Latest / Thinking Class / #096 - Dominic Frisby - Gold, Power, And The State: What Honest Money Reveals About Civilisation

Transcript

#096 - Dominic Frisby - Gold, Power, And The State: What Honest Money Reveals About Civilisation · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking to Dominic Frisbee.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Dominic is a British financial writer and comedian.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: He is the author of several books on finance and economics, including Life After the State, Bitcoin, The Future of Money, and Daylight Robbery, How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Frisbee is also a regular contributor to financial publications, especially Money Week.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to his work as a financial writer, Frisbee is also a comedian and has performed stand-up comedy in the UK and internationally.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Dominic and I think out loud about the history of gold, humanity's relationship with it, what has driven gold rushes throughout history, why gold is honest money and is disliked by dishonest men, why governments and individuals have always and will always want gold, how much the British Empire relied on gold, how much gold China has, and what this means for the world, how much British state short-termism cost the country in 2010 when it sold two-thirds of its gold at the bottom of the market, why excess government and regulation, the erosion of privacy and bureaucratic overreach is linked to running economies with fiat currency, why money should be independent of government, and much, much more.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: This conversation with Dominic is a gallop through financial history and indeed cosmic space.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So strap in, it is a good one.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And make sure to like, subscribe, and follow Thinking Class on YouTube, your podcast platform of choice and Substack.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go thinking class together.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure, John.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for having me.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Dominic, it is uh my pleasure to have you on because you have a very interesting background.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're a financial trade uh writer by trade, but you're also uh a satirist, a musical satirist, and you put out some videos which gain uh quite a lot of attention and have gone viral on X and across the internet.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: But today we'll largely be talking about your book about the history of gold, and we'll also touch on some of the themes you you focus on within your music world as well.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: But beginning with gold, it is a book which I think is quite surprising.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think people would expect to see all of the different themes that you include in there, but beginning with what it is, you know, you you open the book that it's a permanent, pliable, indestructible substance older than the earth, and indeed our solar system itself, which is fascinating, but is it also instructive to humanity's relationship with it?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps we can start there.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's the potted history of humanity's relationship with gold, Dominic?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're absolutely right in saying gold is uh it's older than the earth itself, and it's something you forget, you know, you're you're constantly told this about gold, but you forget, and I every time I think about it, it never loses its shine.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you can dig up Viking gold buried 1500 years ago, and it's shining just as it was when it was buried.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, uh I'm just I'm I've got a gold coin here that I'm reaching for.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: If I can find it, uh I probably shouldn't keep it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's see if I can find it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, I haven't got it to hand.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: But um it there are different theories as to how life that how the earth began, and you know, some people say divine creation, and some people say interstellar collisions.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um it doesn't really matter.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um the fact was that was when gold was created.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if you take the the scientific explanation, interstellar collisions and then in the nuclear explosions, gold was created and then dispersed out into space in in all the dust, and then the dust gradually accreted, was pushed to better together, and that's how it made its way into the um into the earth's crust.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And because you can't destroy gold, because it is permanent, it is exactly it's been shining, it has never stopped shining in all that time.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if you get, you know, AI to uh, you know, if you said to AI, show me eternity, it would be something celestial and ethereal and you know, clouds and goodness knows what, but it wouldn't be this lifeless, inert it's literally the most dead thing there is in the world, and yet it never stops shining.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's uh you know, people go, you know, we're in an age now where all value is all digital, and gold is the most analogue thing there is.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's it's just incredible, and it has seen everything.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's seen the birth of man, it's seen the birth of life, it's seen, you know, if there were civilizations that if you buy all that Graham Hancock stuff and there were greater civilizations than ours that preceded us, gold's seen all of that.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are theories that that humankind only came about because of uh alien invaders who mated, they came here trying to wanting to mine gold, and um the uh the the the the whatever the homo that lived on earth at that time was too stupid to mine the gold, so they mated with us, they crossbred with us to create Homo sapiens who was clever enough to mine the gold for them.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's uh that's one of those theories that does the rounds, it may might be rubbish.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it it's just gold has seen that.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's seen atrocities committed by Nazis, it's seen atrocities committed by Spanish conquistadors and and Mongol hordes, and it has just seen everything, and it has just been inert and neutral the whole time, it has not reacted to everything, anything.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, long after humankind has destroyed itself, the gold will still be there, shining away.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is just this incredible, permanent, lifeless substance.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you you also write that because of that permanence, and obviously because of its alluring, aesthetic appeal, that it's almost as though it was made to be money.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's a human projection onto this, but actually, given this is a human planet we have been living on for quite a lot of time now, I think it's safe to say that given our reliance upon it, and that even, and we'll get into this later, even though it is now no longer used to back currencies, people still want it, governments still want it, and we can we can certainly come on to that later.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: But let's thinking about think about how alluring it is.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you you talked about um it's being Nazi atrocities, you talked about the conquistadors.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start there.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, Christopher Columbus, the man who stumbled across um the Americas and he was on a shipwreck, and he learned about these vast um deposits of gold from some tribal chieftain wherever it was that he'd shipwrecked.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he wrote a letter back to his financial backers and the the monarch in Spain, which sent a wave of excitement around Europe.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: He effectively said, Look, I've got I'm sitting on a gold mine, you need to send money and men, and we're gonna be quids in here.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And a gold rush was on.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps you can tell us a little bit about the history of gold rushes and whether you see now we're in this world of digital revolution that we always get so excited about, whether we see similarities in, for example, the AI excitement that comes out of Silicon Valley and how everyone responds to that, and suddenly all the public sector and private sector are jumping up and down saying, This is it, we've we're we're quids in.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why do why do you think we rush toward all of these opportunities and make the most of them?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and do you believe that the AI gold rush is the second question, uh, really is going to have legs in it?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Gold is wealth in its purest form, in its most distilled form.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the very first metal that human beings ever used, and we used it, we found little nuggets in riverbeds and so on as Stone Age Man, we decorated ourselves with it, wore it as jewellery, gave it out as reward, as a tool of barter, and so on.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It has it I say it's the first metal that human beings used, but it's useless.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: It has no use.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like has some industrial use, but just so minimal in the greater context of things, it's as good as useless.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: So and um but it is wealth, it is pure wealth.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: The the historian Peter Bernstein says it is um nothing is as useless and as useful at the same time.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And because it's pure wealth like it has been apart from maybe sex it is and and I suppose you'd say food, it has been the greatest motivator of mankind in all of history.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, w wh why has hum why have human beings done what they've done?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Partly it's in order to reproduce, and partly it's wealth, but partly it's to survive, food, shelter, clothing, partly it's to reproduce, and then partly it's to to thrive and and get wealth.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you if you think of every great mission that's ever been undertaken, it was always to make money.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Jason and the Argonauts, Jason went off to get the golden fleece, and uh, you know, that was the you know the first great uh explorer seen as the first great exploration, and the Spanish conquistadors went off to go and and and and find gold.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And throughout every mining boom, and we're in a mining boom at the moment, it's really common.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like it to actually produce, get gold out of the ground, you there's there's several stages you have to go through, but first thing you have to find it, then you've got to raise the capital mine to mine it once you found it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And finding it is very hard.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: But if you do find it, you can transform your existence.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you invest in a mining company, an explorer, and it discovers gold, then the the that that that expl exploration company will will go up 10, 20 times more.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And but because of that, what happens is prospectors uh in order to raise money will often lie and exaggerate about the gold that they found, and they'll go, Yeah, there's definitely gold there, you I just need to raise this much more money to drill the ground.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a bullshit that has been going on gone since forever.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Christopher Columbus was a prime example, like he took he made this trip trip to Cuba and he was trying to find Japan.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, they'd heard about they were trying to find King Solomon's gold, and King Sol give bear in mind that King Solomon's gold was probably on the east coast of Egypt, that's where they now think King Solomon's gold was, you know, uh down there.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he was going, he was he just went completely wrong place.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then we got to Cuba, and there's no gold in Cuba.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he asked the locals and they pointed him to Hispaniola, and so he went off to Hispaniola, and there were some uh uh natives who were wearing something gold in here, and they pointed him somewhere else.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: But he never he couldn't find any, but he had to justify this enormous capital that he'd raised for the first trip and then for the second trip.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So he kept having to dangle the carrot of there is gold, there is gold, in order to raise more, not only to raise more capital to for further exploration, for further trips, but to justify the expense of the first trip anyway.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you think how expensive it would have been kitting out a boat, I mean it's expensive now to kit out a boat, but you'd have to kit out a whole boat, you've got sailors to pay, you've got a ship to build, you've got to feed them, you've got to go all this way, and if you come back with nothing, you know, your investors, who in this case was I think was the king of Spain or the king of Portugal, they they're you know they're gonna be they're not gonna be happy.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So he kept he didn't he didn't find any, he kept having to say, uh, there's got it's just in the next island, I just need this much more money to do this next trip.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he was just a classic um, you know, he he just was peddling the same bullshit that that other mining explorers are still peddling today.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're in a mining boom now, and it's all great, and investors are making a lot of money and everyone's happy, but sooner or later this boom's gonna go crash.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the guy who said, Oh, there's gold in in these hills, there's gold in them that hills.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's another one of those uh bullshit lines.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is there really?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, the a lot of it's gonna emerge that a lot of these mining companies raised money for to develop or explore gold prospects where there really was no realistic chance of that of there ever being a mine there.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that'll come out in the crash and everyone will be really unhappy, and then the cycle will just go around and turn again.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's uh Columbus was just pedaling the same BS and Jason and the Argonauts, you know, it's it's a wonderful story.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: You you know, they were sent to go and get this golden fleece, but when you learned that where they went was on the other side of the Black Sea, what today is Georgia, then Colchis, they used to pan for gold using sheepskin.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they'd stretch the sheepskin over a over a frame and they'd put that in the river and it would get the gold, and then they'd hang the gold up in a tree, hang the fleece up in a tree, and then they'd comb out the gold.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how they used to pan gold.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see how that myth of this fleece, golden fleece hanging in a tree.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a fleece with a load of gold in it hanging in a tree, you're gonna guard it with dragons and and whatever else if necessary.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you can see how that, you know, as the story evolved, that became the myth of the golden fleece.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it was just that's how they pound gold.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, but you know, words got back to Jason, he's raised all this money to go and uh do this trip, and he's got Hercules and Castor and Pollux and Orpheus and all these great heroes on the on the trip with him, they all got to be paid somehow, so he's gonna, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna find this golden fleece, we're all gonna be rich, you know.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's what what people do, but at the same time, uh you know, the the Canadian gold rush, Klondike is perhaps the most famous one, where like it was a really dangerous trip.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you had to go across these mountains in Arctic near Arctic conditions, and most people didn't even survive the trip, let alone find some gold and bring it back again.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: But in and you know, that's what the the guys who made the money were the picks and the the people who sold the picks and the shovels, where that's that's where that's um story comes from.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: But California would not exist in the way that it does today, were enough for the gold rush.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: There was literally in 1849 there were like 200 white people in California.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: There was just nobody there, and it was actually Mexican at this point, and uh and then you know gold was discovered there, and it's because of that gold rush that California exists, and you know, it's just a huge economy now.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then because of the Californian gold rush, the Australian gold rush happened.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: The Australian gold rush happened because there was a dude who went to California who was like, oh, the geology is the same back in Sydney.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I just go back to the the the Blue Mountains or wherever it was, and and that started Australia, and that trans transformed Australia to from a penal colony to into Australia, and then the same thing happens in South Africa, and and it was and and when you get a gold rush, people take extraordinary risks, and but in taking those risks, they they further the bounds of expiration, they become more innovative, they become more inventive, amazing things happen, and mankind develops, but also terrible things happen, the environment gets destroyed.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever lived there in the first place before the gold rush gets gets absolutely you know trodden all over, and and so on and so forth.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: So awful things happen too, but it's part of progress.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: As you were talking about California not existing if it wasn't for the gold rush, um maybe it's a tenuous link, but people talk about how culture has a a long tail.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: So once it's set, it's set and it moves through the generations.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And whether you've been born into that and had nothing to do with creating that culture, you're going to end up living within those cultural boundaries.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it made me think about back to that Silicon Valley point, almost makes sense that Silicon Valley would be in California, and think about all these trillion-dollar industries and companies that exist, which are on the basis of whether it's the smartphone, whether it's AI, generative AI, which effectively is just scraping a bunch of information together and it's spitting it out very quickly.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but somehow gets people so excited that every company's out there trying to make AI, everything uh that uh that they do.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it feels like there's a long tail of gold rush culture within California that they just can't quite shape.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Look, we've got the next big thing, everyone needs to come and buy it from the Hoi Poloid to the big investor.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't really know that much about the origins of Silicon Valley and why Silicon Valley ended up being in San Francisco, but I and San Francisco did exist prior to the gold rush, it was called something else, but really the gold rush was the making of San Francisco, put it on.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're thinking about um gold's use now, so perhaps we can we can talk a little bit about gold having predominantly been used to show wealth, whether at an individual or a national level.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we had currencies that could only be produced if it was backed by gold, and we don't have that anymore.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it was released post-second world war, gold no longer needs to back the currency, and currency could effectively be printed by central banks created out of thin air by um wholesale banks, retail banks, as well as they come up with loans and mortgages and all the rest of it.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think the consequences are for the hoy poloy like you and I in a world where currency is now created out of thin air, money's created out of thin air, and no and no longer has gold backing?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, gold's official role as money is obviously gone, but it is still used as money from the point of not so much as a medium of exchange but as a store of wealth.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's now the second largest holding uh by central banks uh uh of central banks, it's overtaken the euro, it's overtaken US treasuries, and it's the only the US dollar is held in greater quantities by central banks around the world.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And world central bank holdings have doubled in the last ten years, and over the next ten years they'll probably double again.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it is still used uh by central banks, by governments, and of course uh many corporations around the world keep some of their treasury in gold, and many individuals uh invest in gold and hold gold.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so even though it has no official role, uh it is still a store of wealth that is widely used, and and that role will never go away.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um the as for gold's role as a medium of exchange you know, I could a a gold sovereign uh is about six costs about six hundred and fifty pounds today.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And a gold sovereign is about the size of a two-piece piece.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a t it's a pretty tiny coin.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of wealth in a tiny coin.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a day-to-day medium of exchange.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: We tended to use silver, copper, and nickel.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you would use gold for larger purchases, a racehorse or a house or a suit or something.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: But but for smaller purchases, uh, you know, silver.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact the words silver and money are interchangeable in uh you know more than fifty languages around the world argent in French, uh Plata in Spanish and so on.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think shekel means silver as well.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so gold does get used as a medium of exchange in extremis.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the Nazis use gold like mad, uh not again, not for day-to-day uh uh exchange, but it was the they were excluded from the financial system.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the way that they were able to re-include themselves was by basically fraudulently smelting bars uh not with Nazi with with you know pre-Nazi stamps on them so that they were acceptable, and then they would send them to Switzerland where they'd be transferred for currency.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So at the higher level they were used.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And recently Russia uh paid for a load of drones which it bought from Iran to use in the war in Ukraine, and it flew three tons of gold over to uh uh Iran.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's just totally impractical flying three tons of gold to pay for something, but that's what they did.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh as a medium of exchange now, uh you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Digital technology is overtaken uh physical.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: We don't barely use cash anymore, and you know, any transactions between banks or whether you use Bitcoin, doesn't matter what the medium of exchange is, is all digital.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: So gold's never going to have a role as a medium of exchange because we don't except in some kind of you know Mad Max in extremist scenario.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: You could conceivably have a digital system of money built on top of gold.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so like a modern gold standard, you know, where you have the gold stored in a vault, but the ownership of the gold changes hands with digital.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that already exists, and there's Glint does it, and there's another company called Tally that does it, and you know, with their own unique iterations.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, the beauty of gold, the reason that it's uh wealth in and of itself, it is that it's wealth in and of itself.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: I give you the gold, you hold the wealth.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's nobody else's liability.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And um, if you have a a gold payment system built on top of gold, it involves a trusted third party, which might you know might be the the the the the the company that affects the transaction and so on.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's its role as money of last resort has gone away.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I don't think gold ever really is going to be a medium of exchange again because of digital in any meaningful way, because of digital technology.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's its role will be store of wealth.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's it's we don't use it as a unit of account, that's the third system of money, because we tend to use as a unit of account uh the currency that we have to uh declare our taxes in.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the British use the pound and the Americans use the dollar and so on as our unit of account.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, the pound and the dollar are terrible units of account because they're not constant, they lose their value all the time, and uh their value changes over time.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas gold is a much better unit of account for reasons that we described at the beginning of the programme, it it never is exactly the same, it never changes.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's the it's the one constant.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Through everything that's going on, gold is the constant.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's for that reason it's we should use it as a unit of account, but we don't.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do use it as a unit of account, it's actually you you you can learn some very um useful lessons.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, if you look at house prices in gold, or you look at the the the Dow divided by gold or or whatever it is, there's some very uh uh uh instructional stuff in there.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that but so that's how I see the future of gold.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: There might as I say there might be digital payment systems built on top of gold, and it might be that that the you know they there's this rumour's doing the rounds again about the Yuan being gold-backed, and it and it might be that that that actually happens.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it will still be we'll then have to trust the Chinese government uh to exchange their yuan for gold, and it may or may not happen, but it it'll just it'll just be a gold standard, it won't be gold.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and the reason that the 20th century gold standards failed is that human ordinary people weren't actually handling gold.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: In Britain, we just took gold out of circulation, so even though we were nominally on the gold standard in between 1925 and 32, there was no gold in circulation.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um in America, of course, in 1932, they made it illegal uh for Americans to own gold.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there was no gold handled by Americans between 1932 and 1971, even though the dollar was nominally on the gold standard.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how can it how can it be on a gold standard if ordinary people aren't allowed to own gold?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just bogus.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: In the 19th century gold standards, you know, gold coins actually circulated.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: But as I say, we don't use physical cash anymore, so money has evolved since then.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the the future of gold that I see as is as a store of wealth more than minimum of exchange.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, perhaps implied in your answer there when you were talking about, for instance, America making it illegal for the for the common person to own gold, and uh you write in your book about how that was handed in effectively to the central authorities, and they were talking about how they've effectively done a great favor to the nation by having all this gold.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then you also wrote about how China's stores of gold are massive, perhaps underreported, and they also use no perhaps about it, certainly underreported.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I suppose that would make sense with the CCP's track record.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh why do you think they're trying to hide how much gold they have?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um they just they're declaring the minimum amount that is credible.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um, if you notice that every month now they just gradually increase the uh their declarations and and and you know they have they're if they're aware of the uh incremental effects of compounding.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: As long as they keep doing it and to keep declaring it, it it it kind of they're being transparent without being transparent, and um but then it won't come as any great surprise when you know what's currently two and a half thousand tons is suddenly five or six or eight thousand tonnes.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: But if they suddenly go, you know, America has eight thousand tons nominally, hasn't been audited, but you know, my calculations are that between thirty and forty thousand tons of gold has made their way to China since the turn of the century, whether being mined or imported.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thirty to forty thousand tons.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: America has eight thousand.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um now China's encouraged its citizens to own gold, and Chinese people do like gold, so a lot of that will have gone into private hands.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not unreasonable to go 40 or 50 percent of that 30 or 40,000 tonnes has gone to the state.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this the People's Bank of China isn't the only government body that owns gold.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: The the army has gold, the Sovereign Wealth Fund, various other uh State Departments hold gold.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, I I just think China there's there's over 10,000.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's there's like um Alistair McLeod says it's more like 20,000 the state has.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Ross Norman thinks it's fifteen to twenty thousand.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh Koos uh um Van Noyenhaus uh reckons it's closer to five or six thousand.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't matter, it's still you know, even if if he's right, it's still three or four times uh what they say they have.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I just say ten to fifteen thousand tons.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: But if America's if they turn suddenly turn around, China would just turn around and said, Oh, actually, you know, the US the the the dollar is the global reserve currency and it's it's not backed by gold, but in every but you know, America has no foreign exchange reserves apart from its gold.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if China just suddenly turns around and goes, Yeah, yeah, actually we've got twice as much gold as you, the the the effect on the financial markets would be enormous.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: It would be really dis destabilizing.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And firstly, the gold price would rocket, secondly, the US dollar price would would tank, and um, you know, China has three trillion US dollars, maybe it doesn't want to devalue its US dollars.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, and it you know, it's in China's in China's doing very well at the minute, it just wants to keep trade going.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's the it's the factory for the rest of the world.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Foreign capital's going to China, China makes stuff and sells it to the rest of the world.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why would it want to upset that game?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's working really well for it.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: There might come a certain point in the future where China and America get into some kind of confrontation and at which kind um at which point they weaponise money because they always do in wars.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: And when they weaponize money, China can turn around and go, Your use your dollars are worthless, and we've got twice as much gold as you.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the dollar plummets, and then America's got a big problem on its hands.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I just don't think China's ready for that.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: China's motto is we must not shine too brightly, and that's how it lives.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so that's why China's just sort of declaring the minimum amount that's credible and just doesn't want to rock the boat.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Don't blame it.
• 30:02
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• 30:07
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• 30:15
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• 30:18
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• 30:31
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• 30:34
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• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: So these and I'm going to call them developing countries because China's the second largest uh economy, maybe largest in the world, uh, but these these non-Western economies who seem or countries that seem obsessed about building their gold stores, why is it that Britain once a big gold holder itself lent money on that basis all over the world in Gordon Brown's premiership?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: What was it that led him to think it was a great idea to sell half of Britain's gold for what was seen as the the worst pricing he could have gotten?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Why would the West get rid of gold whilst everyone else is building it up?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it was a stupid decision, but um at the time, like the easiest explanation is that they thought the gold price was going, it had been going down for 20 years and they thought it was going lower.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they also thought that Switzerland had just recently come off the gold standard, and they thought that Switzerland was about to sell its gold and it wanted to front-run Switzerland, get sell its gold before Switzerland did.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Switzerland never sold its gold, even though it came off the gold standard in 1999, it never sold its gold.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other explanation is he wanted to diversify and all that.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so those are the given explanations.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: The conspiracy is that uh Goldman Sachs and other banks were in trouble uh and he was bailing them out, and the other conspiracy is that they were trying to prop up the euro ahead of Britain's entry into the single currency.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Might have been a bit of everything, but anyway, it was a terrible decision and uh there was no need to sell the gold, and so why on earth would he do that?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he sold two-thirds of our gold right at the bottom of the market, and um you know, if he kept it, it was about£150 an ounce he sold it for, and uh uh now the gold price is coming up to£3,000 an ounce, so and it's it's again it's not the rising gold price, it's the declining price of Fiat.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a stupid decision, but it was a decision he made.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh but Britain has a long history of not actually even so for example at the beginning of the First World War we had Australia and uh South Africa, and so they were the biggest uh mining, especially South Africa, but you know, that that Vitzvatisrand produced 40% of all the gold that's ever been mined.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just an extraordinary deposit, and we had it, we owned it, and so it basically funded the empire, and you know that's the beauty of you you look at the Roman Empire when it it you know it controlled all the mines, so it mined might literally mined the money, and then with its money it paid its armies and so on.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's kind of how you funded it, it's how you created money mining, and we owned all the mines, we owned the biggest supply of money in the world, and people don't talk, you never seem to realise the impact of the Vitzvatis rant on the British Empire, but it was extraordinary.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but it made us very lax.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: So even at the beginning of the First World War, our gold supplies were really low in the uh in the um Bank of England, and we just had to basically sequester all the gold from South Africa and uh and um Australia to replenish our gold supplies, and so we have a long history of of laxness uh in the uh in the Bank of England, uh probably born out of the fact that London's always been the gold capital of the world and all the golds flows through London.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we always knew it would be quite easy to get it back if we needed it.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that that tradition of of of short-termism uh goes back a long way.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Long-term tradition of short-termism.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you also quote in your book uh an American politician, Ron Paul, um, of from the past, and the quote that you uh have written within your book is because gold is honest money, it is disliked by dishonest men.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you can unpack that and tell us the story behind that and what you're getting at.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Ron Paul's always been a massive gold bug, and uh he's been a big believer in sound money, and I share his uh conviction uh that society like I think it was was it Henry Ford who said, you know, if people understood how money and banking works, there'd be a revolution tomorrow.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: And most people just don't understand money, they don't think about it, they take it for granted.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're very grateful for Bitcoin because it's made people more and more people think about money, what it is, where it comes from, and so on.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: But most money, until the financial crisis, most money was created by banks when they lend.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, you borrow a million pounds to buy a house, like the the bank literally lends that money into existence.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: The bank wasn't holding a million pounds that it lends to you, it lended that money into existence.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: You then spend that money, that million pounds on the house, and that million pounds goes into the housing market and on into the rest of the economy.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And people wonder why house prices are so expensive.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Then after 2008, and and then the other way governments uh tend to earn money by spending more than they have and then taxing and then issuing debt government bond market.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: They issue debt and money gets created in the government bond market.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Then in in after 2008, quantitative easing uh it literally just was digitally printing money, and that's the new normal again, it happened again during COVID, all the money that got created there.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the digital printing of money that uh began in 2008 uh quantitative easing, that money all just went into the financial markets and into the property in which the big players mostly lived.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: In in COVID, the money went into ordinary citizens' hands, and that's why we got runaway inflation.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: Previously the inflation had been confined to the financial markets and bond markets and uh housing markets.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: In after COVID, the money went everywhere.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: But inflation, as measured by the central banks, uh does not reflect money supply growth.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Money supply growth is seven percent, inflation is three or four percent.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if the original definition of inflation was uh the inflation of the money supply leading to higher prices.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now it just means higher prices in certain consumer goods which are prone to the deflationary forces of improved productivity.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's a lie, basically.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Our money system is is is is there's just so many lies and misinformation and false information that are spread through the money system.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the money system more than anything else, when one uh body in a society has the power to create money at no cost to itself, in other words, it doesn't have to earn it or it doesn't have to mine it, it just can create it.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is inevitable that that body will grow disproportionately large relative to the Western society.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we've seen the financialization of everything in the West.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas actual making of stuff has gone east.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Financialization of everything, first it was banking, and then now it's just big government.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, government is just everywhere, and it's a consequence, you know, it and and it's it's inherently incompetent and inefficient and wasteful and all those things.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it is just everywhere in our lives, and it just would not be possible with a system of sound money because it would not have the oxygen to grow this big.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it does, and it is, and uh that's I think explains what Ron Paul meant when uh he said that gold is honest money, because it is honest money, it's true, it's gold, it's pure.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can only get it at great expense, at great you have to risk a lot of capital to mine it, and so on, and and there's no guarantee that that you'll be you'll be successful.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's honest money, it's pure money, it's pure wealth.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas fiat, the system under which we operate, is is just built on lies and misinformation and financial manipulation and so on.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And tend to be left-wing people, but people who have favour state planning and the big state and you know, state education and state healthcare and all that stuff, tend to favor fiat money.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh people who have a more conservative worldview and think that government should be a lot smaller and not invade in our lives in so many ways tend to favor sound money uh uh that governments can't create.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, before we hear your thoughts on why uh well what might um be or where money might come from if it's not going to be governed by the government.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: As you were talking there, you're talking about big government and have it having ultimately come about through fiat currency.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a quote in your book which I wrote down, which as I was writing it down on my notebook before the interview reminded me of the song by Alan Oliver Anthony, Rich Man North of Richmond.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll read your quote and I'll read the Oliver Anthony quote because I think you do touch on an awful lot here, which should give the listener pause as to what's going on in the monetary system.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you write all the problems of excess government, waste, incompetence, corruption, crony capitalism, eroded privacy and liberty, unaccountability, bureaucratic overreach, and excess regulation.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um manifold businesses built around wealth extraction rather than wealth creation, even war will inevitably grow too.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you're making that as part of this point that inflation and war have proven to be the refuge of politicians throughout history, and it is today.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you come at this from the angle of a financial writer, someone deeply uh embedded within the ecosystem and understanding it.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Oliver Anthony was a normal bloke in uh in Carolina, I think, or Virginia even.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: And his the chorus from his song, which blew up a couple of years ago, uh leveling or raising his fist at the people in Washington, DC, was these rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all just want to have total control, want to know what you think, want to know what you do, and they don't think you know, but I know that you do, because you tolerate shit and it's taxed to no ends because of rich men north of Richmond.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I just wonder if there is somewhat of a, even though we don't understand how these monetary systems work, the common person, there seems to be somewhat of a folk, uh a folk understanding that's building up, whether it's through like I've got a mate who's a joiner who invests in Bitcoin, for example, you've got Oliver Anthony, a guy who just lives on the land in Virginia, or at least he did, and then you as a financial writer pushing it out there.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you think that there is a a kind of mass awakening to the corruption of the system and everyone's trying to find a way out of it?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean it's more and more people are starting to understand it, and the more it unravels, the greater the understanding will come.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so that's the question that a very long tee up to it.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if governments aren't to be anywhere near the money supply because of the aforementioned problems, where where should it come from?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: What should we rely upon for a society that isn't reliant on big government and fiat currency?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm I'm all for uh a Hayekian world of competing currencies and you know let the market decide, and uh but I'd like to see governments accept other currencies in payment of tax.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: That would uh undermine their own currencies though.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: And um the you know, I'm I'm just a let the market decide guy.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: If that makes sense.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let let people decide what they want to use, and you know, if you give me a choice, I'd I'll pay in fiat and I'll receive in gold and bitcoin.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's uh let's switch gears, penultimate question, which is about the other side of what you do for a living.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're a musician, you're a satirist, and uh one of your most recent videos was demonetized by YouTube before it even was published.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, it's about this boundaryless world that we've been living in financially, and in many ways is driven by it.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you were writing about the widespread demographic replacement of European peoples because of mass immigration, and um besides the demon.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Monetization by YouTube.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: What was the general reaction to that video?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I suppose you probably rub shoulders amongst the establishment too.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what was the reaction to this video and why do you think it was so hot button for a company like YouTube?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, to be fair, I um sometimes get, well, I more often than not now get Chat GBT to write my YouTube descriptions for me because uh it knows what uh uh words to use.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, to get the best clicks and all that stuff.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the video was called Replacing the Population.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: And at this point I had already uploaded the video to YouTube and called it Replacing the Population and Chat GBT just went, don't call it that.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: Anything to do with population and population replacement, YouTube nukes straight off.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think YouTube actually came out a few days ago and actually admitted that they uh censor stuff.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever the algorithms are, I'd already triggered them and I was not it like it my it just I couldn't even upload my account just froze.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: My YouTube account just froze.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I never even even uploaded the video.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: So then I got ChatGB to uh uh write me another title and it changed it to something like Gilbert and Sullivan Parody or something really anodyne.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um I uploaded the video then, but by then um it was it was already it knew it was it knew it was trouble, and so YouTube nuked it.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I put it on all the other platforms, but I just didn't say it was cool replacing the population.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: I just said it was a Gilbert and Sullivan parody song.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um but even then TikTok nuked it.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um but face it got through Facebook and it got through Twitter, and it did very well on those two platforms.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um my left-wing friends from school all said I was spreading hate, and my uh right wing friends all thought it was a work of art and the greatest song I'd ever written, and therein lies the great divide at the heart of everything.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, indeed.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have an audience as big as you, but some topics will take off, and others which you think should get quite a lot of interest.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I had someone on talking about abortion and getting into the the real nitty-gritty of it, and given that there is quite a lot of focus on that, at least with an online discourse, you would expect quite a few views, but I just knew that had been suppressed and it's happened with a few things.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, you know, the YouTube suppression that has apparently been lifted in recent days, is that specifically in the states because of the the First Amendment?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And does it not apply to us in the UK?
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I do know that if YouTube carries on doing it, like I don't know how YouTube's been able to survive as long as it has, because people just gravitate to platforms that don't do it because people gravitate to where speech is freest.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we have a Elon Musk, a lot to thank Elon Musk for, but because he got rid of so much censorship on Twitter, other platforms knew they would lose traffic to Twitter if they didn't get rid of censorship as well.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Substack is really good and uh there's very little sub uh uh uh censorship on there.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess YouTube's realising it's gonna have to go this way, uh it doesn't seem to lose that much audience share to places like Rumble, but all the guys who are talking you know at the edge of acceptability all seem to prefer Rumble to YouTube.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, so but but I guess YouTube has got its advertisers to keep happy and it knows it's got its legislators to keep happy, and so it does all these things because it does what it needs to do to survive.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I'm just guessing.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: But um as to their their lifting of the ban, I imagine uh they will not lift it in the UK and Europe to anything like the extent that they will have lifted it in the US.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Or it may be that there's just one algorithm for the world, I don't know.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: But but you know, the EU and all that that and Starmer and all that, they they they're all very pro-censor shit.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because they they they you know, there's they they want to control the narrative and when they they hate it when they can't control the narrative.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, absolutely.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: We'll still still keep getting videos nuked until I guess so.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, but I'll upload it in a few days' time.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I want to get a couple of other videos up there first to just confuse it, and then I'll I'll try uploading it again and see how I get on.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: Operation shock and awe.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Operation confuse the bots.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Before I let you, Dominic, there's one question I ask all of my guests, and that question is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been an absolute, it could have been something more day-to-day.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what was the turning point that made you think differently?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I started out uh pretty left-wing, my dad was left wing, uh, and I just presumed that right wing was uh you know, nasty people, and I always thought the left were the good guys, and uh I discovered gold, and uh the first reason I invested in gold was to make money, but then I started reading about gold and reading about how money works and so on, and this was in the noughties, and uh that's what persuaded me that that you know libertarianism is the best form of government, and the less state there is the better, and that's what turned me against the left-wing large state model.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have lots of people respond to that with atheist to Christian or various things about the digital world, but first time, surprisingly, that someone's said dropping the left the leftism, uh, which I think is quite common, but there you go.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe uh maybe people are always looking for some other answer.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: I know Bitcoin Bitcoin has uh had a similar effect on a lot of people.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: Furthermore, you know, I'm just a bit older now.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right, so seeding liber libertarians within the Gen Z and Alphas.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, libertarianism is the primary belief system of the internet, for sure.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you look at the the big you know the big guys with libertarian worldviews, they've got all the biggest followings, Joe Rogan and and all the guys on Twitter and but it's just within an actual country the the they have no uh that the only country and it happened by accident was Argentina to elect Javier Millet.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: But uh until until he was there, there was like there was never any chance of of any libertarian, properly libertarian leader getting elected anywhere.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: So even though it was the biggest belief system of the internet within actual nations it uh it got absolutely nowhere.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think uh Millet was an accident.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: The Illuminati took their eyes off the ball for a second and Javier Millet got elected, and it I don't think they'll let that happen again.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: You might well be right, although his um his very mimetic um uh catchphrases, imagery with chainsaw is imprinted onto the cochlear retiné of everyone on the internet, and um people are demanding it in their own countries, having seen all this excess waste we've been talking about.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, but I mean who's our who's the British Javier Millet?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who's the American Javier Millet?
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: It looked like Donald Trump and Elon Musk might be for a bit, but that didn't that lasted about a month.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh I love Farage in many ways, and I like what he's doing.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a supporter of his, I consider him a friend of mine.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think he is instinctively very sympathetic to the Javier Millet worldview.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think Farage is probably a Thatcherite at the end of the day, but you know, he believes in massively cutting the state, but he also is aware of what's possible and what's practical, and the way the media is in England, he's decided that he he can't be as um he can't be as uh opinionated as Malay was with the British media because he'll just get crucified, and so I think he just has to sort of watch his tongue.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're right.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we need our own Malay, and I hope Nigel is the man, but we shall see.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: We will, we will all be revealed.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: Dominic, before I let you go, uh your book, Secret History of Golds.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, where can people find it?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then where can people find you?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what can we expect from you next?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: The Secret History of Gold is available at all good bookstores.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's an audiobook read by me, which is getting very good reviews.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: The book itself has had very nice reviews, and uh um I urge you to buy it and you will find it entertaining and interesting, and you will learn a lot, and you will be uh have a rice smile on your face as you read it, and uh you will be able to entertain your friends with wonderful little tidbits and stories about gold that nobody knew as a result of reading it.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I would also add my voice to that.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, if you don't think that I am high calibre enough, people like Rory Sutherland, Matt Ridley, constantly.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um quotes we got in advance were really, really good.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wonderful.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good luck with it.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: I hope it continues to gain traction and hopefully we get to speak again about whatever work it is that you're putting out there, Dominic.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: But thanks so much for coming on.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: Take care, all the very best.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are run making it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X, or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.