Natalie Smolenski - Universities have Muddied Their Mission | BRP 3
1:00 What is anthropology?
12:00 Natalie’s Polish background and her jarring experience with Marxism in the US
23:45 Ratcliffe-Brown’s interest in the principles governing stateless societies
28:00 Natalie’s critique of David Graeber’s theory of money
34:20 Karl Marx on how property is supposedly evil, Graeber redefining money as credit
37:50 Graeber’s debate with cypherpunk legend Nick Szabo
42:00 Graeber endorsing the Modern Monetary Theory of money
46:00 Natalie’s defense of academia: why are universities important?
52:20 Do we need to reform existing universities, or just build new ones?
57:00 The academic institution of tenure
1:02:50 How universities get funded, bitcoin as future source of funding, and the role of donors
1:09:25 The link between fiat money and warfare, “Easy Money, Easy Wars”
1:16:10 Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
1:20:00 The criticism that bitcoin concentrates the wealth in the hands of the few, the risk of confiscation, Avik Roy’s argument about why bitcoiners need to be politically engaged
1:24:30 The calcification of institutions, parallels with the Soviet Union
1:28:25 Guilt, Europe, the threat of war in the West
1:32:50 Will the European Union collapse? Historical parallels, George Selgin: The US Civil War, Free Banking, and failing government credit. Europe becoming a vassal of the US, Russia, and China
