043. Jeffrey Tucker, Will Pangman, Michael Phillip. A Digitally Fueled Utopia, Bitcoin and a Little Bit of Gin.

LISTEN People are evil, violent, greedy, hopeless bastards.  Even as a prepubescent flesh ball that would experience withdrawal symptoms if you took away his Super Nintendo controller for more than five seconds, I knew that.  How could I not?  Fear of the “bad guys” was embedded into roughly 99.9% of the mega-tons of media I consumed on a daily basis.  As a tyke I'd often lie in bed at night fearing a who’s who of boogie men with all manner of otherworldly weaponry that I could never hope to defeat.  But, thankfully, I somehow managed to survive the onslaught of demonic hordes that plagued my mind, the news, movies and the games I so eagerly devoured. I'd even argue that some of it made me a better person.    More recently, from firsthand evidence, I've learned that as scary as the world can be, it’s actually a pretty awesome, dare I say, cooperative place.  I buy shit on Craigslist. I get rides from Uber drivers. And you know what?  I’ve never once been shanked, scammed or raped by a devil worshipper masquerading as a guy with speakers for sale. In fact, it seems like the best things humans can do are usually accomplished collectively.  Thankfully, we live in an era where we actually have the ability to supercharge our collective efforts through open-source, or consensus based platforms.  Just look the wild power and success of media like Twitter, Reddit, Bitcoin and crowd-funding.  Yet, even these vessels would be truly toothless and impossible without mass participation and trust.   Our guest on this episode, Jeffery Tucker has been labeled a lot of things- Economist, Libertarian, Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Publisher, Bitcoin expert, the list truly goes on.  However, I’ve found that rather than putting him in a ideological box, it's more accurate to call him a human that trusts other humans, despite all the fear-mongering and propaganda that reverberates throughout the mainstream discourse.  Though he and I may not agree on every philosophical point, we agree on the most important thing.  We’re all in this together and if we’re going to make this exponentially more interconnected world harmonious, we’re sure as hell going to need to trust one another.  Cumbauya.  For more on Jeffrey, you can follow him on Twitter, or visit his latest venture, liberty.me  You can also say hi, to my well-read, Bitcoin-mongering co-host Will Pangman on Twitter! Join the thousands who already support Midwest Real. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and don’t forget to subscribe and review on iTunes! P.S.-You can now tip the show at midwestreal.net