Ha! Price Controls
Prices are how the extended order communicates what's worth producing, and price controls bury that signal under static exactly when it's loudest. Every control spreads into the inputs beneath it, and Bitcoin gives individuals the first real way to opt out of the damage.
The one-minute version
Price controls proposed as a fix for inflation, despite a long record of failure.
What a terrible idea. What a gigantic increase in inefficiency price controls bring.02:17
That's exactly what I would do. That's exactly what they're going to do.09:34
they can become middlemen in this leaky boat of efficiency21:47
Every passage, on the record.
- 00:01Claim · condensed
A small subset of the extended order acts in ways that are detrimental to the rest of the organism, and the rest of the hive mind is put into jeopardy because of the actions of that small group.
- 00:31Claim · condensed
Viewing a concept through something as pristine as Bitcoin removes the filters that would otherwise cloud the ability to separate signal from noise, so you can see exactly what is going on under the hood.
- 01:11Claim · condensed
None of this should actually matter to the listener: the answer is to stop listening to the podcast and just hold Bitcoin, because that is all it takes to avoid being exposed to the actors in the space who would do you harm.
- 01:45Event
Price controls are being broached as a subject, as a way to tackle the increase in prices in the modern Western world.
- 02:17Quote
What a terrible idea. What a gigantic increase in inefficiency price controls bring.
- 02:17Claim · condensed
Price controls are brought about by individuals who have not put in the time or effort, and who are happy to signal to the individuals who have.
- 02:51Reference
You can look to somebody like Hayek to show you that what price is, is a tool: it's an exchange, a communication of value inside of the extended order.
- 02:51Claim · condensed
Price is the mechanism by which an economy communicates a vast amount of information about value in a very condensed format.
- 04:02Analogy · condensed
Nobody can make a pencil, nobody can make an airplane, individually, because it exceeds the amount of information any one person could process and turn into the practical know-how needed to embody it in a working product.
- 04:02Reference
Nobody can make a pencil. Nobody can make a airplane. Any of these things individually because it exceeds the amount of information that you would need to process.
- 04:36Claim · condensed
An individual exceeds their own information-processing capacity ('you exceed the person bite'), so that information has to be spread around the organism and coordinated through exchange for ideas to become physical products.
- 06:08Quote
I don't understand what's going on, but I know that high price bad.
- 06:08Claim · condensed
Even a system that is not centralized will eventually attract someone who decides they can make it work better by centralizing it, and price controls are exactly that: someone who does not understand prices deciding to make them lower.
- 07:16Quote
to have the balls to say, well, you know, we should try this time because, uh, it's been so successful in the past
- 07:51Claim · condensed
Politicians pursue price controls to outrun the negative effects long enough to gain more abstract power, feeding people 'bread and circus' while the misallocation continues until it is no longer their problem.
- 07:51Reference
you can then go on misallocating resources more and more and more until you die and it, uh, no longer becomes your problem at the Keynesian viewpoint of we're all going to be dead anyway.
- 08:27Claim · condensed
Misallocating resources is a large problem for the productive members of society who do not wish to have it thrust upon them from outside.
- 09:04Quote
Inflation always and everywhere, a monetary phenomenon.
- 09:04Reference
There has to be, uh, inflation always and everywhere, a monetary phenomenon. Uh, we know that the money supply is increasing.
- 09:04Claim · condensed
The money supply will keep increasing because expanding it is the government's easiest tool and the path of least resistance.
- 09:34Quote
That's exactly what I would do. That's exactly what they're going to do.
- 09:34Claim · condensed
Policymakers behave exactly as anyone would given the same incentives; the difference is that they have not found Bitcoin and do not know how inappropriate and damaging their actions are for the extended order.
- 09:34Claim · condensed
Price controls cap what productive people can generate while the government simultaneously makes money more abundant and resources less abundant, cutting two areas of an already shrinking efficiency pie at once.
- 10:57Claim
The extended order is built on a decentralized network of resources engaged in planning, and planning requires coordination, and coordination in the current system is expressed through prices.
- 11:30Analogy · condensed
Individual actors understand that prices going up means something is happening behind the scenes, much like a fish in water, without even realizing what it is that is happening below the surface.
- 12:06Idea
Price is a signal then that all participants inside of any economy using that price... should desire for that signal to be as pure as possible... anything that doesn't tell us information about where energy should be allocated inside the extended order should be removed.
- 12:40Claim · condensed
Governments that already misallocate resources by taking from productive members of society make things worse by intervening at exactly the wrong time, right as prices for necessities like milk and bread are sending a strong signal.
- 13:14Claim · condensed
When people are experiencing hardship acquiring simple necessities, that signal should be heard as soon as possible, because it gives the extended order a longer runway to deal with the underlying inefficiencies causing it.
- 14:01Analogy · condensed
The government's approach is to think of the economy the way a third grader might, as a handful of separate blocks or sectors where you can pull one or two levers without the others being affected, when in reality it is far more complex and the second-order effects reach further than anyone administering the controls can comprehend.
- 15:00Analogy · condensed
Price controls are like relying on a phone line for information you need to survive, except you are only allowed to hear it through the people manning the phone, and when the signal coming over the line gets loud enough that you could hear it standing next to them, they add static instead of dealing with what the signal is telling them.
- 16:05Quote
they are just adding static so that the signal becomes inaudible
- 17:11Quote
each successive ramp up in control is a notch down in efficiency
- 17:48Reference
this is the Jeff Booth idea that as more and more money enters the system, as there's abundance in money, there is a lack of everything else.
- 17:48Claim · condensed
As more money enters the system there is abundance in money and scarcity everywhere else, and conversely, scarcity in money produces abundance everywhere else.
- 18:19Claim · condensed
Price controls are not theoretical: they have been tried many times and failed every time for the reasons discussed, but until Bitcoin there was no way to opt out of a system that imposes them on you.
- 19:30Idea
The Bitcoin option is to say that you will not be able to mismanage the energy that I have transformed from inaccessible to accessible. I will not allow you to have that power over me.
- 20:05Quote
It is essentially a giant fuck you to whatever system is that they think that they have constructed
- 20:05Claim · condensed
They can't vote the Bitcoin out of you and they can't physically extract it if you have properly secured it; there is nothing they can do about it.
- 21:47Quote
they can become middlemen in this leaky boat of efficiency
- 21:47Claim · condensed
Black markets form on top of price controls because some actors realize the shortages are a hole they can exploit, buying goods like milk or bread before anyone else and reselling them at a markup.
- 22:21Claim · condensed
Price controls can never help, even handed to the most capable individuals or groups available, because the system being controlled is too large and too complex for anyone to manage.
- 22:52Prediction · condensed
Without Bitcoin there was no way to remove yourself from a mismanaged system; now you can do it in less than 10 minutes, with so little friction that the resulting release of energy from the old system will be something never witnessed before.
- 23:30Reference
That's why you have folks like Michael Saylor who constantly bring up the idea that once you fully understand Bitcoin, it's hard to sleep at night knowing that you don't have enough.
- 23:30Prediction
As soon as the bubble bursts in the fiat world, this is going to be unlike anything you've seen before: once the idea is recognized by the masses, there is no slowing it down and the number go up will take over.
- 24:03Prediction
You will never again be able to access as much Bitcoin as you could have five minutes prior; it will run away from you, from everyone you know, and from every government you know, and there is no coming back.