Bitcoin & Our Deflationary Future

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today we're gonna be exploring some of these questions around deflation, inflation, what is our future looking like, what are some ways that society can adapt to this kind of, to this change that's happening very rapidly. But first, let me introduce the sponsors of the show. So firstly, Swan Bitcoin. If you are in the US, you have to get your stacking on with Swan. They set it up so you can auto-stack and it's so simple. Step one, you auto-fund USD from your bank account. Step two, auto-stack the Bitcoin. And step three, auto-withdraw the Bitcoin to your cold storage. Swan doesn't charge withdrawal fees. They want you to follow Bitcoin best practices and hold your own keys. They even beat the fees for Coinbase and Cash App in terms of the appropriate similar service. So set and forget, enjoy your life, just Swan and chill. Go Bitcoin dot com slash livera and start auto stacking, and you'll get ten dollars of Bitcoin dropped into your account. Next up is Unchained Capital, I'm sure you already know they are a provider of Bitcoin native financial services. They're building products and services on top of multi-signature. I'm sure regular listeners already know about their Vault product, but if you were uncertain about how to do that, they've got the Vault Concierge onboarding package, so now you can actually get some assistance. They can send you some devices, you can buy it as a package to get set up with Multi-signature, so you can use a trezor or a ledger or two trezers, and basically they can walk you through that setup and get you using multi-signature. Unchained Capital also offer loans as well, so you can put up some Bitcoin and get USD without selling your Bitcoin. So that's a great option for listeners if you are looking for ways to secure your Bitcoin, go to unchaineddashcapital dot com. Next up for my Australian listeners, did you know you can buy Bitcoin with your superannuation? You can use a self-managed super fund And New Brighton Capital have streamlined that process to make it easy, fast, affordable, and you still hold your own keys. No one has control but you. So as long as you're comfortable making the investment decisions, New Brighton Capital does the accounting and reporting. They offer a free twenty minute consultation. Use the code Livera to get a credit on the monthly fees. Lastly, are you looking after your Bitcoin keys? Are you just using that piece of paper that comes with your treasurer and ledger? Well, look up CipherSafe. They are creating this cipher wheel. product, which is a steel backup product, it's in a wheel shape obviously, and it masks the words of your seed. So you slide in the tiles, and that is your Bitcoin backup. So go and check them out, make sure that your loved ones have access, have access to Bitcoins if an accident were to occur. They've also got the code Livera for those of you who wanna get ten percent off, you can get that. Alright. So now just bringing in my guest, Jeff. He is a technology entrepreneur and the author of the excellent book, The Price of Tomorrow. Welcome to So Jeff, look, let's get started. I wanna start with, why did you write this book?

it, the simple answer is for my kids. you could see, you could see what was happening in the world, I could see what was happening when the world of technology and things moving faster and faster. And this epic response to try to stop that, deflationary pressure, coming into the market just warping society and, and all the second order derivatives of, of that kind of entering society, and I realized my kids won't grow up in the same world that I grew up in or have chances, unless something's done. So The simple an-- the, the simple answer is, is that it's, I would say probably a more complex, it's not a book I wanted to write. you, the, the, I've been talking about this for ten years. I think your Austrian economics back, background and everything else, and, and, and there's a lot of people that have come to this conclusion different ways. and, and, and there were, were a bunch of people in the technology sector that couldn't see what was happening. There was a bunch of it. And, and so, so I just got tired of talking about it and figuring, I, I gotta step into the fray and do something about it.

Fantastic. And I think it is one of those things where people growing up in today's world, they're speaking to their parents, and their parents are often telling them, "Hey, go and buy property, go and buy stocks, that's what worked for me." But I think this is potentially a good point where, in your book, you make the point that, you know, people talk about how, you know, it's like this time is-- this time is different, right? are there, are there ways in which, you know, what worked for that generation won't necessarily work for, say, the millennial or Zuma generation?

Yeah, well, I, I think it's really important to understand what's happening, right? So, so why do we use technology, number one? Right. Isn't it to make our lives simpler, easier, redu-reduce labor? Right. I don't know a company that integrates technology so their Costco app. so, so the point is, when we use technology, we get a, a massive efficiency gain, and that brings costs down. It also destroys jobs. And, and you used to-- so we used to run an economy where technology was a smaller input of everything else, kind of deflationary forces, and governments could get away with kind of what was, what was happening against that technology, but as technology has grown and grown in magnitude and, and kind of exponentially so now technology is the biggest driver by far of deflationary pressure or efficiency that it is also taking jobs, but it also providing, or could provide abundance, and governments are trying to stop that at all, all costs. So, so When you used to be able to buy a house in an inflationary environment and, and then pay back that house with cheaper dollars because of that inflation that you bought it tomorrow, and your wages go up through your whole, whole life, that's a-- that, that was a good bargain for our parents. They did really well on it, and I would say the world did, pretty well on it. A bigger force has come to play, than any central bank can stop in the end, and that's the force of technology, the, the exponential force of technology wanting to bring prices down.

Yeah. And you, you mentioned there that there's almost this conflict there because it's sort of like governments and central banks of the world, under this ideology of inflationism, right? So they're kind of trying to print at the same-- but at the same time, you've got the technology which is kind of pushing costs down. So How do you sort of see the result of that playing out? And in your view, why is it that the deflationary forces in some ways are stronger than the inflationary forces? Or do you, would you agree with that statement?

Yeah, so the deflationary forces are way stronger. But central banks can create an-- create, inflation is a central bank created phenomenon, right? So, so central banks can create, eventually destroy the currencies, have hyperinflation, and they can create inflation. On the other side of that outcome, you would have deflation again. Again, trying to stop deflation from happening now is going to end in misery, because all it's doing is transferring massive amounts of wealth from the middle class and poor to the rich. In the last two months of COVID, the billionaires in the US gained five hundred and fifty-two billion dollars at, at a twenty percent unemployment. It seems ludicrous, right? But, but what's happening is, as you're stimulating into an environment that wants to go down, wants to pr-price is fall-falling. The byproduct is everybody knows that va-- the value of the dollar is being weakened, and that, and, and actually every business too is racing money into technology faster To destroy it. Why do you think the S&P is, is at all time highs? And what do you think at Amazon, Google, and everything else, the money's actually taking the jobs faster, 'cause the only way you can compete as a business Is to drive to technology faster. So not only do you have this massive debt burden that is disinflationary in itself, because taxes have to go up to cover the debt if tap Taxes have to go up to cover the debt, and that brings down growth rate or, or takes companies out of the US as they chase, chase other lower tax, regions. So, but it has to be disinflationary itself You have the, the pressure of the technology that's rising into the most important. It used to be demographics, it used to be data, it used to be everything else. Now it is technology is, is just moved up the curve, and central banks are still using old models to, to guide their thinking, not realizing what technology is doing underneath, and it's, it's, it's just driving a break into society.

Yeah. And look, in your book, you talk about technology deflation, right? So it's we're, we're experiencing economic growth, we are more productive. I'm curious your view I can't remember exactly which, it's one of those rich tech billionaires, someone like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel or one of those people, and I think they were essentially making the point that part of the reason we've seen so much of this growth into the technology sector is probably, is arguably because it's less regulated than other sectors of the market, and that might be also a reason why we're seeing this massive investment at that angle. I don't,

I don't think it's that at all. I think it's, I think it's it's a really great investment. Like if you understand how to build technology companies and the network effect around technology companies, you can play-- one of my investments, I put twenty-five thousand dollars in two years ago, it's two million right now. and, and, and, and so those, it, it tech-- if you understand the pattern behind technology and how to create the, the stop, it, you can create a ton of wealth in technology companies. The, and so, so, so- Look at the Googles, look at the Facebooks, look at the Shoppifies, look at the Amazons. Why they're growing so fast is they're consolidating, massive amounts of information at a scale unheard of. They're ma-monopolies and they have more power than most people know, and you can start them for not a lot of money.

Right. It, it, it's just this massive, people can create massive platforms and then monetize. Once you've kind of reached a certain level or a certain place in society, you just- Earn, in some sense, the right to just earn a massive super profit, and that kind of-- well, whether we like it or not, that's, that's ess- essentially what has happened in many large platform businesses, let's say Amazon, Google, YouTube, et cetera.

Yeah, and, and, and it reinforces on itself. Here's the, here's the irony. capitalism would work perfectly if you let the system cleanse, and all that would happen is as you let technology deflation do its job, the benefits of, of technology would be wider, to, to the public. You wouldn't concentrate wealth like you're doing. So, so is it- It, it, the pol-- the policy, the response trying to stop deflation at all costs is actually causing the problems that, that, that, that policy wants to stop. The inequality, the massive transfer of wealth, they're, they're making it happen faster, they're making it happen at lightning speed because, be-- because of the way technology works.

The other factor here is If you're, if you're talking to the typical mainstream economist or finance person or the government, they might not like the idea of deflationary pressure. What are some of the typical arguments? I mean, as, as an example, they might say something like, "Oh, but we're gonna go through this deflation and a lot of businesses are going to go under, so we need to stop that." So what's your response on that point?

So, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. I haven't heard one. Actual real argument against what I'm, saying. Not one, not, not one, that, that you couldn't say, say what? Right. The, but the problem is you have to, it, d-d-d, where we are right now, they, they keep, they keep making the problem so much bigger. by, you're gonna enter a depression to be able to see the other side of this if you let deflation happen, and they're right. Businesses, you would, and, and, and I think they look back to the thirties and they say, "Deflation's a terrible thing, you have to stop it at all costs." without realizing that it was the twenties, the debt buildup and all of the, and all of the same thing, all the goofing around with monetary policy that created That cleansing that needed to happen, and there was no way out, the cleansing had to take place, and, and we're in the same situation, and that cleansing is going to take place in one way or the other, in one form or the other. It's gonna take place through As, central banks keep on doing what they're doing, get-- and at some point hitting a runaway inflation rate that destroys value, oh, and then deflation. It's going to happen through revolution, or it's going to happen through choice and, and a managed, a managed outcome to, to deflation, but it's going to happen. There's nothing they can-- nothing governments can do to stop it now.

Yep. and it's, it's almost like they've sort of locked themselves into this continual creation of debt, and as you point out in the book, I mean, governments around the world, many of them are in, you know, record levels of debt, and they see it like the only way is to continue the creation of that debt. So why, why is that? Why do they have to keep creating more debt to keep their To kind of keep that system, to keep kicking the can.

Well, well, just kind of, it, it sometimes it's, it's worth using examples, right? And, and let's say, you have a systematic problem, and, and you, and they think they can grow their way out at two percent inflation to make the debt worth, cheaper in real terms, or, or, or because if you let deflation happen, the debt explodes and has to be reset, so the debt gets more expensive, banks fail, businesses fail, banks fail, everything else, Arguing the fact that a depression at the size of the problem today isn't ugly, it's terrible. But the problem is, by fighting that, you're actually making it worse, worse each time So you lower interest rates, to, to, to misprice a-assets, right? You keep lowering interest rates to negative interest rates. Governments, individuals, corporations load up on debt because effectively you're telling those same businesses and governments and everything else, "Debt's your friend. Currency, owning currency is a bad thing. Don't have savings. Load up on debt." And then when there's any blip in an economy Then they, they, then they, then those same businesses that don't have cash, 'cause they use the cash to buy back shares and everything else, have to lean in to the government and say, "Protect me, so I can protect my jobs." And by protecting them, you keep asset prices high, and a whole bunch of people that are losing their jobs anyways because of technology, you have to then give social s-assistance to To give them more money to, to pay for the high food prices, high asset prices, high rent prices that you created in the first place. So eventually that comes home to, somebody pays the piper. And that's com- a-and, and that's coming really quickly to a town near you. It's coming everywhere.

It's everywhere,

right? It's coming, the, the globe is experiencing that.

Yeah, right. I, I think, you, you make a lot of good points in the book around where things are going in terms- Of automation, AI, people's jobs, and so on, and obviously this discussion over the last few years is, it's starting to rise a lot more the con- the discussion around UBI, Universal Basic Income, this idea that- People are gonna lose their jobs and they need some income, or otherwise they're gonna, they're gonna violently, you know, rise up and so on. I, I guess, could you, could you touch on a little bit around where, what sort of jobs you see getting automated first, what kind of responses that you would see that society should be doing in relation to that?

Okay, so if we, if we-- I, I need to back up because people, people assume when they read my book kind of-- or, or not just that, but they-- a lot of people think Okay, AI is coming like a light switch. One day we have it, one day we don't have it, one day we have it, and they're pointing the time point in time where, where computers take over and they're smarter than all humanity. And here's the point, that is totally irrelevant. AI is built through faster learning cycles because of, bringing the datasets together that learns on itself faster and faster, and the whole path towards, towards artificial intelligence one day being smarter than humanity, the entire path is deflationary and exponentially so. So it's a continuum, it isn't a light switch. And all of these industries, one after another, why don't you see bookstores anymore? Why, as you digitize information, that information can be, sold for pennies around the world instead of, instead of hard copies that are hard, harder trans-transmit. And you have technology now creating its own technology. You have, you have algorithms and, and, and technology. So, so people say, "Oh, the only reason your flashlight or guitar tuner is free on, on, on, on your phone is because it's supported with ads." And that is so not true. What do you think it costs to make that app? And then like nothing, ten minutes. and, and, a-and it's put out somewhere and it has global reach across the, so, and, and while there's a dollar to be made for something You have an endless army of people that are going to try to race in, and the prices are coming down, and that's what's happening. And, and, and so those, those prices are coming down everywhere, in every industry. That's how technology, is built. So that, again, nothing is going to stop that trend in the, and governments still think they're capable of stopping that. or preventing that from happening, but, but ironically, they're making it happen faster.

With this trend of technology making it easier and cheaper to produce things, as you mentioned, the guitar tuner app or whatever app or product We could also say it amplifies the value creation possibility of an individual, right? One individual who is skilled, they can really amplify their impact across many, many people, and maybe one person can do the job that used to take ten people, or a hundred people, or a thousand people in some extreme cases. So in some ways, we're We're moving towards a world where we're all going to be much more, at least materially, richer.

Well, well, that's the point of the book. Think about what we do to today. We spend all of our time trying to work our whole lives so that we can retire the last ten years safely, right? And, and the entire time we're working harder and harder and harder trying to keep up with artificially price-- rising prices that are created artificially, right? To, to push away from us, so we have to work harder. And so we need better jobs, we need everything else to be able to chase on that mouse wheel faster and faster. When technology is actually wanting to give us the exact opposite, when prices should be coming down, to, "You don't pay for the oxygen you breathe. Why not? " It's the most valuable thing in your life.

It's not scarce. Because

it's, it's exactly, it's not scarce, it's abundant, and technology creates abundance everywhere. And so as you, as that happens, more and more things become abundant. You don't, I don't pay for my guitar tuner, I don't pay for my Google information, I don't pay for a whole bunch of information because it becomes abundant. And there's, and if you let capitalism work, there's an army of people, well, there's still money in it, that race to make it more efficient Right? And when it's not efficient anymore, when there's no money to be made there, there anymore, it's free.

Yeah. It's an interesting, discussion there around when things are free and then some, they're monetizing in some other way, right? you know, people might, You know, the, the freemium model is another example of that kind of thing that we see, but I guess just around automation and jobs and the, the way people should think about that, I, I would also suggest a, a, a part of that, the concern really is that, oh, some people might- Not be able to retrain into some other job. But in my view, I think part of that is also things like occupational licensing or just generally regulations and licensing stopping people retraining into a new job, you know, or even laws and so on. So,

so here's the thing that I think two different concepts that you might be confusing. You don't need the jobs. Like, if, if, if everything, if you could feed yourself everything else, you could get away with way less time. When Keynes, people think Keynes, are so against Keynes because a lot of his stuff has been, it's been warped over time. He, he wa- he was pro-deflation, and, and, and he believed that by today, we would be working about a 15-hour workweek. What he didn't conceive is a manipulation of policy that, that pushed some people didn't have to work at all, massive wealth transfer, and some people to have to work infinite hours to try to keep up. So he predict-- he predicted, because he predicted things tied to gold reserve, he, he predict-- he, he predicted, the abundance from technology being evenly, more evenly spread. And, and, and the manipulation of currencies is what made it not evenly spread.

Right. And I think, so yeah, so people would look at, say, the Keynesian theory and say, "Well, for example, some of the arguments around like sticky wage and so on, and that's why people have this kind of inflationary concept." But to your point around Living in a world of abundance, I think, yeah, certainly that was, I think there's a few things to tease apart though. One thing there could also be almost like a status game aspect, right? So people, let's say you're in a rich town, and people are working really hard, not necessarily because they need to for their survival, it's, it's that they want to be richer than their, their friend in, in the house next door, that kind of aspect. And that could also be why people are working more than fifteen hours a week, right? You You could lower your standard of living and instead of working forty hours a week, work twenty hours a week, and many people can do that, right?

Yep. I, I, I, I'm just saying when you-- So capitalism takes into account all of the things you talked about. We, we have-- When you have government, manipulating free prices and everything else and the government stimulus in the entire market It looks way more like communism, it's a managed society, right? That's, that's what it looks like today. We don't have a capitalist system at all, right? In a capitalist system, it makes-- it, it, what it says is, it- The si-same thing you said, people will work while they, while they can make more, right? You put a, you put a really good tweet out at one point, y-that you're not advocating for equality, you're advocating for fairness, and I think that was, and I, and I think that's exactly right. I think you, the game board has to be fair. Today, the game board is anything but fair. By the way, I, I'm a winner, right? so, so there's a whole bunch of me and people my, my friends that have all these assets, technology companies and everything else, and the wealth is just being piled faster and faster and faster 'cause we're sitting on the, sitting on the assets. but, but so through that lens, I can really easily see why somebody over the other side says, "I can't feed my family." And they want to break the game, right? I can, I can understand the response.

Right, yeah, and I think, there's a lot to be said there, because, I mean, and part of why I was saying that was, I think there's too much discussion about inequality per se, when really we should be thinking more about justice. What is just? And I think there's a lot about the fiat money system that is not just, and that is why I'm, you know, I'm so much about Bitcoin and ways that people can, get out, get away from that sort of system. And I think in, you know, if we were to imagine the world of, you know, a fully like a free market deflationary world, a capitalist world, we would see a lot of, let's say, you know, the boring work would just get automated away, and then people could actually be, in some sense, freed to work on things that were more creative in nature.

You'd have a cultural revolution. You'd have a, you, you, you, you would have an enlightenment. Of p- of people having, having time, and, and things would be getting cheaper and cheaper long- it's, why do you use technology in your house? Why do you-- because it saves you time? Right? it's a, a that, that across the board, and shouldn't we be amplifying that to take away the, the, the labor instead of having an old construct that says we need more jobs and we need more artificial growth to create more artificial jobs? To be able to again, against that, that's what, that's every single government all over the world is, they have policies that say, how do we get more jobs? Right? How do we get full employment? And they're all using their currencies as weapons against other currencies to try to achieve that outcome, and, and it's just not plausible, it's not, it's not realistic anymore.

Yeah, actually, I recall in your book you made a point there around currency war leading to trade war, and in unfortunate cases, sometimes leading to full-blown war. So do, do you see that sort of trend playing out now in terms of currency war, trade war?

That's what's happening right now, right? And, and remember, the book was written- Over the last, pre-January, it was released in January, but it was written a year be-- and a half before that. So all of these things are just being accelerated as COVID. But look around, look around the, the populism that is growing in every, in every region in the world as people are dividing against each other, and believing the narrative that their politicians are saying on both sides of the aisle, and the politicians on both sides of the aisles are wrong because they're missing the point. And then once you, once you gain enough power in your own country, you have to create a bigger enemy and, and, and to retain power. So that bigger enemy becomes China or that bigger enemy becomes Russia or that bigger enemy-- and that's happening, so for a lot of your listeners in the US, they would see it from their perspective in the US. It's everywhere. It's everywhere, and every-- and, and people are listening to different rhetoric in s-- in another place, thinking the same thing about US citizens, or vice versa.

Yeah, I think another aspect is also-- so we've, you know, we're all agreed on this idea that technology is-- well, most people are on this idea that technology is a good thing, it's making us wealthier, it's giving us more time to be more creative. I think it might also be interesting to chat a little bit about some areas where technology might make us misguided or there might be some risks around that. So I think maybe when I was a kid It was sort of seen like, "Oh, well, see, now that we've got the internet, information will just spread so easily and quickly." But the reality now is, yeah, information spreads quickly, but it also means misinformation and, you know, fake news and, it's, it's difficult sometimes to- Sort out and figure out what's the truth of the matter, because now there's just so much material out there. Now it's about how do you cut through that and filter through the, the noise?

Yeah, and you know, I talked about this extensively in the book as, as well. It's, it, It's hard to-- a, a feature of the system, it's not a bug, is you see more things that you agree with. And, and it is really easy, to, to get stuck in that loop. And when you come up for air and look at somebody else, they're stuck in a different loop, and you think they're insane, and it might be you that's in, in, in, in, insane. And it's really hard to actually step back. I'll give you, I'll give you one of the tweets I really liked about the use, I'm gonna give you one that I, I disagree with. a whole bunch of the first principles talk came from my book. And then the reason you see it more, and you see-- is because there's a whole bunch of people in the Bitcoin community That have already gone down that path and they're deeper thinkers and they've gone to the bottom of the hole, come back up, and said, "This makes a lot of sense." So So your bias and first principles, and thinking in first principles, is seeing a whole bunch of community rally around my book and, and, and think deeper, and you think it's more people are seeing that or say, or, or doing that or in virtue signaling because of it. When most people aren't thinking like that. And so, so I would go the opposite way. I would say, I would hope a whole bunch more people ask deeper questions and say, "Why isn't-- Wouldn't you wanna think in first principles? Wouldn't you, wouldn't you want to say, is inflation a good thing? Without just..." believing it is. Why wouldn't you ask, "Why is it a good thing?" And is that true? And is that true to come to your own conclusions? I think in a world that you're, you're so much attention is, is trying to drive you down a certain path And you're naturally likely to click on that and drive you further down that path. It's your responsibility to ask deeper questions and look around the corner, because the technology won't do that for you.

Of course, yeah. and, yeah, so my comments of earlier about, first principles and so on, that wasn't directed at you, yeah? But- No,

I, I, I, I realized that, but, but again, what I'm getting at is there's a whole bunch of your community. That, that, that are deeper thinkers on this, right? And, and we-- there's, that needs to be brought to a broad audience. There's a whole bunch of people that are just like, they got a hook in their mouth and they're just listening to, to rhetoric, and they're, they're not, they're not thinking it through. They're not thinking, "W-w-what's the next step of this? What's the next step of that?" I would hope that we go the o-other way. I would hope everybody starts pushing out, "Let's But that's-- this conversation that we're having right now, what if the conversation you just said, we, we all agree that technology is deflationary, I haven't found one person who doesn't agree with that. We all, and, and I also haven't found one person that, doesn't agree that it's exponentially deflationary. If those two things are true Then all the other bullshit. I, I, I actually, why are we talking about anything else? If those things are true, then the world's gonna look very different, right? Why don't we spend all our time In, in how do we build a path to the other side? Why don't we do what a business would do and say, "Let's, if these things, with these new things being true, how do we, how, how do we transition? " Instead, it's just like Monetary policy, this, and I don't know if, if, if those two things we just said were true, then nothing else matters. We, we need a rewrite.

Great, yeah, and look, I think, I think most Bitcoin people certainly would agree that those are, those two statements are true. I think the, perhaps the real debate or the real question and the, the argumentation online is more about people acting in a zero sum mindset and they're arguing over who gets what, who gets the gains.

I love that you said that. So, so I love that you, you said, to, to build coalition, and, and so there are some in the Bitcoin community that just wanna reweight, right, and say, "No, I- I have million dollar bitcoins and now I have ten, fifteen million dollars. If it happens that fast, they won't wanna live in that world. They won't wanna-- that world, how do you pay for lighting down your street? What is the, what does the chaos look like? You won't be able to keep it. It won't. So, so I would argue, for me, I hope it happens slower. I would way rather a, a whole bunch of, really smart people talking about a transition to this Than fighting against, fight, calling names, right? because the, the more, the more that this goes, the further along this axis we go on the current path I suspect Bitcoin's gonna do extraordinarily well, right? So, that, that's, that we agree with. I just don't know if I wanna live in a world that, that looks that, that has that much upheaval overnight.

Yeah, and look, absolutely, we don't want, I would agree with you, we don't, we don't wanna live in a world where, like, everyone's like having to constantly look over their shoulder and all that. Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's, the way I'm seeing it though, is more like- There's the difference between what we want and what we think is likely, right? Yeah, that's

a really good point. Really good point.

So we may well not want it to happen that way, but we might also think of it like, "Hey, this thing is coming regardless, and we're just gonna have to prepare for it."

And there, there's certainly some of that, and, and there's no question that some of-- That's why I'd, I look at my portfolio the way I do, the, the, it's, it's playing probabilities. but, but to the point, and actually, well, that's why I make these points on the podcast. You can play the probabilities for your personal gain, right? You should, right? What are, where is your personal gain, everything else? But what you should be advocating for Is a global game, right? You should be advocating at, at, at, at, at, at, at a bigger level. And, and so what I try to do is I try to advocate uniting rather than, rather than division. I'm not worried about kind of money out of this. I'm, I'm, I'm lo- I'm looking way more at the societal consequences.

Right, and I think this comes back to, for me, this comes back to that point we were talking about, what, you know, inequality versus justice, right? Or fairness, right? And I think that to me is we're going through this time, and I think most, with a few, let's call them neoluddites aside, most people see that the technology is coming and we're just gonna have to deal with it. But the question then is more like, how does society respond to that? And I think this is potentially where there's a bit of a tension

So libertarians and the technocrats, right, the people who believe that we should use technology to surveil you and to, you know, to like try and control society in a certain way, and then the counter-veiling pressure, which is obviously a lot more of my listeners are, are in that kind of camp, which is more like the technology as the liberating force that enables people to be more free, as opposed to technology being used to kind of control people into this kind of social credit system or cancel- Culture or, y-y-you get what I'm saying, right?

Yeah. And, and this is a monetary phenomenon. Other-- So your listeners, what your listeners want, the, the, the, the-- say, your camp of listeners would be the natural order of things if technology was allowed to do its thing without monetary interference. That's what would happen, right? You wouldn't, you wouldn't create, you wouldn't create this type of centralized power Because the money wouldn't be chasing it as fast, there would be more opportunities and they would be spread out w-wider. There would still be concentration, and the, and the reason there'd be concentration is because human beings, we say we want Democratize access or, where else? You have it. Did I, I, I, I cut out the end for a minute? Yeah.

So you were just saying, "Yeah, we want this access, we want democratized access, you have it," and then you just cut out at that point.

Yeah, so you just, you, you just never go to page four hundred and fifty on Google.

Yes, that's right.

So you have it, you, you just don't, you don't use it. So you, you trust a brand, you trust-- because you don't have the time to go, to, to go do it. So what ends up happening is we believe technology is gonna be this great enabler. But it actually concentrates because the network effects and our choices that consolidate over and over. We very rarely go to page two on Google, right? We trust that the algorithm brings us the information that we want in the way-- and it's not, it's not Google's bad in doing it. It's just that's the way that, we don't have the time.

Of course. I, I think it, I think that though, Google and these big companies have also had a lot of government interference into them, right? So, I mean, obviously all the Snowden stuff when it was, it came out that, you know, the US government was basically- Tapping into these big companies' servers and so on, it might well be the case that were it not for this kind of prevailing attitude that the government has to, you know, intervene to try and keep us safe, so on, companies might have had their own incentive. Maybe we would have seen better privacy technology, maybe we would already have, much more advanced encryption in the way we communicate and collaborate. You know, I think it's-- that to me comes back to that kind of technocrat versus technolibertarian kind of view. And that's kind of the battle that's kind of playing out now. What sort of future do we want?

So I think the bigger battle is, that's why I said it's a monetary battle. i-is there's a whole bunch of technology pe-pe- that I think know this, it's deflationary, but haven't connected the dots into our monetary system, right? And don't know that, that if this is true, if it's this deflationary Then, then they're benefiting from the same, the, the users rushing money into technology faster and faster, as a result. And so you can't have something that is deflationary at this scale against an inflationary monetary policy. That's, that's the source of most of the problems. You're right, some of these other things at, at the edges, and we worry about Big Brother and we worry about the more power that you concentrate What is that, o-o-lord Acton quote, "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Yeah. And the more power that anybody has, they, they change the rules. Right. And that's, and, and, and, and so what typically happens in a, in a system, in a capital system, is they can't change the rules because they never get that big, and there's somebody else always willing to, to, to come in and, and, and take that to, to keep them in check. And we're stopping that system.

Right. So I guess in your view then... What are your thoughts on how things start to play out, right? I think in your book the theme was essentially, and I, I would agree with you, that essentially governments are gonna do everything they can to kick the can down the road. So what are the likely outcomes of that?

Yeah, you're seeing them. the, did you read my Mon-Monopoly post?

Yes, that was a great post. Yeah, so- So,

so again, once you consolidate a game board, right? In Monopoly, it reinforces the rich get richer, reinforces, reinforces, and the game ends. The poor get poorer, poor, and there's a reinforcing loop. And with its poor racial divide. Minorities, whatever it is, the people on the bottom of that are reinforcing on a negative loop, and they're choosing not to play the game, right? And they're, and they're, and they're rebelling against. So some, some are choosing Bitcoin, "I'm gonna play a new game, where the new rules are fair." Some are anarchists that are rising up against the s-s-system and wanna burn the game to the ground, right? And some are, wait, we need UBI To be able to play the game, to keep playing this game, right? Those three, those three things are absolutely predictable in what, in, in what happens, and you're having all of them happen at the same time. And so UBI won't work, socialism doesn't work, mind you, we have a communist system now, right? We, we have-- when, when government is this much of the, there is no free market. So, so it's no wonder that a whole bunch of people are asking, "Why do I pay taxes? Right? If you can print money at any pace, why am I paying taxes?" And then on the other side, "Well, if you could give me two thousand dollars, why don't you give me four thousand dollars without any idea of where this money comes from?" And a whole bunch of people, suppose smart people, feeding into, "Yeah, that'll work." Right? So, but no wonder people gravitate to it when they can't feed their families, right? When they, when they look at somebody else consolidating wealth, they say the game is rigged, right? And, and so some are doing that. Driving political divide. Some are anarchists, wanting to, to, to rise up against the system, and, and some are choosing a, a, choosing a different game.

Right, and I think the, the Bitcoin game, as it were, you know, I, I see it like more and more people will just start operating outside of the normal financial system, right? You can be in whatever country around the world, you can be a programmer, web developer, designer, whatever, and you can just take Bitcoin and nobody can stop you doing that. And I think that is a powerful factor in the favor of the individual, and it's very aligned with the thing This is from, say, the sovereign individual, and potentially we see this world of more jurisdictional competition because governments around the world will eventually see they can't stop this thing, so now it's about how do you best adapt to a world in which Bitcoin exists. What do you

think? Yeah. I totally agree with you. I think that it's at some point that government, some governments have to peg to it, the, and then the same, and i-it's a network effect. And the more, more people on, the more onroads to it, and the more people that are trusting it. And why wouldn't you trust it? Like, why do you trust a piece of paper with, faces and names on it? The only re- reason you trust it is the government's implicit guarantee of it as a legal tender. And if governments are choosing to destroy that guarantee, and you know they're choosing We need to destroy that guarantee. Why can't something else will replace it? Something else will guarantee replace it. I suspect that something else is Bitcoin because it works on a network effect, and I suspect that the next step of that, after more and more people onrode onto it, that governments start to onrode onto it as well.

Right, and, so we'll see some governments who fight it and others who embrace it, and potentially the ones that embrace it will do better in this new deflationary future.

So, so that's the interesting thing, thing, right? The, the, it, it gives an advantage to the ones that are early, and the ones that are early are, are more likely been, been penalized by being on the US currency for a long time. And every time, and, and so you, you might see some governments around the world jump onto this, earlier. And, and you're gonna have a, this is going to be a big fight, right? Governments are going to try to stop this at all cost, Again, because it's, because it's digital in nature, they're not going to be able to stop it.

Right. And I, I wonder though, because there are some, like, I think, I think it was Patrick McHenry who, in, in one of the hearings, he was saying there's no capacity to stop Bitcoin, right? And so, and he is like a ranking US, you know, government politician. So, but again, then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got the Brad Shermans of the world who are like,

The, the, I'm not saying that it won't try. So you asked the question about what are the probabilities, right? The probabilities are this thing, central banks all around the world are going to try to stop deflation at all costs because they can't come to the terms with The depressionary effect of not stopping it, right? Banks failing, everything else. They can't come to-- so they're gonna try to kick the can down the road and they're gonna make the problem worse as a result, and then you're gonna keep driv-driving this inequality. That's going to drive more people onto Bitcoin and gold for, for a time. At some point, it's going to, it's going, somebody's going to peg to it, right? At some, at some point, that's what I would say the prob- the high probabilities are, are. And if you look at different regions, if you're in Lebanon right now, right? And you're dealing with hyperinflation that you can't pay for food, but you had Bitcoin. You, you look pretty smart, and you can move it outside of the country, it will, or Venezuela and everything else, and you can feed your family. And I suspect that people who have made that choice and spread the, and spread what's happened in th-those regions. that they will never give up Bitcoin again.

Right. It's a social learning thing as well, because it's people learn from what their friends and family are doing, and if it, if it works for your friend or your, your mom or your brother, then you'll take it on and you'll just learn it that way, and I think it just, it's just gonna play out in cycles where people learn from their friends and family.

Yeah. We're still really early in the, that adoption curve. I So the onroads offer, offer-- it's, it's, it's still hard to use, it scares a whole bunch of people. the, but I l-- actually, I love a lot of the Bitcoin community and what they're doing to try to help that, to, some of your advertisers in the beginning, right? Those onroads offer are getting easier and easier. and it provides a vehicle that is going to be way easier to use in the future.

That's right. Alright, so look, Jeff, I've really enjoyed chatting with you. I loved your book. if you've got any closing thoughts for the listeners and, where can they find you online?

online at Jeff Booth. closing thoughts, just keep doing what you're doing. I, I would say with one caveat, unite, unite the communities. so one thing about, about Bitcoin that it comes across, as, is People don't wanna listen to somebody that they think is just arrogant and full, full of it. You have to let them discover some of this and think about how you just discovered it as well, before you knew. Take that into your, your conversations going forward, and, and you'll have a better, I think, a better outcome in bringing more people to the community.

Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for joining me, Jeff. And listeners, you can find me online at stephanelivera dot com. That's it from us, and we'll see you guys in the citadels.