The "What is Money?" Show
Why the Entire Foundation of Western Culture Was Built on a Historical Myth w/ Alexander Bard
- Philosophy of flux and relationalism — Everything exists in constant change; relations between entities are ontologically primary, not discrete objects. The one (unchanging history) and the infinite (unbounded future) frame human experience, with the present as the actionable "many."
- Phenomenology and consciousness — Three temporal loops structure consciousness: retention (present-past reflection), attention (present-future imagination), and pure experience (pre-subjective ego dissolution). Subjectivity itself is constructed through these loops, not foundational.
- Action and praxeology — Mises's axiom of action (man must act using means to pursue ends) is irrefutable and represents an absolute regularity in all human behavior, even across flux. Interaction with the world creates identity and value through goal-directed choice.
- Money and transjectivity — Money transformed barter into a three-part dialectic (you, me, money), enabling distributed coordination. Bitcoin represents the perfection of money as a communication tool encoding value, scarcity, and voluntary exchange across the network.
- Eastern vs. Western philosophy — Pre-Socratic and Eastern traditions (Zen, Sufism, Persian thought) emphasized flux over Plato's eternal forms. Modern philosophy must reclaim this orientation and apply it to the digital age.
- Time-axis mapping of knowledge — The past = actuality/subsistence (fixed, one history); present = potentiality (where action and learning occur); future = virtuality (infinite possibility). Epistemology stays within this loop; ontology solidifies it into unchangeable objects.