Our ideas about money are completely backward.
Money is NOT real wealth
When we understand that, it becomes clear how absurd modern economic thought really is…
Login to reply
Replies (53)
Dude I could have sworn in the opening segment you were gonna do a magic trick and change the dollar into a satscard or something.
Love these videos Guy! Can't zap you though, not sure if your LN address is working.
watching this video can make you dangerous 😏
I wish. My record collection is much smaller. This is actually a faux background, I'm in front of a green screen because I'm just in my unfinished basement, lol
But I've got some really great stuff for the background I'm setting up for my studio, and i may actually have my records as part of it.
Hahaha I actually thought about it. I had a silver bitcoin coin and i even recorded a really simple swap like that but it felt so dumb and gimmicky that i decided to leave out the explicit mention of bitcoin entirely. Felt less like an explanation and more of a sales clip when i went that route. We definitely had the same thought though 😂
Sick, looking forward to seeing it! (glad your records survived the flood too!)
Trying to zap on Amethyst through Alby but getting API call error to fountain.
Dont know if that is useful or not :S.
I listen to you on fountain with sats per min turned on so I'll sats to you one way or another!
Great content, love your shit man.
Bitcoin magic is something I think about alot actually.
The problem being that performing magic is all about recontextualisation of familiar objects and bitcoin is neither familiar to the general public, nor does it usually involve objects.
This is a GREAT clip - EVERYONE should take the 5 minutes to watch this one!!
THIS.
Our ideas about money are completely backward.
Money is NOT real wealth
When we understand that, it becomes clear how absurd modern economic thought really is…
View quoted note →
Time is wealth
You are the Veritasium of Social Sciences
No intrinsic value, you say?
Our ideas about money are completely backward.
Money is NOT real wealth
When we understand that, it becomes clear how absurd modern economic thought really is…
View quoted note →
You are absolutely right!
THANK YOU!
This is such a foundational misconception, it's quite literally destroying civilization. So far you and Parker Lewis are the only ones I've heard who seem to really grasp the significance. It frustrates me so much, I wrote my first Substack post on exactly that topic. Hopefully people will start grasping the truth about money and wake up to the slavery they're supporting by holding dollars instead of Bitcoin.
Money Is Not Wealth
Exploring a pervasive misconception
“Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion. The value of goods, expressed in money, is called "prices," while the value of money, expressed in goods, is called "value."
Carrol Quigley, ”Tragedy and Hope: A history of the world in our time” chapter 5.
https://www.thewayofcoherence.com/post/blood-money
Great video. And what if we don't need money anymore at all?! Its also slavery that governments and so keep copyrights instead of providing free open source, public domain, open data etc. We already have so many free education on the internet, so why still have to pay taxes for school 🤨
@f0xr zapped ⚡️5,000 sats
View quoted note →
We will always need money. For the same reason we will always need language. the problem with money is merely in it's manipulation and the power for a small group to defraud it. But otherwise, society literally is not possible without money.
In fact, the very reason society is in decline, and rots before our eyes, is because we are watching the fallout of the rotting of our money. They are one in the same.
The ability to securely communicate and trade value is the foundation of civilization itself. When the money rots, society rots.
exactamundo!
If money is a claim on wealth which you don't have. How can it be a debt. Isn't debt a claim someone else has against you?
Sorry if I miss your point.
Excellent explanation of money as a bookkeeping system and it's flaws as such
Our ideas about money are completely backward.
Money is NOT real wealth
When we understand that, it becomes clear how absurd modern economic thought really is…
View quoted note →
Health is wealth.
Spend eternity with a toothache and tell me how rich you feel.
Hi kongreif, I try to break down professor Quigley's quote and more in the blog. If I succeeded.. you can be the judge :)
The healthier you are, the more time you have here...
There seems to be a relationship here.
I think it works as an analogy, but the term isn’t broadly appropriate because the money itself holds the value being exchanged. So despite it behaving like one because it doesn’t have direct utility, it also doesn’t have any specific counterparty risk and is a liability for no specific individual, so it isn’t really a “debt” either.
@Guy Swann How can I share this clip outside nostr? This is a great piece for the normies to think about.
Here’s the YouTube link! ❤️
_Fiat_ money does have counterparty risk (I realize you are talking about "money" the abstract concept, or "sound money")
Nice thoughts on substack!
🔥🔥🔥
Good thinking. Inserting the "what if we had sound money?" idea in a broader audience's head is a long-term play for Bitcoin than selling it directly.
Those with the "sound money?" idea in their mind will have an "Aha! Found it!" moment when they begin to learn about Bitcoin on their own without being "sold" it.
You're saying those are problems for magic<>Bitcoin, but to me that sounds like a perfect relationship.
The value magic delivers is in the novel creative space between the borders of the normal/familiar. Bitcoin lives in the same place and thus feels ripe for expression through magic.
After all, magic "isn't a real thing" but the audience's _experience of it_ is very real.
Thank you friend
This is great. Do you put this on FB videos? I’d like to share it there
Anybody know how to download this? I want to upload to Facebook
Never mind. That was easy
Thank you!
I don’t really use FB, but you can share the YouTube link if that helps 🙏🏻
Such a good vid! 🙏🫂 Thanks for sharing. 💜
Fat is not real energy
How can you pay debt with debt?
Now read Modern Monetary Theory. Its basically the same logic but it describes how the system actually works, and crucially (not mentioned in this video) you have to talk about the role of taxes in this, as well as real world resource constraints. Printing money CAN be useful for producing actual stuff. After all every Bitcoin is 'printed' at some point even if that is limited and regulated. The real question is what are the limits of money creation: why 21 million bitcoins and not 1000 million or 2 million? Why every 10 mins and not every 60 mins? It doesn't actually matter, because all that matters is the belief in its value, and because you have to pay taxes in dollars under threat of violence/prison, everyone believes in the dollar, even bitcoiners are convinced they can buy a sandwhich if they have some dollars. Taxes give money value They don't pay for things. Taxes are money destroyed. Printing money is what drives people to create things, the only constraints are resources. And no country in the world is at full productive capacity. Govnt can print money any time it likes. Inflation only hapens when productive capcity is reached. And is reduced with higher taxes. That capacity is a long way off.
Indeed. The sum of all money adds up to zero. No debt no money exists. Money IS debt.
But otherwise, society literally is not possible without money.
Society literally existed for >100,000 years without money.
Credit is not money and money is not credit.
What is true for the fiat debt/credit system is not true for Gold, Bitcoin or Monero.
Bitcoin mining doesn't produce wealth either: Follwoing your own argument we can say it doesn't create actual wealth like sandwhiches or buildings. It is not REAL wealth. You have it all backwards also. Bitcoin might be limited in the amount possible to produce, but its still produced out of thin air at an arbitary rate. #LearnMMT Taxes matter here also. Theya ren't collected to pay for things, they are 'burned' out of existence.
It’s about scale. Small, culturally tight groups can organize. But huge diverse groups with different values, cultures, and language cannot trade and organize without money.
But they did. For thousands of years. People traded goods accross large regions in large groups long before money was invented.
Interacting once a year to trade goods is not a broad, active economy. And even in those instances almost universally a monetary good would immediately arise specifically *because* they cannot have long term relationships without trust, or an independent (non-trust) medium.
Look up Human Economies. Also 'Debt - a 5000 year history' by David Graeber Your history, with respect, is simply incorrect.
I have read it. Good book, but missing a single fundamental principle of money and its relationship to resources. Of course his book, if I remember correctly, doesn’t really prescribe as much as it observes. MMT makes a massive failure in taking what is actually a more logical explanation than the Keynesian nonsense, but applies it completely wrong.
I found MMT and my brother and I exchanged emails for a bit with Warren Mossler before realizing where it was fundamentally divorced from reality. Logically *consistent* doesn’t mean it’s true in the real world. And funny enough a great explanation by Mossler is what made it clear.
please eleaborate on why you changed your mind about MMT? where does it differ from reality? Because MMT actually describes reality as it is. Its not a proposal. Observe reality. You can't pay for things with taxes unless you have money to pay for things. This isnt chicekn and egg. Spending MONEY always comes BEFORE taxing money. Money printing is all money.