He creates new knowledge thats valued by his customers, because it helps them to think betterand better informs their actions. Because no matter how much money you have, if you have money its constantly losing value so you cant just have money. If youre an American doctor, your estimated net worth at age 25 is probably negative 250k. And would it be enough to turn the trillion-dollar taxation leviathan into whatever size that the Saifedeans of the world no longer think is sufficiently small to avoid ruining the sciences or public morals? This is a key analytical point or the key analytical focus of The Bitcoin Standard is to argue that money is inevitably going to be whatever is the hardest to produce. Saifedean Ammous: Yeah, this is a key point in my first book, The Bitcoin Standard. Dr. Ammous holds a Books will be written about the world before the invention of financial plumbing, Fact: Every moment of your life you are making decisions that will make your life better or worse. As such, it is more resistant to wild inflation and corrupt banks. He and his family relocated to Lebanon when Since the value of the local fiat money will most definitely decrease with time, people have no solid future to rely on by saving their money. So then next year becomes less uncertain. Possibly, but in comparison it would be quite limited. WebSaifedean Ammous's Biography. The benefits to the people involved are clear: the home buyer doesnt have to save up before purchase; the homeowner can sell to a larger range of people and get a higher price; and the buyer pays the bank interest for decades to come. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us here on Author Hour today. In the sense of salability across space, being able to move money across space, Fiat is better than gold and thats what has allowed it to survive for a hundred years even though its much more inflationary than gold. Thank you so much for having me. What's the point of telling us (twice) about your doctorate? To the extent that this description is accurate, the parties to this money creation process have this in common: Their purchasing power isnt the governments to spend. Lowering ones time preference means thinking longer term (Valuing the future over the present), Whats the lowest time preference act you can do? He switched his platform for teaching from the university to the internet, and now is able to reach many more customers citizens of the world who want to learn more about Austrian economics and to understand Bitcoin and hard money. Over $100 billion in direct funding is not nothing, obviously, but its far from the free-for-all money spree that Fed critics like Saif sometimes imagine. Suggestions are welcome via an issue or PR on GitHub. " I mean, I wrote The Bitcoin Standard without considering, without having thought about writing The Fiat Standard so it was just writing a book on Bitcoin. Genuinely think Blockchain is going to change the world. Nocoiners need to specify at what price they would admit bitcoin has succeeded or shut the fuck up forever. Benji Block: Lets dive into The Fiat Standard. Saifedeans first customers were students in his university classes. Well, the Feds open-market purchases are conjured out of thin air by decree (i.e. I think the really powerful thing thats happening with Bitcoin and I think a lot of people might be tempted to just dismiss Bitcoin as just another TikTok or another Twitter or social network or something like that I think it is a far more significant thing because its really allowing us to upgrade our monetary operating system from an easy money to a harder money. This just comes across as the decisions Ive taken from above and then these academics are trying hard to rationalize and explain why these decisions are correct and it doesnt quite cut it. They self-selected via Saifedeans twitter feed. But, of course, that meant that the Bank of England effectively printed a whole bunch of money to buy those bonds, it was like quantitative easing what we see today. You know, individuals are in debt and it makes sense. From money that is hard to move around to a money that is very quick in moving around, so I think its absolutely fascinating to witness this and Bitcoins continued rise, you know, its price just keeps going up over time, suggests that, in my opinion, this is a superior technology that is replacing an inferior technology. Podcast Notes is a Signal From the Noise LLC Production, All Right Reserved, Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting, Christopher Lockhead's Follow Your Different, Everyday Espionage Podcast with Andrew Bustamante, Feel Better, Live More With Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, Moonshots and Mindsets with Peter Diamandis, Network State Podcast with Balaji Srinivasan, Spearhead with Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, The Unraveling Podcast with Jocko Willink and Darryl Cooper, This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis, Where It Happens with Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg, If Bitcoin succeeds, it will be like the sewage system or electricity: its one of the best things of our civilization but nobody will talk about it. , Every moment of your life you make decisions that make your life better or worse. The first step was writing and publishing a book called the Bitcoin Standard (conventionally published by Wiley) and then leaving academia for the joys of hard money. In The Fiat Standard, world-renowned economist, Saifedean Ammous applies his unique analytical lens to the Fiat Monetary System, explaining it as a feat of engineering and technology, just as he did for bitcoin and his global bestseller, The Bitcoin Standard. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/authorhour/Saifedean_Ammous_1.mp3, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels: Alex Epstein, All the Presidents Taxes: Charles Renwick. Saifedean Ammous Become a member of academy.saifedean.com to take the online course The Fiat Standard for $15/month or $100/year. 1968 S. Coast Hwy #675 As you have access to hard money, you are able to plan better for the future. How can the government make you think that inflation isnt very high? Hunter Hastings is a member of the Mises Institute, Business Consultant, and co-chair of the Rescue California Educational Foundation. Theres plenty wrong with central banking, no doubt, but showering broken institutions with infinite credit lines and opportunity-cost free funding isnt one of them. Joakim Book is a writer, researcher and editor on all things money, finance and financial history. Saifedean Ammouss Wikipedia page has not been featured on any It explains why its interesting and why it matters, The book is dedicated to his daughter, to immortalize his thoughts in writing for her, to have forever, Looking to the future, If Bitcoin succeeds, it will be like the sewage system or electricity: its one of the best things of our civilization but nobody will talk about it. , It will be like the plumbing system, vital but unseen. Thats just taking away from people the ability to plan for the future. For a Fair and Efficient Tax Policy, Restore the SALT Deduction, Proponents of Fiscal Stimulus Need to Stop Using World War II as an Example, Responsible Budgeting Corrects Bipartisan Overspending Crisis, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most countries dont maximize their seigniorage revenue, precisely because of the political backlash that accompany such extractive inflation regimes. 156 835. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. In Saifedeans case, the transformative event was Bitcoin, the study of which opened up a deeper understanding of hard money and low time preference. Easy money is the local currency, which the Central Bank is printing in ever-increasing quantities to pay off its bills and the governments bills. We are constantly moving to harder monies, were constantly accumulating more capital, were constantly investing more and increasing our productivity. Even though the Fed backstops government debt markets, implicitly and explicitly, its overwhelmingly clear that government spending is much, much larger than that. Ammous is a brilliant and concise teacher of Austrian school economics, and I cannot recommend his courses highly enough. government fiat), and thats the base layer of our money the concept economics textbooks used to call high-powered money. The vast majority of outstanding fiat, Saif explains, is digital, created through commercial banks issuing debt. He and his family relocated to Lebanon when he was an adolescent. Dr. Saifedean Ammous is the author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, the best-selling groundbreaking study of the economics of bitcoin. Dr. Ammous book, The Bitcoin Standard, contains an excellent treatment of all these topics in addition to one of the few enlightened and enlightening accounts of Bitcoin that I have come across. Saifedean Ammous: Thank you. Ammous holds a Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from Columbia University. Granting him some linguistic leeway, government money printers or access to an infinite credit printer doesnt seem to cut it either. Dr. Ammous holds a PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University, where his doctoral thesis studied the economics of biofuels and alternative energy sources. As a result, they develop the mind-set of spending on useful things, Economical and personal decision making shifts towards building for the future and people cooperating with one another, Bitcoin lowers peoples time preference as they start to appreciate the opportunity cost of giving away something that is scarce, even if it is volatile, People share stories of quitting addictive behaviors like smoking or drinking and putting the money into Bitcoin instead , A hangover is Satoshis way of reminding you that you couldve been buying Bitcoin instead with the money that you spent on alcohol.. Throughout the 350-page rant that is The Fiat Standard, Saif repeatedly comes back to the recipients of government-money-from-nowhere. I want to close with just this question. Its very far from what a normal inquisitive brain would try and develop if theyre trying to understand things. I have to say, one of the disheartening learnings in your book for me, because Im not an economist, I was unaware of the reality of the Fiat system really just being built on debt but it explains a lot and so I am going to quote you here and then Ill have you expand on this a little bit. @saifedean At a price over $1m, bitcoin is worth more than all USD M1 supply. So, theres clear consequences and this idea of time is one of them. If you look at the prices of real foods, they are going up. Sound money holds its value and lowers the time preference of society This has significant implications: People are encouraged to save and defer consumption. However, YouTube is not his main income source. Low time preference willingness to save/sacrifice in the short terms for benefit in the longer term is an essential part of the entrepreneurial method. A university-level textbook explaining the most important concepts in economics in the Austrian school tradition, coming in late 2022. WebPrime Meridian Capital executive team members Don Davis (CEO) and Sean Bill (CIO) discuss the success of the firm's multiple credits funds amid difficult market conditions. Then, after I wrote it, a year or two later, I had a whole bunch of ideas that I was writing about how Bitcoins progress and growth will continue and how I would expect it to grow in the modern world and then I decided that the best way to frame this study would be to study the Fiat system in order to then be able to synthesize the two books together and figure out how Bitcoin evolves in the Fiat standard. WebSaifedean Ammous is a professor of economics at the Lebanese American University, a member of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and writer & author of the book, The Bitcoin Standard. In his new book The Fiat Standard, its clear that Saifedean Ammous thinks all bad things come from the government. They kept kicking the can down the road and trying to prevent people from redeeming their gold and eventually, they gave up on the gold standard in 1931, and this is the kind of perverse part here, which is they blamed the gold standard for their failures for all of the economic problems that were caused by abandoning the gold standard. We have a time preference because we are mortal, lowering ones time preference means thinking longer term (Valuing the future over the present). What is the Austrian School of Economics? People had better things to do than spend their money on fighting pointless wars in Europe. Tax ID# 52-1263436, Saifedean Ammous on Knowledge Entrepreneurship, Economic Calculation In The Socialist Commonwealth, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, 2 Volumes, Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, A History of Money and Banking in the United States Before the Twentieth Century, Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market, The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, and Institutions, Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo, Busting Myths about the State and the Libertarian Alternative, Chaos Theory: Two Essays On Market Anarchy, Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America, 16071849, Free Private Cities: Making Governments Compete For You, From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy, It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes, Left, Right, and the Prospects for Liberty, Mises and Austrian Economics: A Personal View, The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government, Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, A Short History of Man: Progress and Decline, Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty, Reclamation of Liberties: Revisiting the War on Drugs, Inflation: Causes, Consequences, and Cure, Taxes Are What We Pay for an Impoverished Society, Why Austrian Economics Matters (Chicago 2011), The Truth About American History: An Austro-Jeffersonian Perspective, The Rosetta Stone to the US Code: A New History of Taxation, The Economic History of the United States, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, The American Economy and the End of Laissez-Faire: 1870 to World War II, Crisis and Liberty: The Expansion of Government Power in American History, Radical Austrianism, Radical Libertarianism, The History of Political Philosophy: From Plato to Rothbard, Microeconomics From an Austrian Viewpoint, The History of Economic Thought: From Marx to Hayek, The Life, Times, and Work of Ludwig von Mises, The Austrian School of Economics: An Introduction, Introduction to Economics: A Private Seminar with Murray N. Rothbard, Introduction to Austrian Economic Analysis, Fundamentals of Economic Analysis: A Causal-Realist Approach, Austrian Economics: An Introductory Course, Austrian School of Economics: Revisionist History and Contemporary Theory, After the Revolution: Economics of De-Socialization, The Federal Reserve: History, Theory and Practice, The Twentieth Century: An Austrian Critique, The Truth About War: A Revisionist Approach, The Economic Recovery: Washington's Big Lie, The 25th Anniversary Celebration in New York, How to Think about the Economy: Mises Seminar in Tampa, The Ron Paul Revolution: A Ten-Year Retrospective, Against PC: The Fight for Free Expression. 5/5. You would expect that this would mean that the value of Bitcoins going to rise while the value of the other currencies of each unit of the other currencys going to decline. Saifedean Ammous is a knowledge entrepreneur. In 2011, he was hired as a visiting scholar at the Columbia University Center on Capitalism and Society for around eight months. Our friend Saifedean Ammous joins Jeff and Bob Murphy for a demolition of the pseudo-economics behind Green energy Tu ne cede malis,sed contra audentior ito, Website powered by Mises Institute donors, Mises Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Find motivation in what you are passionate about. But of course, you have to remember that this is dangerous, because debt is dangerous. Im going to continue to go down this black hole of information and try to figure out economics. Was there one or two issues that really stood out to you that go, Man, I really want to do more research on this because it doesnt make sense?. Thats really the process of human civilization, the ability of us to think further into the future to provide for our future more and more and to discount the future less and less. Is there a path for bitcoin to become the new gold standard? His work has been featured in the Financial Times, FT Alphaville, Neue Zrcher Zeitung, Svenska Dagbladet, Zero Hedge, The Property Chronicle and many other outlets. Listen to the weekly academy.saifedean.com discussion seminar, where a group of learners from all over the world discuss the websites online courses, as well as a wide variety of economic, political, and social issues, and occasionally host special guests for the discussion. Even still, the US government manages to raise tax revenue to the tune of $4 trillion a year, almost the full extent of the Feds balance sheet increase from August 2019 until February 2022. Saifedean Ammous is a bestselling author, professor and one of the most well-respected economists in the world. It was the most impactful on our way of thinking in Microstrategy and it made us want to invert our balance sheet to base it on a bitcoin standard.". The smartest people in markets, finance, economics, and business engage in deep-diving discussions about the global macro landscape, generating actionable takeaways that can help your decision-making process. So, I found the perspective of the Austrian schools far more powerful and far more explanatory. Thats really the best way to navigate it because when you do that, you are benefiting from the decline in the value of the Fiat money over time. Because we still have to operate within some level of this system while also, thinking to like what youre talking about with Bitcoin. People always have a positive time preference (aka: Value the present over the future) The question is by how much? Edit: thanks for all the positive feedback, didnt mean to come off as pretentious mentioning my background my apologies. WebSaifedean Ammous is a world-renowned economist and author of The Fiat Standard: The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization, The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking and the forthcoming textbook Principles of Economics. In The Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean looks back to the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a period of technological innovation by entrepreneurs under the gold standard, bringing us indoor plumbing, electricity, the internal combustion engine, airplanes and elevators, among many more. Saifedean Ammous: That then left The Bank of England with a problem, which is that it had a lot more notes outstanding than it had gold to back them up. Agricultural Subsidies: Down on the D.C. Farm, Austrian Economics and the Financial Markets (2010), Austrian Economics and the Financial Markets (1999), Central Banking, Deposit Insurance, and Economic Decline, Choice in Currency: A Path to Sound Money, Depression, Monetary Destruction, and the Path to Sound Money, Despots Left and Right: The Tyrannies of Our Times, The Current Crisis: an Austrian Perspective, Strategies for Changing Minds Toward Liberty, The Coming Currency Crisis and the Downfall of the Dollar, Review of Austrian Economics, Volumes 1-10, Individualism in the Age of the Smart Machine, Lipton Matthews: una perspectiva global de 5 vas sobre innovacin y emprendimiento en los EUA, History of the Austrian School of Economics. Connect with Saifedean at saifedean.com and on Twitter at@saifedean. Right off the bat, then, theres a problem with thinking that the Federal Reserves money printer finances the governments expenditures; their vast numbers dont add up. Then his spontaneous knowledge accumulation efforts took him to Austrian economics and a new perspective: that the economics he had learned to date didnt make any sense, and that regime higher education was best understood as just another malinvestment. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Email: [emailprotected] Read millions of eBooks and audiobooks on the web, iPad, iPhone and Android. How Financial Advisers Should Think About Bitcoin with Morgen Rochard. He was able to generate value for his students by teaching them the economics they wanted to learn, along with giving them the optionality of seeing the knowledge through his distinctive perspective. Nothing written in this website should be considered advice related to that decision. Would you talk a little bit about that and maybe a new way of approaching it once our eyes are opened to the fact that debt is such a crucial part of our economy? You know, we all grew up being told by our grandmothers that you shouldnt get into debt. A fairly basic website (i.e., not requiring any technological expertise or gear that is not available to everyone) is the platform for the new level of knowledge entrepreneurship. It is essential reading for anyone interested in learning the role Bitcoin could play in a future regime of free and sound money. So, government money can travel much faster than gold because it has the license of government. Saifedean Ammous makes Bitcoin easy to understand for everyone without getting lost in technical details. There is a much bigger scope for conducting many, many, many more transactions across the world with Bitcoin. 304. This is the Author Hour, Im your host Benji Block and today, were honored to have Saifedean Ammous on the Author Hour with us.