Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mark Moss Show,
Speaker 1: where we're always talking about the decentralized revolution, how the
Speaker 1: world is changing as we look at it through the
Speaker 1: lens of politics, finance, and technology. Of course, that technology
Speaker 1: is bitcoin, the decentralized technology that is changing the world.
Speaker 1: And you know, I like to bring to you some
Speaker 1: interesting thought pieces, some latest breaking news, and of course
Speaker 1: some interesting guests so you don't have to listen to
Speaker 1: me all the time.
Speaker 2: And that's what we have today.
Speaker 1: I'm bringing in my friend Jimmy Song. He doesn't need
Speaker 1: much of an introduction. You probably know who he is.
Speaker 1: He's written several books on bitcoin, from how to Program
Speaker 1: on Bitcoin, Thank God for Bitcoin one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: and his latest book, which is Fiat Ruins Everything, Our
Speaker 1: financial system is rigged and how Bitcoin fixes it. I'm
Speaker 1: excited to dig in Jimmy. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me in, Mark. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We've lately got to spend quite a bit of
Speaker 1: time together. We got to hang out and have dinner
Speaker 1: together in la We got to hang out in Amsterdam together.
Speaker 1: That was pretty fun. So I've enjoyed hanging out with you.
Speaker 1: I got a signed copy of your book, but I
Speaker 1: haven't really got to read through the whole thing. But
Speaker 1: let's discuss it anyway. First of all, how many books
Speaker 1: have you written?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: This is number five, mark, although three of them have
Speaker 3: been with other people, so like this is my second
Speaker 3: solo effort.
Speaker 1: Before we dig into that, I do want to just
Speaker 1: ask you about because you actually motivated me. You did
Speaker 1: a book sprint that you documented the process. There was
Speaker 1: like an article written. I think about that, and it
Speaker 1: motivated me to do a book sprint. Alex Sveetski and
Speaker 1: I wrote our book, The Uncommnist Manifesto. In that way,
Speaker 1: I think it was brilliant. It sort of changed the
Speaker 1: way that I look at big project work overall, like
Speaker 1: just kind of planning these sprints. Let's just talk about
Speaker 1: that for a second. So what is your process for
Speaker 1: writing a book since now that you seem to almost
Speaker 1: have it, like in this autopilot where you can pump
Speaker 1: out five books?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so depending on how I, you know, organized the book,
Speaker 3: so like Thank God for a Bitcoin, for example, was
Speaker 3: collaboration with seven other people. So it depends on exactly
Speaker 3: who's going to be writing it and sort of the
Speaker 3: bounds around that. But what I found is that you know,
Speaker 3: generally you want to begin with the end in line.
Speaker 3: So one of the first exercises I do before writing
Speaker 3: a single word is identifying who exactly I'm writing to,
Speaker 3: so you know, if it's a collaborative effort, I have
Speaker 3: everyone write down like a very specific portrait of the audience.
Speaker 3: So it might be, you know, thirty year old men
Speaker 3: that want to date more, I don't know, whatever, whatever
Speaker 3: it is that you want to write about, you need
Speaker 3: to have a specific audience member in mind. So for
Speaker 3: this book in particular, the audience member I came up
Speaker 3: with was some you know, sort of young male bitcoinner
Speaker 3: that's been in the space for a little while, but
Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't know sort of like the all
Speaker 3: of the ins and outs of Fiat money and how
Speaker 3: it affect everything. So that that was my target audience.
Speaker 3: And then after that I have everyone write sort of
Speaker 3: the Amazon book review that they want to see from
Speaker 3: that audience member after they've read the book, So like,
Speaker 3: just give yourself the benefit of the doubt all the
Speaker 3: you know, the book does exactly what you wanted to do,
Speaker 3: and afterwards, what do you want them to write on
Speaker 3: the Amazon review, and I have them write it out,
Speaker 3: so we have sort of like a north star and
Speaker 3: a good way to sort of measure whether or not
Speaker 3: something will do what you wanted to do, because otherwise,
Speaker 3: especially when you're collaborating, a lot of things come down
Speaker 3: to stuff like ego, where a lot of people will
Speaker 3: sort of like jockey and you know, want things in
Speaker 3: there just because it's theirs, instead of focusing on the audiences,
Speaker 3: which is what you need to do. And then it's
Speaker 3: a lot of brainstorming on ideas to get them to
Speaker 3: the point where they'll write that review, and then organizing
Speaker 3: those ideas to chapters, which then becomes your table off contents,
Speaker 3: and then getting to work on sort of fleshing out
Speaker 3: the ideas that you had before. So yeah, that's more
Speaker 3: or less the entire process I discribe.
Speaker 1: So if you start with you start with the who
Speaker 1: the avatar? Who do I want to write to? Who
Speaker 1: are they? Where are they at? Sort of a thing,
Speaker 1: and then you write the review, which I think is genius.
Speaker 1: I've never heard about that from a book writing perspective,
Speaker 1: but that's like a typical or not maybe typical, but
Speaker 1: it's something that in personal development, they would say to like,
Speaker 1: write your own obituary, what would people say about you.
Speaker 2: At your death?
Speaker 1: And then you kind of live your life that way.
Speaker 1: So you're writing, you're saying what would they say about
Speaker 1: the book? And then you want to write the book
Speaker 1: that way. But you didn't talk about maybe the journey
Speaker 1: that you're trying to take that avatar on. So do
Speaker 1: you think about, Okay, here's the avatar, here's who I'm
Speaker 1: writing to, and I want to get them from here
Speaker 1: to here?
Speaker 2: Do you think about that journey?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So first, like you have to get down all
Speaker 3: the ideas right, like you know where there are when
Speaker 3: they begin the book, and you know where you want
Speaker 3: them to be at the end of the books. So
Speaker 3: there's a point A and a point B. And what
Speaker 3: what I like to do is write down one idea
Speaker 3: per like post it note, just like what do they
Speaker 3: need to know to get there?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: What are the various topics that they're going to need
Speaker 3: to know about or various ideas that you need to
Speaker 3: convey to them, And you just like brainstorm for you know,
Speaker 3: thirty minutes to an hour or something like that, and
Speaker 3: just write down every single thing that you can think of,
Speaker 3: and then you stick them on a wall so that
Speaker 3: you have some you know, semblance of organization. And then
Speaker 3: you organize them based on sort of like broad categories
Speaker 3: and so on, ideas that are similar to each other
Speaker 3: and so on. And then once you have these clumps
Speaker 3: and you go ahead and label them and those become
Speaker 3: your chapters. And then once you have the chapters and
Speaker 3: you think about, okay, what makes the most sense to
Speaker 3: take them on this journey? This is the journey part
Speaker 3: that you're talking about, where okay, we have these overall
Speaker 3: large ideas that you need to take them from A
Speaker 3: to B. Okay, what like what's the sequencing that makes
Speaker 3: sense so that they'll be able to get it and
Speaker 3: arrive at the place that that you want them to.
Speaker 3: You don't necessarily want to start, for example, with something
Speaker 3: very complicated that's maybe a later chapter, but something that
Speaker 3: gets them in, you know, puts them through that journey
Speaker 3: where they can sort of end where you want them
Speaker 3: to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you kind of figure out where you're taking
Speaker 1: them after you've sort of done the brain dump and
Speaker 1: put everything there, rather than doing that first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And because in a sense, the book sort of
Speaker 3: emerges out of the ideas that you need to convey.
Speaker 3: And you know, if you if you try to sort
Speaker 3: of like program it too much, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe that that sort of thing works much better
Speaker 3: in fiction or something like that. But at least for
Speaker 3: you know, the specific goal that you have, you know,
Speaker 3: some some level of thinking about like what what sort
Speaker 3: of journey are they going to take? Does come into play,
Speaker 3: you know, during the process, and you can you can
Speaker 3: adjust certain things. So for example, when we were doing
Speaker 3: Thank God for Bitcoin, the the journey that we wanted
Speaker 3: them to go on is sort of like the Chrystal
Speaker 3: Christological sort of journey, right, Like there's the corruption that
Speaker 3: first happens, and then the the corruption. Uh uh, there's
Speaker 3: the corruption, the creation, corruption, and redemption. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a it's the entire redemption arc. That made sense because
Speaker 3: of all the ideas that we wanted to put in there.
Speaker 3: So we wanted to uh inform everyone about like inflation,
Speaker 3: the federal reserve and like the immorality of money and
Speaker 3: things like that, and but also like how it corrupts
Speaker 3: all of these things at a societal level, at an
Speaker 3: individual level, even at church level. And then finally bring
Speaker 3: in the redemption element, which is the last two chapters
Speaker 3: about bitcoin, and that arc worked out, and that's sort
Speaker 3: of like a template. I don't know if you've heard
Speaker 3: of like the story with Many Faces or something like that.
Speaker 3: There's only like, you know, eleven or twelve arc types
Speaker 3: of stories in the world or something like that, and
Speaker 3: every book can more or less be fit into one
Speaker 3: of those. So you can sort of fit that in
Speaker 3: after you've you know, got the material and take readers
Speaker 3: sort of on that same journey.
Speaker 2: It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I like that. And do you follow that same approach
Speaker 1: whether you're writing on your own or with a group.
Speaker 1: Are you still you would do it on your own
Speaker 1: or then you have the group sort of do it
Speaker 1: and then you kind of you bring it together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. For the group one, it has to be more structured,
Speaker 3: just because you're having to coordinate a lot more people
Speaker 3: and having them do certain things, and they need very
Speaker 3: specific instructions so that you come out having sort of
Speaker 3: like a coherent voice. Individually, it's a little bit looser,
Speaker 3: and I found myself actually like having trouble with that
Speaker 3: art or how to present this material in a coherent way.
Speaker 3: And I, at least for this particular book, I had
Speaker 3: to go change the structure like two or three times
Speaker 3: before I finally found one that I really liked.
Speaker 1: And I got to cut you off there, Jimmy, we
Speaker 1: got to take a very short break. If you're just
Speaker 1: tune in, you're listening to the Mark Mass Show, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting down with Jimmy Song. He wrote a new book
Speaker 1: called How FIAT Ruins Everything, How our Financial System is rigged,
Speaker 1: and how Bitcoin fixes It. We're gonna come back and
Speaker 1: after a very short break and find out exactly how
Speaker 1: FIAT ruins everything, what is it ruining, how it's doing that,
Speaker 1: and so much more.
Speaker 2: Don't go hey, We'll be right back, all right, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: If you're just tune in, you're listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: Mass Show, I'm sitting down with Jimmy Song, and we
Speaker 1: are talking about his brand new book, Fiat Ruins Everything,
Speaker 1: How our Financial System is rigged, and how Bitcoin fixes it.
Speaker 1: We were talking about his book writing process. He's written
Speaker 1: five books, and so I just was curious about that
Speaker 1: as someone who's written my own book and want to
Speaker 1: write more, and maybe this might.
Speaker 2: Inspire you as well.
Speaker 1: But Jimmy, let's just dig into that Fiat ruins everything.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty big statement. So what is it ruining
Speaker 1: and how is it ruining it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's ruining things at all different levels of society.
Speaker 3: I would say it at the individual level, it impedes
Speaker 3: our ability to save, and that changes sort of the
Speaker 3: incentives all at the individual level, because we don't have
Speaker 3: very good savings vehicles. So, for example, a lot more
Speaker 3: money goes into stocks and real estate than would in
Speaker 3: a free market, just because people don't want to be
Speaker 3: losing money at a rapid clip as their currency debasis.
Speaker 3: So that that's one small way, but many other ways
Speaker 3: as well. At the next level, up at the company level,
Speaker 3: we have giant corporations instead of I guess more human
Speaker 3: sized enterprises. There's something called Dunbar's number where you can't
Speaker 3: really know more than about one hundred and fifty people
Speaker 3: before you know, your brain kind of can't handle it.
Speaker 3: But most organizations are way past that one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty mark, and most organizations are very inefficient as a result. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I explore in the book about why it
Speaker 3: is that we have these very large corporations like City Bank,
Speaker 3: I think is like fifty thousand people or something ridiculous
Speaker 3: that works, like even yeah, IBM's even bigger, it's like
Speaker 3: three hundred thousand or something like that. There's what are
Speaker 3: all these people doing? How do they even you know,
Speaker 3: keep up with what they're doing and so on. So
Speaker 3: the incentives at the corporate level, you know, especially with
Speaker 3: respect to entrepreneurship and inventiveness and stuff, are all skewed
Speaker 3: as a result of the money. And of course, at
Speaker 3: the government level, there's all kinds of weird incentives at play,
Speaker 3: mostly around the government being able to print their own moneies,
Speaker 3: which is essentially stealth taxation, so they can essentially do
Speaker 3: a lot of things to stay empower a regimes in
Speaker 3: the past that not and that's ultimately meant a loss
Speaker 3: of a lot of freedom, a loss of a lot
Speaker 3: of property, and so on. And finally, at the global level,
Speaker 3: you have essentially the dollar hegemony, meaning that there's the
Speaker 3: world is dominated by the US and the Federal Reserve,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of global policy that gets set
Speaker 3: at that level as a result of the power of
Speaker 3: the dollar.
Speaker 2: So let's break a couple of those down.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, it sounds like maybe the big
Speaker 1: one is that it just sort of changes the incentive structures.
Speaker 1: And you've sort of maybe lined out a bunch of
Speaker 1: the incentive structures that it changes sort of throughout that
Speaker 1: whole process. I guess the ability to print money, fee
Speaker 1: at money, create money, then change the incentive structure. So
Speaker 1: you talked about on a personal level, we're not able
Speaker 1: to save. So if we think about just that for itself,
Speaker 1: like we want to work and we want to earn,
Speaker 1: and we want to be able to save so that
Speaker 1: we can then use that for future consumption. But when
Speaker 1: we're not able to do that, then that changes our
Speaker 1: incentive structure. So what you throughout now we're going into
Speaker 1: stocks or one into real estate, things like that. One
Speaker 1: thing I've thought about in regards to that is that
Speaker 1: really the way capitalisms work and a lot of the
Speaker 1: wealth has been developed, is that we have specialization and
Speaker 1: so I should become the best brain surgeon, and you
Speaker 1: should become the best physicist or whatever. But because we
Speaker 1: can't reliably save now, I can't just be the best
Speaker 1: brain surgeon. Half of my time now has to become
Speaker 1: an investor as well. Potentially we've had this massive brain
Speaker 1: drain that we can't even probably calculate.
Speaker 2: But if all of if everybody.
Speaker 1: Could have focused one hundred percent on their core specialization, maybe.
Speaker 2: The world would have been better. Maybe the world would
Speaker 2: have progressed faster or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it would be a lot more efficient.
Speaker 3: First of all, if you didn't have to work for
Speaker 3: your money twice. I liken it too like a treadmill
Speaker 3: where you have to run to stay in the same place.
Speaker 3: And this is that investment portion that you were taughtalking about.
Speaker 3: If you want to save at all, you have to
Speaker 3: play this game, and you you were forced to invest
Speaker 3: more or less gamble in many ways on the markets
Speaker 3: in order to keep your money. And uh, you know,
Speaker 3: for a lot of people, if you think about it,
Speaker 3: at least in the past, under sound money, the wealth
Speaker 3: accumulated to the people that provided the most value to society.
Speaker 3: So if you made a new widget that did something
Speaker 3: interesting or help people in some concrete way, then you
Speaker 3: you got a lot of wealth allocated towards you because
Speaker 3: you were able to sell those goods and services to
Speaker 3: people and they would give you money, and that meant
Speaker 3: that you're a pretty productive person in society. Nowadays, a
Speaker 3: lot of people are rent seekers, but even if you
Speaker 3: are very productive and you are able to, you know,
Speaker 3: gather a lot of money as a result of providing
Speaker 3: goods and services, well, you can't put as much energy
Speaker 3: into that anymore. You have to put a lot of
Speaker 3: energy into keeping your money. So we've taken a lot
Speaker 3: of the most productive members of society and you've essentially
Speaker 3: made them into investors. And I'm sure you've seen this
Speaker 3: mark where you have a lot of venture capitals, for example,
Speaker 3: that are former founders. Right, instead of creating new companies,
Speaker 3: they end up having to invest because they don't want
Speaker 3: to lose the money that they've made, so they're they're
Speaker 3: continuously looking for other opportunities and so on.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be almost like a form of multiplication though,
Speaker 1: So like they could go create one new company, but
Speaker 1: if they become an investor, they could help fifty new
Speaker 1: companies launch.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I under a sound money, maybe that
Speaker 3: that would work. On their fiat money. Most of the
Speaker 3: money that's being invested ends up being newly printed. And
Speaker 3: because there's no direct pain that you feel. So if
Speaker 3: you're an entrepreneur, you go, you go and raise money
Speaker 3: from a bunch of ecs. You're essentially spending other people's money,
Speaker 3: and you know there's but it's.
Speaker 1: Money that they had created previously, right, So that's I
Speaker 1: mean all the time based investment, right, Well.
Speaker 3: It could be, but it's also oftentimes debt based investment.
Speaker 3: So a lot of the time what happens is, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure you're you're very well aware of how these
Speaker 3: games work. Is you say you have like a ten
Speaker 3: million dollar asset. You have a home somewhere right like
Speaker 3: you have. You have a ten million dollar asset, You
Speaker 3: don't want to liquidate it because you think it's a
Speaker 3: good investment, but you have some other opportunities that you
Speaker 3: want to invest in. What do you do? Well, you
Speaker 3: take out a loan against your house, right, Like you
Speaker 3: have a ten million dollar asset, can easily get five
Speaker 3: million dollars. You take the five million that's created out
Speaker 3: of thin air, and you use that to go invest
Speaker 3: in other other things. This is how FIAT investment has
Speaker 3: been for a very long time, is that the rich
Speaker 3: people can multiply, you know, the the leverage on whatever
Speaker 3: wealth they have because they have access to loans. And
Speaker 3: this is the money that often goes into these venture
Speaker 3: funds and so on. I mean, this isn't you know,
Speaker 3: savings from their bank account. It's almost always like some
Speaker 3: sort of loan or some r play based on the
Speaker 3: assets that they already have. I mean, once in a while,
Speaker 3: yeah you do, you do get cash and things like that,
Speaker 3: but it's almost always loans. And the people that get
Speaker 3: the richest are the ones that are able to most
Speaker 3: effectively leverage so you know hedge funds and you know
Speaker 3: investment banks and so on. What they do is they
Speaker 3: get fifty sixty, one hundred x on their money through
Speaker 3: the shadow banking system. And of course when they win
Speaker 3: and you know, you get twelve BIPs on a trade,
Speaker 3: you know that ends up one hundred xing, so that's
Speaker 3: really like ten point two percent or whatever. And they
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: Money is free. Yeah, money, the money is free.
Speaker 3: You get you get all of these bad incentives and
Speaker 3: you get you get entrepreneurs that don't that are focused
Speaker 3: more on getting to sort of like the next level
Speaker 3: of a company, largely like being unicorns or whatever, rather
Speaker 3: than actually providing value. Most startups don't make any money.
Speaker 3: I mean, Amazon, I think has never paid a divid
Speaker 3: and then thirty years of history, like what does that
Speaker 3: say like the entire incentive structure is off because of
Speaker 3: this presence of newly printed money that can always come in.
Speaker 1: If you're just tune in your listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: Maus Show, I'm sitting down with Jimmy Song, the author
Speaker 1: of the new book called FIAT Ruins Everything and how
Speaker 1: our Financial System is rigged. And we're going to take
Speaker 1: a very short break, but after we come back, I
Speaker 1: want to find out how it's actually being rigged against us,
Speaker 1: maybe some things that we can do, and how we
Speaker 1: can fix it.
Speaker 2: We're back with more a minute. Don't go away, beer back,
Speaker 2: all right, welcome back.
Speaker 1: If you just tune in your listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: mass Show, we're talking with Jimmy Song, the author of
Speaker 1: the new book FIAT Ruins Everything and How our Financial
Speaker 1: System is rigged. And we were just talking about how
Speaker 1: FIAT is ruining everything. It ruins incentive structures, it ruins
Speaker 1: sort of the balance of power when we go into investments,
Speaker 1: we're not on the even playing field. And I guess
Speaker 1: that sort of then goes into the next point, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: of your book and the title of how our Financial
Speaker 1: System is Rigged, and you talked about how before the break.
Speaker 2: You were just talking about how you know a lot
Speaker 2: of these big.
Speaker 1: Vcs et cetera, These big investors are using debt, they
Speaker 1: have access to capital that maybe we don't have. And
Speaker 1: so is that what you mean, like how it's rigged?
Speaker 1: Or is it because they have heavier influence I guess
Speaker 1: the Cantalon effect they have they're closer to the money supply.
Speaker 1: Or is it that most people just don't understand how
Speaker 1: the financial system worked, and so if they you made
Speaker 1: the point earlier, were forced to play. And so if
Speaker 1: you're forced to play a game that you don't understand,
Speaker 1: is that what you mean by being rigged?
Speaker 3: Well, I would say it's rigged more in the former
Speaker 3: sense of the Cantalan effect. So all money in central
Speaker 3: bank back Fiat monetary system is created through loans. So
Speaker 3: essentially one way to measure how much privilege you have
Speaker 3: in this sort of economy is how much access do
Speaker 3: you have to loans? Right? Like how much can you
Speaker 3: get into debt? And the weird thing is the richer
Speaker 3: you are, generally, the more debt you're in, and the
Speaker 3: more leverage you have, and the more you're able to
Speaker 3: get very favorable terms. I was reading that is that
Speaker 3: a bad thing though, Jimmy, it is because it's all
Speaker 3: newly created money. Right, So if anytime you have more
Speaker 3: money coming into the economy, essentially you're stealing from everyone else. Now,
Speaker 3: the biggest culprit by far is the federal government, and
Speaker 3: you can tell by the budget. I think the latest
Speaker 3: numbers say that already this year we're about two trillion
Speaker 3: in the whole with respect to the federal deficit that
Speaker 3: just created this year. But a lot of that money is,
Speaker 3: you know, like where does it come from. It comes
Speaker 3: from the federal reserve. It's created out of thin era,
Speaker 3: and it goes on the balance sheet as part of
Speaker 3: the federal deficit and so on.
Speaker 1: But doesn't matter where the debt comes from.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, like Misas talks about two types of credit, you
Speaker 1: have commodity credit and circulation credit. So commodity credit comes
Speaker 1: out of my savings. So let's just say, for example,
Speaker 1: I grew ten bushels of wheat, I sell eight bush
Speaker 1: of wheat. One of the bushels I'm gonna give to
Speaker 1: you on credit. Yeah, so now that's that's increased your
Speaker 1: purchasing power. But it came from my you know, my
Speaker 1: delayed gratification, if you will, right versus circulation credit is
Speaker 1: where money is just created. So there's a big difference
Speaker 1: in types of credits.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that and that that's exactly the difference between
Speaker 3: BLOCKFIE and unchained capital. Right. Unchained capital it's money that
Speaker 3: is actually there and it is out of someone's savings,
Speaker 3: and there's an opportunity cost to that money because the
Speaker 3: people lending that money out would otherwise have to have
Speaker 3: the opportunity elsewhere to go get it. Whereas whereas the
Speaker 3: loans that we're talking about, the cantal On effect, it
Speaker 3: has no opportunity costs. It can it's literally created out
Speaker 3: of nothing, so you you you are able to expand
Speaker 3: the money supply that way, and that that's how you
Speaker 3: can kind of measure the bridge that these uh, these
Speaker 3: players have. And you know, like socially speaking, like why
Speaker 3: why our Vanguard and Blackrock, why why do they have
Speaker 3: so much influence over everything? Why why are they able
Speaker 3: to give ESG and d I mandates to companies? Is
Speaker 3: because they have enormous leverage. They have access to loans,
Speaker 3: and they they they can bankrupt any stock that they want.
Speaker 1: They they're used there and they're using everybody's money against it, right,
Speaker 1: They've taken over the pension funds and weaponize people's money
Speaker 1: against them. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's that's the thing. If you have access
Speaker 3: to the money, then you you essentially have a lot
Speaker 3: of power. So we most people don't have the access
Speaker 3: that like a black Rock has to shadow banking and
Speaker 3: one hundred x leverage and things like that. Most people
Speaker 3: have very little. In fact, one of the few ways
Speaker 3: that most people have of get tapping into the monetary
Speaker 3: spigot is through mortgages and student loans and low and
Speaker 3: those are two of the places where prices have gone crazy, right,
Speaker 3: Like you try to attend college or buy a house,
Speaker 3: they're completely unaffordable. And that's where you're going to feel
Speaker 3: that inflation the most is where the loans come in.
Speaker 3: This is specifically the Cantalon effect and action, because these
Speaker 3: are the places where people are allowed to take out
Speaker 3: loans that come from nothing, and the prices of those
Speaker 3: tend to go up tremendously as a result.
Speaker 1: But is this sort of like you said earlier, like
Speaker 1: we're forced to play the.
Speaker 2: Game whether we want to or not. And I hate that.
Speaker 2: I hate that, Like I drove down.
Speaker 1: I remember a couple mons ago, I was driving down
Speaker 1: my main street here in town, and I did all
Speaker 1: these shop owners and I just I felt sorry for
Speaker 1: them because I'm like, they have no idea what's about
Speaker 1: to happen to them? Most of them don't, right, And
Speaker 1: where the FED creates all this money and creates this
Speaker 1: artificial boom, and then they suck the money out and
Speaker 1: then they create this bust. And most people are caught
Speaker 1: off sides on this. And if they don't play the game,
Speaker 1: if they don't grow rapidly and this time of growth.
Speaker 2: They're going to fall d So their purchasing power will
Speaker 2: be lost.
Speaker 1: If they don't grow, if they don't add new locations
Speaker 1: and buy new trucks and hire new people, they get
Speaker 1: left behind. So they're forced to play, but if they don't,
Speaker 1: But if they don't play, they get left behind. So
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, I think that's kind of what
Speaker 1: you're framing up. We're forced to play this game. So
Speaker 1: if that's the case, I mean, we all have access
Speaker 1: to the credit and the debt, and so if I
Speaker 1: need to grow my business, why do you think it's
Speaker 1: wrong for me to take on debt to add that
Speaker 1: new location to get those trucks for my crews to
Speaker 1: go out there and work and things like that.
Speaker 3: Well, it's hard to make a moral judgment on a
Speaker 3: lot of that stuff. But I would say that every
Speaker 3: time you dilute the monetary you know, purchasing power of
Speaker 3: somebody that is essentially an observing third party or whatever,
Speaker 3: I think it's wrong. And the thing is it may
Speaker 3: be very good for you specifically. It's certainly good for
Speaker 3: the bank because they're able to collect interests. The you know,
Speaker 3: trick of economics is figuring out, all right, what are
Speaker 3: all of the unseen effects, what's actually going on the
Speaker 3: you know, it might have seemed great that you got
Speaker 3: PPP loans, for example, during the pandemic, but what were
Speaker 3: the unseen effects? So all the business benefited, the government benefited,
Speaker 3: you know, the people that were your customers benefited. Who lost, Well,
Speaker 3: the people that lost were the people that were holding
Speaker 3: the dollar. And we saw massive, massive inflation. And it's
Speaker 3: not necessarily people in the US that it got hurt
Speaker 3: the most. It's people in the developing countries. It's people
Speaker 3: the orphan in North Korea that's unable to buy rice
Speaker 3: because prices just doubled in the black market in North Korea.
Speaker 3: That's who it's hurting. So I would say, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one benefit that we have in the United
Speaker 1: States is that because the dollars the reserve currency of
Speaker 1: the world. Yes, inflation has been very bad here in
Speaker 1: the US, but it's much worse in other nations, like
Speaker 1: Jimmy's pointing out, and so we're shipping a lot of
Speaker 1: that pain overseas, which is why we're seeing so much
Speaker 1: pain happening. I mean, there's a bunch of reasons. It's
Speaker 1: a very very complicated situation, but I think it really
Speaker 1: comes down to the type of credit, right, so back
Speaker 1: to that circulation versus commodity credit, and it's a very
Speaker 1: complicated situation. I think about it like if because of
Speaker 1: the system we're in, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: how this system can get fixed, and I believe there's
Speaker 1: a much better version of the system that we have.
Speaker 2: But in the system that we.
Speaker 1: Have, if home a bunch of homes got built and
Speaker 1: they need landscaping, well, I want to expand my landscaping business.
Speaker 1: So I want to go provide value to them by
Speaker 1: doing their lawns. I need to go buy more trucks
Speaker 1: to get my people out there. I'll take on credit
Speaker 1: to get those trucks. But now all those auto workers
Speaker 1: at Forward that just got their pay raise are benefited
Speaker 1: because now there's more trucks that need to be built. Right.
Speaker 1: So it sort of does add into the economy, but
Speaker 1: it's all baked on wrong incentives, malinvestment and things like that. Right, So,
Speaker 1: even though there is incremental gains, the probably cost benefit
Speaker 1: analysis of it it is that in the long run
Speaker 1: it probably does more harm than it does good. I
Speaker 1: guess this is sort of the point that we want
Speaker 1: to make, and so I agree. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: what I hear Jeff Booth talk about all the time.
Speaker 1: It's like it's hard to understand this new system when
Speaker 1: we're stuck in the existing system that we have today,
Speaker 1: and so we're kind of stuck playing a game based
Speaker 1: off of these rules that we see. But it could
Speaker 1: be much better and it could be much more prosperous
Speaker 1: for everybody in this new system. So that's what I
Speaker 1: want to talk about next. I'm gonna take a very
Speaker 1: quick break, but I'm gonna be right back with Jimmy
Speaker 1: Song with more.
Speaker 2: So don't go away. We'll be right back, all right,
Speaker 2: Welcome back.
Speaker 1: If you just tune in, you're listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: Mass Show sitting down with Jimmy Song, the author of
Speaker 1: the new book Fiat Ruins Everything, How our financial system
Speaker 1: is rigged, and how Bitcoin fixes it.
Speaker 2: Check it out. It's on Amazon. We'll put in the
Speaker 2: show notes down below.
Speaker 1: But Jimmy, so we were talking about, you know, these
Speaker 1: incentive structures and how we're kind of stuck playing this game,
Speaker 1: whether you like it or not.
Speaker 2: We're sort of forced to play it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I suppose you can opt out, but then
Speaker 1: you just fall further and further behind. But the third
Speaker 1: part of the title of your book, viet ruins Everything.
Speaker 1: Our fine system is riggan, How Bitcoin fixed this? Talk
Speaker 1: about how Bitcoin fixes this. We often throw out Bitcoin
Speaker 1: fixes everything, I guess, fix the money, fix the world.
Speaker 2: But what are you thinking about in this part here?
Speaker 3: Well, so what Bitcoin fixes are really the incentives at play.
Speaker 3: So we have a lot of corrupt incentives. For example,
Speaker 3: you've pointed out several just in that last monologue there
Speaker 3: about you know, how we can't really save anymore, so
Speaker 3: we're forced to become sort of investors slash gamblers, and
Speaker 3: you know this economy that oftentimes that we don't really
Speaker 3: understand very well. There's also corporations who are incentivized to
Speaker 3: grow bigger and bigger so they can get bailouts and
Speaker 3: get access to that cantal on money. There's incentives at
Speaker 3: the national level where every country uses the money spigot
Speaker 3: to stay in power, and it becomes a very corrupting
Speaker 3: influence and causes a lot of friction in the entire economy.
Speaker 3: You get a lot of malinvestment and so on. And
Speaker 3: of course you have the US domination at the global level,
Speaker 3: which is the result of the ability to print the
Speaker 3: world reserve currency. So all of those incentives start going
Speaker 3: away as soon as you introduce the sound money. And
Speaker 3: the beauty of bitcoin is that you don't need systematic change.
Speaker 3: It's something that each individual can do one at a time.
Speaker 3: So instead of you know, having some political action committee
Speaker 3: lobby for a return to the gold standard and eliminating
Speaker 3: the FED, you just opt out by buying bitcoin and
Speaker 3: going on a bitcoin standard and using that as your savings,
Speaker 3: and by doing that you are no longer susceptible to
Speaker 3: sort of the whims of the central bankers when they
Speaker 3: dilute things by thirty percent through more money printing, you're
Speaker 3: not affected because your bitcoin is sound. So having that
Speaker 3: essentially changes things not just at the individual level, but
Speaker 3: also at the corporate level. You get smaller companies, you
Speaker 3: get people that are much more like low time preference.
Speaker 3: You get countries that have to use explicit taxation instead
Speaker 3: of the stealth tax of inflation. So government has to shrink,
Speaker 3: and the world isn't dominated by the US, and the
Speaker 3: US doesn't have doesn't end up engaging itself in wars
Speaker 3: halfway around the globe pretty much every decade. Right Instead
Speaker 3: of that, you have you have nations that are sovereign
Speaker 3: that can try various things, and instead of corrupt institutions
Speaker 3: like the World Bank and the IMF, you have countries
Speaker 3: that are trying their own thing and you know, developing
Speaker 3: their own economies instead of being subservient to the needs
Speaker 3: of the Western world.
Speaker 1: One of the best things I think about in regards
Speaker 1: to that is, you know, you talk about the individual level.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that, but when you
Speaker 1: when you think about bigger on the corporate level, but
Speaker 1: really even like the government level, that ability to print
Speaker 1: that money allows them to entrench these positions that they
Speaker 1: have and there's no consequence. And so what we see,
Speaker 1: unfortunately is just government policies seem to get more and
Speaker 1: more stupid, more idiotic. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: specifically is doing things that fail and then just doing
Speaker 1: them over and over and over over again because there's
Speaker 1: no consequence. And so something that Alex and I wrote
Speaker 1: in our book, the on Commress Manifesto, we talk about
Speaker 1: how bitcoin will bring back a system that has a
Speaker 1: true cost of consequence, and so this hierarchical ladder to
Speaker 1: success becomes fluid where people don't just go up and
Speaker 1: then use money to stay there. If theyre's true skin
Speaker 1: in the game, if there's true consequence, with a sound
Speaker 1: money standard, they'll fall and then they'll come to the
Speaker 1: bottom and make room at the top for new people.
Speaker 1: And you started to get this like organic process of
Speaker 1: competition that develops as opposed to governments such as get bigger, bigger, bigger,
Speaker 1: and continue to print more and more money. And so
Speaker 1: certainly that seems to be one of the biggest changes.
Speaker 1: And you know, with with something like culture, they say
Speaker 1: it's set from the top down, and so really we
Speaker 1: need the governments to change and that will sort of
Speaker 1: change this whole process. But going back to this individual level, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: you talked about we don't need this power on how
Speaker 1: to tellusis we can just sort of pull out. We
Speaker 1: can start with change within ourselves. You wrote another book
Speaker 1: called Thank God for Bitcoin. You reference that one of
Speaker 1: my favorite books. I've gifted it so many times, So
Speaker 1: everyone listening should check out that book, thank God for Bitcoin.
Speaker 2: But I saw this.
Speaker 1: I saw this tweet from Pastor Coin came out the
Speaker 1: other day and he was talking about why he thinks
Speaker 1: so many people that maybe have come into the bitcoin
Speaker 1: space have then came into Christianity, and he said, bitcoin
Speaker 1: is not some spiritual entity or illumination. It's just software
Speaker 1: running a computer. It's not bitcoin that produces this experience.
Speaker 1: It's the revelation of objective truth. That's the real rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: People ask questions like if this is true, what else
Speaker 1: is true? And then that typically leads people back to
Speaker 1: the church in the Bible, where there's truth.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, And the way I describe it is little
Speaker 3: tea truth always leads to the big TA truth. And
Speaker 3: the thing about FIAT money is that it is able
Speaker 3: to subsist on lines, right, Like, the money doesn't exist,
Speaker 3: it's all based on Okay, we're going to pretend that
Speaker 3: we have more money even when we don't. Right, This
Speaker 3: was the original sin of fractional reserve banking FIAT lets.
Speaker 3: You sort of suspend reality as much as possible. You
Speaker 3: alluded to it even at the corporate and national levels,
Speaker 3: where all these entities use it to stay in power
Speaker 3: when really they don't deserve it. In any meritocracy they
Speaker 3: would fail. But in under sound money, what you get
Speaker 3: are real market incentives and meritocracy winning and so on.
Speaker 3: The better product wins instead of an inferior product with
Speaker 3: a lot of regulatory modes and so on. So as
Speaker 3: people get into coin, they are essentially slap with the truth. Right, Okay,
Speaker 3: here is how the actual monetary system works. And the
Speaker 3: thing about truth is that it's a little bit. It's
Speaker 3: things a little when you first find out, especially when
Speaker 3: you find out that you've been benefiting from a lot
Speaker 3: of the lies or whatever. But once you get into truth,
Speaker 3: it really tastes really good, right, Like, because there's so
Speaker 3: much explanatory power, there's knowledge that you're gaining and you
Speaker 3: see the world much more clearly, and you can explain
Speaker 3: things and predict things much better because you have a
Speaker 3: much better mental model of the world. And really, as
Speaker 3: human beings, what you want to be able to do
Speaker 3: is have a good model of the world so you
Speaker 3: can interact with the world in a reasonable way. And
Speaker 3: that's what tastes really good. And I think that's what
Speaker 3: ultimately leads a lot of people towards the big truth,
Speaker 3: which is God and you know, phil and metaphysics and
Speaker 3: all of that stuff, which eventually I think leads everyone
Speaker 3: towards uh, towards Christ. And and that's that's what we've
Speaker 3: seen in this Not everyone's, you know, all the way
Speaker 3: a Christ yet, but I've seen so many people in
Speaker 3: this space that are on various parts of that journey
Speaker 3: that are looking at these things and saying, Okay, what
Speaker 3: is the basis of my morality? How should I raise kids?
Speaker 3: And these are all things that you start thinking about
Speaker 3: when you focus on the long term, when you're when
Speaker 3: you lower your time preference as you can through savings,
Speaker 3: through sound money, through a bitcoin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean we if you just think about this just
Speaker 1: from an objective lens or just a rational lens, Like
Speaker 1: we need something to build our truth on, Like we
Speaker 1: need we need the rock, right, we can't build our
Speaker 1: house on the sand. We need our We need to
Speaker 1: build our house on the rock. And maybe if that's
Speaker 1: the best rock or not, that's a different discussion. But
Speaker 1: you still need to anchor on something because everything is relative, right,
Speaker 1: and so if we're comparing one thing to the next,
Speaker 1: like what are we comparing it to? So we need
Speaker 1: that source of truth. And I thought that was a
Speaker 1: really good article. And I love how you say that
Speaker 1: the little tea. So the little tea's the little truth
Speaker 1: that you start building, sort of start adding up and
Speaker 1: eventually you get to, Okay, what's the big truth that's
Speaker 1: out there? And bitcoin as itself, as you said, isn't money.
Speaker 2: It's just it's a ledger. It's an honest ledger, right,
Speaker 2: and that's something big anyway.
Speaker 1: If you're just tuning, listen too the Mark Mas Show
Speaker 1: be sitting down with Jimmy Song. He's the author of
Speaker 1: this brand new book we've been discussing called How FIAT
Speaker 1: Ruins Everything and financial system is rigged and Bitcoin fixes
Speaker 1: it well. Link in the show notes below.
Speaker 2: Make sure to get it.
Speaker 1: Leave them a review on Amazon if you like it,
Speaker 1: and that's what we got. Thanks Jimmy, appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you.