April 28, 2024 • 40 mins
"The isolated interference brought about a condition which, from the point of view of the government, is even more undesirable than the previous state of affairs which the government wanted to alter. And as the government goes farther and farther, it will finally arrive at a point where all prices, all wage rates, all interest rates, in short, everything in the whole economic system, is determined by the government. And this, clearly, is socialism." - Ludwig von Mises
In this Austrian Audible episode of THE Bitcoin Podcast, Walker reads Lecture 3: INTERVENTIONISM, from Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow by Ludwig von Mises, AKA Mises Six Lessons
Each of the six Mises lectures will be released as it's own episode in the coming weeks. Make sure to subscribe to "THE Bitcoin Podcast" wherever you listen or watch.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The isolated interference brought about a condition which, from the point of view of the government,
(00:06):
is even more undesirable than the previous state of affairs which the government wanted to alter.
And as the government goes farther and farther, it will finally arrive at a point where all prices,
all wage rates, all interest rates, in short, everything in the whole economic system,
is determined by the government. And this, clearly, is socialism.
(00:40):
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast.
The Bitcoin time chain is 841256 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
Today's episode is Austrian Audible. I'll be reading the third of Ludwig von Mises' six lectures
(01:00):
and the topic today is interventionism. If this is your first time listening to the Bitcoin podcast,
consider going back to the previous episodes on capitalism and socialism and listening to those
first. I believe these lessons from Mises are best experience in the order in which they were
originally delivered, but of course it's up to you, Bitcoin doesn't care. You can download the
(01:23):
PDF of economic policy, thoughts for today and tomorrow by Ludwig von Mises, in the show notes.
What I love about these lectures from Mises is that even though they were delivered in 1959,
they're still incredibly relevant today. Like all great wisdom, they are timeless.
As you listen to today's lesson on interventionism, I encourage you to think about the rampant
(01:48):
government intervention in our world today and what the short and long term effects of this
widespread interventionism will be. Please share these Austrian Audible lessons with your friends,
family and strangers on the internet who can benefit from the knowledge of real economics,
as taught by Mises and the Austrian school. You can find the links to watch or listen to the show
(02:12):
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enjoying the Bitcoin podcast and find it valuable, do me a favor and give the show a five star rating
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fountain.fm, consider giving this show a boost or creating a clip of something you found interesting.
(02:35):
My goal is to create a podcast that brings you value. And so I always appreciate any time I
receive value in return. And if you are a Bitcoin only company looking to sponsor the Bitcoin podcast,
hit me up on social media or by going to Bitcoin podcast.net slash sponsor. Without further ado,
let's get into lesson three from Mises six lessons interventionism.
(03:00):
Economic Policy Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow by Ludwig von Mises. Third lecture.
Interventionism, a famous very often quoted phrase says that government is best which governs least.
(03:23):
I do not believe this to be a correct description of the functions of a good government. Government
ought to do all the things for which it is needed and for which it was established. Government ought
to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of
gangsters. And it should defend the country against foreign enemies. These are the functions of
(03:47):
government within a free system within the system of the market economy under socialism. Of course,
the government is totalitarian. And there is nothing outside its sphere and its jurisdiction.
But in the market economy, the main task of the government is to protect the smooth functioning
of the market economy against fraud or violence from within and from outside the country. People
(04:14):
who do not agree with this definition of the functions of government may say, this man hates
the government. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If I should say that gasoline is a very
useful liquid, useful for many purposes, but that I would nevertheless not drink gasoline,
because I think that would not be the right use for it. I am not an enemy of gasoline,
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and I do not hate gasoline. I only say that gasoline is very useful for certain purposes,
but not fit for other purposes. If I say it is the government's duty to arrest murderers and other
criminals, but not its duty to run the railroads or to spend money on useless things, then I do not
(04:59):
hate the government by declaring that it is fit to do certain things, but not fit to do other things.
It has been said that under present day conditions, we no longer have a free market economy. Under
present day conditions, we have something called the mixed economy. And for evidence of our mixed
economy, people point to the many enterprises which are operated and owned by the government.
(05:25):
The economy is mixed, people say, because there are in many countries, certain institutions like
the telephone, telegraph, and the railroads which are owned and operated by the government,
that some of these institutions and enterprises are operated by the government is certainly true,
but this fact alone does not change the character of our economic system. It does not even mean
(05:49):
there is a little socialism within the otherwise non-socialist free market economy. For the government,
in operating these enterprises, it is subject to the supremacy of the market, which means it is
subject to the supremacy of the consumers. The government, if it operates, let us say, post offices
or railroads, has to hire people who have to work in these enterprises. It also has to buy raw
(06:14):
materials and other things that are needed for the conduct of these enterprises. And on the other
hand, it sells these services or commodities to the public. Yet, even though it operates these
institutions using the methods of the free economic system, the result, as a rule, is a deficit. The
government, however, is in a position to finance such a deficit. At least the members of the
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government and of the ruling party believe so. It is certainly different for an individual.
The individual's power to operate something with a deficit is very limited if the deficit is not
very soon eliminated and if the enterprise does not become profitable or at least show that no
further deficit losses are being incurred. The individual goes bankrupt and the enterprise must
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come to an end. But for the government, conditions are different. The government can run a deficit
because it has the power to tax people and if the taxpayers are prepared to pay higher taxes in order
to make it possible for the government to operate an enterprise at a loss, that is, in a less efficient
way than it would be done by a private institution, and if the public will accept this loss, then of
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course the enterprise will continue. In recent years, governments have increased the number of
nationalized institutions and enterprises in most countries to such an extent that the deficits
have grown far beyond the amount that could be collected in taxes from the citizens. What happens
then is not the subject of today's lecture. It is inflation and I shall deal with that tomorrow.
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I mention this only because the mixed economy must not be confused with the problem of interventionism,
about which I want to talk tonight. What is interventionism? Interventionism means that
the government does not restrict its activity to the preservation of order or, as people used to
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say a hundred years ago, to the production of security. Interventionism means that the government
wants to do more. It wants to interfere with market phenomena. If one objects and says the
government should not interfere with business, people very often answer, but the government
necessarily always interferes. If there are policemen on the street, the government interferes.
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It interferes with a robber looting a shop, or it prevents a man from stealing a car.
But when dealing with interventionism and defining what is meant by interventionism,
we are speaking about government interference with the market, that the government and the police
are expected to protect citizens, which includes businessmen and of course their employees,
(09:05):
against attacks on the part of domestic or foreign gangsters, is in fact a normal, necessary
expectation of any government. Such protection is not an intervention, for the government's
only legitimate function is, precisely, to produce security. What we have in mind when we talk about
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interventionism is the government's desire to do more than prevent assaults and fraud.
Interventionism means that the government not only fails to protect the smooth functioning of the
market economy, but that it interferes with the various market phenomena. It interferes with
prices, with wage rates, interest rates, and profits. The government wants to interfere in order to
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force businessmen to conduct their affairs in a different way than they would have chosen if
they had obeyed only the consumers. Thus, all the measures of interventionism by the government
are directed toward restricting the supremacy of the consumers. The government wants to arrogate
to itself the power, or at least a part of the power, which in the free market economy is in the
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hands of the consumers. Let us consider one example of interventionism, very popular in many countries,
and tried again and again by many governments, especially in times of inflation. I refer to
price control. Governments usually resort to price control when they have inflated the money supply
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and people have begun to complain about the resulting rise in prices. There are many famous
historical examples of price control methods that failed, but I shall refer to only two of them,
because in both cases, the governments were really very energetic in enforcing or trying to enforce
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their price controls. The first famous example is the case of the Roman emperor Diocletian,
very well known as the last of those Roman emperors who persecuted the Christians. The Roman emperor
in the second part of the third century had only one financial method, and this was currency debasement.
In those primitive ages, before the invention of the printing press, even inflation was,
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let us say, primitive. It involved debasement of the coinage, especially the silver. The government
mixed more and more copper into the silver until the color of the silver coins was changed,
and the weight was reduced considerably. The result of this coinage debasement and the associated
increase in the quantity of money was an increase in prices, followed by an edict to control prices,
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and Roman emperors were not very mild when they enforced a law. They did not consider death to
mild a punishment for a man who had asked for a higher price. They enforced price control,
but they failed to maintain the society. The result was the disintegration of the Roman empire
and the system of the division of labor. Then, 1500 years later, the same currency debasement
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took place during the French Revolution, but this time a different method was used. The technology
for producing money was considerably improved. It was no longer necessary for the French to resort
to debasement of the coinage. They had the printing press, and the printing press was very efficient.
(12:37):
Again, the result was an unprecedented rise in prices, but in the French Revolution,
maximum prices were not enforced by the same method of capital punishment which the Emperor
Diocletian had used. There had also been an improvement in the technique of killing citizens.
You all remember the famous Dr. J.I. Guillotine, 1738-1814, who advocated the use of the Guillotine.
(13:05):
Despite the Guillotine, the French also failed with their laws of maximum prices.
When Robb's Pierre himself was carted off to the Guillotine, the people shouted,
Zergo Zedeltimaximum. I wanted to mention this because people often say,
what is needed in order to make price control effective and efficient is merely more brutality
(13:28):
and more energy. Now certainly, Diocletian was very brutal, and so was the French Revolution.
Nevertheless, price control measures in both ages failed entirely. Now, let us analyze the reasons
for this failure. The government hears people complain that the price of milk has gone up,
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and milk is certainly very important, especially for the rising generation, for children.
Consequently, the government declares a maximum price for milk, a maximum price that is lower
than the potential market price would be. Now the government says, certainly we have done
everything needed in order to make it possible for poor parents to buy as much milk as they need
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to feed their children. But what happens? On the one hand, the lower price of milk increases the
demand for milk. People who could not afford to buy milk at a higher price are now able to buy it
at a lower price, which the government has decreed. And on the other hand, some of the producers,
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those producers of milk who are producing at the highest cost, that is the marginal producers,
are now suffering losses because the price which the government has decreed is lower than their
costs. That is the important point in the market economy. The private entrepreneur, the private
producer, cannot take losses in the long run. And as he cannot take losses in milk, he restricts the
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production of milk for the market. He may sell some of his cows for the slaughterhouse, or instead
of milk, he may sell some products made out of milk, for instance, sour cream, butter, or cheese.
Thus, the government's interference with the price of milk will result in less milk than there
was before. And at the same time, there will be a greater demand. Some people who are prepared to
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pay the government to creed price cannot buy it. Another result will be that anxious people will
hurry to be the first at the shops. They have to wait outside. The long lines of people waiting at
the shops always appear as a familiar phenomenon in a city in which the government has decreed
maximum prices for commodities that the government considers as important. This was always prognosticated
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by economists, of course, only by sound economists, and their number is not very great. But what is
the result of the government's price control? The government is disappointed. It wanted to increase
the satisfaction of the milk drinkers. But actually, it has dissatisfied them. Before the government
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interfered, milk was expensive, but people could buy it. Now, there is only an insufficient
quantity of milk available. Therefore, the total consumption of milk drops. The children are
getting less milk, not more. The next measure to which the government now resorts is rationing.
But rationing only means that certain people are privileged and are getting milk, while other people
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are not getting any at all. Who gets milk and who does not, of course, is always very arbitrarily
determined. One order may determine, for example, that children under four years old should get milk,
and that children over four years, or between the age of four and six, should only get half the
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ration which children under four years receive. Whatever the government does, the fact remains,
there is only a smaller amount of milk available. Thus, people are still more dissatisfied than
they were before. Now the government asks the milk producers, because the government does not have
enough imagination to find out for itself. Why do you not produce the same amount of milk you
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produced before? The government gets the answer. We cannot do it, since the costs of production
are higher than the maximum price which the government has established. Now the government
studies the costs of the various items of production and discovers one of the items is fodder.
Oh, says the government. The same control we applied to milk, we will now apply to fodder.
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We will determine a maximum price for fodder, and then you will be able to feed your cows at a lower
price, at a lower expenditure. Then everything will be all right. You will be able to produce more
milk, and you will sell more milk. But what happens now? The same story repeats itself with fodder,
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and as you can understand, for the same reasons, the production of fodder drops,
and the government is again faced with a dilemma. So the government arranges new hearings to find
out what is wrong with fodder production, and it gets an explanation from the producers of fodder
precisely like the one at God from the producers of milk. So the government must go a step farther,
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since it does not want to abandon the principle of price control. It determines maximum prices
for producers goods, which are necessary for the production of fodder. And the same story happens
again. The government at the same time starts controlling not only milk, but also eggs, meat,
and other necessities. And every time the government gets the same result, everywhere,
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the consequence is the same. Once the government fixes a maximum price for consumer goods,
it has to go farther back to producers goods, and limit the prices of the producers goods
required for the production of the price controlled consumer goods. And so the government,
having started with only a few price controls, goes farther and farther back in the process of
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production, fixing maximum prices for all kinds of producers goods, including of course the price
of labor, because without wage control, the government's cost control would be meaningless.
Moreover, the government cannot limit its interference into the market to only those
things which it views as vital necessities, like milk, butter, eggs, and meat. It must necessarily
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include luxury goods, because if it did not limit their prices, capital and labor would abandon the
production of vital necessities, and would turn to producing those things which the government
considers unnecessary luxury goods. Thus, the isolated interference with one or a few prices
of consumer goods always brings about effects, and this is the important part to realize,
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which are even less satisfactory than the conditions that prevailed before.
Before government interfered, milk and eggs were expensive. After the government interfered,
they began to disappear from the market. The government considered those items to be so important
that it interfered. It wanted to increase the quantity and improve the supply. The result
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was the opposite. The isolated interference brought about a condition which, from the point of view
of the government, is even more undesirable than the previous state of affairs which the government
wanted to alter. And as the government goes farther and farther, it will finally arrive at a point
where all prices, all wage rates, all interest rates, in short, everything in the whole economic
(21:03):
system is determined by the government, and this, clearly, is socialism. What I have told you here,
this schematic and theoretical explanation, is precisely what happened in those countries which
tried to enforce a maximum price control, where governments were stubborn enough to go step by
(21:24):
step until they came to the end. This happened in the First World War in Germany and England.
Let us analyze the situation in both countries. Both countries experienced inflation, prices went up,
and the two governments imposed price controls. Government price controls do not work, and are
(21:45):
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Starting with a few prices, starting with only milk and eggs, they had to go farther and farther.
The longer the war went on, the more inflation was generated. And after three years of war,
the Germans, systematically as always, elaborated a great plan. They called it the Hindenburg plan.
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Everything in Germany, considered to be good by the government at that time, was named after
Hindenburg. The Hindenburg plan meant that the whole German economic system should be controlled
by the government. Prices, wages, profits, everything. And the bureaucracy immediately began to put this
into effect. But before they had finished, the debacle came. The German Empire broke down.
(23:26):
The entire bureaucratic apparatus disappeared. The revolution brought its bloody results.
Things came to an end. In England, they started in the same way. But after a time, in the spring of
1917, the United States entered the war and supplied the British with sufficient quantities of everything.
Therefore, the road to socialism, the road to serfdom, was interrupted. Before Hitler came to power,
(23:52):
Chancellor Bruning again introduced price control in Germany for the usual reasons. Hitler enforced it
even before the war started. For in Hitler's Germany, there was no private enterprise or
private initiative. In Hitler's Germany, there was a system of socialism, which differed from the
(24:13):
Russian system only to the extent that the terminology and labels of the free economic system
were still retained. There still existed private enterprises, as they were called. But the owner
was no longer an entrepreneur. The owner was called a shop manager, Betriebsführer. The whole of Germany
(24:34):
was organized in a hierarchy of furs. There was the highest furer, Hitler, of course. And then
there were furs down to the many hierarchies of smaller furs. And the head of an enterprise was
the Betriebsführer. And the workers of the enterprise were named by a word that, in the Middle Ages,
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had signified the retinue of a feudal lord, the Geffelgeschacht. And all of these people had to
obey the orders issued by an institution which had a terribly long name, Reichsführer-Wirthschacht
Ministerium, at the head of which was a well-known fat man named Göring, adorned with jewels and
metals. And from this body of ministers with the long name came all the orders to every enterprise.
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What to produce? In what quantity? Where to get the raw materials? And what to pay for them? To whom
to sell the products? And at what prices to sell them? The workers got the order to work in a
definite factory, and they received wages which the government decreed. The whole economic system
was now regulated in every detail by the government. The Betriebsführer did not have the right to take
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the profits for himself. He received what amounted to a salary. And if he wanted to get more, he would,
for example, say, I am very sick, I need an operation immediately, and the operation will cost 500
mocks. Then he had to ask the Fuhrer of the district, the Gefführer or Galatier, whether he
(26:07):
had the right to take out more than the salary which was given to him. The prices were no longer
prices. The wages were no longer wages. They were all quantitative terms in a system of socialism.
Now, let me tell you how that system broke down. One day after years of fighting, the foreign armies
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arrived in Germany. They tried to preserve the government directed economic system. But the
brutality of Hitler would have been necessary to preserve it. And without this, it did not work.
And while this was going on in Germany, Great Britain, during the Second World War,
did precisely what Germany did. Starting with the price control of some commodities only,
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the British government began step by step in the same way Hitler had done in peacetime,
even before the start of the war, to control more and more of the economy until, by the time the
war ended, they had reached something that was almost pure socialism. Great Britain was not
brought to socialism by the labor movement, which was established in 1945. Great Britain became
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socialist during the war, through the government of which Sir Winston Churchill was the prime minister.
The labor government simply retained the system of socialism, which the government of Sir Winston
Churchill had already introduced. And this is in spite of great resistance by the people. The
nationalizations in Great Britain did not mean very much. The nationalization of the Bank of
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England was merely nominal, because the Bank of England was already under the complete control
of the government. And it was the same with the nationalization of the railroads and the steel
industry. The war socialism, as it was called, meaning the system of interventionism proceeding
step by step, had already virtually nationalized the system. The difference between the German
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and British systems was not important, since the people who operated them had been appointed by
the government, and in both cases, they had to obey the government's orders in every respect.
As I said before, the system of the German Nazis retained the labels and the terms of the
capitalistic free market economy. But they meant something very different. There were now only
(28:31):
government decrees. This was also true for the British system. When the Conservative Party in
Britain was returned to power, some of those controls were removed. In Great Britain, we now
have attempts from one side to retain controls, and from the other side to abolish them. But one
must not forget that in England, conditions are very different from conditions in Russia. The same
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is true for other countries, which depend on the importation of food and raw materials, and therefore
have to export manufactured goods, for countries depending heavily on export trade. A system of
government control simply does not work, thus, as far as there is economic freedom left. And there
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is still substantial freedom in some countries, such as Norway, England, Sweden. It exists because
of the necessity to retain export trade. Earlier, I chose the example of milk, not because I have a
special preference for milk, but because practically all governments, or most of them, in recent decades,
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have regulated milk, egg, or butter prices. I want to refer, in a few words, to another example,
and that is rent control. If the government controls rents, one result is that the people who would
otherwise have moved from bigger apartments to smaller ones when their family conditions changed
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will no longer do so. For example, consider parents whose children left home when they came into their
20s, married, or went into other cities to work. Such parents used to change their apartments and
take smaller and cheaper ones. This necessity disappeared when rent controls were imposed
in Vienna, Austria, in the early 20s, where rent control was well established. The amount of money
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that the landlord received for an average apartment under rent control was not more than twice the
price of a ticket for a ride on the city-owned streetcars. You can imagine that people did not
have any incentive to change their apartments, and on the other hand, there was no construction of new
houses. Similar conditions prevailed in the United States after the Second World War,
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and are continuing in many cities to this day. One of the main reasons why so many cities in the
United States are in such great financial difficulty is that they have rent control
and a resulting shortage of housing. So the government has spent billions for the building
of new houses. But why was there such a housing shortage? The housing shortage developed for the
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same reason that brought milk shortages when there was milk price control. That means when the
government interferes with the market, it is more and more driven towards socialism. And this is the
answer to those people who say, we are not socialists, we do not want the government to control
everything, we realize this is bad. But why should not the government interfere a little bit with
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the market? Why shouldn't the government do away with some things which we do not like?
These people talk of a middle-of-the-road policy. What they do not see is that the isolated
interference, which means the interference with only one small part of the economic system,
brings about a situation which the government itself and the people who are asking for government
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interference find worse than the conditions they wanted to abolish. The people who are asking
for rent control are very angry when they discover there is a shortage of apartments and a shortage
of housing. But this shortage of housing was created precisely by government interference.
By the establishment of rents, below the level people would have had to pay in a free market.
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The idea that there is a third system between socialism and capitalism, as its supporters say.
A system as far away from socialism as it is from capitalism, but that retains the advantages and
avoids the disadvantages of each, is pure nonsense. People who believe there is such a mythical system
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can become really poetic when they praise the glories of interventionism. One can only say
they are mistaken. The government interference which they praise brings about conditions which
they themselves do not like. One of the problems I will deal with later is protectionism. The
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government tries to isolate the domestic market from the world market. It introduces tariffs
which raise the domestic price of a commodity above the world market price, making it possible for
domestic producers to form cartels. The cartels are then attacked by the government declaring,
under these conditions anti-cartel legislation is necessary. This is precisely the situation with
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most of the European governments. In the United States, there are yet other reasons for anti-trust
legislation and the government's campaign against the specter of monopoly. It is absurd to see the
government, which creates by its own intervention the conditions making possible the emergence
of domestic cartels, point its finger at business, saying, there are cartels therefore government
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interference with business is necessary. It would be much simpler to avoid cartels by ending the
government's interference with the market. An interference which makes these cartels possible.
The idea of government interference as a solution to economic problems leads in every country to
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conditions which at least are very unsatisfactory and often quite chaotic. If the government does
not stop in time, it will bring on socialism. Nevertheless, government interference with business
is still very popular. As soon as someone does not like something that happens in the world,
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he says, the government ought to do something about it. What do we have a government for?
The government should do it. And this is a characteristic remnant of thought from past
ages of ages preceding modern freedom, modern constitutional governments, before representative
government or modern republicanism. For centuries, there was a doctrine maintained and accepted by
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everyone that a king, an anointed king, was the messenger of God. He had more wisdom than his
subjects and he had supernatural powers as recently as the beginning of the 19th century.
People suffering from certain diseases expected to be cured by the royal touch,
by the hand of the king. Doctors were usually better. Nevertheless, they had their patients try
(35:24):
the king. This doctrine of the superiority of a paternal government, of the supernatural and
superhuman powers of the hereditary kings gradually disappeared, or at least we thought so.
But it came back again. There was a German professor named Werner Sombard. I knew him very well,
who was known the world over, who was an honorary doctor of many universities, and an honorary member
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of the American Economic Association. That professor wrote a book, which is available in an English
translation published by the Princeton University Press. It is also available in a French translation,
and probably also in Spanish. At least I hope it is available, because then you can check what I am
saying. In this book, published in our century, not in the Dark Ages, Werner Sombard, a professor
(36:16):
of economics, simply says, the Führer, our Führer. He means of course Hitler, gets his orders directly
from God, the Führer of the universe. I spoke of this hierarchy of the Führers earlier, and in this
hierarchy, I mentioned Hitler as the Supreme Führer. But there is, according to Werner Sombard,
(36:40):
a still higher Führer, God, the Führer of the universe. And God, he wrote, gives his orders
directly to Hitler. Of course, Professor Sombard said very modestly, we do not know how God communicates
with the Führer, but the fact cannot be denied. Now, if you hear that such a book can be published
(37:02):
in the German language, the language of a nation which was once hailed as the nation of philosophers
and poets, and if you see it translated into English and French, then you will not be astonished at
the fact that even a little bureaucrat considers himself wiser and better than the citizens,
and wants to interfere with everything, even though he is only a poor little bureaucrat,
(37:28):
and not the famous Professor Werner Sombard, honorary member of everything. Is there a remedy
against such happenings? I would say yes, there is a remedy, and this remedy is the power of the
citizens. They have to prevent the establishment of such an autocratic regime that arrogates to
itself a higher wisdom than that of the average citizen. This is the fundamental difference
(37:54):
between freedom and serfdom. The socialist nations have arrogated to themselves the term
democracy. The Russians call their own system a people's democracy. They probably maintain
that the people are represented in the person of the dictator. I think that one dictator,
Juan Perón, here in Argentina, was given a good answer when he was forced into exile in 1955.
(38:21):
Let us hope that all other dictators in other nations will be accorded a similar response.
And that's a wrap on this Austrian Audible episode of The Bitcoin Podcast. If you are a
(38:42):
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go to at-titcoinpodcast and at-walkeramerica. You can also find the video version of this
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(39:31):
for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.
The isolated interference brought about a condition which, from the point of view of the government,
(00:06):
is even more undesirable than the previous state of affairs which the government wanted to alter.
And as the government goes farther and farther, it will finally arrive at a point where all prices,
all wage rates, all interest rates, in short, everything in the whole economic system,
is determined by the government. And this, clearly, is socialism.
(00:40):
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast.
The Bitcoin time chain is 841256 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
Today's episode is Austrian Audible. I'll be reading the third of Ludwig von Mises' six lectures
(01:00):
and the topic today is interventionism. If this is your first time listening to the Bitcoin podcast,
consider going back to the previous episodes on capitalism and socialism and listening to those
first. I believe these lessons from Mises are best experience in the order in which they were
originally delivered, but of course it's up to you, Bitcoin doesn't care. You can download the
(01:23):
PDF of economic policy, thoughts for today and tomorrow by Ludwig von Mises, in the show notes.
What I love about these lectures from Mises is that even though they were delivered in 1959,
they're still incredibly relevant today. Like all great wisdom, they are timeless.
As you listen to today's lesson on interventionism, I encourage you to think about the rampant
(01:48):
government intervention in our world today and what the short and long term effects of this
widespread interventionism will be. Please share these Austrian Audible lessons with your friends,
family and strangers on the internet who can benefit from the knowledge of real economics,
as taught by Mises and the Austrian school. You can find the links to watch or listen to the show
(02:12):
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(02:35):
My goal is to create a podcast that brings you value. And so I always appreciate any time I
receive value in return. And if you are a Bitcoin only company looking to sponsor the Bitcoin podcast,
hit me up on social media or by going to Bitcoin podcast.net slash sponsor. Without further ado,
let's get into lesson three from Mises six lessons interventionism.
(03:00):
Economic Policy Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow by Ludwig von Mises. Third lecture.
Interventionism, a famous very often quoted phrase says that government is best which governs least.
(03:23):
I do not believe this to be a correct description of the functions of a good government. Government
ought to do all the things for which it is needed and for which it was established. Government ought
to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of
gangsters. And it should defend the country against foreign enemies. These are the functions of
(03:47):
government within a free system within the system of the market economy under socialism. Of course,
the government is totalitarian. And there is nothing outside its sphere and its jurisdiction.
But in the market economy, the main task of the government is to protect the smooth functioning
of the market economy against fraud or violence from within and from outside the country. People
(04:14):
who do not agree with this definition of the functions of government may say, this man hates
the government. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If I should say that gasoline is a very
useful liquid, useful for many purposes, but that I would nevertheless not drink gasoline,
because I think that would not be the right use for it. I am not an enemy of gasoline,
(04:38):
and I do not hate gasoline. I only say that gasoline is very useful for certain purposes,
but not fit for other purposes. If I say it is the government's duty to arrest murderers and other
criminals, but not its duty to run the railroads or to spend money on useless things, then I do not
(04:59):
hate the government by declaring that it is fit to do certain things, but not fit to do other things.
It has been said that under present day conditions, we no longer have a free market economy. Under
present day conditions, we have something called the mixed economy. And for evidence of our mixed
economy, people point to the many enterprises which are operated and owned by the government.
(05:25):
The economy is mixed, people say, because there are in many countries, certain institutions like
the telephone, telegraph, and the railroads which are owned and operated by the government,
that some of these institutions and enterprises are operated by the government is certainly true,
but this fact alone does not change the character of our economic system. It does not even mean
(05:49):
there is a little socialism within the otherwise non-socialist free market economy. For the government,
in operating these enterprises, it is subject to the supremacy of the market, which means it is
subject to the supremacy of the consumers. The government, if it operates, let us say, post offices
or railroads, has to hire people who have to work in these enterprises. It also has to buy raw
(06:14):
materials and other things that are needed for the conduct of these enterprises. And on the other
hand, it sells these services or commodities to the public. Yet, even though it operates these
institutions using the methods of the free economic system, the result, as a rule, is a deficit. The
government, however, is in a position to finance such a deficit. At least the members of the
(06:40):
government and of the ruling party believe so. It is certainly different for an individual.
The individual's power to operate something with a deficit is very limited if the deficit is not
very soon eliminated and if the enterprise does not become profitable or at least show that no
further deficit losses are being incurred. The individual goes bankrupt and the enterprise must
(07:05):
come to an end. But for the government, conditions are different. The government can run a deficit
because it has the power to tax people and if the taxpayers are prepared to pay higher taxes in order
to make it possible for the government to operate an enterprise at a loss, that is, in a less efficient
way than it would be done by a private institution, and if the public will accept this loss, then of
(07:32):
course the enterprise will continue. In recent years, governments have increased the number of
nationalized institutions and enterprises in most countries to such an extent that the deficits
have grown far beyond the amount that could be collected in taxes from the citizens. What happens
then is not the subject of today's lecture. It is inflation and I shall deal with that tomorrow.
(07:57):
I mention this only because the mixed economy must not be confused with the problem of interventionism,
about which I want to talk tonight. What is interventionism? Interventionism means that
the government does not restrict its activity to the preservation of order or, as people used to
(08:17):
say a hundred years ago, to the production of security. Interventionism means that the government
wants to do more. It wants to interfere with market phenomena. If one objects and says the
government should not interfere with business, people very often answer, but the government
necessarily always interferes. If there are policemen on the street, the government interferes.
(08:43):
It interferes with a robber looting a shop, or it prevents a man from stealing a car.
But when dealing with interventionism and defining what is meant by interventionism,
we are speaking about government interference with the market, that the government and the police
are expected to protect citizens, which includes businessmen and of course their employees,
(09:05):
against attacks on the part of domestic or foreign gangsters, is in fact a normal, necessary
expectation of any government. Such protection is not an intervention, for the government's
only legitimate function is, precisely, to produce security. What we have in mind when we talk about
(09:26):
interventionism is the government's desire to do more than prevent assaults and fraud.
Interventionism means that the government not only fails to protect the smooth functioning of the
market economy, but that it interferes with the various market phenomena. It interferes with
prices, with wage rates, interest rates, and profits. The government wants to interfere in order to
(09:51):
force businessmen to conduct their affairs in a different way than they would have chosen if
they had obeyed only the consumers. Thus, all the measures of interventionism by the government
are directed toward restricting the supremacy of the consumers. The government wants to arrogate
to itself the power, or at least a part of the power, which in the free market economy is in the
(10:15):
hands of the consumers. Let us consider one example of interventionism, very popular in many countries,
and tried again and again by many governments, especially in times of inflation. I refer to
price control. Governments usually resort to price control when they have inflated the money supply
(10:36):
and people have begun to complain about the resulting rise in prices. There are many famous
historical examples of price control methods that failed, but I shall refer to only two of them,
because in both cases, the governments were really very energetic in enforcing or trying to enforce
(10:56):
their price controls. The first famous example is the case of the Roman emperor Diocletian,
very well known as the last of those Roman emperors who persecuted the Christians. The Roman emperor
in the second part of the third century had only one financial method, and this was currency debasement.
In those primitive ages, before the invention of the printing press, even inflation was,
(11:22):
let us say, primitive. It involved debasement of the coinage, especially the silver. The government
mixed more and more copper into the silver until the color of the silver coins was changed,
and the weight was reduced considerably. The result of this coinage debasement and the associated
increase in the quantity of money was an increase in prices, followed by an edict to control prices,
(11:50):
and Roman emperors were not very mild when they enforced a law. They did not consider death to
mild a punishment for a man who had asked for a higher price. They enforced price control,
but they failed to maintain the society. The result was the disintegration of the Roman empire
and the system of the division of labor. Then, 1500 years later, the same currency debasement
(12:17):
took place during the French Revolution, but this time a different method was used. The technology
for producing money was considerably improved. It was no longer necessary for the French to resort
to debasement of the coinage. They had the printing press, and the printing press was very efficient.
(12:37):
Again, the result was an unprecedented rise in prices, but in the French Revolution,
maximum prices were not enforced by the same method of capital punishment which the Emperor
Diocletian had used. There had also been an improvement in the technique of killing citizens.
You all remember the famous Dr. J.I. Guillotine, 1738-1814, who advocated the use of the Guillotine.
(13:05):
Despite the Guillotine, the French also failed with their laws of maximum prices.
When Robb's Pierre himself was carted off to the Guillotine, the people shouted,
Zergo Zedeltimaximum. I wanted to mention this because people often say,
what is needed in order to make price control effective and efficient is merely more brutality
(13:28):
and more energy. Now certainly, Diocletian was very brutal, and so was the French Revolution.
Nevertheless, price control measures in both ages failed entirely. Now, let us analyze the reasons
for this failure. The government hears people complain that the price of milk has gone up,
(13:50):
and milk is certainly very important, especially for the rising generation, for children.
Consequently, the government declares a maximum price for milk, a maximum price that is lower
than the potential market price would be. Now the government says, certainly we have done
everything needed in order to make it possible for poor parents to buy as much milk as they need
(14:14):
to feed their children. But what happens? On the one hand, the lower price of milk increases the
demand for milk. People who could not afford to buy milk at a higher price are now able to buy it
at a lower price, which the government has decreed. And on the other hand, some of the producers,
(14:35):
those producers of milk who are producing at the highest cost, that is the marginal producers,
are now suffering losses because the price which the government has decreed is lower than their
costs. That is the important point in the market economy. The private entrepreneur, the private
producer, cannot take losses in the long run. And as he cannot take losses in milk, he restricts the
(15:02):
production of milk for the market. He may sell some of his cows for the slaughterhouse, or instead
of milk, he may sell some products made out of milk, for instance, sour cream, butter, or cheese.
Thus, the government's interference with the price of milk will result in less milk than there
was before. And at the same time, there will be a greater demand. Some people who are prepared to
(15:26):
pay the government to creed price cannot buy it. Another result will be that anxious people will
hurry to be the first at the shops. They have to wait outside. The long lines of people waiting at
the shops always appear as a familiar phenomenon in a city in which the government has decreed
maximum prices for commodities that the government considers as important. This was always prognosticated
(15:51):
by economists, of course, only by sound economists, and their number is not very great. But what is
the result of the government's price control? The government is disappointed. It wanted to increase
the satisfaction of the milk drinkers. But actually, it has dissatisfied them. Before the government
(16:12):
interfered, milk was expensive, but people could buy it. Now, there is only an insufficient
quantity of milk available. Therefore, the total consumption of milk drops. The children are
getting less milk, not more. The next measure to which the government now resorts is rationing.
But rationing only means that certain people are privileged and are getting milk, while other people
(16:36):
are not getting any at all. Who gets milk and who does not, of course, is always very arbitrarily
determined. One order may determine, for example, that children under four years old should get milk,
and that children over four years, or between the age of four and six, should only get half the
(16:57):
ration which children under four years receive. Whatever the government does, the fact remains,
there is only a smaller amount of milk available. Thus, people are still more dissatisfied than
they were before. Now the government asks the milk producers, because the government does not have
enough imagination to find out for itself. Why do you not produce the same amount of milk you
(17:21):
produced before? The government gets the answer. We cannot do it, since the costs of production
are higher than the maximum price which the government has established. Now the government
studies the costs of the various items of production and discovers one of the items is fodder.
Oh, says the government. The same control we applied to milk, we will now apply to fodder.
(17:45):
We will determine a maximum price for fodder, and then you will be able to feed your cows at a lower
price, at a lower expenditure. Then everything will be all right. You will be able to produce more
milk, and you will sell more milk. But what happens now? The same story repeats itself with fodder,
(18:06):
and as you can understand, for the same reasons, the production of fodder drops,
and the government is again faced with a dilemma. So the government arranges new hearings to find
out what is wrong with fodder production, and it gets an explanation from the producers of fodder
precisely like the one at God from the producers of milk. So the government must go a step farther,
(18:28):
since it does not want to abandon the principle of price control. It determines maximum prices
for producers goods, which are necessary for the production of fodder. And the same story happens
again. The government at the same time starts controlling not only milk, but also eggs, meat,
and other necessities. And every time the government gets the same result, everywhere,
(18:53):
the consequence is the same. Once the government fixes a maximum price for consumer goods,
it has to go farther back to producers goods, and limit the prices of the producers goods
required for the production of the price controlled consumer goods. And so the government,
having started with only a few price controls, goes farther and farther back in the process of
(19:18):
production, fixing maximum prices for all kinds of producers goods, including of course the price
of labor, because without wage control, the government's cost control would be meaningless.
Moreover, the government cannot limit its interference into the market to only those
things which it views as vital necessities, like milk, butter, eggs, and meat. It must necessarily
(19:45):
include luxury goods, because if it did not limit their prices, capital and labor would abandon the
production of vital necessities, and would turn to producing those things which the government
considers unnecessary luxury goods. Thus, the isolated interference with one or a few prices
of consumer goods always brings about effects, and this is the important part to realize,
(20:12):
which are even less satisfactory than the conditions that prevailed before.
Before government interfered, milk and eggs were expensive. After the government interfered,
they began to disappear from the market. The government considered those items to be so important
that it interfered. It wanted to increase the quantity and improve the supply. The result
(20:37):
was the opposite. The isolated interference brought about a condition which, from the point of view
of the government, is even more undesirable than the previous state of affairs which the government
wanted to alter. And as the government goes farther and farther, it will finally arrive at a point
where all prices, all wage rates, all interest rates, in short, everything in the whole economic
(21:03):
system is determined by the government, and this, clearly, is socialism. What I have told you here,
this schematic and theoretical explanation, is precisely what happened in those countries which
tried to enforce a maximum price control, where governments were stubborn enough to go step by
(21:24):
step until they came to the end. This happened in the First World War in Germany and England.
Let us analyze the situation in both countries. Both countries experienced inflation, prices went up,
and the two governments imposed price controls. Government price controls do not work, and are
(21:45):
a last-ditch effort to pacify the public when inflation is out of control. If you want to protect
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Starting with a few prices, starting with only milk and eggs, they had to go farther and farther.
The longer the war went on, the more inflation was generated. And after three years of war,
the Germans, systematically as always, elaborated a great plan. They called it the Hindenburg plan.
(22:59):
Everything in Germany, considered to be good by the government at that time, was named after
Hindenburg. The Hindenburg plan meant that the whole German economic system should be controlled
by the government. Prices, wages, profits, everything. And the bureaucracy immediately began to put this
into effect. But before they had finished, the debacle came. The German Empire broke down.
(23:26):
The entire bureaucratic apparatus disappeared. The revolution brought its bloody results.
Things came to an end. In England, they started in the same way. But after a time, in the spring of
1917, the United States entered the war and supplied the British with sufficient quantities of everything.
Therefore, the road to socialism, the road to serfdom, was interrupted. Before Hitler came to power,
(23:52):
Chancellor Bruning again introduced price control in Germany for the usual reasons. Hitler enforced it
even before the war started. For in Hitler's Germany, there was no private enterprise or
private initiative. In Hitler's Germany, there was a system of socialism, which differed from the
(24:13):
Russian system only to the extent that the terminology and labels of the free economic system
were still retained. There still existed private enterprises, as they were called. But the owner
was no longer an entrepreneur. The owner was called a shop manager, Betriebsführer. The whole of Germany
(24:34):
was organized in a hierarchy of furs. There was the highest furer, Hitler, of course. And then
there were furs down to the many hierarchies of smaller furs. And the head of an enterprise was
the Betriebsführer. And the workers of the enterprise were named by a word that, in the Middle Ages,
(24:54):
had signified the retinue of a feudal lord, the Geffelgeschacht. And all of these people had to
obey the orders issued by an institution which had a terribly long name, Reichsführer-Wirthschacht
Ministerium, at the head of which was a well-known fat man named Göring, adorned with jewels and
metals. And from this body of ministers with the long name came all the orders to every enterprise.
(25:21):
What to produce? In what quantity? Where to get the raw materials? And what to pay for them? To whom
to sell the products? And at what prices to sell them? The workers got the order to work in a
definite factory, and they received wages which the government decreed. The whole economic system
was now regulated in every detail by the government. The Betriebsführer did not have the right to take
(25:46):
the profits for himself. He received what amounted to a salary. And if he wanted to get more, he would,
for example, say, I am very sick, I need an operation immediately, and the operation will cost 500
mocks. Then he had to ask the Fuhrer of the district, the Gefführer or Galatier, whether he
(26:07):
had the right to take out more than the salary which was given to him. The prices were no longer
prices. The wages were no longer wages. They were all quantitative terms in a system of socialism.
Now, let me tell you how that system broke down. One day after years of fighting, the foreign armies
(26:29):
arrived in Germany. They tried to preserve the government directed economic system. But the
brutality of Hitler would have been necessary to preserve it. And without this, it did not work.
And while this was going on in Germany, Great Britain, during the Second World War,
did precisely what Germany did. Starting with the price control of some commodities only,
(26:53):
the British government began step by step in the same way Hitler had done in peacetime,
even before the start of the war, to control more and more of the economy until, by the time the
war ended, they had reached something that was almost pure socialism. Great Britain was not
brought to socialism by the labor movement, which was established in 1945. Great Britain became
(27:18):
socialist during the war, through the government of which Sir Winston Churchill was the prime minister.
The labor government simply retained the system of socialism, which the government of Sir Winston
Churchill had already introduced. And this is in spite of great resistance by the people. The
nationalizations in Great Britain did not mean very much. The nationalization of the Bank of
(27:43):
England was merely nominal, because the Bank of England was already under the complete control
of the government. And it was the same with the nationalization of the railroads and the steel
industry. The war socialism, as it was called, meaning the system of interventionism proceeding
step by step, had already virtually nationalized the system. The difference between the German
(28:08):
and British systems was not important, since the people who operated them had been appointed by
the government, and in both cases, they had to obey the government's orders in every respect.
As I said before, the system of the German Nazis retained the labels and the terms of the
capitalistic free market economy. But they meant something very different. There were now only
(28:31):
government decrees. This was also true for the British system. When the Conservative Party in
Britain was returned to power, some of those controls were removed. In Great Britain, we now
have attempts from one side to retain controls, and from the other side to abolish them. But one
must not forget that in England, conditions are very different from conditions in Russia. The same
(28:55):
is true for other countries, which depend on the importation of food and raw materials, and therefore
have to export manufactured goods, for countries depending heavily on export trade. A system of
government control simply does not work, thus, as far as there is economic freedom left. And there
(29:16):
is still substantial freedom in some countries, such as Norway, England, Sweden. It exists because
of the necessity to retain export trade. Earlier, I chose the example of milk, not because I have a
special preference for milk, but because practically all governments, or most of them, in recent decades,
(29:37):
have regulated milk, egg, or butter prices. I want to refer, in a few words, to another example,
and that is rent control. If the government controls rents, one result is that the people who would
otherwise have moved from bigger apartments to smaller ones when their family conditions changed
(29:58):
will no longer do so. For example, consider parents whose children left home when they came into their
20s, married, or went into other cities to work. Such parents used to change their apartments and
take smaller and cheaper ones. This necessity disappeared when rent controls were imposed
in Vienna, Austria, in the early 20s, where rent control was well established. The amount of money
(30:23):
that the landlord received for an average apartment under rent control was not more than twice the
price of a ticket for a ride on the city-owned streetcars. You can imagine that people did not
have any incentive to change their apartments, and on the other hand, there was no construction of new
houses. Similar conditions prevailed in the United States after the Second World War,
(30:47):
and are continuing in many cities to this day. One of the main reasons why so many cities in the
United States are in such great financial difficulty is that they have rent control
and a resulting shortage of housing. So the government has spent billions for the building
of new houses. But why was there such a housing shortage? The housing shortage developed for the
(31:08):
same reason that brought milk shortages when there was milk price control. That means when the
government interferes with the market, it is more and more driven towards socialism. And this is the
answer to those people who say, we are not socialists, we do not want the government to control
everything, we realize this is bad. But why should not the government interfere a little bit with
(31:34):
the market? Why shouldn't the government do away with some things which we do not like?
These people talk of a middle-of-the-road policy. What they do not see is that the isolated
interference, which means the interference with only one small part of the economic system,
brings about a situation which the government itself and the people who are asking for government
(31:57):
interference find worse than the conditions they wanted to abolish. The people who are asking
for rent control are very angry when they discover there is a shortage of apartments and a shortage
of housing. But this shortage of housing was created precisely by government interference.
By the establishment of rents, below the level people would have had to pay in a free market.
(32:21):
The idea that there is a third system between socialism and capitalism, as its supporters say.
A system as far away from socialism as it is from capitalism, but that retains the advantages and
avoids the disadvantages of each, is pure nonsense. People who believe there is such a mythical system
(32:42):
can become really poetic when they praise the glories of interventionism. One can only say
they are mistaken. The government interference which they praise brings about conditions which
they themselves do not like. One of the problems I will deal with later is protectionism. The
(33:03):
government tries to isolate the domestic market from the world market. It introduces tariffs
which raise the domestic price of a commodity above the world market price, making it possible for
domestic producers to form cartels. The cartels are then attacked by the government declaring,
under these conditions anti-cartel legislation is necessary. This is precisely the situation with
(33:28):
most of the European governments. In the United States, there are yet other reasons for anti-trust
legislation and the government's campaign against the specter of monopoly. It is absurd to see the
government, which creates by its own intervention the conditions making possible the emergence
of domestic cartels, point its finger at business, saying, there are cartels therefore government
(33:52):
interference with business is necessary. It would be much simpler to avoid cartels by ending the
government's interference with the market. An interference which makes these cartels possible.
The idea of government interference as a solution to economic problems leads in every country to
(34:12):
conditions which at least are very unsatisfactory and often quite chaotic. If the government does
not stop in time, it will bring on socialism. Nevertheless, government interference with business
is still very popular. As soon as someone does not like something that happens in the world,
(34:33):
he says, the government ought to do something about it. What do we have a government for?
The government should do it. And this is a characteristic remnant of thought from past
ages of ages preceding modern freedom, modern constitutional governments, before representative
government or modern republicanism. For centuries, there was a doctrine maintained and accepted by
(34:59):
everyone that a king, an anointed king, was the messenger of God. He had more wisdom than his
subjects and he had supernatural powers as recently as the beginning of the 19th century.
People suffering from certain diseases expected to be cured by the royal touch,
by the hand of the king. Doctors were usually better. Nevertheless, they had their patients try
(35:24):
the king. This doctrine of the superiority of a paternal government, of the supernatural and
superhuman powers of the hereditary kings gradually disappeared, or at least we thought so.
But it came back again. There was a German professor named Werner Sombard. I knew him very well,
who was known the world over, who was an honorary doctor of many universities, and an honorary member
(35:51):
of the American Economic Association. That professor wrote a book, which is available in an English
translation published by the Princeton University Press. It is also available in a French translation,
and probably also in Spanish. At least I hope it is available, because then you can check what I am
saying. In this book, published in our century, not in the Dark Ages, Werner Sombard, a professor
(36:16):
of economics, simply says, the Führer, our Führer. He means of course Hitler, gets his orders directly
from God, the Führer of the universe. I spoke of this hierarchy of the Führers earlier, and in this
hierarchy, I mentioned Hitler as the Supreme Führer. But there is, according to Werner Sombard,
(36:40):
a still higher Führer, God, the Führer of the universe. And God, he wrote, gives his orders
directly to Hitler. Of course, Professor Sombard said very modestly, we do not know how God communicates
with the Führer, but the fact cannot be denied. Now, if you hear that such a book can be published
(37:02):
in the German language, the language of a nation which was once hailed as the nation of philosophers
and poets, and if you see it translated into English and French, then you will not be astonished at
the fact that even a little bureaucrat considers himself wiser and better than the citizens,
and wants to interfere with everything, even though he is only a poor little bureaucrat,
(37:28):
and not the famous Professor Werner Sombard, honorary member of everything. Is there a remedy
against such happenings? I would say yes, there is a remedy, and this remedy is the power of the
citizens. They have to prevent the establishment of such an autocratic regime that arrogates to
itself a higher wisdom than that of the average citizen. This is the fundamental difference
(37:54):
between freedom and serfdom. The socialist nations have arrogated to themselves the term
democracy. The Russians call their own system a people's democracy. They probably maintain
that the people are represented in the person of the dictator. I think that one dictator,
Juan Perón, here in Argentina, was given a good answer when he was forced into exile in 1955.
(38:21):
Let us hope that all other dictators in other nations will be accorded a similar response.
And that's a wrap on this Austrian Audible episode of The Bitcoin Podcast. If you are a
(38:42):
Bitcoin-only company interested in sponsoring The Bitcoin Podcast, head to bitcoinpodcast.net
slash sponsor. If you are enjoying The Bitcoin Podcast and these Austrian Audible readings,
consider giving a five-star review wherever you listen, or sharing this show with your network,
or don't. Bitcoin doesn't care, but I do, and I would really appreciate it. You can find me on
(39:04):
Noster by going to primal.net slash walker. And if you want to follow The Bitcoin Podcast on Twitter,
go to at-titcoinpodcast and at-walkeramerica. You can also find the video version of this
podcast at youtube.com slash at-walkeramerica or searching at-walkeramerica on rumble. Bitcoin
is scarce. There will only ever be 21 million, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant. So thank you
(39:31):
for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.
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