructure for development of network states and autonomous political formations. Sterlin It's actually a fantastic project and everybody should take a look at that. Logos? Yeah, Logos. And just quickly, there's three aspects of Logos. One is a codecs, which is decentralized storage. Wacu, which is peer -to -peer communications, already really popular. Sterlin A lot of people build on top of it. An organization called Relgun has built an application on top of Wacu, privatized on the base level, right? And then Nomos, which is a newer product called, it's the consensus layer. Sterlin So it's the blockchain piece, right? And it's for the development of network states specifically. Doug Very cool, man. Thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. Really appreciate this, Doug. Sterlin That was fantastic. Thank you.