[Music]
so today's panel topic is Western
liberalism to World liberalism uh in
order to set up the common ground for
this panelist because we have a very
mirrored setup of panelist
um uh I would love to have each of you
to have a quick very succinct uh uh
sentence to tell us what do you think
about liberalism and what does that mean
to you so uh I guess I'll from uh start
from uh
AIT to me liberalism is a set of values
um and it's to be distinguished from
Western liberalism because uh I don't
think there was anything ever inherently
Western about it their values which tend
to resonate with uh all of humanity
across the world from different cultures
and
times I think it's it's a bundle of
Concepts that includes things like uh
democracy individual rights uh Freedom
pluralism property rights uh concern
about centralization of power and a lot
of things that I think resonate with all
kinds of people and all kinds of context
historically and definitely with this
community for me liberalism is the
pursuit of freedom and individual
dignity and I think that technology here
plays a huge role
enabling self- Sovereign governance
and basically on a global
scale yes the the pursuit of freedom but
by definition the pursuit of Freedom
cannot be done only from one place
cannot be imposed from one place that's
why like the term World liberalism you
know just like World music or or world
food it has to include every tradition
every culture uh otherwise it's not
Freedom otherwise it's imposition from
one side to the other all right I
appreciate those answers I think no
matter how cynical you are um I think
hearing those answers you you really
think to yourself like these are good
things these are good things for human
right um and for all of our uh panelists
as as well as myself the moderator maybe
except from Bruno we're all sort of born
in a society where liberalism is not the
default um and I was previously talking
about how um my story living in China
growing up in China had this experience
of secondhand liberalism where I learned
about liberalism from the internet from
the movies from the TV shows um and
there's no liberalism practice in the
society but liberalism was also very
tangible in the online my space um I
want to direct the first question to
Bruno actually this panel actually
stemed a part of from your idea of you
know coining this word uh World
liberalism so can you maybe give us an
overview of how this idea come to you
and why you want to add World liberalism
on top of liberalism like what's the
difference between World liberalism
versus this old plain liberalism we we
we
understand yes so I think um many people
are suspicious of the term liberalism
and I would I would argue they're
suspicious because that we sometimes
tend to assume liberalism as being just
Western and you know Western liberalism
has its limitations so we need to expand
the concept and I give you three ways in
which it needs to be expanded well first
of all if we're concerned about Freedom
we have to be concerned about the
freedom of everyone but unless you make
an effort to see things from the
perspective of other people other
cultures you tend to overvalue your own
freedom and devalue the freedom of
others you know we can't just be
concerned about the freedom of
ukrainians to build their own country we
have to be concerned about the freedom
of Palestinians to build their own
country but I've noticed if you come
from a certain culture you see only the
the freedom of of ukrainians and if you
come from a certain culture you see only
Palestinian freedom I think a Global
Perspective that includes every single
perspective we can be concerned about
about um about Freedom everywhere very
quickly second way um you know we know
that liberalism is supposed to be about
overcoming State propaganda and State
control but how can you overcome State
propaganda and State Control unless you
make an effort to see your own state
from another perspective well let's try
to see America from the perspective of
China and China from the perspective of
America and do this iteration uh all the
time and finally the the third there's
no other way to get rid of State
propaganda and third even certain kinds
of freedoms are not available in our
society simply because there are
different trade-offs there are certain
experiences of nature that you can have
perhaps in a society like Japan but not
in a society like the United States
certain experiences of family of
religion that you can have uh in in
Muslim societies and you can't have in
the west so if we want a really
comprehensive sense of Freedom we have
at least to understand that there are
different experiences of freedoms in
different places so my attempt would be
to try
to have a a much broader understanding
of liberalism that is just not just the
way to look at the world from one one
place right um this the next question is
about ethereum um ethereum itself is a
aggregation of a lot of things about
it's people it's it's it's you guys it's
us um it's about thousands of thousand
people in this venue it's about
technology um it's also about resource
um so the questions to vitalic is um how
would you describe the liberal aspect of
ethereum and uh how does its core
mechanism reflect or deviate from from
liberalism I think there's uh two levels
at which you can look at it so one level
is the perspective of just uh what
ethereum is technically and what it
enables in the sense that it is a
decentralized platform that allows
people to build um applications and to
use Bruno's language that basically
means it's a platform that tries to
avoid having a single Master
administrator but at the same time
empowers anyone in the network to create
uh their own pieace and to administrate
their own peace and even give them the
uh ability to take away their own
ability to administer pieces of that if
that's what they want to do to give
people confidence but and uh like those
technical aspects I think are important
but I think there's uh another more
interesting level which is uh ethereum
as a community and as an organism as a
whole right because this is an organ a
blockchain ecosystem it always has to
solve this uh fundamental problem of a
51% attack right if uh you have
something that aims to be decentralized
and to give people on top of it
confidence and stability through that
then there's always the risk that at
multiple levels consensus research
development uh um other levels too that
like some actor become gains too much
power and then tries to twist the entire
platform toward their own objectives and
ethereum I think has this really
interesting culture of really explicitly
trying to create something that is very
resilient against that right so there's
a very explicit effort to try to build a
global Community there is this very
explicit effort to try to create
multiple ethereum client teams uh so
there isn't like one client team that
has all of the Practical power to write
the rules of the protocol there's an
explicit effort to try to involve
different all kinds of different new
people in research development different
levels of uh discussion um and uh
this in the ethereum foundation itself
right we have this philosophy of
subtraction which is basically that the
goal of the foundation is not to grow
the foundation the goal of the
foundation is to uh grow other things
that can then enable the success of the
ecosystem and uh like the analogy that I
would make right is that one of the
things that often gets blamed for the
failure of democracy in Russia in the
1990s to last is basically that there
was
pretty much no um Civil Society right
you had the Soviet Union Soviet Union
suddenly disappeared and there was like
nothing there to take over a lot of
functions and uh like it basically
pretty much immediately entered the
oligarch era right and if you want
ethereum to be something that actually
can be resilient and robust and like
that Civil Society layer that layer that
is both not a yes centralized thing and
is also not just a profit maximizing
actors like that needs to be strong
right and the foundation's goal is to
try to intentionally build up that layer
so it can be strong and so I think it's
also this really fascinating experiment
and like trying to see can we actually
create a virtual um organism that's
built on these principles and they can
actually work based off of them yeah
yeah I think in the world where you know
you take grow as this inevitable social
justice I think ethereum Foundation uh
philosophy of substract ction is in a
sense like trying to create more you
know borrowing Bruno SW uh creating more
uh Master game designers in The Meta
system um okay uh so in case you didn't
come to this space earlier uh amid gave
us a really amazing talk about system
failure in the Middle East uh and uh uh
a part of the the system failure and you
know whatever terrible things are going
on there uh was due to uh in a sense
Western uh intervention uh and for
societies like China uh Middle East uh
we often or the society often associate
liberalism with this um
infiltration with the
hypocrisy um and in this panel when
we're talking about from uh World
liberalism to uh from Western liberalism
to World liberalism do you think people
in the Middle East uh can accept this
concept and do you think it it's
possible today to infuse new meanings
into the term or it's easier for us just
to co a newer
term I do think that the term is um has
become toxic um it's dirty by
association with all the things that
have been done in its name and the
concept of Western liberalism um like
being coined as a term two words
together was a a huge blunder because
what western democracies did was take
this set of values that is pretty
Universal that you know some attractive
to pretty much all people in all
societies and try to uh monopolize that
within specific societies and to
persuade uh the world that this came
together with a larger package which it
didn't have to so it was basically it
became associated with a certain power
structure um which is like a postc
colonial power structure it has the
holdovers of a colonial system in which
parts of the world dominated the rest um
and that's still what people associate
it with today now nowadays people
associate it with um you know the
genocide happening in Gaza the idea that
um Western Nations will claim to uphold
certain values but only apply them to
for example specific victims it's a
tragedy when ukrainians are being uh
forced out of their homes or are being
occupied or are being ethnically
cleansed but that's a tragedy because
they're perceived to be Western people
and therefore Western liberal ISM
applies to them and with non-western
people these values do not apply um so
when I speak to my uh fellow Muslims
about liberal ideas I tend to avoid the
word um but I also talk about it in a
different way um I don't you know start
with John Lock and John Stewart Mill
that's not relevant to us I take the the
stories which resonate inside our own
culture so I'd probably you know start
the conversation with uh the life of the
Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and
i' talk about how he lived in a
Cosmopolitan society and created
institutions which allowed um the Jewish
minority within that Society for example
to have their own legal system which uh
they could uh feel satisfied abiding
with the way he uh organized
intercommunal relations to enable people
to kind of uh proceed from a Level
Playing Field the way that they were
treated equally economically and that
resonates far more than um you know
starting the story with uh well these
ideas were invented by the ancient
Greeks and then passed to Western
civilization and now we have to take
them from them because it turns out they
have so something so much better than uh
you know what we always
had yeah thank you thank you for the
answer um so uh just following you know
we we talked Amid and I know Diego uh
you you part of you um previously we
talk about this like you you you agree
with um amit's uh point point where you
know those Western institutions need
some radical
Transformations um what do you why do
you think that way and also I know your
background so can you please paint us a
picture of Argentina's complex
relationship and complex interplay
between State crisis crypto's
proposition and liberalism
itself yeah I agree with arent that uh
Western governing institutions will
change and mostly as they had changed in
the past because of Technology when
writing appeared fism and the church
control information and govern Humanity
then that was replaced by nation states
basically because of the appearance of a
new technology of the printing press and
I think that current institutions are
not suited for the digital world that we
live in we have so much better ways of
potentially governing ourselves and the
institutions that today rule us and I
think they in I don't know years from
now I hope to see it institutions will
start to evolve in a new Manner and I
think that the way that ethereum is
govern we we were Ching that before is
perhaps a test a way of showing how to
govern large scale projects on a
different way as we govern our society
today and Argentina is this strange case
in which we are an extremely rich
country from an objective perspective
regarding natural resources we have a
huge talent pool in Argentina but we
have been failing as a nation since I
don't know the last 70 years we haven't
been able of providing prosperity to the
inhabitants of Argentina and that is
because of failing
institutions and that created this
particular model in which we
argentinians were always forced to
survive in extreme economic conditions
in extreme unst ility from political
institutional
Powers just to give an
idea the other day this guy publish a
website in which you enter your date of
birth and calculated how much inflation
you suffered in a lifetime I enter my
date of birth and he suffered a 30
trillion per inflation that is I mean we
argentinians are economic Navy Seals we
need to survive we're under attack
constantly so
when crypto appeared Bitcoin ethereum
appeared it was not something to
speculate oh this let me try it was a
need for survival we need to get out of
this Fallen economy in whichever way we
can let's explore this and on the second
hand we are
used for institutions to fail we know
that institutions are not trusty
hence we embrac this idea of trying to
govern ourselves and and and gaining
personal agency in different matters and
I want to be pretty clear clear although
the the Argentinian pass has been so
awful I'm extremely optimistic regarding
its future extremely optimistic and
precisely because of this precisely
because of in of we have been under such
harsh conditions that we developed kind
of a landscape in which Innovations in
how we govern ourselves in institutions
in economic means in adopting
decentralization have a very very good
ground to evolve and to
grow I appreciate I appreciate the
answer um next question is for vitalic I
guess this question can be divided into
two parts uh following your first answer
U if World liberalism for the sake of
for the lack of better word uh we'll
stick with world liberis for now if
World liberalism represent certain
values and speak to the ethos of
ethereum how can we make it more legible
and how can we make it more uh visible
uh and the second part is so for a lot
of Western uh liberal uh countries they
they often have this independent or
third- party Institute like Gallup or
human right watch uh those institutes
they would use you know although
sometimes problematic and over abstract
metrics to measure their
liberalness uh it goes to ethereum do
you think it's possible for us to
establish some ethereum human right
watch or ethereum Gallup to study and
quantify how ethereum's
projects uh contribute to world socially
economically and ideologically uh in
your in your uh blog post about how to
make uh ethereum value alignment more
legible you also talked about you want
to see more projects like L2 Beats to to
appear uh can you maybe like imagine uh
another L2 beats but Focus Beyond just
Technical and decentralization
aspects yeah I think I me one of the
challenges that ethereum has right is
that there are these values that
Everyone likes to talk about and there's
this Challenge and like there's often
this gap between what gets talked about
and what actually is for people right
and you know everyone talks about being
a rollup but then some of those rollups
like actually basically the provider
holds holds your coins and they can do
whatever they want with those coins at
any time and and other rollups actually
are not that way and uh if they shut
down like you actually do have an
onchain mechanism that you can use to
take your coins back out right and uh
like that like that second aspect like
those uh values actually being reality
is really important right it's I think
like just like liberalism in politics
it's the sort of thing that is uh very
easy to just completely forget about in
a uh normal situation when things are in
equilibrium but there's always some key
moment that arises when it suddenly
becomes clear that it's everything and
uh the and so L2 beat I think is
definitely one of those
good examples that basically tells tells
you you know is a rollup actually a
rollup or is it one of these systems
where the operator can just take coins
out whenever whenever they want and it's
basically just a a glorified centralized
exchange I think uh but it's only
measuring a few things right I think
other things that could be measured are
um open source is one right if something
is open sourced and other people can
build upon it also other people can
inspect
and it also limits the providers own
ability to abuse their power if they get
too powerful um Open Standards is uh
another one right there's uh value in
building on Open Standards and there is
sometimes a phenomenon where people
claim to be building on Open Standards
but actually they are the ones that are
pushing a standard in a way where
they're the only ones that are really on
that standard and uh this becomes a way
to create a a wall Garden and dominate
an ecosystem um decentralization and
also contribution to um both the
ethereum ecosystem and to the outside
world which is starting to happen more
and more and and the the whole regen
side of the etherum ecosystem is really
fascinating there I mean I think for all
of those things there's uh definitely
value in creating more metrics and in
tracking more metrics I think my
philosophy on Metric is that like zero
metric is not the answer because if you
have zero metric then it is too easy to
for anyone to just virtue signal and
basically like say that the thing they
were going to do anyway actually is the
way to instantiate the value one metric
is not the answer because this is like
uh it becomes like a social credit score
it becomes this like standardized uh
thing that just accumulates a huge
amount of power um and to me the only
answer is is pluralism the answer is to
have many metrics that are all kind of
competing with each other on an
uncertain playing field for legi if I
could just add to that question um
there's a term I heard a couple of days
ago I'm not sure if I'm using it right
but the term was credible neutrality one
of the things that's gone wrong with
Western liberalism is basically
abandoning even the pretence to some
kind of uh neutrality in the rules of
the system and how they're applied um is
there some way of measuring the number
of different perspec Ives from which the
rules being written uh in this system
are coming
from that is a f a fascinating question
I think one of the challenges is that uh
perspectives is so hard to Define right
because uh you can look into you know
you can do GitHub archaeology and allore
devs archaeology and even try to figure
out who was responsible for a particular
EIP getting included although actually
possibly much less of that information
is
being it could be and then the next
question then is like what you can then
look and see are there perspectives that
actually have been um included and often
it's easier to identify specific
failures than it is to identify success
right so for
example one type of specific failure
that of that has been identified
sometimes is when the perspectives of
like researchers who care about
decentralization and who also about like
Queen and mathematical Pur and certain
like software engineering Aesthetics get
taken into account but the uh
perspectives of users do not get taken
into account and that's something where
there's increasingly like different
Community groups trying to figure out
how to correct for um so I think it's uh
like to me like perfect neutrality for
some like complicated decision making is
not achievable right it's the analogy I
use it's like imagine like you have a
chess position and you know imagine
you're in the middle of like some game
between like Magnus Carlson and G
Kasparov right and like you ask what is
the credibly neutral chess move and like
there is no answer but the thing that
you can identify is you can identify
when you have specific biases right you
can say well this player clearly
overvalues material and undervalues
position right and that's a thing you
can say and that's a thing you can uh
correct for but then it's a an endless
projects to try to like keep uh
identifying those biases and keep
improving thank you um uh the next
question I I guess uh primarily I want
to ask for uh Bruno but I would love all
the panelists to answer it uh is Bruno
um in your latest book you argue that
American liberalism isn't failing but
rather undergoing this metamorphosis and
you also uh sort of position that
America is developing what you call
political
virtualism um this this is uh uh so
given America still welding its immense
power um and just take just to take a
case of any G Gadget in your hand uh the
code the the the rules of writing the
code and the rules of Designing such
machine is perhaps originated from the
United States uh my question here is uh
how can we Foster a less America Centric
environment for one political discussion
and uh next for ethereum based
technological innovation and I would
love to have all the panelist uh to more
or less answer this
question so starting with ethereum um
you know I I I believe u quite firmly
that the ethos of ethereum can be
applied outside ethereum so it would be
perfectly conceivable I think that
someone who spent the teenage years uh
developing within the ethereum framework
would go on and work at the UN say and
take those principles I don't think
vitalic 10 years ago was thinking about
how to solve the problem of the UN so I
don't think we should assume that
ethereum as it exists now will solve the
very serious problem that we don't have
a global framework for stability and and
and cooperation but what would be quite
possible and I think desirable would be
for people to take those principles that
U vitalic talked a little bit about uh
to other areas that ethos that culture
um in fact that discipline because I
think it's a lot about discipline uh you
got the idea by now that I'm very
interested in in in this notion of
virtual reality and that we live in
virtual reality and I argue in the
previous book that America had moved to
virtual reality and when it comes to
virtual reality I think there's a uh a
decisive ethos that we have to embrace
do we create virtual worlds for our
private
enjoyment to sort of pursue our most
hidden desires Without Limits or to
create ual worlds of great complexity
that can Encompass the highest possible
number of possibilities and
experiences so if you think about West
world the series and the movie there's
something very perverse about how many
of those people regard Virtual Worlds
you enter the virtual world only to
express your
desires what I see in ethereum is in
fact from the beginning when I got
interested in it is that it's the other
way around that uh the communities sees
itself as made up of
builders that the Richer the virtual
world being created is the better this
not a virtual world being created only
for the sake of experimenting in one
particular thing and I think in the
community there's this permanent
criticism of is this open
enough is this General enough is this uh
capacious enough and so on both at the
level of the system as a whole but of
different applications that are
developed um
so I like the idea italic just expressed
now at the end that one has to correct
for biases and always be attentive to
biases now imagine if these ethos were
taken to other areas of our life where
it's so sorely needed that I think would
be very
important I would add to what Bruno said
that uh and answering to you alfra that
I think that what we see today in in for
example the etherum ecosystem is that
there's no such thing as in my
perspective as America dominance is
Builder dominance if you build a great
IDE a great product a a great feature
whatever nobody cares where you come
from nobody cares who you are I mean
they care about what you build and uh I
completely agree with with with what
Bruner said regarding that in the
upcoming
years most probably the the ethos of
ethereum will get exported to other
realities
and that will start tapping that change
in in governance which I planted before
young people that have been living in
this ethos in this community for the
last 10 years would Mo most probably
pursue to change realities in which we
govern ourselves and makes basically no
sense in today's
world mhm yeah and I I think think uh
for ethereum there's uh like there's
always different uh different things
that we can do right and I mean to give
like some concrete examples one thing
that the foundation tries to do more and
more is to explicitly involve different
support builders in different kinds of
different parts of the world and even
try to get them involved in areas that
are closer to ethereum core development
right and like one of the interesting
statistics is that 80% of the of psse
right the ethereum foundation ZK team is
from East and Southeast Asia and this
actually happened even without my
involvement right this happened and at
some point I just learned about it and
uh like I was just as amazed as anyone
else to hear this statistic and I think
there is definitely this pattern right
when you have a new wave of technology
it has this resetting function where
like there is no such thing as someone
with 10 years of experience writing
Groth 16 code right because 2024 minus
2016 is less than 10 but at the like and
so but like that just shows that it
creates an opportunity right but then
that opportunity still needs to be
claimed and there's this uh question of
like what kinds of seeds can be planted
to make sure that every time one of the
is opportuni appears it actually does
get claimed and I mean I think for us
right now this is still like an open and
ongoing
problem so I think it's important to be
unequivocal about what our values are
but also to resist the attempts to uh
control the epistemological sources of
those values because we can reach those
values from different perspectives and
and um one of the enemies is also a form
of uh values nihilism where we just
decide that you know Western liberalism
has been so trampled upon that there's
no such thing anymore and therefore it's
a free-for all and and it's the law of
the Jungle that the most powerful win um
that's the the risk that we fall in is
that we fall into that and um I think by
developing This Global liberalism which
uh implicitly accepts multiple
perspectives um we can um void that
Temptation so so no dark Enlightenment
but um with more
positivity um and the next one is uh
again go goes to vitalic is H for me
there is one particular World liberalism
moment in ethereum which is actually
coincide with the the the moment I
started to work in in crypto that was
back in 2022 February uh when uh
Ukraine's official Twitter uh shared two
cryptocurrency wallets one for ethereum
one for uh Bitcoin um and later on um as
all of us know ethereum's Community has
contributed uh a huge amount of resource
and uh and capital to to help the
situation in Ukraine uh so vitalic what
is your most memorable ethereum's World
liberalism moment and and why I think I
mean if I had to give an answer that's
uh like very different from
like that like one instance of doing
something really valuable for Ukraine in
the world I would actually just say this
conference and I think the reason why I
say this is that like the like I think
this particular one actually even more
than any of the previous ones I've seen
it uh really shows and makes obvious the
fact that etherum as an ecosystem really
is bringing people from all kinds of
different parts of the world from all
kinds of different perspectives uh to
come in to participate to share their
thoughts um one piece of feedback that I
actually got is that other blockchain
conferences often tends to look like Web
Two trade shows and it's organized top
down and uh like Devcon was not this
right and there's just rooms where you
can basically just like go in and you
can book it and uh I mean I'm sure
sometimes people don't even book it can
just start a session and uh like a lot
of the attractiveness of the of the
conference was uh that and I think like
to me the key thing right is the
combination between like that freedom of
anyone to participate and start and to
contribute together with the a positive
sub mentality right and uh avoiding what
was criticized at ECC as being like the
Side Event Zoo right where everyone
would just uh make their own events but
then they up like destructively
competing with each other and everyone
was stuck in traffic even more jumping
between them for like between one hour
and the next um so I think uh just like
events like this as uh in-person
demonstrations of both the facts that
all of these diverse uh communities
within ethereum exist and also that
there's all of these different sets of
topics that people talk about out right
there's tracks workshops um Sub sub
events of uh all kinds of different
themes all kinds of different know like
academic disciplines and uh intellectual
um emphas is like it really proves uh
for me personally that ethereum
continues to be the kind of ecosystem
that like actually has the uh
ingredients to keep generating the
solutions that people need going
forward appreciate that this is a quite
a positive note
um and
[Music]
[Applause]
uh uh I have one last question is for
all the panelists and before asking this
question and before opening uh the floor
to the the the audience to to ask
questions I want to make a very awkward
attempt to to to give a little bit
hope um so um we know that the uh
existence of non-liberal yet economic
successful models worldwide are are are
quite significant examples such as uh we
previously mentioned Singapore as this
liberal democracy and China very
successful economy with socialism with
Chinese characteristics those two models
are uh not only hostile to uh Western
liberal democracy but they're just
indifferent in terms of accepting or or
getting you know a lot of values we talk
about
uh and we also see uh non-liberal and uh
in a sense struggling models uh we're in
Thailand Thailand is a country uh has a
complex relationship with liberal
democracy uh this country's power is
still concentrated in a monarchy and
Military um and then the Middle East uh
Argentina uh Russia which is currently
in the
war each of those cases present a miror
of conundrum as
liberalism doesn't necessarily make make
the sense but disregard any of that I
think I want to go back to V Al's
hopeful note is I think what makes me
feel hopeful is um is is is really this
stage is is is about us a bunch of nerdy
people come here and and listen and
learn about War liberalism um as this
archaic word um it is oddly hope for to
me and sometimes when I see the
contradiction of ethereum itself we're
talking about mem Corin greedy mem coin
Traders but we're talk we're also
talking about indepth very idealistic
cyphr punk people building stuff here so
I think the breath of the th's
discussion and the breath of those
practices give me hope so my question
here is hopefully everyone can leave
this room with with a little bit hopeful
note is um what what makes you feel
hopeful I think that we're very deeply
scripted in uh the Paradigm of um
centralization uh the nation state
Paradigm uh in organizing in a command
and control hierarchical way it's the
way like it's the system that we were
raised in it's the the water that we
swim in um and it tends to replicate
because it's just your default um so
when I see people really actively trying
to come up with you know decentralized
nony Hier archical voluntaristic methods
of
coordinating um like here at Devcon
that's what really gives me
hope I um I think uh there's a sense in
which the uh you know the thing that
we're fighting against is weaker than a
lot of people think and my own theory is
that the dangerous ideology of this
decade is actually not fascism per se
but nihilism and uh and I think you can
see examples of this everywhere right
even know when you look at how the
invasion of Ukraine gets Justified right
it's not Russia building a glorious
Thousand-Year Empire right Germany in
the 1940s where you know the narrative
was that it's building a glorious
Thousand-Year Empire here it's not the
narrative is yeah we suck but we're
allowed to suck because other people
suck too right and like you see n i mean
we see nism you know within crypto and I
think it's actually
encouraging to remember that like to see
that it's not just a uniquely crypto
problem this is something that all of
humanity is going through um and I think
the and you know there definitely are
things that are not just anism like
there definitely is the phenomenon that
like there's portions of Silicon Valley
who 10 years ago were libertarian
because they thought they had no chance
in hell of getting the government to
listen to their concerns but they're now
much more Central as ation friendly
because they can think they can become
the ne the next group of Chief advisers
uh but at this like at the same the
nihilist part of it it's uh ultimately
self-defeating like it's not like it's
something that eventually eats itself
it's not something that can really
motivate and inspire people and bring
people to like actually put um put their
souls into a project at a very high
standard of quality for many years and
uh I think uh the fact that on the other
hand people who do care about a a
brighter future are working hard and are
putting in the long-term work and are
willing to increasingly find each other
and and support each other means that I
think uh this group is likely to
[Music]
win I feel pretty optimistic about the
future mainly because
50 years ago when you were born you had
kind of tattooed your area code in your
life you were I was born plus 54 in
Argentina and uh that gave centralized
power nation states a lot of control
over how you live what what music you
listen to what things you read how you
were able of work in or that and today
in this new digital world we're much
more humans that from this or that
nation and that Embraces us in a global
society in which liberalism values maybe
applied regardless of whatever nation
states try to impose on you and that
makes me feel so good about the
[Applause]
future got got curious about this idea
of nihilism in in ethereum I have to
askal what that is exactly uh but um on
on the question of of optimism you know
for
me uh the main source of optimism is
looking around and seeing that the
systems of control that exist in the
world and I think you all see them and
perhaps some see some systems better
than others uh and that U sometimes look
so
scary sometimes looks so powerful and so
scary they do tend to be
self-destructive they do tend over the
long term to undermine themselves
precisely because they are so incapable
of seeing the world around them
incapable of understanding other views
in the end they become weaker with time
you may well be a rule of history that
the systems of Oppression and control
cannot be permanent and if that's true
okay then there's hope right because the
opposite of Hope would be if these
systems of Oppression and control could
become permanent and I you know I don't
see that in history and I don't see that
in our own time thankfully
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
uh two senten are quite memorable one is
nism is self-defeating and second is the
thing we're fighting against is probably
weaker than we think those are I'm going
to memorize those two lines for for a
long time uh I'm going to uh wrap the
the the the Talking part for now and now
we can enter the the question answering
stage uh for all the panelists so shall
we pull the
um the questions up and if you want to
post a new questions you can scan the QR
code yeah I was just going to say so uh
thank you very much for the questions
lots and lots of questions have already
been received as you can see so given
that there's so many questions of course
it's especially valuable if you vote uh
as you can get the questions that you
really want answers up to the top yeah
and with that um I hand over to the uh
Q&A okay I'm going to uh read the first
one which get the uh the most votes is
liberalism truly so
Universal um aren't their collectivism
cultures were explicitly de priortize
individual expression as such uh as such
do ideas of pluralism subsume liberalism
that's a really good uh question and um
I actually would uh ask if you pose a
question maybe like tag someone a
panelist you want to you you want to
hear the answer from uh and I guess for
our four panelists who wants to answer
this question you can you can jump in
than I think that um this tension
between like uh a pluralistic ethos and
uh individual rights is something that's
happened in multiple cultures over time
um it existed in uh European cultures um
it's existed in African cultures it's
existed in the Far East and it's uh
tension that communities uh tend to
navigate and it also tends to be an
excuse used by authoritarians when they
say oh individual rights doesn't work
for us because we have a very
pluralistic culture and we don't think
about the individual um so i' I'd be
cautious about believing people when
they say that uh a specific culture is
uh does prioritize like the the
collective over the
individual okay the next one is um is
quite humorous and uh and and sharp
speaking of eum efforts to make ethereum
International Community is eth Moscow
possible it's a it's a permissionless
ecosystem we we shall head to East
Moscow if if if there's one uh next one
um The Losers of meritocracy in the USA
are white and
uneducated um they mainly voted for
Trump who promised even more mocr Y how
does this make sense
so yeah thego or Bruno want take the
answer honestly that that would
mean understanding people psychological
decisions on a global basis I find it
quite impossible honestly I don't know
how does make
sense I I don't think people tend to
assume uh Trump to be a phenomenon of
extreme meritocracy so just because he
promises it I wouldn't um take that very
seriously I
agree I I did go to a trump rally a
month ago and it was uh quite
interesting what I one thing I
discovered is that his supporters are
really going through very difficult
times economically uh we we have this
idea of the United States as
extraordinarily prosperous but there are
so many people left behind and
struggling uh and I think the other side
has to realize that more
more yeah I I could I want to ask to add
my my grain of sand on this because
Argentina has now president melee and we
have a very similar situation I mean on
one side you had maybe a candidate which
proposed that state was was going to be
more supportive of people and on the
other side you had a candidate which
proposed basically an extremely libertar
Aran agenda and president M won and I
think that that's mainly because
struggling people in harsh economic
conditions think hey this system as it
as it is now is not working we need to
change it then let's Embrace a
change uh next one is humans seem to
require religion as a source of identity
on the other hand religion on the state
level leads to a bad B outcomes for
human rights Iran for example do you
have to get rid of
religion um a source of meaning as well
as identity uh I do agree that it leads
to bad outcomes on a state level and
therefore we shouldn't have it on a
state level it should be um a
permissionless like voluntaristic
ecosystem um and States should have free
expression and be credibly
neutral Bruno you talked about
liberalism as a way to resist propaganda
where is the delimit her between force
propaganda and free exchange of
ideas well sometimes you only recognize
it is propaganda if you make the effort
uh of looking at things from different
perspectives um in fact in my own
experience without giving examples it's
sometimes the things that I the things
that I thought were most obvious that
upon further examination I discover were
really propaganda but again the effort
here has to be the effort of stepping
outside looking at things from other
cultures living in different places
meeting many different people and then
the world opens up but beforehand before
doing that yeah I guess it is not
possible to distinguish the
two yeah well Network States leads to a
global Elite that attracts most resource
such as energy water uh ithium clean air
and lets the poor suffer I I love this
question and I guess vitalic wants to
answer it yeah I mean I think uh
realistically there's good and bad
outcomes from Network States but there's
also good and bad outcome States for I
guess you might call like the uh
existing approach to like territory and
to how people live right and uh the bad
outcome there is basically like what we
see with AI where like the entire
industry concentrates B like largely in
San Francisco and it's a a very small
group of people that are in a bubble
that basically assume that AI is going
to decide everything
and like they're in charge of AI and
like basic implementing it according to
a fairly narrow set of some not not even
just principles but even just narrow
like individual interests right and uh
like the in uh with network states of
course uh you know the risk is that
basically this turns into another way
for like small El leads to essentially
wall themselves off and uh you know
become like elium and and support each
other and protect each other and then
not actually have any incentive
alignment with the outside world anymore
but uh you know I think it's also
important to remember that the nation
state order to a large extent is exactly
that as well and uh the positive side of
this is uh you know if uh something like
Network States actually does lead to
creating new connections between people
uh who have resources and have power be
and who come from those existing centers
but then actually making positive
connections with people in a much
broader set of uh uh set of regions and
people who have a much broader set of
needs and I think there have been Proto
examples
of of that starting to happen and so I
think ultimately like which side it
turns into is going to depend heavily on
the kinds of people that actually uh
like
that actually run these things and like
what what decisions they make and what
they
prioritize okay the next one is I also
love this question is the good times to
make weak people weak people make Hard
Times Hard Times make strong people just
a funny Trope or real if real where are
we are we in a uh hard time or or or
good
time if it's just a meme I'd say it's a
very old meme because uh the the oldest
articulation of it I'm aware of was IB
khaldun who was uh uh an Arabic
philosopher who's considered the founder
of modern sociology uh and he wrote this
several hundred years ago he basically
observed that um human societies tend to
last um something like three or four
generations and are often taken over by
new communities Who come out of uh who
who basically come from the margins um
so yeah maybe there's something there in
ancient Greece I forget if this was uh
Lucidity or heraus or someone else there
is the progression coros hubis a nemesis
right that Prosperity leads to huis and
then that leads to destruction um so I
think uh there's definitely been similar
themes that people have observed for a
long
time how to make ethereum Community not
explicitly pro-western despite the fact
that most of venture money come from the
US another really good
question are we positive that most vure
money comes from the US there are tons
of money coming from a as well I don't
have that metric
honestly do you want to answer the
question
with I want to hear other people's
answers what's your answer you haven't
answered a question
yet I shall volunteer my labor to to to
to uh to read the questions um my answer
is um I think um um a lot of the Venture
money come from the US and uh and Asia
of course are coming from a subset of
Hyper Elite people and um and I think
they are the problem this is my
answer
okay um did anybody know that the first
attempt at getting rid of a fiat
currency was made by the USSR in 19 1929
why does nobody see the many
intersections between crypto philosophy
and
Marxism I mean lots of people do right
there's an entire account called the
blockchain Socialist yes I was well say
that hosted by Josh he's a he's a great
guy uh okay I think we have uh 30
seconds for the last question um on
popular take does liberalism lead to
better outcome or is collectivism better
or is collectivism better uh looking at
climate change crime rates
Etc you know but I think in the end it
has to be about human Freedom so Freedom
can be experienced collectively you can
organize collectively that's a
misperception that liberalism has to be
against all that um I don't I don't know
many people who would say you know the
important thing is the the really
valuable thing is the state or the
nation in the end even the state and the
nation have before the sake of
individual
experience and I do think it's a false
dichotomy because you it it's not
liberalism versus collectivism it's
maintaining individual freedoms whilst
having institutions that enable you to
coordinate effectively for the greater
good uh solving the problems of the
commons
okay yeah so uh the I guess the the the
God of Devon give us 5 minutes more or
what's the or oh it says hand overtime
so I