Episode 303: Neal Flesher on his book Modern Chains: The Invisible Shackles of Economic Slavery (July 16, 2025)

In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Thomas Storck, Andrew Sorokowski, and Christopher Zehnder talk with Neal Flesher about his book Modern Chains: The Invisible Shackles of Economic Slavery.

Modern Chains examines a truth we have been conditioned to ignore: our financial system functions as a silent mechanism of enslavement. Drawing on centuries of history, philosophy, and moral reasoning, author Neal Flesher reveals how our fiat monetary order corrodes human dignity and fractures communities. This book delivers a powerful appeal to moral clarity. By exposing the architecture of fractional reserve banking, revealing the invalid logic of debt-based money, demolishing the justifications for “acceptable” inflation, and unveiling the soul-siphoning nature of usury, Flesher maps out the moral imperative to resist with logical rigor and resounding rhetorical force. Yet Modern Chains does not dwell in gloom. It presents practical tools for liberation in the form of a revolutionary monetary alternative: one requiring no trust in political promises or corporate benevolence. If you have ever sensed something deeply wrong beneath everyday economic life, this book’s philosophical depth and practical guidance may be your key to shaking off those invisible chains.

https://enroutebooksandmedia.com/modernchains/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to WCAT radio, your home for authentic Catholic programming.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to the Open Door with your host Thomas Tork
and co host Christopher Sender and andrews Rakowski. Our guest
today is mister Neil Flesher, the author of Modern Slavery,
and we will discuss this very interesting book about money
and monetary theory and the bitcoin. So let's begin with

(00:29):
our prayer in the name of the Father, So the
Holy Spirit, Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of
your faithful and kindling them with the fire of your love.
Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and
you shall renew the face of the earth. Let us pray,
Oh God, who have taught the hearts of the faithful
by the light of the Holy Spirit. We had that
in the same spirit we may be truly wise, and

(00:51):
every rejoice in this consolation through Christ our Lord. Amen,
the name of the Father. And so the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So maybe we should start off by asking you to
explain the underlying thesis of your book, Modern Chains, The
Invisible Shackles of Economic Slavery.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, well, thanks for having me. Yeah, I mean, the
core thesis is it's simple, but pretty devastating that slavery
didn't disappear. I mean, it just evolved. What used to
be accomplished through overt physical domination is now accomplished through
subtle economic manipulation. You know, our modern money is no
longer a measure of any real value creation. It's become

(01:37):
a measure of nothing. It's like a ruler made of
smoke trying to measure a mirage. You know, our money
is brought into existence through debt, and it's detached from
any productive work or energy expenditure. So like's that mechanism
is used to silently extract the value from all existing money.
You know, Like that's not hyperbole, it's just the simple math.

(02:00):
I mean, even according to the Fed their own numbers,
in the last forty five years, they've debased the money
supply by thirteen, five and eighty one percent. You know,
if you just do the quick beer math, if you're
not earning fourteen percent compounded annually, you're you're not keeping
up with the basement. You're you're not even treading water.

(02:21):
That means like more value is being siphoned out of
your money then you're putting back into it. If you're
not achieving that growth.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
It's like this system ensures that we work harder to
just even stand still. Like we do our work. We
expend energy, we produce things, we create real value in
the world, and then we we store that value in
these monetary objects, you know. So the money is just
a capsule which stores the value we put into it.

(02:52):
But the dollar, this capsule, it's hooked up to a siphon,
you know, so every time a new dollar is created,
we treat each dollar the same. So it's just like
they call that fungible. You know, one dollar equals one dollar.
So when they're creating these new dollars that are empty,

(03:13):
like severed from all real value, they just kind of
they hit like the value dispenses between them, like hitting
this kind of new equilibrium. So like a classic example
is just like if you have ten apples and ten
dollars and then you print ten more dollars, It's like
what value is? What more value was created in the world.

(03:35):
It's like none, there's still just ten apples, but you
have twice as many dollars, meaning the value of each
dollars is cut in half. So like that that's kind
of what's happening with the debasement. You know, the nominal
price has doubled, the real price of the value of
the apples is unchanged. And so it's like any those

(03:55):
those pre existing dollars, you know, that value that was
in them is now extracted out and put into those
new dollars. And that's the mechanical function of our system
and the essence of economic slavery.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Now, it wasn't clearly from your book whether you thought
the problem one of the basic problems was that we
didn't have so called commodity money, i e. Money that
was said to be backed by some commodity like gold,
or whether it's inflation, or whether it's the fact that

(04:32):
bank created money comes into being as debt, or is
it all above?

Speaker 3 (04:39):
So like I'm really key. So if money is this
measure of value, and value is a measure of uh,
like the motion towards an end. It's purposeful work, it's
productive work. I mean that's I pull from Aquinas and
from Aristotle to draw that connection that the value is

(05:00):
really it's a it's a motion towards an end. It's
that measure. And the faster, the the more potent that motion,
the more valuable, the more value you create. I mean
that purposeful action, purposeful work, Like everything we do in
our life is you know, to an end, and like

(05:20):
that's that's how we actually are creating this thing called value.
So I don't I think it's really important to when
we're discussing these things, because it's very confusing. Are we
talking about the monetary object or we're talking about the
creation of value or like and how they relate to
each other. So it doesn't when we say commodity money

(05:42):
and it's backed by something like the reason that that's
true and it's grounded in this like natural law, like
theory of like value creation is because there's actually real value,
there's productive value. It's tethered to objective reality, Like it's
tethered to real value, so that it kind of makes
the whole you know, money is this Uh going back

(06:05):
to Aristotle, he just says, you know, it's a it's
a token of need. You know, it's this object that's
created intersubjectively when people come together and exchange value through
an object. So you know, it's people create it, but
there's but there's also this kind of uh, this material

(06:26):
aspect to it, which we need the material object that
have the potential to fulfill its role as money, like
we're actualizing it. But so commodity money is like it worked,
and it's because it's real, it's grounded to something real
at least I have to go and dig the gold
out of the ground. I'm expending energy, I'm creating value,

(06:51):
and we we've it's so it's not it's not the object.
I don't care what object, you know, any anything can
be money. That The thing that I'm keying in on
is we can't separate real value from the money. Once
we've done that, we're we've we're off the reservation. Like
that's the problem. The problem is when we're not actually

(07:14):
dealing with economic reality, we're just dealing with this you know.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
As I explained in the book, it's just like a
gnostic illusion where we're treating economic reality as this like
oppressive prison. And if we just wish it away and
imagine and speculate, we can create this fantasy world where
we're no longer bound by those limits.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
But liken't Isn't it the case though, that money is
primarily a means of exchanging real economic goods like shoes
or wet or wine or whatever, and it's that it's
the real economic goods that we want, not money, except
in so far as money is like an iou for

(07:56):
economic goods.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Well, I mean, yeah, so it's an iowa you're talking
about an io. It comes back to this idea of value.
If if real value is placed in a monetary object,
whether that monetary object is gold, or seashell or a
digital ledger, like, that doesn't matter. That's just an accident

(08:20):
of its of money's being and like it that doesn't matter.
Like some monetary objects are more potent than others, and
they kind of form a natural hierarchy. And I mean
that's that's why gold throughout you know, thousands of years
has kind of arisen as this like prime monetary object.
It's the best monetary object that we've found because it

(08:43):
lets us actual it stores that value we create. So like,
I don't it could be an iou, it could be
anything like that doesn't matter. It's it's really the creation
of value that we're putting into those monetary object that's
the issue. Because if if I'm creating money, like the

(09:05):
monetary objects that are empty, that have no value in them,
like that's the problem because we're treating we're treating them
the same.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
You know.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
It's like when we think of debasement from like the
old days using a golden coin, Like so they would
have uh, you know, uh, a golden coin that had
ten grams of gold in it, you know, and they
debased it by clipping the coin. I'll take a little
bit off of it, and I'll take one gram from
each of these coins and make a new coin. So

(09:35):
it's there's still the same amount of gold, but they're
treating like the problem is that they're passing off each
coin as if it was whole. So they had they
have ten, Oh, but now I have eleven, and they
give it to you as if it was only ten.
Like that's the problem. Like the value, Like it's so
it's not the object. It's not like, oh, it's a

(09:56):
golden coin. It's the real value that's stored inside that object.
So like that that's the problem. When we've gone to
this debt based money where we just print it and
we make it up. You know, it's like we've detached
its creation the month. We've detached then create the creation

(10:17):
of the monetary object from the creation of value. So
like that's uh, that's the single like it's not more
complicated than that. It's it's literally just that they're not
creating more value, but they're pretending, they're passing it off
as if they're the same, and they're not.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
But you would agree that the only really economic value
is in things, would you not? I? E uh, you know,
things we can eat, things we can wear, things we
can read. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah? Again, like I'm falling back to this. You know,
uh what what I pulled from Aristotle and aquinas that
you know, this value is this measure of motion towards
an end. So it's like, as a human object, I
have objective needs. I have to eat, I have to drink,
I have to have shelter, I have to have all
these things. I have subjective needs too. I prefer this

(11:13):
over that, Like that's that's the that's addressing the wholeness
of my human being. Like I am a subject and
an object and I come together and the composite of
all those needs is like the things that I need
in my life, you know. So I'm trying to move
towards them, and I have to create value to achieve

(11:35):
those ends. And as we work together, you know that
this is the other really really amazing thing that I
hit me from from talking about aristotles. Like he calls
money like it's kind of like it's final, it's final,
cause like so yeah, it's function, its form, Its function
is this medium of exchange, but it's kind of final.

(11:57):
End is like it shapes the relations of how we
connect to each other. And he says, it's basically the
glue that holds a society together, you know. So it's
like money is how how we help each other achieve
our ends. You know, I'm I'm super hungry and I
want some food, but I don't have it and you
have more. It's like, you know, we come together and

(12:21):
we trade the value we create in this world to
each other, you know, And like that that's a when
we're when we're value for value, trading and working together cooperatively.
We're not using each other as a means. We're just
you know, uh, we're becoming something greater than just the
sum of our parts as as a community as a whole.

(12:42):
And uh, money is kind of that. That's it is.
It's the glue that connects us and enables us to
achieve that abundance.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
And and so like I but the money you consider
it in itself is not it's not value. It's only
value in so far as it is it. Yeah, it
was one to obtain real economic goods.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, money is only value from the value we create
and put into it. You know, like if there were
no people on the earth, there would be no money. Like,
that's it because it's we create it, like it is
a it is a intersubjective like, uh, it's created through
our intersubjective connections.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
Isn't that also true to some extent of gold. I mean,
people tend to think of gold as being you know,
essentially precious and having great value, but in fact, you know,
it's it's a metal. U there have there have been
societies which ascribed absolutely no value to gold or jewels.
I think Thomas More in Utopia even adverts to that.

(13:45):
So this is all a sort of social convention by
which we ascribe value to to things that are really symbolic.
I mean, would you agree with that?

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (13:56):
I mean again, any monetary like money, is what we
put our value into. So if a society chooses like, hey,
let's not let's not use gold as the monetary object,
We'll put all of our value in a different capsule,
a different object. Well then that's fine, you know, Like again,
I'm not the object itself that we choose. I mean,

(14:20):
that's an accident. I could choose gold, I could choose silver,
I could choose anything. Like the value is the essential
part of the money, and heathering that to reality and
human uh you know, productivity, Like that's the important part,
Like that's what keeps us grounded.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
When you say value is the essential part of the money,
I'm not clear what you mean by that, because isn't
the essential part of the money that by as Andrews said,
by a social convention, it enables us to obtain real
economic goods, which are the only values.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
So uh, we can Uh. They've always said basically if
you go back even to the Roman times, I think
it's like an ounce of gold has always produced a
fine men's suit, right, And they've kind of like used
that as like that like the amount of energy and work,
productive work that it takes to go dig out an

(15:17):
ounce of gold is approximately equivalent to the amount of
productive work and energy expended for a man to produce
a suit, and those approximate kind of equition, Like people
are people are subjectively kind of saying, hey, we're gonna
use this, We're gonna put value the value that it
took me to bring this gold out and the value

(15:39):
it took you to create this suit. We're gonna use
gold as this intermediary kind of like object to exchange
the values. So it's like that's again, it's it's the
value that's so important about the money, and it's like
values not this just completely subjective thing. Like I kind

(15:59):
of like since writing the book, I've kind of just
kind of thought of it more as like you know,
subjectively created, preferentially variable, but objectively tethered. Like we have
to have all three of those to address the whole
because like if we get caught up in this like
oh it's just objective, or oh it's just subjective, or

(16:20):
it can be anything, it's like, well, now we're not
dealing with reality anymore.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Well when you say that, yeah, christ.

Speaker 5 (16:28):
Yeah, I guess that's unclear about here is the one point.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
You say that to do that.

Speaker 5 (16:36):
That money could be anything. It sounds like I took that.
I took that as you were saying that we could
be gold, to be silver, the shells be jade, but
could it be green backs? And money be green backs.
But if but if we judge, if we measure what

(16:57):
it takes, how much goal it takes to a man's suit? Right,
that's because there is actually something objectively valuable about gold.
I mean, how do we get to the measure? How
do we how do if we don't have something like gold,

(17:18):
how do we actually measure anything?

Speaker 3 (17:22):
Uh? So we're measuring it. Like again, if if value
is the measure of motion towards an end, like the
the the person that mines the gold, they're creating a
monetary object, like that's what they're producing. They are producing
the object. The man that's creating the suit is creating
you know, a different object, and they're both have real value.

(17:46):
Like you know, a monetary object does have value of
being money. That is a useful tool, like they are
creating that tool, you know, with without it, then you're like, okay,
what are you going to use? Well, you use the
next best thing. Oh maybe that's uh these pretty gemstones,
Oh maybe that's this nice seashell. Like people are are ingenuity,

(18:08):
Like we will find the tool and we will use
the best tool that we have at our disposal. So
you know, the people that use seashells, Like that's fine,
Like if that's the like people that again, when we
when we start stacking up monetary objects and measuring their
uh you know, their potency, you know, like the material attributes,

(18:31):
their material characteristics, the durability, uh you know, scarcity, like
we just the list goes on and on and like
Austrian economics they call that like saleability, like all those
characteristics that admit of more or less. You know, the
seashells are less durable than gold, you know, so you're like, oh,
well that makes that a objectively a better monetary object,

(18:53):
you know. So it's like we're if we're comparing and
talking about just the monetary objects themselves, you know, there
there is this like now actual hierarchy, and gold is
just has been, through thousands of years, the best monetary object.
So when people go and they they mine it, they're
producing a monetary object, a capsule, a canister that other

(19:14):
people then can take their productive work, that value created,
and then store it in there so they can you know,
mediate exchange.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, I guess. I guess.

Speaker 5 (19:23):
My question though is that's I can see what you're
saying there about the inherent value of gold, but there's
no really much. I mean practically speaking, there's really no
inherent value.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
To scrapper paper.

Speaker 5 (19:36):
Yeah, it's the sort of thing normally that you would
just throw away. So how does that allow for say,
paper money, which is not back up by goal.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
So yeah, if we're using paper money, you know, that's
just the saying, okay, so what is paper? It's just
it had you know, it's super light, it can be transported,
you know, super easily. It's not heavy, you can hide
it like it's it's just a monetary object with different
material attributes. So if I'm putting my value into that paper,

(20:08):
I mean that's like money is created the moment that
we exchange real goods and services and value with each other.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
So if we wanted to say, hey, let's use monopoly money,
like just literally go there. And if we're using that
and you and I agree to, hey, this is what
we're going to use, I'm gonna put all my value
into this. We're just gonna start storing value in this
monopoly paper and we're transacting with it with each other
like that is money. But you know, the different monetary

(20:40):
objects have different strengths and weaknesses. Right if you're using
that paper, It's like, okay, well it can be destroyed,
but it could also be counterfeited. You know, Andrew could
go and he could look at it, and he could
go get his and then pass it off to us
as if it was the money that we were storing
value in.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, the outer fitting existed when we had mostly coins.
It's not anything inherent to paper money.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, but it's just a lot easier like that. They get.
It's the trade off, I.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Suppose, But I think there's a confusion here about unless
I'm misunderstanding you. If money is simply a means of exchange,
or primarily it means of exchange, then I don't understand
why gold is a hierarchy of things that can be
used for gold. I don't see why goal would be
any more useful and in many ways less useful than

(21:37):
paper money. Because one point I wanted to make is
that if money, if our money supply is supposed to
be a way of facilitating exchange of real economic goods
as our economy grows, our money supply had better grow
or we're going to have a problem. We're going to
have deflation.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Well, I guess so when we're talking about deflay as
a problem. Are we talking about, you know, just the
nominal number of how many monetary objects are in existence,
or are we talking about value. As long as the
monetary object is capable of holding all the value we create,

(22:17):
there's no issue. It could. It doesn't matter what the
number is. It's just the capacity of the monetary object
to store the value we create in real life. Like
so if if the monetary object is this you know, uh,
just can absorb anything in everything, then it could It

(22:37):
could be one, it could be one hundred. It doesn't matter.
Like you know, gold, when we talk about like why
did gold arise at the top, Well, it's it actually
takes a decent amount of energy to to pull it
out of the earth to produce it.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
It's why is that important? Why is that important that
it takes energy to pull it out of.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
The earth, Because that's what grounds like it means. It
means like the money it'sself like, the acquiring of that
object requires energy, requires productive That's what makes the creation
of that valuable. It tethers it to reality.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
No, isn't it because it's isn't it because it's able
to be exchanged for real goods that makes it valuable.
Not because if I find a nugget of gold on
the seashore that has the same value as if I
had to laboriously dig it up out of the mind.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Correct, But people, the thing is is that gold is
so scarce that that it's natural inflation rate is something
that is actually kind of a ass as people say,
oh it's more valuable, will more people go and dig
it up? So then there's this like natural kind of
equilibrium between the supply and the demand, between people's like

(23:51):
willingness to go dig it out of the earth and
people's not. Like we talk about like that that King Midas,
you know, the Golden Touch, you know, or alchemy, you know,
the idea of being able to create gold from nothing
that only that only works if you keep it a secret.
Like if I just could clap my hands and literally

(24:14):
everything is gold, gold becomes a monetary object that can't
fulfill its monetary function anymore. Like it's so abundant, it's
so crazy that that no, like you can't put anything
in it. If that makes any sense, Like the value
you could store if everything was gold in gold would

(24:34):
be nothing, would be zero. I don't know if that
makes any sense Like.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
No, you know, but I don't know if the nominal
uh value of a coin or a paper money or whatever,
it doesn't matter as long as you have the same value.
Then wouldn't that be the same with inflation as deflation.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah, I mean so gold had has kind of this
natural inflation rate where you know, about two percent a
year for the last I don't know a couple of centuries.
Like it just people are making more of it, They're
getting better at producing it, at digging it out, and
that's just people have Like that's not an immoral like

(25:24):
natural inflation. Uh, that's not immoral. The the immoral part
is when that when you can do it without any
when the marginal cost of production of to produce that
that gold or that next dollar is zero, you know,
like it's it's not tethered to anything anymore. So like

(25:47):
that that natural inflation rate of gold requires people going
out to actually produce it, expending energy to go produce it.
That tethers it to reality and that lets kind of
this market uh supplying demand kind of equal. And that's
just I mean, that's it's just a natural market force.
I would call that not it's just like an amorl thing.

(26:08):
Like if an asteroid, you know, came down and smashed
the earth and doubled the gold supply overnight, that would
have a lot of economic consequences. People that had no
gold could didn't get it, or people that saved in
gold would you know, they would lose a lot of
the value of that gold because it would equalize throughout
all you know, all the value stored in gold would

(26:29):
equalize to the new supply. Uh, it would cut it
in half. But that's not that's not a moral act.
That's just a force of nature. That's just an occurrence.
The problem with uh, what makes this a moral thing
is when when there's a person's hand on the lever
that's controlling that money supply, it's a deliberate choice of

(26:50):
deliberate action. And when they when they print more money,
when they artificially expand the dollar supply, well, that's pulling
out all it's pulling out all the value that was
stored in dollars into the new dollars. And that's the
immoral Like, that's the crime. That's that's why it's uh,

(27:11):
that's why it's slavery, you know, because like when we
look at slavery, and we think about historical slavery, it's like, oh,
well they used it.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
You know.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
It's physical domination. It's literally taking the person's body and soul,
their will, and it's fashioning it towards your will. And
you are the one that is, you know, determining what
they do, how they expend their how they create value,
and then you're taking that value.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
You know. Okay, but but granted that that deliberate inflation
is uh is not a good thing. But that, of course,
as you pointed out earlier, occurrent even with commodity money,
when when when monarchs would would increase the value of
increase the amount of say lead or whatever in the coins,

(27:59):
and increasing my of gold. So that is a problem.
But isn't it a different problem from what you're talking about.
That's a problem basically of that basically rooted in original sin,
that governments and other people will take the easy way
out or exploit one another. I don't see that as

(28:21):
inherent in the in any money question as per.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
Se well, the debasement of the money is the extraction
of that value. It's the extraction the appropriation of the
work required to produce the value. In reality, I don't
know if that well, I.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Don't think the I don't as far as I can see,
the work required to produce a particular form of currency
is totally irrelevant to the question. The whole question is
what society has green up on to facilitate exchange, storage

(29:03):
of value, et cetera. Uh. And that's and that's the
key to the money question, not anything else. And this
money supple has to keep rough and rough tandem with
the amount of economic activity. Uh.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yes, So we can imagine, let's just imagine we're in
this utopian, uh, fiat world where we've had you know,
this omni benevolent, omniscient uh you know fed chair that
has never ever debased. The money does not increase it.
You know, it's like what our economy would just hum
along and we would be, you know, going about our

(29:42):
economics exchanges. We're all storing our value into this fiat
dollar and everything's fine. Like I have no problem saying that, Yes,
like can't can fiat work is money? Sure? Because anything
can be We can use it. Ah, some moneies are
better than other money, and that's fine. But if we
all choose like, hey, this is what we're using and

(30:02):
this is what we're going to interact with in a
real economy. Okay, that's fine, but we are trusting that,
you know, the benevolence and the omniscience of that person
to not debase the money. The trust is the entire issue.
And you know, this goes back to Socrates in the Republic,
like the fallibility of man like you, No man can

(30:26):
We can't trust any man to not at some point
push on that lever and print more money. It will
be in his you know, self interest over the common good.
Like that temptation will always be there. And even if
we could do that for a generation or two, that
it's it's laughably absurd to think that throughout you know, uh,

(30:52):
generation upon generation upon generation, we will always have that
you know, Christ like figure come and save us, you know,
because they're because we're just human. Like, that's that's not
gonna happen. Like the problem is with the like in slavery,
Like slavery is evil. It is a moral crime, and

(31:12):
it doesn't matter what the social consensus, you know, just
because everybody thought slavery was fine doesn't make slavery right.
So that's that That's why I think the moral the
moral case is so powerful because it says, yeah, look,
we're we could do anything for money, but just because
we agree to do that doesn't justify the effects that

(31:35):
it has on human beings. Like it, it is slavery.
It is extracting from all of us, and that's undefensible.
There's no moral justification for that, Like I don't. You
can throw any economic stat or justification at the moral
crime of slavery and it will not dent it.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, I don't think we any of us will disagree
with you on that. But the you know, the the
argument you're making is certainly the charge you're making about
human foibles and human injustice is certainly valid. But that's
that's true of course for anything. Anytime you have a government,

(32:17):
anytime you have any kind of person over another person,
there's whether it's slavery or whatever you want to call it, corporation,
a gerreannical government. You have these possibilities of these things happening.
But this is unfortunately one of the things we have
to accept living in a world changed by original sin.

(32:41):
And even if you've got rid of the government, you
would have oppression in other ways.

Speaker 5 (32:50):
I guess that My question here is, are you are
you saying that we establish a money supply and we
just freeze them money supply, we keep making the government
the fen sure and whoever it is is it is
behind the money supply in capable of expanding it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, if we set up consensus rules that protect like
guard rails to protect h to protect the money supply
from the fallibility of man. Uh, I mean, that's that's amazing.
Like you know that the thing I really took from
from Aristotle is that the ethics is primary to the economics.

(33:40):
You know, the economic tree is planted in ethical soil,
and if you have a monetary system that's planted in
you know, corrupt, unethical soil, it will produce corrupt, unethical fruit.
And those that the fruit is the economic you know,

(34:01):
healthscape that is today is not like what is facing families,
the middle class, the poor.

Speaker 5 (34:08):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Like, that's the fruit of our monetary system. And if
you put if you take the the economic plant and
you plant it in ethical soil, it can only you know,
make better fruit. Gold was ethical in the sense that
it wasn't uh it's you know, it's it's natural inflation.

(34:30):
It's amorl it's not immoral. You know, our our artificial
inflation or debasement in today's system is morally evil. So
that's the difference between gold's inflation and the dollars inflation
is like one is just a a a moral product

(34:50):
of of market forces, and the other is a deliberate,
you know, choice decision by one human being to another
to all to expand it.

Speaker 5 (35:04):
Yeah, but how do you not expand the money supply
when the economy has actually expanded? Are we going to
have if we if we print up one hundred thousand
dollars this is to example, and we say there always
will only be printed one hundred thousand dollars every year, Well,

(35:24):
you can never expand that money supply. How does that
deal with population growth? How does that deal with economic growth?
How are you able to handle all that? It seems
like you would have growth a point out earlier problem
of depletion.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Well, again, so it's not you're not deflating the value.
So as long as that monetary object is capable of
storing that value. So if there's only one hundred thousand
dollars in all of existence, well that's you're going to sense.
You're going to you know, zero point zero zero one
penny like you're you're not You're not artificially increasing the number,

(36:00):
you know, you're just denominating the in smaller and smaller units.
Like you can still you could break that, you know,
we could come up with the new scent you know
what's tens uh you know, micro sense or whatever, like
you would be breaking it and denominating the value in
smaller and smaller terms. I mean, the deflation isn't a
bad Like just think about this, uh are electronics? Like

(36:23):
that is a perfect modern day example of deflation working
for you before your very eyes, all because of More's
law and the rate at which uh, you know, capacitors
and the processors are getting faster. They've actually outpaced all
the deflate all the inflation. So your TVs, you know,

(36:44):
they get bigger, better, you know, and cheaper. So it's
just like, you know, TVs are deflating. That is a
price that is deflating. But that doesn't mean like, oh man,
all of a sudden, there's no market for electronics. It's like, no,
that doesn't work that way. Like, you know, if it's
the more efficient we are at production, the less and

(37:07):
less energy it requires us to create value. It's like
well that that should be reflected in the money. So
as technology advances, as we get better, we hone our crafts,
like it takes less and less energy to actually produce
value and that's a good thing. Like that's how we
create abundance. Like we don't want this this world where

(37:30):
like we think that, oh, the price has to go up,
like that doesn't make any sense at all. Like I
just we went to ice skating with my girls this
last week and they wanted a snack, and I bought
them a kit Cat bar from a vending machine. It
was two dollars and fifty cents, right, that's the nominal
price of that kit Cat bar. When I was a
kid thirty years ago, it was fifty cents.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Right.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
So we look at the nominal price and we say, oh,
that's five times more expensive. But the value of that
kit Cat bar those are the exact same kit Cat bars.
What's the difference between thirty years ago and today. Well,
the people that produce and manufacture the kit Cat bars
have a lot better processes. They're a lot better at

(38:13):
growing all the materials and all that. Like it, it
takes less energy to create that kit Cat bar today
than it did you know, thirty years ago. But yet
the price, you know, is the nominal price is five
x it's you know, it's cost, but the price in
value is actually smaller because it took less energy, it

(38:35):
took less work to make it. Like that's the that's
the switch in my brain that like, oh my, that's
stop pricing things in this nominal uh denomination. Like let's
get at the value, Like what is the value being
created in the world in reality? Like that is a
real kit cat bar. I can eat it, I can

(38:56):
give it to my girl, Like it's not fake, you know.
And if it takes less energy to make it, then
that should be reflected in a price, if it's an
honest price.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Well, why does it matter whether as long as the no,
as long as the consumer is receiving more certain wages,
why does it really matter whether we call the price
of the kick guy bark ten, twenty thirty, forty fifty.
It really it's the same thing, as long as your

(39:26):
wages are going up the same amount or a comfortable amount.
And that seems to me to be the real problem
with the economic difficulties that you eloquently speak about in
your book, not the not so much inflation, which I
don't denye, it can be a problem, not so much
the inflation as the other problems in the economy and

(39:47):
the decline in real wages for example.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Yeah, So I mean so basically, if we're going to say, okay,
we have this, you know, this this inflation, this artificial inflation,
and as long as we're increasing uh, you know, wages
at the same rate that we're pulling out the value,
it's like, then it will equalize. And it's like, well,
that's kind of a consequential utilitarian argument, as like as

(40:16):
long as you know, you're you're you're you're looking at
the effect, you're saying, oh, well, it's staying the same.
But that's not a justification for the extraction in the
first place. Like that's the that that that would be
the contraction of the extraction in that vat Like why
are you having to increase the wages because the value
is being extracted out, Like I'm gonna siphon the blood

(40:41):
from your system, and then I'm gonna also put in
a line to give you blood, you know, Like like
that's that's what you're saying. You're saying, oh well, as
long as the wages increase the same at the same
rate that we're debasing the money. Then everything works out, okay.
And my thing is, I don't care that it works out, okay.
I care about the siphoning out of your your energy,

(41:02):
Like I, I can't morally justify putting the siphon into you,
or you know, I can't morally justify the extraction of
your blood. So I don't even want to. It's like
an it's like a non it's a non issue whether
or not. Oh, we're putting it back in you, and
in reality that doesn't happen. The reason we have the

(41:23):
disparity between the classes is because that is not possible.
It's not possible to perfectly, you know, uh, increase all
the wages of everybody at the exact same rate. You
know that there's debasement.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
You know.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
The thing that that makes this so uh so horrible
and why the rich get richer and the well is
like if you do not own an asset, so an
asset is another It's it's a money in a sense,
it's something people are storing their value in. So I
go and I buy a house, right, that's a real
tangible good. I'm putting my my the value that I've created,

(41:58):
I'm storing it in that house. I'm taking it out
of dollars and putting it into the house. Well that's
what that's what the people that own assets and have
the wealthy are doing their their their land banking, their
house banking. They're buying any any non uh you know,
any asset that's not a dollar. They're putting all their

(42:20):
energy and value into these things. And that's why, you know,
because it's they're trying to shield themselves from the debasement.
They're trying to take all the value that they've had
and they're they're putting it in a different monetary object
that doesn't have a siphon hooked up to it. So
that's why assets appreciate at this ridiculous, you know price,
because you're when you look at that, at the price

(42:43):
of your house, and you say, oh, well it's doubled
five years ago, it's doubled. It's still the same house.
It still has the same value, if not probably less,
but its nominal prices higher. Like that's not you getting richer,
that's actually the measure of how much debasement has happened.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
You know. Well other things too, I mean it has
to do with the housings, supply of housing. For example,
when the supply of housing doesn't keep paced with the population,
the price will tend to go up. So it isn't
simply inflation this.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
Yeah, no, it's it's not simply just that. I'm saying.
There's layers of this problem, and I am so keen
and focused on debasement because that's the foundation that that's
that's the fundamental, uh, driving force of all this. The market.
The markets react. The market is reacting to debasement, and
the people that can own assets are shielding themselves from

(43:39):
that debasement and they're soaring, and the people that don't
own assets, Like that's the that's the dividing line between
like the middle class the upper class and like there's
not even a middle class anymore. It's it's the people
that own assets and the people that don't. And if
you don't own an asset, you are just completely uh
you you feel the full abuse of of the debasement.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Well, granted that, but I'm I'm not convinced that it's
that the inflation is the primary engine of that. Here,
let's if we marry though, let's shift gears You've devoted
considerable amount of your book talking about bitcoin. Maybe we
could start out with your explaining what bitcoin is and

(44:27):
why you think it's an important way of overcoming what
you see as as our monetary problems.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, I mean the thing the thing that uh, I
mean when I came at bitcoin, uh started to learn
about it. I mean, I'm coming from it from this
moral uh this moral angle.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
You know.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
I I had a I mean, I just came from Kansas.
I'm grew up in Kansas. You know, we have a
kind of a pretty simple wisdom to our ethos, and like,
the the most I ever thought about money was just
kind of this assumed you work hard, you earn money,
and you secure prosperity, like a prosperous life, Like that's
that's that's all you do. And you know, as I

(45:11):
became a father and a husband and a father, I
started to realize, like my my roles, my duties and
responsibilities to my family, I needed to have a better
understanding of what money is. Like that's just not going
to cut it. Because something was wrong. Like I'm like,
why can't I just save my money and uh secure
their future?

Speaker 2 (45:32):
You know?

Speaker 3 (45:32):
Why am I following like what's going on? And that's
what got me on this. Okay, well what is even money?
I need to figure that out. And that's when I
went back to Aristotle and a quietness and like what
what What did they have to say on this? How
can I? Like, I don't all these economic uh, all
these economic definitions. They were just like, oh, here's a part,
here's a part, here's a part. And I philosophically, I

(45:53):
wanted the whole. I wanted to understand what that is
as a whole. And once I knew what money was,
I was like, oh, okay, well what is this debasement?
What is this inflation?

Speaker 2 (46:03):
You know?

Speaker 3 (46:03):
And and morally, that's when I was like, oh, when
you strip away all the accidents, it's literally slavery. It's
it's formal slavery. It looks different, but it's the form.
The form, the function is the exact same. So I
had that understanding as like this is the problem. Holy crap,
how do I escape? How do I get out of

(46:23):
this for my family? So I came into bitcoin from
that moment, like understanding that debasement is slavery and that
trust is the main problem because we have to trust
the politicians and the central bankers not to debase the
money if they want to, if they wanted to debate,
you know, inject six trillion dollars into the economy tomorrow,

(46:46):
they could nothing stop twelve whatever, Like it doesn't matter.
I'm just relying on their trust to not do that.
And they do that to the you know, to the
tune of you know, thirteen and eighty one percent. They've
been debasing the money, so I can't trust them to
do that. Bitcoin solves that trust problem. If if this

(47:07):
trust in the system is the window that allows corruption
in it, Bitcoin just it's it walls it off completely.
That's why, you know, So if you think that trust
is the problem, trust to not debase the money is
the problem. And then here's this tool that completely immunizes

(47:28):
yourself from that debasement. It's like it just it wasn't
even a calculation, it's a recognition. But hey, this solution,
this tool fixes that problem exactly and perfectly. So it's
like that that's what got me into bitcoin was that,
like it solves the moral problem. It frees you from enslavement,

(47:52):
and I don't really even care about anything like to me,
like for me personally, that's that's it. That's all I needed.
Like I am not going to put my all the
all the innergy the value that I create with my life.
You know, I'm expending my life every day I'm exerted,
I'm working to create value. I'm not going to put

(48:13):
any of that value in anything but a perfect monetary object.
Like I'm not going to trust anybody, you know, just
to not debase me, like they're they're not going to
do that. So so the moral angle is what just
oh blew my mind that like this is it plant

(48:33):
economics in an ethical soil and like let's let's go,
let's create abundance. Like that's that's how I'm coming at it.

Speaker 5 (48:42):
Like this, I don't really understand bitcoin. So maybe you
could explain when you go to the grocery store you
buy with bitcoin.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
You could if the if the grocery store would uh
would accept the bitcoin, you could do it. It's just
and it's faster than uh, you know, it's it's faster
than even I like I went and bought uh, I
went and bought my my hamburger at stake and shake
with bitcoin because they accepted they get like at the Kiosk,
you just ring it up pay with bitcoin. Whoop, I

(49:14):
did it. You know, but it takes it takes a
you know, the retailer. It takes the business accepting it
as you know, you know, for us to actually use
it as money. So if nobody accepts it as that,
that's fine. Uh, you know, it's still is this asset
like that the rich people that are the rich people

(49:34):
that are buying houses to store their store all the
value they created in the house. You know, you can
just you could do the same thing except needing you know,
five hundred thousand dollars to buy a house, you could
store five bucks in bitcoin, like.

Speaker 5 (49:48):
Okay, you know, but but you isn't the case that
if nobody takes bitcoin if you just said it could
be a possibility. What value does it have? I mean,
I could put my what am I putting into it?
What is what I mean? It sounds like the value
that ultimately is going to be back at dollars to
get at certain point.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
I mean, so it's gonna be people will value it
in dollars as long as there's some demand for dollars,
like the dollar is the world reserve currency and kind
of by by by force and coercion, you know, with
the petro dollar, countries have to buy oil, you know,
with our dollars, Like we've artificially created this demand for

(50:31):
the dollar. So as long as there's a demand for
a dollar, I mean, people are going to use it,
and that's fine. But there's exchange rates for all currencies.
You can exchange your dollars for you and for anything
like that. So just throwing bitcoin in as another currency
in there with exchange rates, I don't see that as
you know, like that's just normal. That's that's a normal.

Speaker 5 (50:54):
Who is there a supply of bitcoin? Like are there bitcoins?
Like what's the unit of bitcoin?

Speaker 3 (50:59):
So yeah, so the smallest little unit of a bitcoin,
as a satoshi, it's equivalent to like right now in
price the US dollars. I mean, like a thousand satoshi's
is approximately a dollar, you know, But there was no price.
You know, when bitcoin was first created, it had no

(51:20):
no price. It was zero. You just went and mind it,
you know, and then it's like, oh it's thirty cents,
and it's twenty bucks, and oh it's one thousand dollars. Well,
you know, one hundred and twenty three thousand dollars today
you know, it's just just like the fiat price of
that is to me is kind of irrelevant, you know.
It's it's the idea of putting, like I try to

(51:43):
keep the economic part aside, like and sell the ethics
of it, like I am putting as a monetary object,
any value I store in there is mine forever.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
You know.

Speaker 3 (51:55):
It's just a monetary protocol. It's decentralized, So every little note,
it's just a network of this immutable ledger that just says,
you know, this address has this much, this address has
this much, and you possess the keys to those addresses
and that's how you control it. So it is a
true bearer asset, like you hold it all and you

(52:15):
can hold it all in your mind just with if
you if you know the key. So it's just.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Like you said before that rich people are buying real
things houses and so on. Land. Well, bitcoin is not anything.
It's it's an investment, really, an investment in nothing.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
And I would say this so if we think about monetary,
think about object not tangible. Right, I can pick up
a bar of gold, and I can't pick up I
can't pick up a bitcoin and show it to you.
But I mean, it's just energy. It's a it's digital energy,
it's electricity, it's you know, those are particles, just the

(52:54):
same as the goal. Like as a monetary object, bitcoin
is just as objective as you and I. You know,
like it's still physical in the sense that it exists
in physical reality. It is a physical object. It's not tangible,
but you know that it's not any less real. It's
not nothing. It's definitely not nothing.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
It really it's no more real than euros or dollars
or rubles.

Speaker 5 (53:21):
Well, and again, I guess if it seems for any
wealth and bitcoin it has to be accepted as a
medium in exchange. If it's not an.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Exchange, that's the essence of all money.

Speaker 5 (53:34):
Yeah, I understand that. But you said earlier that it
doesn't really matter whether somebody takes my bitcoin or not. Well,
it seems to me it's absolutely necessary. Otherwise you're you're
putting your wealth in something which doesn't promote exchange, or
you can't exchange for anything.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
So just because the because the medium of exchange hasn't
scaled globally yet, that doesn't mean it's not fulfilling that function,
you know. So, like I took this from Aristotle in ethics.
He's talking like he talks medium of exchange, unit of account,
and store value. Those are the three formal properties of money.

(54:13):
Those properties are belongings. So as soon as one person
exchanges makes an exchange with another with bitcoin, it simultaneously
has all it's fulfilling all three functions. It's not just
this or just that. You know, when you and I
make an exchange, we are in the act of that exchange.

(54:34):
We're transferring value that we have already stored, and it's
we're giving it a price. So just because I would
just say I don't really care about the extent of
how you know, the degree of more or less that
it has scaled, that that's an accident. The its formal
function is being fulfilled like that's a category of belonging.

(54:56):
It's on or off, it's it's not. It doesn't admit
more or less. So when we start talking about the
scaling of that, we're talking about a different thing. We're
talking about its adoption. We're talking about its accidents, not
its essence.

Speaker 5 (55:12):
Yeah, but I still seem to me. I just recently
bought a new we bought a car. I put down
four thousand dollars. If my money, if my if my
wealthare caught up in bitcoin, and and the car dealerships
don't take that, I couldn't actually bought the car, so
that bitcoin would have been a little use to me

(55:33):
at that point. And if that's if there's not a
scale of companies that will take bitcoin for exchange, then
it seems it's fairly worthless. It might not be entirely worthless,
but it's fairly worthless.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
Well if the if the car dealer, if you need
a car, and the car dealership is only going to
take dollars, then you sell your bitcoin for the dollars
and buy the car like you're just spending it. You're
just you're just you using whatever, uh you know you're again,
it's just like the exchange rate between them like that,
that's just a normal part of any economy. Like if

(56:09):
I just fly to Japan and they don't they don't
want to take my dollar, you know, that's not that's
not an indictment on the dollar or their currency. It's
just like where you're at you've got to make do with.
I mean, that's just a you just have to deal
with that reality. Selling that bitcoin for dollars to buy
the car. I don't see.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
But well, the problem is is that if there's not
a sufficient number of businesses that will take bit bitcoin,
bitcoin becomes less worth less than dollars. Is not the case?
I mean if if if it's if I can go
get a steak and shake and buy a hamburger wherever
they have a steak and shake or a beer, but

(56:53):
I can't go buy a car, or I can't go
to the grocery store with bitcoin. Some places take it someplace,
it's not. It seems either has to be a cical
threshold at a certain point of a number and just a
right number of businesses that will take bitcoin before it
actually can be a trustworthy place to put one's wealth.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
Well, I mean, it's just like you're putting a if
you're investing or whatever you're putting your in the stock market.
You know, you can't buy a hamburger or a car
with that, you know, So like, why are we applying
a different But the.

Speaker 5 (57:25):
Whole economy is set up on the dollar, and so
from almost intents and purposes, I can use dollars any place,
at least the United States, but I can't use bitcoin
the same way. So bitcoin at this point can't be
as valuable as a dollar, and if it is as
valuable dollars, one wonders if there's some kind of a
kind of inflation going on there too.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
So I don't think that that's if I put all
my energy into a bitcoin and it's immune from the basement, Right,
that was an.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Immune from the basement. You said in your book that
the value would confluctuate considerably if people unload large amounts
of bitcoin for some reason.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
Yeah, the nominal price in converting will change. Like that's
that's the that's just the normal market. What I'm saying
is the value and the energy that I expended can't
be taken from me.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
So like what're talking about.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
My life, My life's work. I spent you know, fourteen
years in the military, working, working, working, doing things, earning
creating value, earning money, right, and when I put that
into bitcoin, no one can ever take that from me.
No one can, No one can extract that energy, like
I'm immune from the debasement.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
The value of bitcoin fluctuate, It's just like the value
of the dollar does. I don't see the difference.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
So the dollar is this bucket, you know, if you
think of these monetary objects as buckets. You know, it's
not just that it has holes in it. So gold
would be a bucket that has a hole in it
at about one to two percent. It is, you know,
as one to two percent of gold is created every year,
year after year, that value that's in that gold is

(59:12):
slowly draining out and equalizing between all the gold supply.
You know, the dollar as a bucket is hooked up
to a siphon which is getting pulled out at fourteen percent,
you know, compounded annually for the last forty five years.
So you say, what is the value of bitcoin. The

(59:33):
value of bitcoin is removing the siphon. Like every day
I hold the dollar, I'm getting extracted from, right, I
don't want to do that. I don't want it extra.
So Bitcoin in nominal price, while it fluctuates, has been
going basically a straight forty five Like now we're talking economics,

(59:54):
like but when you when you go and look at
the prices of bitcoin, it appreciates at least the price
at least the level of debasement. And then the upside.
The upside is as adoption, so as more and more
people are like, hey, I really like the idea of
not getting extracted from I really like the idea of

(01:00:15):
being immune to debasement. Well, they're dumping their energy into
bitcoin too, so bitcoin will basically always keep track. And
this is with your house, this is with all those assets.
If you own any asset, it's going to at least
kind of tend to grow nominally at the rate of debasement,

(01:00:37):
so you're at least keeping up with debasement. I'm going
to hold all the value that I created in bitcoin
to be immune from that. And if I have to
pull some out and put it into a dollar, I
want to hold that dollar as little possible a time
as much so I will pull it out by the
car and I'm done. Everything else is I just I
don't want to hold anything that's hooked up to a

(01:00:59):
siphon like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Well, that has appreciated in value versus the dollar. But
it's only it only makes it only it's only denominated
and drum for the dollar. And so it's hard to
see how is.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Any you can price it in anything?

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Well, sure, but if you, it seems to me a
very little different from an investment scheme. And I don't
see why people who are struggling economically are going to
suddenly be free or or wealthy if they have them
to have enough money to buy a little bit of bitcoin.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Yeah, I mean so you said. So that's the thing.
It's like normal markets, normal capital markets, only the wealthy
had access to buy these assets. Like a picasso is
a great store of value if you want to, uh
protect yourself from debasement. But I don't know how many
millions of dollars that cost. I can't buy a picasso

(01:01:57):
to protect myself from debasement, you know. I can't just
go out and buy a bunch of houses to protect
myself from debasement. But I can throw whatever tips I
get today, the meager savings that I have, I can
at least protect that from debasement. You know, so, I'm I'm.
It gives you a an opportunity to shield yourself. It

(01:02:21):
gives you an opportunity to unhook you know, the value
you create from that siphon, if that makes any sense,
and the investment ups. Like there, there's people that don't
see that. There's people that treat this just like any
other stock, and they speculate on it and they gamble
like people will be people like degeneracy as like, Uh,

(01:02:43):
that's that's for all all of human history.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
They go in the back alleys and they throw dice,
you know, and then that's fine. They're they're gonna gamble.
They're gonna do that, and people do gamble with bitcoin,
they do. But to me, I'm not concerned with that
at all, because that's not why I'm not here to gamble,
you know, I'm I want to work hard, save and
and secure prosperity. I don't want to work hard, invest

(01:03:10):
and take risk to secure prosperity. That's that The s
m P five hundred is not a savings account, but
that is what we treat it as. Everyone's four one K,
everyone's I RA, everyone's you know, retirement plan is in,
a stock is in you know, that's it's a Frankenstein
savings mechanism. Like it's not a vessel that you're supposed

(01:03:31):
to save in. It is investment. It's taking on risk.
You know, we talked about what we price things in.
One of the things that I really like to do
is price things in the median wage, right, because that's
the that's a better proxy to value created what you know,
what what is the value created from?

Speaker 5 (01:03:52):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
You know, the median hourly wage workers, Like what are
we pricing that in? And it's like, that's that's the
crazy thing. I put these in the book. But it's like,
you know, so in nineteen seventy, I think it was
like twenty hours, it took the median the median the
median wage. If you work for twenty hours, you could
buy a share of the S and P five hundred
a slice of the whole entire economic pie. Today that's

(01:04:15):
like one hundred and seventy eight hours, right, So that
that just shows that we've detached the production of value
from the money.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Like like I could show that the corporations have in
collusion with the government to be sure, have kept wages down.
It could equal ways show that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
Well when you also compare that to like just all
the asset, like there's this seven to eight times you know, kind.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Of like.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
It takes seven to eight times more work today in hours,
in human labor hours to create the value that was
before measured in money. It's like, you know, you can
look any you can measure anything in that and you'll
you'll you'll hit that ballpark. So it's like that that's
why I say this debasement is the foundation. Like those
things are on top of it and can add to

(01:05:11):
or detract from, but it's really the debasement that is
this driving force. And eat in on this on debasement
because like you know, it's such a complicated issue like
this the monetary system is this goliath thing and how
do you fight it? You know it's like, well David
hits it with the sling the stone. It's like, what

(01:05:33):
to me it took on this new thing? Like it's
about simplicity. You take one simple idea that is true
and you you you you put it to the system.
You put it to Goliath, and it knocks it out.
They can't answer when you ask somebody a politician or
inb hey, what is debasement? You know what is that doing? Sorry?

(01:05:58):
My daughters? Like morally justified the basement. That is the
question to put to everybody you know you have And
that's what I try to do in the book is
is ask you to hey, you you ask these questions
and look for honest answers, you know, and morally justify it.
Morally justify sticking a siphon into that bucket of money,

(01:06:21):
the dollar, and how can we morally justify that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
And if you know, as you know the FED, one
of the one of the legally mandated duties of the
FED is to keep inflation at a low level. Yeah
they're now and now they sometimes do that is something
don't do that. But the I think that the I

(01:06:48):
agree with you about the amount of work, amount of
money that is inquired to buy certain assets. I mean,
the college tuition is an example that has gotten way
way above the rate of inflation. But that's not primarily
because of inflation. That's primarily for other factors. And and you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
Know, so again I would say, yes, there's multiple variables,
there's multiple factors in this, but the debasement is the
that's that is the about the bottom, that's the foundation.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
Uh, if you just think about this out loud. So
they say they're shooting for two percent inflation, Okay, well
that puts the half life you know of two percent.
Even if they if they perfectly hit their mandate, their
target and they get two percent every year, they've they've
siphoned out half of the value of all dollars in

(01:07:44):
like thirty four years. It's like two percent sounds so
small and dumb, but it's like, in principle, justify it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
I don't know what you said, the gold rate of
inflation would.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
Be yes, but the natural inflation rate of gold is
a moral. It's not an evil in and of itself.
It's just it's just a a force of market. It's
market forces, a natural part of economic reality that we
contend with. And so like it's not evil, you know,

(01:08:14):
but that two percent is a person doing it, Like
that's the that's the distinguishing thing. This, this gold's inflation
is a moral, it's just natural market forces. The two
percent of the FED is a person choosing to do
it to other people. And that's that's the moral distinction.

(01:08:36):
Justify that morally. You have to, Like I don't have
to to morally justify the gold rate because it's not moral,
but you have to morally justify that because that's that's
a person acting, making a decision to affect other people's
lives and cause damage. And that two percent is like,
that's that's significant. Like you're gonna say I've worked for

(01:09:00):
thirty for thirty years or whatever about just and just
to say, like, okay, everything that I've been working, you
know that I that I earned at the beginning is
now half of what I'm earning today, Like that's just
insane to me that it's such a when when you
recognize that, it's like how go back, go back, please?

(01:09:21):
When you recognize that, you can't like once I formed
that category, like I can't unroll my consciousness, I can't
unsee that. Like it's it's just an undefensible evil. So
like what am I to do as a husband and
as a father, as a citizen. It's like, well, I'm
going to I'm going to stand on this like this

(01:09:42):
is this is the this is the purpose, this is
the mission, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:09:51):
Christopher, any more points you want to bring up, Oh,
I guess one final thought, it's what you're what you're
complaining about mostly and if it's not. If it's the
case with the dollar supply we have now we have
this two percent right inflation, which I'm not doubting, but

(01:10:15):
it's the same thing with gold. There might be reasons
why to have the dollar system rather of the goal
system other than the goal then other than that, And
what we're what we're complaining about is that if the
two percent placement which is occurring is because of purely
human choice for the worst of reasons. If the answer

(01:10:38):
is actually, if we had a moral government, moral order,
that would be obvious at least to some extent. And
if you say, well, you don't want to leave it
up to human choice in this matter because it's so
dangerous to do, well, that's that's just the problem with
government itself. There's other places where we can be immoral,
we can be unjust, but we don't league castaway government

(01:11:01):
because of that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Yeah, no, and not I'm not I'm not an abolitionist.
And like I I think that the state is just
a natural extension of the family. These necessary you know,
bonds we have, like getting into like the metaphysics and
the anthropology, it's like, yes, a human, an individual doesn't

(01:11:23):
comfort like we are we are dependent, we are you know,
we we literally come from like the collect The one
thing that Marx gets right is the collective has primacy
to the individual. Like you you don't you don't begot yourself,
you know. So like as those necessary intersubjective bonds, like
that's part of human nature. So like those are non

(01:11:46):
voluntary and they have asymmetrical power dynamics. Like so to me,
that's all the state is. It's just describing those natural
necessary relations between people, And yes, we can have benevolent
state and we can have evil state. And I'm always
advocating for people being moral and doing good. The thing

(01:12:07):
with the money, though, is like, so, now that we
have this monetary protocol that allows us to just remove trust,
It's like, why would we not do that for that domain?
Like separating money from the state is, uh, doesn't abolish
the state, But I mean, why would you not, Like,

(01:12:29):
what's what's the I guess what would be the argument
to not remove trust from the monetary domain if you could,
which we can.

Speaker 5 (01:12:38):
Like, well, like I said, but that's I guess that's
that's point unclearedly that we can. And my only point
that there might be solid reasons to keep the money
supply under the under the control of the state, just
as we want to keep the military of the police
forces control of the state. These things the state should
have some term the nation over over the common good,

(01:13:02):
it seems, and all these things belong to the common good.
We simply remove the monetary supply outside the purview of
the state. We're actually place in it, but in a
kind of state of anarchy, and that that would be
my problem.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
With it.

Speaker 5 (01:13:17):
And so if if there could be a moral fed,
what's wrong with the moral fed?

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
Yeah, So to ask to say, what's the problem with
the moral fed is that the moral fed can't sustain itself.
The moral fed will fall at the.

Speaker 5 (01:13:33):
State of the states.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
Yeah, exactly, So, I mean, but.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
You can't we don't have a solution to the state
like that. That's we're not gonna change We're not gonna
we're not gonna change human nature, but we can change
the monetary object that we choose to to use, like
we can change our monetary tools. We can't change human nature,
but we can change the monetary tools like that. That

(01:13:57):
I would say that's the distinguishing thing between you know,
state and money. One deals with human nature immutable, and
one deals with you know, a monetary object which can
change by our choice.

Speaker 5 (01:14:11):
I guess, I guess my point ative that may be,
it may be true, might not be true.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:14:16):
I'm not I'm not decided on it. The fact that
the money money supply has always been in the control
of the state would seem to argue that that's sort
of the human beings succeeded. That's that there's natural reasons
for that, and I would be rather hesitant to abandon it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
That's just.

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
It's really hard to to imagine, you know. Uh, like
the the invention of the Internet, you know, it changed
how we communicated, you know, so it's like there was
never an internet before, and then we have an Internet
and we're like, oh, well, what does this mean. Well,
it doesn't change human nature, but it changes how we
connect and how we communicate with each other. And like,
I think that's the same thing. Like there's never been

(01:15:00):
a immutable monetary protocol that we have that actually enables
us to remove that trust. So it changes how we
connect and relate, uh, you know, monetarily, but again, it
doesn't change our nature. So like I don't I see
that as like this is a genuine discovery, Like there's

(01:15:23):
this we always had to rely on the state for
money because there was no other way. You know, Well,
we don't have to do that anymore. Like it's not
a technology in the sense that it's a you know,
it's just like a new iPhone. It's a it's a protocol,
it's a it's a set of you know, rules of syntax.

(01:15:44):
The way we talk in English, the way we do
math like this. These are protocols that that facilitate how
we communicate and how how we interact. And we have
a new monetary protocol which enables us to to relate
to each other monetarily in a completely new way. And
so I see that as like, Okay, this is the

(01:16:07):
first time we have the tool to remove that. I'm
going to remove it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Andrewed, we should probably be winding up here.

Speaker 4 (01:16:19):
Yeah, just very briefly speaking as a layman, I mean,
I do find it refreshing in this discussion and in
your book that you do look at economic problems from
a moral and ethical perspective. And you know today many
people are not doing that and are considered those considerations irrelevant.

(01:16:40):
And I think it is certainly salutary that that we
get back to looking at those sometimes very technically complicated
issues without losing that basic moral perspective.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
So I think that's very elogable. Thank you very much
for being our guest today. You know, flesh of the
author of modern chains, the invisible shackles of economic slavery.
And let's let's conclude with a heill marriage to our
lady of Mount Carmel named my father and son No
wispirit Im, Heil Mary, full of grace. The Lord is

(01:17:18):
with thee, blessed among women, and blessed is the fruit
of that womb. Jesus, Bully Mary, Mother of God, pray
for us sinners now and at the all of our death.
And then or Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us
and father. And so I'm no wispirit. Amen. Thank you
very much, thank you, thanks for having me. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
Hello, God's beloved. I'm Annabel Moseley, author, professor of theology
and host of them Sings My Soul and Destination Sainthood
on w c A T Radio. I invite you to
listen in and find inspiration along this sacred journey. We're
traveling together to make our lives a masterpiece and with

(01:17:59):
God's grace, become saints. Join me Annabel Moseley for then
sings My Soul and Destination Sainthood on WCAT Radio. God
bless you. Remember you are never alone. God is always
with you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
Thank you for listening to a production of WCAT Radio.
Please join us in our mission of evangelization, and don't
forget Love lifts up when knowledge takes flight.