Show Summary
On this episode, Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation joins Nate to unpack how monetary policy and debt have increasingly extended the reach of colonial powers over recent decades and how bitcoin offers an alternative to the many people who are under this financial exclusion. How have the IMF and World Bank upheld the power of reserve currency countries in the Global North to exploit and extract resources and labor from the Global South under the guise of aid and development? What is the origin of the ‘petrodollar’ and how has it shaped geopolitical relationships since its creation? What exactly is Bitcoin and how does it provide economic and political freedom? Is Bitcoin compatible with a low energy future?
About Alex Gladstein
Alex Gladstein is Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. He has also served as Vice President of Strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum since its inception in 2009. In his work, Alex has connected hundreds of dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, technologists, journalists, philanthropists, policymakers, and artists to promote free and open societies. He serves as faculty at Singularity University and as an advisor to Blockchain Capital, a leading venture firm in the fintech industry. He frequently speaks and writes about why Bitcoin matters for freedom, and is the author of Check Your Financial Privilege. His new book, Hidden Repression: How the IMF and World Bank Market Exploitation as Development was just published in May 2023.
In French, we have a motto that says that a simple drawing is often better than a long explanation. Jean-Marc Jancovici Carbone 4 President
That’s very understandable because with left atmosphere thinking, one of the problems is that you see everything as a series of problems that must have solutions. Iain McGilchrist Neuroscientist and Philosopher
We can’t have hundreds and hundreds of real relationships that are healthy because that requires time and effort and full attention and awareness of being in real relationship and conversation with the other human. Nate Hagens Director of ISEOF
This is the crux of the whole problem. Individual parts of nature are more valuable than the biocomplexity of nature. Thomas Crowther Founder Restor
Show Notes & Links to Learn More
Download transcript00:00 – Alex Gladstein Info + Works, Human Rights Foundations, Oslo Freedom Forum, and his new book Hidden Repression: How the IMF and World Bank Sell Exploitation as Development
02:14 – Monetary Privilege
02:25 – Bitcoin
02:57 – 4.3 billion people in 95 countries living in authoritarian regimes
03:34 – Cuban Underground Library Movement
04:48 – HRF North Korea Program
05:08 – Starlink
06:02 – Amartya Sen – Lack of information can cause famine
06:32 – Town Square Test
06:59 – Basic Civil Liberties
09:34 – Davos
10:19 – Vladimir Kara-Murza
10:28 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
11:18 – Open Source Code
14:24 – It’s illegal to start a human rights group in Saudi Arabia
14:55 – Check Your Financial Privilege
15:35 – 1 billion people live in liberal democracies with governments that have reserve currencies and private property rights
16:48 – The US’s biggest export is debt
16:58 – The Gold Standard
17:02 – Fiat Money
17:35 – Bretton Woods 1/Bretton Woods 2
19:20 – Inflation in western countries in the 70s
19:57 – Marx
20:08 – Keynseians vs Austrians debate on causes of The Great Depression
20:15 – Capital and Imperialism
21:01 – Western Company, Seven Sisters
21:15 – OPEC
22:06 – Fed Mandate
22:38 – 3rd World Debt crisis in the 80s
22:57 – Repeat of the 1980’s Debt Crisis today
26:44 – Bancor
27:26 – FDR confiscation of gold domestically in the US – Executive Order 6102
28:59 – Financial Repression
29:25 – CPI/Fed Funds Rate
30:18 – French sent a battleship in ‘71 to reclaim gold
30:42 – The Nixon Shock
31:42 – Nixon ‘I don’t give a shit about the Lira’ in Watergate tapes Page 12
32:15 – William Simon
32:40 – Capital count in Saudi Arabia and OPEC in the 70s
33:22 – The Petrodollar Pact
35:40 – Eurodollar System
36:40 – US Non-Shale oil production Peaked, Global oil production growth peaked, GPI Peaked, First Earth Day
40:43 – Volker – interest rate increase
41:26 – IMF/World Bank loans have adjustable rates – The Paris Club
41:45 – The World Bank Loans are long term and IMF loans are shorter term
42:30 – The US bailed out in the 1980’s debt crisis to save its own banks
42:50 – 1994 Peso Crisis, 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, 2010 European crisis
43:30 – The Sopranos
43:45 – Powell
43:49 – Sri Lanka collapse
43:55 – Carbon Footprint of Quantitative Easing
44:12 – Economic situation in Egypt
44:41 – Working hour trends in the Global South vs the Global North over the past few decades
45:52 – Monetary colonialism
46:30 – French Imperialism
47:12 – French Uranium from Africa
47:45 – CFA
48:25 – CFA countries are all authoritarian and many are the poorest in the world
53:19 – In 1982, the flow of funds has been from the Global South to the Global North
53:55 – In 2015 this was 10.1 billion tons of raw materials and 182 million person years of labor
55:20 – When GDP Contracts by 2% mortality rate deteriorates by 1%
56:01 – Larry Summers
56:32 – Summers memo saying we should dump our waste into countries in the Global South
57:13 – Hidden Repression
1:03:10 – Shale Oil Revolution
1:03:40 – Iraq war based on the sale of oil in euro
1:03:45 – Newsweek article from Howard Fineman from June ‘03
1:04:01 – David Graeber – Debt
1:04:43 – Luke Gromen and Lyn Alden
1:05:41 – Ray Dalio
1:06:04 – Triffin dilemma
1:07:22 – US deficit
1:10:03 – Africa as a continent imports 85% of its food
1:11:54 – Suharto , Marcos, Mobutu
1:12:56 – Julian Assange
1:13:04 – Satoshi Nakamora
1:13:54 – Maidan Square
1:13:55 – Garry Kasparov
1:14:16 – Roya Mahboob – Wikipedia
1:15:15 – Personal Encryption – Signal
1:16:32 – Bitcoin energy requirements
1:19:12 – Ownership of Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency Stats
1:15:57 – Largest recipients of IMF aid ever
1:21:27 – The amount of gold it takes to buy a beer in Ancient Rome is the same as today
1:24:10 – Operation Choke Point
1:24:47 – Hong Kong student protests against CCP take over utilizing bitcoin
1:28:41 – KYC and AML policy are financially exclusionary
1:29:32 – Blockchain
1:30:03 – Proof of work vs proof of stake
1:30:30 – Limited amount of Bitcoin
1:32:36 – Lightning Network
1:34:29 – Bitcoin Keys
1:35:17 – The Block Size War – Jonathan Bier
1:36:18 – What is Bitcoin mining
1:36:29 – GreenPeace
1:36:59 – Bitcoin difficulty algorithm
1:38:56 – Clarke Moody’s Dashboard
1:42:56 – Cantillon Effect
1:43:56 – Norway uses more energy than bottom 50 countries
1:44:17 – Air Conditioners in the US use more electricity than Argentina
1:44:36 – Cruise Ships use more energy than bitcoins
1:48:03 – 85% of money is created by central banks
1:48:44 – Every war since world war II has been paid with debt
1:49:42 – The US military is the largest consumer of fossils in the world
1:50:35 – Human costs of electric vehicles
1:51:42 – OTEC
1:52:08 – Bitcoin could run for 50 years off the methane emissions from landfills alone
1:54:55 – Bitcoin miners are completely on demand
1:56:54 – Nostr
2:00:40 – War Bonds
2:02:16 – Odious debt
2:05:02 – Central Bank Digital Currencies
2:05:43 – Government attacks on bitcoin users
2:06:05 – El Salvador and Bitcoin
2:10:00 – Daniel Batten
2:11:31 – Nathaniel Harmon
2:21:15 – Environmental crimes linked to Imperialism and Debt Colonialism
2:25:10 – Paris Protocol
