This is where the block chain is most useful and revolutionary: It helps us to overcome the problem of mutual trust in exchange, which will, in turn, make many of our modern central institutions unnecessary.
When we look at government in Washington or what's happening on Wall Street, we see so much centralization. But really, our goals should be to eliminate and overcome these central institutions. And in recent years we have gained powerful new tools to do this, and most significant among those is the block chain, which is the software behind Bitcoin.
For the first time in 6,000 years of human history, we can have peer-to-peer exchange where trust is not a problem anymore. And it's through the technology that underlies bitcoin. It's called the block chain.
With the block chain, for the first time, we no longer need these central institutions for settlement or for guaranteeing the value of coins or for land titling. All of these functions can be replaced by a transparent public ledger that is safe from tampering and which can make value and ownership clear and open for everyone.
I'm most excited about all of the non-currency uses of the block chain's ledger-ordering ability. I have no idea which ones will turn out to be successful, but I'm glad all of that experimenting is happening.
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
Letting go helps us to to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.
Letting go helps us to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.
There is, in our nature, a disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which, unless hourly combated, will overcome and destroy the best faculties of our minds and paralyze our most useful powers.
The problem is that, in a world of floating exchange rates, as Italy was before the euro, if one country is subjected to a shock which requires it to cut wages, it cannot do so with a modern kind of control and regulation system. It is much easier to do it by letting the exchange rate change. Only one price has to change, instead of many.
The blockchain is custom-made for decentralizing trust and exchanging assets without central intermediaries. With the decentralization of trust, we will be able to exchange anything we own and challenge existing trusted authorities and custodians that typically held the keys to accessing our assets or verifying their authenticity.
The lesson for Asia is; if you have a central bank, have a floating exchange rate; if you want to have a fixed exchange rate, abolish your central bank and adopt a currency board instead. Either extreme; a fixed exchange rate through a currency board, but no central bank, or a central bank plus truly floating exchange rates; either of those is a tenable arrangement. But a pegged exchange rate with a central bank is a recipe for trouble.
Fear is not negative. We should overcome all our fears and this in turn would make us stronger. As soon as we overcome our fears we can face any challenge.
Our capitalistic scheme in the latter years of the 20th century seems to have lost its way. We've had a "pathalogical change" from traditional owners capitalism where most of the rewards have gone to those who make the investments and assume the risks to a new and deeply flawed system of managers capitalism where the managers of our corporations our investment system, and our mutual funds are simply take too large a share of the returns generated by our corporations and mutual funds leaving the last line investors - pension beneficiaries and mutual fund owners at the bottom of the food chain.
If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.
In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.
The important element is the way in which all things are connected. Every thought and action sends shivers of energy into the world around us, which affects all creation. Perceiving the world as a web of connectedness helps us to overcome the feelings of separation that hold us back and cloud our vision. This connection with all life increases our sense of responsability for every move, every attitude, allowing us to see clearly that each soul does indeed make a difference to the whole.