A Design Science Revolution.

Introduction

Bucky spent his life searching for what he called nature's coordinate system. He observed that nature does not have a chemistry, physics, or biology department, yet somehow, everything in the universe was coordinating. He deduced that there was an underlying system used to coordinate everything. He often referred to it as a universal time-energy accounting system. 

In 2009, a pseudonymous developer built this accounting system with computer code (as Bucky predicted would happen), and it has since been openly accessible to anyone worldwide. It is a public utility with increasing engagement, utility, and resiliency.  

The following is a curated list of Bucky's ideas about the time-energy accounting system we now call the Bitcoin network. It provides context for understanding how Bitcoin is akin to discovering a fundamental law of nature, not a mysterious or threatening invention.

Bucky understood that a single person can make a tangible difference.

Bucky often referred to himself as a "trimtab"—a small rudder that can change the course of a large ship with a small amount of force. It was his analogy for how a single person can start to make a big difference. 

Bucky understood the need to think for yourself, a.k.a. don't trust, verify.

"I sought to do my own thinking, confining it to only experientially gained information, and with the products of my own thinking and intuition to articulate my own innate motivational integrity instead of trying to accommodate everyone else’s opinions, credos, educational theories, romances, and mores, as I had in my earlier life." [10]

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"I have done everything I could to unfetter myself from all the social impositions." [15]

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"One reason I was in a great deal of trouble was that I had been extremely accommodating in my willingness to believe what the other fellow asked me to believe." [18]

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"You must learn your own fights about this! And be able to really talk and make decisions that are really gonna count! Whether humans stay on this planet or not depends on your personal individual integrity!" [20]

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"Our only entrance key is through ourselves, not others." [0]

Bucky understood the need to understand basic arithmatic to protect your wealth.

"Mr. King, the reason I'm able to steal from you is because you don't understand arithmetic." [12]

Bucky understood the right to exit.

"For him [Bucky], the capacity to disconnect from a system was as important as the capacity to connect." [19]

Bucky understood that passive resistance would not suffice.

"Passive resistance will not amplify the production of life support." [5]

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"To get rid of weapons we must design our way to positive effectiveness, and not just be negative about politicians and what they are doing." [18]

Bucky understood building is more productive than fighting.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

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"We must remember that our grand strategy is based on producing the artifacts [tools] that will induce the right behaviors rather than depending on politically enacted and enforced reforms." [10]

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"Efficiency makes it mandatory that we use forces, not fight them." [1]

Bucky understood that a time-energy accounting system is nonpartisan and will bring different interests together by aligning their incentives.

"The political leaders will be forced by their engineers and science-educated public to choose to integrate, and the ideological differences will vanish." [4]

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"This will bring about a large series of surprising mergers of heretofore opposed interests." [4]

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"Through computer analysis, the private vs. public sectors' 'best interest' differentiations will tend to disappear." [4]

Bucky understood we would need new solutions to break out of cyclical problems.

"The problems of our moment are as unprecedented as they are vast. The solutions will have to be unprecedented and vast."

Bucky understood that we had to step out of the existing system to identify, diagnose, and solve the problem.

"Mankind literally lives inside the frame of measurement that needs to be interrogated." [19]

Bucky understood that creative destruction was not only necessary but inevitable.

"It is part of my personal discipline to continue to try making obsolete all the inventions which I have previously developed by designing ever more effective and efficient devices for solving the complex and comprehensive world problems." [4]

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"Ecological life is designed to learn only by trial and error...The combined human power structures—economic, religious, and political—have compounded this primary error by filing that no one should make mistakes and punishing those who do. This deprives humans of their only-by-trial-and-error method of learning. The power structure's forbiddance of error-making has fostered cover-ups, self-deceit, egotism, false fronts, hypocrisy, legally enacted or decreed subterfuge, ethical codes, and the economic rewarding of selfishness." [12]

Bucky also understood the risk of shipping an idea before it was ready, regardless of how profitable it might be (similar to Satoshi's early concerns about WikiLeaks adoption).

"Regardless of the fact that his 5500 shares of Fuller Houses would have skyrocketed to a value of at least $550,000 and his dream of quality mass production homes for average people would have been realized in an extremely short time, Bucky was not about to endorse production until the exact moment he deemed everything was completely ready. " [13]

Bucky understood the value of anonymity.

Bucky was the editor of a successful magazine called Shelter. He was unorthodox in that he decided to remain anonymous, although he edited the entire publication himself. He understood how jealousy and competition hinder thinking and openness to new ideas. He wanted people to think for themselves and not blindly accept or reject the beliefs of others. He referred to himself as "4D," a pseudonymous person or group. [13]

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"...he quickly resolved to "be invisible", by dressing in a black suite and tie, like a bank clerk, to ensure that his audience concentrated on the message, rather than his personal eccentricity." [21] 

Bucky understood the inventor is not as important as the instrument.

"Who knows who made the first pencil?...The 'pencil' not only facilitates communication between men, by making thought specific and objective, but also enables men, cooperatively, to plan and realize the building of a house, oxygen tent, flatiron, or an x-ray, by virtue of the pencil's availability. The inventor, alive or dead, is extraneous and unimportant; it is the 'pencil' that carries over. Abstract thought dies with the thinker, but the mechanism was building for a long time before the moment of recognized in-vention." [1]

Bucky understood language can be insufficient and misleading.

Bucky also invents new words, or uses common words in ways that are new, precisely because he is attempting to steer clear of the limiting habits of thinking we all inherited.

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“We still say the words sunrise and sunset, even though we have known for hundreds of years that the earth revolves around the sun!” [4]

Bucky understood true wealth is derived from functional value, not intrinsic value.

“Wealth has nothing to do with the intrinsic value 'money,' as metallic specie—as silver, copper, or gold coinage.” [4]

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"People are corrupt only when no emergency threatens. they will not dive for gold or jewels when the ship is sinking in mid-ocean. They abandon intrinsic for functionals in the supreme test. They will only dive for buoyant objects." [18]

Bucky understood money was not wealth.

“Wealth is the accomplished technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growful needs of life." [10]

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"We define wealth as the organized degree of accountable tooled-up of forward controlling of environment and metabolic process requirements." [18]

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"They began to demonstrate what we really mean by wealth, which is to organize physical capability and to organize energy." [18]

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"Wealth is explicitly the organized tool-articulated energy capability to sustain his forward hours and days of metabolic regeneration; to physically protect him; to increase his knowledge and degrees of freedom while decreasing his interfrustrations." [4]

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​"It is senseless to dump billions of dollars into Europe or China. These sums of money are merely digits stripped of immediate survival reality." [18]

Bucky understood individual speculation was natural and necessary.

"Living entities must speculate to grow. Speculation is the first conscious stage of the teleological trial and error process." [1]

"Much contemporary 'hue and cry' against the 'speculator' has provoked a derogatory, special meaning for the word 'speculate.' This derogatory inference is born of a careless lack of search into the subject, for it is not speculation per see that is anathema to the sense of universal social fairness, but the employment by financial speculators of not only their own credit but the credit of others who have no wish so to speculate their credit." [1]

"Speculation, credit, imagination, invention, et cetera, are exquisitely more unique to the individual than manipulatably acquirable physical properties." [1]

"It is then not speculation but the misappropriation of speculation by 'peculators' of the individual's abstract assets that is at the root of popular condemnation of financial speculation." [1]

"When persons speculating their own credit speculate, for instance, that it will be safest for survival to place their accrued earned credit in a bank against an emergency, they assume that that credit will remain as an intrinsic entity in their chosen depository." [1]

"Banks have actually speculated the credit of their depositors in, for instance, real estate, with regard to which the depositors themselves would not intuitively have wished to speculate."

[1]

Bucky believed in consensual exchange, not theft or coersion.

"I sought to accomplish whatever was to be accomplished for anyone in such a manner that the advantage attained for anyone would never be secured at the cost of another or others.” [10]

Bucky understood war would be unpopular if citizens understood how they were being taxed to pay for it.

"Approximately $30 of our unasked-for per-each debt increase since 1928 was pinned upon us as our individual subscription to the NEXT world war to which certainly very few of us would voluntarily subscribe.” [1]

Bucky understood that fiat currencies and even coinage were at risk of manipulation.

"No legislative peg of minimum wages and maximum hours, even on an annual pay basis, can be of any value to the worker until his dollar is standardized upon this physical energy conversion rate, instead of upon a basic metal unit, which unit, in turn, is subject to scarcity manipulation and to monopoly.” [1]

Bucky understood that debt would increase to absurd levels under the existing system.

"Because debt is a convention of traditional government, it will be increased to eventual absurdity. There is no other means of eliminating it in a democracy. Revolution could eliminate it only by democratic suicide." 1[8]

Bucky understood those in power are able to privatize gains and socialize their losses.

"The bankruptcy of the old system was thereby shifted from banker 'outlet' institutions to the people." [1]

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"This results in private enterprise making a $900 million bad gamble and having the capability of passing on their loss to the public." [11]

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"What the colossus’ media call 'inflation' is of course deflation of humanity’s buying power. Inflation does not increase the true values nor produce more or better goods." [11]

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"The very word 'inflation' is a deliberately deceptive term adopted to exploit the easily misguided human reflex conditioning. It was spontaneously chosen to obscure the fact that all non-holders of corporate shares are being legally robbed." [11]

Bucky understood the implications of de-pegging the dollar from gold in 1971.

"When in 1972 all the power-structure capital had converted its dollars into gold, oil, or other highly concentrated and mobile equities, then-President Richard Nixon severed the U.S.A. dollar from its government-guaranteed gold equity value of $35 per ounce, the U.S.A. people’s dollar buying power plummeted—now, in 1980, being worth only 5 cents of the 1971 U.S.A. dollar." [10]

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"Nixon’s cutting loose of the price anchorage [from gold] betrayed all non-wealthy U.S. citizens." [11]

Bucky warned of the hidden banking insolvency.

"With control of the 'Free World' media, the colossus hopes to postpone world realization of the fact of U.S. bankruptcy for ten years." [11]

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"The 150-year-long 'infinite wealth' poker hand and its uncalled bluffing was over. The called hands were suddenly down. It turned out that the wealthys’ wealth was nonexistent." [11]

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"These Southeast Asians say the banker cannot lend them the wind before the wind blows. They are right, as the world’s bankers are about to learn to the unprecedented discomfort of all humanity." [10]

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"The big money monopoly has lost, and they just aren't going to announce to you that the money game is through. They never do." [16. Day 9]

Bucky understood there will be a limit to issuing US treasuries.

"Nothing to stop the U.S. Treasury from issuing 2050 notes, but for how far into the future can [they] keep selling U.S.A. promissory notes?" [10]

Bucky understood: Not your keys, not your coins.

"We, the American people, are going to have to guarantee our own bank accounts." [10]

"People have always believed that when they put their money in the bank, it stayed there. They had no idea it went out on loan within minutes after it came in." [10]

Bucky understood the coincidence of wants.

"To accommodate such exchanges of disparate goods, humans invented money. Money consisted of tokens made of substances of no intrinsic value—such as white pebbles or beads—which all of the tribe recognized and accepted as representing easily counted tokens for purchasing capability and as calculating devices representing the holders' input into the community wealth. This wealth was realistically accounted as being the capability to support, protect, and accommodate forward days of various numbers of human lives. Money 'beads' realistically represented the accountable hours and days of human production or work invested in the respective exchange items and services. The tokens could be set aside until needed." [12]

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"MONEY was devised primarily as an abstract means by which man might convert his specific-work (energy conversion) into the acquisition of the work of others necessary to his completeness of growth. [1]

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"Money is only an expediency-adopted means of interexchanging desperately sized, nonequatable items of real wealth." [10]

Bucky understood changing rules is devastating to society and analogizes it to a wealthy neighbor he had who used to change how to score his childhood pickup baseball games because he owned all of the equipment.

"The corporate colossus alters the scoring values by increasing prices to ensure that the industrial game will always be won only by the 'richest.' It is reminiscent of the following incident of my boyhood.

Amongst the neighborhood boys of my childhood was one whose family was very rich and had bought him a set of baseball bats, balls, gloves, mitts, and other equipment such as catcher’s masks, base cushions, pneumatic catcher’s belly protector, home plate—that is, the equipment for an entire team. Finding a suitable neighborhood field, he would attract a crowd of us. Eager to play, resplendent in his baseball uniform, he would announce the rules of baseball as we were to play it if we wanted to use his equipment. When, however, his side or he himself began to lose or play poorly he would change the rules, making his side’s just-scored runs worth five of the earlier runs. If his rule-switching became unacceptable to the rest of us, as it often did, he would pick up all the playing gear, put it in his pony cart, and drive away." [11]

Bucky understood manipulating markets could have terminal consequences.

"It is economic suicide to superimpose costs where they do not belong and thus falsify fundamental economic data." [18]

Bucky understood that change can happen too slowly to perceive.

"I have discovered that one of the important characteristics of most economic trends is that they are too slow in their motion to be visible to humans." [10]

"Humans do not get out of the way of that which they cannot see moving." [10]

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"Man recognizes a very limited range of motion in the spectrum of motion." [18]

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"Most of the important trends and surprise events in the life of man are invisible, inexorable motion patterns creeping up surprisingly upon him." [18]

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"We may safely say that the word is keeping its eye on the unimportant, visible one percent of the historical transformation, while missing the significance of the ninety-nie percent of overall, unseen changes." [18]

Bucky warned about zombie companies.

"The computer will show that 70 percent of all jobs in America and probably an equivalently high percentage of the jobs in other Western private-enterprise countries are preoccupied with work that is not producing any wealth or life support—inspectors of inspectors, re-underwriters of insurance re-insurers, [zombie company] promoters, spies and counterspies, military personnel, gunmakers, etc." [10]

"World Game is Anti-Obnoxico [zombie company] and commits itself to making Obnoxico [zombie company] and allied activities obsolete rather than attacking it directly." [10]

Bucky expected mainstream economists would be unable to predict the implications of something invisible like digital gold.

"Economists traditionally try to maximize what you have, but the idea that you could go from wire to wireless or from visible structuring to invisible alloy structuring did not occur to them at all. It was outside their point of view—beyond their range of vision." [10]

"No economic accounting books list metaphysical assets." [10]

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"99% of all evolutionary trends are invisible." [3]

Bucky warned about the infodemic via "news."

"Because advertising pays for newspaper publishing and is placed with the journals that are most popularly read, publishers have sought to feed out what kind of news sells the most. They have found that bad news sells the most...Bad news is what steers humanity." [1]

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"This invisible world-around warring to destroy the enemy’s economy wherever it is operative, above all by demonstrating its homeland weaknesses and vulnerabilities to the rest of the world, and thus hoping to destroy the confidence of the enemy people in themselves, is far more devastating than could be a physical death ray, for it does everything with nothing. Furthermore, it operates as 'news,' which moves around the Earth by electromagnetic waves operating at 700 million miles per hour." [10]

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"This last consideration immediately brings to the fore the vital role of EDUCATION and complete unbe-tampered news dissemination as a primary means for society's egress from exploitation to active self-captaincy." [1]

Bucky warned of psychological warfare because there is no cost to spamming the population.

"Instead, they can readily involve, induce, and persuade individuals of the other side to look for discontent wherever it manifests itself and thereafter to “amplify” that condition by whatever psychological means until the situation erupts in public confusion, demonstrations, terrorism, etc. The idea is to make a mess of the other’s economy and customs." [10]

Bucky understood how vulnerable we are to calls for social justice.

"The highly idealistic youth of college age who are convinced that they are demonstrating against war are, despite the most humane and compassionate motives, often, in fact, the front-line soldiers operating as unwitting 'shock troops.'" [10]

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By skillful psychology and propaganda, the “ins” persuaded America that they were fighting “to save democracy.” I recall, as one of the youth of those times, how enthusiastic everyone became about “saving democracy.” [10]

Bucky understood developing nations were vulnerable to extortion via foreign investments.

"The Wall Street lawyers told Mr. Eisenhower that they didn’t like the over-altruistic social viewpoint of the Marshall Plan for helping underdeveloped countries. They liked foreign aid, but not exclusively for the development of underdeveloped countries." [10]

Bucky understood the concept of Witgenstein's Ruler and the importance of a reliable unit of account.

“The act of measuring always alters that which is measured.” [10]

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"He [Einstein] needed an absolute measurement to which he could relate all other measurements of an energized and motion-full Universe." [5]

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"In the matter of units of measure, science in due course evolved the metric system, which is a decimal system of potential correlated integration with scientific measurements in all fields. It was designed to clear up the misunderstandings universally developed through oddities in humpty-dumpty measuring units...to make possible world-widely understandable decimal and electrical calculation in the development of all scientific problems." [1]

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"Realistic yardstick of energy." [1]

Bucky understood what "bits" are.

“…the principle of progressive subdivision and selection of the relevant half is used, and each progressive subdivision is called a "bit," and the number of subdivisions totally required are known as 'so many bits.'"

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"...by applying the theory of bits, which breaks up finite wholes into finite parts." [6]

Bucky understood that we would eventually have digital Keys.

“But, more exciting, dramatically, to popular conception, is the history of the key, which has constantly diminished from the great implement of the early turnkey (a special job in itself) down through the more able and ever smaller units until finally, we have the photo-electric cell of ephemeralization of the key itself, a transition into a pure scientific abstraction of energy control." [1]

Bucky understood that permissionless technology is necessary to make the world work for all.

“Anyone can use the telephone. Any two can have any kind of telephone conversation they want. They can call each other communist, capitalist, or any other kind of name. The telephone works for either...Without the telephone, the world could not be made to work for all; with the telephone, it could be made to work." [4]

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"The umbrella must, however, be openable by the user. If we have to have an umbrella opener's labor organization to open our umbrellas for us, just in order to get more consumers on the credit ledgers, we will all soon be wet." [18]

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"Initiative springs only from within the individual. Initiative can neither be created nor delegated." [4]

Bucky understood the value of the right to exit.

“For him [Bucky], the capacity to disconnect from a system was as important as the capacity to connect." [19]

Bucky understood we needed a global accounting system congruent with ecology.

"The world-unifying electric power accounting will be the beginning of the omnienergy accounting for world economic management." [10]

"World Game will become increasingly effective in its prognoses and programming when the world-around, satellite-inter-relayed computer system and its omni-Universe-operative (time-energy) accounting system are established." [10]

"Kilowatt-hours will become the prime criteria of costing the production of the complex of metabolic involvements per each function or item." [10]

"...humanity will perish on this planet...if the World Game’s world around computerized time-energy accounting is not forthwith inaugurated." [10]

"There can be no planetary equity until...we have but one accounting system." [10]

"This will make possible a world-around uniform costing and pricing system for all goods and services based realistically on the time-energy metabolic accounting system of Universe." [10]

Bucky understood energy was not scarce and it is fundamental to our well-being.

"There is no energy crisis—there is only a crisis of ignorance."

"The amount of energy being electrically generated and consumed became the most sensitive telltale of economic health." [10]

Bucky understood that pollution was misunderstood.

"Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value."

"Pollution is simply energy—in the form of unfamiliar matter—which the timing of the omniregenerative cosmic system cannot immediately use but must use later." [10]

"Society must become aware of the high value of these recovered chemistries. For example, the amount of sulphur coming out of all the chimneys around the world annually exactly equals the amount of sulphur mined from the ground and purchased annually by industry to keep its wheels turning. The computers will quickly show that the value of the recovered chemistries turned over to the government will more than pay back the cost of their rebates to the industrial companies. The computers will also show that the reduction in cost of respiratory ailments and other deleterious smog effects brought about by elimination of the smog constitutes an out-and-out profit to society." [10]

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"Get the chemists and scientists studying how to use our waste." [16. Day 9]

Bucky understood methane and volcanos (among other resources) could be monetized.

"Humanity’s cosmic-energy income account consists entirely of our gravity- and star (99 percent Sun)-distributed cosmic dividends of waterpower, tidal power, wavepower, windpower, vegetation-produced alcohols, methane gas, vulcanism, and so on. Humanity’s present rate of total energy consumption amounts to only one four-millionth of one percent of the rate of its energy income." [10]

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"Today's wastes of the sanitation cycle will be converted to energy work, providing as they do by natural process 110-octane methane gas." [18]

Bucky understood that monetizing pollution would have secondary and tertiary health benefits. 

"The computers will also show that the reduction in cost of respiratory ailments and other deleterious smog effects brought about by elimination of the smog constitutes an out-and-out profit to society." [10]

Bucky understood energy curtailment was a missed opportunity.

"Every electrical-generating company has the problem of maintaining the experience-proven minimum surplus margin of standby power to take care of unexpectedly compounding big electrical-power loads—the unpredictable peak loads. All standby power that is not used is completely wasted. If used, it could be pure profit. Network integration smooths out the power-loss peaks and increases profits." [4]

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"What the customers don’t use of the surplus generated power is pure loss to the 'public' utilities." [10]

"Integration of the electrical-generating networks of neighboring localities, whose peaks and valleys inherently differ to some degree, the excess of any of the network’s member utilities at any one moment is frequently used by other grid members’ peaks. When this happens, it brings pure profit to the excess-power-generating seller." [10]

Bucky understood digitization would save trees.

"We can discontinue newspapers and save the trees." [10]

Bucky understood a time-energy accounting system would be the ultimate store of value, and everything else (including gold) would eventually fall to its marginal cost of production/utility value.

"Computers will relegate all gold to its exclusively functional uses as a supreme electromagnetic conduction-and-reflection medium—with its supremacy amongst metals also manifest as rated in weight and bulk per accomplished function. The computer will relegate all physical substances to their uniquely best functional uses." [10]

Bucky understood the role hydro energy could play.

"With such hydro development the 54 percent of humanity in China, Southeast Asia, and India will all become physically prosperous in high degree." [10]

Bucky understood our economy is currently subsidized by the millions of years of cosmic energy in fossil fuels.

"These non-life-support-producing employees are spending three, four, and more gallons of gasoline daily to go to their non wealth-producing jobs—ergo, we are completely wasting $3 trillion of cosmic wealth per day in the U.S.A."

"We then asked him to figure how much it would cost nature per each gallon of petroleum for that much pressure and heat for that much time, were it calculated at the retail rate for that much energy for that length of time as charged us by the public utilities. The cost came to well over a million dollars per gallon." [10]

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"World Game considers all fossil fuels to be nature’s own savings account, deposited in our 'Earth bank' and not to be stolen by exploiters. Everyone knows we should live on our (energy) income, not our savings account." [10]

Bucky understood we had sufficient resources and that knowledge was the key to turning "something" into a resource. 

"We have always had enough resources. What has happened that now makes the difference is that we have vastly increased our know-how of specialized innovations, all of which invisible realization integrates to make possible success for all."

Bucky understood the importance of a globally integrated electric energy ecosystem.

"This world electric grid, with its omni-integrated advantage, will deliver its electric energy anywhere, to anyone, at any one time, at one common rate. This will make possible a world-around uniform costing and pricing system for all goods and services based realistically on the time-energy metabolic accounting system of Universe." [10]

"The first step in bringing about the desovereignization will be the closing of the gaps in the world electric power grid. The world-unifying electric power…" [10]

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"…the computer’s politically unbiased problem-solving prestige will have brought about the world’s completely integrated electrical-energy network grid." [10]

Bucky understood that a global energy ecosystem would consolidate energy prices into a very narrow range.

"As power systems become integrated and the network pool becomes more balanced by invention in the matter of greater distance transmission, we shall eventually come to a point where there is attained a balanced power pool available at equal cost at any point in the land." [1]

Bucky understood that upfront "tooling up" was cost prohibitive and only underwritten during wars. Networks, on the other hand, would help amortize the buildout of energy infrastructure.

"Only in great national emergencies, underwritten by mortgaging of whole sovereign states, could men muster the capital credit to use the industrial equation. These national emergencies we know were the great moments of war." [18]

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"By discovering the highest possible numbers of users, we find means of maximum division of initial costs and sharing of further capital initiations." [18]

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"By discovering the highest possible number of users we find means of maximum division of initial costs and sharing of further capital initiation." [18]

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"The more consumers the easier the amortization of the mass production setup's progressive stages." [18]

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"The more people served by industrialization, the more efficient it becomes." [18]

Bucky understood the importance of the number Zero.

"The discovery of the symbol for nothing became everything to humanity." [10]

"That curtain would never again have been raised had it not been for the discovery of that something-called-nothing—the cipher. Because it was “nothing,” the information-monopolizing, physical-property coveting power structure had overlooked it." [10]

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"If you have never been taught about the cipher and its functioning, there is almost no possibility of your accidentally discovering the computationally operative functioning of “nothing”—much less feel the necessity of inventing a symbol for that invisible, senseless nothingness." [10]

"Having developed symbols to express the contents of each column, he had to invent a symbol for the numberless content of the empty column—that symbol became known to the Arabs as the sifr; to the Romans as cifra; and to the English as cipher (our modern zero)." [10]

Bucky understood the difference between a discovery and an invention.

"Patents can be granted only for special cases—i.e., limited physical-practice applications of abstract generalized principles, which principles alone are inherently metaphysical and unpatentable, being only 'discovered' and not 'invented.'" [10]

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"These principles are discovered by man but are never invented by man." [18]

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"The omnirational coordinate system, which I have named "synergetics," is not an invention. It is purely discovery." [4]

Bucky understood the potential for a network state.

"The world energy network grid will be responsible for the swift disappearance of planet Earth’s 150 different nationalities...The 150 nations act as 150 blood clots in blocking the flow of recirculating metals and other traffic essential to the realization of the design science revolution." [10]

Bucky understood technology was deflationary.

"As a consequence of this never-ceasing technological increase in overall efficiency, the actual overall cosmically predicated costs of energy generation have always and only decreased."

Bucky understood the idea of home ownership was somewhat erronious.

"Despite the term "ownership," only a minor fraction of home and car "owners" actually own these items free of encumbrances...All are underwritten in one way or another by federal governments." [4]

Bucky understood housing would be affordable under a sound money standard where savings aren't inflated away.

"It will be parried that none can afford homes if they have not work, to which the answer is given that millions are daily learning that small savings properly invested can rapidly attain the proportions of a permanent competence." [0]

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"By and large, the great world housing problem is an educational problem." [4]

Bucky understood that we would transition from an inflationary monetary system to a deflationary one.

"We are in for a world of economic-accounting revision of first magnitude. We will switch from a negative to a positive world economic accounting." [4]

Bucky understood that a constant or decreasing nominal wage can still increase purchasing power under a deflationary monetary system.

"Thinking in terms of production by workers and of the workers' ability to acquire the product of their cooperative effort, [Henry] Ford realized that the dollar-buying power of the worker's dollar had increased enormously in proportion to the specific satisfaction attainable in product to be purchased. Therefore, he understood that lowering the number of dollars does not of necessity mean a lowering of the worker's wage-ability to acquire goods and services." [1]

Bucky understood small things can have significant impacts.

"I see one minuscule computer chip completely altering the whole world scene."

Bucky understood the concepts behind the difficulty adjustment.

"If you are good at problem solving, you do not eventually arrive at Utopia: you get ever more difficult, more comprehensive, more incisively stated problems to solve." [12]

Bucky understood that the solution was available, but it would need to build enough momentum to succeed.

"As the world political economic emergencies increase, remember that we have discovered a way to make the total world work. It must be initiated and in strong momentum before we pass the point of no return." [3]

Bucky understood that transitioning to a time-energy accounting system would take time to educate and disseminate knowledge.

"There are fundamental rates at which the educational gestation takes time." [4]

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"Even after 'discovery,' inventions often remain popularly unrecognized and unemployed for long periods." [1]

Bucky understood that it takes our minds more than one experience to understand the significance of an idea.

"It takes literally four experiences for [the] mind to discover that there is an interrelationship significance going on here that was not to be evidenced in one experience by itself." [15]

Bucky understood that this new accounting system would make violence unprofitable and, therefore, obsolete.

"The 'attractiveness' of war to Finance would diminish. Wars are a manifestation of the resistance of the old profit system."

(Reworded) [1]

Bucky understood that external threats could be managed through defense and decentralization and that this perpetual threat, in turn, would catalyze life-supporting innovation. Similarly, he understood clever mathematics, with the introduction of the computer, can make it more costly to break the rules than follow them.

"When the population concentrations of animate and inanimate components of the industrial complex are reduced below 'payoff' magnitudes in offensive strategy, the battle is won (temporarily, for we now know life to be dynamic and progressive), that is, 'checkmate' is called. At this tactical event, the checkmate, while racing to uncheck through adequate degrees of decentralization, may cover with a counter-offensive by calling out: 'I have a new missile available in far larger numbers, which may be expended economically on hitherto invulnerable population concentrations.' Obviously, the progression, checkmating and counter-checkmating, will be one of increased technical ability to fire economically at smaller and smaller population concentrations. And, inasmuch as the defensive tactics represent the upper hand to be maintained in the dynamic equilibrium of ever-impending shooting totality, the winning technique must devolve upon superior deployment of higher standards of living facility-livingry." [18]

Bucky understood that larger and larger blocks of energy would be contained in this new time-energy accounting system.

"Larger and larger blocks of which, as inherent principles of an inexhaustible universe, become available to man's control account. The impoundment of ever greater blocks of energy within the arrangements of the ninety-two chemical elements to give higher degrees of performance of structure and mechanics constitute the actual means of harvesting of universal wealth. It is as though the phenomena which we call raw materials, which are, in fact, our ninety-two chemical elements, were a fleet of cargo vessels into which we load ever greater cargoes of energy, and as we load them, they give higher degrees of controlled performance. As a result, we increase our control over our fate and that is the function of wealth." [18]

​

"...enormous knowledge-gains in means of impounding larger blocks of cosmic energy within given pounds of terrestrial matter." [18]

Bucky saw the poetry in connecting the dots.

"The most poetical experiences of my life have been those moments of conceptual comprehension of a few of the extraordinary generalized principles and their complex interactions which are apparently employed in the governance of universal evolution." [2][17]

Bucky consciously designed ahead of his time, knowing his work may remain dormant until needed. It is an example of what he called emergence by emergency.

"I sought to develop my artifacts with ample anticipatory time margins so that they would be ready for use by society when society discovered through evolutionary emergencies that they needed just what I had developed. I realized that if the new tools I had developed could provide valid human-advantage increases, then they would inevitably be adopted by society during the successive inexorable emergencies that occur in society, which evolution of emergence only through emergencies would dictate the proper rate of regenerative gestation of spontaneously adopted social advances." [1]

Bucky understood that a "sly roundabout" was needed to avoid incumbent power structures.

"In order to avoid rousing the fears and consequent active opposition of the powerful financial, religious, and political interests who might foresee in my artifacts revolution the obsolescence of their own profitable products or services, I deliberately design far into the future." [12]

Bucky understood we were on the brink of change.

"Dear reader, traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete." [12]

Closing Thoughts

Bucky often referred to himself as a "trimtab"—a small rudder that can change the course of a large ship with a small amount of force. It was his analogy for how a single person can start to make a big difference. In fact, he was adamant that change would ultimately come down to individual integrity, as groups and corporations are, by definition, incapable of coming up with new ideas. The initiative comes from each individual.

Given the breadth of his work, it is likely that Bucky was a trimtab for the "time-energy accounting system" we call Bitcoin.

​

Bucky never forced his ideas on anyone. He referred to himself as a verb to try and detach his identity from his ideas so they could be evaluated on their own merits. He selflessly continued building, talking, and writing to anyone listening.

​

Bucky, we hear you.

Sources

Bucky often repeated ideas in different contexts to reach different people; he was unabashedly redundant. Therefore, the following list is not intended as the single source for these ideas. 

​

[0] Fuller, R. Buckminster. 1929. 4D Time Lock.

[1] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Nine Chains to the Moon: An Adventure Story of Thought.

[2] Fuller, R. Buckminster. No More Second Hand God.

[3] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Operating Manual of Spaceship Earth.

[4] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Utopia or Oblivion.

[5] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Earth, Inc.

[6] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Synergetics.

[7] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Synergetics 2.

[8] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Everything I Know.

[9] Fuller, R. Buckminster. And It Came to Pass-Not to Stay.

[10] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Critical Path.

[11] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Grunch of Giants.

[12] Fuller, R. Buckminster. Cosmography.

[13] Sieden, Lloyd Steven. Buckminster Fuller's Universe.

[14] Edmondson, Amy C. 1987. A Fuller Explanation.

[15] Fuller, R. Buckminster (with Anwar Dil). Humans in Universe.

[16] Fuller, R. Buckminster. 1975. Everything I know. 42 hour lecture series.

[17] Fuller, R. Buckminster (with Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore). 1970. I Seem to Be a Verb.

[18] Fuller, R. Buckminster. 1963. Ideas and Integrities.

[19] Wigley, Mark. 2015. Buckminster Fuller Inc. Architecture in the Age of Radio.

[20] Fuller, R. Buckminster. 1983. Royal Gold Medal Presentation.

[21] Gorman, Michael John. 2005. Buckminster Fuller. Designing for Mobility.