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We live in a deflationary world, full stop, end of story.

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Free markets are deflationary, but we have an inflationary monetary system.

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And those are two incompatible forces.

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And the incentives created are centralizing.

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They're exploitative and they're bad for everybody, including our home, planet Earth.

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Nothing, absolutely nothing in the marketplace on planet Earth.

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is getting more valuable. Housing is not going up in value. Your Amazon stock over time

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is not getting more valuable. What's happening is the currency that you denominate its value in

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is getting less valuable. Hello, my friends. Thank you so much for coming by for another

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episode of the podcast. I appreciate you being here. Today, we are joined by one of many Bitcoin

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ranters who has joined the space and just turns the camera on and talks about Bitcoin. And this

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guy is one of my favorites. And a lot of people have been bringing him on just because he has

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great content. His name is Eric V. Stacks. He's a cannabis farmer from Northern California.

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And he has a lot of things to say about Bitcoin. I think it'd be really cool to just have your

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insights here, sir. So thank you for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here.

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Why don't we start with your backstory? I think that this is definitely a unique one and how you

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went through the motions and found yourself at Bitcoin like so many of us have. How did that

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happen for you? Yeah, so I moved to Northern California in 2009 to work on a medical marijuana

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a medical marijuana farm and trim and process a harvest. And I never left. I basically got here

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and I knew immediately what I was going to do with the next many years of my life. Growing up,

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I developed an affinity for cannabis. I'd say a lot of that was predicated upon pharmaceutical use

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in my family. My mother and father divorced when I was a child and my mother remarried a psychiatrist.

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and as a result she ended up getting into pharmaceuticals, antidepressants,

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anti-anxiety pills. None of it was really recreational but I would say that it was she

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was definitely abusing the pharmaceuticals and so in my teen years I started smoking weed with

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some of my friends. I kind of determined it was rather benign and should be legal. It kind of

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blew my mind that it was illegal. You know you can get all fucked up on alcohol and tobacco and

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pharmaceuticals and all of these other things that are legal. And so when I was 20 years old,

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my mother ended up dying, she committed suicide. She took a large dose of a barbiturate,

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because she was so depressed, these antidepressants and she was taking wasn't helping the underlying

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problem that actually kind of exacerbated it. For many years, she was kind of like a little

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zombied out, it was almost like she just wasn't herself anymore. So that was kind of a very

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impactful thing for me in my life and really fueled this like vendetta that I had against

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the pharmaceutical industry. And now in hindsight, it's just the incentives baked into the fiat world.

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So when I got here and I was trimming on this farm, I was like, wow, this is amazing. Like I

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want to, I'm going to spend the next many years of my life producing cannabis. And so I did, I

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saved up some money and set up a nonprofit collective. So I was compliant in the state

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of California, started producing cannabis, selling it to the dispensaries. And then in 2016,

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the laws had changed and it was going from medical marijuana to recreational. And the state was going

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to license and the counties were going to permit all the existing cannabis businesses. So I bought

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a property. It was kind of like a Hail Mary. It was like, it was a real big move for me at the

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time. I scraped, scraped together every dollar I possibly could get my hands on and bought this

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land. It's going through the permit process with Humboldt County planning department.

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And, uh, so as soon as I closed escrow on the property, um, I went down the economic rabbit

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hole. I wanted to understand the boom bus cycles. I now, and at that point in my life, I think it

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was like 32 years old. I had this enormous economic incentive to understand what position I was in,

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you know, I had all my money tied up in this land. And so, you know, very quickly, you know,

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you learn about fractional reserve banking, the Federal Reserve, Keynesian economics, then hard

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money, and Austrian economic theory. And after about nine months of going down that rabbit hole,

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I discovered Bitcoin one month before I got issued a license from the state of California.

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And you would think I would be really excited about this. Like I was in one sense, because it

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was like a vindicating moment for me in my life. All of my, you know, teachers and parents,

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friends or anybody who had given me any shit over the years in my earlier days for my affinity for

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cannabis. It was like, there I am with this, this license from the state of California to run my

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business and produce cannabis at a, although I was legal, this is like the next level of legality.

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And, um, but it was an existential crisis. I was like, oh my gosh, like as a commodity producer,

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I'm in trouble. Like the value of my product is going to continue to decrease while my operating

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costs and living costs are going to increase. And watching the pound price change over the

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few years around permitting and licensing between like 2015 to 2018, I was really well primed to

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understand the magnitude of Bitcoin. You know, if you could pair infinite demand with true scarcity,

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you have the apex monetary instrument of our civilization, species, whatever.

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And so, you know, when I first discovered Bitcoin, I was thinking like, you know,

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money is essentially the only thing in the marketplace that has infinite demand.

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Not everybody wants cannabis farms.

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Not everybody wants a place in Costa Rica or a house in L.A. or whatever.

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But everybody wants money because money is a call option on any good or service the marketplace can produce.

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So if you've got infinite demand paired with true scarcity, like at that time, I'm like, this thing is going to just destroy every other monetary instrument over time or the governments will shut it down.

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I've since then determined amongst many other brilliant minds in the world that this is an unstoppable protocol and the world is capitulating into the Bitcoin network and that incentive vortex.

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And so that's kind of the long and short of it and my story and how I got into Bitcoin.

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And so actually, I also sold my farm a year later after getting it licensed.

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That was because of the discovery of Bitcoin.

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I could see the position I was in through a different lens.

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And it definitely provided a lot of clarity and helped me to pivot my strategy.

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So I sold the farm and I started doing farm management and consulting services because I've been producing cannabis for 15 years since 2009.

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So 16 years now. Yeah. So that's how I got here today.

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Very cool. And one of the words that you pulled out there that I want to highlight is this idea of licensing,

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because this is one of the things that, you know,

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as you go through the libertarian side of things

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and learn like the truth behind it,

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licensing is just when the government takes away

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your right to do something and sells it back to you.

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And they say, oh, it's for everyone's safety

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because this is a drug, it's dangerous.

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What are your thoughts on this general idea of licensing?

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Do you think that's a pretty accurate way to put it?

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And what would your response be to people say,

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oh, like we need some because drugs are bad?

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Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. I really like that. You know, for me, in some sense, you could say that my perspective was skewed. It's almost like I was grading on a curve, right? Like because of this thing, because of federal prohibition and like the murky legalities surrounding cannabis, when licensing came in and adult use was voted into effect by the people of the state of California,

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I was excited just based upon the fact that I personally believe that cannabis should be available to anybody who wants it.

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And so I wasn't necessarily too upset at the time about the state and the regulatory involvement.

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I've become much more adverse to the idea of it as time has gone on.

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on. And I think ultimately, you know, because I have a lot of debates with friends and whatever,

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and especially licensed farmers in Humboldt County, where I've been for 16 years. And there's a lot of

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conversation. There's like Humboldt County Growers Alliance. It's HCGA. It's an alliance of growers

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and it's a nonprofit. The people who founded, you know, founded this nonprofit, they basically work

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on making legislation. They work to make the legislation more friendly and the rules more

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friendly for the producers and cultivators. And so there'll be like weekly phone calls. And I know

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people that are members. The owner of the farm that I'm sitting at currently is a member of HCGA.

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And the conversation always seems to be, if you distill it down to first principles, what I always

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hear is the farmers are complaining about things that are allowing the supply to increase, right?

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They want to see the state go in and stop the black market cultivation, for example.

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They want to prevent large corporations from coming in and putting in large facilities.

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And what I hear in all of these conversations is effectively, let's reduce the supply, even though no one's actually saying literally this.

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But if you distill it down to first principles, this is what they're saying.

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Let's reduce the supply, because if the supply goes down relative to the demand, then the margin will increase and then it'll be better for the people producing the product.

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Now, I disagree with that. I think that if that were to happen, as an example, if the state of California were capable of stopping all of the black market product that's being produced and then all of the product that gets consumed in the state of California would be produced in licensed facilities.

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If that margin increased, if it became more profitable, then more people would just deploy capital and they would produce licensed product.

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And then the supply would satiate the demand and the value of the commodity would descend down and near and probably all the way to the marginal cost of production over time.

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So regardless whether it's legal or illegal, that margin is a large incentive for entrepreneurs to attack that margin.

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excuse me, effectively satiate that demand with supply.

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So when it comes to the state's involvement,

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one of the things that I think about very often

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is if the state was more lenient about what regulatory hoops and what fees and licensing fees et cetera that they need that they make business owners jump through it would still the end result would still be the

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same. You know, you would have the supply satiate demand and then that incentive for people to do

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it, that black market or that criminal element would go away regardless. And we're actually

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seeing that in California now where a lot of the black market producers are throwing in the towel

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because it's not very profitable. A lot of the licensed producers are struggling.

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And I see this problem as like a common theme across the marketplace. As an example, I was in

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Florida recently. I'm planning on moving to Florida pretty soon here. And I flew into Tampa.

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And as I'm flying into the airport, we're landing. I'm looking at all these residential neighborhoods.

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And a lot of them have tarps on their roofs because there's a big hurricane ripped through

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there last year. And so when you have an issue like that, so you have a hurricane go through the

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place damages all these roofs. Well, the first thing that's going to happen is, is that all

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these homeowners are going to contact roofing contractors in their area. And they're going to

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say, Hey, I need, I need a roof put on my house. Um, when that happens, you have more demand for

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this service than you do supply. What'll happen is the free market will bid the price up. Then

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that's going to be a beacon of opportunity for other roofing contractors nationally, potentially

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even globally to come into that area and attack that margin to satiate that demand with supply.

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And the value of that service is going to dissent. So anywhere in the marketplace, I see that you'll

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have an opportunity to make a surplus for some period of time. And there's effectively two things

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that you can do. You could either brand to hedge yourself against commoditization, or you can get

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political or leverage regulation to build some sort of a regulatory moat around your sector in

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the marketplace, like insulin producers. I could be wrong about the specifics, but the idea still

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stands. I think it's two companies can produce insulin because of patent law or something like

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that. So insulin is very profitable and they're effectively, the producers of insulin are

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preventing competition from coming in so they can protect that margin. But in a free market,

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you can't do that. So what I learned and what I did is, is I made sure that my,

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my balance sheet strategy was strong. And in my case, I took on a Bitcoin treasury,

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put all my surplus in Bitcoin. And as my income started to descend, my balance sheet is

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appreciating. So it's like, you know, it's one thing to be P&L focused, and you got to make sure

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that you're profitable in whatever you're doing. But it seems that nothing is going to be really

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profitable forever. Because if it's good, other people are going to want to do it. And that's

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where that balance sheet strategy comes in. It's kind of a long answer there. But yeah,

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I mean, we brought the answer here for a reason. I love it.

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Well, thank you.

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Yeah, great, great stuff there. Just how free markets, you know, they naturally work in such a way that provides the most good for the most people, both on a consumer side and the producer side.

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And another word that we haven't brought up yet, unless I missed it, is capitalism.

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I think this is sort of brought up in these conversations around the world right now.

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And it's typically being fed to us through the schooling system as a bad thing.

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Like capitalism is evil.

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It's unfettered capitalism.

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It's destroying the planet.

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It's only helping the rich people.

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I'd be curious.

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And it's funny.

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We talked about Robert Breedlove earlier because you're going to be working with him soon.

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And when I had him on my podcast way back in the early days, I think it was like episode five or six, we challenged this idea and talked about how perhaps capitalism isn't as bad as we were told it was.

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And there are other more evil forces behind the scenes who want us to think capitalism is bad so they can push something more communism, socialism.

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And I'd just be curious to hear your thoughts on all of these isms and what lies have we been told about them and what do you think is the signal in the noise?

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Well, I do think that as the currency is debased, generally speaking, and I could be wrong about this, but this is at least my perception and what I can see taking place is that you create this dynamic where your cost of operating and living is typically increasing at a faster rate than your wages are increasing.

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And like in my case, I was experiencing wage deflation. As an example, like 10 years ago, a bulk wholesale premier pound of cannabis was like three grand. Today, a better pound is honestly like 500 bucks.

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And in that period of time, my my operating costs have doubled, if not tripled.

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So I'm making like, I don't know, one six to one twelfth what I used to per unit produced.

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And so that's wage deflation.

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And that squeeze is something that that most people are feeling some version of.

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Let's say you make 20 bucks an hour.

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Your cost of living increases by 15 percent one year because you have a crisis like covid and they print a bunch of dollars.

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Um, and then your, your wages then follow an increase by 10%. Well, you're actually in real

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terms. That's, that's 5% wage deflation. You're getting squeezed. And so I think as that's

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happening, people are looking for somewhere to point the finger. And it's really easy to fall

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into this idea that capitalism is bad and that greedy entrepreneurs are bad, but that, that

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greed, you could say, or that desire to procure a margin from the marketplace is a good thing.

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If the market is buying something, then they're signaling to the market, we want more of this

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thing. If the market is selling something, they're signaling to the market, we want less of this

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thing. So there is this natural phenomenon that takes place where things get balanced out the

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supply and demand dynamics. Now, speaking of Breedlove, one of the things that he said that

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I really like is, is, you know, money is half of every transaction. And so if you have a central

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bank in any jurisdiction, you're effectively half communist, half socialist. I was literally

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going to bring this up next. I love this framework. And it's so true. It's so true. And so a lot of

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people are looking at the problems that we have in the States and in Europe and in most places in

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the world today. And they're thinking, hey, this is a problem of this is a result of unfettered

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capitalism. We need to regulate this stuff. And the irony in that is, is that they're the people

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who are struggling because their property rights are being violated because of the debasement of

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the currency are effectively asking for more violation of property rights and more violation

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of their freedoms. Hey, let's this is causing problems for everybody. We need more of this

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regulation. We need to stifle, you know, entrepreneur and capitalistic forces, right?

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And so, you know, there's a guy I see, he's starting to go viral a little bit. Some of the

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Bitcoiners retweet him, call him an idiot. But this guy, Gary Economics, who's in, I think he's

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in London. And he basically is just, oh my gosh, going on and on and on all these interviews,

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all these videos, he's got a YouTube channel and his whole message is like, we need to tax the rich.

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and I see a monumental problem with that.

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You know, the idea, I mean,

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because it's effectively taxes or property confiscation.

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It's a violation of your property rights.

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If you earn a surplus and you save that surplus,

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but you have to give a piece of that surplus up to,

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you know, a state authority or a government.

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And then also in my case, I'm in the United States,

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I can't leave and not pay those service provider fees

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if you want to call them that.

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without having to expatriate and pay an exit tax if you have enough of a net worth or whatever.

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So you don't have the ability to just move to a different jurisdiction that has more favorable

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terms. So you're kind of locked into the jurisdiction and you're effectively being

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exploited. And so the idea of property confiscation sounds good or redistribution of wealth. It sounds

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good till you fall into the bracket that's being redistributed from, right? It's easy to think,

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oh, let's just redistribute Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk's wealth.

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Like that could sound good to somebody who's economically challenged.

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But then if you if you zoom out and you're like, well, hey, actually, you make 30 grand a year and there's people mining lithium and some mine in Africa that make $100 a year.

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And we're going to make that that wealth tax, you know, anything above 10 grand and up, we're going to tax.

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You're going to take half your stuff. Well, people would lose their minds.

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So I think that in addition to all of that said, the governmental apparatus, if you will, it has to come up with some sort of a narrative to enforce what they're trying to achieve.

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And I think that that is that distortion that's that's causing all of the noise.

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It's making the signal really murky. It's confusing people.

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And as people's lives get harder as a result of inflation and this Keynesian economic lie that we're living in, they're susceptible to that.

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And so it does create this division.

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We see this currently in the United States with the Democrats or the left-leaning political sphere as opposed to the right-leaning political sphere.

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They're, you know, the right leaning, you know, Republican.

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Generally, they're the business owners or they're the people working in the, you know,

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countrysides or the producers, business or whatever.

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And then you have the Democratic group.

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But actually, when I saw a map, you know, when Trump is about to win the election,

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you're looking at the map and you're like, wow, after it was all said and done,

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most of the country is red, except for these pockets around these.

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You got New York and some of these East Coast cities.

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And then on the West Coast, you got L.A. and Portland and some.

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It's like in these these these urban jungles, people who are a little bit seemingly detached from like how the rest of the country works.

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They're the ones that are like asking for more regulation and effectively more violation of property rights than the other political party is.

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And I find that to be a little bit ironic.

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and then just to like throw in Bitcoin into this, you know, a thing that's playing out.

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I think that the incentive vortex that is the Bitcoin network over time will kind of change some of these things

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because the government can't so easily take your Bitcoin from you, but they could tax your real estate.

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They could confiscate any other assets that you have.

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So I think that the fact that Bitcoin is undebasable or it can't be debased,

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You can't make more than 21 million.

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No governing body in some sort of COVID 2.0 crisis is going to be able to just mint themselves a bunch of Bitcoin.

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And because Bitcoin is so valuable in the appreciation rate theoretically over time should be higher than everything else on average based upon the simple idea that we making more of everything else at a faster rate than we making more Bitcoin So if you want

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the Bitcoin, you have to, as they say on the streets, you have to come correct. You have to

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offer up goods or services or some sort of, you know, as the government there, I effectively look

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at them as service providers. You need to offer up services that people are willing to pay for.

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And the more and more people, you know, that get exposed to Bitcoin, at least in my case, and and so many Bitcoiners that I have had the pleasure of becoming associated with over the last year and a half.

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You kind of it's a really easy way for you to be able to look more clearly at what's happening in the world.

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It really is this like this this energy around it and this clarity that like exposes all of these things.

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For me, like I knew intuitively that commoditization was a problem.

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I knew intuitively that free markets were deflationary.

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But there's such abstract thoughts relative to the way we're indoctrinated.

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You know, the Keynesian economic model, I find that the people who are the hardest to communicate or talk with about Bitcoin are the people that are well educated, who have gone to colleges.

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Right. And they seem to they just can't get it through their head.

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There's like a deep level of cognitive dissonance there.

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And I think that it's partially because, you know, the system is continuing to teach people to, you know, things that enforce the forces that, you know, the system is operating upon.

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And really, it's violation of property rights.

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It's straight up theft.

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And it's you could say it's not theft if you could go somewhere else.

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If I could move to El Salvador, Costa Rica, wherever you're somewhere in Europe.

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and I could just say, hey, you know what, I'm going to take my economic energy, I'm going to

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take my capital, I'm going to go somewhere else, I'm going to pay them for my, you know, I'm going

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to pay them for their services. But I can't do that. The United States government has me on lock,

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right. And so it's definitely exploitative. And I think that, you know, the system, if you want to

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personify the governmental apparatus, like the system doesn't want you to know what's actually

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happening. Yeah, so many great points, sir, I agree with. And I'm glad that you brought back

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this concept that Bree Love talks about where the if you have a central bank who controls the money,

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which is half of every single product and service transaction we make, you are already 50%

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communist. And like most of the time, way more than that, because they use that control to control

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other things. And so this idea that we're even under capitalism right now is already a lie.

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It's not totally this. We've never seen real capitalism. No, as real capitalism would be an

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actual free market where you have sound money. And everyone has the ability to do whatever they want

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in the business sense. And I would say like, this is the way that nature has a design is where we're

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just free to do what we want. And we would not have these problems that we see right now,

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which are wrongfully blamed on this idea of capitalism.

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Like you said, people are just economically illiterate for calling this late-stage capitalism.

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This is really late-stage fiat money that we're seeing right now.

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And I love how Bitcoiners are really beating this drum.

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Could you put a little bit of color on this idea of just late-stage fiat money,

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why that is the actual problem we're seeing here and how people can connect those dots?

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um yeah i think that so i think we're at it's more so late stage central banking or late stage fiat

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or late stage mmt keynesian economic bullshit whatever and you have it's like the ultimate

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trick fuck the central banking authority is lending dollars into existence as debt against

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assets the assets let's use real estate as an example they're real assets they took energy to

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produced, they took resources produced, the marketplace produces these things because people

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need them. Then the central banking authority and then the states with fractional reserve banking,

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the FDIC insured banks or whatever banks are within that system, get to effectively mint

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dollars into existence as debt against those assets. So if you go get a mortgage in the United

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States, most of, if not all of that currency that you're going to use to buy that house, that

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debt you're taking out is newly minted currency. So what's happening there? As far as I can tell,

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the central bank is effectively stealing the wealth out of the marketplace. By the click of

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a button, they produce, they're expanding M2, they produce currency, and then they get the title for

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the real estate as collateral against the debt. So the free market in some ways is freely giving up

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assets, things that we need or produce to the central bank in exchange for this debt. Now,

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because the basket of assets, you could say that collateralized the debt, equities, T-bills,

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real estate, we're producing more of those things every year. And the rate in which we're producing

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more of those everything every year is increasing. So it's actually that deflationary force that

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exists in a free market does exist in the world today. We just can't see it because there's this

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optical illusion taking place because they have to continue to inject liquidity into the market

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to quote unquote prop asset prices up. For example, though, we're pushing the asset prices down,

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but you need the value of the assets in the system as a whole to be higher than whatever

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the debt is. But if we're pushing these down, they keep printing dollars, raising the debt,

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the property asset prices up. So it creates this feedback loop, or it's like a runaway train.

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So you have more debasement of the currency to keep the system solvent, but the insolvency is

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based upon the fact that the currency is being debased. And you have this inflationary monetary

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system, which effectively requires everything, or at least specifically the assets that collateralize

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the debt to go up. But that's the exact opposite from what's really happening. The value of these

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assets is going down in real terms, like in energy terms. We can produce a house now in a couple

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weeks where 50 years ago would take a year, year and a half, whatever. So in real terms, things are

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less expensive. You just can't see it because we're denominating the value of things in dollars.

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Um, yeah, so I just think it's a Keynesian runaway train that's taking place. And as things get worse, the irony in all of this kind of going back to one of your prior questions, is that then the people want more violation of their property rights.

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They're like, hey, let's let's go ahead and let's tax these people. Let's put in regulations to prevent these these these second and third order negative effects taking place as a result of this, this incompatible monetary system.

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Yeah, so it's a it's a it's a real problem. It's a real problem.

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Yeah. And one of the recommendations I want to throw out there, I'm not sure if you've watched Mike Maloney's Hidden Secrets of Money series.

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I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's incredible.

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And it's so this guy's a gold bug who isn't really doesn't really understand Bitcoin a lot, but he does an amazing job describing the problem.

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And I would recommend for people to understand like this debt based system, how it works to watch the fourth episode of that series.

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And it's I think it's called like the greatest scam of mankind or something.

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I'll put a link to it in the show notes.

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But it's it's it's an impossible system.

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It's never going to work. It's only built to just continue running away and screwing future generations more and more by just pushing the tab further and further out.

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And so it's really just a giant mess that we've gotten ourselves in.

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And I'd love to hear you keep bringing up the word Keynesianism and Keynesian economics.

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And this is basically what people are taught in school, myself included.

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I took an econ class in college.

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Could you give us a quick definition of what Keynesian is and what Austrian economics is so people can sort of understand those two sides of this coin when they're learning about this?

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Yeah, well, I'm definitely not an economist or an expert. I'm just a business operating dude trying to make it in this world and figure out what forces I'm contending with.

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But I would say generally Keynesian economics is the idea that you need a central authority or you need the government to control the levers of the money supply.

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They are going to debase the currency. They need to continue to expand the money supply.

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And it's my understanding that the idea was, is that they would expand the money supply at about the same rate in which the marketplace gets more productive.

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So if we innovate and we produce more at like 2% a year, every year, we're getting 2% more efficient.

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Those productivity gains in the Keynesian economic model, the idea that you would have 2% inflation to keep the velocity of money up.

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The idea is that if you're not inflating the currency supply, if the money within the marketplace isn't losing power, then people will hoard the money and they'll stop spending.

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The economy will suffer.

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You'll have deflation and you have all these problems.

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And so if you're debasing the currency at 2% a year, the recipient of that newly minted currency, if it was actually 2%, is effectively stealing the 2% productivity gain.

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their 2% surplus that the marketplace produces every year. So it's that that that surplus is

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being siphoned out of the marketplace and given to the hands of the central authorities,

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or the apparatus that could debase the currency. And then they can fund whatever endeavors that

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they want. So the Keynesian economic model is essentially this idea that there needs to be a

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central authority that's going to decide the rate in which the currency is debased to keep the

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economy thriving. And when I hear Keynesian economists talk, it kind of almost makes my

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brain hurt. I'm like, this is ambiguous. It's nebulous. I don't fucking understand it. There's

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all these crazy, confusing terms. It's really just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. And the idea with

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Austrian economic theory is that you have a hard money that the central authority or the government

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can't arbitrarily produce more of.

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And the result of that would be is you would have a deflationary money

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or a money that increased in purchasing power.

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That was really more of a theory.

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I think that there's been periods in history where we had a gold standard

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or a hard money standard.

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And those times seem to be when we had great economic prosperity.

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And Bitcoin because it truly scarce does allow this Keynesian or this Austrian economic theory to actually be something that we can try We can see how this works You know the idea of debasing the

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currency to keep the velocity of money up, I think, is a flawed premise. You know, a good example when

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I get into debates with people about this is like, how many people do you know or do, you know,

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yeah, how many people do you know that have like an iPhone 15 that works just fine, that will go

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and buy an iPhone 16 with the knowledge that two years later, they can get a better iPhone for the

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same price or maybe less, right? Like flat screen TVs is another example. So people will always

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satisfy their needs and wants, even if the money is increasing and it's purchasing power as opposed

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to decrease in its purchasing power. So a little bit of critical thinking, and you could see right

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through the Keynesian economic, you know, ideology or theory. And one thing that I think about a lot

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is something Jeff Booth says, he has such a knack for just distilling down these mega concepts into

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such small, dense, little snippets. And he says, where you have abundance and money, you create

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scarcity and everything else. Where you have scarcity and money, you create abundance and

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everything else. So in this Keynesian economic model, this fiat, peak fiat paradigm, you know,

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late stage central banking, not late stage, late stage capitalism. The money is shitty. It's weak.

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It's, it's being produced at such a fast rate that it's not a hard asset within the marketplace.

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So then you're incentivized as a market participant to get out of the money and into anything else that preserves its economic energy better than the money does.

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And actually, because we have this debt based system with fractional reserve lending, you're incentivized to short the currency, to borrow the currency and go to go short the currency, go long an asset like real estate.

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and where you have scarcity in money, you create abundance in everything else. If the money

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is the hardest thing in the marketplace, it's the hardest to produce more of. And in this case,

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we have Bitcoin. Thank God we have Bitcoin has no industrial use case. This is purely monetary,

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pure monetary technology. There's, you can't do anything else with Bitcoin than use it as a money,

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Use this distributed ledger technology as money. And so because it's the hardest thing in the marketplace, the incentive is to hoard the money and not all these other things that people need like houses.

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and so yeah the austrian economic theory is much easier to understand and wrap your mind around

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the challenge i think is is that we have this chasm to cross from where we are now in this

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keynesian economic paradigm this fiat i call it the bb world effectively it was basically

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before bitcoin before 2009 all of known history we were limited to the technology of a yellow

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shiny rock because of gold's physicality you needed a layer two system on top of it a derivative

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system a certificate system you take your gold to a custodian the custodian issues a certificate

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you trade the certificate in the marketplace it's as good as gold the problem is is and i refer to

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this as the game theoretic fuckedness the issue is is that the central authorities if they can get

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away with being dishonest, issuing more certificates than they have gold on reserve or underlying asset

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on reserve, they have an advantage in the marketplace. You know, they could grease the

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wheels of a king, some political regime, whatever, create bank holidays, effectively prevent you from

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creating a bank run against them, exposing that dishonesty. So it's like this incentive to

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corruption or dishonesty and the market participant that could get away with that dishonesty had the

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advantage. Now, because of Bitcoin and the AB world after Bitcoin, post 2009, our ability,

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if Bitcoin becomes the underlying global reserve assets or monetary instruments,

383
00:39:00,961 --> 00:39:07,102
our ability to expose dishonesty, you know, let's say a lightning provider or an ETF issuer

384
00:39:07,102 --> 00:39:14,461
if they issue more sats than they have Bitcoin on reserve, or if the ETF sells more claims to

385
00:39:14,461 --> 00:39:20,102
Bitcoin than they have on reserve, there's like 10 to 40,000 nodes, something like that,

386
00:39:20,142 --> 00:39:26,961
from what I understand, checking the base, the main chain every 10 minutes. So you can audit the

387
00:39:26,961 --> 00:39:33,481
supply of the underlying asset quite easily. And what I think will happen in time, because of this

388
00:39:33,481 --> 00:39:40,722
technological discovery, creation, advancement, whatever, will be able to expose that dishonesty.

389
00:39:40,922 --> 00:39:45,722
And what that means to me is, is that the honest market participants are going to be the ones that

390
00:39:45,722 --> 00:39:52,282
gain the market share. The dishonest ones will be weeded out of existence. It's in some sense,

391
00:39:52,282 --> 00:39:58,622
it's quite, it's, it's like economic Darwinism. And the thing that I think is so profound about it,

392
00:39:58,622 --> 00:40:10,501
And the thing that gets me so excited is, is there's been an inversion in the incentives and there's been this inversion and this shift from the incentive to corruption, deceit, violence.

393
00:40:10,842 --> 00:40:14,342
You know, that's why we had this L2 system built on gold.

394
00:40:14,481 --> 00:40:21,142
If you're in London, you want to buy a villa in Italy, you can't just take a covered wagon and a couple of horses with your gold.

395
00:40:21,242 --> 00:40:23,501
Some bandits will just prick you and steal it. Right.

396
00:40:23,501 --> 00:40:27,461
So you have an incentive to violence because the property is physical.

397
00:40:27,461 --> 00:40:33,882
and you have an incentive to dishonesty, scumbaggery, as I like to call it.

398
00:40:34,302 --> 00:40:41,302
And now because of Bitcoin, you have the incentive to peace, consent, consensual exchange.

399
00:40:41,302 --> 00:40:44,422
You want someone's Bitcoin. You're not going to get it if you kill them.

400
00:40:44,422 --> 00:40:47,442
Right. So now you better offer them up something that they want.

401
00:40:47,602 --> 00:40:56,322
And then the ability to expose dishonest market participants makes it so that the honest ones are incentivized to be honest.

402
00:40:56,322 --> 00:40:58,622
and they're going to win in time.

403
00:40:58,802 --> 00:41:01,722
So I know that's kind of a big answer, a little bit all over the place.

404
00:41:01,842 --> 00:41:05,942
But, you know, those are some of the things that I see taking place.

405
00:41:06,162 --> 00:41:09,581
And I think that we are in the midst of like a paradigm shift.

406
00:41:09,622 --> 00:41:10,942
It's like a state change.

407
00:41:11,202 --> 00:41:14,662
Like the fabric of our reality is changed.

408
00:41:15,262 --> 00:41:16,442
Satoshi merged.

409
00:41:16,902 --> 00:41:18,182
Like I get I'm a little spiritual.

410
00:41:18,182 --> 00:41:19,302
I get a little metaphysical.

411
00:41:19,902 --> 00:41:23,702
You know, Michael Saylor says he merged the physical world with the digital world.

412
00:41:23,822 --> 00:41:26,001
But I actually think it's a little bit deeper than that.

413
00:41:26,001 --> 00:41:37,481
I think it's the physical world with the metaphysical world, the invisible realm, the ether, the place beyond that we all kind of intuitively know exists.

414
00:41:37,961 --> 00:41:43,102
And now we have the ability, we have this bearer instrument that exists in the physical.

415
00:41:43,602 --> 00:41:48,782
It's the first thing in human history that's informational that's a bearer instrument.

416
00:41:49,001 --> 00:41:55,722
You know, I like to share this thought with people when I'm talking about how profound Bitcoin is.

417
00:41:56,001 --> 00:42:06,862
You know, 100,000 years ago, if I said to you, hey, go down the river, there's a fishing hole there, and then go a few rocks to the left or whatever, there's a bunch of berries, right?

418
00:42:07,162 --> 00:42:08,541
That's a data packet.

419
00:42:08,842 --> 00:42:11,602
You have that data packet, but so do I.

420
00:42:11,902 --> 00:42:20,081
If I send you an email or a JPEG or a text message or whatever, it's you have that information and I have that information.

421
00:42:20,442 --> 00:42:24,262
So with Bitcoin, Satoshi solved the double spend problem.

422
00:42:24,262 --> 00:42:27,362
It's the first thing that's invisible or is informational.

423
00:42:27,362 --> 00:42:28,481
It's a bearer instrument.

424
00:42:28,602 --> 00:42:29,422
I send you Bitcoin.

425
00:42:29,541 --> 00:42:30,362
It leaves my possession.

426
00:42:30,481 --> 00:42:31,262
It goes to yours.

427
00:42:31,382 --> 00:42:40,001
And because of the encryption, you can't get someone's Bitcoin if they've custodied it properly unless they willingly give it up.

428
00:42:40,122 --> 00:42:45,102
So that tilts the incentive from violence to an incentive to peace and consent.

429
00:42:45,282 --> 00:42:49,642
And all of these things, it's like this vortex of incentives.

430
00:42:50,622 --> 00:42:53,442
It's this monumental state change.

431
00:42:53,442 --> 00:42:58,722
Just like we're going from, you know, liquid to gas or water to ice.

432
00:42:58,722 --> 00:43:03,762
It's this monumental shift in the world that we live in today.

433
00:43:04,021 --> 00:43:09,362
And just thinking about and talking about the long-term implications of this is just really fun.

434
00:43:09,642 --> 00:43:10,642
It's really fun.

435
00:43:11,822 --> 00:43:12,762
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

436
00:43:12,922 --> 00:43:16,942
Because so many people are just desperate for some optimism right now.

437
00:43:17,081 --> 00:43:21,442
And it's one of the really sad things that we see today.

438
00:43:21,442 --> 00:43:38,061
And I talked about this in my episode with Brandon Quittem, how each new generation coming up is getting more and more pessimistic and just feeling more and more like darkness about the future because they're just filled up with all these ideas about how, you know, you're the problem.

439
00:43:38,162 --> 00:43:39,061
You're being lazy.

440
00:43:39,402 --> 00:43:48,461
You're the reason why you can't afford a house and to eat is because you're you need to pull yourself out by the bootstraps and climate change is going to kill you and all these viruses are going to kill you.

441
00:43:48,461 --> 00:43:52,961
And it's just like the optimism is just being sucked out of people.

442
00:43:53,961 --> 00:44:08,142
I just increasingly believe that the same educational system who is lying about all this economic stuff and lies about all the history and lies about everything else, which is just an arm of the fiat beast.

443
00:44:08,142 --> 00:44:12,402
is also intentionally keeping people in this low vibration state,

444
00:44:12,541 --> 00:44:15,081
this spiritually bankrupt state,

445
00:44:15,602 --> 00:44:18,602
because it benefits them to have obedient slaves

446
00:44:18,602 --> 00:44:19,742
who don't ask too many questions

447
00:44:19,742 --> 00:44:20,782
and don't learn about things

448
00:44:20,782 --> 00:44:22,422
that are actually going to free them from the state

449
00:44:22,422 --> 00:44:25,222
and just instead have people that just continue

450
00:44:25,222 --> 00:44:27,642
going through the nine to five,

451
00:44:27,782 --> 00:44:29,081
cog in the machine path,

452
00:44:29,442 --> 00:44:31,122
paying their taxes like good cattle

453
00:44:31,122 --> 00:44:33,142
and just going through those motions.

454
00:44:33,742 --> 00:44:34,922
Would you agree with that?

455
00:44:34,981 --> 00:44:38,122
And do you think that Bitcoin could be the real reason

456
00:44:38,122 --> 00:44:47,682
And you sort of touched on there. This could be what actually brings people into a much higher spiritual state because people will finally have this boot off of their neck from inflation.

457
00:44:48,222 --> 00:44:55,262
And they're able to finally, you know, think about bigger ideas for the first time in their life and have some extra bandwidth to play with.

458
00:44:56,302 --> 00:45:01,322
Yeah, I absolutely love that spiritually bankrupt. That's very well said.

459
00:45:01,322 --> 00:45:06,242
But yeah, I totally agree.

460
00:45:06,722 --> 00:45:21,762
And I do think what is really beautiful about what's taking place is that the NGU technology that's baked into the Bitcoin network, that number go up, that incentive, it's very alluring.

461
00:45:21,762 --> 00:45:24,961
You know, there's a saying that you come for the money and you stay for the money.

462
00:45:25,442 --> 00:45:27,402
Like that's that's very profound thing.

463
00:45:27,461 --> 00:45:30,862
So a lot of people, I think, are going to be drawn into Bitcoin as the price continues to rip.

464
00:45:30,862 --> 00:45:33,342
It's like the meme at like 108.

465
00:45:33,842 --> 00:45:38,581
There's one guy standing in line trying to buy some sats or yeah, 108.

466
00:45:38,882 --> 00:45:40,422
It's like the line is really long.

467
00:45:40,422 --> 00:45:43,061
And then at 84 K there's one guy standing there.

468
00:45:43,061 --> 00:45:43,242
Right.

469
00:45:43,302 --> 00:45:46,061
So as the price rips, it just brings a lot of attention in.

470
00:45:47,102 --> 00:45:53,662
And, and I see this as like kind of the common, most common phenomenon.

471
00:45:54,182 --> 00:46:00,802
People get into Bitcoin as the price pumps, whatever allocation they have to Bitcoin rips.

472
00:46:00,862 --> 00:46:02,102
Then they're forced

473
00:46:02,136 --> 00:46:07,576
to make some sort of a decision. Do they rebalance? Do they sell the Bitcoin? Do they

474
00:46:07,576 --> 00:46:12,716
harvest those gains and then put their money into something else? And if they're still economically

475
00:46:12,716 --> 00:46:18,356
productive and producing a surplus, they'll actually have more capital, more economic

476
00:46:18,356 --> 00:46:22,956
energy that they need to put somewhere. So it actually is this forcing function that causes

477
00:46:22,956 --> 00:46:27,156
you to have to think a little bit more deeply about it. Wait a second. Hey, I'm up 100 percent

478
00:46:27,156 --> 00:46:31,756
over a four year period or whatever the circumstances are. Do I sell this and buy

479
00:46:31,756 --> 00:46:35,916
some Apple stock? Do I buy a duplex? Do I buy an apartment building? Do I buy some gold?

480
00:46:36,576 --> 00:46:43,416
Do I get some T-bills or do I hold it? Do I buy more of it? Should I diversify against this?

481
00:46:43,896 --> 00:46:49,576
And so that's this enormous incentive to understand more about what's happening.

482
00:46:49,576 --> 00:46:54,476
And the more that people understand it, the more they realize that there's no better place to put

483
00:46:54,476 --> 00:47:00,416
the money. And so I think that in, you know, there's a like what comes to mind often when we're

484
00:47:00,416 --> 00:47:05,516
when I'm discussing, you know, things around this topic and people's lives getting so much harder.

485
00:47:05,756 --> 00:47:11,016
It's the best of times and it's the worst of times. Like it's both happening at the same time.

486
00:47:11,076 --> 00:47:15,036
It just depends on what side of history you're living. And part of that is perspective based,

487
00:47:15,096 --> 00:47:20,736
I believe, being somewhat spiritual. I think that you can adopt a gratitude practice and you can be

488
00:47:20,736 --> 00:47:26,656
grateful for everything that happens in your life. As an example, like I never look back on my life

489
00:47:26,656 --> 00:47:32,956
and think to myself, oh, I made the wrong decision. Even if the decision produced results that I was

490
00:47:32,956 --> 00:47:38,816
adverse to in the moment, I just think, okay, it was the perfect decision. Because at the very least,

491
00:47:38,816 --> 00:47:43,196
through process of elimination, it helped me understand more of what I do want, right?

492
00:47:43,636 --> 00:47:49,396
And I think too, with Bitcoin, there are a lot of people who are struggling because they don't have

493
00:47:49,396 --> 00:47:54,356
Bitcoin and Bitcoin could help mitigate those struggles. However, I do think that Bitcoin is

494
00:47:54,356 --> 00:48:00,676
making the world better for everybody today, including people who don't have Bitcoin. As an

495
00:48:00,676 --> 00:48:04,816
example, where I live, I don't own any real estate. I don't even own the house that I live in. And I'm

496
00:48:04,816 --> 00:48:08,336
glad that I don't like I'm moving to Miami, Florida. All I had to do is pick up the phone,

497
00:48:08,416 --> 00:48:14,036
call my landlord and say, hey, I'm out of here in 30 days. I go lease a new place and say there's a

498
00:48:14,036 --> 00:48:18,096
hurricane or another job opportunity comes up. I just get called on a ham done. I'm going to go

499
00:48:18,096 --> 00:48:25,176
at least another place. I hold the Bitcoin and I rent my house. So that gives me a hedge against

500
00:48:25,176 --> 00:48:30,336
the inflation, the currency debasements. It's the hardest asset in the marketplace and it increases

501
00:48:30,336 --> 00:48:38,436
my optionality. I can easily move with minimal friction. But because of that, that means that

502
00:48:38,436 --> 00:48:43,596
people who do want to buy a house, let's say here in Humboldt County, who want to raise a family,

503
00:48:43,596 --> 00:48:51,276
there's less upward price pressure on the housing in the jurisdiction or the area that I live in

504
00:48:51,276 --> 00:48:54,656
because I'm not trying to buy multiple houses, right?

505
00:48:54,936 --> 00:48:58,796
So it might be infinitesimal, but there is a real effect taking place.

506
00:48:59,756 --> 00:49:03,436
It's my understanding that BlackRock, I could be wrong about this,

507
00:49:03,496 --> 00:49:04,356
but it's at least my understanding.

508
00:49:04,496 --> 00:49:09,236
BlackRock has been buying a lot of single family homes across the country for many years now.

509
00:49:09,236 --> 00:49:14,516
And other corporations and other hedge funds are putting housing on their balance sheet.

510
00:49:14,676 --> 00:49:25,296
They're effectively trying to hold assets that are losing value because they are actually losing value in real terms, but at a slower rate than the currency is.

511
00:49:25,456 --> 00:49:32,536
So we have all of these assets, you know, that are monetized because the currency should you have abundance and money, you create scarcity and other things.

512
00:49:32,536 --> 00:49:44,396
But now that the ETFs exist and now that Bitcoin exists, and especially now that we have a political regime that's much more OK with Bitcoin, Operation Choke Point 2.0 and whatever, those things have kind of gone away.

513
00:49:44,936 --> 00:49:48,996
Currently, you can easily purchase Bitcoin and you can hold it in self-custody.

514
00:49:49,356 --> 00:49:56,176
That is freeing up physical things that other people need to exist.

515
00:49:56,176 --> 00:50:05,596
Right. And so I do think that that the positive effects from Bitcoin are touching everyone's lives in the world that we live in today.

516
00:50:06,416 --> 00:50:17,236
However, there is like I don't know, there are some people that just may not ever get it, you know, and they're going to continue to own the real estate and the equities or maybe they'll try to save in dollars.

517
00:50:17,236 --> 00:50:24,076
And that's that like natural, you know, Darwin is Darwinistic force that's taking place.

518
00:50:24,076 --> 00:50:29,876
And those people are going to struggle. The more that they struggle and others see them struggle, the more people are going to get on the other side of that.

519
00:50:29,876 --> 00:50:38,696
And so based upon those ideas there, I actually have softened my concerns about the world.

520
00:50:38,976 --> 00:50:45,516
I've also become more accepting to like the bad things taking place.

521
00:50:45,516 --> 00:50:59,476
I kind of just look at it like, hey, this central baking scam that we have was just a result of the incentives baked into the reality that we existed in based upon the technologies that we've had.

522
00:51:01,096 --> 00:51:02,336
Now that's shifting.

523
00:51:02,636 --> 00:51:03,616
You know, we're in a new paradigm.

524
00:51:03,836 --> 00:51:09,116
We have a new technological solution to preserving capital, to trading that capital.

525
00:51:09,276 --> 00:51:11,696
It's orders of magnitude better than its predecessor.

526
00:51:11,916 --> 00:51:15,376
And as a result, the world's going to reorganize itself.

527
00:51:15,376 --> 00:51:20,956
And I think, you know, we're in the midst of that. Sometimes I get asked like, hey, when do you think hyper Bitcoinization is going to be here?

528
00:51:21,016 --> 00:51:27,536
Like it's fucking here. It started in 2009. Are you paying attention? It's fucking eighty four thousand dollars today.

529
00:51:28,036 --> 00:51:31,256
The United States government just signed into effect an executive order.

530
00:51:31,456 --> 00:51:35,656
It's we've got an SBR like the game theory is playing out like it's happening.

531
00:51:36,616 --> 00:51:40,556
And I think all those are very positive things. It makes me very hopeful.

532
00:51:40,556 --> 00:51:46,556
um you know i had a little bit of a nihilistic feeling i think we can all relate to that you

533
00:51:46,556 --> 00:51:50,716
know you're going through life and you're looking at the world around you i think most people default

534
00:51:50,716 --> 00:51:56,356
to being honest and compassionate and sharing and and all the things and you have this small

535
00:51:56,356 --> 00:52:01,876
percentage of the population whatever it is one percent less than one percent that are sociopathic

536
00:52:01,876 --> 00:52:06,476
and they don't give a fuck they'll lie cheat still kill whatever to do what you know they need to do

537
00:52:06,476 --> 00:52:14,256
to serve their self interests. And it seems that for all of known history in the BB world, 2009,

538
00:52:14,656 --> 00:52:21,096
all the way back to the beginning of known history, those people had control. And now

539
00:52:21,096 --> 00:52:26,396
there's a forcing function, there's a new protocol, there's a new monetary instrument

540
00:52:26,396 --> 00:52:30,676
that is going to punish those people, and it's going to reward the honest ones.

541
00:52:30,676 --> 00:52:43,396
And so I've really trans gone through a shift in my life where the distaste that I had in that nihilistic, hopeless, kind of bummed out feeling that I had about the world.

542
00:52:43,396 --> 00:52:46,456
Like, why are these shitbags the ones who are running the show?

543
00:52:46,676 --> 00:52:48,376
Well, that's now changing.

544
00:52:48,376 --> 00:53:02,396
And I now have some sort of a mental narrative around why things got that way and how they're going to change as a result of Bitcoin, which really elicits a deep feeling of hope and gratitude.

545
00:53:04,556 --> 00:53:08,716
Yeah, so that's kind of a lot there, but that's what I think.

546
00:53:08,716 --> 00:53:15,136
one of the things you mentioned there that i want to highlight is and we sort of talked about this

547
00:53:15,136 --> 00:53:21,476
earlier about how the blame is being as we believe put in a lot of the wrong directions for the

548
00:53:21,476 --> 00:53:27,696
problems we see today and the big one is just like the rich people are evil this kind of idea that we

549
00:53:27,696 --> 00:53:32,576
have and i come from seattle so the perfect example right there is like amazon jeff bezos

550
00:53:32,576 --> 00:53:35,236
Everyone's like, oh, this is a evil thing.

551
00:53:36,596 --> 00:53:49,676
And I think that a big reason why that is is they're partially right that these giant corporations are just – have so much power to control everything and manipulate things and cheat the rules.

552
00:53:50,756 --> 00:54:01,496
But the reason why they do that is – or why they can do that is because we're in a proof of stake financial system where having more power gives you the ability to change the rules.

553
00:54:01,496 --> 00:54:02,096
Yes.

554
00:54:02,576 --> 00:54:10,876
And I think this is a really powerful concept that Bitcoin brings in where no matter how much money you have, you can't change the rules.

555
00:54:10,876 --> 00:54:17,616
It still has that hard cap supply of 21 million and it forces responsibility on these big companies.

556
00:54:17,756 --> 00:54:26,856
And it really shifts the incentives to where in order to get rich, you really have to provide the most value to the most people and make the most happy people.

557
00:54:26,856 --> 00:54:41,876
Yeah. Where in contrast to today, the way you get riches by cheating enough and getting enough people in Congress bought out so they can stifle your competition by passing a bunch of laws that kill off the mon-pa shops.

558
00:54:41,876 --> 00:54:50,736
and just like it just is the current system is just allows so much fuckery and i just think that

559
00:54:50,736 --> 00:54:56,636
it's the wrong uh approach to get mad at those who are utilizing and taking advantage of the system

560
00:54:56,636 --> 00:55:01,956
rather than looking at the system itself that allows that to happen and when you think about

561
00:55:01,956 --> 00:55:09,936
it this way it's really gonna just give people a much cleaner and clearer path to want to become

562
00:55:09,936 --> 00:55:14,696
an entrepreneur and solve problems and make the world a better place because that will actually be

563
00:55:14,696 --> 00:55:19,936
rewarded and you won't have to fight all this bureaucracy the licensing like we mentioned

564
00:55:19,936 --> 00:55:25,276
earlier is one of the many things that's really just become a tool of oppressing like smaller

565
00:55:25,276 --> 00:55:29,836
businesses and like the bigger ones don't have to follow the same rules because they're buddies

566
00:55:29,836 --> 00:55:35,336
with congress you know right it's quite profound i think this could lead to a renaissance of

567
00:55:35,336 --> 00:55:41,016
people just being more inspired and feeling like they can actually see a path where they can

568
00:55:41,016 --> 00:55:46,096
become an entrepreneur and create a small business and do something unique that the world needs.

569
00:55:46,136 --> 00:55:54,156
Would you agree? 100%. I have a buddy who's very intelligent, as a matter of fact. And then I've

570
00:55:54,156 --> 00:56:06,236
had like a two and a half year ongoing debate and really Bitcoin and free market, I don't know,

571
00:56:06,376 --> 00:56:12,836
ideology, theory, ideas, whatever, was like the idea of, you know, my side of the debate. And he's

572
00:56:12,836 --> 00:56:17,456
like, hey, we need more regulation. We need property confiscation. We need to tax the rich,

573
00:56:17,456 --> 00:56:23,676
et cetera. And so one of the things that I say often, we talk about Jeff Bezos specifically,

574
00:56:24,156 --> 00:56:30,756
very often or did in this ongoing multi-year debate. And my response would always be is,

575
00:56:30,896 --> 00:56:36,516
is hate the game, not the player. It's the incentives baked into the economic paradigm

576
00:56:36,516 --> 00:56:44,876
that are causing the behavior. If it wasn't Jeff Bezos, it would be Bob Smith or whatever it is,

577
00:56:44,876 --> 00:56:53,376
who would have leveraged the existing incentives baked into the fiat economic paradigm to centralize

578
00:56:53,376 --> 00:57:02,276
a business authority or an entrepreneurial endeavor and use that fiat leverage and the

579
00:57:02,276 --> 00:57:08,396
ability to sell equity on Wall Street to centrally control some sort of business endeavor.

580
00:57:08,756 --> 00:57:16,296
Now, it's not actually the most energy efficient to have one retailer globally that's responsible

581
00:57:16,296 --> 00:57:18,396
for providing all the goods that the people need.

582
00:57:18,836 --> 00:57:23,216
It's just only possible because of the fiat subsidies, I suppose you could say, or like

583
00:57:23,216 --> 00:57:41,583
the idea that we cut down the rainforests and graze cattle and feed lots and feed them GMO corn and then ship that beef all over the world In energy terms that not more efficient than grazing cattle and grasslands globally and feeding that cattle to

584
00:57:41,583 --> 00:57:49,143
people who live near those grasslands. It's much more energy efficient to do that. Now, the current

585
00:57:49,143 --> 00:57:58,503
business practices, I suppose you could say, are only a result of the fiat incentives and the fiat

586
00:57:58,503 --> 00:58:05,883
leverage that's available. And so without that, you naturally would decentralize. And especially

587
00:58:05,883 --> 00:58:13,883
because of Bitcoin and its decentralized, inviolable, unconfiscatable nature, what will

588
00:58:13,883 --> 00:58:20,643
happen is, is I think that it'll disrupt the central monopolies and that centralizing force,

589
00:58:20,643 --> 00:58:27,163
and it'll decentralize and it'll create this, this economic environment where what's most

590
00:58:27,163 --> 00:58:33,583
energy efficient is actually what persists. And, you know, another thing was like free markets and

591
00:58:33,583 --> 00:58:39,563
regulation and this idea that we have unfettered capitalism and all these things. I see that

592
00:58:39,563 --> 00:58:49,003
there's an immune system, you could say, within the economy that exactly parallels the one that

593
00:58:49,003 --> 00:58:58,663
takes place in nature. You can't have an entity or a living organism in nature that consumes less

594
00:58:58,663 --> 00:59:08,283
energy than it exerts. That's an unprofitable endeavor. You will cease to exist. But the fiat

595
00:59:08,283 --> 00:59:13,863
system that we have allows for zombie corporations or unprofitable endeavors,

596
00:59:14,343 --> 00:59:21,623
fiscally irresponsible governmental programs. All of those things are not possible without

597
00:59:21,623 --> 00:59:30,063
the subsidy of the fiat theft. Effectively, they're stealing the economic energy from the

598
00:59:30,063 --> 00:59:36,583
people who are using the currency, especially the non-property owning class. They're the ones that

599
00:59:36,583 --> 00:59:41,143
They're subsidizing energy inefficient endeavors.

600
00:59:42,603 --> 00:59:48,383
And, you know, if you had like, this is part of the debate to one of my buddies, like, well, you can't just have no regulation.

601
00:59:48,843 --> 00:59:55,083
Well, because if you don't have regulation, some shitbags are just going to continue to exploit and they're going to run the planet.

602
00:59:55,083 --> 01:00:10,663
Well, I think that over time, as more people have access to the capital preservation that Bitcoin allows, even if there is still fiat mandates, you have to use dollars or euros or whatever.

603
01:00:11,303 --> 01:00:19,703
Over time, though, every year, more and more people are liberated from the problems that the fiat system creates.

604
01:00:20,423 --> 01:00:23,203
As that happens, they're more economically empowered.

605
01:00:23,203 --> 01:00:41,343
And I would argue that anybody who has the ability to buy the nicer thing, the higher value product or the product that is produced by an ethical individual or business entity, they will do so.

606
01:00:41,343 --> 01:00:54,983
And so the honest market participants, the ones providing the most value, the ones that are treating the planet and the resources the best will obtain that market share over time at the expense of the dishonest ones.

607
01:00:54,983 --> 01:00:59,343
and kind of circling back to what I was explaining in the beginning in my experience

608
01:00:59,343 --> 01:01:05,303
with cannabis, which is also very interesting, is so many of these people are outside of the box

609
01:01:05,303 --> 01:01:09,963
thinkers. They're freedom fighting, freedom minded. They wanted to produce a product

610
01:01:09,963 --> 01:01:15,243
while it was illegal because they felt like it was the right thing to do. The marketplace wants it.

611
01:01:15,783 --> 01:01:21,423
There's an incentive to do it. They believed in it. Now those same people are like, whoa,

612
01:01:21,423 --> 01:01:28,683
could we stifle the supply? Could you go and stop other people from doing this? So I see it as an

613
01:01:28,683 --> 01:01:36,523
incentive-created phenomenon that is a result of the fiat system. We live in a deflationary world,

614
01:01:37,043 --> 01:01:42,703
full stop, end of story. Free markets are deflationary, but we have an inflationary

615
01:01:42,703 --> 01:01:51,223
monetary system, and those are two incompatible forces, and the incentives created are centralizing

616
01:01:51,223 --> 01:01:57,523
They're exploitative and they're bad for everybody, including our home, planet Earth.

617
01:01:57,523 --> 01:02:01,983
And so I do see that all changing. I really do.

618
01:02:03,603 --> 01:02:10,743
Could you take just a little bit more on why you think that this is better for the planet to to have full free markets?

619
01:02:10,743 --> 01:02:18,523
Because I know this is a sensitive spot for the people from where we're both from on the West Coast, the more left leaning folks as they care about the environment.

620
01:02:18,523 --> 01:02:27,383
And when you think about capitalism, you can understand their thought process of like, oh, there's no cap to it, like there's no regulation.

621
01:02:27,383 --> 01:02:33,943
So it seems like it just keeps going on forever. It keeps consuming more and more resources and it keeps damaging the environment.

622
01:02:34,403 --> 01:02:41,943
Could you explain why that's not necessarily the case and why having a full free market would actually be the best thing for the environment and sustainability?

623
01:02:43,383 --> 01:02:45,863
Yeah, that's a fantastic question.

624
01:02:45,863 --> 01:03:07,183
And so, OK, what left leaning people typically want is for there to be laws put in place to regulate the exploitative destruction, destructive nature of what they believe to be capitalism.

625
01:03:07,183 --> 01:03:31,543
Now, I think that because of the extractive nature, as the currency is debased by the central authorities, the central bank and the government, that extractive force creates an extractive force amongst the individuals within the marketplace.

626
01:03:31,543 --> 01:03:40,823
If you're being diluted, and I also go in the BB world, there was nothing that you could own that wasn't bleeding energy.

627
01:03:40,983 --> 01:03:55,363
If you think in terms of using an asset or a money or something that you're going to own to preserve your economic energy, and you want to think of that thing in terms of like being a battery, there was nothing that wasn't leaky.

628
01:03:55,783 --> 01:04:00,523
Gold, the supply on average, I guess it's 2% a year is being, you know, increased.

629
01:04:00,523 --> 01:04:09,383
So that's a 2% dilution rate. Real estate here in California, 1% tax and 1% annual average

630
01:04:09,383 --> 01:04:17,303
maintenance costs. That's 2% ownership costs. That's a 2% dilution rate. Well, over 35 years,

631
01:04:17,303 --> 01:04:26,063
you lose half the value of the asset. You get diluted. You got $1 million worth of gold out of

632
01:04:26,063 --> 01:04:33,223
you know, a hundred trillion or 20 trillion or whatever, that gold supply doubles. Now you have

633
01:04:33,223 --> 01:04:40,843
1 million out of 40 trillion worth of gold. You've been cut in half. And so that causes a problem

634
01:04:40,843 --> 01:04:46,523
where people are looking to continue. They have to extract more value from the marketplace to

635
01:04:46,523 --> 01:04:55,663
maintain their ownership percentage of the pie, I suppose you could say. Now that's a big problem.

636
01:04:56,063 --> 01:04:59,483
And let's see, where was I going with that one?

637
01:04:59,523 --> 01:05:00,483
I lost my train of thought.

638
01:05:01,163 --> 01:05:03,023
Could you reiterate the question one more time?

639
01:05:04,163 --> 01:05:09,743
Yeah, just how capitalism is not bad for the environment

640
01:05:09,743 --> 01:05:13,343
and more so like the fiat system is bad for the environment

641
01:05:13,343 --> 01:05:15,003
and how like bringing free markets

642
01:05:15,003 --> 01:05:17,283
are better for the environment.

643
01:05:17,623 --> 01:05:17,943
Yes.

644
01:05:18,323 --> 01:05:21,483
So if you can preserve your economic energy

645
01:05:21,483 --> 01:05:23,723
and it's not bleeding out,

646
01:05:23,723 --> 01:05:27,763
then you don't have to continue to extract more from the marketplace.

647
01:05:28,103 --> 01:05:34,563
The governmental apparatus has to extract more from the marketplace to keep the current system operating and solvent.

648
01:05:35,043 --> 01:05:38,623
And as a result, the individuals within the marketplace have to extract more.

649
01:05:38,843 --> 01:05:44,083
They're incentivized to stifle the competition, stifle innovation,

650
01:05:44,083 --> 01:05:48,783
which is bad for the end consumer because you have less optionality within the marketplace.

651
01:05:48,783 --> 01:06:11,503
And there is like an immune system in nature. There's an immune system in the economy. And if you have a business that's doing unethical things and the people who are doing business in that marketplace have the optionality to work with someone else who's not doing unethical things,

652
01:06:11,503 --> 01:06:19,883
I believe that they will over time gravitate towards the most value and the most ethical producers.

653
01:06:20,243 --> 01:06:30,303
Right. And so with cannabis, the value of the cannabis as a result of the supply increasing has gone down.

654
01:06:30,303 --> 01:06:34,923
And now the black market element has really gone away for the most part.

655
01:06:34,923 --> 01:06:37,203
Like it used to be a concern here in Humboldt County.

656
01:06:37,203 --> 01:06:43,083
You had 10, 12,000 farms in Humboldt County that you could see via satellite.

657
01:06:43,223 --> 01:06:44,323
You could go on Google Maps.

658
01:06:44,463 --> 01:06:46,583
I could take you a tour on Google Maps of all these farms.

659
01:06:46,643 --> 01:06:47,543
You could see them from space.

660
01:06:48,463 --> 01:06:53,063
And what's happened is, well, there was a lot of concern around the environmental impact.

661
01:06:53,163 --> 01:06:59,723
You have people, you know, diverting stream water, drilling wells, discharge runoff from nutrients.

662
01:06:59,723 --> 01:07:01,343
They're cutting trees down.

663
01:07:01,343 --> 01:07:10,803
And so you could you could expend energy with enforcement going and rounding these people up.

664
01:07:10,803 --> 01:07:16,023
But it's actually not very energy efficient to do so. That's more rules. That's more regulations.

665
01:07:16,363 --> 01:07:28,483
And if they would have just been like, hey, cannabis is legal. Anybody who can produce it anywhere you want, whether it's in a garage, a basement or a full blown open field, a big greenhouse facility like this.

666
01:07:28,483 --> 01:07:38,583
If you can pass a certain testing requirement, which the free market would want, they would want to buy cannabis that is clean, free of heavy metals, free of pesticides.

667
01:07:39,183 --> 01:07:42,163
If you could pass this test, you could sell your product into the free market.

668
01:07:42,163 --> 01:07:52,263
What would happen is, is that in no time, the margin would descend, the value of the commodity would plummet to its marginal cost of production.

669
01:07:52,643 --> 01:07:59,003
And then the producers who are doing unethical things would over time lose market share.

670
01:07:59,283 --> 01:08:03,403
The people would be buying the best product from the people who are ethical, who could prove.

671
01:08:03,403 --> 01:08:15,203
And now with social media and this this hyper rate of information sharing, spread, whatever you want to call it, you can tell pretty quickly who are who are the ethical and honest people who are doing the right thing.

672
01:08:15,203 --> 01:08:27,783
And so there is this natural dynamic that that takes place in a free market where the things that the marketplace wants will produce more of and the things that the marketplace doesn't want will produce less of.

673
01:08:27,783 --> 01:08:37,883
And then there's this this this conversation, I guess you could say, anarcho capitalism, some hardcore libertarians, which there's a lot within the Bitcoin space.

674
01:08:38,403 --> 01:08:43,863
This idea that we need to downsize government or get and get rid of government entirely.

675
01:08:44,443 --> 01:08:57,543
I think that if you had a Mad Max apocalyptic scenario where the government ceased to exist, the first thing that I think people would do is it would the government wouldn't cease to exist.

676
01:08:57,783 --> 01:09:09,550
just the current governmental central model I suppose would change and you would end up with a decentralized governing model where you would have people who would they would band together

677
01:09:09,550 --> 01:09:15,990
and they would pull and elect, you know, the fiscally responsible, intelligent, creative people

678
01:09:15,990 --> 01:09:21,550
who wanted to do so into positions of power where they would then pool capital together

679
01:09:21,550 --> 01:09:25,090
and then they would allocate that capital to take care of things that the marketplace wants,

680
01:09:25,110 --> 01:09:27,810
like roads, schools, clean water, etc.

681
01:09:28,190 --> 01:09:40,150
And in that free market, I think you are providing more value to the end consumer, because if you could prevent monopolization, you're effectively preventing excessive exploitation.

682
01:09:40,750 --> 01:09:48,170
You know, as an example here in Humboldt County, PG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric, they're the only power providers.

683
01:09:48,170 --> 01:09:54,750
That's the only person that this facility can only entity that this facility can procure electricity from.

684
01:09:55,610 --> 01:09:58,070
So the electricity is really expensive.

685
01:09:58,190 --> 01:10:08,410
Right. Because there's no option. There's no one else that could come in and say, hey, you know what? Actually, you have this this margin. It's 100 percent. It's 50 percent, whatever. I'll do it for less.

686
01:10:08,410 --> 01:10:26,090
And so that free market dynamic does create an environment where the person or the entity that's providing the most value, that's the most efficient and destroying nature is not the most efficient.

687
01:10:26,870 --> 01:10:31,810
Those are going to be the entities that end up with the market share.

688
01:10:32,330 --> 01:10:33,590
I hope that makes sense.

689
01:10:33,590 --> 01:10:39,630
It's really, I mean, like this, a lot of this stuff is inverse to the way we have thought a lot about the world.

690
01:10:39,830 --> 01:10:46,150
You know, like when I heard the Sailor series for the first time, it was like so clarifying for me.

691
01:10:46,210 --> 01:10:50,250
I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is what's happening in the world.

692
01:10:50,350 --> 01:10:50,990
Holy shit.

693
01:10:51,430 --> 01:10:56,770
You know, when I heard the Jeff Booth series and listen to The Price of Tomorrow, I'm like, fuck.

694
01:10:56,850 --> 01:10:58,890
I remember pausing it like several times.

695
01:10:58,890 --> 01:11:00,750
I'm like working with the plants and the grum here.

696
01:11:00,750 --> 01:11:03,530
So wherever I was at the time, I'm like, pause.

697
01:11:03,590 --> 01:11:10,670
hold on, the natural state of a free market is deflation. Like had to wire new neuro pathways.

698
01:11:11,410 --> 01:11:15,730
And I remember some of those moments, it was almost like like a psilocybin trip where it's

699
01:11:15,730 --> 01:11:21,730
like I get the cerebral elation where I'm like, Oh, my God, it makes sense. I can't believe it.

700
01:11:21,770 --> 01:11:28,450
Like it's so clarifying. Yeah, and Bitcoin's a catalyst for that understanding. And it's and it

701
01:11:28,450 --> 01:11:29,630
It is the forcing function.

702
01:11:29,970 --> 01:11:49,910
You know, as far as also, and I'll leave this thought with this, the idea that we need more laws, more regulations to prevent people from doing things that generally we could all agree people in businesses shouldn't be doing is actually accurate.

703
01:11:49,910 --> 01:11:59,610
But what we need is a money that can't be corrupted or controlled because money is superordinate to law.

704
01:11:59,610 --> 01:12:10,290
So we now actually have that. And it's in some sense, it's the laws of physics that govern our physical reality are now going to govern our economy.

705
01:12:10,290 --> 01:12:25,550
And we were, for whatever reason, this runaway train of deceit, like this game theoretic fuckness because of the technological limitations that we had as a civilization allowed for an unnatural phenomenon to take place.

706
01:12:25,550 --> 01:12:31,730
But I think that Bitcoin is like it's an emulogical response from the marketplace.

707
01:12:32,090 --> 01:12:34,170
You would have that in nature.

708
01:12:34,370 --> 01:12:43,690
If things get too out of balance, something else will evolve and shift to bring back balance that harmonious.

709
01:12:43,690 --> 01:12:45,330
What is it like homeostasis?

710
01:12:45,630 --> 01:12:48,150
And so Bitcoin is that forcing function.

711
01:12:48,150 --> 01:12:56,030
It is the law that will regulate our entire global economy and prevent the scumbaggery.

712
01:12:56,190 --> 01:12:59,830
The things that we can all fucking agree upon are a problem, you know?

713
01:13:00,710 --> 01:13:02,470
And I think that that's a beautiful thing.

714
01:13:04,210 --> 01:13:06,570
Yeah, I fully agree with all that.

715
01:13:06,570 --> 01:13:22,770
And I think that another piece I would just throw in in terms of just the sustainability side and why sound money brings us a more sustainable world full of people who care about the environment is fiat inherently makes people think short term.

716
01:13:23,170 --> 01:13:31,510
And especially the big dogs at the very top who control the knobs, they are definitely thinking short term all the way up to the politicians who are just in for a few years.

717
01:13:31,610 --> 01:13:34,470
And so they're just going to give all the free stuff so they can get reelected.

718
01:13:34,470 --> 01:13:39,710
everything is just wired to be very short-term thinking right now because people can't save their

719
01:13:39,710 --> 01:13:44,430
money their money is disintegrating so they have to act quickly they have to spend things fast and

720
01:13:44,430 --> 01:13:49,210
the most extreme example is these companies or countries who've gone through hyperinflation

721
01:13:49,210 --> 01:13:54,870
where the money is worth less at the end of the week or the end of the day than when they get it

722
01:13:54,870 --> 01:13:59,550
so they have to run to the store and spend it right away and the stores have to you know like

723
01:13:59,550 --> 01:14:04,170
have only let you get a certain amount of things of each product.

724
01:14:04,330 --> 01:14:08,270
All this stuff is just making people think really short term and closing their world down

725
01:14:08,270 --> 01:14:11,330
and all the way up to the corporate and government level.

726
01:14:11,330 --> 01:14:16,690
And when you have a sound money that allows people to save and start thinking long term

727
01:14:16,690 --> 01:14:23,690
and provides more benefit for those who plan long term and create good businesses that,

728
01:14:23,810 --> 01:14:28,850
like you said, do things the right way, which will be more and more transparent

729
01:14:28,850 --> 01:14:34,650
as we have more independent journalists out there using Nostra and getting zaps for, you know,

730
01:14:34,650 --> 01:14:38,050
talking about these things and investigating things and just doing the research themselves,

731
01:14:38,050 --> 01:14:46,930
as we're seeing already, it's going to provide this really paradigm shifting bandwidth upgrade

732
01:14:46,930 --> 01:14:51,810
in people's brains to just be thinking more about the future. And people who think about the future

733
01:14:51,810 --> 01:14:56,610
are naturally going to do more sustainable things and take more sustainable habits, both

734
01:14:56,610 --> 01:15:02,010
on a personal level for their own health, for example, but also just caring more about nature

735
01:15:02,010 --> 01:15:06,810
and the environment because it's impossible to care about those things when you can't survive

736
01:15:06,810 --> 01:15:11,690
and you have to feed your kids and you're struggling to live, you know? And as soon as those things,

737
01:15:11,770 --> 01:15:15,010
and this sort of ties in with the spiritual side we talked about earlier, why people,

738
01:15:15,650 --> 01:15:21,770
like there's just no spirituality, no higher thinking. These days when you just walk around

739
01:15:21,770 --> 01:15:25,090
the city and you see people and they've got their heads down, their phones, and they're just kind of

740
01:15:25,090 --> 01:15:30,610
walk in a straight line like a zombie. It's because that's all that they can do. They just

741
01:15:30,610 --> 01:15:36,970
don't have any extra space left in their brain to think bigger. And so I think that this expansion

742
01:15:36,970 --> 01:15:43,330
from the short-term fiat system to the long-term Bitcoin system is going to be super profound in

743
01:15:43,330 --> 01:15:49,230
how it affects people. And I'm curious of your thoughts on that as well. Well, I totally agree.

744
01:15:49,230 --> 01:15:57,170
Um, I do also think though, that it's almost like our reality seems to be splitting and not to get

745
01:15:57,170 --> 01:16:04,210
too woo or metaphysical, but it almost seems like we're like, our, our, there's like a bifurcation

746
01:16:04,210 --> 01:16:08,810
taking place where some people are sending to a higher state of consciousness. And there seems to

747
01:16:08,810 --> 01:16:14,890
be a large spiritual movement and a great awakening around, you know, vibration, frequency,

748
01:16:14,890 --> 01:16:21,770
energy, how that affects our reality, quantum physics, you know, the Newtonian model seems to

749
01:16:21,770 --> 01:16:28,310
be being somewhat disrupted by the quantum model of reality. And so I think that some people are

750
01:16:28,310 --> 01:16:35,610
evolving at a faster rate in which we maybe ever have, and then some people are devolving at the

751
01:16:35,610 --> 01:16:42,090
same time. And so it's almost like a reality is splitting into two groups. But I think, I think

752
01:16:42,090 --> 01:16:50,830
what you're speaking to is dead on. And I think that one's ability to plan for the future is

753
01:16:50,830 --> 01:17:00,050
directly related to their ability to project their capital into the future. And so if you can't

754
01:17:00,050 --> 01:17:06,270
effectively project your capital into the future, 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, then you can't

755
01:17:06,270 --> 01:17:12,550
really plan for that. That's also why some of the sociopaths, like Bill Gates, for as an example,

756
01:17:12,550 --> 01:17:19,510
who have so much economic energy at their disposal, you know, Jack Mallers, I love how he

757
01:17:19,510 --> 01:17:25,770
says this money is your time and energy in an abstracted form. Well, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos,

758
01:17:25,890 --> 01:17:31,250
none of these people have a lot of money. They have a lot of stuff. I just also want to be clear

759
01:17:31,250 --> 01:17:34,850
about that one. That's I think like, so there's a misunderstanding there. You know, I talk with a

760
01:17:34,850 --> 01:17:37,970
lot of people and they'll be like, oh, so and so they have a lot of money. I'm like, whoa, no,

761
01:17:37,970 --> 01:17:41,690
they don't. They have a lot of stuff. They have a lot of real estate. They have a lot of equities.

762
01:17:41,790 --> 01:17:45,550
They might have some gold. They might have some treasury bonds, whatever. That's not money. That's

763
01:17:45,550 --> 01:17:50,570
stuff that we've monetized because the money is really abundant and shitty. So the incentive is

764
01:17:50,570 --> 01:17:58,390
to hold the stuff. But someone like Gates, he has at his disposal an immense amount of economic

765
01:17:58,390 --> 01:18:04,930
energy, life force in an abstracted form. So he's capable of thinking about the long term.

766
01:18:05,410 --> 01:18:11,830
Now, I would argue that his perspective about the long term success of the species seems to be the

767
01:18:11,830 --> 01:18:16,910
exact opposite of what mine is and a lot of other people like I think that he's concerned about the

768
01:18:16,910 --> 01:18:21,770
resources on the planet is concerned about the unsustainable forces that are taking place. And

769
01:18:21,770 --> 01:18:26,310
he wants to reduce the population and feed everybody fucking grasshoppers and put them

770
01:18:26,310 --> 01:18:32,190
into a camp. Now that's not the solution, in my humble opinion. But it is a real issue.

771
01:18:33,470 --> 01:18:41,470
Your ability to plan for the future. Like, why would why would somebody who whose life is getting

772
01:18:41,470 --> 01:18:46,430
harder? See, the other thing too is, is like, most people, although they may not be able to

773
01:18:46,430 --> 01:18:50,550
articulate all the things that we're talking about in this conversation, and a lot of Bitcoiners

774
01:18:50,550 --> 01:18:57,250
speak to, but they intuitively know there's a big problem. Like you don't have to know that,

775
01:18:57,250 --> 01:19:03,150
hey, the government's debasing the currency and they're funding fiscally irresponsible endeavors.

776
01:19:03,790 --> 01:19:09,630
It's more rules, more regulation and more taxes and more debasement to enforce those rules and

777
01:19:09,630 --> 01:19:17,110
those regulations. People may not understand that at, you know, at in great depth, but everyone

778
01:19:17,110 --> 01:19:21,530
knows when they're getting fucked. Like it's really clear. And then what the problem is,

779
01:19:21,550 --> 01:19:24,230
is though that everybody turns to the left, they turn to the right. They're like, you're

780
01:19:24,230 --> 01:19:30,490
screwing me. You're screwing. Who's screwing me. Let's stop all this. And so, yeah, I do think that,

781
01:19:30,750 --> 01:19:35,010
you know, like I said, you nailed it. You know, people, if they, if they're struggling now,

782
01:19:35,710 --> 01:19:40,090
they, you know, it's like, hold on. I want, I want to be able to have a good month now. I want

783
01:19:40,090 --> 01:19:44,130
to have a good year now. Like I want to take my kids to Disneyland or whatever it is that you want

784
01:19:44,130 --> 01:19:49,870
to do and I'm fucking broke and I can't do that. Like I'm going to work on figuring out how to do

785
01:19:49,870 --> 01:19:54,670
that. And then if you could achieve that, then maybe you could think, oh, in two years, I want

786
01:19:54,670 --> 01:19:58,670
to upgrade my house or in 10 years, I want to start this business that I'm going to leave with

787
01:19:58,670 --> 01:20:06,710
my children or I have my whole life. I want to work on a distillation business that could distill

788
01:20:06,710 --> 01:20:12,330
water out of the air or I want to solve cleaning up the oceans or whatever these things are.

789
01:20:12,330 --> 01:20:15,490
your ability to project that economic energy into the future.

790
01:20:15,490 --> 01:20:19,890
Um, how effectively you can do that,

791
01:20:19,890 --> 01:20:23,930
I think directly affects how far into the future you can plan.

792
01:20:24,470 --> 01:20:26,970
And so I do see that that that's a monumental problem.

793
01:20:26,970 --> 01:20:40,798
And you also see that in Bitcoin I know some Bitcoiners that you know have um enough Bitcoin that they like oh yeah they starting to think longer term longer term and more you know yeah it just low time preference

794
01:20:40,918 --> 01:20:45,778
I mean, we talk about this, you know, all the time in Bitcoin, high time preference versus low time preference.

795
01:20:45,778 --> 01:20:49,498
And I think that's just all predicated upon one's ability to project that energy into the future.

796
01:20:51,438 --> 01:20:51,838
100%.

797
01:20:51,838 --> 01:20:57,178
Eric, I feel like I could talk to you all day, man, but we've covered so many great things here.

798
01:20:57,178 --> 01:21:02,118
I'm sort of getting in the habit of trying to not just go for freaking hours since I know we'll do another one in the future.

799
01:21:03,038 --> 01:21:04,178
Yeah, man, sounds good.

800
01:21:04,198 --> 01:21:11,078
It's good to keep things short for those folks, you know, in still not fiat world, just kind of looking for little tidbits of new info.

801
01:21:11,778 --> 01:21:20,998
So I do have one, I think, a great question to start wrapping things up here, which is something I heard you say in one of your previous podcast episodes I listened to,

802
01:21:21,238 --> 01:21:25,118
which is when you buy Bitcoin, it's good for everyone who holds Bitcoin.

803
01:21:25,118 --> 01:21:27,798
And it's also good for everyone who doesn't hold Bitcoin.

804
01:21:27,798 --> 01:21:37,498
So could you take us home with just explaining why Bitcoin really is helping everybody in the world right now?

805
01:21:37,578 --> 01:21:51,538
And the more that you can anyone can do out there on an individual level to support this movement, whether it be buying Bitcoin, you know, just reading books about educating yourself, sharing resources to help others like my podcast.

806
01:21:51,538 --> 01:21:58,138
anything else you can just spread the love spread the education and spread this bitcoin

807
01:21:58,138 --> 01:22:05,558
uh word out there you know what would your explanation be for that um well i spoke uh

808
01:22:05,558 --> 01:22:10,178
about this a little bit earlier and i really want to drive this point home where you have abundance

809
01:22:10,178 --> 01:22:14,378
in money you create scarcity and everything else like we talked about you mentioned venezuela as

810
01:22:14,378 --> 01:22:19,118
an example you have hyperinflation the currency is being debased at such a fast rate that the

811
01:22:19,118 --> 01:22:25,258
people who get paid in that currency, they actually won't even save the money or the currency that they

812
01:22:25,258 --> 01:22:29,598
need to buy the groceries two weeks or four weeks later. They'll literally spend it all.

813
01:22:29,598 --> 01:22:37,378
And then if they have a surplus, they'll buy real estate, mopeds, whatever it is, anything.

814
01:22:37,818 --> 01:22:42,358
They're going to hoard anything that they can to project their capital into the future.

815
01:22:42,998 --> 01:22:49,038
And that creates shortages. Effectively, you're not hoarding the money. You're hoarding

816
01:22:49,038 --> 01:22:54,058
other things that have demand in the marketplace. Now, where the money is the hardest thing in the

817
01:22:54,058 --> 01:23:00,818
marketplace, the incentive is to hoard the money and nothing else. So there are people here in

818
01:23:00,818 --> 01:23:06,978
Humboldt County where I live, and actually Humboldt County has a history of environmental

819
01:23:06,978 --> 01:23:12,778
exploitation. There was, you know, this is the Redwood Forest, some of the biggest,

820
01:23:12,878 --> 01:23:17,858
most beautiful trees on the planet have grown here. Some of them are two, three thousand years

821
01:23:17,858 --> 01:23:24,098
old, right? It's a beautiful, mystical, special place, very resource rich. Well, the logging,

822
01:23:24,798 --> 01:23:31,998
like I think it's 99% of all the old growth redwoods were cut and sold out of the area and

823
01:23:31,998 --> 01:23:37,338
actually by corporate outfits that weren't even local to the area. So it was very exploitative

824
01:23:37,338 --> 01:23:49,198
thing that happened. And so we have with the planning department there, it's very difficult

825
01:23:49,198 --> 01:23:53,518
to subdivide land. You have environmental groups that have really put a lot of pressure on the

826
01:23:53,518 --> 01:23:57,638
county and the politicians and whatever. So the expansion of the real estate market has been

827
01:23:57,638 --> 01:24:03,118
stifled by this environmental pushback, which you could say is a good thing. But there's been a

828
01:24:03,118 --> 01:24:08,778
housing shortage for the last 15 years that I've been here, like the rent relative to the quality

829
01:24:08,778 --> 01:24:14,458
of houses that you can get, it's kind of high. And that's because there's more demand than there is

830
01:24:14,458 --> 01:24:21,318
supply. In other jurisdictions, other areas where it's easier to expand, put in more subdivides,

831
01:24:21,418 --> 01:24:28,078
build more houses, you have less of that dynamic taking place. But now because we have scarcity

832
01:24:28,078 --> 01:24:35,958
and money, I can use me as an example, for the last 10 years, as I've been producing a surplus,

833
01:24:36,278 --> 01:24:44,638
providing a commodity that had more demand than supply, I was able to have a strong P&L,

834
01:24:44,638 --> 01:24:50,758
you could say. So I had an economic surplus, I had savings, I had extra capital that I was able to

835
01:24:50,758 --> 01:25:00,778
accrue as opposed to buying some stocks and, you know, I don't know, Amazon, Netflix, Google,

836
01:25:01,198 --> 01:25:07,398
Meta, whatever, like, you know, most people do that, that nice basket of those tech monopolies

837
01:25:07,398 --> 01:25:13,118
and buying some real estate. I have all my money in Bitcoin. So what that's doing is,

838
01:25:13,118 --> 01:25:17,818
is it's making it so that there's less upward price pressure. There's less demand on the

839
01:25:17,818 --> 01:25:23,838
existing housing market in the jurisdiction that I live in. There's less capital for these big tech

840
01:25:23,838 --> 01:25:31,738
monopolies to use to further violate our privacy. Right. And so that's good for people who don't

841
01:25:31,738 --> 01:25:36,158
own the Bitcoin. Right. Like if you want to use Google and you want to stop, you know, you have a

842
01:25:36,158 --> 01:25:41,838
problem with them violating all your privacy. Right. Well, maybe you should stop saving in their

843
01:25:41,838 --> 01:25:46,778
equity. Right. That's like a common theme I see in America where people are all up in arms like

844
01:25:46,778 --> 01:25:52,078
all these fucking problems we have with all these tech monopolies. Well, hold on. How much of your

845
01:25:52,078 --> 01:25:59,378
401k is in Amazon stock, Apple stock, Google stock? You know, oh, housing's so expensive.

846
01:25:59,998 --> 01:26:06,198
Well, okay, you own a home you live in and you own three rental properties. Well, you're contributing

847
01:26:06,198 --> 01:26:13,658
to that upward price pressure on the housing. And so Bitcoin is quite literally making everybody's

848
01:26:13,658 --> 01:26:18,978
lives better today because there are more and more people every day that wake up that are just

849
01:26:18,978 --> 01:26:22,618
like you and I and so many other Bitcoiners that realize they have that light bulb moment. Oh,

850
01:26:22,698 --> 01:26:28,598
wait a second. Bitcoin's the final trade. Like it's the best thing to hold my economic energy in.

851
01:26:28,738 --> 01:26:34,678
Like I don't want an additional house. Like you can only live in it one at a time, right? Why do

852
01:26:34,678 --> 01:26:40,198
you need 40 fucking houses? There are rich people who own trophy who own like I want a nice house,

853
01:26:40,198 --> 01:26:45,418
Right. But rich people own all of the nice houses to preserve their capital.

854
01:26:45,558 --> 01:26:48,998
There are lots of nice houses that aren't even being lived in.

855
01:26:49,238 --> 01:27:02,838
Right. So as they figure out Bitcoin appreciates in its term, in terms of its convertibility into other goods and services at a faster rate than the real estate does.

856
01:27:02,838 --> 01:27:06,758
It has less ownership costs, less counterparty risk.

857
01:27:06,758 --> 01:27:23,558
Like, you know, they want to, let's say, for example, California, I'm leaving California, but if I was going to stay here and let's say the, as Saylor would say, the well-intentioned politicians wants to come up with some sort of a plan to keep their unprofitable governmental business endeavors going.

858
01:27:24,078 --> 01:27:26,238
Hey, let's go ahead and put a tax on Bitcoin.

859
01:27:26,538 --> 01:27:28,258
Well, it's hypermobile capital.

860
01:27:28,438 --> 01:27:31,298
I'm just going to take it to a different jurisdiction that'll treat it better.

861
01:27:31,458 --> 01:27:31,638
Right.

862
01:27:31,638 --> 01:27:38,458
And so it's a forcing function to cause governments and businesses to be more fiscally responsible.

863
01:27:39,158 --> 01:27:45,618
It moves that the focus from the P&L extractive business strategies into a strong balance sheet strategy.

864
01:27:45,698 --> 01:27:53,178
Like it's really it's actually better if you could just have a strong balance sheet that's shredding than it is to try to figure out how to exploit the marketplace.

865
01:27:53,278 --> 01:27:55,058
That's a path of least resistance.

866
01:27:55,058 --> 01:28:11,578
So the same forces that have caused all the problems in our world are the same forces that are going to change the world as a result of this immutable, scarce money technology protocol that we have.

867
01:28:12,058 --> 01:28:20,158
And so that's kind of a long answer there, but I think it's comprehensive and, you know, as I can make it and still have it make sense and whatnot.

868
01:28:20,158 --> 01:28:24,778
And so, yeah, it is making everything better for everybody, regardless of whether you have the coins or not.

869
01:28:25,058 --> 01:28:42,918
Yeah, and we've talked about real estate and housing a few times throughout the conversation, but I think that's sort of a good example for people to just visualize and stick to is using that Jeff Booth analogy, as you talked about earlier, where when there's abundance in money, there's scarcity in everything else.

870
01:28:42,978 --> 01:28:44,858
When there's scarcity in money, there's abundance in everything else.

871
01:28:44,858 --> 01:28:47,278
Well, right now, money is abundance.

872
01:28:47,478 --> 01:28:51,158
It's getting printed by the billions and trillions all over the place by these governments.

873
01:28:51,158 --> 01:28:57,318
so the the smart money that has lots of money knows that they need to get out of the currency

874
01:28:57,318 --> 01:29:03,258
they holding the money itself is going to punish you which is crazy it's not supposed to be that

875
01:29:03,258 --> 01:29:08,278
way like back when we were on gold you know if you got a gold coin as a kid and saved it till

876
01:29:08,278 --> 01:29:12,338
you're an adult and gave it to your own kids it would be worth more that's deflation that's the

877
01:29:12,338 --> 01:29:19,138
natural way that money should be when the products and services ascend faster than the supply of the

878
01:29:19,138 --> 01:29:23,178
money. But now that we're in fiat world where everything's getting printed all over the place,

879
01:29:23,618 --> 01:29:27,998
people are trying to escape the money. And so they throw it into things like houses.

880
01:29:28,538 --> 01:29:33,738
All these rich people are just buying up tons of houses because it holds its value better than the

881
01:29:33,738 --> 01:29:38,078
money does. And so this is the root problem. And once there is a better solution out there,

882
01:29:38,078 --> 01:29:43,098
which we believe is Bitcoin for simply saving your value, then guess what those people are

883
01:29:43,098 --> 01:29:47,238
going to do? They're going to move it out of the houses and into this better alternative.

884
01:29:47,238 --> 01:29:53,998
And this is why, you know, I tell my smart friends who own real estate, my own family owns some real estate.

885
01:29:54,098 --> 01:30:01,598
I'm telling them this is like as soon as people figure out Bitcoin, the big money figures out Bitcoin, they're going to be dumping their houses.

886
01:30:01,798 --> 01:30:11,558
Because, I mean, it's just a pain in the ass to have to take care of these things, hire the, you know, all the different extra third parties involved in maintaining a house, cleaning the toilets, all that stuff.

887
01:30:11,958 --> 01:30:13,358
You know, you don't have to do that with Bitcoin.

888
01:30:13,498 --> 01:30:16,038
You just buy it and hold it.

889
01:30:16,038 --> 01:30:20,098
it actually does what money is supposed to do. And so there's going to be huge capital flight

890
01:30:20,098 --> 01:30:24,918
out of real estate at some point. And I think that the people who hold on to those houses are

891
01:30:24,918 --> 01:30:31,018
going to be holding some giant bags. Would you agree? Yeah, I do. I describe that dynamic

892
01:30:31,018 --> 01:30:38,258
unfolding in front of our eyes today as the great demonetization. All of those assets that have been

893
01:30:38,258 --> 01:30:43,378
monetized as a result of the currency or the money that our economy has been using being so

894
01:30:43,378 --> 01:30:48,938
abundant or so weak or shitty, however you want to describe it, has effectively monetized all

895
01:30:48,938 --> 01:30:54,978
these other things. And that monetary energy will flow out of those asset classes and into Bitcoin.

896
01:30:55,978 --> 01:31:00,518
I think it's happening today. I mean, it's going to end up in the rate in which it's happening is

897
01:31:00,518 --> 01:31:05,538
going to increase. You know, I think most people are unaware of the fact that like, you know,

898
01:31:05,578 --> 01:31:09,778
this real estate strategy, because you can leverage the real estate, because the system

899
01:31:09,778 --> 01:31:17,858
needs to inject liquidity, the currency needs to debase. So real estate's a good vector to debase

900
01:31:17,858 --> 01:31:23,298
against. Most people are unaware that they're actually just using, they're thinking in terms

901
01:31:23,298 --> 01:31:27,558
of it being an investment, and then they want their investment to cash flow. But if you're

902
01:31:27,558 --> 01:31:32,498
effectively only trying to preserve capital, and you're using real estate, well, now you're also

903
01:31:32,498 --> 01:31:37,098
forced to become a service provider, which is a headache, like, hold on, I got to rent this thing

904
01:31:37,098 --> 01:31:43,158
out. I got to Airbnb this thing. I got to make sure I have some sort of cash flow to pay for the

905
01:31:43,158 --> 01:31:48,298
property taxes, the maintenance costs, you have entropy of nature just trying to gobble this

906
01:31:48,298 --> 01:31:53,798
fucking house up, right? And so it's not energy efficient. And one of the things that I could

907
01:31:53,798 --> 01:32:02,398
leave you with this thought, I think this is so important. And very few people are aware of this.

908
01:32:03,718 --> 01:32:04,218
Nothing.

909
01:32:04,245 --> 01:32:11,065
absolutely nothing in the marketplace on planet earth is getting more valuable.

910
01:32:11,405 --> 01:32:14,785
Housing is not going up in value.

911
01:32:15,425 --> 01:32:21,965
Your Amazon stock over time is not getting more valuable.

912
01:32:22,465 --> 01:32:29,685
What's happening is the currency that you denominate its value in is getting less valuable.

913
01:32:29,685 --> 01:32:33,345
I talk about houses and cars.

914
01:32:33,945 --> 01:32:37,605
I was literally just talking to somebody about this yesterday here at the farm.

915
01:32:37,965 --> 01:32:39,005
Talking about Bitcoin.

916
01:32:39,225 --> 01:32:40,285
They're asking me some questions.

917
01:32:41,345 --> 01:32:48,805
And I'm like, the value of your house is going down just like the value of that Honda Accord.

918
01:32:49,325 --> 01:32:56,425
You just can't see it because you're denominating the value of the house and the car in dollar terms.

919
01:32:56,425 --> 01:33:07,165
And the dollar is losing value fast enough that it creates the optical illusion, or at least in dollar terms, the house is going up, but the car is going down.

920
01:33:07,325 --> 01:33:13,505
So the currency is not being debased fast enough so that the value of the car is increasing in dollar terms.

921
01:33:14,865 --> 01:33:16,065
And so it's this optical illusion.

922
01:33:16,225 --> 01:33:22,345
People are unaware of the fact that they're getting they're not actually getting wealthier most commonly.

923
01:33:22,345 --> 01:33:26,845
And let's say, you know, I don't know, you buy some Apple stock and it shreds and then you sell it.

924
01:33:26,925 --> 01:33:28,985
And I mean, you could definitely like changing lanes.

925
01:33:29,145 --> 01:33:30,445
You could you could speed a little bit.

926
01:33:30,505 --> 01:33:32,105
You could get a little bit ahead, but you're trading.

927
01:33:32,765 --> 01:33:37,925
And that requires energy, cognitive bandwidth to do.

928
01:33:38,065 --> 01:33:41,105
And so I like the saying that Bitcoin is the final trade.

929
01:33:41,445 --> 01:33:43,665
It's the best place to have your money.

930
01:33:43,985 --> 01:33:49,525
And and you can denominate the value of anything in this world in anything else.

931
01:33:49,525 --> 01:33:57,345
I could denominate the value of this greenhouse in terms of microphones or in laptops or cups of coffee or whatever.

932
01:33:58,145 --> 01:34:09,465
And so if you denominate the value of anything in the marketplace in terms of Bitcoin, it's going to increase because we're making more of all of those things than we're making more Bitcoin.

933
01:34:09,465 --> 01:34:25,525
And so currently actually Bitcoin in real terms is losing value because we increasing the supply Once we hit 21 million Bitcoin will quite literally be the only thing on planet Earth that has a fixed value

934
01:34:25,845 --> 01:34:32,705
But it'll seem like it's going up in value because its convertibility into other things are decreasing.

935
01:34:33,205 --> 01:34:40,325
So nothing on planet Earth is increasing in value in terms of energy, including Bitcoin.

936
01:34:40,325 --> 01:34:45,585
Bitcoin is just being produced at a slower rate than everything else is.

937
01:34:45,645 --> 01:34:49,785
It's the quote unquote hardest asset in the marketplace in terms of stock to flow.

938
01:34:50,605 --> 01:34:54,585
So everything on planet Earth is going down in value.

939
01:34:55,285 --> 01:34:56,845
Quite literally everything.

940
01:34:57,265 --> 01:34:58,385
Like I saw a chart.

941
01:34:58,765 --> 01:34:59,905
I think it was Swan.

942
01:35:00,325 --> 01:35:02,565
One of their daily videos like a year ago.

943
01:35:02,625 --> 01:35:05,245
I think I was in Prague going to the conference there.

944
01:35:05,245 --> 01:35:10,525
and they were denominating the value of the S&P in dollar terms

945
01:35:10,525 --> 01:35:13,405
and the chart hockey stick up to the right.

946
01:35:13,985 --> 01:35:17,745
But now let's just complete the algebraic equation there.

947
01:35:18,245 --> 01:35:23,965
Let's throw in how many dollars are in the M2.

948
01:35:24,125 --> 01:35:26,885
So if you adjust that chart for M2,

949
01:35:26,885 --> 01:35:33,145
what you can see is that actually the S&P is going down by like a half percent or 1% per year.

950
01:35:33,145 --> 01:35:38,865
treasury bills, tech stocks. I mean, what did we just see? There was,

951
01:35:39,325 --> 01:35:45,585
oh, I forget what it was. There's some AI company just came out and NVIDIA just had a crash. What

952
01:35:45,585 --> 01:35:51,945
was it? DeepSeq? DeepSeq, I think. DeepSeq. Yeah. So there's going to be another tech company

953
01:35:51,945 --> 01:35:58,285
that's going to issue shares. There's going to be another search engine, another social network.

954
01:35:58,285 --> 01:36:04,405
There's going to be more treasury bills, gold, you know, the Mike Maloney's of the world, bless their hearts.

955
01:36:04,405 --> 01:36:07,745
But they're failing to see that gold has failed us.

956
01:36:08,325 --> 01:36:13,245
Gold was really good, I suppose you could say, as a money or as an underlying asset.

957
01:36:13,425 --> 01:36:20,725
If you take away that central corruptible element to it because it has to centralize because it's physical.

958
01:36:21,205 --> 01:36:24,305
Gold was cool before we had computers and bulldozers.

959
01:36:24,305 --> 01:36:41,925
right and if the gold price shreds you know if peter schiff wakes up one morning and lives in his dream come true reality and they revalue gold to fifty thousand dollars an ounce a bunch of unprofitable miners are going to just fire up their bulldozers and rip up the forest floor and dump gold onto the marketplace

960
01:36:42,745 --> 01:36:48,685
So. Yeah, Bitcoin, it's fucking Bitcoin.

961
01:36:48,685 --> 01:36:56,845
such a big deal oh and so probabilistically speaking i know that bitcoiners sometimes

962
01:36:56,845 --> 01:37:03,585
can get a little bit uh you know seemingly hyperbolic and speak in terms of certainty

963
01:37:03,585 --> 01:37:11,685
um and so i can you know i disclose these are all the things that i believed based upon probability

964
01:37:11,685 --> 01:37:17,125
when i say that bitcoin is going to appreciate at a faster rate than everything else forever

965
01:37:17,125 --> 01:37:21,085
However, probabilistically speaking, that's true.

966
01:37:21,465 --> 01:37:24,505
You know, unless we have a black swan, an unknown unknown.

967
01:37:25,205 --> 01:37:29,865
But there is not going to be a Bitcoin 2.0.

968
01:37:29,985 --> 01:37:33,345
There's millions of new cryptocurrencies that people come up with.

969
01:37:33,625 --> 01:37:35,165
And Bitcoin is the one.

970
01:37:35,245 --> 01:37:36,565
It's not going to be replaced.

971
01:37:36,905 --> 01:37:37,985
It is a protocol.

972
01:37:38,265 --> 01:37:40,925
It's like the additional layer on the Internet.

973
01:37:41,165 --> 01:37:43,085
Now with the Internet, we can send value.

974
01:37:43,225 --> 01:37:44,565
It used to be just information.

975
01:37:44,565 --> 01:37:52,925
um there's no need to replace it markets converge onto one this is a protocol stack not a technology

976
01:37:52,925 --> 01:37:57,565
this isn't this isn't a tech stock that you're going to trade so you can go buy a fucking lambo

977
01:37:57,565 --> 01:38:01,905
and the people who do so are going to look back and they're gonna be like oh i should have just

978
01:38:01,905 --> 01:38:08,685
held the bitcoin and so that's that there's just this beautiful incentive vortex that's reorganizing

979
01:38:08,685 --> 01:38:15,665
our world. I call it the great imposition. We're in the midst of the great demonetization

980
01:38:15,665 --> 01:38:22,525
and the great imposition. Bitcoin is imposing a new economic order, a new economic rule set

981
01:38:22,525 --> 01:38:26,945
on our civilization. It's going to reward the ethical and productive individuals,

982
01:38:26,945 --> 01:38:32,725
and it's going to punish the ones who aren't. And the zombie corporations, the fiscally

983
01:38:32,725 --> 01:38:34,825
the irresponsible governments,

984
01:38:35,305 --> 01:38:55,285
the lying cheating stealing central banking apparatuses will all have to change their way of operating or they will be Darwinian out of existence And that just like such a beautiful thing Just the fact that that is now much more

985
01:38:55,285 --> 01:39:04,765
logically or reasonably possible is so inspiring. Like it's like such a catalyst for hope and

986
01:39:04,765 --> 01:39:13,005
optimism like everyone should be ecstatic like this is a state change things are changing and

987
01:39:13,005 --> 01:39:21,165
that's you know beautiful 100 agree with all that and also just your statement that yes it is all

988
01:39:21,165 --> 01:39:25,245
probabilistic and yes bitcoiners get a little crazy sometimes and we just talk about how this

989
01:39:25,245 --> 01:39:31,085
is such a sure thing is going to happen but like you the more research i've done on this thing and

990
01:39:31,085 --> 01:39:36,365
and the deeper I dove down a rabbit hole, the more sure I am that this is inevitable.

991
01:39:36,925 --> 01:39:45,385
And all the reasons that we sort of have in our brain coming into it, why it won't work, are just not correct.

992
01:39:45,385 --> 01:39:51,525
And that humanity is due for a new form of money that just works.

993
01:39:51,905 --> 01:39:56,725
And I also agree that we're in sort of a fiat interregnum period right now.

994
01:39:56,765 --> 01:39:58,905
I'm sure you may have seen that analogy before.

995
01:39:58,905 --> 01:40:05,945
I think it was Anil Patel said that one or something, I believe, how we're really just in between sound monies right now.

996
01:40:06,005 --> 01:40:06,765
It's like an intermission.

997
01:40:06,985 --> 01:40:10,445
Like this fiat experiment is an intermission between gold and Bitcoin.

998
01:40:11,265 --> 01:40:13,685
And Bitcoin is going to be the best money we've ever had.

999
01:40:13,745 --> 01:40:18,265
And it's going to create a very, very beautiful future for everyone.

1000
01:40:18,625 --> 01:40:23,145
And it's up to all of us to just continue spreading the word, spreading the love and spreading knowledge.

1001
01:40:23,145 --> 01:40:28,125
So more people can get plugged into this thing and make sure that we benefit from as much as we can.

1002
01:40:28,905 --> 01:40:32,005
Eric V. Stacks, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you today, sir.

1003
01:40:32,085 --> 01:40:33,125
Thank you for coming by.

1004
01:40:33,125 --> 01:40:35,705
And I really look forward to keeping in touch.

1005
01:40:35,785 --> 01:40:39,185
I'd love to do another one at some point because certain people,

1006
01:40:39,285 --> 01:40:41,925
it's just super fun to just chat with for hours and hours.

1007
01:40:42,045 --> 01:40:43,185
I could definitely do that with you, sir.

1008
01:40:43,305 --> 01:40:47,105
So I wish you all the best in your future changes you have coming up,

1009
01:40:47,125 --> 01:40:48,785
and we will stay connected for sure.

1010
01:40:49,485 --> 01:40:50,385
Yeah, man, sounds good.

1011
01:40:50,425 --> 01:40:51,805
I've really enjoyed it.

1012
01:40:51,885 --> 01:40:52,965
So thank you for having me.
