We don't oppose the state's Wars because they'll be
counterproductive or overextend the states forces.
We oppose them because mass murder based on lies can never
be morally. Acceptable.
Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone in the
libertarian Institute today. I'm joined by Stephen D krumbine
of real progressives dot-org, mr.
Grumble and thank you so much for your time.
Okay. Thanks for having me on, man.
Appreciate it. Of course.
What does it mean to be a real Progressive?
Well, like it too. Be more of a view of people
willing to change when things ain't right.
When something doesn't smell right when it, isn't.
We don't just stay stuck. We don't just say, well, this is
what was said, a hundred years ago.
We look for solutions to real rule, real world problems today.
And, you know, the goal at least from my perspective.
Anyway, is collective well-being, not just individual
well-being. And so I think that there's a
lot of understanding about Grading what we call the public
purpose as opposed to the individualist bootstrap minded
approach to things. And and I just to be fair, you
know, we talked a little offline about this but I come from a
Libertarian background. I was a republican for a long
time and all my journey where I am today.
I did a drive-through on the Democratic party ended up, you
know, did a Libertarian tour for about six years, supported Ron
Paul. Be heavily and just kept
drifting leftward and haven't been able to pull back the other
day. It's just it's not intentional.
It just it's like where does the best for people?
Keep pulling me to him? Wherever it is, it would
probably be categorized as left. So that's that's where I keep
going. So I think Collective
cooperation is really important. Even if you're doing something
alone like playing Solitaire. Well, you didn't invent cards,
you didn't invent. Ink on cards or the computer or
your electricity, you're only alive because other people made
food that you trade with. So, I think Collective
well-being is vitally important. Do you think there should be an
important emphasis on voluntary cooperation versus coercive
cooperation? When it comes to achieving your
ends in life, you know, it's a tough call because yes, I mean
that is the goal. Like there's a huge part of me
that has an anarchist streak through throughout my my
Beliefs, I don't do it on purpose.
It's not like, I have a rigid. I am this.
So there for that, but I would say that the best is to have
Society. Put what's best for society
first and foremost. However, this is where it gets
challenging because an individual may feel that what's
best for them is not in line with what's best for society.
And so now you've got a conflict of interest, you've got an
intron several interests, going one, the question is, Whose
interest Trump's whose is that the individuals interest, that
Trump Societies, or to society's interest, Trump the individual.
And I think there's a balance there.
I don't know what the right answer is and all times.
I think the answer to the question if you're truly curious
as it depends, if the answer is always, it depends.
But my goal would be to always, find places where we all can
move forward, collectively under our own voluntary approach.
I don't subscribe to the nap. I don't subscribe to all that
bottom line is at some point in time.
There's times where I believe strongly in a benevolent
dictator as well. So you would never fight, you
know, I would tell you straight up.
I have huge Bend toward Central planning and local
Administration. So it's a challenge, right?
It's a answer. That question is always going to
be, for me. It depends.
It's not a rigid line. What?
Is modern monetary Theory. So I'm empty.
Is an interesting thing and I got to tell you, I'm Mt.
Is a large part of the reason why I left being libertarian,
interestingly enough, you know, I did a lot of praxeology
learning Austrian economics. I got my MBA learned basically
your standard, you know, the old classical to neoclassical Adam
Smith, you name it on up. Type of Economics, hyack Von
mises, you know, all the standard bearers, if you will.
And, you know, I ended up pulling back and and, and said
something doesn't sound, right? Something doesn't sound right?
Because every time they say they're going to do X or Y.
I never see a tax hike to coincide with it.
Or or if I do see a tax hike, it's only seemingly when it
might be the benefit people when it might be some spending
towards. Birds little guys, all of a
sudden they start talking about costs and stuff like that.
I'm like, doesn't make sense this thing over here.
This bill that they're trying to pass.
Let's just say it's five hundred billion dollar bill, but you're
going to take me to war for two trillion, but we don't even have
to raise taxes for the two trillion dollar War, you're
ready to start, but that 500 billion over there is got your
hair in a you know, one end. It's something doesn't make
sense. Right?
So, I mean forget with you like the villain, I do.
It could be anything right? It just doesn't make sense.
And so, I had a group called grumpy finds political Mosh Pit,
where we had everyone from an caps, you know.
Solid regular old school Libertarians cloth, coat.
Republicans, true liberal Democrats.
Progressives Communists socialists, all man, Arcus.
You name it hodgepodge. Everyone together.
Listen, most interesting place I've ever been because we all
even though we fought like cats and dogs.
It was a genuine Affinity amongst all of us, even though
we didn't Agree with pretty much anything, anybody said but the
mmt angle started coming up in these discussions and it was in
mixed company. So I didn't think it could be
any illogical and it's not ideological write it.
What? Basically it came down to was
Steve. Do you know, what a dollar is?
I was like, yeah, it's this piece of paper right here and
there right now. No, Steve.
You've never seen a dollar. I said, what do you mean?
He said, dollar is a unit of measure like an inch or a pound,
you've never Seen an inch and you've never seen a pound it
relative to a unit of measure. I said, huh?
And they said, that's what the dollar is.
It's a tax credit and I said hi and so little by little I had to
dig deeper because a lot of what they're talking about, came from
things like Abba, Lerner and functional finance.
And quite frankly. It came down to collapse State
theory of money and other stuff. And these are things that are
old. Old tried-and-true discussion
points. Many of them are not even really
controversial. I mean, we knew about these
things forever. I mean even Milton Friedman knew
about these things forever, you know, I mean, they everybody
understood these things and we've lost a lot of that
knowledge, but ultimately money is a creature of the state.
It's a law, right? It's a law.
It's forget the piece of paper. Forget the gold-backed or not
gold-backed or anything else backed.
It is a tax credit. So what?
Happens. Is that the state when it wants
to provision itself? Spends this money into the
economy. Okay, and then the people look
at the money and they're like, well, I don't need a piece of
paper. What I'm going to do with this
coupon. I'm not I don't do anything for
me. It's to the state says Ah,
you're right. So we're going to impose the
tax, payable only in that currency.
You can't pay it in Bitcoin. It can't pay it.
And etherium. You can't pay it and chicken
necks, sexual favors anything else.
You can only pay It in that unit of account and and this goes
back centuries, you know to win like Caesar and the Gang would
say here's this coin, you know, and you hear them Render unto
Caesar. What is Caesar's?
Well, the state currency is the government's currency and
whether they farmed it out to the fed or whether they bring it
back to the treasury, whatever you want.
It doesn't matter. Ultimately.
It's a it's a unit of account for the federal government to
provision itself. And so, when you think about it,
you have Two ways of getting money into the economy.
One is through Private Bank lending or through net Financial
assets being created by federal spending.
And so what modern monetary Theory does is it takes that
thing that happened in 1971? When Richard Nixon took us off
the Bretton Woods, Accord and removed us.
From any kind of pegged, commodity backed currency to a
full free floating Sovereign fiat currency, and at that point
in time, the rules change. Aged, but the textbooks didn't
change and our understandings of money didn't change.
And so some fundamental thinking how to take place.
Some changes had to take place. If you go back to World War 2,
we knew this. We actually really did know
this. And what we did was we removed
ourselves from the gold standard so that we could keep up with
Germany. So we could fight in World War
Two and so we could get the factories going at 100%.
So we could do all these things. We literally remove the gold
standard. We could do that.
So what happened was every Factory in the entire nation was
running at full capacity. I mean, there was nothing else
that could be produced but stuff for the War Machine and I'm very
anti-war. So this is not a sales pitch for
war. This is really more.
A statement of this is what happened.
And so what happened, while people still had needs and
wants, but there was no factories to produce the things
that they might need or want other than the basics.
So the government realizing the economy was going to overheat if
they didn't do something, started selling war bonds.
Well, why do they sell war bonds?
Was it to fund the war know those bonds merely delayed
buying power. They took money out of the
productive economy. Put it into the fire sector,
pulled it out. So you're not making those
spending decisions. Now, you're doing it for the old
country, doing it, for the red, white and blue, all that good
stuff. You know, Mom, Bob, apple pie,
whatever. And so this is what they do when
we're trying to fight Wars. Imagine what we could do, if we
flip the script and thought about rebuilding the nation
rebuilding the infrastructure. I mean, think about this DARPA,
net arpanet, all that stuff created the internet that was a
government plan. That was then turned handed over
the private sector and it was turned into what it's become
today. But back then, it was done by
public money. Not taxpayer dollars, and this
is what mmt shows. Shows us and this is something
actually as a Libertarian. When you know, when I was on the
Ron Paul, you know, ride to Freedom.
So to speak, we knew this we understood that taxes were
basically an inflation hedge. We knew that that wasn't really
paying for anything that the tax was the problem was that.
We also thought tax was forced, but we didn't realize that the
money itself derives its value if you will, by the price that
the government sets for Things that buys once it buys something
with that first dollar, it becomes a monopoly issue or the
currency becomes the price Setter.
And once it does that, that's how the whole economy starts
from that first dollar spent into the economy.
But what happens when they do tax it?
Well, they've remove money from the economy.
Doesn't go in some piggy bank somewhere and get re spent.
We don't repurpose tax dollars or deleted.
They're functionally deleted from the system.
So if you don't spend money back into the economy, it's like
opening up the drain in the bathtub.
You keep tax and all the money's leaving the economy, but then
you've got offshoring. That's another demand leakage
that pulls money out of the economy.
And you got the need for savings that pulls money out of the
economy and slowly, but surely that drain the bath tub of the
economy is going like this, and there's no function in capital
in the economy. So, what ends up happening?
Remember I said, there's two ways you can get money, either
a, the government spends it into existence or be you go to a
private. Bankster and you sit there and
get a loan out for interest. And so right now what we've done
as a result of a very successful Milton Friedman right-wing
campaign is we have made the fear of government spending
because we're still acting like we're on a gold standard where
it's possible to debase a free-floating fiat currency,
which you can't do by the way, but that's the mindset has
stayed so much that we have resisted the federal spending
and even when we spend a little bit, we go.
Oh my God, they spent money reality.
Is that what we end up doing? If we don't do that, is we end
up pushing everyone to private credit and the whole freaking
economy is blown up by that and what happens?
They start loosening credit because you and I only have a
finite amount of credit that we can absorb.
And then the economy starts tapping out.
When you've maxed out everyone, you've overextended them and
then you start making credit even easier to come by and you
really overextend people that are not currency issuers.
Wolves that really are in a state of scarcity.
And then that's when the economy goes.
Boom. That's when it really goes
crashing to the ground. And so mmt basically shows us
the cause and effect. We have a lot of examples of the
government doing all the wrong things progressives using this
understanding would seek to expand citizen rights citizen
benefits. Not I'm not a neoliberal, so I
don't look at like identity politics.
Oops, I'm not looking at some way of Balkan izing spent.
I'm talking about even people. I hate should get what I think
everyone should get. If you know what I'm saying.
Like this is not a exclusionary thing.
Not not from my vantage point. I look at it as a series of
rights as opposed to a series of handouts and rights for all.
And I think when you operate from a rights-based position
that you allow all to participate in the benefits of
society, and I think that's something that you can.
Lean from an understanding of mmt.
Even though LM T is just accounting.
Basically, once you understand that you realize that, hey, it's
not like we're running out of money.
We have as much money as we need to do what we need to do there.
It's not coming from your tax dollars.
You don't have to worry about that.
It's really what it is. Is a fundamental understanding
of how a fiat currency works. So that's mmt in a nutshell.
There's a lot more to it. But, you know, for just to jump
in the pool, that's what it is. It's commonly understood that if
you Have a monopoly in a certain sector.
You'd get higher prices and worse quality than you.
Otherwise, what under free competition.
Why should the state monopolize the money supply?
Well, the state doesn't monopolize the money supply.
It is the money supply. Okay, and ultimately, what
should happen. This is, this is, you know,
fundamentally the way I operate, the way I view it, the state
creates the currency, the state, creates the economy and Essence,
but this is just the US, this is Everywhere, right?
This isn't like a phenomenon only in the United States and by
having law by having force of law, to enforce contracts to
enforce credit relationships and such that provides a certain
amount of security if you will, in terms of those exchanges, so
with the state provisioning itself through the public,
Purse. I mean, anybody can create
money. I mean, you see it right now.
You can create alternative currency.
You can create complementary currencies.
You can, the issue is never a question of whether you can do
it. The question is, is anybody
going to accept it? Right?
So, the imposition of the tax is what really genuinely forces you
to accept the currency. Like if you got to get a
paycheck. They gave you Bitcoin and nobody
would accept Bitcoin. You probably wouldn't be too
keen on accepting Bitcoin. Same thing with the dollar.
If nobody was taking dollars for payments, anywhere.
You probably wouldn't be too Keen to work a job for dollars
to get paid in dollars. But because that is the currency
and that is what is accepted in payment of taxes.
That's what we take. And so even as a Bitcoin, or
even somebody that would invest in some sort of a cryptocurrency
or something, like That ultimately stuck at a convert
that crypto back to dollars to pay your taxes.
It's not like because the point of the tax is not to fund the
government. The point of the tax is, to
maintain that circuit, that circuit spend it into existence
tax it, out of existence. Spend it into existence tax and
out of existence. And honestly, I think the where
we are with the state today and this is an important point, and
I think that Libertarians can relate to this.
The state has been The state is no longer representative of
quote-unquote. We, the people it has been
captured by very, very special interests by extremely wealthy
people by people that maybe don't have our best interests at
heart, you know, multinational conglomerates.
You name it far and actors even. And when we think about, you
know, freedom and you think about the fact that you're being
all the laws and rules and everything else that are
constructed around this? Are being tainted By the Light.
If you will of the special interests that over way, almost
all popular opinion. I'm just everything regular
everyday, Joe's say they want. When they raise your hand say,
yes, I'd like to have that doesn't happen.
But suddenly you'll find. Hey, let's go ahead and make it
harder to file bankruptcy for student debt.
Okay, that sounds like something everybody voted for, right?
I mean, that's, it's just insane the way that this works.
So, I think that from a, from a perspective of a Libertarian,
You Could See Clearly that the state has slipped the plot.
It's not doing its job. It's acting in the interests of
someone other than the individual, someone other than
the citizen other than the voter.
And I think that that renders it pretty useless right now.
And many ways, that that's not a god breathed.
It has to be. That way though, right?
That's the thing and I think that's where Libertarians and
guys, like myself would part ways because I think that we the
people can create governance that works for I think that we
can come together. I think that the government
should be by the people for the people etcetera, but it's
clearly not. So what it should be versus what
it is. I think that's, that's the real
Chasm. I think that we all want similar
things. I think the one challenge
probably They would be the role of private property and the role
of individuals being able to. Do something that would be seen
deleterious to Society for their own gain.
And I think that that is a challenge that, you know, as a
Libertarian. Even I said, how does that work?
You know, if I'm at the top of the river and my neighbor down
stream of the river, depends on the water that runs through that
River, but that river runs through my property and my
create a dam. I've just harm them that they
bought their house with the expectation that that River
would be there. Well, I bought my house with the
expectation do with what my property, whatever I want to do.
And so now all of a sudden you've got this real serious
property rights natural resources, type debate and
discussion. And I think these are
fundamental differences that progressives and Libertarians
would probably not agree on. Yeah, I think that those
interests that conflict of it can be relatively harmonized,
and I also think it's a shortcoming with the state.
I want to vote for a certain thing.
You want to vote for the opposite.
Those also have conflicting interest here is Thomas soul in
his book. Basic economics.
He says, in reality, most of the great Fortunes in American
history, have resulted from someone's figuring out, how to
reduce costs. So as to be able to charge lower
prices and therefore, gain a mass market for the product
Henry, Ford did this with automobiles Rockefeller with
oil? With steel and Sears Penny
Walton and other department. Store chain founders, with a
variety of products. He also uses the example of
Amazon, drastically lowering, the cost of books to give people
access to great wisdom. They otherwise wouldn't have had
access to. So is this approach to making
poor people wealthier and using income Mobility?
Is this just totally wrong? Is there something I'm missing?
Well in theory, I like the idea of of class Mobility being able
to not be born into a class at the bottom would be stuck at the
bottom forever. And never be, you know, they
what was it back in the Middle Ages.
They had those who pray those who fight, and those who work,
you know, that was the three classes.
Really, at the time before the merchants became in that fourth
class. I think that, you know, when you
were born into a feudal society back in the day, you knew that
you were not going to suddenly become a warrior.
From being a peasant and that kind of never even crept into
their brains. It was odd Farhan for them to
think about being anything but what they were.
So the part of me that still holds onto that libertarian
streak, if you will says hey, I would really, you know, it's
great. The problem here is class in
general, right? And so to me at the level of the
way we position this there are a way to walk and chew gum.
Gum, okay, and this is where I think that the state fails, but
I think Libertarians have such a ideological Bend to the
individual. The Ain ran the objectivist
view, all, that's two, I owe, you know, almost got my PhD in
this stuff and I, as I went through it, I just kept thinking
of myself objectivism, really fails to understand that.
Just because you did not win the lottery of genetics, just
because you did not win the lottery of birth doesn't make
you a Acre and the idea of, you know, somebody being born on
third base and tending, they hit a triple is a little
Preposterous. So for me, there are ways of
doing this, especially when you understand that the state is,
whether you like it or not. This is like a get it.
You don't like the state having a monopoly on the currency.
It does. Right?
Okay, I get it. Ideologically.
You don't like that fine. But in the real world, it does
have that Monopoly. So with That in mind, the state
allowing us to wait like Tiny, Tim tear sir, please sir.
Please give me some porridge sir, you know, oh here are let
me trickle that down for you. That doesn't seem like a very
good way of distribution in my mind.
Okay, especially when you know that the spending comes from the
federal government. Now the real resources, the
natural resources under the ground and stuff like that.
I really believe fundamentally that those real resources.
All of ours, they shouldn't be these, This is My Little Rock.
This is my little pool of water. This is it that you can't have
any, right? And so fundamentally the
resources of the nation should belong to the nation.
And when I say that I'm not, I don't have time.
I guess to really give you some long-winded explanation when I
mean there other than to say, I believe in public land, I
believe in shared. Prosperity, I believe in
Collective approaches, I understand the voluntarist and
that's the anarchist view as well, and Anarchy, and communism
very, very close to one another. In many ways.
I would believe that the anarchists would want to
completely do away with the state.
But ultimately, I don't see capitalism lifting.
I think it always lifts a certain amount of people,
depending upon how the ruling class.
Wants to keep the pitchforks at Bay so they will release just
enough money. Just enough Services, just
enough whatever to keep enough. People calm that there's never
enough people hurting but there's always enough people
hurting that we can point to them.
The seats. I'm doing pretty good, you know,
and feel good and smug about ourselves.
But the truth of the matter is is that it's a political
decision. When you know that the state is
the currency issue and you know that the money gets into the
economy. Nanami when the state spends and
we should know, we got to tighten, our budgets.
Does that even mean we're not borrowing money when they talk
about borrowing money to talk about the national debt stuff
like that. All the national debt is, is the
sum total of every untaxed dollar in the economy.
And when you understand that you're like, wait a minute, hold
on. So so we're doing, why are they
talking about? We have to pay all that back.
That's not how it works at all. When China sells goods and
services into the United States. They get In u.s.
Dollars, China has a choice. They can take that money and
they can go ahead and just let it sit there and do nothing or
they can go ahead and take that money and invest it in US.
Treasuries, its US dollars that they earned in trade and they're
simply handing their own US dollars.
They earned in trade. They're buying a savings account
with interest on it. That's it.
That's all it is. And where does the money come
from for the interest? Well, it comes from Folks from
us we do this. So so much of what Saul talks
about and stuff. He's written, is this false
scarcity narrative and the false scarcity narrative that he
Trump's always makes Finance always make money, which is the
one thing that's irrelevant really in the grand scheme of
things. It's the easiest thing.
The hardest thing is the resource real resources to put
against a bill. Do we have enough?
Doctors? Do we have enough lawyers?
Do we have enough teachers? Have enough roads.
Do we have enough? Whatever these are the things
like you look at this. Pandemic that we just went
through. None of the problems were facing
right now, our monetary phenomenon, everything that
we're facing starts with Supply chains.
Number one, number two, and think about the supply, chains
are all over the world to make one iPhone.
I believe it's like 37 different countries have different parts
to that. So naturally, if you've got one
country, that's Shut down because of covid or whatever.
The hell reason, they're shutting them down, right at one
part that you were, make it in whatever country and now you
can't make your iPhone. Look at the semiconductor
shortage over the entire time. I mean, sorry.
Kids that like PlayStation five. The reason your PlayStation
fives aren't out there because there's a huge semiconductor
shortage. You think that was because there
wasn't enough money in the economy, know, the supply chains
broke down, had nothing to do it money, you know what I mean?
And so What happens when you're a good smart Savvy, rich guy at
the top that runs, one of these Mega corporations is, when you
have an opportunity to behave monopolistic, you can gouge.
And that's what you're seeing with the Saudis with the
gasoline. That's what you're seeing with a
lot of folks out there. They've got a moment, they're
going to gouge and so you see a little bit of inflation right
now, as a result of the supply chains breaking down and the
gouging, but the average person get a lot of money.
In fact, I'm Mean, you couldn't even get the Biden
Administration to give, pandemic relief checks.
And we forget anything idiot logical for just a second.
For all the talk of the Biden Administration, being left the
organization, which is not at all.
By the way. They didn't give a shit.
They didn't give people shit. They didn't give them hardly
anything to survive under the conditions they were in.
And so, when you think about that, it's like well, so it
couldn't have been that people themselves are buying so much
stuff. It's causing inflation.
That doesn't make sense. I mean, you go to Walmart of all
places. Got one of the best just-in-time
inventory systems in the world. Okay, these guys have, I mean,
this is so airtight there, a case study in Harvard, you know,
you go to Harvard Business School.
You're going to get a Walmart Supply Chain management.
Course, you're going to have a white paper on there.
Just in time inventory. It's that good.
But yet during this time, you go into Walmart and the shelves are
empty. Why are they in?
Empty, it's not because people are just buying.
Everything is because the supply chains broke down because people
are locked down etcetera. Well, takes a lot to get an
economy back on its feet. You got to put air in that tire
and it's one of those tires that the beads slip.
So you've got to trap it down, to keep the air in the tire
while you're pumping. Okay, and that's that's what's
happening here. So between gouging and stuff
like that, but instead, what do you hear?
Every paper? You read every paper.
Oh, we printed too much money. We debase the currency.
So, therefore inflation. It's that kind of stupid kind of
commentary that like, like, again, take away any of the
illogical Bend at all. It's just empirical.
It's really not the printing of money that did anything.
Because most of that money got spent at the top, most that
might end. What do people at the top?
Do with money when they get the kind of money he invested.
And what do they do in investment?
Just swirls around and Wall Street, maybe it goes out in The
crypto space Etc. Sometimes you have an Elon Musk
that will go out there and do something.
But I don't know if you noticed this or not Elon Musk got four
point nine billion dollars in federal subsidies for point,
nine billion dollars from the government for subsidies to do
this. You know.
Hey, that's a public-private partnership.
That's a Libertarian wet dream. That's a, you know, that's the
whole, you know, great man Theory, right?
So I think ultimately, Only if you want to see like
demand-driven, money-driven inflation, you have to spend it
on everybody. And all of a sudden, the
aggregate demand of all those people that have pent up demand
that were not able to execute that demand.
Now, all of a sudden they have means to execute that demand.
If the supply chains didn't keep up with that new demand and the
access to new demand, then you're going to have inflation
and this is what happened in places like by Marv, Germany.
We're, which is one of the favorite ones that gets thrown
out there. I mean, you had the Treaty of
Versailles where you had a cruel.
Very, very cruel sanctions. Put on the Germans, at the time.
They had foreign debt denominated in French francs.
Their entire industrial sector was shut down because the guys
went on strike as a way of saying, hey, we're not, we're
not doing this. So all of a sudden, Supply
chains, foreign debt payable, only in You know, the other
currency and then add into the fact that the depression from
the war and everything else. All the destruction from the
war. The printing of money happened.
Way after the hyperinflation occurred, get to the next
favorite one, which is symbolic of way.
Everybody loves to talk about in Zimbabwe.
Right? So Zimbabwe what happened there?
Well mcgaubey, he went ahead and took all of the Farmland away
from the white colonizers gave it to his indigenous.
People, the white colonizers for all the, you know, complaints
actually knew how to farm. Susan, Bob way had food.
Sovereignty at the time even though that people had been
colonized and didn't have their land.
We had two problems there. Well, when the white Farmers
left, they set the fields of fire and the black Farmers, the
indigenous. They did not know how to farm as
well. They did not have years of
experience doing this. So they lost their food
sovereignty. Now, all of a sudden to get a
era corn, you had to pay through the nose.
No money was printed. This wouldn't have anything to
do with printing money. It was 100% a supply chain
driven thing, could end of Venezuela, same thing.
You have a situation where you've got a single export and
oil and it's only crude. We're not talking about refined.
So they would have to sell their crude on a market where the
Saudis can cut the bottom out of the market, really?
Really screw them up. Drop the price out of
everything. Cripple them, because again,
single export commodity driven economy.
And then worse, the Knuckleheads had their currency pegged to the
u.s. Dollar as soon a chole that
leaves them. Some Aspect with US Dollars
where the US government can do, what it does, the CIA and all
the other and say nose over. There are go ahead and do what
they do, which is of course pull a coup mess with their finances
screw around with their access to their own currency.
You name it and Corruption CIA meddling.
And the fact that they only created crude, which got the
bottom dropped, out of it, left them in a very, very, very bad
place. None of which had anything to do
once again, With printing money, so, mmt exposes these things.
But they're also very big questions about understanding
how State currencies work, and why your description from Seoul
and the whole idea of capitalism raises the poor up and so forth.
It depends, right? It does.
There was a time when we were first starting out when
Innovation was King and we were wild wild west.
Well, we aren't Wild, Wild West anymore.
You can't just walk down the street and plant.
A garden in the woods. Why?
Because somebody's private property.
They'll shoot, you get off my land.
Here's my castle doctrine, get off my land.
So now we're in a situation where the lands are either a
protected or be owned and the ability to just go out there and
strike out like, you know, the old days the settlers and all
the problems that came with that too.
It just doesn't exist like that anymore.
So I think ultimately soul is living in a theory land.
That doesn't Exist anymore. I appreciate the thought because
that's where I came from. To my entire life.
I spend on the right and as a Libertarian for like 6 years,
like I said, but it just doesn't pass muster.
Once you understand how the the economy really truly works.
It's still only benefits that very small amount and one final
thing. You look at the United States
government. You look at the World Trade
Organization in a, look at the IMF and what they do is they
impose Insane rules and restrictions on the global
South. So if Global South Country needs
to borrow money, they have to agree to a whole series of
structural adjustments. They have to allow full access
to everything. They can't protect any of their
own products. They can't subsidize their
products. In the mind you, these countries
are been hijacked and literally that just vacuumed, you know,
freaking vampire by. North kind of Corporations,
literally taking and seizing their real resources in their
country X, you know, extracting that and then trying to sell it
back to them refined and and the rules and conditions for that
are so oppressive that these countries have to make a choice.
Do we say screw paying our debts back?
And they had to sign off that. There's no chance of bankruptcy.
By the way. There's only extract say, send
the vultures in to pick apart these countries down south now.
So, when you think about that and understand that that extract
of behavior, is how the, you know, the high price of low
costs, you know, the high cost of low prices or something like
that. That's how that happens.
And that's why that export-import, you know,
Paradigm these companies, get down there, you know, and they
extract for pennies on the dollar and then they come up
here and then they sell it for five hundred percent, six
hundred a thousand, ten thousand percent.
Prophet and yeah, I don't know that that really helps the poor
I guess in this country. But if you look weather down
south, didn't help them. And we're literally destroying
half of the world. Three quarters of the world for
the benefit of a very, very small amount of people.
So, I would disagree with Thomas soul on that.
The main issue I see, with this considering, I would totally
agree. Mmt is basically an accounting
Theory. I think it's really brought us
some insight to the table of how money works and operates.
But my whole concept is for the same reason.
I could see you opposing the Catholic Church having a
monopoly on taxation within a large geographical area.
If you can see how private property, empowers a few people.
Well, a few people having a say on how governments run things
that certainly gives that creates a power imbalance.
So just as now you can say well, That is something ideological
the state exists. I have my problems, but I need
to live in reality. I do admire how the left will
say. Yeah.
God is something that a lot of people believe in, but I still
think atheism is correct, or they'll say yeah, racism's out
there and I don't care how popular it is.
Racism is a moral. Sexism is a moral homophobia, is
a moral colonialism is immoral. I don't care how many people say
it. I don't care how powerful they
are. I will stand up against Henry
Kissinger. And Richard Nixon and protest,
this goddamn War if it kills me. So by that same token, all I'm
really saying is my standards for the Catholic church and
Amazon and the Koch brothers and real Progressive dot org and the
Red Cross. And the government.
I just don't have any double standard.
At the point of disagreement is saying this group can rack up 23
trillion dollars in tax credits by issuing them out and no other
group has that right? Do you at least see where I'm
coming from? Oh, I'm okay, so I'm not here to
tell you. That reform is not possible and
I'm not here to tell you that, I don't support reform.
Okay, what I'm here to tell you is that, I do believe that we
need to democratize the way that money gets into the economy.
I see democratize not purse, privatized but democratize.
And, you know, I think what are the things I think is really
interesting right now. I understand your take I do and
I That's there are people in left spaces that have those same
beliefs as well. Okay, so it's not like a
uniquely libertarian position. It is a Libertarian position
though, right? And so with that in mind, I
think it really comes down to Simply participating.
I'm gonna I'm sorry. I hate to rewind myself here.
But I want to make a point. The left does this just as much
as the Libertarians do where they check out basically of the
productive system and say I'm not going to participate in
this. I'm only going to focus on this
thing that I'd like it to be instead, right?
And it becomes kind of a I'm not that's too icky.
For me, I'm not willing to even talk about it.
I'm not willing to even acknowledge it and, and the
left, we have a lot of marxist and socialists, and I consider
myself a socialist, of some variety.
Whatever. That means to others.
I don't know. I I consider myself to be a mmt,
informed leftist. I don't know what that means.
I mean, there's no book out there.
That describes it, it probably strays.
Into a more Collective theories of power dynamics, and more
understanding of Labor and owning the means of your own
labor, to the extent that that is true.
I would imagine Libertarians would support some of that as
well. You know, I mean, it seems like
there's a there is a individual Dynamic there through the
collective. But as far as the state Ate
itself having that Monopoly power.
We had we used to have competing currencies.
There was lots of them and the Federal Reserve for all its
warts. And everybody's, you know, the
conspiracy theories from Creature, From Jekyll Island,
the Rothschilds, and all the other stuff.
You know, I used to be, you go to bank a and to be like, hey,
give you a billy bucks. You got a bank, be the give you
Joey bucks and you sit there and go to excuse, like, almost like
a foreign exchange. Change in the US and you go in
there and somebody's thumb sitting there on the, on the
scale. Yeah, I'll just kind of crazy
nonsense. It was very, very wild.
Wild Westy. And what the Federal Reserve did
was provide a common framework for clearing payments.
The Federal Reserve is really a boring place.
It's not as exciting as we've made it out to be and so the
farm. I don't know if you're familiar
with like telephony or anything like that, but In data networks
and telephony and stuff like that.
There is what we call a DeMark. There's an Ingress, and there's
an egress and and the Federal Reserve kind of represents that
Ingress and the egress between the public and the private, the
public doesn't need money. Because the public itself
creates money. It's the Wellspring for, which
money is generated from the private sectors, where that
money works and if there's not enough money in the economy than
it'll go belly-up and that's when you end up with all the
private debt. And when I went through that, so
I think at the end of the day, just recognizing that there is
room to democratize currency to spread that out to the edges to
provide some room to the States. Because right now, Article 1
Section 8 gives the power of the purse to Congress and if you
look people talk about public Banks and creating public Banks
and so forth. Well, Banks themselves regular
Banks today, all had to get A charter from the federal
government to operate however, because of deregulation, private
interests have taken over in the banking industry.
Now you got used to re happening in insane ways.
This is one of the real painful factors of a guy like me, who
talks mmt because you watch and you say, I see this in practice.
This is what it looks like in practice.
It looks like that in practice because fundamentally Lee Banks
have been deregulated to the point where they can do a lot of
things. They used to not be able to do
you go back to Ferdinand pakora when he took on Wall Street in
the Great Depression and fern a Cora routed out, all those
private interests, all those backdoor deals, all that
nefarious behavior. And that's how we got some of
the most calming Bank moments in history, this security exchange
act and also having the Oh my goodness.
How am I going to screw this up? Our favorite glass-steagall Act,
Right? The kind of divided investment
Banks from Savings and Loans. And so, when Bill Clinton signed
the paper that allowed us to get rid of glass-steagall and
append, the Sandy, while the Wall Street goon that right
there, functionally created that the conditions that set forth
the great financial crisis of 89 that right there set the stage
for all the cdos and all the bad Investments.
All those synthetic, you know, bundles those bonds is D rated
bonds that they would go out there and say a rated, right?
I mean that is the kind of stuff that creates that space that
you're worried about that you we're both talking.
We're talking about the same problem story, but we're not
coming up with the same solution and I think part of the problem
here, is that when you look, Ivett interest profit motives,
create these perverse incentives, all these
deregulation high-speed transactions.
These are three recipes for fraud for Elite control fraud
and Bill black one of the leading Minds in banking and
auditing and criminology wrote a book called.
The best way to rob a bank is to own one.
And he goes to great detail to show how this happened.
So when you think about privatization of money, you
think about all this kind of spreading it out to the edges.
You got to have an apparatus that can enforce regulation
without regulation. And and I know this is a another
bone of contention between Libertarians and and left this,
but if you think about it regulations, provide a
framework, they provide the rules.
Is that people can predict and can can count on and when those
rules are not upheld and when those enforcement's are not made
and there is no real meaningful teeth to the regulation.
You have a law that says X. And you have an execution that
says, why you end up with these bubbles, you end up with these
bursts and you end up with these rich guys, who already pocketed
off of the stuff riding off into the sunset while they leave all
the other folks there to suffer and die.
And I That that's what you saw in the great financial crisis.
And I think you could see that happen again here soon to, with
BlackRock buying up so many properties in the United States
and us becoming the renter Nation.
I think that we have real serious Crisis, coming up here,
very, very soon. Slight, segue.
Let me ask you. Do you have any Appetite for
Georgia's. Mmm.
No, that that again has the same problem that?
Well, you know what, the land itself.
You don't own. Therefore.
It's Justified to tax that. Does anyone have the right to
justify. It can real progressives
dot-org, do it. Well, if they can't do it, how
can they elect? Kyrsten Sinema, or Joe manchin
to do it on their behalf of again, George's and has a double
standard for one group of people.
So that is why I have no such appetite.
Well, I look at the land value tax.
Single tax as a potential way of providing.
So when money, when money pulls and it kind of has that natural
helium effect, where it just pulls up here, and then never
makes it back down to the productive economy by putting a
land value tax in there. It stops the squatting.
It stops the allowing businesses and buildings to be run down and
it stops. The Ron ta, you know, kind of
gouging and usury. Type Behavior.
So the idea of a land value tax is somewhat appealing to me.
Although you won't see many mm tears saying, this but George
is. MM, comes from a Libertarian
kind of background, you know, it's a strain of libertarianism
that I think has some Merit here.
I think that's it. I think it's a pathway to
Bringing people together people that are otherwise very
Connected. And so in the grand scheme of
things knowing that you are, I mean, I know your type and I
don't mean this in a negative way.
I mean, I have a lot of friends that have that very similar,
kind of like the nap is, is God in.
This is this is I can't D. This is very important to me.
This is do not pass, go do not collect 200, if you violate this
principle and I get it, but in terms of finding a way to live
in a pluralistic society, where people have different Aunt views
and opinions and stuff as hard as that is for me to manage
sometimes, as well. I look at a land value tax, as
a, as a way of bridging two, disparate communities and its
really to private versus public, right?
It's a way of bridging two groups and allow us to do things
collectively. While simultaneously, giving
people the ability to still, it maintain private property, and
still maintain that. So there's Again, you're not
short of living in your own isolated, this as my
libertarian, hellscape or my libertarian Paradise, depending
on your perspective. We are in a pluralistic
environment. And so, knowing that there are
people out there who would outright completely do away with
public property or private property and vice versa do away
with public property. I think that there's an
opportunity there to find a less than perfect, but do not let
perfect become the enemy. A good kind of symbiotic
relationship. I don't know.
That's that's I believe that that's a potential way forward
to bring groups together when it comes to voting.
I think a lot of people have a lot of different areas of
expertise. We see the certainly nowadays.
No one says, well everyone's opinion is equal with regard to
covid-19. Vaccines, they say there's some
people who know a lot more than others.
They should be on TV and they should have more power than the
average person. I don't see that that is very
different from who should own the factors of production.
So I have no problem with worker cooperatives.
My only issue was to stop people from engaging in contracts with
employers if they see that as a better option, I did an
internship for zero dollars and zero cents.
So I mean if that's like the ultimate exploitation, but it
was better for me in the long run.
So my issue with democratizing, a lot of things or things to the
point where you're dealing with people who haven't gone into
this agreement, voluntarily is you are more likely to get
people who don't have a lot of information people who aren't
well trained people who are less ambitious and people who are
maybe not as kind. It just doesn't allow us to
disassociate. Bad actors as easily.
So for the same reason, I don't want us voting on a national
religion. Might sound rugged,
individualist. You're a Protestant and he's a
Muslim. And this guy's a Jew and I know,
Anarchy and Chaos. I still think that is superior.
What are your thoughts on Democracy?
Now, not allowing people like, I guess that would be me and Adele
have the same listening audience if we're in a democracy, but in
a free market, she can sell a billion records and no one can
buy from me. What am I missing?
There. I don't think I understand your
question entirely and I'm trying.
So can you reframe that? Yeah, why is democracy
inherently valuable? Well, I don't know that it is
inherently valuable. I do know this.
This is where the you starting to get into micro slicing here.
Right? You've got the universal set.
Now, we've gotten it down to one of these small bubbles in the
Venn diagram. Okay, you're talking about
individuals that have power over their person power over their
data power over x y z. I am an anti Surveillance, I
guess you could say at some level it's civil libertarian to
some degree. I think we're where it starts
becoming challenging is when you're right or my right?
Let's put it in my terms and when my right to be healthy and
whole is infringed upon by your desire to do something.
That ultimately leads to my demise.
I think that that is a real super duper challenge to cross.
And like, you know, I am, it's a tough way of saying, but it's
like, there's a part of me that is.
Hey, I don't tell me what to do. And at the same time, I'm not a
virologist. I always had to show a vaccine
card when I went to elementary school, when I went to middle
school. I had to prove that.
I got my ex vaccine, my this vaccine, my other vaccine, you
know, I fundamentally if we're protecting each other from harm.
Then I believe that there is a place for that kind of mandate.
It hurts to say that because I understand what the implication
is. And yet, at the same time, What
is the, what is the outcome, if you don't do that, right?
And I think a bigger problem here.
Is that Force usually comes when you don't trust someone, when
you inherently don't trust someone like you know that
there's this grimy dude. That is the guy that's going to
rub up on a child. A pedo kind of thing.
And that child is saying, I don't want to go stay over and
uncle Larry's. But Mom and Dad say, you're
staying at Uncle Larry's and you're going to like it and then
stays with Uncle Larry and she's right.
They're whatever we that to me is is a horrible outcome of
somebody having control over you and mandating what you do and
don't do. That right.
There is a little hyperbolic. Obviously that I don't think
everything has to be in terms of rape survival and stuff like
that. I think you can have a much more
micro much more benign and it's still be offensive.
But I think that there's a point here where you have to look at.
How do you maintain any semblance of order?
And you look at the fall of the Roman Empire, as the Roman
Empire bled out and kind of just fizzled out.
It didn't really die. It fizzled out, right?
He extended himself too far and lo and behold it just went away
and this neck. The next people that came and
power didn't have the power, didn't have the Charisma didn't
have the under whatever it was. They didn't.
The thing that kept the empire together and as you saw as the
Roman Empire ended the Dark Ages began, and it became a very very
non literate Society. Actually, the Dark Ages really
were dark. I mean, they really were dark
that it wasn't just the Bubonic plague and all the other forms
of plague that took place in the 13th century.
You're talking about a serious situation where people that want
spoke and and wrote fluently no longer were literate, literally
literacy died. It had to recover some of that
literacy and it took years and years.
I believe that over excuse about one-third of the population of
Europe was wiped out by the plague and it wasn't until about
the French Revolution that they got back to pre plague levels of
population. All of that knowledge was lost.
And people had to Rican, re figure out how life was.
And so, you had the dawn of capitalism through that period,
the merchant class came up, but people themselves, you had
Warlords. You had a lot of Warring
factions. It was a very brutal time.
Very, very brutal time was not a caring Society.
I was not a society where I would have wanted a been a
seventy-year-old with some sort of An illness and hoping to God,
somebody took care of me. And when I'm unable to take care
of myself, it was a very brutal death driven.
Killing killing death was all around.
It was as normal as you name it. I don't want to go back to that.
I don't want to be involved in that.
And so, as they think to myself about that kind of play here in
society today. It terrifies me quite frankly.
I mean whether you're a big believer in climate change or
not. There's evidence of coastal
erosion. There's evidence of mass ice
melts, whether it's human made or not and of those ice melts,
you can rest assured that there will be bacteria and viruses
that come back from the dead that have been frozen away for
ever. You have algae, blooms coming
out. How would we collectively?
We deal with that. How will we collectively deal
with ours? Every person on their own?
And I've got a cure, and I'm going to lock myself in this
castle and nobody can have it like Bill Gates with patents on
different life-saving medicines. So, I think you have to really
ask yourself. What kind of society you want to
be in and how precarious, do you want life to be for the average
person? And I come from a mindset of, I
want to make life as good for people as possible.
And I want to be able to provide an environment where we all have
the chance to thrive without a gun, to her head without the
fear of death waiting around the corner constantly.
And I don't think libertarianism.
I don't think that that gives us that.
I think it gives people that were born, the lottery of good
genes and great health and access to things.
It gives him a real leg up and you could see people really
throw So, in other words, the sine wave of this signal in the
society, I'm looking at is a much shorter wave.
Whereas the wave, and a Libertarian Society seems to be
like this, like Bitcoins, you know, jumping up and down
because the people at the bottom really haven't got a leg to
stand on their done, the people at the top, totally different
ball of cheese. They've got the World by the,
you know, by the short hairs. So it's a real challenge.
I understand the thinking, I do, but I've swung full circle.
I'm very much on the, let's mitigate.
Let's clear the bottom. Let's get rid of the edge cases,
Let's help them out. Let's lift them into the middle,
and at the top, let's pray. I don't want my all the real
resources gobbled up by an individual.
I think that we all have to survive, oxygen water.
You name it. There's no way we should be
selling water. You know, I mean, it's just when
you think about About the natural resources that we have.
There's a point where you say. Hey, we could get free energy
today from the sun. We can get free energy from
water and wind but the state or the public-private Partnerships
or whoever says, hey, wait a minute.
If you get, if you all can get free from the Sun, we're going
to lose our profit. So we're going to do something
different. So the state intervenes and adds
taxes and surplus charges and all these other things to free
stuff to prevent us from I'm ever being able to escape.
So this is a area where I think maybe Libertarians and others
could come together and find a different solution as well.
Because otherwise, I mean, really you're, once again,
mitigating. The one thing that could really
make us free. Imagine if you didn't have to
pay electricity. Imagine if you weren't
constantly forced to do that. I mean, when that be great, I
can't imagine anybody would say, it wouldn't be great except for
the guy that owns the electric company, you know, so well too.
It's just that Tougher, tougher him.
He can find something else to do just like, you know, what was
really tough for me when my girlfriend broke up with me.
So, what I need to find? I need to find something else.
The sun example was actually used by The Economist Frederic
bastiat in the 1850s. He said, you know, well, we
candle makers need to come together because there's this
competitor who's just killing us.
We got a form, some protection this guy.
Well, it's actually not a guy, it's more of a thing.
This thing, the Sun is Really putting us out of business or
what we need to collectively come together and get this SOB.
So yeah, the concept of profit worship and money Obsession.
I couldn't agree with you more. My final question for you, just
to I'm going to use a specific example, but I want your, this
will get an overall idea of the mmt.
Economic view one. Do you agree with me?
That South Korea's wealthier than North Korea to why is South
Korea wealthier? Than North Korea.
Define wealth. That is what.
So, I would say, an increase, the a country as wealthy to the
degree. You can measure the number of
hours worked to obtain certain goods and services wealth would
be the ability to achieve ones ends using fewer resources than
you otherwise would have to in an impoverished scenario.
But the reason that it's such a tough question is because
there's Christian monks. So, who live on like 30 cents a
day, who are happier than a lot of people?
I know who are in nice houses. So, so the, so I get, I'm
intentionally pigeonholing you to see where you would take it.
You will you will you will. You can't pigeonhole me.
I get this one, but I know you're good though.
I'm with you skin, crawls, my hair stands on end, whenever I
hear the, the headline left, the the Races of the world and stuff
like that. Say the United States is the
richest country in the world and I say to myself, explain that
I'm good with that. Maybe I wasn't saying that to
me. Yeah.
It because like if I look at China and the massive size of
its country and the massive amount of real resources under
its ground and its soil, its capacity.
Its in its industrial capacity to create its I look at it that
the ability to produce real real similar.
What you just said, - not really worried about the money part of
it, right? Because the money is, we could
do this stuff for free or you could trade it for something or
whatever, right? There's a million ways to handle
that. So, money is not an indicator of
real resources. It's not an indicator of real
wealth either, right? And so, this is an area where I
think that Liberty being that I've For that space.
I know the gotcha lines, right? So.
Well, you can't print real wealth.
Well, no, you can't print real wealth.
That's right. But what does dollars give you
dollars? Give you access to real
resources, right? It could give you.
This is an interesting thing, and I think that you'll find
this challenging Milton Friedman back in the day believes in
helicopter, money. He believed the only problem
with capitalism was we needed more.
Um, so let's give them more money.
Let's just give a negative income tax.
Let's do whatever, and that will make capitalism Thrive because
the only thing wrong with capitalism is people don't have
enough money. So it's giving more money to
spend. So this is kind of the
foundation of many Ubi hours out there.
Many of the people that come with the Ubi perspective.
Well, the Ubi though assumes real resources are there for
them, the purchase. Well, who created this real
resources who created those things for them to buy and why
are You diminishing the value of that labor, by giving away the
cash to get that real resource for free.
Because ultimately, at the end of the day, it's not really
about whether or not I want them all to have what they have.
I do want them to. So I I come from a different
position because I do know what real wealth is.
I say, let's give people a universal basic Services as
opposed to Universal basic income because the currency
issue. Our can absorb any cost
increases that are there the currency issuer can absorb,
whatever spikes, or whatever in the economy, but you and I, we
can't absorb that. And so if we're a family and we
have children, or whatever, and we have to try to absorb those
spikes. We're in big trouble.
We're we, you, and I are in big trouble.
There's opportunities out there, sure.
But a lot of this stuff is a crapshoot, right?
Some of these. Don't have to be a crapshoot.
You don't have to live in that kind of precarity and I don't
see any value in creating precarity.
But I do know why they creep precarity.
And this dates back to some of the Middle Ages stuff that I'm
talking about when you're trying to keep a surf going.
When you're trying to keep these vassals going these servants
going. Okay, you've got to make it so
that the alternative is worse. So they're like, okay.
Well, what do I do for that money then?
Okay, you know, I have the saying going back to how I
present mmt that Kings back in the day would print a coin.
And they would go up to a peasant out in the field or
whatever. He was farming is field and
fishing and bouncing his kid on his knee, or doing whatever and
say, hey, I'd like you to come build an aqueduct for me or I'd
like you to come and build a castle for me and dudes.
Like, yeah, you know, I'm all right.
I'm good. I think I'm going to keep
fishing. I think I'm gonna keep doing
whatever I'm doing right now. I guess haha.
Yeah. Good point goes.
Well, what if I give you a coin for that guy, looks the coins
like what am I gonna do with the coin?
I don't need that coin. It's a good point.
He says, hey, we're going to put a 10 coin tax on your house.
Your Hut here. It's got to be paid or we're
going to take your Hut and the guy goes, wait.
What? What?
You can take my heart. Well, how do I get those coins?
Is that funny? You should say that I need an
aqueduct built. I need a castle built, whatever.
Okay. Now all of a sudden taxes create
buyers and sellers of goods taxes are also what creates the
first unemployed person. So unemployment is a direct
creation of taxes. You say.
Oh, well, then we should get rid of taxes.
Well then. Your currency isn't worth
anything. Now all of a sudden and this is
what happened to the South. The Confederacy was that they
couldn't Levy a tax. They were so ideological against
the tax that their currency didn't hold up.
And so they ended up actually having a hyperinflation in the
South which ended up costing them, the Civil War.
Quite frankly. I mean, it's one of the rarely
talked about facts of History, so I think that idia logically
speaking wealth is a construct similar to what you said.
And I would say that wealth is also should be based on the
happiness of the people living in that space as well.
Not just numbers and acquired things.
But like, how can you gauge from with of their health their
years? They live the, the Whatever
rate, you know, I mean, there's a whole caste of there's a
dashboard of metrics that you should be able to evaluate the
success and wealth, you know, hey, I may not make a lot of
money. But damn, I'm happy.
Every single day. I get laid 10 times a day.
I get to get high every day. I get to do whatever I want.
Every that. I'm really happy.
I wake up every day. I'm a thrilled man.
I'm loving life, you know, you know, happiness has got to be
part of that equation. And so your the question to your
The answer to your question is I think first of all, I don't
think that really is a valid question.
It's a valid question, but it's a trick question and it's it
really comes down to what do you measure?
How do you quantify wealth? And I think your statement there
was a pretty accurate one. I think that wealth is really
about the ability to live, a good life with the least amount
of effort. And but it would be nice and I
think it's possible that we can increase the wealth of all by
creating systems that allow instead of money to start at the
top to start at the bottom. Because he'll, you know, like I
said before, money has a natural helium effect and it pulls the
top. If you spend it at the top, you
got to pray to God that they piss on you.
So it makes it to the bottom, but it always comes back up
because you're buying your stuff again.
And so it always gives back up. So if you start the money at the
atem, provide people with basic Services, provide them with
good, living, provide them with these things that money's going
to matriculate through the economy and it's going to make
it back up anyway, and when it makes a backup tax, some of it
away so that they still keep motivated.
They still keep going. And at the same time, these
people keep going because they have to this is the thing, if
you and I are millionaires. And we're only going to buy X
number of loaves of bread. We're only going to buy X number
of cars. Maybe we have a car fetish, we
buy a bunch. But even that wouldn't be enough
to sustain an economy, ultimately where inflation and
things like that would kick in is if everybody suddenly had
20,000 dollars in their pocket. It's not the money, but it's the
ability to exact that demand and whether or not there is the real
resources there for them to purchase.
And if we all want a Lamborghini and they've only made 20,
Lamborghinis. Well, there's going to be a
bidding war for this, 20, Lamborghinis.
And that's how you're going to end up getting that kind of
demand pull inflation. Right?
You're going to get that kind of scarcity based on that.
That's how these things go, but that doesn't have to be, we
don't have to create a false scarcity for people that want to
live in a casino world. I think life is too precious to
make everything a Gamble. And and so that's I think that's
wealth in my Opinion also is the ability not to worry to not live
in precarity. So sure and just one more thing.
I need clarified, when it's that the dollar has value because of
the tax. I paid for this mouse pad, don't
tread on anyone in Bitcoin, Bitcoin is not taxed.
Does that mean Bitcoin does not have value?
Even though it was used as a medium of exchange for a product
or service? So as you go through this
process just remember this. Coin is an envelope Bitcoin is a
store of value. Okay.
And so what happens is this and Brett Scott?
I don't know if you've ever heard of a guy named Brett
Scott, but he is one of the most incredibly brilliant men on the
Bitcoin Payment Systems. Mutual Credit all kinds of
different really, really Next Generation.
Futuristic views here. Check him out.
Brett Scott. He has a great sub stack as
well. I wish you could remember I'm
subscribe, but just look up. Brett Scott.
You won't be dissatisfied is amazing.
But if you think about it, what happens is that you have this
tunnel this dark tunnel, but how did you get your Bitcoin to
begin with OR how did you get whatever you got?
You paid US dollars to get whatever that first coin was and
then it's done. Its thing, it, you know, people
speculating and stuff add pump and dump, you know, they're
pumping up the value, right? Ultimately.
It's still U.s. Dollars that are paying for that
and or it's still Iranian, you know, money or it's still
Australian money. The Bitcoin is basic.
If you're a packet guy, if you're a packet-switched kind of
guy, you have a header, you have a trailer, you know, you have a
flag bit, you have all these bits.
But inside, there you have, your payload and data networking,
right inside that little area is the store of value.
So, consider Bitcoin and envelope for State currency, and
I think that the real value of Bitcoin stuff like this, not so
much the Bitcoin so much as the underlying blockchain technology
that will allow us to do tremendous things in the future.
I think that the Bitcoins and stuff like that, are a fun game
that people that, like, to collect beanie babies.
Do I said, but the other side of that is the functional systems
of defy and other stuff. I think that there's some real
value there in terms of making Society a better place and being
able to get around some of the oppression, some of the fascist.
Russian it occurs throughout this nation and around the
world. Quite frankly, so Back to my
first statement. Everything it depends.
You know, it really is find the right tool for the right job.
You just because you're a hammer doesn't mean everything's a
nail. You got to find the right tool
for the right job. You got to understand the
requirements. You got to build the design.
You got to test and execute and these are some things that I
think people don't often times do because they're so
ideological e locked in to a given thing that they don't.
I'm a project manager by trade. So my job is to analyze.
That sort of thing. So that's it.
That's that's where I'm coming from.
Thanks to everyone for watching Keith Knight.
Don't try it on anyone in the libertarian Institute, Mr.
Graham Bond. Thank you so much for your time,
sir. Greatly appreciated.
Absolutely meant. Thank you for having me on this
great time.