Latest / Monero Talk / Live at the LNC w/ Pholosopher and JackVLloyd | EPI 314
Transcript
- Doug All right, what's going on guys? How's the LNC treating you? Jack V Lloyd treating us overall pretty well in terms of the people here. We had a lot of friends and fans. It's been fun. So Doug Friends and fans, who are your friends and fans? What do you do? Why do you have fans? What are you guys up to? Pholosopher We do quite a bit of things. We make our own music, we have music videos, we have non -fiction books talking about the philosophy of liberty, comic books, and a kids book now. So yeah we do a lot of different things, content creation for liberty, and you call it liberty propaganda. Doug How'd you guys get into the business of selling people on Liberty? Jack V Lloyd Oh, many years ago, I was in college and there was this class, a history class, where we were talking about the American eugenics movement. And there we learned about Buck v. Bell, which is a law case where Kerry Buck was forcibly sterilized and I was shocked by this. Jack V Lloyd I was like, OK, wow, I didn't realize that forcible sterilization was a thing in America and now I got to go revisit everything I knew. And I started to research and read and I eventually realized, you know, government's not as as great as it's made to be in public school and, you know, the curriculum. Jack V Lloyd And so I started to investigate things for myself and I kept researching and I came across people like Alex Jones and I eventually went down the libertarian path and then I eventually became a volunteerist. Jack V Lloyd And after that, I started to do creative content, so educational content and then a comic book series and then memes with this page called Anarchy Ball. And then we developed that into something more and we came together. Jack V Lloyd We started to do music and music videos and other types of creative things. Pholosopher educational videos as well I still do a monthly video I've been doing that for over seven years now yeah yeah still if you don't Doug How'd you guys come together on this collaboration? This is definitely a winning team you got going here. Pholosopher Oh yeah, so the way he likes to tell it is I slid up in his DMs, and that is true. And more specifically, it was Macy Tamlin. I took a picture with her. I met her in person, because I had driven at the time from Seattle, like three hours down south to Oregon, just to meet Adam Kokesh during his Freedom Tour. Pholosopher And so I met Macy there. We took a picture together, and then I posted on Facebook, and then some cute man liked the post, and I'm like, who is this? And I saw that, at the time, he had a campaign going called the Voluntarius comic series, and this particular one was Saving Snowden from the NSA. Pholosopher And I thought, okay, wow, okay, you must be really passionate about liberty to spend your time making a comic about it. So I first hit him up by just saying, hey, I want to make a video game, because I'm a software engineer. Pholosopher And I was like, I want to do something for liberty. I don't know what, but I'm thinking maybe a video game for either anarchy ball or Voluntarius. So that's how we started talking and video calling, and we just kept talking to each other nonstop. Pholosopher And then two months later, he said, I love you back. I love you back. I love you. Doug I'm really getting the full story. Pholosopher And then a few months later he flew me down and we met in person and Eight months later. I moved down to Florida Jack V Lloyd We'll be right back. KATHRYN Doug Amazing. So how would you guys describe what you know, what is voluntary? Jack V Lloyd Sure. So volunteerism is the consent ethic. It's this idea that each person should be respected in their body and their consent because consent is the ultimate meter of ethical behavior, right? Just like the difference between having a boxing match and having a battery is consent, right? Jack V Lloyd You consent to a boxing match. The difference between, you know, consensual sex and rape, right? It's gonna be whether you say, oh, yes, you know, I want to have sex. And those kinds of things, right? Jack V Lloyd So consent is really at the root of what people consider to be ethical behavior. And so it's really focusing on that and maximizing that in all human interactions. Doug And now are you got is that is that your strict belief voluntary nism is that what you kind of have personally boiled it down to is that? Jack V Lloyd Yeah, sometimes I encapsulate as libertarian volunteerism, or sometimes you will say anarcho -capitalism as like an outcome, but essentially, yeah, that's what my non -fiction books are about. Pholosopher I like to try and summarize it as, you know, we value individual body and property rights and that's, you know, the thing that we advocate for in every single human interaction. And in his books is where, which I'm the editor for, is where we define what those actual principles are and what body and property rights should be for individuals. Pholosopher So, yeah. Doug Do you guys see any role for government or do you think it's very nature kind of, you know, crosses over the boundaries of Voluntarianism? Jack V Lloyd Right. So government, right, by its nature is going to be violent of individual consent because government's established by force, forced on all whether or not anybody actually wants to be ruled. So the very nature of statism there is going to be violent of those principles. Jack V Lloyd Obviously, the way to get to undoing those things is to have any form of governance and dispute resolution to be as consensual as possible are opted into and funded voluntarily. So, you know, the state fundamentally is about, you know, taxation, which is, you know, forcible takings and eminent domain and conscription, which is forced labor for the government. Jack V Lloyd So those things are just, you know, antithetical to the core values that we have as volunteers. And so we try to advocate for the reduction of the size, scope and power of the state, ideally towards zero as people are choosing to have peaceable interactions outside of government force. Doug You want to answer that? Pholosopher Yeah, I mean, there is a distinction between, like, you have to be specific when you say government. It's a monopoly on violence and it's one that's funded by taxation and it's formed through a declaration that this government owns you and your body and your property unilaterally. Pholosopher So just, if that's what you mean by government, then yes, at its core, it is a violation of individual body and property rights because you have no choice whether you're forced to fund it or not. You have no choice whether they own your property and tax you forever and you never actually own your property. Pholosopher So yeah, and what most people mean by government and all the governments of the world today are definitely violators of liberty. Doug I think that's a good segue to Monero or privacy coins. What do you think of these things as tools for ensuring liberty in the digital age is how I like to describe it. Just curious what your guys overall take is on that technology and maybe just kind of the cypherpunk approach in general. Jack V Lloyd Yeah, so I mean, anything that can help people live and think outside the state and prosper outside the state, I think is a great thing. Obviously, not all crypto is privacy oriented. So it's important to know the difference between a privacy coin and ones that are, you know, very much traceable. Jack V Lloyd So I do like Monero, as you know, in terms of at least the IRS being like, oh, you know, we're still trying to figure out how to crack it, you know, that kind of thing. So that's a good sign. I think that any technology that helps people live outside of state controls is a wonderful thing. Jack V Lloyd So we're big proponents of that and, you know, basically looking for ways to help get the government out of your life and wallet and to stop spying on you is wonderful. Pholosopher I think it's an incredible testament to what we mean by wanting a decentralized revolution. And, you know, it's created by, I like to call it software engineers for liberty, because it's just people trying to construct a system where you can have a bank and it's permissionless. Pholosopher You don't have to ask anybody. You can just create your own wallet. And who you transact with and how you get the transactions verified is done, you know, mathematically. So it's, I find it very incredible as a piece of technology. Doug And I know we were kind of brainstorming a little earlier about the idea of potentially having you guys come up with a Monero book or something that could explain Monero in the way you guys do so well. Doug What do you guys think of that as a concept? Would you be open to potentially getting funded by the Monero community to put together some content? I think you guys have certainly nailed the content side of things. Doug It's amazing what you're capable of doing in terms of expressing complicated topics and simple language and images. Jack V Lloyd Yeah, I mean, maybe something, we do a lot of videos in terms of educational videos, that's a big core of what we do, but, you know, printed format, we do comics and nonfiction books, so we certainly have the skills for that, it's a possibility, you never know. Pholosopher We probably would, I mean I would edit it, he would write it, but we'd probably definitely want to do much more research into that if we ever did that. Doug Yeah, they're not trying to put you on the spot, but it would be very cool. We could talk offline about that. Anything you guys want to put out there in terms of where people can find you, purchase your content, things like that? Jack V Lloyd Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, you can find us at JackJCKV as involuntaryist, Lloyd, L -L -O -Y -D, JackVLloyd .com. And I do have a lot of different sites and things we do. It's kind of hard to encapsulate it all, so that probably is a good landing point, and you'll probably end up in a million different places, you know, YouTube and Facebook and other websites, but JackVLloyd is a good place to start, and then she has something as well. Pholosopher Yeah, my website is thephilosopher .com, that's thepholosopher .com, and that's where you can find links to all my stuff, and we actually, being here in DC, we chose to come here, partially to the table, but the main reason was we have a song called End the Fed, we've had that out for a few years. Doug I didn't know it was a song, you know? Pholosopher This is a prop from the music video. So we just shot that two days ago right in front of the Federal Reserve That was really fun. So has it been put has? Doug Has that been posted? Pholosopher No, not yet. It'll probably take a two to three months to produce with our editor if not longer Yeah, and then we have some perks to ship out because we did a crowdfunding campaign for it So there'll be some and the Fed coasters taxation stuff coasters Doug Very cool, guys. How'd you do the crowdfunding campaign? Just curious. Jack V Lloyd Indiegogo. So we use Indiegogo often, although we've also used FunMyComic for some comic stuff, so... Pholosopher And we like to live stream too, we'll live stream from my YouTube channel and promote it and direct people to go to the campaign, although a lot of people like to give us super chats as well, so that's how we've been able to crowdfund a lot of our music videos. Doug Very cool, I also, not to shill too many things, I recommend you guys check out Kuno. That's kind of a, it's like an indie go -go, but it's Monero -based, no fees are taken, and people can just donate anonymously with zero fees. Doug Yeah, I think you would do well there. All right, thank you guys so much. Greatly appreciate you taking the time, and introducing yourselves to the Monero community. Thank you. Jack V Lloyd Appreciate it. Pholosopher Thank you for your time. Thank you. Doug All right, thanks, guys. Of course, yeah.