[Analysis] The Bushido of Bitcoin: Virtue in Economics

"The Bushido of Bitcoin" by Alexander Svetski, a Review and Discussion

The moral foundations of neoliberalism have very much run their course. While a Vance-Trump “americana” dream still holds significant political sway, regressive “golden-age” thinking will not build a meaningful future for the next generation. While excellent messaging from a political standpoint, the Imperial Transition in the United States will fundamentally reshape culture in as-yet unpredictable way. The rebuilding of a post-materialist moral system will shape the way future generations see this era of human history.

Forgive me for frequently posting links to previous articles. This discussion necessitates frequent call-backs to content that I’ve written in the past.

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A recent publication by

Aleksandar Svetski

offers a reasoned and traditionalist approach to virtue and morality considering the tidal changes in our economic and cultural systems. I was contacted by Svetski some time ago as he thought that I may be interested in reading and review his recent book: The Bushido of Bitcoin. Upon completing the text, I agree with him. While “The Bushido of Bitcoin” is not the seminal treatise on 21st-century morality… I am certain that “The Bushido of Bitcoin” will be a significant inspirational foundation for that piece of future literature.

What many people fail to understand is how morality and economics play into one another with incentive structures. That is, how society is structured depends on how energy can be accrued and dispensed through a population. Feudalism was a land-based system; grown crops were the primary energy source of humanity at the time. Burgoise capitalism became the system when energy was accrued through fossil fuels and distributed via factory production. The managerialist systems of the Soviet Union and the United States developed during a time-period where energy was so plentiful that massive wasteful vanity projects could provide make-work jobs for useless mid-level childless functionaries.

The managerial revolution is coming to an end. It will be replaced by something new over the next few generations (one way or another). A paradigm tied into future American-Imperial economics. Things will change dramatically in coming decades, especially as resource, mineral, and energy limitations and demographic collapse change the global face of humanity.

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A Discussion of the Bushido of Bitcoin

I would like to begin by stating that this book is mistitled. A more accurate title might be “Meditations on Bushido and Bitcoin” or “On Bushido and Bitcoin” or “Economic Virtue; Bushido and Bitcoin.”

Similarly, I would recommend that a reader skip the foreword and the introduction. Begin the book at “Part 1” rather than going through the preamble. After completing the last chapter, go back and read the Forward and the Introduction as an epilogue rather than prologue. With that said, the book is highly recommended literature for those making sense of this new century we find ourselves in.

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This book is a complex and difficult discussion of human morality, virtue, and the distinctions between warrior and civilian cultures. Svetski reaches into history by exploring the historical virtue-cultures of Bushido and Chivalry and how economic incentives alter societies.

The explorations of morality are both more complete and digestible than the majority of texts on the subject. It represents a modernized analysis of historical virtue and an understanding of what the post-modern neoliberal world lacks. I think that Svetski’s selection of Bushido is apt. Feudal Japan focused heavily on the very virtues that “liberal” society has abandoned. An optimized future for Western culture would be a synthesis of Liberalism and Bushido as they’re diametrically opposed in a moral-foundations sense.

Jonathan Haidt originally conceptualized the 6 moral foundations:

• Care

• Liberty

• Fairness

• Loyalty

• Authority

• Sanctity

Liberals focus only on Care, Liberty, and Fairness, to the exclusion of all others. The result has been a culture of mediocrity, cowardice, and an odd form of Karen-based authoritarian anti-authoritarianism.

Imperial Japanese culture focused almost entirely on Loyalty, Sanctity, and Authority to the exclusion of all others, leading Japan to declare suicidal wars of conquest against over 10x their population… and very nearly win.

In both cases, a hyper-biased approach to the moral foundations resulted in catastrophic oversights and a general social breakdown. The social breakdown in Japan came after they lost WWII while the social breakdown in the West has taken longer but resembles the failures of the managerialist Soviet Union.

Svetski does not dwell on the distinction, but I think that it’s an important piece of reasoning as to why Bushido makes an excellent oppositional comparison to modern liberal societies. Bushido, a culture of virtue, is diametrically opposed to the culture of civilian safety created by liberalism. With that in mind, Svetski examines and modernizes the Bushido code in light of the changing economic times in the West.

With the rise of bitcoin, an energy-based currency that has no higher governing authority, we have the opportunity to reshape human culture based entirely on new incentive structures and the virtues of the people who grow up around them. One cannot print money if the monetary system changes to something profoundly rigid. Keynesian economic systems simply cannot function in such an environment.

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The Bushido of Bitcoin is not afraid to throw punches at taboo topics such as women’s suffrage and the very concept of egalitarianism. Likewise, the idealism and hidden necessitation of hierarchy inherent in misguided libertarian ideals. It seems that Svetski rather enjoys pointing out inherent flaws in our Western taken-for-granted social system. The book makes the reasonable argument that feudal systems produce higher culture, higher quality of life, and superior moral output compared to liberal democracy. Bushido and Chivalry were both created as a consequence of feudal lifestyles and hierarchies. I’ve argued much the same in several articles of my own.

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By eliminating the pretense of egalitarianism, one can emphasize virtues like excellence. That is, the skilled, brilliant, and vital succeed at the expense of the incompetent, the stupid, and the weak. From such a perspective, neoliberalism seems like a moral inversion of Darwinism. This makes sense; fascism is tribal Darwinism at the scale of the nation-state. Since the second world war, neoliberalism constructed its entire existence and moral code around being “not-fascism” to the point that the original definition of the word “fascist” has become so muddied as to mean nothing.

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A culture of strength and vitality raises to the top those that are the most competent and vital; those that truly believe in doing what is right and are capable of using violence to enforce their will. A warrior-culture. A culture of weakness results in mass mediocrity as excellence is discouraged. Managerialism, seeking to reduce human complexity to spreadsheet entries, has built a culture of meaninglessness and hedonism.

In the book, Svetski analyzes a modernized form of Bushido virtues and contextualizes them. He then goes on to examine them in the context of economic incentives and the changes that will occur as the global monetary system transitions to a stateless-immutable currency from a state-based fiat currency.

The modernized virtues of Bushido as listed in the text are:

• Justice

• Courage

• Compassion and Love

• Honor

• Responsibility

• Excellence

• Respect

• Loyalty and Duty

• Self Control and Restraint

If courage is the peak virtue of the warrior, self-control is the peak virtue of the leader

Svetski takes great care in describing the virtues, demonstrating their chivalry-equivalents, and contextualizing the virtues in a modern paradigm. Indeed, I found myself needing to take notes regarding some of the specific ideas that are conceptualized in other texts. Many science fiction novels focus heavily on the ideas discussed in the Bushido of Bitcoin through plot and thought-experiment. Books like “Return from the Stars” by Stanislav Lem show how struggle and honor and courage are necessities for life to grow rather than regress into a state of cattle-like mediocrity.

Hardship, especially voluntary hardship among the elites, is critical developing a greater society. Virtues are ideals to be lived and acted upon. Virtue in a new society is something to be cultivated at the individual level be it through martial arts, entrepreneurship, or something as simple as fasting. Virtue isn’t a list of ideas, it’s a list of actions. The book takes sufficient care in accurately describing many of these ideas, that I was forced to take notes in the margins.

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Books like Hyperion describe a “New Bushido” as a post-liberal code of warrior ethics created in an interstellar future-history. The concept is that honor can be returned to combat if competing parties are willing to engage one another on equal footing. A completely different attitude towards combat in comparison to the modern conceptualization. The Great War in 1914 dramatically altered the concept of warfare into something distasteful and filled with deceit and brutality. There is no reason that industrial nations cannot return to a state of honorable conflict provided that a sufficiently powerful cultural substrate could be built to do so.

Books like the Arthurian legends and the Three Musketeers demonstrate a propensity for violence as a positive end rather than solely an unavoidable means. Honorable violence tempers the individual and the larger society. Honorable violence produces heroes and valor. There is embedded in “The Bushido of Bitcoin” a deep desire to see a society that is not afraid of its own shadow. One willing to engage on behalf of honor rather than mere material resource. When men are willing to defend their honor through violence, one sees birthed an honorable society. When men are punished like school children for being honorable, the result is a society of fear and mediocrity. The “Bushido of Bitcoin” works toward creating a new framework for virtue in the coming age of humanity.

By ascribing the heroic virtues in detail and considering them in the context of modern culture and expression. Svetski builds a cohesive argument for a more noble future culture. The “Bushido of Bitcoin” works toward creating a new framework for virtue in the coming age of humanity. As humanity transitions from an abundance culture to a resource-scarcity culture, new virtues are going to be needed; a new monetary system that will function through periods of economic stability and decline rather than existing solely in an era of infinite economic growth. The book “The Ecotechnic Future” is an excellent introduction to such ideas.

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A byproduct of the shift from abundance-industrialism to scarcity-industrialism, as described in “The Ecotechnic Future,” is going to be a change in time-preference. The money printer and enormous material wealth have combined to create a society so short-sighted that it’s willing to sell its children down the river for a nice paycheck. That is going to have to change at a fundamental level. It cannot change as long as an infinite-growth debt-based currency is the backbone of the global industrial system. To quote so dozens of luminaries over the last decade, “Bitcoin fixes this.”

As Bitcoin is an inherently stable/deflationary currency, shifting from a debt-based Keynesian fiat system to a Bitcoin-based Austrian-stability system will allow the global trade networks to continue existing even as global GDP growth stalls. What would be a catastrophic economic contraction in a fiat system becomes market stability in an energy-based Bitcoin system. Bitcoin makes an argument for low time preference (encouraging long-term planning, long-term thinking, and delaying gratification for future benefit). The Bushido of Bitcoin discusses the way economic incentives could be used as a springboard to foster a more virtuous culture. I argue similarly, but would like to highlight that a new monetary system will be needed for a future era of economic stability.

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Svetski recognizes the cyclical nature of societies. There is a purpose to the social turnover that we’ve seen over the last few thousand years, just as there is a purpose for the older generations making way for the younger. Attempts to subvert these cycles have resulted in cultural, economic, and social obstructions to the normal functions of civilization. To reach back to Spangler, each civilization has its spring, its summer, its autumn, and its winter. A failure to operate within the cyclical economic models merely causes inflation and institutional decline, as we’ve seen since the 2000 crash right through to the pandemic market shenanigans in 2020.

The focus of the work is on future-planning. Virtue and wealth are not inherently opposed, but a society that values neither will find itself bereft of both. Doing the right thing rarely aligns with doing the thing that makes the most money. As Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies measure wealth in a way that is stable over time, the hope is that reputation will once again become valued. Family and family name, and family honor become markers of success just as much as material abundance. There are a lot of short-sighted, stupid idiots driving around in cheap Lamborghinis right now. They have no reputation, but the current Western culture doesn’t value reputation.

Let’s change that.

It is possible to align the interests of the leaders far more so with thee interests of the citizens if we get rid of the money printer. If wealth is printed, then those with the printer, and the friends of those with the printer, are the ones who have direct access to real wealth. One can see that today with massive public spending across the Western World is becoming the driving force for companies and NGOs. It’s not about making a good product, it’s about getting close to the money printer in an economic sense.

With the birth of a new monetary system using new tools and virtues, we can seize the future. Effectively declaring praxis not on a place but in a time. By virtue of action, we can take control of our destiny by swapping to a system that doesn’t require an elite money printer in the first place. If the wealthy must be as productive as the laborers, how society is shaped will need to change swiftly and dramatically.

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The first question, “is this possible?” isn’t considered in the book. Svetski assumes victory on behalf of a new monetary system. It is a question that I’m far more interested in, though. I think that Svetski is optimistic in the long-term, to be sure. I don’t entirely disagree. I do think that several compounding factors will render such a transition difficult. The first is the elite themselves. Their wealth is tied to the endless printing of money. Without infinite growth the current global economic model collapses. Thus, the elites are incentivized to perpetually kick the can until they run into some hard limit.

The longer they kick the can, the more catastrophic the eventual collapse will be. Thus, the elites create false illusory growth by creating new asset-classes, building bigger and bigger tech bubbles, and hoarding wealth even as it’s debased. It is in the interest of the people to switch to a bitcoin based system of digital currency, but the people are retarded.

The people are easily swayed by propaganda and uncertainty. AI tools and social media ghettos will make it progressively more difficult to get useful messages out. Even those messages and that information that does get out will be swamped with a wave of brainrot content. Unfortunately, an elite is needed that is willing to shirk their traditional roles and make changes.

Fortunately, there are some members of a new elite starting to peek their heads up and make major plays. How those plays will come to fruition and if they’ll align with our interests, I don’t know. The new elite in the coming century will be different, at least in the United States. The managerialist elite were destroyed in the 2024 election. Individuals like Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk are taking the helm, while individuals like Michael Saylor are building entirely new ideas when it comes to investment and digital property.

This is a period of dynamism. While the United States becomes imperial, numerous nations and economic models are going to be reshaped one way or another. While Svetski adheres to the “Great Man” theory of history, I hold a much more mixed view. Massive socio-cultural forces build over time, and during periods of crisis, a “Great Man” is thrust into a position to make decisions. At those times, history stands on the tip of a needle and the Great Man is the one who decides which way history will fall. Alexander the Great, Augustus Ceasar, and Jesus Christ are examples of the heroism of the classical age. Great thinkers and leaders who swayed the mass of cultural baggage that had preceded them.

So, while Svetski recommends seizing the future on behalf of this new coming world, I find myself far more partial to see society as a rudderless ship tossed in the wind. In both cases, the tools he recommends using will be invaluable:

Privacy and Private Keys: This is the first time in human history that men have been able to possess and use, and travel with an asset that no government can seize. Those who hold their wealth in Bitcoin are free of oversight in a way that few others in history ever have been.

Communications and Networks: Modern culture has left people bereft of personal networks in an environment where mass communication is free and instantaneous. Build new personal and professional networks with as many people as you can. One well-networked man is worth a hundred un-networked men. Find your interests reflected in numerous microcultures and build networks. Real friendships, and try to localize them. If you and your friends own every bar in a small town, you own the whole town.

Combatives and Self-Defense: One of the oldest artforms of humanity, combat. Combatives are a mindset and a skill set. Train in them, train in them with friends. If you can make time to go to the gym (and we can all make time to go to the gym), you can make the time to go to a boxing or jiujitsu class. Honor and Courage and Restraint are virtues to be practiced by warriors, not serfs.

A Willingness to Fail: Building businesses is difficult and uncertain. At the same time, it’s so difficult for white men to get employed in faceless-drone bureaucracies that the theoretical stability of doing so is well out of reach anyway. Thus, a willingness to fail and begin independent business enterprises will be crucial. Fortunately, new businesses operating using Bitcoin as a reserve are going to be in a dramatically improved position over those that use USD cash reserves.

Restore Cultural Rituals: Rituals like rights of passage and honoring the past help to maintain social cohesion. They help ensure that the individual is bound to a larger group rather than merely existing as a disconnected periphery. We are links between the past and the future, bearing the hopes of past generations and a responsibility to future generations. Rebuilding rituals to honor those connections will help us to rebuild a society worth living in rather than one of mediocre hedonism.

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The changes undergoing human civilization now are going to be shaped heavily by the modern understanding of virtue. The Bushido of Bitcoin is a new stone now laid in that foundation for the future.

How cultures change over time shows a preference for complexity and then de-complexification. Between 1945 and 2020, human cultures reached an apex of high complexity that’s never been seen before in human history. We are now beginning to decomplexify away from the Globo-Homo system established in 1950 and toward something new. I hope, as Svetski seems to hope, that we will see abandoned false notions of egalitarianism and return to a form of structured localism and cultural hierarchy. Perhaps not a feudal state as in the ancient past, but a new form of social system that is better predisposed towards responsibility, virtue, and strong governance. These patterns of history are well described in the book “The Collapse of Complex Systems,” one of the seminal works on civilization-collapse-theory produced in the 1980s, which appears to be accurate given further observations in the last 40 years.

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The de-complexification beginning globally is going to present great opportunities. It will also create horrible castrophes. Through the construction of a new moral and ethical system, it will be possible to weather these tribulations and come out the other side with a stronger culture.

At some point in the future, a brilliant author will write a treatise that will become a defining feature of late 21st-century virtue and ethics. When that happens, said future-author is almost guaranteed to reach back to “The Bushido of Bitcoin” as a valuable reference and source material. Already, we are seeing a number of formerly western cultures experiment with new ideas. American culture in particular. The idea of changing the incentive structure of civilization from eternal consumption to excellence and nobility is gaining traction. Safety-cultures are beginning to fall away in many red states, and grindingly slow return to a culture of responsibility is taking its place.

I hope that Svetski is recognized for his contributions to these discussions in a century or two. I’d also like to personally thank him for reaching out and asking me to take a look at his book.

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