How Nobility Can Smash Mass-Democratic Globalism

On Character and Capital

Welcome back and thanks for reading! My wedding is tomorrow, so I will be offline for a bit. Fortunately, my friend Svetski, who also writes on Substack, was able to write a guest article on the interaction between nobility and capital, and it is fabulous. Even if Bitcoin doesn’t interest you (though some form of hard money should), I’d recommend you check it out, as the general idea of nobility and capital needing each other is superbly explained, and quite important. As always, please tap the heart to like this article, as doing so shows Substack that you liked it and shows the platform to promote it. Thanks!

On Corruption and Noble Resistance to It

We’ve all heard the line: money corrupts and power is evil. We’ve become accustomed to perceiving wealth and influence as suspicious, in part because so many members of the wealth and influence elite, something Ayn Rand derisively called our “aristocracy of pull,” are suspicious.

But the real problem isn’t money or power—it’s the people who hold them. Give capital to a person with cheap values, and they'll squander it on superficial pursuits. Entrust it to someone with substance, and they’ll build something meaningful, then steward it for generations to come.

Today’s fiat-driven, globalist-democratic world doesn’t lack capital—it lacks character. The elites in power are not builders. They are parasites, inheriting institutions they didn’t create, manipulating systems they barely comprehend, and treating power like a costume.

This essay will explore why it’s necessary for people with character to also accumulate capital. Character comes first, yes, but without capital, you lack power, and without power, you’re just yelling at the clouds.

I’ve drawn inspiration from my second book, which I published last year and discussed at length with Will on a recent podcast you can find here. You can find more about the book here at BushidoOfBitocin.com (I recommend you watch the trailer).

Money & Nobility

In a world increasingly defined by materialism, the noble—those who aspire to virtue, honor, and a higher purpose—face a paradox. Wealth, often vilified as a corrupting force, is also the foundation of not just societal progress and cultural flourishing, but also power and sovereignty.

Economic ignorance, as history demonstrates, has led to the downfall of great civilizations and even upstanding elites, from feudal Japan to the Roman Empire, from the Virginia gentry to the British peerage. Yet, unchecked pursuit of wealth, particularly when driven by usury, high time preference, and consumerism, also erodes character and destabilized societies.

The noble must, therefore, neither shun capital nor succumb to its temptations. Instead, they must master it in order to build a legacy and exert real influence. If they do not, a vacuum is left for the globalists and goblins to do their worst.

"Money is power, and you must learn how to channel it. This is why Bitcoin is such a force of nature. We live in a material world, and you ignore this at your own peril."

-The Bushido of Bitcoin

Wealth is not merely a means to luxury; it is a tool for channeling power and shaping the world. Historically, those who understood and mastered wealth built enduring legacies. The Medici family, for instance, transformed Florence into the cradle of the Renaissance through their banking prowess and patronage of art. These artworks have left a cultural imprint that endures five centuries later. Similarly, it is thanks to the wealth, prudence, and taste of the Grosvenor family that Mayfair and Belgravia remain composed of tasteful, beautiful brick and stone homes rather than the steel and glass monstrosities that otherwise dot London. They own and love those neighborhoods, and so have kept them refined, leaving an imprint on the city that has lasted for generations.¹

The Price of Economic Ignorance

The Samurai of feudal Japan, as described by Inazo Nitobe in Bushido: The Soul of Japan, disdained commerce, viewing it as beneath their honor. This disdain left them unprepared for the modernizing world, where merchants and traders outmaneuvered them economically. The resulting inversion of Japan’s hierarchy saw the warrior class displaced by those who understood “numbers.”

Similarly, the fall of feudal Europe stemmed partly from economic naivety, as nobles failed to adapt to the rising bourgeois class, whose mastery of trade and division of labor gave them an advantage. The same was true of much of the British peerage, which has since sunk into near-irrelevance, and the Southern gentry, which has all but disappeared as commerce displaced the fruits of landed estates.²

“Division of labor and trade determine how complex and therefore powerful a society can become.”

-The Bushido of Bitcoin

To ignore economics is to ignore the foundation your house is built on. It is the infrastructure—often invisible, but always essential—that holds everything else in place. It’s also what allows for the compounding of time, energy, and knowledge. Without it, no amount of cultural refinement or moral virtue, however honorable, can sustain a civilization. That virtue is a necessary component, to be sure, but not a sufficient one.

Economics is like the sewage system in a house. It’s not glamorous, but it’s vital nonetheless. When the pipes break, you don’t take the kids out for ice cream—you fix the plumbing. Not because you love it, but because you don’t want your family living in shit.

People who scoff at economics—who say things like “family is more important than money” or “community matters more than capital”—are like a child throwing a tantrum because dad is spending money on pipes instead of toys. They think they’re making a moral point, but really, they’re just ignoring the cost of not dealing with reality, and reality always sends a bill.

The Price of Easy Money

Economic ignorance isn’t the only thing with a price. The other—far more insidious—is easy money: money that can be created without effort, backing, or constraint—typically through debt, decree, or the printing press.

Easy money erodes everything it touches—first culture, then character, then civilization itself. When money can be conjured at will, it untethers wealth from work, reward from responsibility. It allows institutions to survive without serving, and people to accumulate power without responsibility. Capital becomes mispriced, misallocated, and ultimately, meaningless and dissipated.

"Easy money is like a cancer in the body of economics, because it transforms everyone into a trader or gambler—not only to win, but to just survive."

-The Bushido of Bitcoin

This isn’t new. History shows us that every civilization that embraced monetary easing eventually paid the price. From ancient Rome to Weimar Germany, the pattern repeats. Debase the currency, and everything downstream falls with it.³

America’s slide began in earnest in 1971, when the dollar was severed from gold. Untethered from reality, the money supply expanded—and everything else deteriorated.⁴ Capital became cheap, as did values and the institutions that were supposed to uphold them.

Nowadays, corporate zombies extract rather than serve, bureaucracies grow simply because they can,⁵ and entire generations are now raised without the ability—or even the incentive—to think beyond the present moment.

"The optimum orientation for economic actors is to align as much as possible with the central banks and money monopolists."

-The Bushido of Bitcoin

This is the real cost of easy money. It doesn’t just make your savings worth less. It makes your efforts feel pointless. It punishes integrity. It selects for parasites. It elevates fraud over truth, mediocrity over excellence, and it ensures that anyone who tries to build something real must do so while swimming against the tide.

Threading the needle

This is why the job of the nobility is so critical.

They cannot afford to be economically illiterate, nor can they afford to be seduced by money—especially the kind that comes easily. They must understand it, master it, and learn to channel it with precision and purpose, all while retaining their traditional sense of virtue - and they must never fall in love with money.

It’s a narrow path. Fall to one side, and you become naive—vulnerable to being outmaneuvered by traders, schemers, and technocrats. Fall to the other, and you become them—another abominable mercenary in a world ruled by short-term incentives and their dire consequences.

The noble must walk that middle line: to wield capital without being consumed by it. To see money not as a status symbol or source of identity, but as a tool—powerful and necessary for the family and for civilization.

This balance has always been difficult. In a world of easy money, it becomes nearly impossible. And this is precisely why I find Bitcoin interesting. I wrote a piece for John Carter’s Postcards from Barsoom late last year called “Hard Money and Hard Men,” in which I make the case for Bitcoin as hard, uncompromising money that reintroduces the kind of discipline, consequence, and high-stakes reality that soft, fiat systems have erased.

It opens the door for the first time, for the noble to build wealth without being corrupted by it or sucked into a vortex of financialism.

Why Bitcoin Matters

For the first time in centuries, the monetary terrain itself is shifting.

Bitcoin creates the conditions necessary for us to forget about money and focus on what money is supposed to give us. Money was never meant to be the point. The noble have always known this. Money is a means—an instrument for building, protecting, and transmitting value. It’s not an “end.”

The trouble is, when the money is broken, it becomes the very thing we’re obsessed with. It distorts incentives, infects culture, and forces even the well-intentioned to play rigged games just to survive.

Bitcoin changes that. It reintroduces consequence. It rewards conservatism. It strips power from the money changers and transfers it to those who can steward value over time. It is uncompromising, incorruptible, and entirely disinterested in political virtue signaling of any kind.

This is what makes Bitcoin so revolutionary. Not that it’s “digital gold.” Not that it’s scarce. But that it is the first form of capital in the modern age that does not subsidize cowardice. It puts skin back in the game and thus gives the man of character a fighting chance—not just to survive, but to lead.

If the noble cannot afford to ignore economics, because wealth enables sovereignty—control over one’s destiny, family, and community, then Bitcoin, as a decentralized, incorruptible currency, exemplifies this potential. Unlike fiat money, which is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, Bitcoin allows you to save and plan for the future without interference from the money changers and parasites. It frees the noble to focus on building “real wealth and capital: blood, territory, and legacy.” By mastering capital, the noble can protect their family, fund cultural projects, and resist the parasitic elites who thrive on economic manipulation.

Bitcoin is not salvation. But it is terrain. And like any terrain, it favors those prepared for it. In the same way mountainous regions forge mountaineers, and deserts forge tribes of endurance, Bitcoin favors the strong, the patient, and the noble. It is a form of money that carries with it conservative attributes—scarcity, savings, temperance, discipline—while being built for the digital age. It can function at internet scale without sacrificing the principles that made sound moneys of the past fundamental to civilization in the first place.

This is why I wrote the book, The Bushido of Bitcoin. My goal was to blend the timeless virtues that made men noble with the emerging realities of a new monetary era—to offer a moral framework for those who would lead in a world where money is once again anchored to truth.

If money is power, then Bitcoin is responsibility. And for the first time in a very, very long time, those two things are back in alignment. This gives me hope for the future

I’d like to leave you with an extract from the book, as a teaser, should you wish to dig more into the material:

Wealth and the Family Unit.

“Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it."

-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Bitcoin should help move individuals and the world in a better direction, because it’s a common standard for the language of material value that nobody can change or issue. As such, humanity is freed up to focus on building real wealth and capital: blood, territory and legacy. There is more to life than just money, and the sooner we free ourselves from this narrow paradigm, the better.

Family is real wealth. It is a biological investment that compounds over generations. If guided well, it can become something powerful and grand; if guided poorly it can turn into something vile and weak. Both Nietzsche’s Ubermensch and his Last Man are outcomes of poor or sound investments in family. Neither will randomly sprout from nowhere. They are long-term, intergenerational projects involving the compounding of conscious decision-making across multiple lifespans, in the case of an Ubermensch, or unconscious meandering in the case of the Last Man.

Compounding is the eighth wonder of the world, and family is its biological manifestation. Conscious mate selection, conscious living, careful nurturing of one’s offspring, family rituals, religion, rites of passage, and the passing on of wealth from father to son, are all elements in the ancient process of cultivating one’s lineage.

Some might ignorantly laugh at this and call you an elitist or a eugenicist just for talking about passing on “good genes”. Do not let these bitter, brainwashed fools deter you from what your soul and DNA are calling you to do. Family is the most important unit, and is precisely what’s been attacked by the globalist, communist, slave, and ghoul classes of the world because it is an institution of savings and compounding, not only of material wealth, but of biological, intellectual and spiritual wealth.

It’s our job to pave the way, figuratively and literally speaking, for tomorrow’s new leaders to come into and drive the world forward and upward again. This is a large part of why money is so important, and you cannot ignore it.

Philosophy aside, the practical reality is that savings are the cornerstone to a stable, sovereign life and civilization. You cannot plan for the future, you cannot have a family, you cannot build a community, you cannot think long- term, you cannot exchange goods or services with others, and you cannot build any form of beautiful or ascendant society, without first being able to save using a common medium that can also be exchanged.

People in religious and conservative circles rail against the destruction of the family unit. They (accurately) point out that women are working mindless jobs so they can be tax slaves, instead of staying at home, performing their most vital duty: bringing life into the world and raising it. They are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that it’s almost impossible for a family to survive on a single income, and that because of this, many couples are remaining childless for longer so they can “save up” while others are giving up on it altogether because it’s like running on a treadmill. The harder they work, the less they can save, and the more trapped they feel. Everyone knows there is something wrong, they can see all of the symptoms, but they are oblivious to the fact that it’s a function of a very particular upstream problem.

It’s not just Disney and Netflix destroying families, because propaganda alone doesn’t work unless there is some evidence or “fault” to point at. If everything is fine, it’s hard to cry wolf. But if the world around you is broken, it’s very easy to identify a scapegoat and direct people’s vitriol towards it. Global warming, evil capitalists, the patriarchy, the unvaccinated, Trump supporters, white people, gym bros, men, colonialism, or whoever else some mainstream midwit reporter wants to complain about. It’s the classic magician’s sleight of hand. The real trick is not so evident initially, but when you know where to look, it becomes so obvious.

If your money is increasingly becoming worthless, then both husband and wife need to work. If you’re both working but you cannot save, then you put off children because you cannot create the economic buffer needed to take the necessary time off. You are then left with a choice to either “YOLO” and remain “DINKs” (dual income, no kids), or gamble, or live in relative poverty, month to month on a single income, or take on the stress to both raise children and work a job to help pay the bills - so the kids end up raised by the school and the state.

It’s no wonder people are choosing to enjoy life and defer the family (until more often than not, it’s too late, biologically speaking). It’s no wonder their time-preference is skewed toward shorter time horizons and, downstream, behavior adapts. They remain adolescents into their thirties because it’s economically impossible to get ahead anyway, so why try? They see their friends take on extra jobs, only to pull their hair out trying to manage family, work, relationship and kids, so they ask: “why should I put myself through that?”

This is actually somewhat rational at a superficial level, but of course comes with the price of not having kids, of not passing on your genes, of not leaving a legacy and ultimately of ending your lineage, and making society weaker (through low birth rates). We are all human, and as much as we can tell ourselves abstract stories and rationalize all the things, we are wired to procreate. We desire, more than anything else, the ultimate act of creation: bringing life into the world. But because the economic system is so broken, we are trapped. Trapped between the future biological regret of extended adolescence and the current economic pressure of trying to start a family while consistently playing catch up.

There is a whole generation of childless 30-somethings who are beginning to feel the biological regret of their otherwise rational economic decisions. It’s no wonder people are so angry. It’s no wonder they’re gambling on shitcoins, or fantasizing about living forever. It’s no wonder porn, AI girlfriends, climate crusades, and superfluous social media stupidity are all so popular. These are all coping mechanisms.

Broken money breaks everything else downstream. It destroys the individual, the family, the community, and in time, it destroys the state itself, unless they have full, digital, panopticon control over it — which is why they want CBDCs so badly. They will distract you with fairy tales about AI, racism, and climate change, while the real threat is coming to a bank account near you.

Money is supposed to make possible an exchange of excellence between voluntary peers, but this exchange is worthless if the money is fake. It quickly becomes an exchange of degeneracy and desperation — which is evident today in the twilight of the West.

So if you have any interest in the importance of family, children, or legacy, then saving independent, incorruptible money (i.e., Bitcoin) must be the central part of your economic focus. It cannot be ignored. If you’re conservative - in either the traditional or political sense - and you have not migrated onto a Bitcoin Standard, you are doing yourself, your family, your legacy, your community, and the world a major disservice. Every debauched civilization has at its core, a debauched money. When you come to realize this, everything else becomes clear. So wake up and stop supporting the enemy. Pull the umbilical cord connecting you to the Leviathan. Stop supporting the parasite and cease degrading yourself by trading your precious time, energy, and your family’s future for some bureaucratically conjured-up token they can print out of thin air and control from their distant office. Have some self-respect and store your wealth in Bitcoin.

If you’re a Bitcoiner, it’s your duty to go have a family and build wealth beyond just the material and economic. That’s why I wrote this book. “Number go up” is cool, but there is more to life than the amount of satoshis in your wallet. You have the opportunity to lay the foundation for a better future.

And if you’re already doing both, then perhaps it’s time to focus on building beyond just your family. We need leaders who can take on more responsibility and channel more power. We have to actively throw the parasites out and take back control of the ship.

Power and Money.

It's not only okay to be rich and powerful - it's necessary. It’s the duty of those who have the will, desire, and capacity to leave their mark on the world. It's the duty of the father who seeks to provide for his family, the creator who wants to produce and solve problems, and the leader who seeks to govern and guide his people.

This is why, despite all his flaws, Trump is a greater leader than any other modern American politician could ever hope to be. He walked the walk before he talked the talk - and people know it. In fact, they don’t even need to know his past, because they can feel it when he speaks. He’s unique, quirky, and often crude, but he’s authentically himself - which is rare.

Contrast him with career politicians who have never produced anything of value in the marketplace or worked a day in their lives. Not only are they actors, but they have a degree of detachment and insulation from the populace that makes them tone-deaf and ignorant to the reality and needs of the people they supposedly serve. These politicians, like parasites, are beneficiaries of wealth and resources they did not help build or create, and as such, they can’t help but take it all for granted. They wield power and have money because the monetary system and the political system are interwoven, not because they are worthy of being called ‘powerful individuals.’

Power and money are deeply entwined. Everyone knows that, but few can tell you why. Let’s answer this question at a high level. Think about what each of them are. Money is a kind of “crystalised energy” representing an amount of value generated, that can be stored and transmitted across time and space. It represents resources and time. In physics, power is defined as the rate at which work is done or energy is transferred over time. So if money is a form of metaphysical energy, and power is the capacity to channel energy, there is a clear relationship, beyond just their surface level associations. You have potential power if you have money. Beyond that, your ability to move it and do with it as you please is a measure of how much actual, functional power you have.

"In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."

-Tony Montana, Scarface

What is politics? Politics originally referred to the affairs of the city and its governance. It comes from the Greek politikos, meaning "of, for, or relating to citizens." Today it carries a broader meaning, which I would sum up as “the game of social influence and power.” There is a relationship between money, power, and politics. Traditionally speaking, if you were a major landowner, employer, or a benefactor of some sort, then you had influence and power, particularly over local resources and thus politics. This is natural and worked quite well when the “state” was small because the landowners who made the decisions had skin in the game. It was their land, lives and wealth on the line - so morally, functionally and practically speaking, their opinion mattered most. This was the reality for most of Western history, bar a few periods of excessive state growth, which always ultimately led to a fracturing, because the larger the territory, the harder it is to maintain influence and power (let alone absolute power).

Fast forward to today, and we find ourselves at a new fracturing point; only this time, it is far more exaggerated than ever. For the past two hundred years, we’ve seen a continued consolidation of political power into the hands of a larger and more distant “state” apparatus that no longer has any skin in the game. In fact, the level of dissociation from the polis (city/state) and the politai (citizenry) has never been so large - and that is due to multiple factors, the two primary being the abolition of landed/hereditary/royal family ruling class and their replacement with a ‘democratic state’, along with the creation of central banks and their sole-right to issue money and govern monetary policy. This transformation of the ruling class from visible families who owned the property, into an obfuscated apparatus that controls the property but doesn’t directly own it, has turned the state into a hydra. In that scenario, we no longer have governance by the competent and naturally elite - we have instead one giant resource siphoning machine that attracts parasites like moths to a flame.

Those who wield political power today are not powerful individuals who built their own wealth and know how to channel it, but most often frauds who use the wealth of others to fill their own dead-end bags. There is no higher purpose or desire to create something beautiful, because none of what they have is theirs. In the same way you don’t do improvements to, or for that matter even care about, the car you hired from Thrifty or Budget, today’s ruling class cares nothing for the territory they temporarily ‘rent’ governance over. They use their position to get closer to the money printer and do their best to siphon as much as possible during their tenure. Their entire goal becomes: print more money, to amass more political power, so they can print more money to amass more political power. And all the while, you and I pay for it.

This makes the game unfair, and people know it: “rules for thee, but not for me.” These fake elites have sullied what it means to be powerful and wealthy, and in the process convinced otherwise good and capable people that “power is evil”, and that “power corrupts”, all so as to create a vacuum they can fill. It’s about time we changed that, and I believe that Bitcoin separating money from state is a critical step in that direction.

In Closing

The Bushido of Bitcoin was my attempt to codify these ideas—an exploration of how character and capital, once aligned, can reshape the world. Character without capital is impotent, and capital without character is corrosive. The two, therefore, must be combined.

Sound money, when wielded by principled individuals, can become the foundation for a flourishing civilization. If we are to build something lasting—beyond financialism and the rot it has produced—we need a new class of leaders who can walk that narrow path: strong in virtue and competent with capital. In short, we need sound values and sound money.

Featured image credit: Albrecht Dürer, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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1. My thoughts on the Grosvenors:

2. Described in some detail here:

3. My friends at Smoke River Ranch described this in some detail here:

4. As seen in housing:

5. discussed here: