Responding to Balajis

This Twitter thread is by Demetri Kofinas @kofinas (source: 03-21-2023). Kofinas is the host of Hidden Forces.

When @balajis says he is "ideologically driven," he's not lying. He and his comrades have an explicit political agenda to replace the Dollar and bring about a new world order run by a plutocratic elite of free agents who remain removed from the obligations of citizenship & place.

As ridiculous as this may sound to some people, it needs to be taken seriously and the deeper motivations and causes behind it need to be understood.

Balaji's claims about the US banking system failing while Chinese banks are "soaring" is a lie. His claim that the USD is about to go into hyperinflation is both ideologically-driven and ignorant. I’m happy to debate both of these claims with Balaji and have invited him on the Hidden Forces podcast for a frank conversation about it, but that is not the point of this thread.

Balaji is nonetheless right to be upset about what has happened to our country over the last several decades. We know that there are many people to blame and some are more to blame than others. So, my question is what do we want to do about it?

Balaji and other members of this new class of elite are clear on what they want to do. They are lobbying for a future that is plutocratic, where they can act like free agents by using their wealth to exercise political influence over governments around the world while remaining removed from the obligations of citizenship and the identity of place. Their exit strategy is a pyramid scheme: “Buy Bitcoin before it’s too late! Buy it or you will end up impoverished and without a voice.”

Their sophistry and sense of entitlement remind me of the very political culture that they claim to want to upend. Except that their future lacks even the most elemental constitutional safeguards of our imperfect democratic world.

I believe that we all need to get clear on what is happening in our societies today, especially in America and whether we want to be part of the solution or if we are with those like Balaji who choose “exit.”

If you want to own Bitcoin, you should absolutely have the right to do that. In fact, participating in society through our existing democratic institutions is the only way to protect your right to own it and anything else. Balaji’s world promises you none of that. His vision is a chimera.

We are at a turning point and we have to choose. Do we reform our societies from within, building on the institutions and traditions that we inherited over hundreds of years from generations that paid for them in some cases with their lives or do we jump into the abyss of uncertainty and chaos that is the world that Balaji and his comrades seek to bring about?

It’s a choice that begins with rejecting golden calves and chimeras. What comes out of that is unknowable, but at least it forces us to contend with the deeper inequities, corruption, and betrayal of liberal democratic values that is partly responsible for our disillusionment with modernity. Our abandonment of tradition has left us casting about in open waters where hucksters and frauds present themselves as our saviors, when in truth we are the only ones who can save ourselves.

Again, the choice begins with rejecting false idols, abandoning cynicism, and having faith. Deep down its faith that has been missing. Faith in each other and in ourselves to know that we can come out of this. That we know the way. That others have done it before and that we can do it again.

Feature image generated via HackerNoon Stable Diffusion prompt of ‘A Debate’