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Saifedean Ammous | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

0:00
I'm not going to ruin it. I'm not going to give you
0:01
spoilers, but, well, maybe I will.
0:04
Where did gold fail? Where Bitcoin will succeed.
0:07
Bitcoin has the lowest supply growth rate, so it's even better
0:10
than gold at being like gold. I think the Austrian school is
0:14
doing a lot better, and I think it is because of Bitcoin,
0:16
because Bitcoin is a living refutation of a lot of the main
0:20
ideas in mainstream economics and an advertisement for a lot
0:24
of the ideas of Austrian economics.
0:26
And that is a theme and an important theme in my gold
0:29
standard, the book. People will think that I may
0:32
have brought about the death of Fiat.
0:34
Hell yeah. Yeah, welcome to another.
0:40
Episode of Simply Bitcoin. IRL, we're here in the beautiful
0:42
Lugano, Switzerland, and I'm joined with a man who needs no
0:46
introduction, Saifuddin Amos. How you doing man?
0:49
Very good. Thank you for having me.
0:50
Thanks for joining me. My pleasure.
0:52
Saif, I'm going to start the the interview with this, you know,
0:55
you wrote, I think one of the most consequential books that I
0:59
think is going to be known for, you know, the next.
1:03
Multiple. Centuries most consequential
1:06
economics books and I think you know the market is saying that
1:09
is signaling that did you know that the Bitcoin standard was
1:12
going to be as influential as it was when you wrote it?
1:16
No, obviously not. I, I, I did not expect it to be
1:19
this way. I was writing it.
1:21
It, it was the right thing for me to do at that point in time
1:23
to write it because I was spending all my days arguing
1:26
with people on the Internet about Bitcoin.
1:28
And my one day my wife walks into the house and just looks at
1:31
this gigantic essay that I was typing as a response to some
1:34
comment on Facebook. There's a friend about Bitcoin
1:37
and she just said, my God, I can't believe how much time
1:39
you're wasting commenting on Facebook.
1:42
You could have written a book if you'd spent all of that time.
1:45
And I remember just looking at her and thinking, well, she's
1:47
actually right. You know what?
1:48
No more Facebook comments. I'm going to just actually write
1:51
a book. And it was just all these ideas
1:54
that I had in my mind that I had to go on a into one place so
1:59
that I don't have to repeat myself every Facebook thread.
2:03
So yeah, definitely there was no, there was no conception that
2:06
this was just going to be as big as it became.
2:09
But obviously I'm happy it has. Yeah, and I definitely think
2:12
it's changed the world. And, you know, it's really
2:15
interesting to me. And perhaps it's like a metaphor
2:18
of some sorts that the Fiat standard is actually thicker
2:22
than the Bitcoin standard, which I think is a great
2:25
representation of trying to explain the complexities of an
2:30
inferior. System absolutely is that was.
2:32
That on purpose or it just required more time?
2:35
No. It wasn't, it wasn't on purpose.
2:36
It was just, you know, when I, when I after I wrote the Bitcoin
2:39
standard, I thought there were some loose ends in the book,
2:42
some issues that needed to be addressed, some questions that I
2:44
haven't gotten to with the Bitcoin Standard.
2:46
I had a strict word limit from my publisher.
2:50
And then I decided, all right, the best way to do it would be
2:52
to talk about the Fiat system and then discuss the main
2:56
questions that were left loose from the Bitcoin standard, which
2:59
is how Bitcoin can rise in a world of Fiat money.
3:03
And so to do that, I decided I'm going to start trying to explain
3:06
Fiat in the same way that I explained Bitcoin thinking of
3:08
Fiat as just another digital currency, which is it ultimately
3:11
is because only less than 10% of Fiat money is usually printed in
3:15
physical form. The rest, and the vast majority
3:18
is digital. So if this was a digital
3:20
currency, how would you describe it to somebody who has never
3:23
understood or looked at how it works?
3:25
And I realize it's actually quite more complicated than
3:27
Bitcoin. People just use it.
3:29
They don't quite understand how it works.
3:30
But it's an extremely elaborate and contrived mechanism.
3:35
It's it's it's. It's a weird contraction that
3:38
operates in a quite weird ways. Does it surprise you?
3:42
Of course it doesn't surprise you because you wrote you wrote
3:45
in all these books. But I think being a Bitcoiner,
3:47
you've come to the realization that money plays an integral
3:51
role in society and there are a lot of outcomes that come from
3:55
used people using broken money. So could you describe, because
3:58
you do a deep dive into a lot of this so that the moral
4:02
implications, the family implications, the short term
4:05
thinking, the long term thinking, my personal favorite,
4:08
the food, right? So could you talk a little bit
4:11
about that? Because I think that is
4:13
completely misunderstood. Perhaps not misunderstood, but
4:16
underappreciated. Like people don't think about
4:19
don't. Understand how important a role
4:21
money. Plays in society.
4:23
No, I agree and I think you know that I I think a big part of the
4:26
success of my books was precisely because of this,
4:28
because it once people see this, they start seeing it in all
4:31
manner of decisions. So I've gotten so many emails
4:34
and messages from people who tell me about how they see this
4:38
pattern of Fiat in all manner of the aspects of life and business
4:43
and the society and so on. If I were to try and summarize
4:47
in an obviously it's a sophisticated idea that has been
4:49
fleshed out over three and three books and my coming forth book,
4:53
I'd say that ultimately money is like a control knob for our time
4:59
preference and time preference refers to the degree to which we
5:02
discount the future. So all human beings discount the
5:05
future compared to the present. If I were to offer you something
5:07
today or that same exact thing one year from now, you will
5:11
almost certainly say that you would prefer it now and it's a
5:14
rational thing to do because you might not be here in a year, you
5:16
might not be here to enjoy it, and you'd rather have it now
5:19
rather than in the future. The future is uncertain.
5:22
Ultimately, there's no guarantee that you're going to be here in
5:25
the future. So people always prefer the
5:27
present and that's normal and natural.
5:29
However, the less uncertain the present, the future becomes, the
5:34
more you're able to provide for the future, the more you're able
5:36
to see the future with certainty, then the less you
5:40
discount it, the more you start thinking about it, the more you
5:42
care about it. And I think that as humans, you
5:45
know, human civilization develops as a result of our
5:49
lowering of our time preference. We start discounting the future
5:53
less and less. So we start providing for the
5:54
future more and more, and we start behaving in ways that are
5:57
conducive for to our future well-being at the expense of the
6:01
present. In other words, we start curbing
6:03
our inner instincts. So you, you get angry at
6:06
somebody, you are not happy with somebody.
6:08
You don't just kill them. You think you don't want to be a
6:11
murderer. You don't want to have the
6:12
consequences of having murder on your conscious.
6:16
You don't want his family to come and avenge you.
6:18
You don't want to go to jail. You start thinking about the
6:20
long term consequences of things.
6:21
So you Curb Your animalistic instincts and you become future
6:26
oriented. So you can see human
6:28
civilization is just this process of lowering time.
6:31
Preface. And that's not original to me.
6:32
I, I, I quote Professor Hans Herman Hopper, who came up with
6:35
that formulation. We lower our time.
6:37
Preface as we build civilization so people start investing in the
6:40
long term. We don't just, you know, have
6:43
random children with random strangers and leave them on the
6:46
street. We build families.
6:47
So we take care of our children. And the idea is that if you take
6:50
care of your children in your old age, they'll take care of
6:53
you. And then culture, society,
6:55
religion, they all work. When they work properly, they
6:59
work to lower people's time preference, to make people think
7:02
more and more about the future. But the technology that I think
7:05
is the most pivotal toward lowering our time preference is
7:08
money, because money is the most reliable way of providing for
7:11
the future. You take resources from today,
7:14
you put them in the form of money, you sell them, and you
7:16
acquire money in exchange. And you hold that money for the
7:20
future. And lo and behold, in the
7:22
future, you've got resources available to you just because
7:24
you've held on to the money. So as civilization advances, as
7:29
our time preference declines, we're constantly fighting better
7:32
forms of money to provide for the future.
7:34
And the better our money is for providing for the future, the
7:37
better it holds value that you store in it into the future.
7:41
The more certain your future becomes, the less uncertain the
7:45
future becomes. And so therefore, the more you
7:48
start thinking of the future. And so you can see human
7:50
civilization as being intertwined with the increasing
7:53
hardness of our money, the difficulty of producing our
7:56
money, which makes our ability to provide for the future more
8:01
effective. So as civilization advances, we
8:04
move toward harder and harder monies, and our monies keep
8:06
getting harder to make because the harder the money is to make,
8:09
the less it is likely that others will produce of it from
8:13
it, and therefore the less they will devalue the value you store
8:16
in it. So as money gets harder, we
8:18
become more civilized, more future oriented, more peaceful,
8:22
and more likely to engage in productive cooperative behavior
8:26
rather than destructive conflict.
8:27
And I think the the human species essentially took a
8:32
radical turn for the worst in this aspect with the move from
8:35
gold to Fiat money in the beginning of the 20th century,
8:39
because that compromised our money's ability for providing
8:42
for the future. And so therefore it became
8:44
harder for you to provide for your future self, and so
8:47
therefore you discount the future more heavily.
8:49
Gold's supply increases at around 1:00 and a half to 2% per
8:53
year, but Fiat money supply increases at around 14% per year
8:58
as the average over the last 60 years.
9:00
So it's almost 10 times as much annual inflation.
9:03
So therefore you would expect Fiat money has effectively been
9:09
terrible at holding on to its value and so therefore it's
9:12
taken away from people the ability to easily save for the
9:14
future. Providing for your future self
9:16
is not something very easy. And so in the Bitcoin standard
9:19
and in the Fiat standard, I flesh this out in detail.
9:23
What are the implications of this?
9:25
And it's astonishing how powerful this is as a way of
9:28
explaining a lot of the things that we see in the world.
9:30
So when people move toward having a higher time preference,
9:35
they become more present oriented.
9:36
So they're more likely to spend the resources that they have
9:39
today rather than saves them in the future, right?
9:42
And it makes sense. Look at a place that has
9:44
hyperinflation. People get their paycheck today.
9:48
They run to the supermarket at right after they get their
9:51
paycheck to go and spend that paycheck and try and acquire as
9:54
much resources as they can. Because it makes no sense to
9:56
hold on to the rest of to to any of your paycheck until the end
9:59
of the month, let alone hold on to it for a year or five years
10:04
or 10 years from now. So that's what happens in
10:06
hyperinflation. But when you what, when you have
10:08
steady low inflation, which is the situation that you get in
10:12
most of the world, then you're just seeing the same thing, but
10:14
I've led to a lesser extent. So people aren't rushing to the
10:18
supermarket to spend all of their money in the first day
10:20
that they earn it, but they are discounting the future a lot
10:25
more. They're saving less of their
10:27
money for the their future self in 5 or 10, 10 years time
10:31
because there's little reliable methods.
10:35
There are few reliable methods for providing for yourself in a
10:38
decade or so. And so you see this reflected in
10:41
economic decision making, but you also see it reflected all
10:44
across all aspects of life because money is pervasive to
10:47
everything. It's pervasive to every economic
10:49
transaction that we carry out and our ability to provide for
10:52
ourselves in the future. It governs how we behave in all
10:56
manners of ways as pertaining to the future.
10:58
So I think this, you see this reflected in people's emphasis
11:02
on family. When you can't save, you're less
11:04
likely to commit to long term relationships.
11:07
You're less likely to want to start the family.
11:09
And because starting a family is more uncertain, it's hard to
11:12
say. It's hard to have the resources
11:14
that you need to comfortably provide for others.
11:16
So you become more present oriented.
11:18
You become more fixated on short term relationships rather than
11:21
long term relationships. You see there's an architecture,
11:24
for instance, in the 19th century under the gold standard.
11:27
You look around, you know, in this beautiful town here, you
11:29
see that a lot of the homes, a lot of the most beautiful
11:31
buildings were built in the 19th century.
11:33
And it's pretty common everywhere.
11:34
All the nice areas in the US are 19th century homes, 19th century
11:39
buildings, and they're still alive, you know, 150 years
11:42
later. Because during that time the
11:45
money you had lasted long and so you had a long term horizon.
11:51
You thought about things for a long time.
11:53
The money that you held would appreciate over 50 years.
11:56
So if you were going to spend that money on building a house,
11:59
you wanted that house to also be there in 50 years.
12:02
Now, in a world in which the money loses half of its value in
12:05
five years time, which is what happens at 14% supply growth
12:08
rate, you'd expected to lose approximately half of its value
12:11
in five years time. Then you don't need to have a
12:13
house that's going to last you 50 years.
12:15
You can build something that will be essentially disposable.
12:19
And so you see this around, you see houses that are being built
12:21
today, they get torn down in 20-30, forty years and they get
12:26
replaced. And so people's ability to make
12:28
long term investments is compromised.
12:30
And you see this reflected everywhere.
12:32
And I think you also see it as food.
12:34
And there's also, I should say, there's also a second aspect to
12:37
it, or, or, or, or the other side of the coin, as you're
12:40
losing that purchasing power from your money because your
12:42
money is being devalued. Well, where is that purchasing
12:44
power going? There is the other side of the
12:47
story. The the the sinister aspect of
12:49
it is that somebody is. Distribution.
12:51
Yeah, it's, well distribution essentially it's the government
12:53
and government connected people and cronies who are benefiting
12:58
from that inflation if essentially what they're doing
13:00
is they're taking the purchasing power from you.
13:02
And so that extra purchasing power is reflected in more
13:06
resources, more power in the hands of the government and in
13:09
the hands of the people who are in charge of the government.
13:12
So you are less capable of providing for your future self,
13:16
but your government has a lot more money to shape the world
13:18
today. And so that results in more
13:21
conflict, more war, more spending on things that are not
13:26
economically sane. But there's little opportunity
13:29
cost to government spending because government is able to do
13:32
whatever it wants because it can just devalue everybody's money.
13:35
And to to go back to the issue of food, you see the these two
13:40
combine in in a very sinister way because on the one hand,
13:43
people are losing their ability to hold value.
13:46
So therefore they're becoming more present oriented and they
13:49
discount the future more. So when they decide what to eat,
13:51
they're more likely to make decisions that are destructive
13:54
to their health. They're more likely to eat
13:56
things that are not very good for them because they value the
13:59
kick that you get out of the candy bar now and they discount
14:03
the long term health effects of this thing.
14:05
But on the other hand, you also because you know, food is one of
14:09
the most important aspects of everybody's expenditure, at
14:12
least for most people, food is significant part of their
14:14
expenditure and food is something that you buy every day
14:17
almost. So therefore you are quite
14:19
sensitive to what is happening with the prices.
14:21
So when your money is being devalued, the most effective
14:24
way, most or or the most way in which most people feel that
14:27
devaluation of the money is in the growth in the price of the
14:31
food items that they purchase. And so therefore that makes
14:34
people quite skeptical of their government, of the government's
14:38
policy. So governments aren't very fond
14:41
of people being angry at their food becoming more expensive.
14:44
So in the 20th century, particularly after the 1970s as
14:48
food became very expensive because of the inflation of Fiat
14:50
money, we see that governments have dedicated an enormous
14:54
amount of resources to telling people that they should be
14:57
eating cheap food. And I think this explains all of
15:00
the scam that is modern nutrition science that's out
15:03
there telling people, yeah, the pyramid, you know, you need to
15:06
eat 6 to 10 nations of grain every day, which is essentially
15:09
a very reliable formula for developing diabetes.
15:12
But it's also very good to for the government because grains
15:16
are cheap. And so if you replace nutritious
15:19
good meat with cheap grains, then you've under reported
15:24
inflation, then people's food is not becoming much more
15:27
expensive. So therefore inflation is less
15:30
of a problem. So on the one hand you have the
15:33
government is destroying the value of your money.
15:35
You can no longer afford the real food.
15:37
They're taking those resources and they're telling you, hey,
15:39
anyways, actually real food is bad for you.
15:41
It's bad for the planet. The cows are going to ruin the
15:43
weather or some shit like that. And then what you should be
15:45
eating instead is essentially industrial waste.
15:48
If you eat industrial waste, like, you know, the seed oils,
15:52
hydrogenated oils, if you eat cheap grains that have always
15:56
been fed to animals or slaves, then actually that's healthy for
15:59
you. And so the result is people's
16:01
health has been destroyed. People's finances have been
16:04
destroyed. And it's just a very, very, very
16:07
terrible story, all based on just the destruction of the
16:11
value of money, which is something that most economists
16:14
in the mainstream tradition will tell you is essentially cost
16:17
less. Like it's, it's just, oh, it's
16:18
just one or two or three percent every year.
16:20
And with that, we are able to finance the government without
16:23
any cost. But the cost, there's always a
16:25
cost. And, and their argument is
16:27
basically, you know, without inflation, people wouldn't spend
16:30
and don't beat me up safety. I'm playing devil's, I'm playing
16:33
devil's advocate. What would be your counter to
16:35
that? My counter to that is that it's
16:37
very obviously false. First of all, we can see it in
16:40
examples like tech blue goods, cell phones.
16:43
Cell phones get cheaper every year.
16:45
The same cell phone that you are buying today will be a lot
16:49
cheaper if you wait another year or five years for it.
16:52
And you know, the cell phone that you bought five years is a
16:56
lot cheaper today. So why did you buy it five years
16:58
ago? Why are you buying cell phone
16:59
now? And why will you still be buying
17:01
one in five years? Why don't you permanently delay
17:04
it? And the answer is, again, time
17:06
preference is positive. You prefer things now over
17:08
things in the future. You may not make it to the
17:10
future. You may not survive to the
17:12
future. You want to consume things now.
17:14
You want to get married when you're young.
17:16
You want to have kids when you're young.
17:17
You want to to live in a house now.
17:19
So people always have an incentive to spend.
17:21
We consume because we would like to survive.
17:23
We want to enjoy life. We want to avoid death, we want
17:25
to avoid destitution. We don't want to be homeless.
17:29
And so people always have an incentive to spend.
17:31
We don't need to be incentivized to spend.
17:34
We want to consume, we want to survive.
17:36
And so people already have that. We don't consume things just
17:40
because our money is devaluing it.
17:44
It's true that the devaluation of the money can make us more
17:48
consumption oriented and that that is true.
17:50
That's part of the effects of the things that I was mentioning
17:52
when I was talking about the effect of inflation.
17:55
It's true we do spend more, but it isn't as if the if the money
17:59
would appreciate that we wouldn't spend anything.
18:01
People under the gold standard, their money appreciated and they
18:04
still spend money. So you will always want to spend
18:07
because you always want to experience the joys of life.
18:10
You always want to avoid dangers.
18:12
We don't need any extra motivation by destroying the
18:14
value of our money. And if we are able to save and
18:17
if the money appreciates, we get more capital, we have more
18:21
savings. We're able to invest in
18:23
accumulating more capital. That increases our productivity.
18:26
It increases our income and our wealth and therefore allows us
18:30
to spend more and more and more. In fact, the richest countries
18:33
in the world are the countries that have saved the most in the
18:36
past. I think this is the perfect
18:38
example. You know, Switzerland has always
18:40
has some of the highest savings rates in the world.
18:43
And as you can see, they're not exactly destitute.
18:45
They are consuming. It's one of the richest places
18:48
in the world, and it's one of the places where the people have
18:51
the highest living standard. But that happens precisely
18:54
because people delay consumption, because they delay
18:57
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Check out Let In today. What are the parallels do you
20:46
see between the gold standard and the Bitcoin standard?
20:49
And where did gold fail? Where Bitcoin will succeed?
20:53
I think the most important parallel between the two is in
20:56
the hardness of the production. So gold's supply is always
21:02
increasing at around one and a half, 2% per year.
21:04
And that comes from just the chemistry of gold, the fact that
21:07
gold is essentially indestructible.
21:10
And it's a metal that humanity has had for thousands of years.
21:12
So for thousands of years, humans have been digging for
21:14
gold, finding gold, refining it. And then it's come onto the
21:18
market. And all of the gold that we've
21:20
been accumulating for all of those thousands of years is
21:22
still out there. You know, the same gold that was
21:24
borne by Cleopatra may today be in some random lady's earring.
21:32
It's always just been there. So it's always accumulating.
21:34
So even though our technology for looking for gold keeps
21:37
improving and every year we produce more gold, we find more
21:40
gold, and we're always adding on to a fixed supply that is not
21:45
dwindling, it's not being consumed.
21:48
The gold that exists is not being consumed.
21:50
So therefore, even as our production goes up, our
21:53
stockpile of gold also goes up. So therefore, there's always
21:56
this balance where we're constantly only increasing the
21:59
supply every year by around 1 1/2 to 2%.
22:02
That's held for more than a century now.
22:04
And so that has given gold the lowest supply growth rate of any
22:08
metal. And that's why gold was money.
22:10
That's what I argue you it makes gold money and what the Austrian
22:13
school in general argues is the key monetary property of gold.
22:18
The analogy here with Bitcoin is the Bitcoin has an even lower
22:21
supply growth rate. Starting last year, Bitcoin
22:23
supply growth rate dropped below 1.5.
22:27
It's now around 1:00. It's around .8% per year.
22:31
So Bitcoin has the lowest supply growth rate.
22:33
So it's even better than gold at being like gold.
22:38
That I think is the parallel, the similarity and the
22:42
difference is that gold is a lot harder and more expensive to
22:46
move around. It's it's got great saleability
22:51
across time, but it's not as good as Bitcoin, but it's got
22:54
not very good saleability across space.
22:56
It's difficult to move gold around.
22:58
It's expensive. So if you want to pay somebody
23:00
with gold halfway around the world, you have to either incur
23:05
an enormously expensive cost, get on a plane or a ship and
23:08
travel halfway around the world and hand it to them, or you're
23:11
going to have to rely on financial intermediaries that do
23:14
this. And that became essentially
23:17
impractical by the late 19th century, early 20th century,
23:21
because it meant a massive centralization of gold reserves
23:24
in central banks across the world.
23:26
And so as a result of this, you see this increase in government
23:29
power at the beginning of the 20th century, which culminated
23:31
with World War One, where central banks is essentially
23:35
suspended the gold standard across the belligerent country,
23:39
which. Coincidentally, the Federal
23:40
Reserve was literally fine. Like it started in 1913, World
23:45
War started a couple years later.
23:48
You think that was a coincidence?
23:49
It's an interesting question. I mean, it was, it was, I mean
23:53
the growth of central bank and was happening all over the world
23:55
and there were a lot of interest that wanted this to happen.
23:58
And you know, whether it had anything to do with the war is
24:01
an interesting question. I don't know, I don't have any
24:03
kind of special insight on it, but something that I get into in
24:05
depth in my next book, The Gold Standard, which is coming out in
24:08
the next few months. Let's talk about.
24:11
That so the gold standard and alternative history story.
24:14
I'm an alternative history junkie, so I'm really looking
24:18
forward to that. So could you, you know, give a
24:21
maybe some sneak peeks or? Yeah, advise the viewers.
24:24
Yes. The the the book will probably
24:26
be out by the time this episode comes out.
24:28
OK. Great.
24:29
Yeah, It's going to be out in November 14.
24:31
Essentially, the book asks the question, what would the 20th
24:34
century looked like, I'll have looked like on a gold standard.
24:38
So we look at the world of the 20th century.
24:42
You know, I think one of the most important things to happen
24:44
in the 20th century was the fact that money was Fiat, was
24:47
government money and had a high supply increase rate.
24:50
And that happened. That started after 1914.
24:53
The world really went off the gold standard in 1914. the IT
24:56
returned onto the gold standard, at least nominally in most
24:59
countries in the 1920s. But that was not really a same I
25:04
returned to the gold standard as it was before the war and then
25:07
the world practically left the gold standard in the 1930s and
25:11
it's never been back since then. And that has, I believe, been
25:14
devastating. So what I do in the gold
25:16
standard is I have essentially introduced Bitcoin to the world
25:20
in 1910. And the way that I do it is, I
25:23
imagine of so the first third of the book is like history, real
25:27
world history, the world up until 1915.
25:30
The second third of the book is fictional and it's like a novel
25:33
almost. It's a work of fiction studying
25:36
the lives of a few entrepreneurs who essentially changed the
25:39
world. Analogue Satoshi Nakamoto's
25:41
effectively and it's a French aviation pioneer named Leo,
25:45
who's a real person. He was the first guy to cross
25:47
the Channel between France and Britain.
25:49
And he was an entrepreneur. He invented the headlights on
25:52
the car. So he had a lot of money and he
25:54
was a huge aviation buff and built some of the first
25:57
airplanes. So he partners with the Wright
26:00
Brothers in the US and they make and, and you know, they wanted
26:04
to make aviation scale. They wanted to make aviation
26:07
grow. They were inspired by 4 than
26:10
what he did with the car. They want to do the same thing
26:12
with the airplane and they figure out that we need a
26:15
commercial application of flight.
26:17
But at that time flight was very expensive.
26:20
So moving people around wasn't economical because people
26:22
weren't going to pay because people are heavy.
26:24
And moving economic goods around isn't wasn't really economical
26:27
unless the goods were extremely valuable.
26:30
So what's the most valuable thing per unit of weight?
26:33
Gold. So he figures out that the only
26:35
way that we can make this scale is if we start running a gold
26:39
clearance service with airplanes across Europe and North America
26:42
and then the rest of the world. And it's a great idea because it
26:46
it picks up very quickly because people want to have access to
26:50
quick money because, you know, the world is becoming
26:52
industrial. And so people are trading across
26:53
the world. And there was telegraphs and
26:55
telephones at that point. So the world was globalizing,
26:58
trade was becoming more and more international.
27:01
And that company which is Malaria Transport Corporation
27:05
and other was BTC. That company becomes the
27:09
essentially central bank replacement.
27:11
So it picks up businesses, great, 1911121314 Then World War
27:16
One starts, and in the real world at that point, central
27:19
banks stop the redemption of gold and they confiscate most of
27:23
the people's goals. And people had no choice but to
27:26
hand over their gold because they had nowhere else to where
27:29
they could move the gold unless they go through the central
27:31
banks. But in this alternative history,
27:33
they've got those airplanes. So they don't hand in their
27:36
gold, they keep their gold. They use BTC to clear their
27:40
payments with the rest of the world.
27:43
And that essentially then leads to the collapse of central banks
27:46
in 1915. All of the major governments,
27:49
their central banks all collapse at the same time.
27:52
And so the war ends. The French is empty.
27:55
Nobody can pay their soldiers. The soldiers leave, and then
27:58
Switzerland takes a center stage.
28:00
Switzerland effectively becomes the world superpower in that
28:03
novel because all of those people hadn't been taking their
28:05
gold out of their country, sending it with those airplanes
28:07
to Switzerland. So all the countries are broke
28:09
and Switzerland, you know, they're just civilized, peaceful
28:12
people. They don't want to be part part
28:13
of a war. They want everybody else to be
28:15
civilized and peaceful. And so there's a grand
28:17
conference here in Switzerland where Switzerland whites all the
28:20
major powers and they essentially Swissify the world.
28:24
They impose the Swiss world order in which they tell the
28:27
world, you know, that you've got to have freedom of movement of
28:30
capital, You've got to allow for the right of self determination.
28:33
And it provides A framework that allows the world to end these
28:38
conflicts. And then we have an essentially
28:41
a, an incredibly utopian century of peace, prosperity, free trade
28:45
and the monetary soundness. And then the thought experiment
28:49
is think about the technological and social impacts of this.
28:54
How would the 20th century have been different?
28:56
It's a pretty extensive book. It's similar to the Bitcoin
28:57
standard in a sense, but in an alternative universe.
29:00
I think it could potentially be a glimpse into the future in a
29:04
way, exactly a glimpse into the past that also glimpses into the
29:08
future of what the possibilities of a sound money standard would
29:12
be now safe. Have your views evolved at all
29:16
since you wrote the Bitcoin standard many years ago?
29:19
I mean, obviously, yeah, a lot has happened.
29:20
I wrote the Bitcoin Standard in 2017.
29:23
It was published in 2018. So yeah, a lot has happened.
29:26
But I would say on the key ideas in the book, I think they've
29:29
held up pretty well. Absolutely.
29:31
And I, you know, the the book is probably selling more this year
29:36
than it did in his first year. So I think it's because
29:39
ultimately nothing has really changed in Bitcoin.
29:41
The fundamentals in Bitcoin are still the same and they're still
29:43
pretty constant. So these kind of timeless
29:46
aspects of Bitcoin, they are the ones that I focused on.
29:50
So I'm, yeah, I'm happily, stubbornly sticking to my guns.
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30:51
So we talked about the Bitcoin standard to talk about the Fiat
30:54
standard. We talked about your upcoming
30:55
book that's coming out in November, which by the time you
30:57
guys watch this episode, it should be out for sale.
31:01
You can find it on your website. Yes.
31:03
What's the website? Safeanddean.com or the
31:05
safe-house.com and you can also find the paperback on Amazon.
31:08
Boom, boom, boom. But we haven't talked about your
31:10
other book, which is The Principles of Economics.
31:14
Now, what I find really interesting about this book
31:16
specifically is it adds to the Austrian School of Economics in
31:20
a way, I think both Mises and Manger, forgive me, I'm not a
31:26
college professor, I'm a YouTube podcaster.
31:28
If I mispronounce that, but it I feel like the Austrian School of
31:33
Economics would not be possible. That type of it wouldn't be
31:36
possible without Bitcoin is I guess what I'm trying to say.
31:38
So I think you, you know, you wrote that book and it's the way
31:42
that I interpret it, is Austrian economics for the Digital age.
31:45
I think so. I mean, I wouldn't say that
31:47
Austrian economics wouldn't be possible without Bitcoin.
31:49
Is existed for 100 and 40 years or so since Manga wrote his book
31:54
in 1870. But I think what Bitcoin has
31:58
done is it's given Austrian economics an incredible lease of
32:00
life. I mean, it was, it's
32:02
astonishing. Just a couple of hours ago I was
32:04
in the Plan B conference and we had a panel with the Knuts Van
32:08
Hong and the Rahim Taghizada. And the discussion of the panel
32:12
was the history of the Austrian school.
32:13
And it was packed. The room was packed.
32:15
Couple 100 people, people standing.
32:17
A lot of people couldn't come into the room and then they just
32:19
left. And it's incredible.
32:21
Very few to 19th century schools of thought attract this kind of
32:25
interest today. And I think it's, you know, and
32:28
there was a time in which Marxism was the 19th century
32:31
school of thought that attracted a lot of people.
32:33
I don't think it has that same kind of appeal today.
32:35
I think the Austrian school is doing a lot better and I think
32:39
it is because of Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is A and that
32:42
was the topic of my talk yesterday in the conference.
32:43
Bitcoin is a living refutation of a lot of the main ideas in
32:47
mainstream economics and an advertisement for a lot of the
32:51
ideas of Austrian economics. Particularly Austrians don't
32:54
think that money is a creation of the state.
32:56
Here we have the money that's not a creation of the state.
32:58
They Austrians don't think that the money supply needs to
33:01
increase, and here we have a perfectly functioning monetary
33:04
system where the money supply is not increasing.
33:07
Safe last couple minutes I want to ask you this because you did
33:10
mention Marxism. This Fiat enable socialism.
33:13
Absolutely. I think it's not a coincidence
33:15
that the century of, and that's the century of socialism with
33:18
the century of Fiat. And that is a theme and an
33:21
important theme in my gold standard book.
33:24
I'm not going to ruin it. I'm not going to give you
33:26
spoilers, but well, maybe I will.
33:28
But essentially, in that alternative century, socialism
33:31
and leftism are nowhere to be seen effectively, because if you
33:36
look at the history of socialism, I mean, it exploded
33:40
and mushroomed all over the world right after World War One.
33:43
And that's no coincidence. Before World War One, very few
33:46
people had ever heard of Karl Marx, and very few people in
33:50
places like Russia or China had heard about him and this insane
33:53
idea that these are grassroots movements.
33:56
It's completely ridiculous. It wasn't, it wasn't as if the,
33:59
you know, the Russian farmers were reading Karl Marx and
34:01
realized, all right, that's it. We figured it out.
34:03
That's how we fix our lives. It was always an idea that was
34:05
top down. It was always imposed and
34:08
financed from the top. And, you know, I get in
34:11
particular into the history of the Bolsheviks in Russia.
34:14
And the Bolsheviks were financed by German and American bankers
34:17
who wanted to bring down the tsarist regime and the every
34:24
socialist movement that has come into power in the 20th century.
34:26
Maybe every is a strong word, but I'm pretty sure that is the
34:30
case. Has always had significant
34:32
funding from foreign sources. It's was never an organic
34:35
movement. You never had this mass movement
34:38
of a majority of the population reading Karl Marx and then
34:41
arriving at the conclusion that we need to destroy private
34:44
property in order to make our country better.
34:47
It was always people who lusted for power and people who had a
34:50
lot of money and power and wanted to reinforce their
34:53
position in society who used these criminal ideas to
34:57
undermine the fundamentals of the society and fundamentals of
35:01
a social working order, undermine the family, undermine
35:04
religion, undermine monarchy, and undermine capitalism.
35:07
And if you undermine all of those things, you essentially
35:09
take away what creates all the basis of human civilization.
35:12
Your turn humans to a state of barbarism and you make them
35:17
essentially powerless, helpless slaves without capital, without
35:20
religion, without monarchy, without family, without these
35:25
institutions. We go back to being monkeys in
35:27
the jungles, thinking our feces at each other.
35:30
And that is essentially what socialism leads to.
35:34
And that is, I think, you know, it's it's as you said, it's a
35:37
highly intertwined with Fiat because first of all, the
35:41
creation of a central bank and the destruction of the gold
35:43
standard is the only way that you can implement those ideas.
35:46
You need to pay a lot of people to wear the Jack boots and go
35:49
knocking people's doors, confiscate their property, take
35:52
their gold, shoot them if they resist.
35:54
That's very expensive. And you can't do that on a gold
35:56
standard. So you've never had a socialist
35:58
dictatorship that ran, you know, gold standard as far as I can
36:01
tell, you have to have it with out money.
36:04
And it's also the reason I believe why universities in
36:07
general are always heavily promoting leftist ideas.
36:12
Not all and not at all time, but to a very large degree, a vast
36:15
majority, you know, the 20th century is just always across
36:20
all disciplines in the social sciences.
36:22
You always see this heavy emphasis on Marxist ideas and
36:26
leftist and progressive ideas and all these different flavors
36:28
of the same shit essentially. And the reason for that is that
36:31
these ideas help people to help people in power.
36:35
The people in power like those ideas.
36:38
You know it. And it works perfectly because
36:40
it is packaged in the rhetoric of helping the poor, helping the
36:44
downtrodden, helping the farmers and the workers and so on.
36:47
But all that it does is it destroys those people's lives to
36:50
the benefits of the people who come to power and the people who
36:53
have the resources. And so that's why Fiat is so
36:57
popular with socialists, and that's why socialism is so
36:59
popular with fiaters. Absolutely.
37:01
I mean, it's not a coincidence that the 5th tenet of the
37:04
Communist Manifesto is a necessity for the centralization
37:08
of credit. Say for the last question, 100
37:10
years from now, 500 years from now, 1000 years from now, how do
37:13
you want to be remembered? What do you want your legacy to
37:15
be? Oof, difficult question.
37:19
I hadn't thought about that one before.
37:22
I mean, I guess somebody who helped people get on Bitcoin and
37:27
hopefully people will think that I may have brought about the
37:31
death of Fiat. Hell yeah.
37:33
Helps to bring it about, make it draw it a day earlier.
37:36
Contribute that. Then I'd I'd be very happy.
37:41
Save Adina Moose. Thank you.
37:42
Guys, go check out his new book. It's going to be out by the time
37:45
you guys see this episode, say for the.
37:47
Appreciate it. Yes, Sir.
37:48
Thank you so much for having me. Cheers.