Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 467: The Sound of Money

Transcript

Episode 467: The Sound of Money · Words & Numbers

0:00
Today on Words and Numbers, Denmark copywriting your.
0:03
Face. An Ontario ad campaign.
0:06
And the sound of money. All this and more coming up on
0:09
Words and Numbers, a civil original production.
0:13
Check us out at civil.com. That's C ivl.com.
0:17
Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony.
0:18
And this is words and numbers. It's not exciting in your world
0:26
this weekend. One of our long time listeners,
0:28
Sydney Dewind, sent me something from.
0:32
Facebook Cigna is not only a listener, she is a friend.
0:36
Well, she is. I wanted to put in context.
0:38
We've known her for what, 10 years or more?
0:42
Yeah, she's a when you were unavailable, she when you were
0:47
unavailable, she would go out with me to do a high school
0:49
programs. That's right.
0:51
I forgot that. Yeah.
0:52
Well, we've known her since she was a graduate student.
0:54
She's now a professor. And I apologize, I forget where,
0:58
but she sent me this thing on Facebook in response to to a
1:03
discussion we had had about copyrights.
1:06
She says Denmark proposes A copyright law that grants
1:11
citizens ownership of their face, voice and body to fight
1:16
against AI deep fakes. And oddly enough, when I said
1:21
Denmark, this is exactly what I wanted to talk about.
1:25
So great. Mind, we've got the same quick
1:28
hit. So great minds think alike and
1:31
you think like me too. These are two different things
1:36
anyway, Anyway, when when I saw what's your take on?
1:42
Well, you know, Cigna didn't send it to me, which cheeses me
1:46
off a little bit and maybe I'm going to have to have words with
1:48
her about this, but nonetheless. Well, she likes you and you're
1:52
James, so. Just shut your pie hole.
1:58
I, I saw it in the Guardian and in just kind of a standard news
2:03
sweep that I do every every day. And I thought, well, look at
2:08
that, I finally have a thing that I can say is a perfectly
2:14
reasonable and justified thing for government to do.
2:18
Well, yeah, and I would agree with you.
2:19
It falls under the the heading of defining and protecting
2:23
property rights. Property rights exactly so.
2:25
And if if you don't have a property right in your person,
2:31
then you don't have a property right in anything right that
2:35
that just necessarily follows. Also in a digital world, there
2:42
might be more to having property in your person than just saying
2:47
I own myself and you can't enslave me.
2:51
Maybe also my voice is something that I own as a property, right?
2:59
And sadly my face and all the things I would say and do and
3:06
think. And I remember having this
3:09
conversation, a very odd conversation with a number of
3:13
women and you, you'll see why it was specifically women I had
3:17
this conversation with. I I would ask them what would be
3:21
your response if you found out that somebody took your face and
3:28
through electronic manipulation pasted it onto a porn star in a
3:37
scene so it looked like it was you in that scene and they were
3:43
all horrified by the idea. And then I would tell them that
3:49
technology already exists. There are people who might have
3:53
already done this to you without your knowledge and they claimed
3:59
it was a violation. And and I pushed hard asking how
4:05
exactly is it a violation if it's not really you?
4:09
And nobody really came up with the answer in those
4:13
conversations that the Danes have come up with.
4:15
Now that you have a property interest in your name, likeness
4:22
and what's always the third thing name like list name,
4:26
likeness, an image that you can actually own those.
4:31
And we've, we've come around with college athletes to say you
4:36
own your name, likeness and image.
4:38
So if you want to go or if people want to hire you to be a
4:43
spokesman, you don't lose your amateur sporting status because
4:47
of that. It's name like likeness, image.
4:49
Go go nuts. And I think that's a more fair
4:54
thing to tell college athletes. Then the college will benefit
4:59
from your hard work and you'll get a free education that, let's
5:02
face it, you're not interested in in the first place.
5:06
Right. Right, right.
5:07
So I think the Daines are on to something here.
5:10
Yeah, I and I don't disagree with with the sentiment and, and
5:15
I may even agree with what they have in mind, but it raises
5:20
some, it raises some unintended consequence questions, which
5:27
are, is it the case that if I'm then let's suppose this law's in
5:32
place and I'm walking down the street and somebody happens to
5:35
be videoing and I appear on their video.
5:38
Can I now sue and say, look, you're using me in this video?
5:42
No, because that's a public thing, right?
5:45
And we already have laws that cover that.
5:47
But think of it this way. We have a listener out there,
5:51
I'm not going to say his name, Jesse Hunt, but Jesse.
5:56
Jesse sent me a file once of you saying a bunch of things that
6:04
you. I know I heard this.
6:05
You would never say and he said you should just do the podcast
6:11
with this fake Anthony instead. He would say such smart things
6:16
and I thought Jesse didn't really say that, but I really
6:19
thought that. And somehow that would be wrong,
6:24
right to to represent a thing as you that is not in fact you.
6:30
Yeah, and it seems to me there's a big difference there because
6:34
if you're filming me walking down the street, you are
6:37
capturing something that I did. It's real, it's true.
6:41
But if you put me in this fake situation, it's it's it's would
6:46
be the same thing as me quoting something James Harrigan said
6:50
and me just making something up and saying James said this.
6:54
But that's right. And I, I don't think there's a
6:57
lot of territory for unintended consequences here because.
7:02
Because there's one more I haven't said yet.
7:03
All right, go ahead. What do you do in the case of
7:07
twins? Well, I mean, look, that's
7:10
always been a, a, a bit of a sticky wicked, hasn't it, over
7:14
over the many years. And I think you have to treat
7:17
them the same way that we would treat any other individual.
7:20
It's just going to be a lot harder to figure it out.
7:22
Well, yeah, I mean, I'm my immediate reaction is we got to
7:26
decide which one owns the face. Well, they each.
7:29
I mean, ultimately that's the question.
7:31
They each own their own face. It just so happens that they
7:35
have the same face for the most part.
7:39
Right there. All kinds of little tiny things.
7:42
But I take your point. Twins are difficult.
7:45
But you don't allow the hard case to make the law.
7:48
You will. You will allow the right case to
7:51
make the law and. Well, hang on a second, because
7:56
if you're going to say, OK, we'll deal with twins, then I
7:59
say, OK, I take this picture of James and I, I put a birthmark
8:02
on it and I say it's not James anymore.
8:03
But it is, it is, it is, and we all know it is, right.
8:11
Let's, let's be reasonable here. I, I think the interesting thing
8:14
here is going to be answering questions not from the present
8:18
in the future, but the past. Can can James Dean star in a new
8:23
movie? Who owns James Dean?
8:26
James Dean is long as long as long dead, right?
8:30
Do people at some point go into the public domain?
8:34
100 years after I die, will it then be acceptable to make a
8:39
James chatbot without asking anybody or compensating anybody?
8:44
Those are the interesting questions that we're going to
8:47
have to answer. But in the here and now, saying
8:51
in the age of AI, you can't attribute to a person things
8:57
that person did not say and then make something that's so utterly
9:01
believable. And look, we've been talking
9:03
about village idiots on and off over the last couple of months.
9:08
And I keep an eye on them on Facebook especially.
9:11
They will buy hook, line and sinker any AI thing that you put
9:15
up, even with obvious flaws. So what happens when AI no
9:20
longer has obvious flaws? The village idiots are going to
9:23
buy it and they outnumber us. So I mean, people are going to
9:28
need some form of protection. Otherwise everybody who has a
9:32
fight with anybody is going to be online saying horrible racist
9:36
things, going to get fired immediately.
9:39
This is not a world we can we can live with.
9:42
The real question is how are you going to be able to trace people
9:45
down, track them down if they in fact do this?
9:50
Because they're going to be guilty of crimes, right?
9:52
This is going to become a forensic endeavor to go find
9:56
these people. And that, that's going to be
9:59
really interesting. And just I guess related to
10:03
that, let's suppose hypothetically we get to the
10:05
point that AI is, is so good that I can create a video of you
10:13
robbing a bank and you say, no, Davies made this AI, this is AI.
10:18
But what if you actually did rob the bank and someone was
10:21
videoing? It would and look, they're all
10:23
going to be all kinds of crackpot things that happen.
10:26
And in fact, that might provide for me the best alibi ever
10:31
Davies made that I didn't rob the I didn't rob the bank,
10:34
right? Anyway, if there is a Danish
10:38
lawmaker in the sound of my voice, please be in touch.
10:43
We would love to talk about this with you in person.
10:47
Absolutely. Which which of course, brings us
10:49
to the foolishness of the week. Did you happen to see the
10:54
advertisement that the province of Ontario made and ran all over
11:01
American TV in the last week? No.
11:04
It it was really great. It was Ronald Reagan talking
11:09
about free trade and one American who you may or may not
11:16
be able to guess lost his ever loving mind the minute to sit
11:24
the air and and President Donald Trump said those damn Canadians
11:32
have made a fake AI of Ronald Reagan talking about free trade.
11:39
Not wow is that that Was his response fake?
11:43
AI not realizing that Ronald Reagan was in fact free trade,
11:48
anti tariff free trade. So one of two things must be
11:54
true. The president did not know that,
11:58
or he did know it and lied about it.
12:01
I leave it to our listeners to decide which one of those things
12:05
is true. But that is the universe of
12:08
possibilities. There's no third option.
12:11
It's literally ignorance or malice.
12:15
Which would you prefer? But but aunt, that's, that's not
12:18
where the story ends. It couldn't be the foolishness
12:21
of the week if President Trump blew a gasket over an ad.
12:25
No, no, no. There has to be an action that
12:28
comes along with it. And he said because of said ad,
12:32
I do hereby add 10% to the Canadian tariff.
12:39
I knew I somehow I knew that's what it was going to be.
12:42
And yet it is just as funny. It is my God.
12:45
But, but here's the thing. Phil Magnus came on a long time
12:48
ago and explained in graphic detail, such granular detail
12:54
that nobody wanted to hear any more, right?
12:56
That the the the mechanisms, the legal mechanisms by which
13:01
presidents can implement tariffs legally.
13:05
And it comes down to national emergencies, right?
13:09
So Donald Trump decided that his not knowing Ronald Reagan was a
13:16
free trader is a national emergency that warrants a 10%
13:22
further tariff on the nation of Canada.
13:26
Donald the Mad. Maybe he wants to be a king.
13:29
Every king gets a good title. I would be James the Just
13:33
drawing from the Catholic. But really, this isn't it seems
13:38
I'm I'm not prepared. I'm not prepared to say the man
13:42
is is stupid. No, I, I am prepared.
13:47
Let me say it this way. My going in assumption is he's
13:50
simply pushing as hard as he can until somebody pushes back.
13:54
Which, weirdly, is the way the founders designed the government
13:58
to. Work, yeah, but they didn't
13:59
assume that Congress would never push back.
14:03
Right. Which is always the the tricky
14:05
bit. Anyway, that's what we've got
14:08
this week. I promise I I will not be able
14:10
to come up with anything Dumber next week.
14:13
We're happy to announce that Civil members can join me and
14:16
James for a new lecture series, Words and Numbers Live.
14:20
Words and Numbers Live is a members only series in which
14:23
James and I talk about issues in politics, philosophy and
14:26
economics. We take a deeper dive and then
14:29
invite listeners for a live Q&A session.
14:32
In this week's session, which is available now, we explore
14:35
unintended consequences. To participate in this exclusive
14:38
series, subscribe to civil@civil.com.
14:42
That's CI vl.com. When you log into civil.com,
14:46
you'll find an archive of our past lectures, as well as
14:49
collections of our episodes of Words and Numbers and
14:52
announcements about upcoming lectures in our new Words and
14:55
Numbers Live series. Subscribe to Civil for $5 a
14:58
month or $50.00 for an annual subscription.
15:02
This week, JP Cortez joins us. JP is the lead author of the
15:06
Sound Money Index and Executive Director of the Sound Money
15:11
Defense League, an organization working to re monetize gold and
15:16
silver. JP, welcome to Words of Numbers.
15:19
Thank you very much for having me.
15:20
I'm excited for this conversation.
15:21
So let's just jump in with actually taking off your bio.
15:26
What does it mean re monetize gold and silver?
15:29
So when we say re monetizing gold and silver, what we're
15:32
talking about is removing all of the disincentives and the taxes
15:37
and all of the the Breyer and Thistle standing in the way of
15:40
people using gold and silver today as money.
15:43
When the sound money defence league was established back in
15:46
2014, we looked around at the state of play and realized,
15:49
wait, the reason people aren't using gold and silver.
15:52
There are probably multiple reasons, but maybe chief among
15:55
them is the fact that there's so much friction introduced into
15:59
any gold and silver transaction by government and by regulatory
16:02
agencies that make it unworkable.
16:04
It is literally impossible to to practically use gold and silver
16:09
today as money. So we go state to state and to
16:12
the federal level removing all of these points of friction that
16:15
would allow for smoother transactions in gold and silver.
16:19
As both of you know, there really is no entity like the US
16:24
dollar as far as tax treatment. The IRS, that there is nothing
16:28
else that the IRS considers a non entity for taxation purposes
16:33
and that is what allows the dollar to be used
16:37
transactionally with very little resistance.
16:39
So to take that designation and then apply it to things that
16:44
could actually and historically have been used as money, we are.
16:48
We are arguing our hypothesis is that if given a choice, people
16:53
would rather sound money. Money that is tangibly backed,
16:57
money that is subject to market forces over long term over Fiat
17:02
money, which is government or money by edict.
17:04
Money by government. Money that only has value
17:07
because the government says it does.
17:09
JP if I may, what is the sound money index?
17:12
So the sound money index. Thank you for asking.
17:14
There's a yearly. You've come.
17:16
You've come prepared. Of course, of course.
17:18
It's a yearly. It's a yearly index that we
17:21
publish, I believe since 2017. So I think this is our 8th
17:25
edition or 9th edition, maybe the upcoming year that ranks all
17:28
50 states by their pro or anti sound money policies.
17:32
So states that have states towards the top of the index are
17:35
ones that have removed sales tax on the purchase of precious
17:38
metals, removed capital gains tax on the sale of precious
17:41
metals, have established or yeah, created a, a reserve for
17:46
the state in physical gold and silver, have issued or invested
17:49
in gold bonds, have removed owners regulations of other
17:52
sorts. So it's a very holistic
17:54
scorecard that ranks all 50 states by the actions that
17:58
they've taken or or haven't taken.
18:00
So towards the top of the list, your Wyoming's, your Idaho,
18:04
Alaska, states like that. And then down towards the
18:06
bottom, Vermont, New Jersey, California, states like that
18:10
with high incidences of taxation, high rates at that.
18:14
So it, it's been really interesting scoring this card
18:17
for so many years and seeing which states have been proactive
18:20
and which states have dithered down and, and haven't done
18:23
really much of anything to promote sound money protecting
18:26
their own state coffers. Many states haven't gone as far
18:29
as to protect their own state coffers with gold and silver, or
18:32
even like I said, removing the the disincentives that stand in
18:36
the way of individuals re adopting their own gold standard
18:39
if they wanted to. So you've, you've answered the
18:42
first question I wrote down, which is what are the frictions?
18:46
And I if I were to summarize, it's less friction means less
18:51
restrictions on the buying and selling gold in including but
18:55
not limited to sales taxes. Yeah, I would say that's
18:59
accurate. You know, taxes are certainly a
19:00
big part of it. Go ahead, go ahead.
19:02
I'm sorry. So so that my second question is
19:04
why? What's wrong with the US dollar?
19:09
Well, the US dollar as it exists today, the the qualms that sound
19:13
money advocates have against the US dollar are are there are
19:17
several. They're multifaceted.
19:18
The first being that Fiat money as it exists today has an
19:22
expiration date. It it naturally is, is withering
19:25
away because of the dilution, because of the perpetual
19:28
printing of money by the federal government.
19:30
This leads to the dilution of the purchasing power of each
19:33
individual dollar this year. Principles that we've known for
19:36
a long time. If you were to add water to
19:38
wine, each subsequent glass of wine would be less potent, and
19:42
that is exactly what is happening here with the dollar.
19:44
On top of that, it's this debt enabled inflation that allows
19:49
the government to commit things and to commit acts that it would
19:54
never be allowed to if it had to get consent of the taxed.
19:58
So the the Fiat system is what allows for wars of choice all
20:03
over the world. It is what allows for a growing
20:06
bloated, inefficient bureaucracy.
20:08
It is what allows for the Ponzi schemes that make up American
20:11
entitlement systems today. All of these things are enabled
20:15
by a Federal Reserve System. So when you look at how the the
20:19
functionality of all this, you can see that the Fiat dollar,
20:23
the the Federal Reserve note which is commonly used commonly.
20:27
Commonly described as the US dollar incorrectly, but the
20:31
Federal Reserve note allows for it is the the chief
20:36
counterfeiter that allows for all of the other abysmal,
20:39
atrocious things that government can only do because it has a
20:43
printing press, because it can print and spend at will.
20:46
So by constraining a government keeping it from doing this, what
20:49
we'll see is that one individuals and institutions
20:52
will be able to plan long term better.
20:55
You can enter 10/20/30 year arrangements because you can
20:59
reliably, you can reliably count on the value of the dollar being
21:03
generally stable. That's the only reason you can
21:06
do this. If you were worried about
21:07
hyperinflation, if you were worried about your dollar losing
21:10
value, you wouldn't be able to plan that far ahead.
21:12
So first, sound money provides that, it provides the ability
21:16
for long term planning. And like I said, the second is
21:19
that it acts as a bulwark it it protects against the government
21:22
that would otherwise spend and act extrajudiciously and outside
21:27
of its constitutionally granted means.
21:29
Let let me push back a little bit.
21:33
When you talk about the the, the stable value of gold versus the
21:40
dollar, I can't help but remember that back in the 80's,
21:44
the price of gold rose to 800 and then crashed and then never
21:49
didn't regain that 800 level for 2025 years.
21:54
And so I look at that and I say, what are you talking about?
21:56
Stable value? I would say that you're
21:59
absolutely right. In that short term, there are
22:01
corrections that happened to the price of gold, but I think long
22:05
term we've seen it hold up. And you can see that, for
22:08
example, in the work of of academics who I'm sure you're
22:12
familiar with, economist Lawrence White talks about how
22:15
Doctor White talks about how gold has a mean reversion
22:18
property that goes underappreciated.
22:20
Built into the economics of gold mining is our pressures that
22:25
hold the value or at least keep it from drifting way up high
22:29
indefinitely or way down low indefinitely.
22:31
Gold and silver has a mean reverting property because of
22:34
the fact that there are costs associated with mining that
22:37
keeps gold and silver approximately at around the same
22:40
level. And you're right.
22:41
So for example, you can see examples throughout history
22:44
where for example, the California gold rush where
22:47
massive increases in the in the price or excuse me, in the
22:50
supply of gold were met with short term fluctuations.
22:53
But long term, these all revise or or revert back down to the
22:57
mean or, or to a stable average. So you're right to answer your
23:02
question again, short term you run into risks like that.
23:05
But so that is the answer. So long term, gold and silver
23:09
hold up very much better than Fiat.
23:12
And that's that is what allows it to be good money.
23:16
That's what makes it preferable to a a dollar that is
23:20
perpetually devaluing, among other things, I should say.
23:24
So we started with hard money, then went to gold, then went to
23:28
gold and silver. Do we also include platinum and
23:33
Palladium? Is it just gold and silver?
23:36
Do we edge out into things like baskets of commodities or
23:42
Bitcoin? Where's the proper line drawn in
23:46
your mind and why? As a question of sound money,
23:49
which is what the Sound Money Defense League obviously
23:51
specializes in defending and promoting, we define this as
23:55
gold and silver. We don't generally include
23:58
platinum, Palladium, while they are precious metals.
24:00
One of the big arguments as to why we decided, why we ended up
24:05
on gold and silver is because of the massive historical element
24:08
here, thousands of years of, of monetary stability of of of of a
24:14
standard across geographic locations, across cultures,
24:18
across religions. Gold and silver has served
24:20
effectively as, as this asset, as a, a unit of measure, as a,
24:26
a, yeah, a, a hedge against inflation.
24:29
The other side is that constitutionally, when I'm
24:32
talking to legislators, when I'm speaking, giving testimony at
24:36
committee hearings or speaking to legislators, the points that
24:40
I'm making are largely constitutional.
24:42
I can tell you that in Article 1, Section 10 of the US
24:44
Constitution, it says that no state shall make anything but
24:48
gold and silver coin, a tender in the payment of debts.
24:51
So when I talk to legislators who have put their hands on a
24:53
Bible and swore an oath to the United States Constitution
24:56
Institution, I can tell them, hey, in this document that you
25:00
pledged an oath to is a mandate to make sure that nothing but
25:04
gold and silver is money. I can't make that same argument
25:07
when I'm talking about a basket of goods or even things like
25:10
Bitcoin. And you know, going back to
25:13
Doctor White's argument, Doctor White's argument addresses
25:16
Bitcoin in that way. You know, part of what makes,
25:18
like I mentioned the mean reverting a property of gold and
25:21
silver, part of what makes that functional or, or appealing
25:25
versus other assets that could potentially function as money
25:30
are that it, there is, there is a, a market element to this.
25:36
Whereas Bitcoin has no response to any changes in supply or, or
25:42
any changes in demand because it has a fixed supply.
25:46
We talked about gold and silver having a fixed supply.
25:49
That's actually a little bit of a misnomer.
25:51
It has a supply that's that's that's variable, but it's
25:54
minimal and it's dependent on, like I said, the economics of
25:57
mining. So to me, that's just another
26:00
strong reason why gold and silver can are are well suited
26:04
to function as money. Because to be sure, gold and
26:08
silver in and of themselves have no inherent value.
26:11
There is nothing special about gold and silver but that they
26:14
they have strong properties that we would want in a long standing
26:18
money. That is ultimately what make
26:21
gold and silver special, that it's fungible, that it's
26:23
divisible, that it's scarce, so on and so forth.
26:26
And these properties make good money, especially when you
26:30
compare that or juxtapose that to a a paper money, a government
26:35
script. Let me back you up just a step,
26:38
because you said something interesting, right?
26:40
You said, drawing from Article 1, Section 10, that no state
26:45
shall. But your real argument here
26:50
isn't with the states. Your argument is with the
26:52
federal government and and Fiat money.
26:55
So how do you reconcile these two halves of the coin you're
26:59
dealing with? You are completely right, and
27:01
that's not something that people typically understand.
27:04
So good on you, James, for for catching that.
27:06
You're completely right. The dysfunction, the monetary
27:10
dysfunction that we live under today is largely the result of
27:14
the Federal Reserve and acts of Congress.
27:16
We know that this the the dysfunction stems from that
27:19
level, but that doesn't mean that states have to sit idly by
27:23
while the purchasing power of their money is sapped away by
27:26
the federal government or in the case of the Federal Reserve, a a
27:29
private banking cartel. The states can take actions to
27:33
mitigate some of this damage. Like I mentioned, a lot of this
27:36
has to do with freeing up the lifeboats.
27:38
The few remaining lifeboats that exist are currently shackled
27:42
again with taxation and regulation.
27:44
So to remove this is to it is the, the goal is to enact a
27:53
Hayekian conception of denationalization of money,
27:58
creating a market for money that is not dependent on things like
28:01
legal tender status, which is what the US Federal Reserve note
28:05
enjoys today, which is a government designation that was
28:08
completely made-up in order to imbue monetary properties on
28:12
something that does not naturally possess them.
28:15
Legal tender as a concept would not exist if it not for the
28:19
government trying to fool people out of using real money and
28:22
using their paper money. That is the, the origins in the
28:25
United States. Of course, starting at the Civil
28:28
War, Lincoln needed to fund the Civil War.
28:30
He didn't have enough gold, so he had to print gold backs.
28:32
And we know the history of gold backs in regards to their,
28:36
their, their purchasing power that was zapped to nothing.
28:40
So I think the like, like we said, the states are not the
28:46
primary culprit here, but there are things that they can do.
28:50
And importantly, we've seen throughout other issues, not
28:53
just sound money, good policy tends to percolate upwards.
28:57
It's hard, it's really hard to pass policy at the state level
29:00
and at the federal level. To pass legislation at the
29:03
federal level means needing to be extremely connected and
29:06
individuals just considering the efficacy of political of of
29:10
participating in politics. When you reach out to A to a
29:13
federal legislator, you'll call DC.
29:16
You may get an aide who might answer your call.
29:19
You'll probably get a machine. If you write an e-mail, you'll
29:21
probably get a formal response back.
29:23
Your e-mail might trickle up to the congressperson that you're
29:26
talking to. But you largely have very little
29:29
power in DC. But that's not true in Lincoln,
29:32
NE or Nashville, TN or Salem OR in state capitals.
29:37
You still have power as an individual.
29:39
And so to pass legislation at the state level is infinitely
29:42
one, more cost effective and two, just a better use of our
29:45
time than then launching large federal campaigns that largely
29:51
don't work. So if we can get policies to
29:54
percolate upwards and force then the federal government to act,
29:58
then we can see that that we're making the real change.
30:01
But of course, all of this, you know, like the, I would, I
30:05
personally love the idea of a family in Lincoln, NE or, you
30:10
know, a family in that in Frankfort, KY, being able to
30:14
establish their own gold standard.
30:16
But what we're talking about is bigger than this.
30:18
And ultimately we have to address this problem head on and
30:21
that that that problem lies with the Leviathan at the top.
30:25
And that is the ultimate enemy. Let me ask you a related
30:28
question. I, I think that the, the, the
30:33
theory and the constitutionality topics are fascinating and I
30:38
really enjoy them, but I can imagine our listeners wanting to
30:42
know at a practical level, let's assume that that whatever system
30:48
you have in mind, you could wave a magic wand and, and it's, it's
30:52
in existence. What practically speaking, does
30:55
it look like? Do we still have paper money?
30:58
Can I pay with my phone? What?
31:01
What's my day-to-day look like as I deal with money in your
31:04
world? I think that it's important to
31:07
note from the top that the answer is that I don't know.
31:11
And that's, I think I wish more people, more scientists,
31:13
political scientists, economists would give this answer.
31:16
The truth is that's part and parcel with the Austro
31:19
libertarian ideology. Individuals don't know.
31:22
Central planners don't have the answers to these questions.
31:25
And that's why it's so important that markets be able to
31:28
experiment and answer these questions.
31:30
But personally, how this could potentially look, I don't think
31:34
it has to look a lot different from the world we're living in
31:36
today. I think that, you know, we're
31:38
not even necessarily asking for a, a gold standard as as a far
31:43
as like congressional, A congressional act that
31:46
establishes a peg. I don't think that's necessarily
31:49
what we need either. It's not necessarily gold backed
31:51
money. It's gold as money.
31:53
So the question isn't a top down approach that establishes some
31:57
system. It is largely getting the
31:59
government the hell out of the way and letting bottom up
32:02
approaches work themselves out. There are plenty of ways that
32:05
this could work Today, the ubiquity of these products,
32:07
fractional products is more common than ever.
32:10
Today you have everywhere from 1-2 thousandth of an ounce of
32:15
gold in the form of a physical bill where the technology has
32:19
advanced such that you have physical gold in lane in special
32:24
polymers that make it impossible or or very difficult that leads
32:27
to counterfeit and such. And so if you wanted to transact
32:30
that essentially at on today's gold prices would function as a
32:33
$2.00 bill. That's a very functional
32:35
practical instrument of exchange.
32:38
Of course, they're also digital answers to this.
32:41
There are more than there have been the the electronic nature
32:46
of the digital nature of money. This can look like tokenized
32:50
gold, which is what some people are doing.
32:52
I think that the part of part of your question sort of hinges on
32:57
the fact that what would people want or, or what would it look
33:01
like when people spent their gold.
33:03
And I think today as it exists, there really isn't a great
33:06
reason to spend your gold at all.
33:08
Because of Gresham's law, because of the the monetary
33:11
system that we live under today, we're living in a scenario where
33:16
where businesses and tax collectors will happily accept
33:20
your depreciating paper notes for for goods and services.
33:25
So why would I spend me as an individual?
33:27
Why would I spend my good money, my sound money when I know that
33:31
my bad money is accepted? It's that's the people are
33:35
willing to accept that. So anyone working in that space,
33:39
in the space of trying to make more gold transactional, they're
33:42
fighting an uphill battle to be sure.
33:44
They're fighting against the laws of economics.
33:46
They're fighting against the system that exists today, but
33:50
allowing for this infrastructure to be developed in the case one.
33:54
If anyone wants to take on these massive tax obligations, they
33:57
can. But more importantly, I guess
34:01
the plumbing should be there. In the case anything were to
34:04
ever happen with America's economic system, in the case
34:08
that the dollar were to collapse, in the case the
34:10
Federal Reserve were to shutter its doors, we would have the
34:13
infrastructure or the plumbing to be able to then adjust.
34:17
So this is just an alternative. More than anything.
34:21
What we're talking about is creating markets, introducing
34:24
systems that allow for people to adopt as they see fit.
34:27
So is it fair to say then that on the front end life might look
34:33
exactly as it does now, but on the back end what's happened is
34:38
you have taken away from the government the ability to
34:42
arbitrarily expand the money supply?
34:44
It is absolutely true that by doing this you would you would
34:47
take away the government's ability to arbitrarily expand
34:50
the money supply. I would not go so far to say as
34:53
on the front end there would be no differences.
34:56
I think that what we experienced today in a Fiat system like the
34:59
one we exist in today, you're, you're met with a trilemma.
35:03
A trilemma is introduced to every dollar holder.
35:05
So, so on in an inflationary With an inflationary currency,
35:09
you have three options, none of which are good.
35:12
You can spend your money immediately to preserve its
35:14
purchasing power before inflation takes it.
35:16
You can save your money and pay the inflation tax, or you can
35:20
throw your money into the casino that is the stock market and
35:23
hope to make back some return. And that third option?
35:27
Many people are not sophisticated enough as
35:29
investors to do this skillfully. So these three options that that
35:34
we're left with, none of which are, are promising or good, and
35:37
they all massively influence the way we invest, the way we save,
35:41
the way we spend, and the way we generally organize society.
35:46
So what what we have today, you know, this, this depreciating
35:49
currency, it breeds consumerism, it breeds waste.
35:55
And of course you can see that on the government, on the
35:57
federal level, it it breeds things like war, it breeds
36:01
dishonesty and that trickles down societally.
36:04
Individuals are largely or or many individuals many times it
36:09
can be a reflection. This society and culture
36:11
trickles down from from government.
36:14
And so when you have a dishonest government that's regularly
36:16
engaging in dishonesty and counterfeit and lying and
36:19
stealing in in unconstitutional war around the world, funding
36:24
it, if not actively fighting it, what we've seen here is a
36:28
massive, a massive impetus, a massive reason today to address
36:34
this problem head on. And historically, the answer has
36:37
been gold and silver. And that's in part why we are
36:41
choosing to promote this and why gold and silver have been the
36:44
focus of the monetary system we wish to see.
36:48
James and I are delighted to be working with Civil.
36:50
For years we have been pushing people to think about how we can
36:54
make the world a better place. Civil's mission of upgrading
36:57
society fits exactly with what James and I have been talking
37:01
about for years. Civil helps us by allowing us to
37:04
do what we do best, which is researching topics that are
37:08
important and communicating these to our listeners in a way
37:11
that we hope they find enjoyable.
37:14
To see Civil's extensive list of content, including our podcast
37:17
Words and Numbers and our new lecture series, Words and
37:20
Numbers Live, visit civil.com. That's civl.com.
37:26
I have a very strange question. I you might not have any
37:29
thoughts on this at all, but unless you have the greatest
37:33
genes in the history of the gene pool, you're probably a bit
37:36
younger than than myself. And Anthony and Ant and I are
37:41
just old enough to remember United States Silver
37:45
certificates. They they kind of, they were
37:49
almost gone by the time we were able to go to the store with a
37:54
dollar or two. Once in a while you'd get one is
37:56
change, yeah. Every now and again and they,
37:59
they went out of fashion in 1964 when we took silver out of out
38:03
of the, the coin that we were using.
38:07
But wouldn't it be interesting if we had two kinds of dollars,
38:11
right, The gold back gold or silverback dollar and the Fiat
38:14
nonsense that we have now and just let the market decide what
38:18
was worth what? Well, let let let me jump in
38:21
because JP mentioned Gresham's Law which I wanted to to mention
38:26
for our listeners. Gresham's Law roughly boils down
38:29
to if you have two competing currencies like you just
38:31
described, James, people are going to use the one that they
38:34
consider less valuable, get rid of it.
38:38
You want to hold on to the other one.
38:39
Well, they'll do that until it's worth absolutely nothing.
38:44
Right, Yeah. Then you've got you've got no
38:46
choice. Which?
38:47
I would suggest different topic, but I would suggest that might
38:51
be what's happening with Bitcoin perhaps.
38:53
Sorry, JP. No, no, I, I think.
38:58
And so pre 1965 like you mentioned you had silver
39:01
certificates, Dimes, quarters, half dollars, they had either 90
39:05
or 40% silver in them depending on which which type of yeah,
39:09
which type of of item you had. And we still see some of those
39:14
in circulation today, people either not knowing what they
39:16
have I. Got one in change in the past 10
39:21
years. And so that's that one quarter
39:24
or dime is probably today worth 7 or $8.
39:28
And so yeah, I think that that's ultimately what we want to see.
39:32
Like I mentioned, you have Gresham's law, you have things
39:34
that are fighting against a market for transactional gold
39:39
today within the current system. But the, the, the ultimate goal,
39:45
like you said, we're, we're talking about a long term thing
39:48
here. And I think that not there,
39:51
there are people all over the United States who have never
39:53
made this connection. You know, there are nearly 8000
39:57
elected state officials, state legislators across the United
40:00
States. The vast majority have never
40:03
heard the term sound money, have never considered fundamental
40:05
questions about money regarding, you know, even what is money?
40:09
What problem societal problem does this aim to solve?
40:13
Where does it derive its value? So on and so forth.
40:15
So, so much of this is an education issue.
40:19
It's not, You know that. That people are allergic to gold
40:22
or that that the people are, are well informed and, and they're,
40:27
you know, either MMT or, or, or you know, whoever it is, it's,
40:31
it's largely that they don't know and they've never
40:33
considered questions like this. So by simply asking some of
40:36
these questions, by simply showing someone a 1964 half
40:41
dollar and saying this has real, this has real metal in it.
40:45
What we use today has no metal in it.
40:47
It has no precious metal value in it.
40:50
What is the difference? What happened?
40:52
And then importantly, in 1965, of course, we have the ending
40:56
of, of metal in coinage. In 1971, Nixon quote UN quote,
41:01
temporarily suspends the gold standard.
41:03
And what has happened since then?
41:06
We've seen an explosion the the way free marketers and Austrians
41:09
predicted. We've seen an explosion in
41:11
deficits and debt. We've seen the purchasing power
41:13
of the dollar go down. And we've seen wars all around
41:16
the world fought and funded by a country that has very little
41:20
business fighting and funding these wars.
41:22
So the, the, the impetus for this, for this change or for
41:27
this reinstitution of constitutional sound money is
41:30
not just constitutional, to be sure, it's also economic, but
41:34
also it's moral and ethical too. Because so much of so much of
41:39
what the government does today is only permissible, is only
41:43
possible because they've created a system that enables them to do
41:46
so by constraining them, by putting the, the shackles back
41:50
on these people who have shown that they have no real capacity
41:55
for constraint. Only this, in my opinion, this
41:59
is how we restore a a brighter future for our families, for
42:03
ourselves, for our progeny, with more economic opportunity, with
42:07
less war, with less strife. This is is the moral imperative
42:11
here. And JP, you I think that last
42:16
couple of paragraphs is in my mind the core of the argument at
42:22
least for, for, for me. And that is that because we have
42:26
decoupled the money supply from gold or, or or what have you.
42:31
But the fact is in the decoupling, we have allowed the
42:34
federal government to through the Fed in effect print as much
42:37
as it wants as it does. So that is identically the same
42:42
as a tax on our savings. We have.
42:45
We the government now has the ability to tax us going around
42:51
Congress, which the founders were insistent that not just
42:55
Congress but the House itself is where any discussion on taxation
42:59
begins. We've completely circumvented
43:01
that. It it's worse than that too,
43:03
Aunt, for a reason that you yourself point out quite a lot.
43:06
It's a tax on the unborn. Right.
43:09
Yes, yeah. Right.
43:10
It just goes on and on and on and on.
43:13
And, and you know, if you think about the ability of a
43:17
congressman to stand up and say, oh, I propose an additional 3 to
43:24
5% tax on everything you own for the rest of all time, every
43:31
single year, compounding out indefinitely, literally no one
43:36
would ever vote for that person. And yet that's exactly what has
43:41
happened. And that's part of what makes
43:44
this so problematic, because it is in fact so insidious and not
43:50
one in a million can identify the root cause of the theft
43:54
that's taking place here. It's ingenious and it enables
43:58
the worst things that the most horrible people around us,
44:01
politicians, I, I say that in jest.
44:04
I know there are worse people. It it it enables I'm I don't
44:09
want to be picked on later. Like, wait a second, murderers
44:12
are worse or thieves are worse? He's not.
44:15
He's not saying I say it in just some of them aren't bad, he
44:18
says. There are some.
44:19
That are worse. It is so and and this is what
44:23
this is what creates the system. And you know it's funny you
44:25
mentioned the the power that a congressperson could potentially
44:29
have to do something like this. As you said, appropriation bills
44:33
are supposed to start in the House that's in the
44:35
Constitution. That's the way it's supposed to
44:37
function. That is very much not the way it
44:39
is. And you know, in the case of
44:42
Senate or senators and, and representatives, so, so members
44:47
of Congress, there are 435 House members, 100 senators.
44:53
So in a, in a country of more than 350 million people, we have
44:58
these 500 and 35535 people who are supposed to be the absolute
45:04
best of us, the cream of the crop, the most impressive, most
45:09
most put together, most credentialed people that exist
45:12
among us. And instead, we're left with
45:15
this, you know, what we have today, which speaks to, you
45:19
know, this, the system itself is not built to to help people.
45:26
It's not doing any of the things that it purports to do.
45:29
It largely it's, it's a system that allows those closely
45:33
connected to it to get fat off of the backs and the laborers of
45:37
taxpayers off of the, the productive member, the, the
45:41
productive sector of society versus the unproductive sector
45:43
of society. And, and this, this is a problem
45:47
that, you know, far extends far past just the money.
45:51
You know, in a lot of ways, the, like I mentioned, the the
45:53
Leviathan is a great big beast that has its tentacles
45:56
entrenched in literally all parts of the way humans,
46:01
Americans interact with one another, interact with
46:03
businesses, interact with their government.
46:06
And, and all of this is largely it, it comes from a position of
46:09
power. So to reclaim that power on an
46:12
individual, and of course on a state level from a federalism,
46:15
from a federalism point of view, it is important that we take
46:18
that power back from institutions that have taken it
46:23
extrajudiciously, taking it outside of the congressional
46:27
powers that that they were explicitly granted.
46:31
JP there there's a an investor I used to watch.
46:34
It's weird the things that people say that stick with you
46:37
over time. I probably heard Jimmy Rogers
46:40
say this 30 years ago and, and he said I'm an old Frenchman and
46:46
I'm a little suspicious of everything.
46:49
So I think it's everybody's responsibility to have a little
46:52
gold and silver in the back of it of your closet.
46:55
And that, that just stuck with me for all these years.
46:59
And it, it seems incredibly good advice, right?
47:03
Not not only from a perspective of like, it is this money
47:10
because yes, it is. But what happens if we actually
47:13
have government failure, which as a political scientist, I'll
47:17
just point out is an inevitability.
47:19
All governments fail sooner or later.
47:23
So it it seems a matter of of pure prudence that we have a
47:28
money supply based on hard money, but also that people take
47:34
this into their own hands. And are you recommending that
47:38
people do that as well? That is largely what our
47:42
policies aim to do. Like I mentioned, we have lofty
47:44
goals and we are are crosshairs are aimed at the the federal
47:49
government and at the Federal Reserve.
47:50
But yes, of course, individually it's so important because like
47:53
you said, there are lessons here and you know, like you said that
47:57
that Jim Rogers quote, there are a lot of great investors who
48:02
will talk about gold as an individual personal investment.
48:05
But you can also look at it from a macro point of view.
48:08
You know, right now, I'm sure both of y'all have seen the news
48:12
over the last several years, there has been an increase a, a
48:15
gold or excuse me, countries are stockpiling gold at breakneck
48:19
paces all over the country. That is in part because of one
48:22
of gold's greatest features and that is that it has no
48:24
counterparty risk. Gold is not the liability of
48:27
anyone else. So in the case of U.S. dollars
48:29
or U.S. Treasuries, if I'm holding this
48:32
asset or this liability, my the the value of what I'm holding is
48:38
dependent on whether the United States is solvent.
48:41
If the United States goes bankrupt, the dollars that I'm
48:44
holding or the treasuries that I'm holding are not worth
48:46
anything. In the case of gold, gold is not
48:49
anyone else's liability. It is the final extinguisher of
48:52
debt. That makes gold extremely well
48:54
suited to act as money because there is no counterparty risk.
48:59
Like I mentioned, dollars, paper money all have that risk.
49:02
So you know, you're seeing this de dollarization trend take
49:06
place and accelerate all over the country and, and
49:09
understandably so, because both enemies and adversaries and
49:14
allies of the United States are are looking around at how the
49:17
United States has perverted and weaponized its dollar for many
49:20
decades, using it, using it as a cudgel to hurt their enemies and
49:24
to help their friends. And they're saying, Hey, wait,
49:26
we need something that isn't so dependent on the whims of
49:29
American politicians. And like I said, enemies, quote
49:33
UN quote, the, the the BRICS countries, the Brazils, Russias,
49:37
Indias, Chinas of the world and even allies, you know, Germany,
49:43
countries like this are coalescing back around gold
49:46
because it has some of these properties.
49:48
So because it has all of these properties that make a good
49:51
money. So an individual can look at
49:54
this, this geopolitical trend taking place and saying what do
49:58
they know that I don't? States themselves and countries
50:02
all around the world are stockpiling, they're buying into
50:05
gold. What do they know that I don't?
50:06
Why are they doing this? The answer, like we said it,
50:09
it's obvious, especially when you consider things like the
50:12
weaponization of the SWIFT system that and all of the the
50:16
seizing of assets that America started to do that.
50:19
I should say that America became more comfortable doing openly
50:25
after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and that completely
50:29
tipped the scales all around the world.
50:31
And people are saying, wait, the dollar can no longer be trusted.
50:34
And so it's been a reigniting a revival of gold and silver as
50:39
money because it's a trusted asset that is non inflatable and
50:43
it's politically neutral. It's interesting, right?
50:45
There are exactly two ways of looking at this.
50:49
Gold and silver have roughly doubled building value over the
50:53
the last little bit of time, or the US dollar is worth half what
50:57
it was over that same period of time.
51:00
And that's a really interesting point that I think not a lot of
51:02
people really understand. And you can zoom out even
51:06
further. A price.
51:08
A price is a ratio. It speaks to a relation between
51:10
two things. So when I say that the price of
51:13
gold is $4000, what I mean is that it takes 4000 US Federal
51:18
Reserve notes to buy one ounce of gold.
51:21
So you can imagine imagine us standing on on platforms on two
51:24
different platforms. If the price of gold goes U,
51:27
yes, you could very well argue that the platform that gold was
51:30
on has been raised, but that's not the only possibility.
51:33
It's equally as possible. And in the, in a Fiat
51:36
environment like what we're living in today, what we're
51:39
seeing is the price of gold is actually the devaluation, the
51:43
manifestation of a loss of purchasing power of the dollar.
51:46
The platform that the dollar is going on is going lower.
51:49
Gold is not becoming more valuable.
51:51
And that's an important thing that I think not a lot of people
51:53
think about, in part because we're very privileged here in
51:57
the United States to live under the global reserve currency, to
52:01
have the financial infrastructure that that we live
52:04
with today. We don't have to do conversions.
52:07
We don't typically do that kind of the, the mental process that
52:12
many other countries do all around the world, making them
52:15
more apt or more suited to think, hey, wait, this this is a
52:20
this is a ratio. And so there are different
52:23
potential meanings for what it means when the price of gold
52:25
goes up. So yeah, James, I think that's a
52:28
great point that I think is super underappreciated.
52:31
Most of our listeners will know that I I once lived in Iraq and
52:36
in in Iraq there was a very large thriving gold market and
52:42
people would take their pay the day they got it and walk right
52:46
over the gold vendors and trade their pay for gold.
52:51
Because here's what had happened over the years when Saddam
52:55
Hussein was in charge, it was 8 dinar roughly to the dollar, so
53:01
12 1/2 cents per. By the time I got there in 2010,
53:07
one thousand dinar was worth $0.18.
53:11
It had lost all of its value went in the vernacular.
53:15
People carved 3 zeros off when they told you how much you owed
53:21
and it it still is is like that. Sooner or later they'll swap
53:24
them out for, you know, an adjusted version.
53:28
But that just bakes the inflation right in, and gold was
53:32
the only way around that for these people.
53:36
And it, it creates a, a situation so desperate, you
53:41
know, we talk, it's very easy to talk about, you know, supply and
53:44
demand charts, mean reversions, dot plots.
53:47
There's a there, there are real humans on the other side of all
53:50
of these policy decisions and people who can't, who can not
53:54
only not only can they not already afford basic
53:57
necessities, food, shelter, medicine, at least here in the
54:01
United States, we are making it intentionally as a in their
54:05
mission statement is a the spoken goal of making it 2%
54:10
harder year over year for people already on the poverty line to
54:13
afford their basic necessities. This is it's.
54:17
Best case. Scenario.
54:18
Yes, yes, of course, in the best by their own metrics.
54:23
And you know, anyone, especially over the last couple years has
54:26
walked into a grocery store, knows that the prices that
54:29
they're facing are much higher than what the government
54:31
statistics say. Mises has a great quote on that
54:34
about a a prudent or a judicious housewife is a better indicator
54:39
or a better measure of, of the inflation rates of, of homegood
54:42
costs than government statistics.
54:45
And so, yeah, you, you saw, especially over the last couple
54:48
years, people doing things like repurchasing their Amazon carts.
54:52
Do you guys remember where people would pull up an Amazon
54:55
cart that they had ordered back in 2019 and repurchase the exact
54:59
same thing to find that it was 60% more expensive?
55:02
70 And so like this, by the policy of creating money and
55:10
thereby perpetually devaluing money, makes it to where people
55:14
are trapped in a scenario that they cannot get out.
55:18
This this bakes in poverty on a generational level.
55:23
People are condemned, doomed to a life of poverty that most
55:26
Americans could not imagine because of policy choices, not
55:29
because of acts of God, not because of hurricanes or
55:31
tornadoes or tsunamis, but because of individuals at the
55:34
top. They're choosing to make these
55:36
decisions at the benefit of themselves, at the the debt, to
55:41
the detriment of all of the people living under that that
55:45
regime. It's interesting jpi mean we've
55:48
been dancing around saying something.
55:52
Money is literally whatever we agree money is, right?
55:58
John Locke referred to gold as a shiny, a yellow metal and and
56:03
said that there's obviously no particular reason it should be
56:06
this and and there isn't, not really, because nothing has
56:11
inherent value, right? All value is subjective.
56:15
Cigarettes become currency when times are tight, or at least
56:19
they used to when a lot of people still smoked.
56:22
Liquor becomes currency when times are tight.
56:26
And gold and silver have been accepted for thousands of years
56:31
without interruption. I mean, it seems, dare I say it,
56:37
like a no brainer. I couldn't agree more.
56:40
And you know, throughout monetary history, you have
56:42
myriad examples of things, commodities, assets that have
56:47
been used as money, everything from cattle to wampum to beads
56:52
to salt to tobacco, everything under the sun.
56:55
And ultimately, you know, we don't.
56:57
It's easy to see it now, but if you look back, what you can find
57:02
is that all of those were experiments and every single one
57:05
of those reached the conclusion that we thought, which is why
57:07
we've ended up here today. It's not like you said, it's not
57:11
that gold and silver are are naturally have to have, you
57:14
know, these reasons. It's inherent in value.
57:16
It's that over the course of time, these properties are the
57:20
ones that society over, you know, stacking millions of
57:23
decisions on top of each other and judgments.
57:26
So there is no top down societal idea that gold and silver make
57:29
good money. But through all of these
57:31
practices and all of these experiments, what we found is
57:34
that these are the the the properties that make a good
57:37
money. You know, today cigarettes still
57:41
today in places like jail are used as money.
57:45
So like you said, money can, can be anything.
57:47
And especially that's especially obvious in or under regimes that
57:53
have either hyperinflated or destroyed their currency.
57:57
In the case of Venezuela today, in places like Venezuela, you're
58:01
seeing people doing things like turning to video games, turning
58:05
things like to turning to either Runescape or World of Warcraft
58:09
to earn in game currency because that either holds value or is
58:13
worth more than the Fiat currency being printed by the
58:16
government. And, you know, you have.
58:19
Yeah. And and this is this is
58:20
happening today in Argentina. There are stories, like you
58:22
said, the gold market is huge. You have people chipping,
58:25
They're shaving off chippings. This is not a theoretical thing,
58:28
in part because humans will do what they have to do to survive.
58:32
And these Fiat monetary systems create so much desperation that
58:36
people have no choice but to look outward or to get creative
58:40
with how they are preserving their wealth.
58:42
You know, to the extent that money is supposed to be a
58:44
transmitter of value across time and space, Fiat is not well
58:48
suited for that. In it brings to mind Adam
58:53
Ferguson's great book When Money Dies, that, that highlights the,
58:57
the hyperinflationary practices, the, the, the, the event that
59:01
went on in the Weimar Republic. And then you can see, like I
59:04
said, there are actual people that have to suffer behind all
59:09
of this. And that makes it that makes it
59:11
all the more important that either one, the infrastructure
59:15
exists and and that people are educated as to these risks.
59:18
Because when a money dies, it's violent and it's oscillating and
59:22
people don't really know where to turn.
59:25
And that allows people to get scammed, stolen from.
59:29
This pushes people into illicit or black markets.
59:32
It breeds desperation. And that's a devolution of
59:36
society a a sound money leads to or at least incentivizes enables
59:42
the the progress in society, progress being defined as better
59:46
living standards. But of course a more moral
59:48
society, a society with fewer wars, with fewer theft with with
59:52
less theft, with fewer crimes, all of that.
59:56
The hypothesis is that by re establishing or restoring.
1:00:00
Sound money, money that cannot be manipulated by politicians
1:00:04
whims, will find that this will not only have an economic
1:00:08
effect, but this will have a social and cultural effect as
1:00:10
well. JP where can our listeners go to
1:00:14
read more about what you do in the Sound Money Project?
1:00:17
You can find us at soundmoneydefense.org and on
1:00:21
Twitter or X at Sound Money Def or my Twitter is at JP Cortez
1:00:28
27. Anthony, if you don't mind, I
1:00:31
would love to make a plug that I think your listeners in
1:00:33
particular would like. Every year we do a scholarship
1:00:38
and a fellowship. We call it the Sound Money
1:00:40
Scholarship and the Sound Money Fellowship, where in the case of
1:00:43
the scholarship, it's an essay contest where we're allowing
1:00:46
high school seniors up to graduate students to participate
1:00:49
in this short essay contest. We're asking for about 1000
1:00:52
words. You submit your essay and then
1:00:55
your essay will be judged by a blue ribbon panel, free market
1:00:59
economists or professors or journalists, commentators, so on
1:01:03
and so forth. So I encourage anyone listening
1:01:06
if you're in that age group. We have this scholarship every
1:01:11
year and in the case of the fellowship, this one is a little
1:01:13
more advanced for grad students or independent researchers to
1:01:18
who are looking to advance the scholarship around sound money,
1:01:22
who are looking to do more of a deep dive, more of a research
1:01:24
type paper. And these are both paid
1:01:26
opportunities. So we are, we set aside about
1:01:29
100 ounces of gold back in 2014. At the time that was about
1:01:34
$110,000. Today that's close to 400 and
1:01:39
$410,000. So we're doing this to to
1:01:43
advance the scholarship to allow people, students interested in
1:01:47
this topic, giving them a paid opportunity to further their
1:01:50
research. So if you want to be published,
1:01:52
if you want to be read by the people in this space on this
1:01:55
issue, I encourage all of you to check it out.
1:01:57
You can find it out on the Sound Money Defense League website.
1:02:00
Thank you JP, this has been great.
1:02:02
It's been a real pleasure. It's been nice to meet you and I
1:02:05
hope to hear from you again sometime real soon.
1:02:06
Thank you all very much for having me.
1:02:08
The pleasure was all mine. At Words and Numbers, we spend a
1:02:11
lot of time talking about what's going on in the economy and the
1:02:14
government. But fundamentally, all of this
1:02:17
boils down to one thing. The greatest threat facing
1:02:21
modern society is a lack of respect.
1:02:23
The people who disagree somehow find it difficult, if not
1:02:27
impossible, to discuss their differences in a civil manner.
1:02:31
We had Civil are interested in upgrading civilization by
1:02:33
encouraging people to engage with new ideas and ultimately
1:02:37
engage civilly with each other. If you share this idea, please
1:02:41
join us by subscribing at civil.com.
1:02:44
That's civl.com.