Kind: captions
Language: en
how is it that all the economic reports
make it seem like the economy is RedHot
and yet people feel like they're in a
recession what's going on well all those
metrics are baked you know they reverse
engineer all of them we've talked about
the inflation metric before CPI the
Consumer Price Index this is a basket of
goods that change in price over time uh
this metric has been revised I think I
want to say three to four times in the
past 30 or 40 years and and a metric
that is designed to measure price
changes the government actually decides
to exclude anything any particular
commodity that's in that basket whose
price changes too quickly so if food or
energy changes too quickly and causes
inflation rate to appear too high they
exclude food or energy to manage that
number toward what they want it to be so
it's basically a [ __ ] metric if I
may be so Frank May uh think the
unemployment numbers are similar I'm not
as familiar with them but as I
understand it they've been revised like
12 months after the fact so they'll
issue a certain number a month later and
say you know oh unemployment was 8% last
month and then 12 months later they will
say oh actually our numbers were wrong
we need to revise this upward to 12% or
whatever of course it makes headlines uh
and has an impact when it's released in
a timely manner but when you mention the
the amendment 12 month months later it
doesn't make quite so much of a splash
uh also with the unemployment numbers we
have this thing called Labor Workforce
participation rate well now there's
people that just at a certain point of
not looking for a job they just exclude
them from the calculation so it's people
that are actively looking for a job are
considered in that calculation of
unemployment and of C you know if you
haven't had a job in 6 months someone
could fact check me on the exact amount
they just exclude that those individual
from the calculation itself so that's
another way of managing the unemployment
numbers uh to suit The Narrative that
any particular Administration is trying
to
push yeah why do they manipulate CPI why
do you think the government wants to
make a narrative when people are still
encountering
reality well I think there's a lot of
theatricality that occurs inside of Fiat
statism right it's the whole like the
meme where the dog is sitting in the
room and everything's burning down and
he just says this is fine this is fine
this is fine do you think they're just
trying to control the perception well I
think you what you don't want is social
Revolt I mean that's the you know people
are going to feel the pain but then all
of a sudden you're also telling them oh
you know your feelings are valid and
inflation is running at 15% as measured
in 1980 terms so you're getting milked
at 15% a year which means your
purchasing power is getting cut in half
every seven years um that's a bit more
painful I guess for people whereas if
you just do the same thing to them but
tell them inflations 3% or 4%
everything's fine um you're just
pretending basically and I guess that
does have kind of an analgesic effect on
people uh just the belief that maybe
things aren't quite so bad um sort of
reminds me of censorship a little bit
where you know if enough people get
censored individuals start self sensor
so creating this illusion that um you
know things are okay then you if you're
feeling the pain you might be more
hesitant to speak up um if if the guy on
TV is telling you oh no inflation's low
and numbers are up you might be like
well [ __ ] what's wrong with me I can't
find the job I can't get ahead I can't
make ends meet um rather than standing
in unity with people saying hey this is
actually a broken social system or
social contract um and we need to do
something about it so that would be I
mean that's my hypothesis um but in
general really the entire idea of trying
to manage an economy is just a bunk
metaphor it does not work right an
economy is a complex adaptive system
central banks uh often refer to their
policy tools as levers right like oh if
unemployment is up um what is it they
try to do here if inflation is high then
they will um increase unemployment to
reduce inflation I think is the one that
they use and so that they act as if this
complex adaptive system they metaphorize
it as if if it is a machine that they
can simply Press buttons and pull levers
and cause inflation rates to change and
unemployment rates to change and I think
that is ultimately as hubristic and
silly as a meteorologist trying to
control the weather right we we don't
understand what an individual human
being will do you can't say with
certainty what an individual human being
will do from moment to moment across
time right uh without getting into the
argument about free will it's not
predictable at least right I no one can
predict on this Earth what words you're
about to say next right that's up to you
and your own psychology what in the
world makes us think if we can't predict
one human psychology what they're going
to do moment to moment why could we
possibly predict what 8.5 billion human
psychologies interconnected in a global
Marketplace competing and cooperating
inov ating why do we think anyone could
predict the outcome of that complex
adaptive system and yet that's what
central banks do when they try to manage
or steer the economy it's just it's
silly it's an Antiquated outdated
Industrial Age mentality and it doesn't
apply to the reality of complex adaptive
systems so you said that part of the
reason they do this is they want to
avoid social Revolt do you think that
Trump getting elected is that tame
version of a social Revolt you know it
seems like it's a populist movement to
some extent right people are feeling the
pain um and look I'm I'm the worst guy
to talk to about politics in general but
just as an
observer um it seems as though the
Democratic party was really trying to
overplay the race card and you know
everyone needs to vote based on race and
people just started to wise up to that
and say you know what that doesn't
actually make sense um it for it appears
to me it's always it's not red versus
blue it's the state versus you basically
and so the Democrats overplaying this uh
divisiveness card um while at the same
time you know we expanded the money
supply 40% in four years right so all of
that PRI that monetary inflation created
price inflation that was dumped on
people that was a tax basically the
invisible Shadow tax of inflation that
we've talked about a lot people have
been coping with that pain and suffering
with that pain while at the same time
you had you know Joe Biden was going on
the Super Bowl doing a commercial saying
oh I love ice cream and you know Shame
On Ice Cream producers for increasing
the prices of ice cream we're going to
make sure that these greedy capitalist
ice cream producers don't increase the
price of ice cream anymore you also
heard Cala flirting with the idea of
price controls like how insane is that
this is Soviet Style statism basically
right um and and just to be real clear
on this prices are data packets about
consumer preference to try and regulate
prices is like trying to regulate
consumer
preference you can't pass a law to tell
people what they want right a price is
the economic expression of what people
want so to try and regulate prices it
only does one of two things it creates
surpluses or shortages right the market
does not clear or supply and demand meat
as an honest pricing system does and it
creates distortions that ultimately harm
people right this is why millions of
people starved in Soviet Russia Etc so I
think all of that um nonsense was
basically Dawning on people like I think
people have a good [ __ ] detector
even if they don't understand the
complexities of how a price system works
and money printing manipulates the price
signal and all of that I think people
just start to see through the [ __ ] a
little bit and look I'm no fan of any
politician frankly I I I'll be very uh
interested to see how many promises
Trump has made actually get kept however
at least in his rhetoric he was much
more uh honest seeming right that he was
talking about actual pain and actual
problems that people were feeling
whereas the Democratic party was taking
this approach of everything's fine and
what's whatever is broken will regulate
prices and and crazy [ __ ] like like that
so I think at the end of the day uh team
red was just a little bit more in touch
with truth and that's why they won it's
interesting so the concept of price
gouging I think feels relatively
intuitive to people uh that yeah
somebody should control that there
should be an upper limit people were
very happy when uh scarelli I forget his
name but the guy that bought the drug
and then raised the price like a
gazillion percent ends up going to
prison um people I think feel like yeah
there should be some sort of cap on some
of these things yet the Democrats got
voted out of power and even here in
California there was a referendum for
rent control and that failed yeah so
somebody somewhere is getting the
message why why didn't the Soviet system
work like why don't price controls
simply calm businesses down from price
gouging yeah so basically you think
about capitalism as like a decentralized
Computing system right where people are
making decisions about how best to
allocate Capital to satisfy customer
wants better faster cheaper but all of
that Computing system is based on the
data input of the price right it's what
other people are doing um where where
supply and demand are meeting in every
Market it's telling entrepreneurs what
to do basically it's signaling to them
how much consumers want something and
how much what supplies are available so
for
instance if there's an earthquake in
Chile I've probably used this example
before but it's a pretty simple one and
a copper mine collapses right and let's
say the flow of copper to the market now
from that mine
ceases all the people interacting with
copper in the world right whether you're
a consumer or producer they don't need
to even know about the copper mine
collapsing they don't need to know the
story they don't need to know the
background the history nothing all they
need to see is okay supply of copper
coming to Market slowed down so
therefore price went up all they need to
see is the price of copper went up as a
producer of copper I'm now incentivized
to produce more and because the price is
higher maybe there's new methods of
production that weren't economically
feasible before that all of a sudden are
right so I'm incentivized to alleviate
that shortage by producing more copper
and bringing it to Market and on the
other side consumers in the face of that
price increase are incentivized to
consume less or use substitutes or delay
consumption right so consumers are
incentivized to buy less producers are
incentivized to produce more this is how
markets
Rectify problems basically and so it's
that complex adaptive computational
system that is only possible with the
individual ownership of the means of
production which is to say individual
private property rights socialism
violates private property rights right
it steals from people and allocates
capital arbitrarily according to
bureaucratic whim and so in Soviet
Russia they had pricing Zars right they
were making like 10,000 pricing
decisions a day right a guy sitting in a
tower deciding what a nail cost but he's
not the nature of knowledge itself is he
has no knowledge about what
entrepreneurs actually need right he
doesn't know the supply of nails at any
given point he doesn't know the demand
for them he's just really taking a shot
in the dark and actually a lot of those
pricing RS um a lot there's a strong
argument to be made that it only lasted
as long as it did because they were able
to copy prices from the free markets in
the US right they could Peg to what the
the free market uh data was was
generating on on certain Goods so it's
just a matter of
decentralized compute versus centralized
compute and if you consider that each
person has a finite bandwidth their
awareness their attention span like only
so much data can flow through your eyes
and ears and head at any one time you're
talking about in a in a decentralized
competitive free market you have the
bandwidth of everyone right feeding that
system so it's whatever the data
throughput of an individual Market
participant is times all Market actors
that's your total data throughput for
that decentralized Computing system in a
centralized Computing system you only
have the throughput of the bureaucrats
the pricing are as whoever's making the
decisions everyone else is just
following the orders not to mention all
the data has to go be passed up from the
market actors into the central
bureaucracy the decision has to be made
then it has to be passed back out into
uh the prod the productive actors and
then they have to execute against that
plan and that has to be enforced because
none of these people are following their
self-interest so the entire thing is
just very inefficient it leads to the
misallocation of capital uh which
basically means Capital that's being
allocated inconsistently with the wishes
of consumers that have the power and
wherewithal to buy something so it it
distorts reality basically and it
destroys civilizations and what happened
by the end of Soviet Russia it wasn't
even an economy anymore it was a dis
economy um you'd have to check the exact
numbers but I want to say they brought
in like you know $90 billion of inputs
annually and they had $30 billion of
outputs it was a dis economy right an
economy is when more less inputs come in
than outputs go out you're increasing
the value of things uh and Soviet Russia
was was the opposite you know most
people were employed as narcs on one
another they were telling on each other
um you get all of these nonproductive
paper pushing jobs inside of the state
bureaucracy and as the old saying went
you know they pretend to pay us and we
pretend to work that's what the Soviets
said towards the end of that whole sham
so
I hope there's enough uh learning from
this across history that people in the
United States have said no basically I
know living in Miami there's a lot of
people from Cuba uh and other places in
South America that have had different
issues with Communism and socialism and
there were signs on in all kinds of
people's yards saying you know no no
Kamala communism and whatnot so um I
think it had something to do with that
right people do learn from history to
some extent and uh you combine that with
a good [ __ ] detector and uh I guess
that's the result that we
got why do you think then given we just
dodged that bullet why are the rich
getting richer and the poor getting
poorer because as much as I love
capitalism it has not in its current
iteration yielded results that are
sustainable I mean we've talked about
this right it's not
capitalism anywhere you got a central
bank you are at best 50% capitalist and
you are 50% Marxist or communist uh
because money is one half of every
transaction and money under a Central
Banking Paradigm is centrally planned
Central Banking is the central planning
of money this comes from uh measure
number five in Marx's 1848 Manifesto to
the Communist party that the state has
to have central control of cash and
credit for communism to work uh the
printing of money is the violation of
private property right Marx said you
could sum up communism in one sentence
which is the abolition of private
property so at one end of the spectrum
there's and we've talked about this
communism the institutionalized
abolition of private property the
opposite of Communism would be
capitalism the institutionalized
Perfection of private property and the
transfer of private property through
consensual contracts right we can agree
to trade things only by consent not by
coercion the Spectrum in between is
effectively socialism in all its
different forms it's an
institutionalized policy of aggression
against private property so whatever uh
the average tax rate is of a particular
country that is basically what
percentage it is socialist and to get
that tax rate you really need to know
not only what is the uh explicit tax
rate of say the average taxpayer but you
also need to know how much uh Savers are
being debased through currency
counterfeiting right the shadow tax of
inflation also goes into this equation
so we don't have capitalism anywhere in
the world nor have we ever had it
anywhere in the world we've had
different um iter you know different
intensities of it but uh and the United
States would be a great example of when
we were founded as a constitutional
republic we did not have a central bank
we had uh no income tax there were very
low and predictable and so oftentimes no
state taxes largely were funded through
tariffs
and uh rule of law was you know pretty
much minimal and centered on the
preservation of life liberty and
property and what did we get we got a ma
massive economic boom one of the most
successful economic stories in human
history you could also look at places
like Hong Kong that had a similar
beginning right where they had very
stable rule of law very low taxes and uh
a lot of capitalism places like uh the
UAE today they're doing this right very
low taxes do they have a Fed
uh do they have a central bank I believe
they do um but I would say that they are
not engaging in currency counterfeiting
at the same rate as the US someone could
check me on that as well but I know
their explicit tax rate is much
smaller um than what we have in the US
so so basically you let entrepreneurs
keep the fruits of their labor and leave
them alone and you tend to get
successful economic stories but the and
that's capitalism but the extent to you
start to progress along that spectrum of
socialism towards communism uh you you
slide closer to that Soviet style dis
economy we just talked about do we need
any breaks on capitalism like if you had
your brothers I know you don't vote you
said earlier you're the worst person
talked to about politics so do you one
do you consider yourself completely
removed from politics because it's just
a protest vote this is so corrupt you
can't
engage you know I think the most most
powerful vote you can cast is the way
you save and spend your money ultimately
so I consider holding purchasing power
in Bitcoin or physical gold which is
outside of the Fiat system right they
can't print money to steal your
purchasing power if you're holding your
savings in gold or Bitcoin uh so you're
you're protected from inflation and then
um you know obviously optimizing
yourself from a tax standpoint this is
the most effective vote you can cast
against the apparatus of coercion that
is the state because you're actually
taking your energy out of it right
you're not participating in a popularity
contest and hoping that the guy that you
elect will represent your interest and
make things better right is that that's
very soft right sure does it help more
so at a Grassroots level I think but
when you get into large centralized
bureaucracies I don't think it helps
that much or as much what really helps
is actually removing your energy from
the system and so that's what I look at
it as is like I actually we try to
boycott the system by holding my
purchasing power outside of it we'll get
back to the show in a moment but first
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the show my take would be that right now
we're living through a very interesting
moment where who you vote for matters
based on their world view and we are
ultimately in a moment where we as a
people are deciding whether we want that
top- down authoritarian control whether
we want freedom of speech or not
and it felt pretty consequential this
was the first time where I really felt
like yo people need to get out and vote
now I'm cool whatever way people want to
vote I don't think I have a monopoly on
the truth but I do have a very strong
take on what I think uh and to me this
really felt like a referendum of a a
revenge of the working class I forget
who said that but I think it's an
absolutely brilliant assessment of what
just happened and going back to my
initial question I think really what
just played out out is you can put out
all the reports in the world that say
everything is going well but if the
average person has to be a degenerate
Gambler to stay ahead of inflation if
they go to the grocery store and
everything is going up up up in price
real wages are flat you're making less
than your 20s and your parents did
you're looking at what's going to happen
to your kids you don't not feeling super
optimistic the deaths of Despair for
young men are skyrocketing to the point
where it's bringing the overall average
age the average life expectancy Down In
America which is absolute
insanity and so people are just like say
what you will dear politician but the
reality is that my life does not feel
the way that you're describing and so um
it really does it it becomes gaslighting
that is so blatant that you even if you
want to reconcile with it you're not
going to be able to which is pretty
fascinating so anyway I get what you
mean about you can cast you're you're
going to c a potentially even more
important vote by what you do with your
money but I think for the average person
they don't want to think about where to
put their money they want the system
that they live inside of Capital T
capital S to be moral to use my own
words and so going back to what you said
about CPI glad you brought that up so if
people understood why the government
manipulates the CPI specifically part of
it is because your entitlements as you
age are based on the CP
and if the CPI go up they have to P you
more they can't AFF to do they'd have to
print more money and we get on and on
into debt which I'm sure we will talk
about but so the W the way I look at the
government is the government has a
tendency to become evil and
inflating money is evil now I have a
feeling you agree with that if you would
give people that quick primer for why is
inflation evil because for basically my
entire life till about 5 years ago I
thought it was a natural law of nature
that money inflated by 2% yeah I I
realized too I didn't answer your
question like do we need any breaks on
capitalism and so I'll try to wrap both
of those answers together if you mean by
capitalism the right of individuals to
own property and trade it by consent
only right and if there are any
violations of that ownership people can
seek retribution through the rule of law
right if you steal my car then I can go
to the police and file a police report
and seek to have that uh retribution
enforced by the force of law right this
is the purpose of the rule of law
actually is to preserve private property
um I don't think you need any breaks on
that right that's just really saying do
we need any breaks on individual human
freedom I mean I think the breaks are
almost built into it but uh you know we
talked about in episodes prior life
liberty and inviable private property
this is what was in the Magna Carta in
1215 when King John signed it I think
this is the entire purpose of government
right it needs to use a legal Monopoly
on Force to defend life liberty and
property that is it that is the entire
philosophical purpose and scope of
government it doesn't need to do
anything beyond that anything it does
beyond that I would consider to be in
that domain of government being evil so
the second part of your question why is
inflation evil because it is a violation
of private property rights if you are a
saver and you're holding uh money in a
bank account right that means you have
gone into the
marketplace you have provided labor or
um you've rended favors to the
marketplace to other people right you go
to work you add to the productive output
of society by producing goods and
services for other people you are paid
in
money those are tokens that basically
say Hey you rendered other people a
useful favor you did something that
other people deemed to be useful as
signaled by the money that you were paid
and this
receipt is something you can use to take
back into the market later and redeem
similar favors from other people for
them to produce goods and services for
you that is the social contract of money
um if you're hold so basically if you
have Savings in a bank account and you
inquired it consensually that means
you've added to the productive output of
the species and not yet subtracted from
it right so you've added to human
productivity you've solve problems for
people but you haven't been paid or
compensated in return until you go into
the market and spend that money so what
happens when you're holding Savings in a
bank
account and a central
bank will counterfeit that currency is
they are debasing or diluting your
purchasing power right so the favors
that you rendered into the market that
you saved up for yourself for future use
or you've delayed
gratification well they start to
steal that energy that purchasing power
is what economists call it right and
this is basically what uh that money is
capable of purchasing right it goes down
as prices go up basically right so if
you've got a million dollars in the bank
and stake is uh you know $10 a pound
then you can get 100,000 pounds of stake
but if the price of State goes up to $20
a pound then you can only get 50,000
pounds of Stak right it goes down as as
prices go up purchasing power goes down
basically it's an inverse
relationship um that then means the
person who was was prudent and diligent
and provided favors for other people and
saved for future consumption is now
being disincentivized from doing so
you're now incentivized well my money is
not going to hold purchasing power I
might as well spend it on something now
better yet I might as well spend all of
it and just borrow more because if I
borrow dollars today that are going to
get weaker over time that I can borrow
strong dollars today and pay back weaker
dollars over time and indeed this is
because currency is being inflated in
this way it pushes everyone it's
incentivizing everyone to take on more
and more debt so the evil component of
it and obviously when you take on more
and more debt you become beholden to
creditors you know you get in the whole
that whole game right where once you are
indebted you're also paying interest to
creditors and that can be a downward
spiral for a lot of people that don't
know how to manage debt intelligently so
it it sort of increases the the pressure
of that trap
and the evil part of it really is just
that I mean if you consider theft to be
evil right if someone rightfully owned
something they worked to acquire it they
worked you know you worked to make money
to buy this table right that someone
built and you consensually traded the
money you had with them for this table
who else has the right to come and take
your
table right you worked for the money the
guy built the table you guys had a
consensual trade does anyone in the
world have a moral or just right to come
and coercively take your
table I mean I think it's a pretty hard
cell at least from a moral angle right
now people could get into oh well if
there's an emergency and someone really
needs it and all of that but if you give
what's the saying that if you give
governments more power in times of
emergency then governments will create
an emergency to take more power so you
give that little [ __ ] in the armor they
give them that inch that they take a
mile and I just don't think it can be
justified so do you think there's any
amount of government that's good you
know the government that governs best
governs least governs best I think as
has is that you just putting up with the
fact that you doubt you can get it to
zero like in your ideal world would it
be zero you
need there's a reality of physical force
in this world so we have to have a way
and there's the reality of people
violating private property right people
can take your stuff if someone takes
your stuff and you you know short of
taking the Law into your own hands it is
useful to have recourse to a legal
structure that has uh you know the force
of law behind it to fix to write that
wrong so to speak um and so yeah I think
a government that's ideally
local um not very
centralized and that really focuses
solely on the preservation of life
liberty and property um preferably one
that uses like an English common law
tradition this is where you know
disputes that have occurred over time uh
and the ways they were resolved these
become discovered laws that get codified
and say okay this is how people have
resolved law or disputes over time and
that becomes aifi as law so it's like a
legal Discovery process rather than a
legal a Fiat legal process where some
guy is elected into power and he just
signs a piece of papers saying this is
the way we do things now right then
you're at the whims of whoever is in
power um that is much the outcomes of
that tend to be much worse right the
individual in power will use the law to
serve their own interests we've heard
this law this term lawfare come up
recently where it's that very thing
right the law is not the ideal of the
law was equality in the eyes of the law
we have one fixed rule set that is
evenly applicable to everyone whether
you're a president or a popper right
every one in between we're all beholden
to the law to the same extent and the
same way just like we're all beholden to
the laws of physics to the same extent
in the same way but when you start
to unevenly apply the law or you know
Mis bend a rule or you know bribe a
judge this is where we get the term
corruption by the way right which has
its has an eological root in the word
shares one with the word rupture so this
evenly applied rule set all of a sudden
has a rupture in it and you get rules
for thee not for me type of situation
and um that is where government really
falls apart so to the extent
government
applies the rule of law evenly and the
rule of law is developed organically
through a legal Discovery process and
it's truly restricted to the
preservation of life liberty and
property I think this is the libertarian
ideal and kind of a high level and I
know this you know people may say oh
that all sounds good in theory but like
where does the rubber meet the road uh
you could read a book like the ethics of
Liberty by rothbard he goes through a
lot of these legal aspects you talking
about boycotting and bribery and all
these specific edge cases in the law and
how it would be in a Libertarian World
um is it perfect probably not but I
think it's a lot better than what we
have and once you create this situation
where people can game the system right
they can bend the rules to benefit
themselves and exclude or harm from
others that's a really nasty game right
because it's all about hard pressed to
find a system that can't be gamed full
stop I know one say more Bitcoin
bitcoin's the only game that human
beings have ever invented that they
themselves cannot game it is inviable
private property no it's an
Incorruptible monetary system and so and
considering that money is superordinate
to law right as Roth shild said give me
the power to issue a nation's currency I
care not who makes its laws because if
you can issue the currency you can
rewrite the laws trust me that's what
lobbying is basically right it's private
money rewriting the laws to benefit its
interest um having an Incorruptible
monetary layer a game that humans cannot
game themselves uh a social institution
the only social institution so far as I
can tell that human beings cannot
corrupt uh that's really important that
is equality in the eyes of the law and
an actual implemented system not just
written onto a constitutional document
under the hopes that all future
politicians will adhere to that code we
have an actual economic incentive system
that causes or not causes induces or
encourages people to follow it um rather
than just hope basically that that we'll
follow the US Constitution for all time
is the sum total of what makes Bitcoin
amazing that it can't be
ated
well no um the fact that
Bitcoin and to be very specific we're
talking about monetary inflation so the
actual arbitrary increase of a money
supply over time Bitcoin has 0%
arbitrary inflation or you could say 0%
unexpected inflation right it's the only
fixed Supply money and fixed Supply
asset for that matter in human history I
also think it's the only one that that
will ever exist now there are 50,000
shitcoins out there and you know there
are a few hundred of them that will tell
you they too have a fixed Supply or they
have a diminishing Supply or they have
whatever but none of those crypto assets
are decentralized so all of those are
based on promises you're trusting some
individual or group of individuals to
keep their promise only Bitcoin is the
battle hardened proven provably or
highly credibly decentralized crypto
asset and for more on that you could
read a book like the blocksize wars of
2017 decentralization is not something
Satoshi created in a lab Bitcoin started
out centralized too right it was just in
the mind of one guy but the way it was
released the the organic path of its
development the idiosyncrasies
associated with its proliferation all of
the attacks on it and the attacks that
it has
survived this is what has uh grown it
it's grown into a battle hardened
decentralized monetary Network that's
not something you can just recreate in a
lab so Bitcoin yes inflation uh not even
resistance inflation immunity basically
there's 0% unexpected inflation in
Bitcoin um that's a really big deal it's
a huge idea but it's also a digital
Bearer asset right so to hold a bearer
asset is if I have physical possession
of it I'm assumed to be the rightful
owner so if I have a gold bar in my hand
I don't need a contract that says I'm
the owner of that gold bar possession is
ownership basically
um Bitcoin is the same but it's the
first digital Bearer asset so it's to
just possess
information which is the private key is
to own the Bitcoin and now this gives
you a number of very unique advantages
one you can secure that in a multi- key
setup so you don't you don't have to
just hold one key you could break that
key into three pieces or five pieces and
have a quorum right so you need two of
three to spend funds or three of five
and that type of security model is much
more robust right you don't have single
point of failure you have redundancy but
you still have full control over the
asset this is also very similar to how
we secure nuclear codes by the way
there's not just one guy with his finger
on the trigger there is a group of guys
that need to do very certain steps at
very certain way and a very certain
timing before anyone can press that
button and hit launch you know it's a
multi- key setup effectively so you get
nuclear uh code like security models
with Bitcoin because it's a digital
private key you also get extremely high
portability right gold does not move
over a telephone wire we can only move
promises to Gold over telephone wires
but we can't move physical gold so you
know sailor would say something like
gold has very low frequency final
settlement but Bitcoin has very high
frequency final settlement you I can
send you Bitcoin over a telephone line
and we can settle with finality in an
hour on the other side of the planet
right I sent you gold effectively a
bearer asset physical Bitcoin if you
will through telecommunications around
the world no problem try doing that with
gold not possible Right you need trains
planes boats armies whatever to secure
that it still feels like uh it's nice
I'm glad that that's true but when I
really try to boil down why I think the
current system
uh it it breaks let me walk you through
a speedrun of what I think is wrong and
why I think the fact that it can't be
inflated makes it a solve for what I
think needs to be solved for uh I I
don't want to seem like I'm overhyping
Bitcoin whatever it is I just need
something that can't inflate so here's
my speedrun the reason that the economy
is what it is and goes in ralo's uh six
step Loop is because of the ability to
print money so whenever I say inflate
anybody uh listening right now if you
can hear my voice I mean print money so
print money inflation same thing uh
counterfeiting same thing yes so
printing money is
counterfeiting counter fitting
counterfeiting is Criminal inflation
correct so uh if you make that
impossible now all of a sudden people
can only spend money that they have when
they can only spend money that they have
now the government is going to ask ask
your permission because there's no way
to hide this stuff there's no way to tax
you without you knowing you're being
taxed inflation is them printing money
so that they can spend more money than
they have and everybody is fine with it
because you don't realize that there's a
problem if you had $100 in your bank
account you still have
$100 nobody is complaining the problem
is if that $100 only buys half the
amount of stuff that it used to you've
lost half your money uh but people can
feel it they're getting frustrated
they're upset but they don't understand
what exactly is happening and so the
reason that I say that this is a moral
problem is we've created an incredible
Capital Market System that's absolutely
amazing I couldn't love it anymore if I
tried however it makes the average
person have to gamble their money on the
stock market or crypto or whatever in
order to outplay the inflation that
they're experiencing that if they're
anything like me they just thought
happens they didn't realize that a
central bank was was in coordination
with the government deciding to
counterfeit just to keep it nice and
clear what's happening to constantly
counterfeit money to allow the
government to spend extra money because
yeah and then to get back to the why are
the rich getting richer and the poor
getting poor because when they put the
money into the system when they
counterfeit it what they end up doing is
buying assets from people that already
hold them and and this is a part that I
think a lot of people don't understand
so one if you don't own of the assets
that they buy your so you don't
experience any of the joy you're going
to be Downstream of that and then on top
of that there are a bunch of assets out
there your house price being one of them
the stock market being another not
exclusively some of it goes up because
there just as increased value but a lot
of the value of the stock market is
simply keeping up with inflation so the
odds that your house is actually going
up in
value is low so if you were to price
your house against gold or Bitcoin
exactly you're going to see oh wait a
second it's not changing in the way that
I thought it was it's only when you
compare it to the dollar which is
probably going down in value due to
inflation so now the average
person they're the money that they're
socking away saving is going to be worth
nothing they will have been brutalized
and stolen from and once you start using
that language like wait a second uh my
grandpa who's been a good dude worked
his ass off Blue Collar sleeves rolled
up janitor working two three jobs you
know until his 80th birthday he had to
work to his 80th birthday because all
the money that he was saving every month
ended up being nothing yeah that's
people need to understand that is the
system that they're living in right now
that's the system we have right now
today and once you have something like
Bitcoin or even just a gold backed
currency now all of a sudden it's like
okay cool as long as it's not fractional
Reserve uh then I have some something
where I can save my money and that's the
key though the a gold backed currency
always depends on the promise of a
custodian yes not overissue the paper y
to not issue more paper than they have
gold and Reserve right so to speak from
an accounting
standpoint if you are running a go a
bank basically right a Traditional Bank
where people deposit gold with you and
you issue them Bank notes or Warehouse
receipts which are little notes that of
paper that they can redeem for gold in
the future every time someone deposits
gold with you that's an asset on your
balance sheet right you have gold in
your Warehouse that's an asset obviously
it's a bearer asset as we touched on the
paper you issue to the depositor it's an
IOU right you owe that gold to a
depositor right as represented by that
bank note so an honest Bank a
non-fractional Reserve Bank a full
Reserve Bank would be one where assets
equals liabilities right such that if
all depositors came to redeem their gold
at once the bank would have no problem
satisfying all of those obligations
because they have all of the liabilities
covered by assets right one to one a
fractional Reserve Bank is when a bank
starts to overissue that paper relative
to the gold so they have more
liabilities on their balance sheet than
they have assets which is an insolvent
fraudulent operation you can't scale
gold because it's it's a physical metal
right you can't send it over a telephone
wire as I said you can't scale gold as a
transactional
transactable money at a global scale
without having a gold-backed currency
but the gold backed currency depends on
the Integrity of individual Bankers
right you need to trust the bank not to
overissue the paper and even if for
argument sake all the bankers were
perfectly trustworthy They're All Saints
none of them ever lie none of them ever
overissue the paper you still have to
deal with the government who might in
time of Crisis or War as is typically
the case decide you know what we need
some extra funding there's a whole lot
of gold in that bank over there why
don't we just go have them loan some of
it to
us uh Force
right we can write the laws and have
them loan it to us cheaply or we could
just suspend customer convertibility we
could seize the gold as was done in 1933
by executive order 6102 right it was
Private gold ownership was outlawed
under a threat of imprisonment or a fine
which is crazy right like you can't own
gold what the [ __ ] what do you mean I
can't own gold like it's just a thing
that I own and hold in my hand you're
telling me I can't own and hold a thing
in my hand um that's the problem right
you you can only scale gold with the
prom Promises of others you are
dependent on trust in human
beings Bitcoin fixes that right we can
actually have a digital gold that is
Trivial for individuals to custody
themselves or if they want to custody it
with an institution you can break the
key into multiple pieces and you can
have a collaborative custody schema even
among institutions so you can mitigate
the counterparty risk you can inhibit a
government from coming to any one
institution and seizing the Bitcoin
because every institution only has one
piece of the key right you can't they
need to work together to unlock funds so
you you you inhibit the government's
ability and Banks ability to break that
promise should you choose to to promise
it to them you can also choose to hold
it yourself and promise no one right
this is the don't trust verify ethos of
Bitcoin not your keys not your
cheese um this is a big deal you we now
have a monetary a sound monetary medium
that can scale for a global society that
does not depend on the Promises of
fallible Fallen sinful human
beings um this is the the essence of
trust minimization and this is
why Bitcoin is digital sound money gold
is non-digital sound money you know just
the way I look at it is we have two
rough visions of the future there's one
vision of the future where we have
things like electricity the internet and
artificial
intelligence in that world Bitcoin is
dominant money because we can transact
with one another without the need to
trust counterparties basically right we
can minimize counterparty risk and
maximize uh our ability to move
purchasing power over time and space
which is the purpose of money there's
another view of the world that's more
dystopian right for whatever reason
solar weather global war whatever the
thing is we don't have electricity
internet AI in that world I think
non-digital sound money like gold will
be dominant because well people are
going to be dealing with each other in
physical space a lot more than they're
going to be dealing with each other in
digital space so you can make that
assessment for yourself obviously
there's a whole gradient in between and
decide right there's an 90% chance we
have a digital future and a 10% chance
we have a non-digital future and then
Alex at your C the cash balances in your
portfolio accordingly right I have 90%
Bitcoin 10% gold so it's not really
Bitcoin versus gold it's not either or
just like everything else in the world
it's probabilistic and if you're going
to be a Savvy investor I think you just
have to look at the Spectrum of
possibilities decide for yourself which
way we think which way you think we are
going and then construct your portfolio
accordingly okay so I buy into a lot of
what you're saying about um private
property you want a government that is
small you want to have sound money so
that you hobble the government from
getting too big because they're going to
use money printing to do it um but do
you think that we have a moral
obligation to take care of those less
fortunate than us at the level of
government do you uh the question is do
I think that the government has a moral
obligation do do we as a species us in a
country do we have a moral obligation to
take care of those less fortunate yeah
look I when I when you say invoke the
term moral obligation I get very
hesitant to be that prescriptive about
it interesting why the word moral why is
that the trip wire well I truly believe
in human Freedom right so if I'm going
to put a gun to your head and say you
need to go and take care of the needy
that sort of defeats the purpose right
but then doesn't that mean that I don't
have the moral obligation to do it or
does it mean that I have the moral
obligation but I you don't think that it
should be enforced so it depends on the
moral code you subscribe to of course
right I think this tends to be the
domain of the church or religion right
many wisdom Traditions teach us to tithe
right to tithe to the church to take
care of the less fortunate Etc I am a
subscriber to that does that mean I'm
going to impose that Subs that
prescription on other people no I I
don't think that is something that that
holds weight for me me however I think
in a world with very strong private
property we naturally accumulate and
construct more wealth right that is the
whole point um and here's here's a way
to think about this by the
way every time someone spends time and
energy taking an asset from someone
else you've heard me talk about this
before maybe there's two ways to create
wealth in the world or I'm sorry two
ways to acquire wealth in the world
making or taking right I can build the
table and you know spend my labor to
create something of value and trade with
other people that are also doing the
same thing that's the path of making
that's the entrepreneurial path that's
the constructive path or I can just get
the $5 wrench and go budgeon the guy
over the head that built a table and
take his table right that's the path of
taking that's the path of criminality
statism coercion
every time someone spends time and
energy taking rather than making that is
time and energy they could have spent
producing
something right so that is a decrement a
decrease on the productivity of the
species because that person's time and
energy the taker was spent taking rather
than
making further because they took it from
someone that built it and produced it
they have disincentivized that
individual from producing in the future
because that individual didn't keep to
did not get to keep the full reward of
their labor which was the fruit of their
labor right so if someone's getting 20%
of the fruits of their labor stolen
every year by an organized criminal
Syndicate called the government try 53
53 okay then they are 20%
disincentivized from producing right
like if I can only keep 80 cents of
every dollar that I make well then I'm
less
incentivized or rewarded to produce as
much I agree with you and all of that
makes sense to me in the abstract but I
think the thing that we end up
struggling with sorry this is not even
abstract this is like axiomatic if
someone is spending time and energy
taking rather than making that our net
productivity goes down and the
incentives for
producing because you live in a world
where humans fall on a spectrum from an
evolutionary perspective where even
though Trump won by a quote quote
Landslide it was really what three
points Four Points I mean we are
basically divided down the middle I
think there's an evolutionary reason for
that that you need when you think about
getting a species to work cooperatively
together in flexible but large groups
you're going to need some people that
are compassionate and saying basically
just think about it from a caloric
standpoint yeah let's say that you go
out and you hunt you come back with
something now if you're smart you're
going to store the calories that you
can't eat right now in my body and the
way that you do that is you give me
something even though I didn't get
anything on the hunt you're going to
give me some so that I eat so when I'm
the one that wins I come back and I give
you some next time so in a world without
refrigerators the way that you store fat
is on the people around you now the
catch is that if you do that I start
going ah Robert's a great hunter I don't
have to go hunt he's just goingon to
feed me in the hopes that one day and so
now other people go no we we can't stand
for that we can't have Free Loaders so
you get people that they skew
compassionate the left and you get
people that skew personal responsibility
the right and you need the tension
between the two to make sure that we
don't get a bunch of freeloaders that
turn into parasites that drag the place
down but you also need people that
understand dude we've had central banks
since
1668 the modern world's pretty amazing
so even though I can tell an aggressive
story about how evil and sinister and
all that stuff that it is and it really
is the problem is it also gave birth to
a pretty amazing world did it did it
though did it can we we can't attribute
because we have all of these Modern
Marvels and all of this uh this standard
of living right in the post-industrial
age which by the way like GDP per capita
basically for human history is flat
Forever Until We hit the Industrial Age
and then it goes completely vertical
right do we attribute that to Central
Banking
like why just because uh do wet streets
cause rain right correlation does not
causation I would argue that the market
has succeeded in spite of all of the
money Printing and the theft and the
Warfare funded by Central Banking what
take Warfare alone right the possibility
the scale scope and severity of World
War I and World War II were only
possible because of money printing
typically a country goes to war when it
runs out of money it cut it signs an
Armistice right it cuts a deal because
guess what it's War chest is empty but
when when it can hyperinflate the
currency its War chest goes from being
its own balance sheet to the balance
sheet of everyone using the currency
right so Wars get larger longer and
worse War wish people understood that
war is this MO is the most dis economic
activity human beings can possibly
engage in right we mobilize humans in
capital to go and Destroy Humans in
capital it is
anti-economic it is the antithesis of an
economic process it's a economic process
and so that is enabled and worsened by
money printing I would say that
everything that we enjoy in the
post-industrial age is in spite of
Central Banking and you were asking
about you know the moral
obligation the point I was trying to get
to is the stronger private property
becomes the more we increase the
standard standards of living per capita
or GDP per capita if you want to use a
metric like that and that in my view
actually enable Ables uh the furtherance
of compassion right compassion is a bit
of a luxury right like you can have
compassion in your heart but to actually
act on that compassion and to be able to
give people things to give people stuff
food shelter Whatever It Is Well you
need an economy that's producing that
the division of labor and to have the
division of labor you need private
property rights and so the stronger
private property becomes the more
economic abundance we have the more
capable the successful Among Us are
are of being compassionate to others in
a material sense of actually giving to
them the more we violate that principle
and say oh we need to tax the rich or
steal from whoever to fund any even if
it's a uh you know a scheme to feed the
Homeless or whatever
compassionate scheme that is cooked up I
think it actually is cutting off the
nose to spite the face type of thing or
sawing off the branch on which one rest
you're you're you are hamstringing the
ability of the market to produce more
goods and therefore take care of more
people even if you're doing it out of
the compassion of your heart right that
we're all blow voting blue to STX the
rich and fix the homeless problem in San
Francisco right or whatever the thing is
and just look at the history of it look
how incompetent government has been at
allocating Capital there's the story
this is not that old I think in s s
Francisco they spent like $3 million in
15 years trying to open a public
restroom something like that um there
there was also talk of I think this was
Biden's electric vehicle charging
program you know they spent x billion
doll and they had three charging
stations or something by the end of it
it's like government
is misus would argue all government
action as a misallocation of capital
because it involves the coercive
extraction of resources from people
through taxation and inflation and so
the there it's much easier to spend
money that you didn't
earn and it's much easier to spend it
foolishly and I think that's what
governments basically do so what do you
take away necessary evil perhaps because
we need to defend life liberty and
property but when the the institution
charged with the preservation of life
liberty and property starts to
aggressively violate private property we
get very perverse outcomes
yes so what do you think when you look
out at the world and you see
every civilization of any size has a
government
yeah I think it is a reality of physical
Force like I said like we do that people
want somebody to take care of them well
it's it's not that you want it's it's a
Protection Service right so if we look
at the origin point of government it
comes in the agricultural age once we we
stop being hunters and gatherers and we
settle down in one place and we start to
create an economic surplus right we've
got grain and The Silo so to speak well
you now need to defend that grain and
The Silo from other people that want
that are hungry that want to come and
take it so the local area defense
network that protects Intruders from
taking the Grain in The Silo is
basically the origin point of government
and so that's what you want it to do
defend the property lives and Liberty of
the individuals living within a
territory um however it's a very
complicated and bloody history right
because once you give people that
physical power that Monopoly on Force
what do they start to do they extract
tribute from people inside of the
territory right and so how do you this
has been like the age-old problem is how
do
we create a central Monopoly on Force
and entrust people to run that Monopoly
on force in a way that they won't bend
it to serve their own interest right and
we've there's been many experiments on
how to do this best across time I would
say the United States and the founding
fathers uh are the best one we've done
yet right the the
decentralization of power checks and
balances um you know the US Constitution
was written basically to prevent the
implementation of a central bank to
maximize local state power and to
minimize Central State power um you know
we were we were founded as a
constitutional republic so a
constitution being an enumerated list of
things the government can never do right
this is the Bill of Rights right cannot
infringe on the freedom of speech cannot
infringe on the right to bear arms Etc
uh these were meant to be absolutes that
uh absolute spheres of human Freedom
that government could not
violate however after three attempts we
got the central bank right we got the
FED in 1913 what is it people are
clamoring for so uh they clamor for
protection when they put in a government
protection and coordination I would say
is probably fair and then what are they
clamoring for when they say yes to a
central
bank well we don't really say yes to a
central bank I mean if you read at least
in the United States um you could read
the book The Creature From jaal Island
this thing was snuck in over a holiday
weekend after a private meeting off at
an on an island off the coast of Georgia
called jual Island um but are there any
modern economies of any significance
that don't have a central bank um there
are not um these you know a lot of this
someone somewhere is clamoring for some
you're not voting it in though like
these things they're private banks that
are basically installed it's not the
will of the people people that is
choosing to have this thing install is
it a signal of corruption it is the
ultimate institution of corruption in my
opinion so you look out at all the
governments having one of these and
you're like that is a tower to uh
memorialize the corruption in the
country it okay again if we Define
Corruption as the uneven application of
rules well a central bank has the legal
authority to counterfeit money if anyone
else counterfeits money they go to jail
let me give you a how is that like those
are that is the bifurcation of rules
right if you and I go and play
basketball and I put a gun to your head
and say my shots count four your shots
count two like is that a corrupt
game or I can print points for myself
and you can't if I were playing against
my wife it would be very fair and I
think that's going to be one of the
arguments so there's that I think the
you're probably not recognizing the
power of people who want things to be
fair in this whole equation but the
reason I think that people are clamoring
for a um a central bank even if they
didn't vote for it is the promise of
stability hey we're going to manage
things you're not going to have the
Great Depression you're not going to
have people jumping off of buildings in
Wall Street because we're going to make
sure that you're protected yes it's
fractional Reserve banking but it's FDIC
insured and so that the same desire that
makes them want to have a government to
protect them from a bully they want the
central bank to be able to print money
because they don't understand inflation
and they feel like ah I'm now protected
yeah but they're not protected I mean
yes the aims of the Federal Reserve are
low and stable unemployment and stable
prices right low and predictable
inflation have either one of those
things happened I mean you can look at
the purchasing power of the dollar since
1913 I think it's down
99% does that sound like stable prices
to you that means the prices of
everything have gone up 100 fold in over
100 years uh we've had worsening boom
and bust business
cycle uh each time we have a bust we
have to print exponentially more money
than we did the round before because
each time we print money we inject more
liabilities into the
system um it's just it just doesn't work
and ausan economists
like misus you can read his book The
Theory of money and credit he has laid
out a very strong theoretical foundation
for why printing money counterfeiting
money centrally planning money doesn't
work um and I've I don't know any honest
intellectual on this planet who has ever
sat here and said that it does work the
only thing it does is act as a source of
Limitless purchasing power extraction
for the shareholders of central banks at
the expense of everyone forced to use
the currency via legal tender laws and
other acts of compulsion so I don't know
how you could ever justify that morally
ethically pragmatically economically it
just doesn't make any sense to me
whatsoever and I think the corruption of
money also leads to the corruption of
many other things in the world right
when you're printing money and you can
steal purchasing power from everyone
well then you can use that purchasing
power to buy narrative or to buy
mainstream media Outlets or to create
fake news or to wage Wars it it is a
very Insidious power right if Lord Acton
said power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely I don't think
there's anything closer in the sphere of
human Affairs to absolute power other
than the printing of money considering
it is the thing that everyone works for
and if you are the institution that can
create it without performing any work
and you can use it to extract the work
energy of other people well then you
will do everything in your power to
deceive them and to believe in that it
is good and necessary for them and their
economy which is indeed what Keynesian
economics does it's a pseudo scientific
paradig that tells us every time there's
a problem in the economy the government
just needs to pull that lever and print
more money baby and everything's going
to be all right this time don't worry
about it it'll be fine and what happens
well we get to look recent history we
print 700 billion in
2008 that was a big number back then we
thought that was a very serious amount
that's less than on10th of what we
printed in the post-pandemic world
printed 8
trillion okay give it a few years we're
going to print 10x that it doesn't stop
until the currency hyperinflate into
worthlessness and I don't mean to be the
bearer of bad news but anyone wants to
challenge me on this open a [ __ ]
history book about fiat currency tell me
how all of them end either the country
gets conquered or the currency
hyperinflate right the oldest and most
successful fiat currency today I think
is still the British pound has lost over
99% of its value in 320 years um so
those
countries UK us we're still in power
fiat currency is still working but all
of those before us have failed been
conquered or hyperinflated so you know
how many how many times we need to learn
this lesson a lot appar we'll get back
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impact and now let's get back to the
show all right so you've got a magic
wand
you uh you're holding tight to that
magic wand Trump comes to you and he
says robber breed love with your magic
wand what do we do we want to make
everything better what do you do if you
were going to do three big things and I
mean you can do anything what are the
three big things you would do to write
the ship promote Bitcoin education
and help people transition to a sound
money economy I you say coin and gold
for that matter I'm not actually partial
people want to stick with gold and
that's their thing Freedom so not make
Bitcoin the uh official currency well
here's what I don't like about that
because it's legal tender tends to be
the compulsory use of something so I
don't want to tell people they have to
use Bitcoin but just educate people
about oh this is how money actually
works we suggest this as the best money
it's the ultimate sound money however
gold also works if you want to use that
or you could also have free Bank Bing
right just let Banks issue their
currency and go through that whole
painful experience of uh different banks
blowing up and people learning their
lessons the hard way and let the market
sort it out so I mean I'm admittedly
radical in My Views as an anarcho
capitalist like I think we need just the
preservation of life liberty and
property and then the market solves
everything else better than any Central
institution possibly
can and so the big theme of those three
things is just minimizing statism
minimizing revenues to the state
therefore shrinking the state and
maximizing human freedom and the market
process I think that solves the most
problems with the least effort all right
if you abolish taxation you're saying
the government has no sources of revenue
or the government has to become a maker
well so the again pre- income tax the US
government used to fund itself through
tariffs right so it's actually charging
taxes on Imports um those are at least
imposed on outside countries and those
are countries that want to access
domestic markets I'm not I still don't
think that's a good idea I think that
actually is still destructive to net
wealth um you know people would probably
accuse me of being an idealist or
utopian in this respect but I don't
think nation state structure really
works I'd like to see a world more of
like free private cities instead of 200
some odd nation states we have 20,000
free private cities um that can trade
with one another with very little
friction you know if there have to be
tariffs to fund that security network so
be it maybe they charge a flat tax just
on land right they're actually defending
land ultimately maybe the owners of that
land need to pay a consensual not even a
tax a consensual protection fee so
you're paying a percentage to that
Protection Service uh to provide that
protection that physical protection from
foreign
Invasion um and again you know it's it's
the devil's in the details because when
you put that power in the hands of one
group of people it's very difficult to
prevent them from using that power to
extract more resources than than the
consensual protection fee was agreed to
be um and so that is like an everpresent
risk or threat and I think that's where
something like Bitcoin is very important
because if a jurisdiction starts to
treat people unfairly let's say they
agree to a certain protection fee and
then the state says actually we're going
to take 2x 3x whatever it is people can
vote with their feet very effectively
right they can leave that jurisdiction
with their purchasing power intact their
Bitcoin private Keys intact even if the
government gets nasty and starts seizing
their physical assets well then people
still have a much uh better chance
basically of leaving with purchasing
power in a digital Bearer asset and
therefore incentivizing you're like
creating a free market competition
dynamic between different jurisdictions
so all of a sudden Juris iics now that
can't print money they are accountable
to their p&l right their revenues are
Protection Service fees and their
expenses are providing physical security
if they mistreat their citizens well
their citizens will leave with their
Capital so that will actually decrease
their revenue so you will be
incentivized as one of these free
private cities to be accountable to the
preferences of your customer you want to
keep them and you you already see a
little bit again like you know a place
like UAE I think is kind of eting
basically for Global Talent and capital
by offering really low taxation so
that's more of an ideal world that I
would like to
see wo that certainly uh that was not
the answer I was expecting now do you
think that there's an element of chaos
that's going to be born out of that
because as you're describing it I'm like
running through my head I'm like okay
gangs are definitely going to rise up
and some of these cities they're going
to coers you into staying I know they're
not supposed to but of course they will
people will try to leave they'll put
Capital controls on it like they'll find
a way even if it's just a wrench attack
but then people will escape as much as
they can it just feels like whoa I get
why in my mind I get why people try to
consolidate into larger groups of people
where there's a stable non-corrupt
government feels like the human tendency
um but play that scenario out where do
you think the what would be the points
of friction you would worry about
well I mean so your worry that gangs
will rise up I mean that's what
governments are frankly government is
the biggest gang in the room right they
have outcompeted all the other gangs and
deemed themselves to be the legal
authority of the land so I don't think
that the absence of the biggest most
centralized gang um is actually going to
create yeah you're going to have well we
say gang it's like yeah people organize
themselves into groups and those groups
compete for their
self-interest
um you know what we associate with gangs
is that they tend to engage in physical
coercion and crime right so in a world
where people do have digital Bearer
assets I think it is much more difficult
much less profitable let's say to Eng to
engage in traditional gang activity like
trying to physically coers people and
take their stuff um much easier to do
that in a world where people are using
physical cash or physical gold um so
yeah would it be more chaotic it's
like there's this example of wildfires
in
California which you know there's
there's like this uh kind of the same
topography that's in uh California also
is the same in down in Mexico and so
there's a lot of government
intervention and this is like Baja
California area where they were trying
to manage forest fires basically right
that they would burn they would try to
burn um every time one of these fires
would start they would extinguish the
fire and try to basically dampen it
whereas down in Mexico they would just
let these fires burn basically right
it's more Anarchy if you will they just
let the fires burn well what happened is
that when you prevented those fires
micro fires from burning brush
accumulated until a big fire did hit and
then it burned so [ __ ] hot that it
burns away the top soil and does a lot
more damage basically it becomes this
giant conflation whereas down you know
Mexico is just this uh sequence of
smaller fires it's more of a natural
process and so it's that pressure
release kind of mechanism where when we
try to centrally plan something
sometimes we create the unforeseen
consequence of creating something much
bigger and worse you know we could say
oh we've had this long period of Peace
in the 20th century and this nuclear
stalemate and everything's been great
but what does that setting us up for you
know we don't really know is it better
to just have you know disputes resolved
at a smaller scale more frequently
rather than having disputes delayed and
resolved with a very low frequency but
with a lot more catastrophe you know an
author like TB would say delayed
volatility is exacerbated volatility so
we have to be careful when we're trying
to manage systems and dampen volatility
because ultimately volatility is a
Reconciliation to reality and if we stop
that reconciliation to reality and
engage in it much less frequently then
the ultimate reconciliation can be a lot
more painful so I think the argument for
decentralization is just you want
more you want less uh more power more
widely distributed basically so that you
get whatever pressure needs to be
released it's released in smaller more
frequent pockets and places rather than
being compressed for many decades and
blowing up in World War III or whatever
the catastrophe might be okay absolutely
fascinating few answers have ever made
me want to write a story set inside of
the world I imagined uh than that one I
utterly utterly fascinating idea um now
I'm going to take away the magic wand
right now uh you've got Trump coming
into Power he it looks like he's going
to have Senate probably house uh
Judiciary and the Supreme Courts pretty
much on his side um what do you want to
see him do in order to take steps to
alleviate some of the wealth inequality
that we have start moving towards
stronger uh personal freedoms private
property you mentioned tariffs earlier
he didn't seem to love the idea what
what should he do in the real world
starting when he takes office yeah I
mean he's FL Ed with the idea of
abolishing the
IRS that's a great first start right you
abolish the IRS you abolish a lot of
wasted human energy navigating I think
the IRS tax code it's somewhere
between when I I have a master's degree
in taxation when we studied it in
college I want to say it was like 9
million words long good Lord it is
literately impossible to navigate also
impossible to comply with you comply
with one law you're out of compliance
with another law it's like it's designed
just be this [ __ ] trap basically and
there's so much human cognitive energy
pouring into gaming this thing right
like this whole Army of tax accountants
and um ATT tax attorneys like trying to
find loopholes and exploit loopholes and
all of that's non-productive energy
right if we had a simplified or
preferably a non-existent tax code these
guys could go be engineers and build
something that people actually [ __ ]
use rather than just navigating
a a
purposelessly complicated set of rules
that have just emerged because of you
know I think it's the fiat currency
complex right it's a lot of people
having these competing interests inside
of the rule structure trying to benefit
themselves when you looked at these
things in the tax code it's like okay
here was the original Law then it was
modified this way oh then it was
modified that way because someone didn't
like you know this Lobby group they
didn't like what they got so they
lobbied for this counter proposal and
then on it goes and you read this law
and there's all these exceptions and
back and forth and rules and by the time
you're doing this you know we have
things like the alternative minimum tax
for instance I don't know if you've
heard of this it is this weird other
like parallel calculation you have to do
on yourself in your tax world it's like
if you meet certain criteria then all of
a sudden you have this other giant tax
liability that just pops out of nowhere
and so anyways I won't go into it
because I don't frankly I haven't looked
said it in a decade but it was just a
nightmare to learn about in college it
didn't make any sense it's totally
arbitrary uh it doesn't map on to
anything in the real world right it's
like we're just putting ourselves in
this cognitive trap so to abolish all of
that and liberate all that cognitive
human labor and reduce all the
associated violation of private property
I think that would be a Hu huge win so
if Trump's going to make good on that
promise that would be absolutely massive
um I don't know what he said about the
central bank if anything I mean he has
said that we're going to start
stockpiling a national reserve of
Bitcoin um he wants the United States to
be a leader in what he says crypto and
Bitcoin mining um I think you know he's
still suffering from the conflation
between crypto and
Bitcoin only Bitcoin mining uh would be
of any geopolitical significance so far
as I can tell um that would also be a
huge win just to get you know it's it's
contributing in to the monetization of
Bitcoin uh obviously that would put the
United States in a better position
economically as against other countries
but I think also by contributing to the
monetization or the acceleration of
bitcoin's
monetization this accelerates the
demonetization of the state right or the
defunding of the state um by removing
and the long run money printing as a
revenue option and then ultimately
you're you know enriching this asset
that's hyper portable hyper concealable
and lets people vote with their feet
very effectively so all of that would be
good for our move away from centralized
statism towards a more decentralized
World um what other promises has he made
I you know I think um just you know the
the general theme of deregulation that
tends to come with Republican
administrations that's a good thing
right do you think Elon has a shot at
actually doing something meaningful
there he's flirting with this idea of
the government efficiency agency do
cutting Department of governmental
efficiency yes cutting two to three
trillion of government spending I mean
like all the government spending by the
way euphemism for stolen purchasing
power right so you're reducing the
stealing of purchasing power you're
increasing the Integrity of taxpayer
private property again that's a step in
the right direction so yeah I don't know
like I you know I don't trust these guys
any further than I can throw them I mean
maybe I can throw them a little bit far
but um Trust might be able to throw some
of these guys I we'll see we'll see what
plays out I I my general philosophy
would be never trust a politician don't
think that a politician is coming to
save you uh there's very few instances
in human history where politicians have
have stuck to their word um maybe now
would be a good time to bring up Mr
George Washington though who is uh I
don't know if I'd classify him as a
politician necessarily but he was a
president he was a president uh but he
was different right this is one of the
founding fathers of the United States um
the leader of the American Army that
rebelled against the British Empire uh I
think their decisive victory was this I
think it's 1781 the battle at Yorktown
if I recall
correctly um where Washington defeated
General corn Wallace of the British
Empire and you know we had been fighting
for these principles of establishing the
United States as a constitutional
republic right it was largely a tax
Rebellion against the British Empire
also a rebellion against the bank of
England which was the Central Bank of
England um people wanted to be free
right these were highly educated men
there were very strong Christian men
mostly uh the the seal on Benjamin
Franklin's house I think said Rebellion
to tyranny is obedience to God like
these were guys that were very qu very
[ __ ] serious about expanding human
freedom and the thing I like about
George Washington is that he led and won
the rag tag group of rebels American
soldiers against the British Empire now
we had help too but we won right he
earned the victory right he had skin in
the game he was a leader of men he went
to war and he won years years and years
and years an incredible story and the
end when he he achieved
Victory they wanted to make this man
King right we fought to become a
constitutional republic but at the end
of that it was they put the
keys of power into the hand of this man
and all he had to do was accept and
close his hand and frankly he earned it
right he led the Army he
conquered the new territory but the old
way of Kings well he is the new king he
would have been the new you know the
King of the American Empire and his
lineage and his descendants would have
become the next Kings to who we all paid
tribute and homage and forever more and
what did he
do he channeled this
like it's really like a staggering
amount of philosopher king energy you
could call it Christ Consciousness right
he he refused that temptation to near
absolute
power he put the interest of the human
family above the interest of his own
family lineage in a way and he said
absolutely not I will not be your king I
will be your president and I will be
your two-term president and I will
refuse the third term and we will be the
constitutional republic that we set out
to be so he put the interest of human
Freedom above his own direct more
selfish you know genetic self-interest
let's say and that is just a aging
accomplishment as far as I can tell like
we often talk about Marcus aurelus as a
very significant philosopher king and he
was but I don't think we give enough
credit to George
Washington and I hope that you know we
can cultivate more male leaders like
that that actually
take the larger perspective on what this
is all about like we're trying to
advance human freedom in its total
not just trying to advance me and my
freedom here and now and for my future
descendants right that's the that's an
old game and it's a bloody game and it's
nasty and it it's you know it it gave us
the life that was what was uh brutish
and short that someone
said and by channeling this you know
Christian sort of value framework this
philosopher king energy if you will by
doing what's right in the greater scope
of humanity you know that this was a man
that was integral to his word in a way
that few people possibly can be but he
sets a very powerful example for all
Future Leaders and
so I hope we can get back to that you
know it's um how do we get back to
that well
so he's a trustworthy man right because
he did what he said he would do do even
in the face of great
Temptation and the words trust and Truth
share An eological Origin they're both
related to a word that basically means
steadfast true solid right something
that's dependable reliable has
Integrity right whether if it's the
truth it's a representation of reality
that is uh High Fidelity right it's an
accurate portrayal of reality and if
someone's trustworthy that means they do
what they say they will do right they
they he is a man of his word he is
integral his words and his action are
integrated together Bitcoin is a system
of absolute truth right it's if if money
is a language of human action or a
language of power it's a language in
which lies cannot be told it's something
that incentivizes people to interact
cooperatively rather than coercively
because you know it's hard to steal
impossible to inflate all these things
we've talked about um and
you know there's a saying that no man is
better than his incentives so I guess
it's an open question to how much does
that honest incentive system induce
honest integral moral development in men
I'm not
sure but I hope that Bitcoin enables the
process of individuation in a way that
helps people become more
like the the spirit that the founding
fathers were tapped into like taking
seriously the collective human
Enterprise not any specific nation state
not any specific lineage but uh creating
something that's sustainable for all of
us across time right that that ideal of
equality in the eyes of the law the
ideal of innocent until proven guilty
freedom of speech right to bear arms all
these things that give us a symmetry of
power such that there's no asymmetries
where one group is exploiting another
group like this is the ideal this is the
principle and so my hope is that that
Bitcoin can enable um the cultivation of
more men like Mr
Washington George the uh could have been
bitcoiner I like it yeah yeah I think so
all right we've got some
speedr stuff from our fearless producer
over here Drew what do you have for
us all right we're getting set up could
we start with number one uh G number so
we're going to be responding to Clips
yes I have a couple clips and a couple
tweets just want to get your opinion on
it quick take minute 30 seconds nothing
crazy money is just a number in a
database that's what it is um and it's
primarily an information mechanism for
labor allocation and my opinion of
Bitcoin is that I I mean I think Bitcoin
is probably a good thing it's I think
it's primarily going to be a means of of
doing illegal transactions but that's
not necessarily entirely bad cuz not you
know
you know some things should be maybe
shouldn't be illegal it will be used for
for legal and illegal transactions
otherwise it would have no value as a
use of for for legal transaction because
you have to have a legal to Illegal
Bridge yeah I don't own any Bitcoin all
right is that a hot take or a not
take I think it's a useful definition of
money that it is a database of Labor
right it's you could think about it as
tokenized human labor as we described
earlier someone goes to work they
provide labor they receive money in
return that money is redeemable for
labor from others later right that's a
useful definition what I think he misses
though is
that Bitcoin is the only error prooof
database it's the only database that
can't be manipulated right so when a
central bank owns that database and all
of a sudden they award new tokens you
know new units of tokenized human labor
energy to themselves or whoever is near
the currency spigot they are
debasing the units of tokenized Labor
energy of everyone else so they are
introducing an error or entropy to that
database this corrupts the signal that
money facilitates which is the price
signal it also disincentivizes Savers
from saving and incentivizes Savers to
become in debtors right to accumulate
debt as we described earlier so yeah you
could call Money a database of tracking
uh labor however the ideal database
would be one that is error proof one
that cannot be manipulated or changed
willy-nilly by the whim of any
bureaucrat you want something that can
only be changed by those who are
actually rendering useful work to other
people and that's what Bitcoin is very
interesting so I'll say that was a weird
take um the there's two things that I
want to get to and I it's weird because
he's obviously this is so old so I think
he's sort of just encountering it but
there's two things one once you
understand that money is a technology
that allows people to capture the um
energetic value of their labor to be
used at a future date then all of a
sudden it's like whoa that's really
incredible that we came up with a way
whether it was shells back in the old
day grain salt whatever that you were
able to say I went and did this thing
and I have a reward for that that I
don't have to spend now spend later it's
equal in the um importance to giving
somebody else food so they can store fat
on their body in your behalf equal to
language I would say huge yeah uh the
other thing that I want to focus on is
this idea that I think is incredibly
important now as you see the Chinese
government ratchet up what they're doing
with the social credit score is you you
need to allow things to have a potential
illegal use and if you try to get
illegality down to zero you have to go
into the precog business
now all sudden you
are eliminate way that could WR that you
do end up with the
1984 uh thought crime stuff and so uh he
said it a little bit awkwardly but even
if money Bitcoin whatever is used for
illegal transactions if it has a real
utility you should let that in it's just
like freedom of speech of course people
are going to use speech to say hateful
horrible things but that doesn't mean
that you eradicate speech yeah or just
like US dollars right US dollars are
used for all kinds of illegal activities
doesn't mean they they turn off US
dollars or an invention as simple as the
knife right well people use knives to
prepare dinner every night and other
people use knives to kill people like we
don't make knives illegal people have
used cars to run people over it's like
you're not going to make cars illegal
like it's the tool is aoral Right money
is a tool you can't impute any morality
the tool oh someone use this for an
illegal purpose we need to illegalize
the tool that is [ __ ] nonsense makes
no sense
whatsoever all right number two a hot
take from Andrew Tate what do you think
about cryptocurrency are you invested
currency yeah so I'm I'm a proponent of
crypto I do use crypto Bitcoin eth the
big ones I think that chasing crypto
pumps is now over we're not the bull
run's over the stupid money is gone I
see they launched these coins and then
they start a telegram Community
everyone's like yeah we're all in this
together no you're not you're not in
this together if you buy crypto at a
dollar and then you sell it at $10
someone bought it off you at $10 they
start these stupid communities so all of
you sit there and don't dump so that the
developer could dump you're all dummies
you're all dummies it's a pretty good
description of
crypto um not Bitcoin yeah it's in
general crypto could be
described favorably as gambling devices
and unfavorably as pump and dump schemes
as he's describing right you create a
token you create a community uh some
kind of value proposition a website a
white paper whatever you create this
hype you know it's going to be the next
decentralized World computer whatever
whatever and you get people to buy this
hype this Innovation theater as I call
it the price goes up that's good you're
the original issuer of the token and
then you just dump it after it's 10x or
whatever your your multiple is and so
yeah that's basically what crypto is
they're pump and dump schemes the the
you know people are basically being used
as exit liquidity so people are getting
rug pulled all the time and that's why
it's such a disgusting space overall um
what's unique about Bitcoin once you
understand like the properties of good
money like we've talked about before and
uh Bitcoin is basically this Ultimate
Sound money you know call it digital
sound money it's it's an ideal asset you
have that same type of
Dynamic but there's no better asset to
dump it into actually so you know win at
10 X's well what are you going to do if
you're going to sell your Bitcoin for
what like for do well you don't want to
sell it for dollars because dollars get
debased you don't want to sell over for
gold because gold has you know um more
seizable has a more higher inflation
rate all these things that make it
inferior to bitcoin so Bitcoin you're
left with just this Perpetual pump
scheme basically it just goes up because
it is the most Superior monetary
technology we've ever had so it's you
know yeah crypto is pump and dump and
then Bitcoin is crypto minus the
dump there's just no better asset to
dump it into so therefore it just
pumps for me I think people need to
understand that all capital markets are
gambling full stop and something about
the way that it gets crystallized and
manipulated in crypto that's extra
creepy but if you fail to understand
that the stock market is a big gambling
pool that attracts gamblers uh you will
be very confused now that doesn't mean
that I don't like them it doesn't mean
that I don't think that there's a huge
purpose to the capital markets there are
but you a hedge fund is literally
betting against things for things it's
going to go up it's going to go down
like it's gambling so yeah Mis would say
all Human Action is specul because we
can never know with certainty that our
actions will create our intended
outcomes ever right so it's all
speculative it's all gambling right it's
all gambling you don't you don't know
anything that you're trying to do is
going to work out in your favor so we're
dealing with probabilities in every step
of Our Lives
yep all right this one you're familiar
with you've seen this one
before the US government can't go
bankrupt because we can print our own
money it obviously begs the question why
exactly are we borrowing in a currency
that we print ourselves I'm waiting for
someone to stand up and say why do we
borrow our own currency in the first
place like you said they print the
dollar so why why does the government
even borrow well
um the uh so the I mean again some of
this stuff gets some of the language
that the M some of the language and
concepts are just confusing I mean the
government definitely prints money and
it definitely lends that money which is
why the government definitely prints
money and then it lends that money by uh
by selling bonds uh is that what they
do they they um they yeah they they um
they sell bonds yeah they sell bonds
right because they sell bonds and people
buy the bonds and lend them the money
yeah
so a lot of times a lot of times at
least to my year with with mmt the the
language and the concepts can be kind of
unnecessarily confusing but there is no
question that the government prints
money and then it uses that money to um
uh uh so um yeah I I guess I'm just I
don't I can't really talk I don't I
don't get it I don't know what they're
talking about like CU it's like Jesus
the government clearly prints money it
does it all the time and it clearly
borrows otherwise we wouldn't be having
this Deb and Def conversation so I don't
think there's anything confusing
there bro he lied on his resume like
that is crazy that that clip is crazy
it's crazy it I've seen it titled as the
scariest clip on the internet that is by
far the scariest clip on the internet
that guy was actually advising President
Biden on his Economic Policy that's
insane I can't I can't fathom uh I think
he has a music degree or something like
he doesn't have a degree in economics um
clearly I would say in short that's your
brain on Fiat basically like it just
makes no [ __ ] sense whatsoever um if
I were to try and demystify what he's
saying us he doesn't know what he's
saying well I think what I think he if
you could answer her question yeah what
he wishes he understood here's what's
going on and I'll try to say it in as
simple terms as possible US Government
issues shitcoin called US Treasury it
can issue as many of these shitcoins as
it wants right this is debt creates it
out of thin air uses treasuries to
borrow dollars from the fed the Central
Bank of the United States that can also
issue US dollar shitcoin out of thin air
at infinitum right so US government is
issues us t shitcoin as many as they
want to borrow as many USD shitcoin from
the Federal Reserve as they want the
dollar that's how dollars come into the
system they are born at interest they
are borrowed into existence there's an
interest rate paid to the private owners
of the shareholders of the Federal
Reserve whose uh names we don't know but
we have some ideas about it right in
general um that's the the circle jerk
that's going on here and the cost of
that is externalized onto everyone using
USD as a savings vehicle they're getting
their purchasing power debased with each
new dollar that is counterfeited into
existence via this mechanism and this is
what this is the circle jerk that
Bitcoin
fixes yeah I still can't believe that
clip is real it looks like parody but
it's not clown World Jesus clown world
all right last one after Bitcoin just
hit a alltime high somebody was right
but I know this is not Financial advice
disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer how
bananas do you think it's going to go
yeah so this is a tweet I put out on
March 6th
2024 um this was right around the
Bitcoin having which I believe was May
2024 this year someone could check me on
that but I think it was May um and
historically Bitcoin puts in a new
all-time high price roughly
approximately 18 months after the having
so I put this tweet out um you know I
hope you guys like bananas because over
the next 12 to 18 months Bitcoin is
going to go bananas and I retweeted it
today or the yesterday sometime recently
here in November because well bitcoin's
at a new alltime high price but I think
we're just getting started I think we're
going to put in um a really face melting
number by the end of 2025 and you're
going to I'm already getting bombarded
by the the way it's so weird to be in
Bitcoin because you go through this
entire cycle of drama where bitcoin
price goes up people are all texting me
foming how do I
buy and then as soon as bitcoin price
goes down they're like oh my God it's
going to zero right like it's all over
like should I sell it and then Bitcoin
goes into sidebound trading for three
years you know between having Cycles
before it goes into that giant blowoff
top and everyone's quiet everyone thinks
oh bitcoin's still a thing like no one
talks to me it's radi silence you know
you're still into that what's wrong with
you it's like I've seen this this is the
third cycle I guess I'm going into now
and sure enough you know Trump got
elected I'm getting blown up with people
asking me questions about it um and so
you know those who live by the crystal
ball are bound to eat glass I am not
making this prediction for any reason
other than entertainment purposes this
is not Financial advice this was just my
read on bitcoin's prior price
movements as it relates to Prior uh
range-bound trading and mapped over its
having
Cycles but I I put this prediction out I
think three years ago at this point that
I I thought it would
trade north of
$300,000 by its next Market cycle Peak
that was my prediction three years ago
so I'll just stick to that one for
entertainment purposes only and what
time duration is that before the end of
2025 wow 3 100K before the end of 2025
above 300K nice yeah all right wow well
if it hits that number my friend I'll
take you out for a very nice day dinner
and that would put it around a little
bit less than half of Gold's market cap
Gold's Market Cap's around 15 A5
trillion I think that would put Bitcoin
probably around five or six trillion
market cap uh again someone could check
me on that but I think that's about
right five or six trillion seems like a
reasonable number for this cycle and
then next cycle I would expect it to
Eclipse Gold's market cap and and go on
up from there be fascinating to watch
and speaking of which where can people
follow along with you to see what you're
up to yeah uh thank you for having me
always love talking to you a lot of fun
uh I'm what ISM money podcast.com and
I'm on Twitter at breed love22 I love it
all right everybody speaking of other
things that I love if you haven't
already be sure to subscribe and until
next time my friends be legendary take
care peace if you like this conversation
check out this episode to learn more
Michael sailor welcome back to the
show happy to be
here it is very good to have you now at
the time of recording Bitcoin is over
100k and has been for quite a while at
this point so I think the question of is
Bitcoin real is dead uh but now