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cockpit all right here we are in the cockpit as you say so um yeah what we're so welcome to

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bitcoin study sessions today we're going to talk about a new book we finished up soft war last time

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by jason lowry which was an excellent first book to begin studying bitcoin on because of how

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much it engages you in all sorts of areas beyond bitcoin which is kind of what we want to do here

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is use Bitcoin as an entry point into a general exploration of just the many aspects of reality

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that are going to be impacted by Bitcoin and that impact Bitcoin.

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So today we're continuing that journey.

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We're going to begin Lynn Alden's Broken Money, Why Our Financial System is Failing Us,

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and How We Can Make It Better.

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This is a book that Lucas and I have both read before, right when it came out.

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My particular reading right when it came out was the kind of reading that you do when you just read something quickly is kind of somnambulistic, like a sleepwalk through it.

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I didn't get as much as I wanted to, not because of the book, but because I didn't read it correctly.

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And that's exactly what we want to do in these Bitcoin study sessions is read a book as it should be read, which is sitting down, studying it, and then putting in our own words and having a conversation about the contents to help push the contents deeper into our mind and engage with them.

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So I hope that you're doing the same if you're listening to this with Lucas and I, that maybe you have the book, maybe you're reading along, maybe you've read it before and want to, maybe you've also had a sleepwalk reading and you want to have the concepts be more present and alive in your mind.

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Hopefully, this is a forum to do that.

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So again, I encourage you to read along, grab a copy of the book.

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It's on Audible too, so you can listen to it.

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Today, we're going to break this apart.

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This broken money is broken into six parts and 30 chapters.

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We're going to roughly, I think, try to do two chapters each study session.

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Today, we did the introduction and chapter one, ledgers as the foundation of money, and

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chapter two, the evolution of commodities as money.

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So I'll do a brief summary of the introduction in the first two chapters, just so we have

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the contents present in our mind.

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And then Lucas and I will discuss the contents and see what of interest we can dredge up and what we can reconstruct from the reading ourselves to help us again thoroughly understand what is being said, because this is a phenomenal book.

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So the introduction kind of begins with, I would say, a quick survey of our broken monetary system.

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It begins internationally with other countries, Lebanon, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil.

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These are all countries that have been deeply affected by inflation.

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In Lebanon, that's the anecdote that Alden begins with.

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She begins strikingly with a person in Lebanon robbing their own bank because they're trying to get their funds out.

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that the bank is not letting them access.

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And we see, again, all these different countries,

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they're all racked by the same problem,

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a broken money system,

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all this inflation that's causing people

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to have to renegotiate their wages with their employers

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because what they have,

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what they're earning can no longer buy what it did.

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It's not just what you might think of

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as developing countries either.

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She has a broad survey of countries.

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She mentions Europe and Japan,

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their sovereign bond markets from 2016 to 2021 were zero or negative yields, which essentially

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means people were paying for the privilege of lending money to their own government.

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So there's kind of like beginning with these anecdotes, a survey of international examples

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of a broken money system. And then talking about the United States, we, of course,

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have inflation, she notes, at a four decade high in 2022. We've had money creation at record rates.

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We have the Federal Reserve, this institution whose actions affect Americans, but also all these other countries she's mentioned, and whose actions are done by this cabal of individuals who are not democratically accountable.

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So how does – we have all these countries, again, 160 different currencies, many of them double-digit inflation or hyperinflation.

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But again, the Federal Reserve's decisions about the currency in the United States is affecting all of them because there's a few currencies, she notes in the introduction, that are held kind of as reserves.

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Even by countries who, of course, don't use the dollar for their currency, they're holding stronger money in reserve.

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But even those reserves, like the U.S. dollar, are inflating away.

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So Alden notes, quote, it can be a challenge to save money even in the most stable monetary jurisdictions, and if someone happens to be born in the wrong, quote-unquote, jurisdiction, it's an incredible uphill battle.

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So stepping back then, if our monetary system is broken in this way worldwide, how did we arrive at this?

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So she notes, Alden notes that history shows three reasons why global financial orders historically have tended to fall apart. Economic imbalances, geopolitical realignments, and new technologies. And this book is going to focus on the last of those. New technology as a reason why global financial orders and the current order we have tends to fall apart.

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So Alden says, quote,

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I won't go into each of those parts. We're, of course, going to methodically march through the book here. But she also gives an overall summary in the introduction. She says, quote, this is kind of her thesis in the book that she's going to establish. So I think we're going to revisit this paragraph as we go throughout the book.

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At its core, money is a ledger. Commodity money serves as a ledger governed by nature. Bank money serves as a ledger governed by nation states. Open source money serves as a ledger governed by users.

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As the book explores the evolution of technology changes the prevailing power structures and incentives surrounding money from era to era. So again, this is a book about technology's impact on the monetary system. And there we had her thesis that at its core, money is a ledger. And the different ways that getting to open source money, we're going to see how money as a ledger is governed by users.

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so it's almost criminal to read that that paragraph because that packs in obviously

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everything the book is going to be about and we're going to spend the next few weeks and if you read

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along you're also going to see this as the chapters develop we're going to unpack that paragraph in

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which there's a lot of information a lot of claims so again we'll hopefully return to this paragraph

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two more interesting points in the introduction before we move to chapter one um first she says

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Alden says this is not a banking, a Bitcoin, or a political book. This is an exploration of

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monetary technology. So part five of the book is, I think, largely about Bitcoin. But I think it's

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interesting that upfront, she says it's not a Bitcoin book. She's not going to pigeonhole herself.

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And so this is a wider exploration. And two, related to that, Alden notes she is taking a

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systems engineering approach to analyzing the global financial systems, systems engineering

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being a multidisciplinary field focused on design, integration, operation, and maintenance

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of complex systems over their life cycle. So here we have the complex system, which is the global

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financial system. And here we have a systems engineer looking, Alden looking at the life

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cycle of that. And again, talking about how new technology tends to cause a decline of global

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financial orders. So that's the introduction. Chapter one, then, ledgers as the foundation of

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money. Money begins as a ledger. All the notes. And what is a ledger? A ledger is a summary of

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transactions that is used to keep track of who owns what. It's that simple. It's a list saying

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that you own this resource, I own that resource. She notes even that the first written example of

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this are Sumerian clay tablets that just had a picture of a commodity and a dot next to it,

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noting how much of it there was, presumably in the possession of a certain person or entity.

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but there goes further back than that there were even ledgers before writing there were ledgers

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that are based in that are conveyed orally and just held in memory they're not written on a clay

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tablet they precede writing so these were like systems of kind of you would imagine they precede

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ledgers like this precede what we think of as money and also precede writing their systems of

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memorializing swapped favors.

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They're systems of credit.

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Do this for me now.

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In the future, I owe you a solid.

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We can kind of imagine an ancient tribe to see how this works.

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We might keep track of who kills the animals most often, who does a domestic chore, and

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then doing these things kind of in this informal social ledger we have of exchanging favors

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and keeping track of them in our minds and conveying them orally.

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It kind of increases your social standing in the community. We maybe even, all the notes, kind of evolved the tendency to feel good when we do someone a favor, because that tends toward cooperation and survival of that unit over time.

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important. These oral and memory based ledgers of kind of exchanges of favors were kind of a rough

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of a rough accounting of who is kind of a boon providing a surplus and who is more of a burden

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to the group. It's an unconscious mental ledger, not necessarily exact, you don't have ticks in

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your mind for doing favor, getting a favor. All the notes. By doing this favor, I am strengthening

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the whole group, including myself, and I am banking some personal insurance or social savings

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for myself and or close kin in the future. I'm expending current worker resources during my time

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of abundance, and in return, I am collecting some savings in our collective social ledger.

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So we kind of have talked about this hypothetical ancient tribe, but it actually is beyond ancient

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tribes. You can think of it nowadays, all the notes, sharing rides with a co-worker. I give you

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a ride today, you give me a ride tomorrow. Giving gifts, we kind of tacitly expect we'll get a gift

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back. We still have that evolved tendency. We still have informal social ledgers that we use

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in certain instances to keep track of favors. Notably, though, these oral and memory-based

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ledgers, these social ledgers depend on trust and reputation. They're really only affected between

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family and friends within like a social network that you know the person. When you trade with

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unknown individuals or one-off exchanges, you can't do them a solid and expect to get a solid

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back in return. Because again, a one-off exchange with a foreign tribe, you just can't count on that.

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So the oral or memory-based ledger doesn't work in that instance necessarily. And you have to have

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some way of doing a spot exchange. If you want to trade spears with another tribe,

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there needs to be some way of doing an exchange that doesn't rely on simply hoping that a favor

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gets returned in the future. This is the problem of barter, all the notes that are in that it

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requires it raises the problem of barter rather once you have these spot exchanges, because it

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requires a double coincidence of wants, which just means that the other person or tribe needs

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to want something that you have and are willing to give, and you need to want something that they

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have and are willing to part with. If you guys, if I have spears, and they don't want spears,

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then I don't really have something to give them in exchange for something that I want from them.

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So that's the double coincidence of wants. We kind of each need to want something the other

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person has and be willing to part with something that they want. So notably, the social, so she

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began all in the day by talking about social credit between friends and family, not strangers.

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With social credit, that ledger doesn't have that problem of the double quintet of wants

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because I'm doing you a favor now and then I can kind of depend on you doing that favor

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in the future.

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We're all part of the same social network.

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But now that we have barter exchanges with other tribes, with strangers, we're going

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to need something to solve this problem of the double coincidence of wants. And that's what forms

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of money do. An item that is always in demand. So that if I want to get something, if I want to get

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spears from another tribe, but they don't want any of the goods I have, maybe they would accept the

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money because it's something that's always desirable. And later on, they would exchange

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that money for something they do want. So then she talks historically about these early forms of

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money, shells and beads being a very prime example, to see what it takes to arrive at this thing that

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might be universally wanted and used as a form of exchange when we don't have goods to barter that

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the other person wants. Shells and beads, they have the quality of being durable. You can move

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them through time. Something like food decays. Shells and beads don't. They're durable. They're

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also portable. You can move them through space. The tribe moves from one space to the next. You

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You can put beads and shells on your person.

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They're not maybe like furs or spears.

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You can't stockpile them as easily as you can shells and beads.

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They're also universally desirable for maybe their aesthetic value.

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You can wear them, their status symbol.

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And so you can expect that another tribe might want them.

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And finally, they're scarce.

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They're labor intensive to retrieve and or produce.

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So these types of early monies then serve to replace the oral and memory based ledger

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for exchanges with kind of non-trusted third parties outside of your friend and family network.

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The shells, this is going to go back, as we know, Alden's thesis relates to money being a ledger.

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Alden notes here in the first chapter, the shells are a ledger. A ledger, again,

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being a summary of transactions that is used to keep track of who owns what.

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It's not a physically written down letter, but it rather is a decentralized ledger that's kind of

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updated by physical possession of passing the literal beads or shells back and forth,

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updated or maintained by nature because the physical laws of nature are what are preventing more of them from coming into existence.

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And so we have this, again, the passing around of shells is an unwritten but decentralized form of a ledger.

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In summary, so to summarize chapter one, ledgers as the foundation of money.

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Money begins as a ledger, not as coins.

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Small groups, friends and family don't need money because we have the social ledger that we can maintain orally through memory.

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And we can kind of solve the problem of barter before it even arises because we can expect a favor to be repaid later, even if I don't need something you have now when I'm doing an exchange.

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But the need for money arises when maybe with agriculture leading to larger group sizes, we now are associating with people beyond kin and friends or we're encountering other strange tribes.

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We need to finalize one-off spot exchanges on the spot.

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And so money starts as, quote, nature's ledger.

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That leads us to chapter two, the evolution of commodities as money.

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So she notes at the beginning, early money may seem foolish, right?

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We have these hunter-gatherer tribes.

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They have high infant mortality rates.

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They need to be, like, hunting and gathering, right?

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So why does it make sense to take time to go out, get shells, punch holes in them, string them up as beads, polish them, do all these things you need to do to make it serve as an aesthetically valuable piece of money when ancient tribes have all these other, they're living so close to the thin line between them and death or whatever.

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but all the notes good money is a resource because it makes economic interactions more

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efficient with non-trusted third parties so there is a benefit to having money it's not

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it's not just it's not a luxury unlike barter money provides for a common medium of exchange

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and a store of value again the way previously noted which is solves the problem of the double

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coincidence of wants by providing something that's kind of universally wanted

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and then is also portable and durable.

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So to facilitate this, then,

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we need money to solve this problem,

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the double coincidence of once,

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in order to provide a ledger of interactions

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between non-trusted third parties.

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Money should have certain characteristics.

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Here, Alden draws from the Austrian Economic School.

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She mentions Karl Menger,

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Lube von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek

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to give characteristics of commodity money.

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She does note a disagreement with what

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she calls the credit theory, but she brackets that disagreement on the nature of money until

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chapter four. So here we again have the characteristics of what she calls commodity

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money. And those are one, that it's divisible in the sizes that are suitable for different sizes

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of purchase. Two, that it's portable. It's easy to move across distance. Three, it's durable.

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It's preservable across time. Four, it's fungible. One unit is as good as the next.

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Five, it's verifiable.

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The seller can easily check that the money is real and not counterfeit, something like that.

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Six, it's scarce in that the supply does not increase too quickly.

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And seven, it has utility in that it's intrinsically desirable for some reason, could be consumed, used, and or has aesthetic value.

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These, again, are the characteristics of money, money understood as commodity money.

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these characteristics tend to make money into the most sellable item it's always something that you

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will want to obtain if you can't obtain something else that you need like spears or fur you'll at

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least want to get money in exchange because it's intrinsically valuable universally wanted it also

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these characteristics give it the the the power virtue of being easily transportable across space

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in time. Of these seven characteristics, all the notes that scarcity is often the defining

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characteristic when deciding between different forms of money. In this, she uses the phrase that

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we might have heard before, the stock to flow ratio, to define what makes a currency or one

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way to talk about a thing being scarce. Stock being how much of a thing currently exists in

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a region, that's the stock of it. And the flow is simply how much of it is flowing into the region,

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how much new stock is being introduced And you want a high stock to flow ratio to be scarce That is you don want too much new flow of the thing coming in relative to how much stock exists or else it will be inflated and lose its value

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The stock to flow ratio is also a good way to talk about scarcity because a defining characteristic

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of money, and this is an important concept, is that there is a monetary premium on a thing that

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begins to be considered or taken or used as money, a thing when it is used as money becomes more

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valuable because people, in addition to whatever other use it has, they also want to hold it to

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use it as money. That's another use. And they want to hold it for savings to transport value

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into the future. And so even beyond the intended use of an item, which might be ascribed some value,

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there's a monetary premium, more value given to that thing because it's used,

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it has these monetary characteristics. An example from the present day people might have heard of,

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of course, is real estate, we often think has a high monetary premium, because people not only buy

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a house to live in, but nowadays tend to invest in a house as something that they expect to

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appreciate in value, they want to preserve their wealth over time. And so real estate is used as

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a savings technology, giving it a monetary premium, a cost, or amount of value over the

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value of the real estate itself. As an example of something that doesn't tend to have a monetary

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premium, Alden gives, for example, crude oil. It's not necessarily held as savings. Its value

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is exactly in its intended use. So the deal with things with monetary premiums are people are

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incentivized to get or make more of it. It tends to increase the flow and so increase the stock,

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which again diminishes the value of that thing as a currency because it is in there's there's

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more and more of it and so it's less valuable alden gives the example of gold as something

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that has um that is good as that has been historically good as a commodity money because

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it has a high stock to flow ratio there's a small amount that is mined each year which has not really

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increased. And so even though there's a high monetary premium to gold, people want gold,

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not just because it's useful in electronics or something like that. It does have a high

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monetary premium, but that monetary premium hasn't been able to incentivize or cause a

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kind of a flood of flow increase, a dramatic increase in flow. Whereas you can imagine with

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some things that are easy to produce, if there's a monetary premium, people are going to produce

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more of them more quickly and increase the flow relative to the stock and decrease its scarcity.

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So Alden also notes that some theorists just believe that money is just a shared delusion. So

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hypothetically, I guess you could pick whatever random thing, like a slip of paper. And if we all

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say it has value, or it is money, then it is money. But again, for Alden, because scarcity

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is important, if a thing picked has a low stock to flow ratio, that thing can be diluted over time

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and people's savings can be wrecked.

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So the characteristics of commodity money

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mean, if we take them seriously,

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that you can't just designate a random thing

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and then say that if we all believe it has value

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as a currency, it therefore does.

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No, there's some objectivity to what constitutes money

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under the commodity money theory.

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This brings us back to the theme of the book,

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how new technology disrupts the financial system.

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Alden says, quote,

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Shell money lasted thousands of years in various regions, but eventually became unworkable against the Industrial Revolution.

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That's because with better tools, shells could be acquired and then polished and made into currency much more quicker.

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She also notes, furs, livestock, salt, tobacco, and other monies also served their useful roles at various times.

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But the ever-growing technical prowess of civilization eventually made those unworkable as money as well. They worked until technology disallowed them from continuing to work.

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So again, the theme, technology has ended the use of certain commodities as money because it allowed people that had access to new technology to produce more of the commodity because there's a monetary premium on that.

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So they're incentivized to produce more of it.

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That increases the flow and so inflates the stock.

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Alden then goes through various examples.

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I kind of mentioned in that previous quote of things like the furs, tobacco, and cocoa beans of things that you began as money, but technological increases because of the monetary premium, people were incentivized to overproduce them once the technology allowed for it.

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She gives also the famous example, I'll just mention one, in Bitcoin literature. You might have heard this one. In the island of Yap in the Pacific, Pacific Islanders would, from a specific island, go to another island, Palau, to mine a specific rock.

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This other island they went to

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was 250 miles away,

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but they would go there,

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extract huge stones,

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refine them into disks,

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and take them back

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to the island of Yap.

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An incredibly energy-intensive process,

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and so it tended to give scarcity

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to these stones

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once they were on the island of Yap.

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Until a westerner arrived,

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and then with better technology

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could transport more stones

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quicker and quicker,

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quarry them and refine them

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quicker and quicker,

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and then once that happened,

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it kind of eventually ruined

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the monetary system there.

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I'll just mention

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The concluding example, because it's interesting,

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and we might talk about this,

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massively multiplayer video games.

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This is also an example of money that,

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commodity money that Alden gives from Diablo 2.

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I played this back in the day,

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so I can verify that this example is true.

282
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There was like a special item you could get.

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Diablo 2 is obviously like a dungeon clearing game.

284
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You go down there,

285
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you try to get magical artifacts and whatnot.

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One was called the Stone of Jordan.

287
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and then it emerged as things that players were using as an implicit form of currency

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to to trade with other players the stone of jordan was an artifact you could get but it

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turned out it just had the qualities of a commodity money i'm just applying austrian economics it was

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portable fungible it had utility um because any class in the game could use it it was scarce

291
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there was also some sort of divisibility because there were like secondary artifacts that could be

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used as smaller increments of money or whatever. And so the point of that whole example, I think,

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is that money is arrived at, commodity money is arrived at, it emerges as a solution,

294
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not by the design of developers, not even by the formal decision of those playing the game,

295
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they just converge upon the solution of this in-game item, the Stone of Jordan,

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having monetary properties within that game. And even outside, I think people paid real world

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currency to get stones of jordan um but it also she notes the same story plays out technology is

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the theme of the book technology within the game it turned out there was a way to hack the game so

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that you could produce these stones of jordan you could dupe them um and so that just wrecked the

300
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stone of jordan currency so to summarize chapter two commodity um commodity money as a ledger

301
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requires scarcity, which works until the technology emerges that allows a party to get the upper hand in production.

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And then it will tend to devalue things like beads, shells, or rye stones, these stones from the island of Yap,

303
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that can then, whoever has this new technology, can increase the flow relative to the stock and inflate and devalue the currency.

304
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History then shows that commodities serve as money until technology allows one group to have the upper hand,

305
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at which point everybody then must adapt or lose.

306
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You can't keep on trading beads once the technology is out there to mass produce them.

307
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So that's the summary of the intro in chapters one and two.

308
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And so, Lucas, what do you think?

309
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Money as a ledger.

310
00:27:51,158 --> 00:27:52,858
I mean, I don't want to put that.

311
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This is obviously the hypothesis that's going to get developed over time.

312
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But I thought it was incredibly fascinating to start off with this idea of social credit, even prior to the exchange of any commodity money, any item as money, the doing of favors and expecting a favor in return is like a monetary system.

313
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Yeah, it's a natural emergent property as well.

314
00:28:21,918 --> 00:28:44,718
Yes. Today, as I read this, I was thinking about where in my life do I currently see this sort of flexible social credit? And the first thought I had was double doors. So you and I are walking in through to a building that has double doors. I get to the door first. I hold the door open for you. You go in. What do you do? You open the door and you hold it for me.

315
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If you don't do that, then you have violated this unspoken social obligation that then impacts my ability to trust you.

316
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It impacts my desire to interact with you.

317
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It impacts basically my trust in you as a person.

318
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And so that is so innate to what we have that coming at it from that direction, from that money is a is merely a solution to the inconvenience of trying to keep all of these favors in your it is a it is an external.

319
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It's just the externalization of that flexible social credit.

320
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Yeah, but not necessarily just an inconvenience because it's also the possibility of expecting the return of a favor from a non-trusted third party, a foreign tribe stranger.

321
00:29:51,598 --> 00:30:01,518
that's right yeah because without that then you obviate the um occurrence of spot interactions

322
00:30:01,518 --> 00:30:05,938
like you like you mentioned before it's like you know this might this is the only time that i'm

323
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ever going to see this person i can't take a favor from them um and but i still want to do business

324
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with them they still have something that i want um and so we do we've got this issue with this uh

325
00:30:17,238 --> 00:30:20,778
you know, double coincidence of wants that has to be recognized.

326
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I thought one of the things that Alden does is she frames money as a good that is the most

327
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saleable good, which is basically just to say that money is the good that everybody wants.

328
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And I think it's really important for people when they start, especially when they start

329
00:30:39,758 --> 00:30:48,698
getting involved in Bitcoin to start viewing the world in terms of selling dollars to buy things.

330
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Because we don't ever really think we, we typically think of dollars or we typically think of money

331
00:30:54,678 --> 00:31:00,858
as the thing we use to buy something or the thing we get in exchange for selling something.

332
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But it's equally the other side of those things where when you go buy a Coke, what you're doing

333
00:31:08,478 --> 00:31:12,218
is you are selling $3 for a Coke.

334
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And you're buying that Coke.

335
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And when you sell a used car,

336
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what you're doing is you're buying $5,000

337
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and you're selling the used car.

338
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So I think it's important to think of it that way

339
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because then it kind of takes away this money mystique

340
00:31:30,838 --> 00:31:33,738
where if you just treat it like a good

341
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and you place it on top of the heap

342
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in terms of this is the most saleable good.

343
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This is the good that just,

344
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it's not even that everybody wants it,

345
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it's that everybody accepts it.

346
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Like in investing, the term is cash and trash.

347
00:31:49,818 --> 00:31:51,638
You don't want cash.

348
00:31:52,318 --> 00:31:55,058
You want money so that you can buy things with it,

349
00:31:55,058 --> 00:31:58,198
but the only reason to have it is to get rid of it

350
00:31:58,198 --> 00:32:01,098
in a lot of instances.

351
00:32:01,678 --> 00:32:03,518
And that obviously, that exists

352
00:32:03,518 --> 00:32:09,798
because we do have this problem with any sort of money that we've ever come up with.

353
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Sans Bitcoin has been one that once there's a monetary premium placed upon that,

354
00:32:16,698 --> 00:32:26,338
then hard work and technology and voodoo and whatever is going to be used in order to extract that monetary premium.

355
00:32:26,878 --> 00:32:33,298
Alden does a really good job, by the way, of noting this, how anytime there is a monetary premium,

356
00:32:33,518 --> 00:32:38,698
that's placed upon something, technology not only extracts that monetary premium,

357
00:32:38,698 --> 00:32:43,278
but it basically destroys that whole, you know, that whole system.

358
00:32:43,518 --> 00:32:48,018
And thinking about that, so you brought up the real estate example,

359
00:32:48,318 --> 00:32:50,958
and I've been thinking about this in terms of real estate too,

360
00:32:51,038 --> 00:32:57,678
because, you know, your average starter home in the United States right now is like $420,000.

361
00:32:57,678 --> 00:33:04,518
and you can buy a tiny home from China

362
00:33:04,518 --> 00:33:07,558
that's like a luxury tiny home for six grand.

363
00:33:08,138 --> 00:33:09,778
You can buy a tiny home off Amazon.

364
00:33:09,778 --> 00:33:11,238
First time I've heard luxury tiny home.

365
00:33:11,338 --> 00:33:12,038
I like that phrase though.

366
00:33:12,618 --> 00:33:15,678
You can buy one off Amazon for like 12 grand.

367
00:33:16,318 --> 00:33:20,678
And the reason being is that technology has come in

368
00:33:20,678 --> 00:33:25,078
and using modular offsite automated design,

369
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they've been able to just slap this together, make it very high quality, and then send it to you.

370
00:33:32,618 --> 00:33:37,378
And there's another example of like they have these inflatable things.

371
00:33:37,578 --> 00:33:41,178
They blow them up, they put rebar over them, and then they spray concrete over them.

372
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And then you have a dome concrete house that's done in a day instead of a year or 18 months.

373
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So I find that really fascinating how technology comes in and just sucks all of the monetary premium out.

374
00:34:00,378 --> 00:34:04,058
And the thing is, people try really hard.

375
00:34:04,218 --> 00:34:07,498
There's still people trying to convert lead into gold.

376
00:34:07,698 --> 00:34:09,858
There's still people trying to figure out alchemy.

377
00:34:11,038 --> 00:34:12,178
It would be worth it.

378
00:34:13,038 --> 00:34:18,518
Well, up until Bitcoin came around, it would have been worth it for them to do that.

379
00:34:18,938 --> 00:34:19,178
Yeah.

380
00:34:19,178 --> 00:34:22,698
I mean, I have like a fantastical conception of science.

381
00:34:22,698 --> 00:34:33,238
So I just hear a word like nanotechnology, and I assume that there's some potential alchemical process that can eventually come from the ability to manipulate atoms.

382
00:34:33,419 --> 00:34:38,398
And so I'm not, of course, saying that's coming out of the pipeline, but conceptually, that seems possible.

383
00:34:38,398 --> 00:34:44,538
And with a monetary premium over gold, it's incentivized to come up with some sort of process like that.

384
00:34:44,538 --> 00:34:58,978
And then as all the notes, once the new technology is out of the bag, whoever has it first devalues the money, sucks that the monetary premium out of it, benefits from it, replaces everybody else's goods with an inflated currency that is rapidly losing all value at all.

385
00:34:58,978 --> 00:35:16,818
Yeah. One of the other things that I wanted to talk about, kind of bring up was this concept of scarcity. And in the book and in a lot of writings about money in the past, we talk about how this is scarce and therefore it became money.

386
00:35:16,818 --> 00:35:35,478
And I do think that we need to caveat all of those things now by saying that they were relatively scarce and simply happened to be more scarce than whatever the money before was because now we actually have an absolute, like we have an absolute scarcity with Bitcoin.

387
00:35:35,478 --> 00:35:53,598
And so there is a difference. And the difference is that gold is more similar to mosquitoes or bacteria in terms of scarcity than it is to Bitcoin.

388
00:35:53,598 --> 00:35:58,938
because the difference between something that cannot be replicated

389
00:35:58,938 --> 00:36:04,318
and the thing that you can make 1.5% more of per year,

390
00:36:05,258 --> 00:36:08,938
that's an uncrossable chasm.

391
00:36:10,678 --> 00:36:13,958
So on the one side, it's only a matter of time

392
00:36:13,958 --> 00:36:17,998
until the stock-to-flow reaches a point at which

393
00:36:17,998 --> 00:36:21,919
all holders of that thing have been sufficiently diluted

394
00:36:21,919 --> 00:36:29,898
And those who are close to the source of it have extracted a monetary premium to benefit themselves.

395
00:36:30,218 --> 00:36:35,658
There's such a great example in this book of the wampum factory that John Jacob Astor bought.

396
00:36:36,238 --> 00:36:38,018
So describe that.

397
00:36:38,018 --> 00:36:52,638
Okay, so wampum, which people may have heard of, wampum is a proto-money that was made from shells of oysters or clams, I think, in the northeast of the United States.

398
00:36:52,758 --> 00:36:55,498
And it was legitimately recognized money.

399
00:36:56,258 --> 00:36:57,378
These are fashioned.

400
00:36:58,178 --> 00:36:58,959
They're white.

401
00:36:59,058 --> 00:37:00,298
They're white and purple ones.

402
00:37:00,419 --> 00:37:02,838
The purple ones were more scarce, so they had a higher value.

403
00:37:02,838 --> 00:37:12,498
anyways so these were used as money in the united states um early early on um it was something that

404
00:37:12,498 --> 00:37:18,798
was adopted from the local tribes and then when um colonists came over they they actually adopted

405
00:37:18,798 --> 00:37:26,698
the same type of thing and they traded it and um so there's this guy who builds a mill to make

406
00:37:26,698 --> 00:37:33,518
these like to obviously, Hey, there's money. I can make more of this money. I'm going to do it

407
00:37:33,518 --> 00:37:38,439
in an industrial type of process where I'm going to build a mill and I'm going to create, um, more

408
00:37:38,439 --> 00:37:45,939
wampum. And this other guy, John Jacob Astor, who I believe like traded furs or something like that.

409
00:37:45,998 --> 00:37:51,598
I can't remember what it was, but he came in and he goes, um, I think I'll buy that. And it's just

410
00:37:51,598 --> 00:37:52,838
It's so obvious.

411
00:37:53,058 --> 00:37:56,218
It's like, oh, there's a money printer and it's for sale?

412
00:37:57,998 --> 00:37:59,238
I can buy it for...

413
00:37:59,238 --> 00:38:05,459
The thing is, whatever price you buy it for, it's worth it.

414
00:38:05,939 --> 00:38:07,758
If you can make your own money.

415
00:38:08,278 --> 00:38:09,459
Like, you can...

416
00:38:09,459 --> 00:38:12,998
So anyways, yeah, I just thought it was really interesting to hear about that.

417
00:38:12,998 --> 00:38:17,858
Like, the Cantillon effect, which is we've talked about earlier with Lowry,

418
00:38:17,858 --> 00:38:23,798
was that the closer that you are to the source of the money, where it is created,

419
00:38:24,338 --> 00:38:25,959
the more you benefit.

420
00:38:26,218 --> 00:38:28,678
And the further away you are from that source of money,

421
00:38:28,798 --> 00:38:32,738
the more you are oppressed, effectively.

422
00:38:33,878 --> 00:38:37,818
And so it's just, I think it's awesome to think about how

423
00:38:37,818 --> 00:38:44,238
it's not just in this modern era of people suffering from a federal reserve

424
00:38:44,238 --> 00:38:47,478
and their blatant abuses of fiat money.

425
00:38:47,858 --> 00:38:52,098
we can talk about this type of effect of like,

426
00:38:52,178 --> 00:38:52,258
Hey,

427
00:38:52,258 --> 00:38:53,038
there's a money printer.

428
00:38:53,138 --> 00:38:53,898
I'm going to go buy it.

429
00:38:53,959 --> 00:38:58,198
I'm going to make my own money and I'm going to benefit from being the guy

430
00:38:58,198 --> 00:39:01,078
who spends that money first.

431
00:39:01,078 --> 00:39:03,078
So that anyways,

432
00:39:03,939 --> 00:39:04,078
that,

433
00:39:04,178 --> 00:39:06,298
that just takes me to the problem,

434
00:39:06,298 --> 00:39:22,877
like the problem with Decentral So so money itself is a ledger We agree I actually agree I like that I like that idea It that money is a ledger But the thing about like dollars is that nobody has any idea how much money anybody else has

435
00:39:22,877 --> 00:39:41,797
And so what that means is that you also can't know when new money is introduced to supply, which means you also can't change your buying and spending decisions based upon the altered unit of account.

436
00:39:42,417 --> 00:39:56,997
So, you know, if the amount of money goes from five to 50, but you don't know that, then you're still going to pay for things as though the entirety of the money is five units of whatever.

437
00:39:57,456 --> 00:39:59,517
And so you're going to be paying 10 times as much.

438
00:39:59,517 --> 00:40:20,537
Um, and so anyways, again, a lot of these, a lot of these things that we talk about, like scarcity and, um, you know, the ability for a ledger to be, uh, to be verified or whatever, they are unique only to Bitcoin, like Bitcoin, absolute scarcity, Bitcoin, only ledger that everyone can verify.

439
00:40:20,537 --> 00:40:26,977
everybody knows how much is where it's at everybody would know if more was introduced to the supply

440
00:40:26,977 --> 00:40:33,297
um because you can just uh you can just verify using a node so right no but the ledger that is

441
00:40:33,297 --> 00:40:40,677
shells alden does note that we are each person who was using shells as commodity money and so

442
00:40:40,677 --> 00:40:47,857
kind of physically manipulating physically changing the ledger by giving shells to another person in

443
00:40:47,857 --> 00:40:53,917
exchange for something they also did not know how many shells were in existence but there was a way

444
00:40:53,917 --> 00:40:59,717
that they kind of rule of thumb were able to verify for a while they at least knew that shells

445
00:40:59,717 --> 00:41:04,936
are difficult to obtain you had to like dive for them or get them and there was also some process

446
00:41:04,936 --> 00:41:09,897
done to the shells i think like polishing or putting holes in them and whatnot um so that

447
00:41:09,897 --> 00:41:14,417
people at least like i don't know how many shells are in existence but people kind of assumed that

448
00:41:14,417 --> 00:41:25,956
The stock-to-flow ratio must be high because the flow, it would seem difficult to dive for the shells and difficult to refine them until, again, things like the wampum factory happen.

449
00:41:26,137 --> 00:41:28,817
New technology intervenes that people don't know about.

450
00:41:29,357 --> 00:41:35,916
And so their naive conceptions about how stock-to-flow operates for the currency are disrupted.

451
00:41:36,297 --> 00:41:43,857
And they don't know that the disruption happens until all their value has been drained from them in exchange for increasingly worthless shells.

452
00:41:44,416 --> 00:41:52,617
So there's an interesting aspect of this.

453
00:41:52,717 --> 00:42:04,577
And you've been, of course, drawing the analogy to Bitcoin with these early commodity monies and the ways that Bitcoin is different as a ledger and as a money.

454
00:42:04,577 --> 00:42:13,737
one of the characteristics that alvin gives for money is that they that has some utility

455
00:42:13,737 --> 00:42:20,117
and this is what makes it universally desirable and therefore it's kind of what we settle upon

456
00:42:20,117 --> 00:42:25,697
as a shelling point as something that we will accept in an exchange um if they don't have

457
00:42:25,697 --> 00:42:31,757
something else we want if our trading partner doesn't so commodity money like has these values

458
00:42:31,757 --> 00:42:52,097
And so things like shells, and she mentions feathers, and then of course, gold, the value that these has is kind of an abstract form of value in that it's aesthetic. And she also notes they also become status symbols. So it's like almost a circular form of value that they're valuable because we know that they have value.

459
00:42:52,097 --> 00:43:00,097
And so if a person is bedecked in beads and feathers, it signifies abundance.

460
00:43:01,717 --> 00:43:08,357
It's a circular form of abstract value that is the utility of it.

461
00:43:08,397 --> 00:43:12,297
Because if I get those, then I can signify that I'm valuable too.

462
00:43:12,497 --> 00:43:14,657
And so I thought that was really interesting.

463
00:43:14,817 --> 00:43:18,377
I mean, commodity money like tobacco, we know that the utility is you can smoke it.

464
00:43:18,377 --> 00:43:43,377
But things like shells and gold, feathers, the utility begins to be abstracted in a sense in that aesthetics is like a human description of value that is not related to consuming it or producing a further thing in the same way that indicating status is also – and I'm referring to it as an abstracted form of value.

465
00:43:43,377 --> 00:43:50,217
But it's maybe more accurate to just say it's a value specific to human culture and sociality.

466
00:43:50,637 --> 00:43:54,077
So, I mean, what did you think about that aspect of commodity money?

467
00:43:55,017 --> 00:44:09,517
I try to relate it to what I see in the world today in terms of how do people adorn themselves aesthetically, especially with regard to their culture in a manner to display wealth and status.

468
00:44:09,517 --> 00:44:18,817
and um so i think about like uh so i was recently in uh st louis and i spent a lot of time um in

469
00:44:18,817 --> 00:44:25,337
like the ferguson area and um you know in that area you see a lot of people that have like they

470
00:44:25,337 --> 00:44:32,157
have like gold grills right um in their teeth and then they also have like um on their vehicles like

471
00:44:32,157 --> 00:44:39,436
they'll have like uh spinners and and fancy wheels and stuff like that and the converse of that is

472
00:44:39,436 --> 00:44:46,377
like here out in western Kansas, you see a lot of people that they will have like really fancy

473
00:44:46,377 --> 00:44:54,077
leather boots. They will have a really fancy winch on their truck. They will have big tires on their

474
00:44:54,077 --> 00:45:02,537
truck. So what it becomes is like the instance in the video game where the Stone of Jordan

475
00:45:02,537 --> 00:45:10,097
naturally arises because it's more useful in terms of getting what you want.

476
00:45:10,697 --> 00:45:15,997
So in terms of getting what you want, like out here, Western Kansas,

477
00:45:16,757 --> 00:45:20,877
it's, you know, I want to have a truck that gets through everything.

478
00:45:20,877 --> 00:45:24,597
When it rains, when it snows, you know, I want to have the winch.

479
00:45:24,657 --> 00:45:25,697
I want to have the big tires.

480
00:45:25,897 --> 00:45:32,257
Like that's more useful than a Honda Accord and $3 million in the bank.

481
00:45:32,537 --> 00:45:40,757
that's more useful to you. And it's a way of not only displaying that wealth, but also it's a

482
00:45:40,757 --> 00:45:52,477
natural emergent property of a utility in the commodity. And in like Ferguson, where you have,

483
00:45:54,057 --> 00:46:01,357
there's a lot of, you know, this is a really impoverished location. Not a lot of people have,

484
00:46:01,357 --> 00:46:07,097
But like everybody there had used Cash App like for a bank account.

485
00:46:08,097 --> 00:46:15,117
And a lot of them used pawn shops in order to pawn something, get some quick cash.

486
00:46:15,197 --> 00:46:17,017
And like that's what a grill is.

487
00:46:17,177 --> 00:46:28,357
Like your teeth, like it has the usefulness of being able to walk into a place, pull it out and get money on the spot for it and then hopefully come back and reclaim it.

488
00:46:28,357 --> 00:46:33,197
Um, whereas if your money's in the bank, then you can't, I mean, you can't do that.

489
00:46:33,257 --> 00:46:34,037
You have to wait on them.

490
00:46:34,177 --> 00:46:40,077
I thought of another really, I think, interesting example of commodity money based on, so the

491
00:46:40,077 --> 00:46:45,037
first, uh, the first part where you talked about in Lebanon, the guy robbing, robbing

492
00:46:45,037 --> 00:46:49,037
the bank to get his own money.

493
00:46:49,037 --> 00:46:53,817
So what is a ground, a grain elevator or a co-op?

494
00:46:54,497 --> 00:46:56,857
It's a bank for grain.

495
00:46:56,857 --> 00:47:03,317
It's where farmers have been convinced basically or whatever.

496
00:47:03,317 --> 00:47:24,657
For those of you who don't know, most of the way that harvest works out in grain areas is that farmers harvest their grain and they take it to town and they put it into a cooperative, a grain elevator, which is merely a place to store the grain until the cooperative sells it.

497
00:47:24,657 --> 00:47:35,837
So it's like, oh, you're part of this and you can either sell it to them on the spot or you can store it there and pay storage for it.

498
00:47:35,837 --> 00:48:01,936
And there's a lot, I mean, not a couple, but a lot of examples of during the 80s and during basically this farming crisis that went all across, or 70s too, went all across the United States due to just horrific government over-involvement, putting price floors and price ceilings and manipulating.

499
00:48:01,936 --> 00:48:08,597
But anyways, long story short is this is like a bank where farmers are storing their money, right?

500
00:48:08,677 --> 00:48:09,837
Their grain is their money.

501
00:48:10,237 --> 00:48:16,137
And there were a lot of instances where they tried to get their grain out and they were told that they couldn't.

502
00:48:16,537 --> 00:48:23,517
And so you had guys that would go in the middle of the night with a torch and cut open.

503
00:48:23,997 --> 00:48:24,477
Yeah.

504
00:48:24,477 --> 00:48:34,157
Or like run a truck into it and get their – like literally rob the bank of grain to get their own grain back out because they weren't able to.

505
00:48:34,537 --> 00:48:35,396
That's really interesting.

506
00:48:35,396 --> 00:48:45,657
And like Alden mentions, like grain does have a history as a commodity money in – is it Syria?

507
00:48:45,657 --> 00:48:57,277
I think wherever Hammurabi's code was historically in place, grain was a currency and also the silver shekel, as I recall.

508
00:48:57,997 --> 00:49:05,916
And there were specific encoded, like this many grain units for this many, like a unit, like amount of exchange or whatever.

509
00:49:05,916 --> 00:49:08,697
and a similar

510
00:49:08,697 --> 00:49:10,077
phenomena to what you note

511
00:49:10,077 --> 00:49:12,137
is all the notes like historically

512
00:49:12,137 --> 00:49:14,137
like that had

513
00:49:14,137 --> 00:49:16,577
using grain as a commodity money

514
00:49:16,577 --> 00:49:18,577
back then had social

515
00:49:18,577 --> 00:49:20,416
impact on the agrarian

516
00:49:20,416 --> 00:49:22,357
folks who raised it as well because

517
00:49:22,357 --> 00:49:24,137
you would have this like

518
00:49:24,137 --> 00:49:26,317
prolific abundance at the time of

519
00:49:26,317 --> 00:49:27,916
harvest and so

520
00:49:27,916 --> 00:49:30,097
within the rest of the year you would

521
00:49:30,097 --> 00:49:32,416
you know be going in debt

522
00:49:32,416 --> 00:49:34,436
in order to win the time of harvest

523
00:49:34,436 --> 00:49:39,117
you would then pay off your debts. So you'd accrue debts throughout the year, pay them off at harvest time.

524
00:49:39,597 --> 00:49:44,416
This then made it so that if there was a failed harvest, you know, prior to insurance and all that,

525
00:49:44,737 --> 00:49:49,597
people became literal debt slaves. They had no way to repay these debts.

526
00:49:49,757 --> 00:49:56,137
And so like this led to the development of elaborate kind of administrative structures to deal with this,

527
00:49:56,297 --> 00:50:02,277
where Kings, all the notes would periodically do as a word for like debt.

528
00:50:02,277 --> 00:50:03,936
Is it called a debt jubilee?

529
00:50:04,436 --> 00:50:05,456
I think that's exactly it.

530
00:50:05,497 --> 00:50:07,677
I don't know if Alden uses that in this chapter.

531
00:50:07,997 --> 00:50:09,077
But I think that's what it's called.

532
00:50:09,137 --> 00:50:09,817
That's exactly right.

533
00:50:09,916 --> 00:50:16,097
And it's like that's – again, we just have these – money is so important.

534
00:50:16,777 --> 00:50:28,977
The commodity that you use as money is going to bring with it all of these emergent social consequences based on its properties, whether it is perfectly divisible or not.

535
00:50:28,977 --> 00:50:38,737
The nature of all of it arriving at once during harvest and then society needing to make laws to help deal with the consequences of using this commodity as money.

536
00:50:40,317 --> 00:50:57,637
So, yeah, it's incredibly, again, money is such a deeply implicated aspect of our social structure that looking at it from all these different angles as a systems engineer, looking at the whole structure and contemplating as such, there's a lot of value to that.

537
00:50:57,637 --> 00:51:17,396
I guess one thing I didn't want to say, though, unless you had something to add to that, when you note that visible displays of wealth, and you note them interculturally within the United States, the status symbols interculturally that are settled upon in different areas and used to signal wealth.

538
00:51:17,396 --> 00:51:33,797
In the past, a person would wear all of the beads and the feathers. I think Alden notes that you did this to signal, if you're using a social credit system, you want to show people you're a valuable member of the society.

539
00:51:33,797 --> 00:51:49,697
Like, oh, this person got a lot of beads. That means that they must have killed a bunch of animals, brought a lot of value to society in the past. They are signaling positive social benefit and abundance of that. I want to form a family unit with them, breed with them, associate with them.

540
00:51:49,697 --> 00:51:58,537
but nowadays that type of showy wealth is actually often a form of debt or abuse of credit and so

541
00:51:58,537 --> 00:52:04,757
it's like it's opposite it's like in the past showy wealth may have signaled abundance but the

542
00:52:04,757 --> 00:52:10,557
the money system is so perverted now that showy wealth is what people do in lieu of abundance they

543
00:52:10,557 --> 00:52:15,956
want to falsely i'm not saying like i'm not accusing anybody or whatever i'm not saying it's

544
00:52:15,956 --> 00:52:20,436
bad. It's just like, that's an emergent social consequence again, of the way that we've structured

545
00:52:20,436 --> 00:52:25,337
our monetary system is that people want to signal abundance in a way that is actually,

546
00:52:25,337 --> 00:52:30,677
you know, leading them to have less and less abundance. And one might say, be more,

547
00:52:31,117 --> 00:52:36,277
not providing positively to society, but going further and further in debt. So that's just an

548
00:52:36,277 --> 00:52:41,617
interesting social consequence of our own monetary system, I guess.

549
00:52:41,617 --> 00:53:01,077
If fiat turns everything upside down, what would have been a display of usefulness and honor, basically, and all of these virtues, today you can display the exact same thing, but it can mean something entirely opposite.

550
00:53:01,077 --> 00:53:08,157
So, yeah, you talked about so I had forgotten that she mentions debt slavery.

551
00:53:08,637 --> 00:53:21,477
So debt slavery, people, I think, should look up and try to kind of understand what it was, because I just thought that debt slavery was this term that was sort of like pejoratively used to describe the system that we live in.

552
00:53:21,477 --> 00:53:41,837
But no, like debt slavery is like a real thing. Like in the code of Hammurabi, they like even explicitly say like if if if Grant, if I if I owe Grant a debt and I can't pay it, I can send one of my like family members or something to be his literal slave for X amount of time.

553
00:53:41,837 --> 00:53:49,577
And it even specifies like after this amount of time, like in the example is like three years on the fourth year, that person returns.

554
00:53:49,737 --> 00:53:51,837
But for that time frame, they are effect.

555
00:53:52,617 --> 00:53:53,956
They are literally debt slaves.

556
00:53:54,057 --> 00:53:58,577
They are a slave to that person because of the debt that was incurred and was not paid back.

557
00:53:59,737 --> 00:54:04,197
And so I think it was really cool to learn about the genesis of that term.

558
00:54:04,317 --> 00:54:05,357
I really enjoyed that.

559
00:54:05,517 --> 00:54:07,357
I love the point that you made up.

560
00:54:07,357 --> 00:54:15,396
You kind of maybe blew past it a little bit without thinking about how awesome it was to talk about this.

561
00:54:16,037 --> 00:54:19,757
But that's accusatorial.

562
00:54:20,097 --> 00:54:23,717
I do believe that you're very genuine in what you're saying about this.

563
00:54:23,896 --> 00:54:27,997
But it really matters what you use for money.

564
00:54:28,377 --> 00:54:30,956
Like it really has massive implications.

565
00:54:30,956 --> 00:54:50,717
And one of the things that I had written when I was reading this was this thought to myself of the idea that instead of working hard for more money, what you should really work hard for is to find a harder money, is to find a money that's harder to replicate, that has a higher stock-to-flow ratio.

566
00:54:50,717 --> 00:55:16,177
Because what we've seen again and again and again from seashells and beads to tobacco to video game artifacts to the Japanese invasion money to Rhyestones, all of these examples, what we have seen is that if you're late to recognizing, I mean, it's just an extended Cantillon effect.

567
00:55:16,177 --> 00:55:33,416
But if you're late to recognizing that technology has come in to extract the monetary premium of your money by creating more of it and flooding the market with it and therefore diluting everyone else's time and energy that they spent in order to acquire that money.

568
00:55:33,617 --> 00:55:37,537
If you're late to that game, it doesn't matter how hard you work.

569
00:55:37,857 --> 00:55:38,657
It doesn't matter.

570
00:55:38,817 --> 00:55:41,137
It doesn't matter how smart you are.

571
00:55:41,237 --> 00:55:41,697
It doesn't matter.

572
00:55:41,697 --> 00:55:48,456
Like you are going to be so far behind, you know, to see your wealth decimated.

573
00:55:48,637 --> 00:55:50,177
And I got to credit.

574
00:55:50,517 --> 00:55:53,717
So Lynn Alden is one of my favorite analysts.

575
00:55:53,717 --> 00:55:56,737
And the other, I would say, favorite is Darius Dale.

576
00:55:57,037 --> 00:55:59,416
And Darius introduced me to this idea.

577
00:55:59,577 --> 00:56:03,877
So his whole philosophy is don't lose.

578
00:56:03,997 --> 00:56:10,137
Like it's very important not to lose money because of the way that percentages work,

579
00:56:10,137 --> 00:56:12,317
that most people just don't understand,

580
00:56:12,497 --> 00:56:16,217
which is that if your portfolio goes down 50%,

581
00:56:16,217 --> 00:56:20,077
you have to make 100% to get it back up to the same spot.

582
00:56:20,357 --> 00:56:23,876
If it goes down 75%, you have to make 300%.

583
00:56:23,876 --> 00:56:29,577
If it goes down 90%, you have to make like 9,000.

584
00:56:29,717 --> 00:56:30,237
I can't remember.

585
00:56:30,557 --> 00:56:33,077
But anyway, it's like, so suffice to say,

586
00:56:33,376 --> 00:56:36,717
like if you're late to the game

587
00:56:36,717 --> 00:56:39,876
and you're watching your wealth get decimated,

588
00:56:40,137 --> 00:57:00,396
12% a year if you're owning United States dollars or, you know, a thousand percent a day if you're in Turkey or something like that, then you mathematically, it is nearly impossible to come back from that.

589
00:57:00,396 --> 00:57:05,237
Obviously, there's people that can do it, but it's just it makes it so important.

590
00:57:05,376 --> 00:57:13,117
These conversations that we're having in order for I mean, obviously, we're having these conversations because we find the body of work interesting.

591
00:57:13,117 --> 00:57:27,956
But I think it's so important for anyone who is learning from this to be able to recognize that to be able to recognize that falling behind is way more dangerous than getting ahead is beneficial.

592
00:57:28,797 --> 00:57:28,916
Yeah.

593
00:57:28,916 --> 00:57:35,317
Um, it just, it makes it almost impossible and truly for generations too, like for centuries,

594
00:57:35,597 --> 00:57:40,997
you know, it's just a good point too, that like, I mean, math is like an esoteric arcane

595
00:57:40,997 --> 00:57:43,857
way of thinking that at least to me does not come naturally.

596
00:57:44,597 --> 00:57:51,436
Um, and so, I mean, maybe look at the evolutionary story we get where we begin with social credit,

597
00:57:51,436 --> 00:57:56,517
where we have this rough ledger in our head of here's how much I've done for the community.

598
00:57:56,517 --> 00:58:16,416
Here's how much I can expect. That's not mathematics. And so like mathematics does the power to do mathematics obviously arises from some logical or rational capacity we have. But that logical or rational capacity is not necessarily tied to that internal social ledger we have.

599
00:58:16,416 --> 00:58:25,577
So the math circuit and the ledger circuit internally maybe aren't necessarily intertwined.

600
00:58:25,697 --> 00:58:26,797
At least they're not for me.

601
00:58:26,876 --> 00:58:36,257
The things you mentioned about to just signal my own ignorance, like those statistics always amazes me when I actually do the math and see how these things pan out.

602
00:58:36,257 --> 00:58:55,475
And so that one way in which even the most simplistic seeming discussion about mathematics can help people be more financially wise or whatever and understand the nature of money But I guess this is maybe a related point that I wanted

603
00:58:56,655 --> 00:59:05,395
I don't come away from this chapter, though, thinking that ancient tribes, early people

604
00:59:05,395 --> 00:59:13,155
are ignorant. The people that were using shells were using it because that organically emerged

605
00:59:13,155 --> 00:59:20,115
as like the shelling point in this incredibly complex societal um context where you had you

606
00:59:20,115 --> 00:59:26,655
know different tribes maybe even spoke different languages and so like what they the like arriving

607
00:59:26,655 --> 00:59:33,235
at money was in one way a way to obviate violence because you don't then necessarily you know if you

608
00:59:33,235 --> 00:59:40,175
can't barter with someone maybe you take that thing and so like shell beads are a brilliant

609
00:59:40,175 --> 00:59:50,435
like alden mentions this that shell beads are perhaps in africa the first savings technology

610
00:59:50,435 --> 00:59:55,255
humanity came up with because they're a portable sort of value that can be traded away portable

611
00:59:55,255 --> 01:00:00,895
and durable portable you can move them through space durable you can move value through time

612
01:00:00,895 --> 01:00:07,475
and like this is a book about technology shells are a technology they are a monetary technology

613
01:00:07,475 --> 01:00:21,315
In the history of man, we have fire, we have the wheel, we have shell beads as a brilliant emergent solution, a piece of technology that humanity innovated through necessity or whatever way.

614
01:00:22,075 --> 01:00:28,275
And so I look at this and I see the demise of all these other monetary systems, but it's not because the people were foolish.

615
01:00:28,275 --> 01:00:47,395
And so don't think that, oh, I'm not foolish. You know, nowadays I can see half humility, I think, is one of the lessons of seeing how technology, new forms of it sneak up on people who are too complacent just naturally and not accusatorily or whatever about the systems that they use.

616
01:00:47,395 --> 01:00:55,495
yeah you bring up a good point in that um i mean that so really if you want to compare if you want

617
01:00:55,495 --> 01:01:01,855
to evaluate money based on its stock to flow then those beads were a hell of a lot better money than

618
01:01:01,855 --> 01:01:09,075
fiat like yeah they so those those tribes thousands of years ago were using a far superior form of

619
01:01:09,075 --> 01:01:16,795
money to what we have it's just like it absolutely is um uh there's a couple things i'm going to hit

620
01:01:16,795 --> 01:01:22,135
on here. So let's see, let's see how I can do getting them out. First off, great point about

621
01:01:22,135 --> 01:01:28,835
how trade, trade obviates the need for violence. And this is something that we learned from Jason

622
01:01:28,835 --> 01:01:39,715
Lowry in his thesis was the benefit to cost ratio. So you and I meet and you know, it looks like I

623
01:01:39,715 --> 01:01:45,795
might be able to surprise you and ambush you, but you're a bigger guy. You're a stronger guy.

624
01:01:45,795 --> 01:01:51,915
my chances of being able to take you out and take the furs off your back, I'm going to guess that

625
01:01:51,915 --> 01:01:57,995
they're pretty low. But they're definite. I have a non-zero chance of winning and I definitely have

626
01:01:57,995 --> 01:02:04,135
a non-zero chance of losing. But if we have something that we can pass between us, then I can

627
01:02:04,135 --> 01:02:12,415
then make that presumption of like, well, I have a 50% chance of dying if I attack this guy to get

628
01:02:12,415 --> 01:02:18,295
his furs. I have a hundred percent chance of living if I trade with this guy to get his furs.

629
01:02:18,435 --> 01:02:25,375
And all I have to give up is this, uh, you know, these spears that I spent three days making. So,

630
01:02:25,455 --> 01:02:32,435
okay. So now what I'm doing is I'm making a decision where I value my life more than I do

631
01:02:32,435 --> 01:02:37,475
the three days that it took me to do that work. And that's, it's really cool because it does

632
01:02:37,475 --> 01:02:43,235
decrease violence. Um, yeah, yeah. And, and you could also say money could increase violence if

633
01:02:43,235 --> 01:02:49,875
it's bad, then right. Money is a way that it's not. Well, 1000%. I listened to a, I listened to

634
01:02:49,875 --> 01:02:54,355
an episode of, uh, what is money today on the Breedlove ship? And he had this guy,

635
01:02:54,515 --> 01:03:01,595
Chris Sullivan was his name. And he was talking about, um, how you can, um, link every single war

636
01:03:01,595 --> 01:03:05,495
from the Battle of Waterloo, which was in the 1800s,

637
01:03:05,775 --> 01:03:10,575
every single war after that has been what he calls a banker's war,

638
01:03:11,335 --> 01:03:14,755
where, like, World War I began, like, a year to the day

639
01:03:14,755 --> 01:03:17,295
after the Federal Reserve was created.

640
01:03:19,295 --> 01:03:25,515
And, like, Kennedy, two months before he died,

641
01:03:25,515 --> 01:03:29,855
or before he was killed, Kennedy had signed into effect

642
01:03:29,855 --> 01:03:36,175
an executive order like 111105 or so i don't know what it was but an executive order effectively

643
01:03:36,175 --> 01:03:41,815
taking money creation powers away from the fed and putting it in the treasury where they were

644
01:03:41,815 --> 01:03:49,895
issuing silver certificates and two months later he is assassinated and then we go to war

645
01:03:49,895 --> 01:03:56,175
and it's just over and over and over and over and over um you know so it's just

646
01:03:56,175 --> 01:03:59,175
I think that there's a lot of truth to that.

647
01:03:59,175 --> 01:04:13,735
I don't think that you have to be wearing a tinfoil hat to look at it and say, well, the bankers are really rich and they stay rich throughout the centuries.

648
01:04:13,735 --> 01:04:28,315
And one of the things that they benefit most from is war because they get to finance and they make their money off of financing, which is credit, right, which is expanding.

649
01:04:29,275 --> 01:04:33,195
You know, the way it works is the Fed creates a trillion dollars and they sell it.

650
01:04:33,295 --> 01:04:37,575
They create a trillion dollars worth of bonds and they go sell them to somebody.

651
01:04:37,575 --> 01:04:42,295
Or in today's case, they buy them back themselves because nobody wants to buy our bonds.

652
01:04:42,295 --> 01:05:01,735
And then they take that trillion dollars and they place it into the account of one of the 12 anointed reserve banks around the United States that then is able to create more money out of that, you know, $10 trillion because you have lending limits that allow you to loan higher than the amount of reserves that you have.

653
01:05:01,735 --> 01:05:20,475
And so it just, you know, and we saw examples of this with Lowry's thesis too, where Henry Ford's, you know, he buys a $30 million dam with the hope of creating an electric money because he realizes that gold causes wars because it requires somebody to centralize it.

654
01:05:20,575 --> 01:05:26,555
And then they can then loan against that centralization and live off of that continual debasement.

655
01:05:26,555 --> 01:05:36,835
So, yeah, I wanted to point out, I remember I had learned this stat a couple years ago, and I just updated it today.

656
01:05:38,195 --> 01:05:49,835
So I want to bring this back again to talking about why I think Bitcoin is so important, which is that we do not have a clear pricing signal in the world today.

657
01:05:49,835 --> 01:05:55,215
And the way that we know that we don't have a clear pricing signal is we don't have a constant unit of account.

658
01:05:55,915 --> 01:06:02,135
Yes, the United States dollar is very popular across the world,

659
01:06:02,135 --> 01:06:05,595
but we have 160-odd currencies or whatever,

660
01:06:06,275 --> 01:06:10,535
and those are traded every single day in the Forex market.

661
01:06:12,695 --> 01:06:17,915
So the size of the United States debt is around $35, $36 trillion.

662
01:06:18,355 --> 01:06:24,015
How much do you guess is the daily volume of money traded for money,

663
01:06:24,015 --> 01:06:30,015
the forex market what would you guess at the 35 trillion dollars of debt in the united states how

664
01:06:30,015 --> 01:06:35,175
much would you guess is the daily volume traded you i already said i numbers don't even make

665
01:06:35,175 --> 01:06:42,075
sense to me that's a good point yeah so you'd be like 11 11 7 11 7 beyond 100 beyond the number

666
01:06:42,075 --> 01:06:47,615
of friends of my fingers of myself and my friends then i can't go there i do not go so at least it

667
01:06:47,615 --> 01:06:51,195
So it's $7.5 trillion a day.

668
01:06:51,215 --> 01:06:51,695
That's incredible.

669
01:06:51,695 --> 01:07:10,395
And by the way, so what's important about that number is that, to me, is that that means that, let's just say that 3% of that, which it's probably closer to about 7%, but let's just say that 3% of that is commission to the people that are making the trades.

670
01:07:10,395 --> 01:07:21,675
That's $210 billion a day of value that is literally just extracted and put into the pocket of the people that have the access to that.

671
01:07:22,575 --> 01:07:33,835
And I mean, that's an unbelievable – I mean, we're talking – we're complaining about how there is a trillion dollars of debt being added every 100 days, right?

672
01:07:33,895 --> 01:07:34,975
And rightfully so.

673
01:07:34,975 --> 01:07:44,955
But there's a trillion dollars worth of value being stolen through the manipulation of currencies every five days.

674
01:07:45,595 --> 01:07:45,675
Yeah.

675
01:07:46,595 --> 01:07:48,715
So 20 times faster.

676
01:07:49,915 --> 01:07:57,395
It just it it makes it so clear how how Bitcoin can benefit.

677
01:07:57,395 --> 01:08:07,875
And the reason none of the, by the way, like, so the reason why all that trading is going on is because these countries are constantly changing interest rates with contracts, contracts or expands the supply of money.

678
01:08:07,875 --> 01:08:14,575
They're constantly printing more money, which increases the, you know, the amount and therefore it's worth less.

679
01:08:14,715 --> 01:08:15,675
And so you're going to trade out of it.

680
01:08:15,675 --> 01:08:18,455
Like, so push that all to the side.

681
01:08:18,455 --> 01:08:30,655
And now you have a standard unit of account for the first time in history that people can actually use to properly send a signal to producers and consumers so that capital is allocated correctly.

682
01:08:32,355 --> 01:08:37,795
It blows my mind to think about the potential downstream implications of this.

683
01:08:37,795 --> 01:08:58,535
When people talk about how this can lead to abundance, how Bitcoin can fix these things, I don't think anybody's truly prepared for what a world looks like where we properly assign capital, where we don't have millions of acres of corn being grown in the Midwest where it's not meant to grow,

684
01:08:58,535 --> 01:09:09,395
where we don't have trillions of dollars being spent to make F-35s, or billions, I say,

685
01:09:09,815 --> 01:09:12,715
to make useless war equipment.

686
01:09:13,255 --> 01:09:17,055
All of these things where it's just like we're sending the wrong signal to the market.

687
01:09:17,675 --> 01:09:19,575
Literally all we have to do is get out of the way.

688
01:09:20,035 --> 01:09:25,055
But in order to get out of the way, we had to create a money that we could use as a standardized unit of account.

689
01:09:25,055 --> 01:09:35,355
I think the unit of account thing is the most overlooked aspect of money because of how it affects the allocation of capital.

690
01:09:35,355 --> 01:09:49,375
Yeah. Alden does note right out the bat that 160 more or less world currency, like national currencies, because most of those currencies are only good within that jurisdiction.

691
01:09:49,375 --> 01:09:54,375
You essentially do have, as you mentioned with Forex, like this, a barter exchange amongst countries.

692
01:09:54,555 --> 01:10:04,055
And there is an inefficiency there. And just beginning chapter two, like this is a perennial human problem.

693
01:10:04,055 --> 01:10:20,435
It's a problem now. It was a problem for early hunters and gatherers who needed a way to get past barter. And like, again, like Alden posed the question, is this really a wise thing for hunter gatherers to be focused on coming up with this abstract thing called money when they should be out hunting and gathering?

694
01:10:20,435 --> 01:10:30,235
And like, for sure it is like because of the efficiencies and all of the ways that it's going to enable much more fluid cooperation in trading.

695
01:10:30,475 --> 01:10:37,775
And so perennial problem, problem then, problem now, money just keeps on hopefully through Bitcoin getting better and better.

696
01:10:37,775 --> 01:10:41,775
I want to say something that brings this back

697
01:10:41,775 --> 01:10:45,035
even to what I think is one of the most interesting things

698
01:10:45,035 --> 01:10:46,995
about chapters 1 and 2

699
01:10:46,995 --> 01:10:50,275
is a society prior to money

700
01:10:50,275 --> 01:10:55,175
which is still our society in some ways

701
01:10:55,175 --> 01:10:58,475
so this is something that Alden kind of mentions

702
01:10:58,475 --> 01:11:01,075
offhandedly but it's a good point

703
01:11:01,075 --> 01:11:03,915
and I think it has value to think about

704
01:11:03,915 --> 01:11:05,995
even in our daily lives

705
01:11:05,995 --> 01:11:10,795
is that there is a value called relational value that she mentions,

706
01:11:10,915 --> 01:11:12,515
she gives the example of,

707
01:11:12,715 --> 01:11:13,835
it's kind of a dark example,

708
01:11:13,935 --> 01:11:18,755
but a mob boss who somebody comes to the mob boss and they say,

709
01:11:18,755 --> 01:11:19,075
I,

710
01:11:19,375 --> 01:11:19,855
you know,

711
01:11:19,875 --> 01:11:20,675
I need your help.

712
01:11:21,235 --> 01:11:22,755
This person has nothing.

713
01:11:22,835 --> 01:11:23,895
The mob boss wants,

714
01:11:24,035 --> 01:11:26,175
but this person is part of the mobs,

715
01:11:26,655 --> 01:11:27,135
mob bosses,

716
01:11:27,295 --> 01:11:28,115
social network.

717
01:11:28,115 --> 01:11:29,995
And so he extends them a favor.

718
01:11:30,235 --> 01:11:31,815
He knows that in the future,

719
01:11:31,815 --> 01:11:33,635
this person may have something I need.

720
01:11:33,715 --> 01:11:34,775
They're part of my social network.

721
01:11:34,795 --> 01:11:35,615
I can trust them.

722
01:11:35,615 --> 01:12:03,335
And so the mob bosses in this way are like, they increase their wealth because they, they lean on, they invest in their social network, they give favors out, and then they expect them in return. But I also just think that that's an important thing to consider in our daily lives. And we already do it, but like, not in a cold, methodical way of I'm doing something quid pro quo, I expect something in return.

723
01:12:03,335 --> 01:12:24,815
But also to acknowledge, like, maybe you go out and mine fiat and get money to exchange for Bitcoin. That's good. But there is a lot of value also in the social network, doing things in the community for friends and kin and extending the circle of people who are friends. There is, like, literal value in that.

724
01:12:24,815 --> 01:12:32,335
It goes clear back to being in a tribe and needing social insurance by, I'm going to be sick someday.

725
01:12:32,875 --> 01:12:39,295
And so I'm providing you with a lot of value now because even though you have nothing to give me, when I'm sick, I want somebody to look after me.

726
01:12:39,595 --> 01:12:42,475
That relational wealth still exists nowadays.

727
01:12:42,955 --> 01:12:44,755
Maybe we see it even in the Bitcoin community.

728
01:12:44,935 --> 01:12:46,195
You see fellow Bitcoiners.

729
01:12:46,675 --> 01:12:52,875
You know that there can be more trust with somebody in the Bitcoin community than there is in a one-off exchange with a stranger.

730
01:12:52,875 --> 01:12:58,695
And so don't overlook relational wealth, mine your fiat, increase your amount of Bitcoin.

731
01:12:58,935 --> 01:13:01,855
But also remember, there's lots of forms of value in life.

732
01:13:02,035 --> 01:13:03,775
And that of the social network is very important.

733
01:13:04,755 --> 01:13:10,515
You bring up a really good point of the drawback of scarcity, which is that with fiat, you're

734
01:13:10,515 --> 01:13:12,695
just always like, well, cash is trash.

735
01:13:12,755 --> 01:13:14,295
I'll spend it because I can always get more.

736
01:13:14,595 --> 01:13:20,455
But there does sometimes sneak into the mind of someone who understands Bitcoin and realizes

737
01:13:20,455 --> 01:13:27,155
how valuable it is and how scarce it is, they make that their only thing in life where I just

738
01:13:27,155 --> 01:13:30,695
have, I have to get more Bitcoin. I have to get more Bitcoin. I have to get more Bitcoin. It's like,

739
01:13:31,055 --> 01:13:40,535
no, what you need is an understanding of what enough is, of what is enough for you.

740
01:13:40,535 --> 01:13:41,475
Yeah, absolutely.

741
01:13:41,995 --> 01:13:47,015
Because the person, you know, there's the famous story. I can't remember the exact people, but

742
01:13:47,015 --> 01:13:52,335
it's back in like the 30s and there's an author and he's at this like a really rich guy's place

743
01:13:52,335 --> 01:13:58,215
and um somebody makes a comment to the author they're like hey did you know this guy made like

744
01:13:58,215 --> 01:14:05,295
a million dollars yesterday or whatever and i heard that it's vonnegut yeah and he yeah and

745
01:14:05,295 --> 01:14:10,735
his response is he says well i have something that that guy can never have which is i have i have

746
01:14:10,735 --> 01:14:15,595
enough yeah so you do bring up a really good point about this kind of the psychological

747
01:14:15,595 --> 01:14:23,395
hell, really, that somebody can meander through if they do choose to, like, focus their entire

748
01:14:23,395 --> 01:14:24,615
world around Bitcoin.

749
01:14:24,615 --> 01:14:31,695
I had a really, I think this is a cool example of how the barter system, the social credit,

750
01:14:31,835 --> 01:14:39,255
the kind of, yeah, how the sort of, like, pre-money system is still at work today in

751
01:14:39,255 --> 01:14:46,895
small societies, which is like in, in basically, I feel like this happens most in the NBA and

752
01:14:46,895 --> 01:14:51,915
professional basketball, but you'll see like, occasionally you'll see like a six team trade

753
01:14:51,915 --> 01:14:55,435
where it's like, this guy's going to this team.

754
01:14:55,595 --> 01:14:58,775
They're sending two guys to this team who are sending a guy to this team.

755
01:14:58,875 --> 01:15:03,835
And it just, and it, you know, there's only like 30 teams or whatever.

756
01:15:03,835 --> 01:15:10,715
So it's a small cohesive band of people and all the general managers are talking, they're throwing out ideas.

757
01:15:11,335 --> 01:15:24,075
And it just so happens that you can actually make something like that happen where even though the double coincidence of wants does not exist between the two initial parties that want to talk,

758
01:15:24,635 --> 01:15:30,175
that you're able to resolve that by using multiple parties within the trade.

759
01:15:30,175 --> 01:15:37,935
I thought that was a really cool thing to think about was how we still have examples of that even in modern society.

760
01:15:38,735 --> 01:15:39,175
Yeah, absolutely.

761
01:15:40,135 --> 01:15:44,015
We transmit values in different ways.

762
01:15:44,895 --> 01:15:48,655
In some situations, it would just be crass perhaps even to use money.

763
01:15:49,015 --> 01:15:56,635
And at the end of the day, we are apes, evolved apes with the capacity to maintain a social ledger in our brains.

764
01:15:56,635 --> 01:15:58,575
And so it's a superpower.

765
01:15:58,855 --> 01:15:59,695
We use it in different ways.

766
01:16:00,175 --> 01:16:19,475
Yeah. I was trying to think. Oh, I loved, by the way, so she defined, I'm just kind of drawing back from my notes here, but defines monetary premium as a massive and permanent advertisement to try and make more of that thing.

767
01:16:19,475 --> 01:16:36,975
Right. And it really is. It's just this constant signal to the world, like get more, get more, get more. And I think maybe, yeah, maybe it's a good way to leave it here, which is to say more is not what you're seeking. Enough is what you're after.

768
01:16:37,335 --> 01:16:38,715
Right on. I like that.

769
01:16:39,655 --> 01:16:42,155
Yeah. Yeah. Well, what else you got?

770
01:16:42,155 --> 01:16:43,715
I feel like that's enough.

771
01:16:44,015 --> 01:16:44,695
Why add more?

772
01:16:45,035 --> 01:16:52,995
We've arrived at enoughness, a fullness existentially, personally, morally, ethically, financially.

773
01:16:53,735 --> 01:16:54,615
We are enough.

774
01:16:55,155 --> 01:16:56,075
We are enough.

775
01:16:56,275 --> 01:16:57,275
You are enough, Grant.

776
01:16:57,915 --> 01:16:58,455
Thank you.

777
01:16:59,655 --> 01:17:01,115
I just feel great.

778
01:17:01,635 --> 01:17:02,015
All right.

779
01:17:02,055 --> 01:17:02,795
We're both enough.

780
01:17:02,795 --> 01:17:04,635
And I think that's all we have then.

781
01:17:04,795 --> 01:17:08,375
So, again, thanks for everybody who's following along with us.

782
01:17:08,455 --> 01:17:10,815
We're reading the book Broken Money.

783
01:17:11,395 --> 01:17:12,835
This was chapters one and two.

784
01:17:13,415 --> 01:17:15,495
Would love it if you want to read along.

785
01:17:15,655 --> 01:17:21,895
Obviously, the next thing that we'll do, if you haven't figured it out, is chapters three and four and so on and so forth.

786
01:17:22,495 --> 01:17:23,255
Read along.

787
01:17:23,415 --> 01:17:24,535
Interact with us if you like.

788
01:17:24,535 --> 01:17:36,515
We try and monitor the channel so that we can answer questions and further the discussion here of what we find to be a very important topic for people to understand and to explore.

789
01:17:36,515 --> 01:17:40,915
and also just an intellectually stimulating way for us to converse.

790
01:17:41,575 --> 01:17:45,215
Grant is at The Whole Frame on Twitter, X.

791
01:17:45,435 --> 01:17:47,975
I am at Lucas Matty on X.

792
01:17:48,375 --> 01:17:54,995
These podcast episodes are posted first on X, then on YouTube, and then on Spotify.

793
01:17:56,675 --> 01:18:02,115
And please like, subscribe, hit the bell, whatever they ask you to do.

794
01:18:02,675 --> 01:18:06,315
It's really cool just to see people kind of gathering around this

795
01:18:06,315 --> 01:18:11,095
and wanting to support something like this where we get to explore really cool ideas

796
01:18:11,095 --> 01:18:12,335
and have really good discussions.

797
01:18:12,775 --> 01:18:16,575
So anyways, on that, that was more than enough.

798
01:18:16,975 --> 01:18:21,155
And so we are out, and we will see you guys very soon.

799
01:18:22,035 --> 01:18:23,235
Right on. Thanks, Lucas. Appreciate it.

800
01:18:23,515 --> 01:18:23,975
Thanks, Grant.