WAITING FOR CRYPTO: 2/4: The Money Confusion: How Illiteracy About Currencies and Inflation Sets the Stage for the Crypto Revolution by John Tamny (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Money-Confusion-Illiteracy-Currencies-Revolution/dp/1958682268/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Money, Tamny argues, is a natural market phenomenon and one that asserts itself even in a world of government-issued paper. While economists and pundits hide behind charts, equations and supercilious commentary about the so-called "money supply," Tamny provides familiar examples from the real-world to expose this mysticism as modern-day phrenology.
He makes plain throughout a book that rejects nearly all conventional wisdom about money that a focus on "money supply" is the surest sign of a thought process hopelessly off course. In truth, trusted money in circulation is a natural consequence of commerce, not the instigator as economists imagine.
That a free market for money has formed in a world of government currencies is what sets the stage for private money as the eventual replacement for government mediums of exchange. Precisely because money facilitates global cooperation on the way to staggering advances in productivity, it's essential that money be trusted as a measure in the same way that the mile, degree and tablespoon are trusted today.
Although academia and policymakers misunderstand money and inflation to a frightening degree, the thinkers, innovators, and risk-takers have forged a better way. The future is here for money; and that future, Tamny explains, is blindingly bright
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When you can't quite get the angle, take hands-free selfies with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, |
| 0:05.2 | stand it up, step back, and your photos are also synced to your Chromebook, ready to edit. |
| 0:10.8 | The new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Chromebook, available on Vodafone. |
| 0:20.0 | This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batchewa. John Tamney, the author of the new book, The Money |
| 0:24.8 | Confusion, how a literacy about currencies and inflation sets the stage for the crypto revolution. |
| 0:31.4 | We've established that money is for the getting of things. Money is the sole use of money, |
| 0:38.4 | said Adam Smith, in the 18th century, is to circulate consumable goods. The goods also require |
| 0:47.4 | attention to the word credit. John, you use the example of Elon Musk when he worked in Canada |
| 0:54.8 | for a bank. He had a vision, a vision of something online, the internet being used to exchange values |
| 1:03.8 | to buy things or to bank. And that was the genesis of what we now know as PayPal. But the road to |
| 1:12.4 | PayPal was failure after failure because he had to invest, he had to attract investors. |
| 1:19.8 | How did he do it, John? What investors? Was it the Bank of Canada? Was it the Bank of the United |
| 1:25.5 | States? What investors showed up to continually refund Elon Musk's idea? |
| 1:33.0 | It's such a great question. And no, it couldn't have been banks because banks as a rule can't |
| 1:39.3 | take risks. Banks are lending out money and they are getting being paid an interest rate for it. |
| 1:48.2 | Just about every technology company ever started has failed and so banks can't touch technology. |
| 1:55.0 | And here Elon Musk was saying we are going to move finance and lending and banking and investing |
| 2:01.4 | online. At a time in the 1990s when the vast majority of exchange of bills were still paid via a |
| 2:11.0 | check dropped into an envelope and put in the mailbox with a stamp on it and sent via regular mail. |
| 2:18.2 | And so what he was doing was so outlandish that the traditional investor wouldn't come near him. |
| 2:25.2 | So he went to venture capitalists who as a rule are going to basically invest in 98 companies |
| 2:33.6 | that vanish or go bankrupt based on two of them coming out and paying for all their losses. |
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