← Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Jeff Booth: Why Prices Rise But Quality Gets Worse | The "Free Market" and Deflation Myth
01:14:13
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- [00:00]
Jeff Booth
People are fighting inside this, thinking it can be solved with this person or this person. The entire thing is rotten to its core. I'm not saying there's bad people in all the institutions. I'm saying if money is broken, then you could expect everything out of that broken monetary system to be less and less secure and more and more harmful to you.
- [00:27]
Natalie Brunell
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Happy 2026. I'm so happy to be joined again by one of my mentors, one of the best voices in the space. So many of you requesting for him to join me again, Jeff Booth. Jeff, thanks for joining me.
- [00:43]
Jeff Booth
It was so great to see you. Natalie.
- [00:46]
Natalie Brunell
Our interview that we did about seven months ago was. It just blew my expectations away. I had no idea that it would resonate with so many people. I get someone coming up to me or messaging me almost on a daily bas saying, that was the interview that changed everything for me. And it was essentially like a masterclass from you on inflation and deflation. Why do you think it resonated with so many people?
- [01:08]
Jeff Booth
What I loved about that, that podcast specifically, is it wasn't meant to be a podcast. It was you and I discussing so that you could help write your book in a tone because you kept on getting caught up when people asked you questions and. And so it just allowed us to explore something in a way deeper level than just the high. Than the high points and your questions. I think that's why it was so authentic and so people could see people. It wasn't me, it was you asking really good questions through that process that unlocked a greater understanding in a whole bunch of other people.
- [01:49]
Natalie Brunell
Well, I think we're ready for a part two, because I have been. Something's been weighing on my heart as I follow the news and the headlines, really outside of Bitcoin. And I thought, who better to speak about this with than you? And it's really about just our system and the political divisions that we've seen. And when I look out at the conversations that people are having right now, I see a lot of anger, especially from young people, toward capitalism, toward America. I see a lot of some of the same sentiment that I actually wrote about in the book that I saw after the great financial crisis, which is tax the rich. This isn't fair. You've got a lot. You need to give some of it to me because I've been working hard and just people again, kind of pulling themselves apart in teams. And I think I've told you this, but I took very serious notes on your book price of tomorrow. And so I pulled them up because you talk about capitalism in the book and you wrote, I believe in capitalism where risk is rewarded and punished and the free market is the ultimate referee of your value. That's why it pains me to see it breaking down. A market where the government reaches in to decide who wins or loses is nothing more than crony capitalism, where wealth is not created by the value you create and the risks you took to get there, but by a political system that rewards its insiders. And I went back to that because I thought if only people understood. They're not angry at capitalism, they're angry at what is a distortion of capitalism, crony capitalism, or corporatism or whatever you want to call it. But that's kind of where I want to start this conversation is do you also get the sense that people don't even understand capitalism anymore?
- [03:44]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. And I wonder how they could, right. How they possibly could understand capitalism. Because what you mean by capitalism, the word capitalism, as I think you describe it, or very many people describe it, can't mean what you think it does. Right. That's actually why I wrote that in the book. I think by capitalism, what you describe as capitalism means the free market. What I describe as capitalism means the free market. But that leads us to something that's a real big challenge in our own brains. Because a global free market has never existed. Because a global free market would be deflationary, would mean prices would fall as we competed with each other to provide more value to each other and we used the more value, prices would just naturally continue to fall. But it brings up. So if that's true, then the version of capitalism that you believe in has never been true. It's just a word. And so everybody has their own version of what they mean capitalism mean. And so if, if their version of capitalism means tax attacks for the rich, right. The rich get richer and then of course they're going to believe in somebody else who's going to burn that system down. Right. Or we're going to stand up and we're going to, we're going to get our share and make the. Make the whole thing because. Because the version that you believe in doesn't exist either.
- [05:30]
Natalie Brunell
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- [08:19]
Jeff Booth
Because to be able to meet somebody where they are, you have to realize that your version of capitalism has never existed as well. And, and that's hard to do because I, I grew up in the same, I grew up in the exact same thing. I believed that capitalism did exist, free markets did exist, that, that, that I was creating value in the free market and that was the source of my wealth or success was all it was, all of that. And to, to break that down and, and wonder and realize that that couldn't be true. It could, is impossible for that to be true globally. If the natural state of the free market was deflation and I lived in a different system, then I realized my version of capitalism had to be distorted too. And, and those are hard things to. When your own, when you're, when you're, when your own belief gets challenged and you have to rectify that belief because it can't coexist, then, then you can only start to understand somebody else's belief on why, why they might see the world from, from their, their view. But those two things cannot coexist. Right? Prices cannot go up and you live in, live in a free market. In other words, capitalism has never existed in the way that people think it does. It's always been a control of money that has distorted outcomes and distorted outcomes that leads to socialism. Why does it lead to socialism? Because as, as you centralize everything and you regulate and money chases money and all of the big tech, big pharma, big agriculture, who gets elected? Who, how, how do you get elected? You go to those people for donors and the money just feeds back. There's no way to stop that. And so it' there's so many people left out is that money concentrates so many people left out. They will always turn to socialism. But socialism is just a different type of control system. Right? They're both control systems that people don't realize that they're making stronger both left and right. Right. When you start with capitalism and defending capitalism, you're not defending what you think you're defending because it hasn't existed.
- [10:50]
Natalie Brunell
Well, I want to get into that and how you really can't have a free market and true capitalism in an inflationary system. But first I'm going to kind of put myself in the mindset of some of the critiques that I get and even some of the way that I felt, I would say probably 15 years ago, which is we see a lot of greed. The corporations have gotten wealthier and wealthier and we need regulations, we need the government to step in because otherwise they would destroy our environment. They would put things out that aren't safe. And so we need entities that are going to come in and create rules of the road to say you can, you can or can't do this and bound them to a system of rule and law. What do you say to that?
- [11:36]
Jeff Booth
There can be no monopoly in the free market. It's impossible. Regulation is the market. What monopolies favor is regulation because it keeps the free market out. And so all of the things that people are trying to solve with more regulation create the empires and the manipulation, everything else that they think they're being protected against. And so let's just walk through why that's true and you can push back on anything. So you, Natalie Brunel, are a part of the free market. You will choose value that in your terms, what you determine is value. And entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs compete against what was previous there, there to give you more value. If somebody is destroying the world and you don't want to, you won't choose them in a free market. You will choose something different. And their margin creates an opportunity for entrepreneurs to attack that margin in whatever way they want it to, to provide more value to you, Natalie Bruno and you use what provides you more value. We're using Riverside right now because it provides you more value than a bunch of, other, than a bunch of other platforms. And if another one comes tomorrow to provide you more value that you can have more reach and it's cheaper, better, faster, you will use it. And if you don't, other people will use it and they'll provide more value than you because your cost will be too high. And that force that has us as both parts, we forget that we're part of the economy. Our choice is part of the thing that drives the entrepreneurial process. And it's constantly a forcing function to bring more value to us. So the only way prices could go up in that market is if you regulated, controlled that market, blocked it from that compet competition. And so from that regulation, if you looked at healthcare expenses, if you looked at what food looks like, if you look at what banking system looks like, if you look at what the technology monopolies are looking at, looking like, all of they look like that because of the regulation designed to, to protect them that you desperately wanted because you were inside a system trying to drive benefit for you and actually centralizing it faster.
- [14:31]
Natalie Brunell
Okay, so let me push back a little bit. Let's, let's think of an industry like, like clothing. If I just wanted to make money, if I was a company that wanted to produce clothing at the cheap, cheapest amount possible to make the largest profit margin. I would use the worst materials. I would mass manufacture it in any place that I could get the cheapest labor. And I would churn out as much as possible that fat. I mean, people are criticizing this now, like fast fashion, right? It all ends up in the landfills. And I would just scoop up as much profit as I possibly could. I mean, if I was someone that was a bad actor who just wanted to make a bunch of money in the capitalist market, and so wouldn't I need regulation to come in and say, well, you can't do this or you can't do that. You can't pollute in your factory. You can't, you know, produce with chemicals that are going to harm someone's body or something like that. Like, because that's the, that's the mentality. I hear from a lot of people that if you remove all the regulations, you're going to have a wild, wild west of people putting out products that harm you that are super cheap to produce. But hey, you're going to have a huge market because people will probably choose the cheap, cheapest thing in the store.
- [15:45]
Jeff Booth
So you can go to stores right now and buy the exact goods that you just described. Correct? Are they, are they the biggest clothing brands? And, and so there's an entire choice of what you like. You could go, literally, I could walk down the street and find corner stores that sell that type of garbage, right? Similar. And I can buy really cheap, cheap, cheap clothes. The market is vast. It buys all different types of clothes. And that is a tiny part of the market. If it was the entire market, it would look like you said, and then somebody would be regulated as such. It will never be the type entire market because our choice is fast. We all want different things. And as soon as something is like that or we decide we want something different, as soon as all of the manufacturing textiles moves to a different labor environment because it, because their currency has been hyperinflated and it's cheap labor, then it moves again and it moves again and it moves again and there's always markets constant. And then in time, a bunch of that labor will be replaced with automation, right? And it'll move again and move again. It. The free market is what you decide it is. And our choice is in combination. So no, it's. So let's say the entire entire world exactly like you described. And tragedy of the commons was existing because. Because these big corporations were burning it all down, right? And they couldn't remain big if other people chose different things. You would choose different things.
- [17:38]
Natalie Brunell
I mean, I see this sometimes on Shark Tank. I don't know if you've watched that show, Jeff, but these entrepreneurs will come on and they're producing something of high quality or they make it in a certain way and even the sharks will push back and say, you're not going to get shelf space because these other guys, you might, it might be better, you might use fresher ingredients or whatever, but that guy charges $4 less or $6 less. And that's what the average family is going to pick up because it's just such a big difference. So you might provide the quality, but the other one has the cheap factor.
- [18:13]
Jeff Booth
So let's use that as an example. I think it's a really great example. So this is where the market has no idea what's coming, right? So as an example, your shelf space idea, right? Your shelf space idea had Walmart as the biggest retailer doing exactly what you said around the world, right? Lowest cost goods, best supply chain around exactly what you said they started from, from smaller, smaller towns instead of big cities. And they built an incredible efficient supply chain to be able to stock those shelves. And they only had limited shelf space. And so everybody in all entrepreneurs, not all entrepreneurs, tried to get their thing in a competitive landscape for your eyeballs going in the store, onto their shelves. And it was ruthless. You had to compete in narrow margins with everybody in the world. The free market is ruthless, right? You have to compete for you, right? For all people and that block. And that's what did Amazon do in competition with Walmart? They expanded the shelves. Limitless, right? And Amazon ate Walmart's lunch by having limitless shelves. And you one day said, I'm never going to shop at Amazon, I'll never buy everything online. And then when there's more value online, you move. So what we just described is something coming out of nowhere in the free market as technology expanded to provide you different value in a different way, that expanded the shelf space limitless to just your imagination because the shelf space online was unlimited. Now again, what's happening right now is Amazon looks like it's today, just like Walmart, sorry, just like Walmart looked before was impenetrable because everybody's there and everybody's there. So you're competing in this and there's going to be another innovation, whether it's, whether it's printing in your home one day, some of the goods, right? That, that changes that. That again. But the free, free market is relentless and in trying to create value and when you Create value for other people. They move.
- [20:47]
Natalie Brunell
Okay, so let's actually make a distinction for people that are watching. So we do not live in a free market. One of the things you shared in my last episode is none of us have ever even known what that's like. We, it just has not existed for humans because we've had imperfect money. So let's say the bitcoin world, the bitcoin standard is that free market. The bridge to that is what we're trying to create for folks. Right? But they don't, they don't know how to operate within that because they've never experienced it. The one we're in, you know, call it crony capitalism, whatever it is, this is the broken system. I keep seeing videos pop up in my algorithm lately on Instagram about young people complaining about the quality of things. And again, they go back to profit. They say the companies are putting out this terrible quality. Ten years ago, the food only had three ingredients. Ten years ago, the clothing was made of cotton. They fast forward to today and they say this is the result of corporate greed. What do you say to them.
- [21:49]
Jeff Booth
From that spot? If they believe that, that spot, it's really hard to be able to try to convince them separately. Right. Because this is a. I ask a different question. I ask name a name a problem that you could solve inside a system that had to manipulate money faster and faster and faster. Name the thing that you care about most. Because how does, when you say corporate greed, you yourself are choosing the value. So if you're choosing the value and you're choosing these corporations over and over and they're competing in razor sharp small margins to try to create value, then wouldn't they have to remove their labor as fast as possible with AI or you wouldn't choose their value. How could it be them when it's you? And so if you're inside that system yelling at that system all that time while choosing that system, isn't it you and not somebody else? And by the way, this is the layered. How layered this is, is so hard to see. Because we want to believe. We so want to believe. What you just described is I'm in social media all day inside the system, trying to divide me from somebody else, believing it's. It's not somebody, it's. It's somebody else. And I don't want to face that. It's me. Right, the agency at the bottom of that, because. And all of the things inside what you're talking about would have to separate you from others faster.
- [23:32]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah.
- [23:33]
Jeff Booth
And it Would you would want to believe that? You would want to believe because it couldn't be you. But if you've never lived in a free market, and bitcoin is the only free market that's ever existed, and you spend all of your time in the other market, how couldn't it be you?
- [23:51]
Natalie Brunell
Right. Okay, wait. So this actually might help both me and the people listening to this. Let's transition into this free market world. Are you saying that on a bitcoin standard we now have perfect money? We operate in a free market. Money cannot be manipulated. Would both costs come down while quality increases for people? Would I be saying not only can I afford the clothes or the house or whatever, but actually the quality of how it's made and the things that are used to produce it would be better over the years? And if so, how?
- [24:30]
Jeff Booth
Why would that exist? And you already know because you're starting to participate in, in Bitcoin and actually purchasing in Bitcoin. And what do you see? You see tallow soap, you see grass fed beef, you see these artisan markets emerging, higher quality, lower cost and circular economies that are emerging all over the place. And that's what I'm watching too. And so I understand why people couldn't see it if they're not in it. But when you're in it, every day you're seeing exactly what you just described you're seeing. And that has to happen, not might happen. Why would it have to happen? Because we're the choice. We choose more value all the time. And entrepreneurs and the free market rewards an entrepreneur when they give us more value.
- [25:27]
Natalie Brunell
Well, again, I think this is why it's so hard to understand. Because when you think about producing something with quality today, the cost is the biggest hurdle. All these materials, the nicer they are, the better quality they are, the more expensive they are. So it's almost like the whole system incentivizes you to use cheaper things, especially if you want profit. And people again, are kind of skewed that capitalism is all about profit. So if profit means you have to produce it as cheaply as possible, which usually means you use the cheapest stuff possible. So to envision a world where not only are your prices coming down, but the quality of things are going up, that it doesn't make any sense, Jeff.
- [26:05]
Jeff Booth
You know, and that doesn't make any sense because they've never seen that world. And they're measuring everything from the other system, believing that there's an enemy and they. That's not them. Right? It's this is why this is so hard to see at the bottom of what we just said. It just. If you just go in layers and you. And you said you could try to disprove everything I'm saying, right? But natural state of the free market is deflation. We know that. Right? We've already done a podcast on that. Meaning you've never lived in it, right? In a. In a world with exponential technology moving faster and faster, that means we should step two, we should see exponential deflation, we should see exponential value increase to us. And, and three, you are a part of it. You have agency in it. And so if all of your agency at the bottom of Bitcoin really is. Every single question in Bitcoin comes down to I'm scared somebody else has more agency than me. Quantum core versus knots. What governments will do, what companies will do, what these people will do. Every single question come comes down at the bottom of that question comes down to do I have agency in the world I want to create or not? And most people don't believe they have any agency. So it's easy if they don't believe they have any agency to look for somebody else to blame. I'm including bitcoiners in that. Right? The. It's. It's just so natural to believe there's somebody else other than you. But if you go through the work on Bitcoin and understand what it actually represents and you can run a node and you can start spending in this new free market and you can activate into it, then all of these other imaginary villains go away because it's you. And you stop spending your time inside that chaos inside the. Inside the nonsense that's trying to divide you from everyone else. And you start spending your time in. In something that looks very different.
- [28:24]
Natalie Brunell
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- [28:39]
Jeff Booth
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- [28:45]
Natalie Brunell
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- [30:59]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So to create the seed oils, the amount of manufacturing and capacity to build that entire infrastructure to try to extract those and solvents and everything else, it's not an took a lot of infrastructure to be able to build that infrastructure. Marketing, get people to believe that this was better, to fight against what was better for you. If that same amount of investment went into an infrastructure for tallow and everything else, you would find cost parity, probably find better, far better outcomes. And then if you took the at a higher level, the cost to our health care systems, the cost to our economy, the cost to everything else that is that's downstream of that first derivative, essentially scam. People would see it and people would choose differently and the business. And, and they, and they now imagine a different world where fast food chains or maybe not healthy, but healthier and one was really unhealthy for you and you could see the difference. What would that really unhealthy one do in the free market?
- [32:15]
Natalie Brunell
Probably fail. Yeah, right. Well, that, I mean, that leads me to my next question, back to kind of regulation. Do you really believe that a free market could referee itself without the need for agencies to come in, entities to come in and say this, these are the rules. And if you do something that is harmful, we have to punish you. Like would. Would people be able to kind of root out the bad actors themselves? And how do we prevent like true harm from happening? Right. Someone producing something that willfully harms people, that they're negligent or they add something that's bad for someone. Regardless of what industry we're talking about, it could be medicine, it could be food, it could be a piece of clothing. Like how do you prevent that? Do you really think the market could self regulate?
- [33:01]
Jeff Booth
So this is going to be hard for people to hear, right? Because some of the things that we're talking about are going to challenge their heart, their biggest beliefs. But are those problems solved now or are they really bad now? Right, they're really bad.
- [33:20]
Natalie Brunell
You're right. We have a lot of regulations.
- [33:23]
Jeff Booth
We have regulation everywhere, right? So if regulation could solve the problem, wouldn't it have already solved the problem? Regulation stops the free market from working. And it says these people have control. And these people who have control are the money manipulators, are the people that are funding the government. Why does Epstein look like it does? Why does the what. Why does entire people are fighting inside this thinking it can be solved with this person or this person? The entire thing is rotten to its core. All of the institutions that you believe. I'm not saying there's bad people in all the institutions. I'm saying if money is broken, then you could expect everything out of that broken monetary system to be less and less secure and more and more harmful to you. So look at the things just. And you're out, you're mostly outside of it now. And look at the things you've learned that, that have taken your breath away, that you thought this was true before and now you've realized that something else is true and you're looking now what else isn't true. But everything from that broken monetary base has to be a Lie. And that's hard to take. So why this is so hard for us to see is we don't want to believe we've been lied to all over life. It's easier to. It's easier to. They'll protect us. When I, when I said agency. Right, that's what I mean. Right, that's what I mean. It's easier to believe that somebody else's fault than ours. It's easier to believe that, to go back 30 years and remember what family life used to look like. And it's, it'll get back like that again. But it can't from a broken monetary system. It has to get worse and worse and worse and worse. The opposite is also true. The free market is a natural referee. Why is it a natural referee? Because we have more police. Where are the police? Through our actions. Well.
- [35:23]
Natalie Brunell
And hopefully we have more choices. Right, like that's Right.
- [35:25]
Jeff Booth
That's what I mean when I say it creates more choices. Any monopoly gets attacked by more people trying to create more value because the margin creates more value. Opportunity.
- [35:38]
Natalie Brunell
So why do you think that people associate monopolies with capitalism? Because that's actually a piece of pushback that I've gotten when I talk about this world that we could create with Bitcoin, that it'll level the playing field. That I've said this many times on different shows that I don't think we would have a big pharma, big tech, big food, all these monopolies in different sectors if we had perfectly engineered money and a true free market. And people push back and they say absolutely not. We have Amazon and all these monopolies because of capitalism.
- [36:09]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. They need to add because of crony capitalism. Right. And again you're going back to capitalism. Like, like it's the free market and capitalism isn't the free market. They are. Right. And you're right. Right. So. So it's just your version of capitalism, which is really crony capitalism and their version of capitalism. And then you get stuck on a word.
- [36:37]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah.
- [36:38]
Jeff Booth
And you don't realize that we've never lived in a free market. And both are wrong.
- [36:42]
Natalie Brunell
It's so interesting because. Yeah. I mean I see it all the time. And maybe it is self reinforcing. Right. Because it's like that you sort of choose your own algorithms. But it's riled me up. It really has. Because I feel like people are blaming the wrong thing and then they are advocating for political leaders that will take away some of their rights and freedoms potentially in the worst case scenario. I'M not saying all of them will, but it's. It's their. Their pointing their anger at something that is a symptom rather than the true cause. And to. What you're exactly saying is when you have the corruption and money, it leads to corruption and everything else. But it's so hard to point people in that direction. And I. It's hard with outreach. Right. Because I truly see myself as an educator. I'm trying to do outreach about Bitcoin and meet people where they are. And everyone is so focused on the political stuff. Everyone is yelling past each other. It's this team versus that team. If their leader does something, it's okay, but if the other team does it, oh my gosh, all hell breaks loose. Right? There's so much hypocrisy, and it's so hard to just help people understand that what they're mad at, like, it's the wrong thing and they need to direct it towards the monetary system.
- [37:58]
Jeff Booth
But. But again, what they're mad at is way bigger than that, unfortunately. What they're mad at is them. Because what I said is this is. Bitcoin isn't asking. It's. It's imposing a new system. And you can have agency in that new system. And while you're in the other system talking about Bitcoin or talking about Bitcoin from a price measured in the other system, you were still in the other system. And so. So it would be really hard to describe what I'm talking about if all of your energy was in the other system. And that goes for bitcoiners, too. It goes for. Because. Because. Because you spend all your time, like, look at what Twitter. Look at Twitter. Right. Look at. On both sides of the.
- [38:46]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah.
- [38:46]
Jeff Booth
Both sides of the debate. And you're in it. Are trying to divide you and you think it's somebody else.
- [38:54]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah.
- [38:54]
Jeff Booth
They're trying to keep you. So. So a control system requires fear, Fear, coercion, manipulation, and it gains its control because free markets don't look like that. Like your autonomy, your agency, your freedom doesn't look like that. And it doesn't look like that in a free. In a. In a free market at all. It's your choices that. That drive a market. So if you're. And I say that, and I say it, it's hard to hear, but it's us, right?
- [39:30]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah.
- [39:31]
Jeff Booth
And when you. When you're experiencing all of that, it's not somebody else, it's us giving our energy to the system of control.
- [39:41]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah. Well, it's tough Jeff. Because I really do feel like, I feel like it's part of my mission and my calling to do outreach and to try to bring people onto the bitcoin side. And a lot of the pushback is the same. It's the same. I mean, I don't even deal with the crazy stuff, right? It's like, well, all of the electricity could go down. It's like, okay, they can turn bitcoin off, right? Those kinds of things, things I don't worry about. But it's more so when I get into conversations with very intelligent people, people I worked with or went to school with, and they, they start to kind of, you know, poke, poke at the, at the thesis and they say things like, okay, well the gold standard, right, that was different. And the gold standard, let's say that was more capitalistic. Well, we had the robber baron era and we had extreme wealth concentration. We had the Gilded Age where people were in factories and sweats and we needed the regulation to come in to set things like a 40 hour workweek and, and to break up the monopolies and things like Standard Oil. We needed the government and like, it's hard to kind of, it's hard for me to, to kind of insert bitcoin into those conversations. Because what I'm learning to your point is even then we didn't have a free market. Right?
- [41:06]
Jeff Booth
That was. That's really well said. That's the, that's the hard thing. That's the exact. Because people want to. If you've never, if we've never experienced it and just let's leave that as an if for now for, for people want to listen. If we've never experienced the global free market, then all of our books, everything, all of our history, all of our relations, all of our democracies, capitalism, socialism, all of the isms, all of our. The way we believed would also have to be contained this error code, right. That was always a control system that it would always fail. In the end we would go to war, restart it and start again. It always had to look like that. And what would make you think you were immune from that thinking. That's why this is so hard. That's why this is so hard. Because if this exists, if this and, and it does surely exist, you have a protocol bounded by energy that every 10 minutes there's a new block that doesn't care what I'm saying right now.
- [42:16]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah.
- [42:16]
Jeff Booth
That as long as it stays decentralized and secure. It is the first time we've ever seen this. That would Be really hard to understand from a whole bunch of minds that we're looking. Because how do you build, how do you build the future? You look at your previous pattern and want to build on top of it. And so we would always look to our past to say what's next? What's next? And now you have something totally different, orthogonal to anything else that has ever existed. That cut through that is imposing something that we had to either accept, move our time to or push away from.
- [42:55]
Natalie Brunell
So if you were speaking with someone and you know, they, they argued that, okay, well we weren't on the fiat standard back in the 1800s and we, we had the, the free banking, the wildcat banking era and it didn't self regulate. And we ended up with all of these issues and that's why they came in. And we established like a central bank and a lender of last resort because there was so much chaos in the quote unquote free market.
- [43:24]
Jeff Booth
So you're, you're talking specifically the U.S.
- [43:28]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah, I'm, I'm giving, yeah, let's, yeah.
- [43:31]
Jeff Booth
And by the way, and, and I agree with. So but if we again, not a global free market, but a local free market. So what grow, what drove the US and to be one of the wealthiest nations ever? What it was, the free market was the constitution about freedom that allowed people to move all over the, from all over the world to a place where their ideas mattered. Right. And their ideas culminated in faster growth and more economic freedom and more growth that changed kind of the course of history and made the US a new superpower. But as that was happening and you had a free banking system and what would it look like? Let's just, let's just do a toy example. What would it look like if that system was based on gold and a bank could reserve the gold and you didn't want your gold all the time and a bank could reserve that gold 50% of the time and pay you a little bit of a, pay a little money in the free market. Then another bank would do it 30% and pay you more then 10% and then 5%. Each one would pay you more. What would you do? You would go to the one that paid you the most, you would absolve the risk and they were, they were fractionalizing your gold. You would take the short term profit and for a while it would work because you chose. And then when it failed because everybody wanted to go back at the same time, what would you do? You wouldn't blame yourself, I would blame the bank. You would Blame the bank. Yeah.
- [45:14]
Natalie Brunell
Risky greedy people.
- [45:16]
Jeff Booth
Those greedy people. Exactly. And where did the greed lie? The greed laid in you trying to get a higher interest rate and, and absolving yourself of your risk in the free market. And so what would happen? What would happen? You, the as a government, you would exploit that, or as a central banking cartel, you would exploit that. You would actually create that. And you would say, we're going to solve this problem for those, those greedy people. And you would centralize that into a Federal Reserve, right, that protected those people from themselves. You regulate it. And now you've ex. Now you have an extraction mechanism for all of humanity.
- [46:00]
Natalie Brunell
I mean, honestly, you just, you boiled down wildcat banking in the 1800s into a couple minutes, and it makes perfect sense just based on normal human behavior.
- [46:10]
Jeff Booth
Human behavior. It's really. And, and what that says about us says the same thing as saying about us right now, right? So why people are going into all these altcoins and nonsense and, and why and stable coins. And that is people are going to do the same thing right now. They're going to central, they're going to centralize.
- [46:30]
Natalie Brunell
And we point to greed, right? In these corporations, it's always, it's always them. They're always in the ivory tower. It's the CEOs and the executive boardrooms. But we're also, when you choose Amazon, you're making a choice, right? Like, you are also, it's probably the cheapest. You didn't have to walk into a store. You just got it delivered on your front door. You're also exhibiting a little bit of greed, right? But, but I mean, to that point, would we have the level of wealth in some of these individuals? Like you even pointed it out when you wrote Price of Tomorrow, which was what? I mean, the book came out in, I think, 2017, right?
- [47:07]
Jeff Booth
2019. 2019.
- [47:10]
Natalie Brunell
So 2019, before the pandemic and all the money printing, you said just three people, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos account for more wealth than 50% of the population. And the top 5% of the US population holds more than two thirds of the wealth. The remaining 95% fights for their share of the third. So now we've, now we've got maybe a little bit of movement, right? We've got Elon Musk, but it's worse. It's worse. So, like, would we have that type of wealth concentration on the bitcoin standard? Because that's also a piece of pushback. I get that. We would see worse wealth concentration in bitcoin and what do you say to that?
- [47:48]
Jeff Booth
It cannot, it's, it's impossible. And one system centralizes, right? All of the things that people are worried about are from the centralizing system. You just, it's a super simple question that cuts through. Name a problem that you could solve by printing more money. There being none that can't solve any of your problems. Are you measuring, are you inside a system? Now ask the next question. How much time are you giving to that system? System? And I mean seriously, ask that question. Mark it down every time you're on social media inside that system, every time you're, you're mad and you're spending a time in that system, mark it down and say, I need to remove some of my time from this system that cannot solve one of my problems and move it to a different system. And be really honest with how much time you're giving to that system. And you'll find there is no they, it's only we. And while you still make those choices and think there's a they, there will always be a they. There will always be somebody to capitalize on your aggravation and your, how mad you are about them. And it's you, right? Move that time. That other, that other system has to distribute. Because if you had a whole bunch of bitcoin and bitcoin, now this is bitcoin as monetary, it's money too, right? It's not just an asset under control of a banking cartel. If it was only an asset, you would have the robber barons faster and then it would fail. It would all centralize. If it's a protocol being money as well, then it constantly decentralizes. Why does it decentralize? If you had more bitcoin and everybody was spending in bitcoin, you would have to create more value or distribute your bitcoin. Let's imagine you wanted to create a standing army. What would you be doing with your bitcoin? You would be distributing it to your standing army. And so it has to constantly decentralize. Even what you're seeing today, large holders are actively selling right now, distributing their bitcoin to new to new. And I don't begrudge them. If you held on for 10 years and you now have billions of dollars of paper, pieces of paper on bitcoin, and you think now time, now is time to sell some great, but it will constantly distribute. It has to, because that's what the free market does.
- [50:35]
Natalie Brunell
I'm smiling, Jeff, because just as we did in the first interview that we had like this, I just Feel like my mind is getting blown. And yet it's also simple when you really boil it down to, again, human behavior and psychology and how technology evolves. And so I think a lot of people will get that from this interview as well. But so, so when people think of the robber baron era, the Gilded Age, that was the gold standard. So why did wealth concentrate so much if it wasn't, I mean, the, you know, the fiat, just paper promises and a central bank, it was more like a freer market. Right.
- [51:14]
Jeff Booth
So I don't know. I don't know actually that it really was. So one thing about gold is it centralizes because you can't transport it easily. And so because it centralizes, you could, when you say robber barons, you could invade another nation, steal their gold and raw materials, and they would be slaves to your nation. So it was still, you were still living in a zero sum game. It just didn't look like you were living in a zero sum game because when you're measuring your history, you're looking through the lens of the, of the winners. But if your history was instead Democratic Republic of Congo or somewhere else where you were looking through the loser's lens, it wouldn't look like that. It would look like exploitation. So that zero sum game, somebody had to lose for somebody to win. Now think about what the free market is and you could go back to Adam Smith's work or anyone's. Free market is an infinite game. The only way you can get paid more is to provide somebody else value. They win, you win, the world wins. And so if you added more people into a free market, not exploit it, you added them more into a free market, unlocked more minds into a free market. What would you expect to see? You would expect to see more value faster to every, for everybody. And the only amount they would win the, the entrepreneur that created is how much value they provided to somebody else. I want to leave this on a hopeful note too, because these choices all manifest in, into this, this. And it would look this chaotic as both were happening. And what I hear in most of conversations are people talking about what Bitcoin is from the other system. But just ask yourself a question. What would it look like if 99.9% of people were stuck in said system and you weren't and you were providing value and you started providing value, it would look a lot like what you've created. Natalie, right? I remember when you moved your time and to watch you now compare, take it, take all of your friends in newsrooms back at that time and where are they versus where are you? And why did that happen? Because you're moving your time into a system that rewards value for others. And as you provide value, more of the 99% of people move, move along with you. It's exactly what you'd expect has happened. We're just extraordinarily early in that. In that process. But as an entrepreneur, I think, where would I want to be, right? And so I'm not mad at the way the system looks today at all. It wouldn't give us this opportunity to create so much value for other people if it didn't look like it was. It was strangling the value out of people from. From that system.
- [54:38]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah, I know, Jeff. It's just. I feel like we found Noah's ark and the flood is coming, and we need to get as many people. Like, I. You know, and I look out at some of my friends or colleagues, and it's like, I know that they're feeling the sting of this system that is putting so much pressure on them. And they're. They might have gotten the raises or promotions, but it's just not enough to do things like buy a home. And that's one thing that I think is really hitting this administration right now is you. Every administration puts out the great pr, right? We're doing this great job, and the economy is better than ever, blah, blah, blah. But really, when you listen to people, it's like, I can't afford the house. My. My parents generation could. I can't. I can't afford this. Like, there's a lot of just fighting and anxiety, especially, again, among younger generations who feel like the tab is on them, right? These. These burdens have been placed on them, and they've played by all the rules, and they don't know what to do. And I think you even wrote in Price of Tomorrow that that creates fertile ground for revolutions and populism and frustration. It becomes almost a dangerous world for. For those who succeeded, right? Like, in this rigged game, they won, but people don't feel like they won, that they earned it. And so there's, like, almost potential, like a powder keg for even violence. I mean, we've seen it. And so I just. I mean, I don't know where I was going really with that, but I. I think that right now we're in a very tumultuous place as I look out. And we already know for bitcoiners, it doesn't matter which team you elect. They have to keep expanding the monetary supply, right? And they have to keep inflation going. So you can pretend that one is more capitalistic than another, or you can say that the socialistic one will redistribute the wealth and it'll fix everything. But we know it's deeper than that and, and it won't. And I, and I do think, one thing I wanted to ask you about is I am surprised even looking at this country, how much of a welfare state we've created where you know, people are saying that their healthcare is going to go up if these subsidies go away. Because the government has to come in with subsidies and you know, or these, these benefits if, if just for a week they're turned off, everyone goes hungry. It's like, why are we all depending on the government for necessities and basic income? And that kind of brings me to something you write about in your book a little bit, which is the idea of in an AI world, won't we need universal basic income? Like won't we need the, the mother father figure of the government to come in and pay us? Because, because there's going to be so much deflation that there aren't jobs. Like how do you see this all playing out?
- [57:23]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, so, so government doesn't create value, government extracts value. So how could a government give use anything that isn't extracted? So, and, and why you see a rise of bigger and bigger government. If you look at the size of the government when the US was founded or in 1900 versus what it is today and how much, and if you include the entire financial operating system of how everything works with money and you see how much is extracted, it'll start to take your breath away. And so again ask how could I solve that problem from that system? That is the problem. And go back to what I said before. Natural state of the free market is deflationary exponentially. Advanced tech, including AI means faster deflation. Credit based system means exponentially. Instead of exponential deflation, exponential centralization, coercion control. Because it has to steal faster than the productivity should flow to you. So from one system the productivity should flow to you. Every job that's lost means lower prices for everyone, right? So as AI moves to free, it's free for you. As the jobs are lost, you get more, you gain more abundance from that system that you wouldn't need UBI because. Because prices would keep falling at that rate.
- [59:04]
Natalie Brunell
So in the free market you wouldn't need ubi. But people are starting to talk about UBI because in the inflationary system with AI, you're going to kind of need.
- [59:12]
Jeff Booth
It so that, so in an inflationary system then all of the problems created for people, right, because not of allowing the free market to work requires at UBI to give them a tiny little piece of the stuff you've stolen from them. And you just have entirely centralized world, right? Where, where you just have pawns on a game, a game board controlled by the top of the game board. And you get to decide what they, they want inside, inside that system. Because if you just keep on following that AI will merge with robotics. All of these jobs and, and all of these jobs are already going to be gone. So in that world, where are you safe if prices continue to rise unnaturally? And who benefits from prices rising unnaturally if you don't? Now ask yourself, why are you spending any time in that world? Because you know it's already true, right? All of that. You can't build walls high enough to protect you if you're super wealthy in a world that looks like that. In fact, it gets. Because the same technology, let's imagine imagine you were exploited. You're the very bottom of the ladder and that same technology allowed you to go into CRISPR AI, create genetic warfare, create diseases, and you wanted to burn the world down. You would do that because you were so mad. And the technology would be ubiquitous. You'd be able to. And so what would the control system do? We have to stop those people. We'll spend more money to stop those people, right? More risk, more fear. It would be telling everybody, you have to, we have to spend more to concentrate more to control that from happening versus the opposite system where you just gain abundance from the natural state of the free market working for you, because it has to. So even if you didn't work in that system, prices would get lower and lower. You would gain more and more value forever in that system as the entire world worked to compete for you.
- [61:40]
Natalie Brunell
So it's almost like, I mean, if we didn't have bitcoin, would you be worried? It almost feels like it came to us at the perfect inflection point when we desperately need this. Because the alternative path would have led us down some really dark, dark places.
- [62:00]
Jeff Booth
Which is so interesting because it came at the exact time you'd expect it to come because of the alternative path in the free market. So if I go back and I think about what the cypherpunks were talking about, cypherpunks were talking about privacy and money and privacy and removing money from government. Because in a digital age you would be living in a panopticon A complete surveillance if you didn't have this, and that was if you look at the first mailing list and how few people were on that mailing list and all of the failures before Bitcoin that were instrumental in creating bitcoin, it would happen as exactly at the time you would expect it to need to come in the free market as our ideas competed to provide value to others to be able. And that's exactly what's happening right now in the protocol and the other layers. Adding privacy on top of bitcoin. It's exactly what's happening right now. Most people don't know what's happening because they're still in the other. Still in the fiat system, measuring bitcoin from that system. System.
- [63:09]
Natalie Brunell
So how would you describe ideal governance or government within the Bitcoin system? Because you said government doesn't create value, but someone might be listening to this and push back and say, but it creates schools. You create, you know, free education, roads, police to keep you safe. What would government look like in the free market under a bitcoin standard?
- [63:32]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, well, so, so simply it will get smaller and smaller and smaller and the government will be elected like the free market, to be able to serve you. And they can't lie and say, I'm getting all of this money through this means taxes is only a fraction and most of it's coming from inflation. And they would have to tell you the truth. Here's what I propose. And you'd see if it works or not. And you would constantly be. It would be a very different democracy. It would be a very different representative system than we have today because it'd be harsh on people. Do what they say they're going to do. No cheating.
- [64:27]
Natalie Brunell
This is why I feel like you come to us from the future. Because some people might be listening to this and say, this is completely unrealistic. I mean, we're actually going in the wrong direction. If you look out at the countries and more and more people feeling divided. And I even remember a presentation that you did where you highlighted that when it gets worse in other countries, why do you think people are risking their lives in order to be able to come here, right. And, and flee those countries in order to pursue a better, a better life. And we're seeing a lot of like, I don't know, I feel like we're just seeing an influx of people feeling frustrated and feeling like we're actually going in the wrong direction and government's getting worse and maybe it's that control tightening. Right. And these, these like contractions getting deeper and deeper, as Preston says. But it feels like we're so far away from this utopic utopia.
- [65:31]
Jeff Booth
I get challenged on that quite a bit, Natalie, but I just, I'd ask somebody to. Instead of challenging it, saying it can't be true, tell them, ask them why it isn't true. Right. If you. It just. And just for it to be true, Bitcoin would have to stay decentralized and secure. So I'll grant that. But if it stayed decentralized and secure, I'm not saying this might happen. I'm saying it is happening. It will happen for sure. The only caveat is bitcoin stays decentralized and secure. And so from that caveat, I look through the lens of. Of why might it not stay decentralized and secure? What risks would that that would look like? I spend a lot of time there. I'm convinced it will stay decent, centralized and secure. And this is the world that is, is. It's being imposed. It doesn't care what I think about it. Right? It doesn't care. And it doesn't care what somebody else thinks about it. It just. Every 10 minutes, there's a new block that I'm a part of. Right. And you are a part of a part of. And an entire protocol stack that's being built on top of it that is imposing these rules around the world. When you see countries like El Salvador move in alignment with the free market, you see a change in pace from something that's coercion, corruption, killing, to hope, freedom, truth. And you see, and you can feel it in the population from one step to another. And so other countries are going to start to follow that example or they're going to be really hurt. The citizens in those countries are going to be really hurt. Centralization doesn't work.
- [67:20]
Natalie Brunell
Do you ever get the pushback that that world can't happen because a. The current one has too much incentive and too much power to not allow for them to essentially lose that power. And also because of just human traits that are fallible, like human nature.
- [67:38]
Jeff Booth
So, so this is the, this is where I spent the bulk of my research and on kind of after writing the book, I spent 15,000 hours trying to kill Bitcoin because I know human nature, right? When I said the robber baron age and what that looked like. So why would we all of a sudden, just because we have this new protocol that's emerging, why would we all of a sudden change human nature? And we won't. We'll do the exact same Things over and over and over again and fall for the same tricks. And so I asked that question in 5,000 years of human history, if we've never seen what I'm describing here, what would that look like? What would the incentive look like for the system that I'm to try to attack? The system that removes that zero sum game forever and distributes it back to us. How were we part of that? What would that look like? And let's just kind of run a catapult processes on that. If you tried to kill Bitcoin for 10, 15 years, it's bad for the environment. Governments are going to stop it, China is going to stop it, us is going to stop. We're going to regulate it out of existence. And you couldn't kill it. It kept on going, it kept on going. It kept on going. More and more people moved to it. More and more people running nodes and such. What would you do? I know what I would do. I would try to co opt it. I would try to say Bitcoin's good for us. We are going to control the rails and regulate it so that it's part of our financial system. And you try to co opt. A lot of people would centralize based on that and they wouldn't hold bitcoin in self custody. They would hold a derivative instrument in somebody else's custody. And by doing so they would do the same thing as we talked about before. They would and some and then you would give interest rate on that and more people would do it.
- [69:53]
Natalie Brunell
Like the free banking era.
- [69:55]
Jeff Booth
Free banking era. And then they would, then, then when it all went to pear shaped you would step in and try to sweep it all up and make it okay. But that won't work with bitcoin. Bitcoin, it's a protocol and it's. And when that, when that, when somebody tries to or a group of people try to do that, there will be a fork in bitcoin and that fork will probably die. So you can expect all of these things. So all of the things that are happening today, nothing is surprising. I would say.
- [70:35]
Natalie Brunell
Yeah, it's so fascinating to listen to this. I know we're short on time but I did want to ask you one more question since you're following all of this so closely and you a take talk about how again all this sort of hinges on bitcoin remaining decentralized and secure. I feel like you are a perfect person to ask about quantum because so many people are worried about it. It's sort of the, the fud du jour. Right now Quantum's going to hack Bitcoin. It means it won't be secure. We're going to need an upgrade. But will we reach consensus? Da da da da da. What are your thoughts on it? What should people know?
- [71:06]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, I'm going to do a podcast on I've been helping these people or helping is wrong word. I've been reading a paper distilling this at a way higher level that is. Or is there a risk or not? And I don't think there's a risk at all is what it comes down to. I will always. This is somewhere I'm paying a lot of attention. I think the risk is so overblown and the. And to be able to create more fud. More more again going back from the other system. If I couldn't kill this from climate, if I couldn't kill it through regulation, if I couldn't. What do people not know enough about that I could try to insert a whole bunch of nonsense about to be able to try to control this. This is what I think we're seeing seeing today. More to say on this topic in time. But I don't think there's a. I don't think there's a risk.
- [72:12]
Natalie Brunell
Okay, well that gives us some peace of mind. Jeff. I find these conversations to be fascinating and I apologize if some of my questions are again kind of dumb questions and I go back and forth on a bit of it. But I've really been struggling with this because I'm waiting out into these worlds that I'm no longer in or I have really no familiarity with including, you know, I feel like the political landscape and I visited Washington. Right. I'm trying to do outreach and it's just so tough because people are in that frame. The framework of it's always been a certain way or it operates within this two party system or it operates with inflation and it's so hard to get them to come out and see the world the way someone like you sees it and the way that a lot of us have been challenged to view the world with bitcoin. And so I think these conversations do help because some, some of the questions come up again and again with all kinds of people. So I just appreciate your patience. I hope this has helped someone. I know it's helped me and it helps me when I go to answer some of these same questions when I'm asked them. So thank you always for your time. Jeff. If you guys haven't read the book Price of Tomorrow, it's a timeless classic, and it's more true now than ever before. And just thank you so much for all of your wisdom. I know that you've changed so many lives.
- [73:34]
Jeff Booth
Right back at you, Natalie. Thanks for having me.
- [73:37]
Natalie Brunell
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of Coin Stories. Make sure you're subscribed to the show so you don't miss any new episodes. If you can, turn on those notifications and leave us a positive review, they really help the show grow organically with new listeners. We have a free weekly newsletter. You can sign up@thenewsblock.substack.com this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing should constitute as financial investment advice, and you should always do your own research. I'm always open to feedback and guest suggestions, so please feel free to reach my team@infoalkingbitcoin.com I'll see you next time.