Okay, read this, so here's a slightly better take: the article is brilliant and thoughtful and probing, as per usual.

And highly relevant to btc. It's worth asking why basically zero economists from the total population, and a negligible number from the populations you would most strongly suspect of "getting it" (e.g., the ones affiliated w/ mises.org) actually get bitcoin. The priesthood explanation offers a blanket explanation, but is there another one?

I agree w/ SA that priesthoods are generally good. Having been deep in the "alternate health" world I can confirm that it is mostly idiocy, and the arguments are mostly terrible, and the data confirms this when you dig into it with any sophistication. But also these views make surface-level sense, and in fact they can often be surface-level correct -- the issue is that real life is not at the surface level. You start adding in all of the special cases and weird circumstances and complexities of how people inhabit their environments and pretty soon your elegant populist theory is a jumbled mess.

So I worry constantly whether I am being really really dumb wrt btc. But I also have done the work and slogged through the mud and shit, so at least I know, in grotesque detail, why I think it's a Big Deal. I know why I believe what I believe at a deep level. But I still worry that no priesthood, even a rogue faction, champions it. Almost nobody's talking about it the right way.

As Feynman said, the first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. Which is concerning.

Anyway, thanks for posting the article, very worth reading and sitting with.