Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Mark
Speaker 1: Moss Show, where we talk about the decentralized revolution each
Speaker 1: and every week, of course, talking about the way the
Speaker 1: world is changing as we look at it through the
Speaker 1: lens of politics, finance, and technology, and of course that
Speaker 1: technology being bitcoin, the decentralized technology that of course, technology
Speaker 1: always changes the world, you know. I try to bring
Speaker 1: to you some you know, educational pieces to help you
Speaker 1: see the world a little bit differently, some of the
Speaker 1: latest breaking news, and of course some new unique perspectives
Speaker 1: from some different guests. And so I have a returning guest,
Speaker 1: my good friend Alex S. Fetzky. He's in the studio
Speaker 1: with me today, Alex, and you can find him on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Sfetzky Rights. And we wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: um as I said, politics, finance and technology, and really
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in the convergence of those three, and
Speaker 1: of course they all drive each other. Technology seems to
Speaker 1: be the big driver of of change, but politics and
Speaker 1: finance come together. And Alex, I know you've been working
Speaker 1: on a lot of Austrian economics, and Austrian economics is
Speaker 1: a a school of thought, a school of thought of
Speaker 1: economics and it used to be a big school of
Speaker 1: thought of economics. It's not really taught anymore. I've talked
Speaker 1: to many people who have graduated in the United States
Speaker 1: from UH with with MBA's and pH ds in economics
Speaker 1: who have never even heard or never heard of Austrian
Speaker 1: economics while they were in school. Amazingly. Um, but give
Speaker 1: us some of the background on you know, where it
Speaker 1: came from, uh and and kind of how Austrian economics emerged,
Speaker 1: and we'll kind of walk through that. Cool cool, cool,
Speaker 1: cool Mark. Thank you for having me back. First of all, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe a good place to stought. This is sort
Speaker 1: of a little bit of background. I've been working on
Speaker 1: a publication for a number of years now called The
Speaker 1: Bitcoin Times and the latest edition so uh, I was
Speaker 1: about to say this year's edition, but we're actually so
Speaker 1: the edition was which just came out, actually came out
Speaker 1: of a Christmas is the Austrianan issue where I brought
Speaker 1: together who some some of who I think are the
Speaker 1: best minds in and around bitcoin, So Safety Namos, who
Speaker 1: wrote the Bitcoin standard, Michael Goldstein, who was one of
Speaker 1: the people actually inspired him to get into bitcoin, Pierre Rochard,
Speaker 1: Raheem Tugger out a gun who's actually a direct student
Speaker 1: of hans Herman Hopper, and he's the last he's the
Speaker 1: last Austrian economist who's teaching in the direct Austrian School
Speaker 1: in Austria. UM. And he was actually a physicist turned
Speaker 1: Austrian economists. So he wrote the piece in there. And
Speaker 1: Conrad Graff, who's who's quite a well known early bitcoin
Speaker 1: or kind of tied the concepts of bitcoin and Austrian
Speaker 1: economics together. UM. And anyway, I brought these people together
Speaker 1: to write a series of pieces, and one of them
Speaker 1: in there was actually written by Rahim hans Herman Hopper's student,
Speaker 1: and it's called from Bitcoin to the Austrian School and
Speaker 1: from the Austrian School to Bitcoin, and he talks a
Speaker 1: little bit about like why this school of economics is
Speaker 1: called Austrian economics. It's not because it's like Austrian. It
Speaker 1: just so happened that the founding fathers of this school
Speaker 1: of thought basically sort of came out during what's kind
Speaker 1: of known but not very well known as the Austrian Renaissance,
Speaker 1: which was kind of around like late eighteen hundred's early
Speaker 1: nine hundreds. And this is sort of you know, the
Speaker 1: two pioneering or two sort of founding fathers of this
Speaker 1: Austrians school of thought or or this economic school of
Speaker 1: thought happened to be Carmengo and Ludwig Vonsis and and
Speaker 1: obviously they're both Austrians. So so that's kind of what
Speaker 1: inspired the nomenclature around why we call it that. But
Speaker 1: but essentially, like I kind of call it and wen't
Speaker 1: weren't weren't weren't weren't a lot of them kind of
Speaker 1: huddled up in Austria at the time, and they kind
Speaker 1: of they kind of had this like a little grouping
Speaker 1: of those people there in Austria and they all kind
Speaker 1: of use these ideas and develop them together. Yeah. Absolutely so,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like think of Silicon Valley, right,
Speaker 1: why do we have you know, Facebook and all these
Speaker 1: sort of technologies come out of there, you know, like
Speaker 1: you had the Xerox park, you had Apple, you had Intel,
Speaker 1: you had sort of like a critical mass of that
Speaker 1: type of thinking. So Vienna back in the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds early nine was kind of like a melting pot
Speaker 1: for people that were sort of thinking about the world
Speaker 1: in a way which where he makes a really good
Speaker 1: argument in the in the piece where he calls it
Speaker 1: a bottom up Enlightenment versus what you sort of had
Speaker 1: in England and France at the time, which was a
Speaker 1: top down kind of enforced Enlightenment, which which is really
Speaker 1: interesting because we ended up getting out of France and
Speaker 1: England was democracy and socialism, um, and what you sort
Speaker 1: of had out of this kind of bottom up Enlightenment
Speaker 1: that came out of Austria, and also you know, it's
Speaker 1: predecessor was actually the Scottish Enlightenment, where you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of thinkers that came out of that were you know,
Speaker 1: Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, you know, Wealth of Nations
Speaker 1: and people like that. So it's quite interesting sort of
Speaker 1: the cultures and the similarities between those sort of decentralized, emergent,
Speaker 1: bottom up kind of philosophies and thinkings and Enlightenment periods
Speaker 1: versus these top down ones that were like the French
Speaker 1: and English and what they sort of produced at the
Speaker 1: other end. So anyway, yeah, as you said, there was this,
Speaker 1: there was you know, a bunch of students obviously that
Speaker 1: came after Manga and and mesas, and they were all
Speaker 1: obviously Austrian because that was the region they were in,
Speaker 1: and that's really what kind of you know, pioneered that
Speaker 1: school of thought and hence hence the name. And you
Speaker 1: know what I was going to say before is I
Speaker 1: just think of it as natural economics, because that's essentially
Speaker 1: what it is, you know, it's it's the school of
Speaker 1: economic thought that says, don't touch things because you're going
Speaker 1: to break them, because the economic system is more complex
Speaker 1: than what you know, a single entity or a single
Speaker 1: mind or a single organization can define it as. So
Speaker 1: s quit you know, messing with stuff and let the
Speaker 1: market kind of figure itself out, would you. And I've
Speaker 1: discussed that nauseaum in the book we wrote, and you know,
Speaker 1: as you do obviously every week on your podcast. So
Speaker 1: you know, these guys were the founding fathers, the pioneers
Speaker 1: of this type of thinking. Yeah, yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it just seems you kind of said naturally, you know,
Speaker 1: like natural economics. And and obviously Mesas, who is also
Speaker 1: may be considered one of the godfathers of that school
Speaker 1: at Busas I wrote the book Human Action, right talking
Speaker 1: about how human actions drive economics, and so you don't
Speaker 1: really break the two down, you know, between each other. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: how would you compare Austrian economics than the traditional or
Speaker 1: probably the dominant and maybe some people don't even know that,
Speaker 1: but the dominant economic kind of policy or theory today
Speaker 1: is Kinsian or has been born off of Kinsey. And
Speaker 1: it's probably so, you know, uh, morphed and evolved. Now
Speaker 1: maybe it's not exactly what it's probably way worse than
Speaker 1: what Kings even had in mind back then. But how
Speaker 1: would you kind of compare those two? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: a good way to think about it is, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean you asked the average person, you know, what,
Speaker 1: what's the economic model of the world that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: even know who the hell Keens is, you know, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't know that it Keenes, you know any of that. Right.
Speaker 1: So the way I kind of think of it as
Speaker 1: interventionist or non interventionist economics, right, And you know, the
Speaker 1: interventionist school suggests that, hey, we should play with interest rates,
Speaker 1: we should you know, uh, you know, make the money
Speaker 1: supply elastic, you know, we should uh you know, use
Speaker 1: regulations to try and you know, funnel money and productivity
Speaker 1: in particular directions. And the non interventionist school, which is
Speaker 1: the Austrian school, which is what I call the natural school,
Speaker 1: just says no, don't do any of that, because every
Speaker 1: time you make one of those decisions, there's one one
Speaker 1: of those central planning decisions, you have unintended consequences downstream,
Speaker 1: which then deform the rest of the system, and you
Speaker 1: will forever be playing not only catch up, but you'll
Speaker 1: be making everything worse because you have like a you know,
Speaker 1: one of those magnification effects. You know, you you you
Speaker 1: push one thing here, intend things happen out there. And
Speaker 1: that's really the that's really the two big schools of thought.
Speaker 1: And actually Parker wrote a little bit about He wrote
Speaker 1: the forward for this Peace Paco Lewis, and he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, most people just don't they don't get they
Speaker 1: don't know what Australians or Kinsian or any of that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. And sometimes, you know, we in the
Speaker 1: bitcoin space get lost, you know, throwing those terms around,
Speaker 1: and he was like, look, let's just call it as
Speaker 1: it is is. You know, one school thinks that the
Speaker 1: way toward economic prosperity is to have some sort of
Speaker 1: central planners and managers, and the other school of thought
Speaker 1: says no, let people at the edges decide and really, um,
Speaker 1: I guess I think I think there's more more to
Speaker 1: it than that. I mean, it's certainly is that, certainly right?
Speaker 1: But how to the how do these central planners manage then? Right?
Speaker 1: And so not only is it that now they're trying
Speaker 1: to control and tell people what to do, but they're
Speaker 1: also increasing or decreasing the money supply. I So that's
Speaker 1: that could be a big piece of it. So it's
Speaker 1: not just like, hey, you do this, you do this
Speaker 1: kind of a thing, but they're but they're in increasing
Speaker 1: the money. But I was just talking about in a
Speaker 1: previous segment, Um, Amazon's laying off seventeen thousand people. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's that's one small drop in the bucket. We
Speaker 1: gotta take a breakthough. We're gonna come back to this
Speaker 1: in a minute. If you're just tuning in, you're listening
Speaker 1: to the Mark Moss Show. I'm in the studio with
Speaker 1: Alex Sfetzky. We're talking about um economic theory, different economic models. Uh,
Speaker 1: it gets more exciting. Don't go away, We'll be right
Speaker 1: back in a minute. All right, welcome back. If you're
Speaker 1: just tune in, you're listening to the Mark Moss Show.
Speaker 1: Talking about the decentralized revolution. Right now, I'm in the
Speaker 1: studio with Alex Spetzky. We're talking about Austrian economics. Um.
Speaker 1: He's just been written and it just published an entire
Speaker 1: um magazine kind of article full of articles on Austrian economics.
Speaker 1: That's called the Bitcoin Times. You can find them on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Sfetzky Rights. But before the break, Alex I
Speaker 1: was saying, how you know it's it certainly is intervention
Speaker 1: versus non intervention, but I think it's the way that
Speaker 1: they intervene as also important where Austrian school believes that
Speaker 1: at um, you know, all wealth is needs to be
Speaker 1: created first before it can be consumed, and so we
Speaker 1: must save our money and then um all then saving
Speaker 1: or even credit would come from delayed gratification as opposed
Speaker 1: to Kinsian's interventionists, if you want to call adapt believe
Speaker 1: in creating or increasing the money supply. And I was
Speaker 1: just in in in the segment of the hour I
Speaker 1: did before you jumped up, I was talking about how
Speaker 1: Amazon's laying off seventeen thousand people and this is happening
Speaker 1: all over the economy. I mean that was just one
Speaker 1: data point, but but everywhere is being laid off. Um,
Speaker 1: and I was just talking about I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the insanity of this, where um, the the the interventionists,
Speaker 1: the central banks printed uh tens of trillions of dollars
Speaker 1: in and UM dump that money into the ecosystem. So
Speaker 1: then everybody had this extra money. They started going buying
Speaker 1: all these things, which then broke supply chains down right
Speaker 1: cause all these problems. And then Amazon is like, whoa,
Speaker 1: we can't keep up with orders. So they started building
Speaker 1: all these distribution centers. They started hiring all these people,
Speaker 1: and then people are like and then they have to
Speaker 1: pay people increased wages because they're trying to get them
Speaker 1: to back to work because the interventionists are giving them
Speaker 1: money to stay at home. So now people are getting
Speaker 1: hired at Amazon with good wages. They're feeling good. And
Speaker 1: so then the guy's like, hey, I got hired at Amazon.
Speaker 1: I have this good career. I'm making good money. Hey, wife,
Speaker 1: wown you quit your job. Just quit your job. You
Speaker 1: stay home now, and let's go buy that new car
Speaker 1: we've always wanted. Right, So like now I've I've planned
Speaker 1: my whole life based off of that. And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the central planners, the interventions want to
Speaker 1: suck the money out of the economy, and now Amazon
Speaker 1: has to lay seventeen thousand people off. But it's like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, my wife just quit her job and
Speaker 1: I just bought this new car, like and sorry, is
Speaker 1: that magnification effect? Yeah, this is that magnification effect. Right,
Speaker 1: you do one thing here and then ten other things
Speaker 1: happened somewhere else, and then of course the problem is
Speaker 1: the greedy capitalist again, which is you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is part of the positive blame month of something else,
Speaker 1: the issue that happened. It's it's the it's the it's
Speaker 1: also it's the whipsaw effect. Right, So it's like if okay,
Speaker 1: increase the money and this, okay, let us deal with that.
Speaker 1: But it's no, no, no, it's it's let's increase it
Speaker 1: by and then let's suck it back out and then
Speaker 1: let's put it back in then and so we don't
Speaker 1: even know what's ever coming, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So it's like we we can't ever get used to it,
Speaker 1: we can't ever like adjust for it. Well, this is
Speaker 1: this is actually one of the other things. While we're
Speaker 1: on the Austrian economics topic, it's that you know, modern
Speaker 1: economists talk about this thing called the business cycle, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, we don't know where the business cycle
Speaker 1: comes from, and um, they actually and this is you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people don't realize this, but you
Speaker 1: go to university and when you learn about what the
Speaker 1: business cycle comes from, no word of a lie. They
Speaker 1: call it animal spirits. They say that it just happens,
Speaker 1: and like it's right there in front of you. What
Speaker 1: you just explain there the whips or effect, like the
Speaker 1: business cycles are created by the very interventionism that is
Speaker 1: supposed to smooth out the business cycles. They literally created
Speaker 1: by their own hubris and stupidity. Whereas you you know,
Speaker 1: naturally get some sort of cyclical effect in and a
Speaker 1: economy because you know, as you said, sometimes people go out,
Speaker 1: they build a business, they get a little bit carried away,
Speaker 1: you know, they hire too much or whatever, and you
Speaker 1: know that has local effects. But when you're doing it
Speaker 1: at the central planning level, you know, and at the
Speaker 1: at the mass you know, national global national economy level
Speaker 1: of the global economy level, then you actually create these
Speaker 1: total business cycles where everything becomes correlated. So in a
Speaker 1: normal natural organic economy, if one industry kind of grew
Speaker 1: itself out a little bit too much, and maybe the
Speaker 1: adjacent industries might benefit a little bit from that, but
Speaker 1: that tapers off very quickly. So if they make a
Speaker 1: mistake and blow themselves up, it's a localized effect and
Speaker 1: the rest of the economy is pretty fine. Whereas what
Speaker 1: this interventionism does is it actually correlates everything. And now
Speaker 1: you know, there's businesses that are going bust that should
Speaker 1: actually be doing quite well now, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: all the same thing now. So so there's no more
Speaker 1: actual economy. It's just the function of what the intervention
Speaker 1: us to doing. How much money they're pulling into the
Speaker 1: system and how much money they're sucking out has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with productivity anymore, or very little to do
Speaker 1: with productivity anymore, which is madness, Like what why are
Speaker 1: we working? What are we doing? Yeah? Um, if I
Speaker 1: was going to play Devil's advocate here a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, understanding kind of the other side of the argument. Um,
Speaker 1: you know the kinsians would you already made the case
Speaker 1: is is their goal, their whole purpose that the federal
Speaker 1: serves purpose is kind of to smooth out those cycles.
Speaker 1: So what we'll do is the natural business cycles there, right,
Speaker 1: we have changing one's needs and desires. Humans are irrational,
Speaker 1: right um and so um, you you ordered too much
Speaker 1: of one product or good or whatever, but I don't
Speaker 1: want that anymore, right, and now all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're stuck with it. Right, So you have these natural
Speaker 1: business cycles, and the Kinsians believe that they could smooth
Speaker 1: that out by what what we'll do is we'll stimulate
Speaker 1: a little bit in the times when we need, and
Speaker 1: then we won't stimulant and we don't, and then we'll
Speaker 1: smooth that cycle out. That's the purpose versus if we
Speaker 1: kind of allowed the natural market to take its place,
Speaker 1: then we'd have much more choppy boo and busts. So
Speaker 1: what would you say to that? Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: the I guess the proof is in the pudding is
Speaker 1: that you know, it really comes down to a study
Speaker 1: of complex systems and and just a humility to at
Speaker 1: least recognize that if you allow things like as I
Speaker 1: sort of said before, it's like you get these natural
Speaker 1: business cycles all the time, because as you said, people
Speaker 1: are rational, they order too much, they've changed their mind,
Speaker 1: whatever the case is. But when the effect is more localized.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't have a systemic effect on everything else,
Speaker 1: versus the process of correlating everyone together so that when
Speaker 1: there is a problem, it actually becomes entirely systemic. It
Speaker 1: affects people and industries and sections of the economy that
Speaker 1: just shouldn't have anything to do with this, like and
Speaker 1: it just it just spreads it all and and it
Speaker 1: basically it reminds me of the whole all in this together,
Speaker 1: you know, interventionist economy puts us all in everything together
Speaker 1: for no reason. And instead of you know, the healthy
Speaker 1: engine in a car for example, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: the radiator does its job, and the you know, the
Speaker 1: carburetor does its job, the fuel injectors do their job.
Speaker 1: You know, like everything does its own job here, Like
Speaker 1: everyone is being sort of skewed to basically become a
Speaker 1: speculator of some sort. And it exacerbates the booms and
Speaker 1: it exacerbates the busts, and it just stresses everyone the
Speaker 1: hell out, and instead of doing something productive with their time,
Speaker 1: like building a business, everyone's hanging on you know, what
Speaker 1: the hell is the interest rate going to be? What
Speaker 1: are they getting? Like it's at the point now it's like,
Speaker 1: what are they hinting about hinting about doing in the future,
Speaker 1: And it's like, Okay, now, let's make all our decisions
Speaker 1: based on the hint of a hint of a hint,
Speaker 1: which is you know, animal spirits. Yeah. One way they
Speaker 1: do that is, I mean, I think most people, not everybody,
Speaker 1: but most people um probably realize that, like, price fixing
Speaker 1: is bad. Right, If I set the price of bread,
Speaker 1: but then the bread manufacturer, the baker can't produce it
Speaker 1: for the price that it's fixed at, then he doesn't
Speaker 1: produce bread anymore, at least the shortages. And so most
Speaker 1: we will understand that. But they probably don't understand is
Speaker 1: that when the Fed fixes the price of money, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're fixing the price of everything. And so that's
Speaker 1: that coordination, that large scale coordination that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a guy a Matt Staller. He writes
Speaker 1: a article called the I think it's called Big or
Speaker 1: Big Monopoly, and he's talked about these monopolies that happen
Speaker 1: all over the place. And just what wrote one talking
Speaker 1: about Ponzi hospitals and counterfeit capitalism, which is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about more of that in a minute. Also,
Speaker 1: we'll get into time preference, we get into what the
Speaker 1: world looks like if we could implement something like this
Speaker 1: on the back end, how Bitcoin could potentially do that,
Speaker 1: and maybe the moral core code for for fixing this
Speaker 1: system like this. You're listening to the Mark Moa Show.
Speaker 1: If you're just tune in, m in the studio with
Speaker 1: Alex s Fetzky. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution, talking
Speaker 1: about money and economics right now. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: more in a minute. Don't go away, all right, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: If you're just tuning in. You're listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: Moa Show. We're talking about the Decentralized Revolution, and I'm
Speaker 1: in the studio with Alex s. Fetzki. You canna find
Speaker 1: him on Twitter at sfetzky Rights. He's the author of
Speaker 1: the The Bitcoin Times, which is a really cool publication.
Speaker 1: He's put together a bunch of Austrian articles, Austrian economics.
Speaker 1: We're talking about economics, you know, before the break, I
Speaker 1: had kind of hinted about this sub steck article I
Speaker 1: got from Matt Staller and it's called Big and he
Speaker 1: was talking about how um every every issue is talking
Speaker 1: about these monopolies and he was talking about how he
Speaker 1: calls it ponzi hospitals and counterfeit capitalism, and he was
Speaker 1: talking about how ft X is nothing new, how it's
Speaker 1: just like we work was where you get this uh
Speaker 1: guy wearing a T shirt that everyone thinks is a genius,
Speaker 1: and uh, he creates a story. This genius creates a
Speaker 1: story as to why he's losing money, but why it's
Speaker 1: a good thing because he's getting growth and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But it's only possible because of this counterfeit capitalism, this
Speaker 1: ponzi finance. Right, we work continue to give them money
Speaker 1: to buy get these building leases that were worth more
Speaker 1: than the buildings themselves, which were insane or like f TX.
Speaker 1: They were talking about, um, how how it's happening with
Speaker 1: hospitals and so it's allowed these private equity companies now
Speaker 1: to start going and buying up all these hospitals, but
Speaker 1: they don't know how to run them. The running them horrible.
Speaker 1: Now the hospitals are going on a business. Um they
Speaker 1: own the land and they were he was saying that
Speaker 1: even like UM, the they gave the loans to the hospitals,
Speaker 1: the hospitals are paying on the land, but when the
Speaker 1: hospitals go broken, can't pay the loan the hospital money
Speaker 1: to keep making payments. So then they can show to
Speaker 1: their shareholders in prospective investors, hey we've never had a
Speaker 1: payment missed. We're still growing even though they're actually funding
Speaker 1: the money in. And he's talking about how it's only
Speaker 1: possible because of this counterfeit capitalism, only possible because the
Speaker 1: interventionalists created all this free money, gave it to them,
Speaker 1: and how is distorting things and causing problems where now
Speaker 1: hospital care has gone down, Uh, hospitals are going to business.
Speaker 1: He was. He was blaming this whole last past hack
Speaker 1: that recently happened on on on the same thing where
Speaker 1: private equity came in, took over the business. They don't
Speaker 1: know how to run it ran too the ground cause
Speaker 1: the hack whatever. So I think there's there's definitely a
Speaker 1: good case for that, um but let's let's go this
Speaker 1: is the opposite of time preference. And I think this
Speaker 1: is a big piece to hit on because as I
Speaker 1: already kind of made the case that under Austrian economics
Speaker 1: or natural law, it's like I've expended my energy and
Speaker 1: if I decide not to expend that energy today, I
Speaker 1: could store it and I could use it later. So
Speaker 1: I'm delaying the gratification of using that later versus the interventionalist.
Speaker 1: The Kinsians want to just create the money today and
Speaker 1: we'll just pull it from the future. And so I
Speaker 1: have this instant gratification, and that really starts to distort everything,
Speaker 1: including every choice that we make concluding relationships, health, etcetera. Right, totally, So,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna read a passage here. It's a small
Speaker 1: paragraph from from Safe Things article in the Bitcoin Times.
Speaker 1: It says it's called a primerund time preference, and the
Speaker 1: first paragraph is the scarcity of time is the starting
Speaker 1: point of all economic choice. The scarcity of time forces
Speaker 1: man to choose between alternatives at all points in his life,
Speaker 1: and it means that every decision has an opportunity cost,
Speaker 1: even with no restraint on the amount of resources available,
Speaker 1: and individual's choice of how to spend their time results
Speaker 1: in the elimination of all other choices for which he
Speaker 1: could have used the time. Economizing time is therefore unique
Speaker 1: because time passes and cannot be stopped or reversed. So
Speaker 1: you know, I've I've heard the argument in the past.
Speaker 1: You know, people like, oh, you know, will we ever
Speaker 1: live in a post capitalist society where you know, we
Speaker 1: have the Star Trek machine that you know creates anything
Speaker 1: that we want at any point in time? And my
Speaker 1: answer is, well, no, because that's still not a society
Speaker 1: post time, right, Like, the only time we'll have a
Speaker 1: post capitalist society is when time doesn't exist anymore. Because
Speaker 1: even if you could create everything that you wanted right now,
Speaker 1: you can only use what you wanted in place of
Speaker 1: something else that you may have also wanted. But there's
Speaker 1: a priority. So time is the ultimate sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the ultimate equalizers, so to speak. And you know what
Speaker 1: time preference is for for people who who may have
Speaker 1: either not heard the term or heard the term you're
Speaker 1: not really understood it is. It's the it's the difference
Speaker 1: in how you value the future in relation to the present. Right,
Speaker 1: So everyone always has a time preference, which is, uh,
Speaker 1: it's more than one basically. So so the lowest time
Speaker 1: preference you can get to is once. So if we know,
Speaker 1: cause if we do it, like a quick example is
Speaker 1: that the present is always worth more than the future
Speaker 1: because the future has some level of uncertainty. You don't
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen down the track. So if
Speaker 1: you could eat today, like food right now is worth
Speaker 1: more than the potential of food tomorrow, and it's definitely
Speaker 1: worth more than the potential of food a hundred days
Speaker 1: from now, and it's for certain worth more than the
Speaker 1: potential of food a thousand days from now. So so
Speaker 1: the longer you know you go out the you know,
Speaker 1: the more the president sort of valuable in relation to it. Now, civilization,
Speaker 1: you can argue, is a function of how well or
Speaker 1: how much you can value the future in relation to
Speaker 1: the present. Because the more you can value the future,
Speaker 1: the more longer term plans you can make, the more
Speaker 1: things you can do. And then that's when you build things.
Speaker 1: You create things like if everything was just now, you
Speaker 1: would never build anything. You'd never build a house, you'd
Speaker 1: never learned to build a fishing rod, for example, to
Speaker 1: fish for more fish. So all of these things require
Speaker 1: the lowering of one's time preference in order to increase
Speaker 1: productivity and better the future. Essentially, now, what we do,
Speaker 1: as you said, is like when we pull from the
Speaker 1: future by intervening, by printing money, by creating credit out
Speaker 1: and where and all this sort of Ponzinomics basically is
Speaker 1: we we screw up that calculation and we make the
Speaker 1: future more uncertain. And in making the future more uncertain,
Speaker 1: it means we value the present way more in relation
Speaker 1: to the uncertain future. Um. And we do everything short
Speaker 1: termist in the way we do stuff. You know, we
Speaker 1: spend more, We buy cheap crap. You know, we uh,
Speaker 1: we gambling on every investment that we can sort of
Speaker 1: think of. Um, you know, companies like what you mentioned
Speaker 1: with the hospitals is like they have all this free money,
Speaker 1: so you know, the money is worthless tomorrow, so let's
Speaker 1: just throw it into stupid ideas and fund our own debt,
Speaker 1: which is insane. But this is sort of well, we
Speaker 1: eat we eat junk food because it tastes good right now,
Speaker 1: even though we know it's going to cause long term
Speaker 1: health effects. Correct, excuse everything. And I think time preference
Speaker 1: is kind of like the master knob essentially, if the
Speaker 1: master dial for the maturity of human beings an individual
Speaker 1: level and civilization at a macro level. Like if the
Speaker 1: if the time preference is really really really low, you
Speaker 1: have extreme maturity. If the time preference is really really
Speaker 1: really really high, you have extreme immaturity, and that's really
Speaker 1: the dial And um, I think what we've done to
Speaker 1: the world with all this intervention ism is we've made
Speaker 1: the future so uncertain that we've made everybody and everything
Speaker 1: immature and we're just shooting from the hip hoping for
Speaker 1: the best. Is it a chicken or the egg? Though? Right? Like?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it because we we we naturally we
Speaker 1: want you know, we talked about capitalism being natural, right,
Speaker 1: so naturally we're going to try to get more for less, right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna try to be more efficient. We want um,
Speaker 1: you know, we want to speed things up, and so
Speaker 1: naturally we kind of want to get things faster, and um,
Speaker 1: that caused us to have the short term thinking in
Speaker 1: ours of our life, including now we've found a way
Speaker 1: to short term uh you know, hack into our money
Speaker 1: or is it because the money creation and gave us
Speaker 1: that thought? You chicken or the economy? It is an
Speaker 1: interesting one. I think the it's one where if you
Speaker 1: can separate the the consequence from the act you you
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know which one is the chicken
Speaker 1: or the egg here, but you you you create a
Speaker 1: situation where does the money cause us to have short
Speaker 1: term thinking and everything. Or is it because we have
Speaker 1: short term thinking, we've created a shortcut to money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would that's a good question. I think they feed
Speaker 1: on each other, honestly, And then somewhere along the line
Speaker 1: we end up in a situation where we create a
Speaker 1: way to have short term thinking, have the benefit of it,
Speaker 1: and then have somebody else pay for it. So then
Speaker 1: you end up, you know, stuck on this drug of
Speaker 1: you know, like economic heroine, and it just feels good
Speaker 1: for the moment. Feels good, feels good, feels good, and
Speaker 1: you don't feel the concerts until you die. We gotta,
Speaker 1: we gotta, we gotta take a quick break. UM. If
Speaker 1: you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Moss Show.
Speaker 1: We talk about the decentralized Revolution. We're talking about money
Speaker 1: because money is, you know, what makes the world go around.
Speaker 1: Talking about the different types of economics, and I want
Speaker 1: to talk more. We have Alex Fetzki in the studio.
Speaker 1: I want to talk more when we come back about UM.
Speaker 1: Now we've understood this time preference. Talk more about UM.
Speaker 1: This moral code for us, moral code for leaders in
Speaker 1: the future, UM and what that future looks like. So
Speaker 1: We're gonna be back with that and more in a minute.
Speaker 1: You don't want to miss this part. It brings it
Speaker 1: all together. We're back. Don't go away, all right, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: If you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: Moss Show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution, and specifically
Speaker 1: we're talking about economics. We're talking about money. We're talking
Speaker 1: about long time perspective or preference, high time preference, low
Speaker 1: time preference. I'm in the studio with Alex S. Fetzki. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's the author of the Bitcoin Times UM and you
Speaker 1: can find them on Twitter at Sfetzki Rights. Now, Um, Alex,
Speaker 1: I kind of asked you about this chicken or the egg,
Speaker 1: and you know, like you said, they probably feed on
Speaker 1: each other. I think that's probably probably the best case.
Speaker 1: But let's say that, UM, you know, if we can
Speaker 1: you know, fix the money, fix the world, so to speak.
Speaker 1: So there's money, maybe it's not the root of the cause,
Speaker 1: but it certainly accelerates, uh and feeds into this kind
Speaker 1: of short time perspective. UM. So if we could fix
Speaker 1: that where these interventionists don't have the ability to just
Speaker 1: create all this money from thin air, we went to
Speaker 1: a sound money, a fixed money supply like bitcoin, um,
Speaker 1: and then that slows down our perspective on money. Then
Speaker 1: you believe that then that probably helps start changing the
Speaker 1: perspective on all other other areas of our life. I
Speaker 1: think so. So, Like if you think about all the
Speaker 1: ancient teachings, and not just the ancient, like even the
Speaker 1: Austrian teachings, like all this sort of stuff, they try
Speaker 1: and educate human beings to be more mature, more moral,
Speaker 1: more honorable, and a lot of these things sort of
Speaker 1: revolve around behaving like an adult, thinking about the future,
Speaker 1: not just about the present, right like that, they're sort
Speaker 1: of all of these great stories, these great philosophies, whether
Speaker 1: it's Stoicism or Christianity or any of these things, they
Speaker 1: all kind of try and impart these lessons on human beings. Um.
Speaker 1: But as we sort of identified as like, human beings
Speaker 1: have a tendency to want to do things the easy
Speaker 1: way and you know, get the shortcut, you know, and
Speaker 1: if they don't feel the consequence of the shortcut, then
Speaker 1: they're oblivious to, uh, you know, whether what they did
Speaker 1: was you know, right or wrong or indifferent. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: by by fixing the money. What you end up doing
Speaker 1: is you you create a new environment in which, at
Speaker 1: least the hypothesis here is that if you make a
Speaker 1: poor economic choice, the consequence is far more localized and
Speaker 1: therefore you get feedback, right, And we talked about this
Speaker 1: in the Uncommunist Manifestomy. I wrote that is like the
Speaker 1: faster the feedback loop, or the closer the the the
Speaker 1: consequence you know, to the actor, the more likely they
Speaker 1: are to adapt and change in order to survive. And
Speaker 1: you know, my my hypothesis in my article in in
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin Times was that bitcoin kind of makes what
Speaker 1: the Austrians and prudent schools of thought all throughout history
Speaker 1: of sort of suggested. I think bitcoin kind of codifies
Speaker 1: it in the economy by making the money fixed and
Speaker 1: you know, not allowing any bailouts through printing you know,
Speaker 1: more money or all that sort of stuff. And I
Speaker 1: actually think that what will happen is smart people, good operators,
Speaker 1: will actually orient themselves in such a way that the
Speaker 1: teachings of you know, Austrian economics and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff don't just have to call upon people's like
Speaker 1: honor and um an intelligence and maturity to behave the
Speaker 1: right way. There's actually going to be an economic benefit
Speaker 1: to behaving the right way, because you're less likely to
Speaker 1: blow yourself up because you know, you'll, uh, You're purchasing
Speaker 1: power is increasing just purely by function of being a
Speaker 1: responsible adult and saving you know, so so it kind
Speaker 1: of changes that game a little bit. So, yeah, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: that's interesting point I am. You know, you've referenced many
Speaker 1: times Lennon's quote where you said that you know, destroy capitalism,
Speaker 1: devoutch the currency through inflation, and you steal, and then
Speaker 1: the best way to get rich is through gambling and theft, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's kind of where wrath is gambling and theft,
Speaker 1: and so then you just start looking at your whole
Speaker 1: life that way, and you're just trying to thieve and
Speaker 1: steal and gamble and trick everything kind of a thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But and in these of that last piece you're talking
Speaker 1: about our savings and so like if we did have
Speaker 1: this kind of like fixed money supply and our savings
Speaker 1: were sound, that really starts to change a lot of things, right,
Speaker 1: because one, we have to continually work harder to try
Speaker 1: to offset the theft of inflation. And now that X
Speaker 1: or time we might save could go into building better
Speaker 1: relationships or better education or knowledge of becoming more mature,
Speaker 1: because you're saying, like the argument or maybe the problem
Speaker 1: is that we're not maturing enough. And as you were
Speaker 1: saying that, I was thinking back to the chicken or
Speaker 1: the egg dilemma. Uh, you don't have kids. I do,
Speaker 1: and kids at one and two years old have very
Speaker 1: short time preference. It wasn't the money. It wasn't money
Speaker 1: that taught them that they're born with that right. And
Speaker 1: it's through the act of maturing that you learned to
Speaker 1: delay the gratification. So uh to me. And as I
Speaker 1: started kind of thinking about that, usually word maturity and
Speaker 1: it kind of brought that into perspective. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: I was on this Twitter spaces recently and we started
Speaker 1: getting kind of into you know, what does the future
Speaker 1: of money look like? On bitcoin? And um, they're trying
Speaker 1: to explain how, you know, I think there could be
Speaker 1: some fractional reserve and there would be you know, people
Speaker 1: would loan your money against your bitcoin and and and
Speaker 1: you can get some yield this way and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And I was like, if your money held value and
Speaker 1: actually bought you more goods and services in the future
Speaker 1: than less. I wouldn't need to be invested it, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't need to be earning yield, and so like
Speaker 1: you're trying to like think of how it could be
Speaker 1: used in context of what we have today. But if
Speaker 1: my money brought me more goods and services, then I
Speaker 1: just saved my money and I just keep focusing on
Speaker 1: wealth creation instead of this whole investing complex, you know,
Speaker 1: Wall Street and Wall Street industrial complex that's been built up.
Speaker 1: Kind of a thing. I agree, I agree. One of
Speaker 1: the best articles that was ever written about this concept
Speaker 1: is called the Great de Financialization, which was written by
Speaker 1: pacul Lewis, and he actually wrote it for addition three
Speaker 1: of the Bitcoin Times. It was one of my favorite
Speaker 1: ever and um it was actually around the first time
Speaker 1: you and I did a podcast. Actually, I remember I
Speaker 1: was in Germany when he wrote the article, and I
Speaker 1: was in Germany when we did our first podcast together.
Speaker 1: But he basically it's called the Great Definancialization, and the
Speaker 1: premise of the article is that while people think that
Speaker 1: you know, bitcoin is gonna you know, increase financialization in
Speaker 1: the world and everything is like no, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: actually going to simplify all of this excess um, you know,
Speaker 1: baggage and confusion comes with the financial world today because
Speaker 1: we are trying to find ways basically not to become poor.
Speaker 1: Like that's literally all these machinations like investing and trading
Speaker 1: and like you know, millions and millions upon millions derivatives
Speaker 1: products and all this sort of stuff. It's all hot air,
Speaker 1: it's all fluff, and it's all kind of like a
Speaker 1: a roundabout way to try and offset the damage that
Speaker 1: basically monetary inflation does to the world. And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, let's just you know Alexander the Great and
Speaker 1: the Gordian Knot, right, you know, they said you can,
Speaker 1: you will become you know whatever. It was like king
Speaker 1: of this region if you can untie the knot before
Speaker 1: the sun goes down. And he looks at the knot,
Speaker 1: looks at the sun, pulls out his sword and he
Speaker 1: just cut the knot in half. Right, So like, let's
Speaker 1: just you know, Bitcoin is cutting the Gordian knot of
Speaker 1: this tangle of crap. You know, You've got people talking
Speaker 1: about like, oh, let's like, you know, open up regulations
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's like no, no, let's just cut
Speaker 1: the crap and you know, let let the chips full. Basically, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's uh, It's something I talked to
Speaker 1: my kids a lot about, specifically my oldest daughter, and
Speaker 1: she's kind of wrestling with this, like what she's gonna
Speaker 1: do and does she want to take class at university?
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is that you old ultimately want? And like,
Speaker 1: what's just the quickest way to get there? Like do
Speaker 1: you need to go through this existing system to get
Speaker 1: to where you want to go? In my opinion from
Speaker 1: where I'm at, the answer is no. And kind of
Speaker 1: to your point, like do you need to sit there
Speaker 1: and untie the knot or do you just cut it?
Speaker 1: You know, a conversation I've had many times with some
Speaker 1: of the people I'll leave unnamed for now, but you
Speaker 1: know they talk about like, well, how does it fix
Speaker 1: the euro dollar market? That's a question I've been asked
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, right, because like we have this
Speaker 1: huge problem with all these off short dollars, and that's
Speaker 1: really where the shortage is happening. In the FED doesn't
Speaker 1: have enough firepower to actually keep the dollars enough dollars
Speaker 1: in supply because of what's happened to the euro dollar market?
Speaker 1: And then the yield curves are inverting and how does
Speaker 1: it fix that? And like it doesn't like it just
Speaker 1: does a way with the whole need for that. And
Speaker 1: then firstly, like know, so it's kind of like top
Speaker 1: like like like cutting cutting the knot, so to speak.
Speaker 1: We got about thirty or forty five seconds left. Anything
Speaker 1: else you want to throw out there? Throw out before
Speaker 1: we wrap this up, no other than like if if
Speaker 1: people found this interesting and they want to dig into
Speaker 1: this a little bit further, like Bitcoin Times dot io
Speaker 1: is dot io sorry is where they can pick up
Speaker 1: a copy of the Bitcoin Times. So there's five editions,
Speaker 1: the latest being the Australian one. I think is you know,
Speaker 1: really really really really special. So you know, people want
Speaker 1: to support and check that out by all means. But
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope they enjoyed this history and economics lesson. Yeah, hopefully,
Speaker 1: And I would I would really encourage everyone to just
Speaker 1: dig into this a little bit. Get get the Bitcoin Times.
Speaker 1: I have, I have every issue that's come out. Check
Speaker 1: out mesas dot org as well. Lots of good articles
Speaker 1: on mesas as well. Check out the book that we
Speaker 1: wrote the Uncommunist Manifesto. You can get that on Amazon
Speaker 1: just search Uncommunist Manifesto. UM and check that out as well.
Speaker 1: And uh man, keep digging into this. It's it's it
Speaker 1: can change not just your life, but change the world. UM.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Markma Show or talking about
Speaker 1: the decentralized Revolution in the studio with Alex Fetzky and
Speaker 1: that's what we got. Thanks for listening.