Derek Magill

26 Quotes from College Dropouts

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Jay-Z was once asked in an interview if he feels insecure about not having a degree when he goes into a boardroom with a bunch of lawyers and MBAs. His response? “Never. They’ve lived a bunch of words but I’ve lived a bunch of life.”

As a dropout myself, I can understand this feeling. How could I possibly feel insecure about not having a degree that I never wanted and when I have 5+ more years of professional experience than anybody my age? For me, dropping out and starting my life early was a way to avoid the insecurity I see today in so many of my peers when they realize that they have no marketable skills that employers want and no knowledge of what they really want out of life.

More and more young people are beginning to realize this too. They see college as a 4-6 year postponement from the real world that costs far more than it’s worth and figure out ways to sidestep it entirely.

Over the last few years, I’ve been collecting quotes from these people about their decision to drop out of college and what they did instead. It’s helped me and I hope helps you make the decision to drop out and get started on your life.

People said I should do the responsible thing and go back to college. But I didn’t. I decided to irresponsibly chase my curiosity. I went down the rabbit hole, and I knew some people thought I was crazy. I was a college dropout, I was living with my parents and I was spending all my time coding, something that many believe a woman or a dropout cannot pursue as a career. Yet I didn’t care. I let go of what path I was supposed to be on. Later, I realized I had discovered my biggest passion. I did an unpaid engineering internship and eventually got my first job as a software engineer.
– Madison Kanna

This opportunity that is front of you—is it what you were going to school for in the first place? For me, that was it. I wasn’t going to stay in school for another year, graduate, and then cross my fingers and hope to get offered a similar job again. Fuck the marshmallow test—sometimes you have to take what’s offered to you right now…because later might not happen.
– Ryan Holiday

I didn’t come to college to be forced into useless classes nor did I come to become well-rounded. I came to college to study a particular field and differentiate myself in the job market. Even when I finally took some good classes, they were delivered in horribly inefficient ways. Anyone could learn this material from books and free online resources.

After 3 years of disappointment and thousands of dollars of debt accumulation, I was fed up. I stopped being afraid of stupid things and decided to break the mold. It was the best decision I have ever made.
– Nate Baker

I am so proud to say I’ve been offered jobs at very reputable companies that “ONLY HIRE COLLEGE GRADUATES,” as they are fond of advertising. I’ve been the only non-graduate in a workplace more than once, and it is not something I hide — it is something I sing from the rooftops. I have had many employers/interviewers say things like, “We don’t normally hire people without degrees, but you are interesting. At the age of 18, you didn’t feel the pressure to conform to what everyone else was doing, and that is the kind of maverick we want in our business.”
– Grace Slater

I realized that 95% of “education” was self-taught, either through personal projects or internships. I wanted to learn JavaScript, so I used online resources and learned at my own pace, on my own time, that too for FREE.
– Keshav Narula

When I dropped out of school, I was betting on myself. It was a good bet (one that surprised me, honestly). In less than 3 years, I’d worked as a Hollywood executive, researched for and promoted multiple NYT bestsellers, and was Director of Marketing for one of the most provocative companies on the planet. I had achieved more than I ever could have dreamed of — the scared, overwhelmed me of 19 could have never conceived of having done all that.
– Ryan Holiday

Looking back at my life, dropping out of college was the smartest decision I ever made. I left CU-Boulder as a sophomore against the better judgment of all my friends, family and classmates. At the time, they thought I was making a huge mistake. However, I was determined to prove them wrong, and this determination helped fuel my success.
– Logan Cheirotti

I’m not putting myself through five years of freaking college that’s expensive and to not have a guaranteed job at the end.
– Nathan Latka

In college I was learning things that didn’t help in anything I wanted to achieve. The classes were very boring, the people I was studying with didn’t seem incredible to me as to consider them colleagues or future members of my team. I was learning a lot of calculus, mechanics and electricity, but only theoretically because most universities don’t have the infrastructure to do practical classes on these subjects. And they don’t encourage you to think beyond passing the exams…I wanted to quit college.
– Carlos Sz

I was tired of losing money, time, and mental energy to college. I was more frustrated about the opportunities I was missing out on. I dropped out and it was the best decision I’ve ever made.
– Casey McGoff

After I dropped out, I began running studio sessions and selling the beats I was making to pay for rent and food. I didn’t have anybody telling me to do it that way; one day I just realized that people sell beats, and I had tons of beats. I made a post on Facebook seeing who wanted to buy my beats, and I’ve been selling them ever since. I’ve basically spent every day since in my studio working as hard as I can to be comfortable. I still haven’t gotten around to paying back any student loans, but I can eat now, I can pay my rent, I have some great friends, and I’ve had the privilege of playing and working with some of my inspirations in the last few months.
– Riley Smithson

College, for me, was a lot like a bubble. I had a level of independence and responsibility, but I wasn’t yet part of the reality outside of school. Don’t get me wrong—college makes sense for those who feel happy there and want to be there. But for me, this bubble was suffocating. The longer I stayed, the more trapped I felt…This was a scary decision, but I finally made it, and once I did I felt I could breathe again.
– Anonymous

I remember one moment very vividly: I was in the bathroom when I heard a few of my classmates complaining about having to go to class and discussing how many more points they needed to pass the course. These were the same girls I had to shush as I gave my painstakingly prepared presentation on historical revisionism earlier that day. It hit me right then that in three years’ time, we would all have the same exact diploma, we would probably compete for the same jobs and no employer would care about how many all-nighters I had pulled to deliver quality term papers…

…the impact has been way more positive than negative. The random skills I’ve acquired have allowed me to travel the world, learn a third language and work with amazing tech startups in Asia doing a range of things from digital marketing to product development. I am also no longer embarrassed — and am maybe even proud — to admit I am a college dropout.
– Fabi Pina

[Read more…]

Sales > critical approval

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I was recently gifted an original copy of an early critical review of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. The joke on me was that “I like the book for all the reasons the writer says its evil,” and that’s probably true, but there’s an important point I’ve taken away from the document: having paying customers speaks louder than critics.

Atlas Shrugged debuted to outcry among the intellectual class. They described it as “immoral,” “fascist,” “non-stop day dreaming,” and it got very few critical press in the mainstream. And yet, business owners, construction men, assembly-line workers, soldiers, plumbers, entrepreneurs, pilots and short-order cooks all around America read it in droves. Atlas Shrugged is considered one of the perennial best selling American novels and was ranked in the reader submitted Modern Library Top 100 Books of All Time as the #1 (the critical list did not even include it at all).

The massive commercial success of Atlas Shrugged led to the creation of The Nathaniel Branden Institute and the self-esteem school of psychology, the Libertarian party,  nationwide lectures, and an international newsletter. It continues to sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year over 60 years after its publication and has nearly 6,000 reader reviews on Amazon with 4.5 stars. Rand won, no matter how many nasty things were said about her in among the “intellectual” class, because she had real customers.

As she wrote in The Fountainhead,

The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

It’s important to understand this. Your work might be unappreciated in the press. It might be ripped apart on Twitter. It might be slandered or ignored by intellectuals or critical reviewers. It doesn’t matter. The best metric for success are sales numbers and real readers, not the approval of the mainstream intelligentsia who were wrong about Rand as they are wrong about most things.

When we launched Praxis, we were viciously opposed by a number of academics in our circles who were formerly good friends or acquaintances. They said it was “anti-intellectual,” “ill-informed,” “Sham-Wow,” and that nobody would join. Social media periodically lit up with outrage and a few organizations boycotted us.

But students passed our blog articles around and invited people at Praxis to speak at their clubs and student conferences. They scheduled calls to ask for advice about their lives that they could not find in school. And they applied to Praxis, achieved incredible results, and allowed us to grow it into the company it is today.

So it goes with all new things. Judge your work by customers and sales, by those who pay you for your work, art or services, not by the voices of those who are paid to criticize.

32 Quotes from The Fountainhead that Matter

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Today is the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, the novel I’ve recommended more than any other. I first read it in high school (teachers warned me against it) while I was in England and its plot, theme, characters and the philosophy Rand integrates through it all has been the guiding influence in my life since.

Every decision I’ve made since, from the choice to leave college to my involvement in the Bitcoin Cash industry have their roots in The Fountainhead. And it’s all been for the best.

As I’ve said elsewhere, Rand “painted a picture of what was possible for the individual man that I desperately needed at that age of my life and which I still need today.” Having read Anthem, Philosophy: Who Needs It, and a good deal of her nonfiction essays first, I came into The Fountainhead expecting a great read but nothing truly new to me. I was wrong.

The novel dramatized a staggering number of philosophical, aesthetic, ethical and psychological issues for me that I could not have fully grasped through non-fiction alone. Things about my life and the people in it that didn’t make sense suddenly became clear. I learned to see in people the characters of Roark, Keating, and Toohey as well as dozens of the minor characters and to understand the conscious and subconscious premises they’ve accepted that guide their day-to-day actions. For a novel, it taught me more about the world than most nonfiction books I’ve read.

This post was originally intended to be a look at ALL of my highlights in my beaten paperback copy, but it turned out to be over 8,000 words, which is not a particularly reader friendly length for a quote roundup. In the future, I may do a giant roundup for fun, but for now, below are 32 of my favorite quotes from the novel that I’ve highlighted over the years under the broad categories of individualism, second-handedness, and creation.

I hope they inspire and enlighten you as they have done for me.

On Individualism

Dean: “Do you mean to tell me that you’re thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?”
Howard Roark: “Yes.”
Dean: “My dear fellow, who will let you?”
Howard Roark: “That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”
Chapter I, pp. 18-19 ; Howard Roark to the Dean

“‘Look,’ Roark said evenly, and pointed at the window. ‘Can you see the campus and the town? Do you see how many men are walking and living down there? Well, I don’t give a damn what any or all of them think about architecture — or about anything else, for that matter. Why should I consider what their grandfathers thought of it?”
Chapter I, pp. 18-19 ; Howard Roark to the Dean

“Rules?” said Roark. “Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it’s made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn’t borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn’t borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.”
Chapter I, pp. 18-19 ; Howard Roark to the Dean

“Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important—what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right—so long as it’s not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic—and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don’t know. I’ve never known it. I’d like to understand.”
Chapter I, pp. 18-19 ; Howard Roark to the Dean

“But you see,” said Roark quietly, “I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.”
Chapter I, pp. 18-19 ; Howard Roark to the Dean

“If you want my advice, Peter, you’ve made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?”
Chapter II, p. 28 ; Howard Roark to Peter Keating

“Heller, the fighter against compulsion, was baffled by Roark, a man so impervious to compulsion that he became a kind of compulsion himself, an ultimatum against things Heller could not define. Within a week, Heller knew that he had found the best friend he would ever have; and he knew that the friendship came from Roark’s fundamental indifference. In the deeper reality of Roark’s existence there was no consciousness of Heller, no need for Heller, no demand.”
Chapter XI, pp. 135 ; Austin Heller and Howard Roark

“A house can have integrity, just like a person,” said Roark, “and just as seldom…Your house is made by its own needs. Those others are made by the need to impress. The determining motive for your house is in the house. The determining motive for others is in the audience.”
Chapter XI, pp. 136 ; Austin Heller and Howard Roark

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder?”
Chapter VIII, Part 4, pp. 576; Crony businessman

“I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.”
Chapter XVIII, Part 4, p. 743 ; Howard Roark

“No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind’s moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.”
Chapter XVIII, Part 4, p. 738 ; Howard Roark

“After a while Mallory sat up. He looked at Roark and saw the calmest, kindest face — a face without a hint of pity. It did not look like the countenance of men who watch the agony of another with a secret pleasure, uplifted by the sight of a beggar who needs their compassion; it did not bear the cast of the hungry soul that feeds upon another’s humiliation.”
Chapter XI, Part 2, pp. 329 ; Howard Roark and Stephen Mallory

“Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.”
Chapter XVIII, p. 740 ; Howard Roark

On Second-handeness

“He’s an egomaniac devoid of all moral sense” –
– said the society woman dressing for a charity bazaar, who dared not contemplate what means of self-expression would be left to her and how she would impose her ostentation on her friends, if charity were not the all-excusing virtue –
– said the social worker who had found no aim in life and could generate no aim from within the sterility of his soul, but basked in virtue and held an unearned respect from all, by grace of his fingers on the wounds of others –
– said the novelist who had nothing to say if the subject of service and sacrifice were to be taken away from him, who sobbed in the hearing of attentive thousands that he loved them and loved them and would they please love him a little in return –
— said the lady columnist who had just bought a country mansion because she wrote so tenderly about the little people —
— said all the little people who wanted to hear of love, the great love, the unfastidious love, the love that embraced everything, forgave everything, and permitted everything—
— said every second-hander who could not exist except as a leech on the souls of others.”
Chapter X, Part 4, pp. 622; Howard Roark and the public

“It’s what I couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating….He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other peoples’ eyes. Fame, admiration, envy — all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your actual selflessness. It’s his ego he’s betrayed and given up. But everyone calls him selfish. That’s the pattern of most people.”
Chapter IX, Part 4, pp. 605; Howard Roark on Peter Keating

“Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You’ve wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion – prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: ‘This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me’. Then he wonders why he’s unhappy.”
Chapter IX, Part 4, pp. 607; Howard Roark

“But Keating could never be the same when he had an audience, any audience. Something was gone. He did not know it, but he felt that Roark knew; Roark’s eyes made him uncomfortable and that made him angry.”
Chapter II, p. 34 ; Peter Keating and Howard Roark

“He wondered whether he really liked his mother. But she was his mother and this fact was recognized by everybody as meaning automatically that he loved her, and so he took for granted that whatever he felt for her was love. He did not know whether there was any reason why he should respect her judgement. She was his mother; this was supposed to take the place of reasons.”
Chapter II, p. 35 ; Peter Keating

“Mrs. Sanborn was the president of many charity organizations and this had given her an addiction to autocracy such as no other avocation could develop.”
Chapter XIII, pp. 167 ; Mrs. Sanborn

“I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it. Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but for his own joy? Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why. They whine and say they don’t understand the meaning of life. There’s a particular kind of people that I despise. Those who seek some sort of a higher purpose or ‘universal goal,’ who don’t know what to live for, who moan that they must ‘find themselves.’ You hear it all around us. That seems to be the official bromide of our century. Every book you open. Every drooling self-confession. It seems to be the noble thing to confess. I’d think it would be the most shameful one.”
Chapter IV, Part 4, pp. 551; Howard Roark

“Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution—or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.”
Chapter XVIII, p. 739 ; Howard Roark

“No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind’s moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.”
Chapter XVIII, p. 738 ; Howard Roark

“The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.”
Chapter XVIII, P. 738 ; Howard Roark

“He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words sounded if they were hitting a vacuum. There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends. the picture post cards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.”
Chapter XIII, pp. 162 ; Howard Roark and Mrs. Wayne Wilmot

On Creation and Production

“People meant very little to Mike, but their performance a great deal. He worshipped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no tolerance for anything save for other single – track devotions. He was a master in his own field and felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter. He loved buildings. He despised, however, all architects.”
Chapter VII, p. 93 ; Mike Donnigan

“Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can’t you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You’re so serious, so old. Everything’s important with you, everything’s great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can’t you ever be comfortable—and unimportant?”
“No.”
Chapter VII, p. 88 ; Peter Keating and Howard Roark

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred. The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”
Chapter XVIII, Part 4, pp. 736-737 ; Howard Roark

Henry Cameron: “Why did you’d decide to become an architect?”
Howard Roark: “I didn’t know it then. But it’s because I’ve never believed in God.”
Henry Cameron: “Come on, talk sense.”
Howard Roark: “Because I love this earth. That’s all I love. I don’t like the shape of things on this earth. I want to change them.”
Henry Cameron: “For whom?”
Howard Roark: “For myself.”
Chapter III, p. 49 ; Henry Cameron and Howard Roark

“The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power—that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the
nature of achievement.”
Chapter XVIII, Part 4, p. 737 ;Howard Roark

“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”
Chapter IV, Part 3, pp. 446 ; Howard Roark

“The house on the sketches had been designed not by Roark, but by the cliff on which it stood. It was as if the cliff had grown and completed itself and proclaimed the purpose for which it had been waiting.”
Chapter IX, p. 124 ; Howard Roark

“They were the sketches of building such as had never stood on the face of the earth. They were as the first houses built by the first man born, who had never heard of others building before him. There was nothing to be said of them, except that each structure was inevitably what it had to be. It was not as if the draftsman had sat over them, pondering laboriously, pricing together doors, windows and columns, as his whim dictated and as the books prescribed. It was as if the buildings had sprung from the earth and from some living force, complete, unalterably right. The hand that had made the sharp pencil lines still had much to learn. But not a line seemed superfluous, not a needed plane was missing. The structures were austere and simple, until one looked t them and realized what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the simplicity. No laws had dictated a single detail. The buildings were not Classical, they were not Gothic, they were not Renaissance. They were only Howard Roark.”
Chapter IX, p. 124 ; Howard Roark

The Fountainhead is one of those rare novels that gets better and better each time you read it. Even looking through my highlights, I discovered other passages that were highlight-worthy. I’ve read it four times and plan to do it again soon. If you haven’t read it yet, I guarantee it’s worth it.

Read it once through without taking notes —  just enjoy the plot. Then come back to it in a few months with a pen. You’ll find something interesting on almost every page.

Writing in Slovenia

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In Slovenia last year I did some of the best writing I’ve ever done. That’s at least my own totally unbiased estimation of my work. Moments like the one I experienced are rare in my writing. I blog every single day and yet I’m lucky if I experience that once a month.

I don’t consider it something magical. It’s something you habituate yourself into in a sense, like an Olympic sprinter who runs and incredible time in the 100 meter dash. That sprinter might not equal that time for months. He might never equal that time again. And yet it  was all the lesser times leading up to it that made it possible.

This is how I approach writing. Slovenia Moments, as I’ve started calling them, are made possible by all the head bashing and drudgery you do every other day. I won’t always experience them but when I do it will be worth it.

As a general rule, don’t trust any artist who says their talents or inspirations come out of nowhere. They lack self awareness or they are falsely humble. Trust me, they earned that Slovenia Moment. And if you want it too, start doing your art now.

Slovenia was incidentally one of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever visited. I look forward to going back sometime.

I visited on a layover I had after speaking in Sarajevo, Bosnia at OpenFest 2017.

A short but productive time made possible through writing.

Why Bitcoin Cash matters

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Why does Bitcoin Cash matter when cryptocurrencies like Litecoin, Dogecoin, and dozens of other alt coins already exist which work quickly and have low transaction fees? [1]

This is a question I see every day in some form on Twitter or Reddit. I think it comes at worst from people who want to undermine Bitcoin Cash. They know that the other coins are not a threat to Bitcoin Core and they understand that branding Bitcoin Cash as an “alt” would do a good deal of social damage to it. But there are also people who truly misunderstand the nature and the importance of the Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Core debates. I’m writing this essay for them.

Though I think there are a number of reasons why we should believe Bitcoin Cash is the best option, including fees and transaction times, I think focusing on them too much is a distraction. When I first developed an interest in Bitcoin Cash, I was thinking along those lines. To me, the question of high fees and low fees was all important. [2]

Now it is my belief that Bitcoin Cash matters more than any other cryptocurrency out there, but it matters for a more fundamental reason than transaction fees and speed. To understand this, we need to understand what happened to Bitcoin Core, previously the most successful cryptocurrency project ever, that started this whole debate. I quote from Mike Hearn:

Why has Bitcoin failed? It has failed because the community has failed. What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked “systemically important institutions” and “too big to fail” has become something even worse: a system completely controlled by just a handful of people. Worse still, the network is on the brink of technical collapse. The mechanisms that should have prevented this outcome have broken down, and as a result there’s no longer much reason to think Bitcoin can actually be better than the existing financial system.

Bitcoin Core did not fail for any necessary technical reasons whatsoever. As Hearn wrote, it “failed because the community has failed.” Anybody who tells you otherwise is misinformed or lying. For a large part of Bitcoin’s history, it was understood that Bitcoin could scale on-chain to the entire world. The 1mb block size was supposed to be a temporary measure that was lifted long ago, but through a combination of censorship, subversion, slander, theft, and propaganda, the 1mb limit was never lifted and opposition was silenced. As Mike Hearn said, Bitcoin became “a system completely controlled by just a handful of people.” These people have forced an artificial block size limit on Bitcoin Core that prevents it from scaling and which in 2017 led to the creation of Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin Cash then is not trying to answer the question of whether Bitcoin can scale on-chain or not. We know it can, as did Satoshi and everyone else who worked on the project in the early days. This is where people who push other coins against Bitcoin Cash miss the mark in particular. The block size debate is a function of a larger problem. Alexander Hamilton wrote before the breakout of the American Revolution that it was wrong to think

that our contest with Britain is founded entirely upon the petty duty of three pence per pound on East India tea, whereas the whole world knows it is built upon this interesting question, whether the inhabitants of Great Britain have a right to dispose of the lives and properties of the inhabitants of America, or not.

It is likewise incorrect and trivial to think that the entire Bitcoin Cash question is built upon the size of the blocks. Bitcoin Cash matters because it is attempting to answer if a blockchain project can survive being co-opted from within or not. Can a project be protected by a Remnant [3] of good actors against bad ones who have gained control? That is the real unanswered question and I think it is the most important question in cryptocurrency today. No other coin has the chance to do that and we should not allow it to be forgotten in block size discussions.

So if you find yourself wondering why Bitcoin Cash matters in a world of alt coins, this is one big reason. The fact is that if Bitcoin Cash fails it does not bode well for the rest of the cryptocurrency industry. It would mean that any project that gains enough traction is open to being taken over through the same means that Bitcoin was taken over before: censorship, lies, propaganda, theft, slander, and masses of unprincipled useful idiots.

If Bitcoin Cash succeeds however, as I believe it will, it sets a precedent for the future. Its existence and success will be an insurance policy that will remind bad actors that a project can and will fork if it strays from its original intent. As Taylor Pearson writes, the future of society is

…defined by forking. The balance between voice and exit will tilt towards exit. Appeals to authority (and perhaps violence) will be replaced by forking. If you disagree with a decision, you can fork a new blockchain.

This is what we have done by forking Bitcoin Cash and we will see whether it can be an effective check against Orwellian subversion of a project or not.

Like this essay? You can support my Bitcoin Cash writing here.

[1] If you want examples, just say anything positive about Bitcoin Cash on Twitter.

[2] It is still very important of course. Low fees and fast transactions on-chain are essential for user experience and adoption. I recommend Maybe High Fee Coin is a Really Stupid Idea by Ryan X. Charles.

[3] I use the concept of The Remnant because I think it applies beautifully to the Bitcoin Cash community. “The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.” – Albert Jay Nock in Isaiah’s Job

Image by Satoshi Doodles

Give unexpirable gifts

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Isaac’s son Nolan made a great illustrated print of some of the people behind Praxis. I love every part of it but the real standout to me is the likeness of Cameron which looks a bit like George Constanza. I was glad I’m not the only one who likes to make the comparison.

The illustration is printed and framed and I plan to hang it in my new office. Gifts like this — and I’ve received a number of them over the years — have taken on increasing importance in my life. Most other gifts have some sort of expiration date. If you give someone a gift card or clothing or concert tickets, that’s great, but in a few years the chances that the person remembers that gift is low.

Something like this print won’t expire in my lifetime. I’ll see it everyday when I’m at home and it will always be a reminder to me of the work we’ve done these last four years building Praxis into what it is today. It’s not given for immediate effect but it’s made to last the long term. I think that’s pretty neat.

And when I go back through my archives, these are the kinds of gifts that really mean something now, the ones that are unexpirable, that take on more meaning the longer you keep them and the more you share their story with others. These are the ones I’ve always made sure I held on to no matter what. I think the obvious lesson here is to start trying to give gifts that won’t expire on their recipient any time soon.

Though for most of my life I was the kind of person who just gave out gift cards, I’ve realized in the last year or so how much social capital can be gained by being a good gift giver. You can set yourself up to be a topic of discussion for years to come and make a lasting impression on a person or institution. I’ve tried to start doing this more often. It’s forces you to really take an active interest in the receiver in a way that many expirable gifts would not and this lends itself to some interesting results.

Last fall for example, I sent a 6 foot tall working pencil to my friends at the Foundation for Economic Education after they invited me to lecture at their summer seminars on economics and entrepreneurship.

Their founder, Leonard Read, wrote the famous iPencil essay that has introduced thousands of young people to the basic ideas of free market economics, and I thought what better tribute to that than a pencil that stands as tall as me? The office loved it and I expect it will remain there as a talking piece for years.

I’ll always be the guy who sent the big pencil and they’ll always have the giant pencil as a memory of our work together and my complete and total gratitude for all they’ve done for me. It is unexpirable and that makes all the difference.

Building your own credential, on the School Sucks Project podcast

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I was on the School Sucks Project podcast the other day to chat with Brett Veinotte. In Part 1, we talked about the intellectual and moral foundations of the decision to drop out of college and my own story in doing it. Part 2 is titled Building your own credential.

If you’re looking to drop out or you’ve already dropped out and need some practical advice for what to do next, this episode is for you.

From Brett’s description:

As as follow up to our conversation on dropping out of college, Derek Magill and I explore how to “build your own credential” in lieu of a degree. Derek explains why he believes such a self-directed credential is superior to the four-year degree, and he illustrates how you go on to signal that credential in the market.

Also discussed:
– the journey after dropping out of college
– don’t let your interests “sit in study mode”
– How did Derek land a Director of Marketing job in his early 20s?
– Creating your own job “build a digital paper trail”
– the limits of resumes
– How to establish your online presence

Derek also answers the following listener questions:

– What limits does he see to the Praxis model? As in, industries, careers, and further development.

– What blowback has he experienced in trying to build these partnerships with businesses/startups in regards to their attitude to non-degreed candidates and replacing the college credential (at least for the Praxis participants)?

– What has he learned in building Praxis that those older in life and career could benefit from?

– What struggles have there been with government and establishment ed in building Praxis, specifically in the frame of it being a college alternative?

You can listen to the episode on the School Sucks Project website or iTunes. I also encourage you to support Brett’s show. He’s doing important work.

Bitcoin Cash strikes back

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Within an hour of posting this essay several Bitcoin Core supporters tried to hack into my Twitter account.

A common argument used by Bitcoin Core is that Bitcoin Cash users should stop attacking Bitcoin Core and focus on itself and it’s own merits.

This is amusing coming from a group of people who get accounts banned on Twitter, censor Reddit forums, smear heroes like Roger Ver, and scream “BCASH BTRASH BCASH” every chance they get. If Bitcoin Core did not want the discussions to get so hostile, they should have allowed an open, civil discussion to take place to begin with. They have not and we are forced to be more aggressive. For lack of a better phrase, “they started it.”

At the same time, this argument is demonstrably wrong and I can’t help but see it as an attempt to undermine the entire case for Bitcoin Cash. One of the most powerful things someone in the wrong can do is to make themselves immune from criticism. The fact is that the good things about Bitcoin Cash are inseparably bound up with the bad things about Bitcoin Core. You really can’t discuss one properly without discussing the other. Bitcoin Cash was born at of necessity created by the artificial limitations imposed by the Bitcoin Core cartels, not out of some happy-go-lucky idea for a new coin. As Chris Pacia writes:

Remember, not a single one of us wanted Bitcoin Cash to happen. We did everything in our power, offered every conceived olive branch, including reducing our demands for a capacity increase by 90% and offering to activate segwit to avoid a chain split.

But the Core developers and their supporters were so intransigent that they refused to compromise even an inch. So there was no alternative but a chain split. Now we’re being viciously attacked by these douche bags for splitting a chain, which was 100% avoidable.

It would simply be inaccurate — and impossible — for us to pretend that this part of the history of Bitcoin Cash never happened. It would also weaken our case and allow the Core community to continue it’s propaganda and censorship campaigns unharnessed.

And from a strategic standpoint, nobody ever got anywhere by painting a strictly positive vision for his position. Hate, disgust, frustration, and anger are all powerful motivators.

When I look at the history of the American Revolution, which I’ve taken to comparing the Bitcoin Cash movement to, I see obviously the noble picture of mankind presented by the declaration of independence, but I also see the denunciations of King George. I see the manifest destiny vision for America, but I also see commoners tarring and feathering British tax collectors. [1] I see Thomas Paine writing about the rights of man, but also rebels throwing British tea into the bay.

Criticizing your enemy is strategically necessary. To give another example, anti-German propaganda in WW1 was one of the driving forces behind bringing the US into the war. It works.

The late classicist and military historian John David Lewis [2] wrote that the records of war history,

…show that the strongest power belonged to those who were, in fact, right, if those who were right knew it. This may be unfashionable to say today—in an intellectual climate that sunders fact and value, and understands moral claims as inherently contested matters of opinion—but it remains a demonstrable fact that the Spartan and Confederate slave systems were morally debased and that the freedom upheld by the Thebans and the Union was good.

If we want Bitcoin Cash to survive, we need the understanding of the rightness of the BCH case, technologically and philosophically, a vision for the future, and yes, the idiocy of the Bitcoin Core stance and the immorality of many of it’s supporters. And we need to use all these understandings to craft a compelling, robust message.

Anyone who says otherwise is no friend.

Like this essay? You can support my Bitcoin Cash writing here.

[1] I’m not suggesting we tar and feather anyone from Core…..

[2] I cannot recommend John David Lewis enough. His lectures, which are available at the Ayn Rand Institute eStore, are brilliant and cover a wide range of topics from Ancient Athens and Roman Law to modern military strategy and healthcare policy. He was taken from us too early.

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