The Bitcoin Standard Podcast

Can law, order, and defense be provided on the market? Why can't they be normal goods? We are joined by economist Edward Stringham to discuss his fascinating work on free market anarchism and private governance. Stringham examines the economic of government from an Austrian perspective, and clearly shows how the world is increasingly relying on private voluntary legal and defense services rather than inefficient monopolies. We also apply these ideas to examine the concept of public health, and Stringham's work at the American Institute for Economic Research on the Great Barrington Declaration.

References

• Book: Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life - https://www.amazon.com/Private-Governance-Creating-Economic-Social/dp/0199365164 
• Book: Anarchy and The Law: The Political Economy of Choice - https://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Law-Political-Economy-Independent/dp/1412805791 
• Great Barrington Declaration - https://gbdeclaration.org/ 
• SSRN papers - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=685664 
• Coronavirus and Economic Crisis, AIER - https://www.aier.org/product/coronavirus-and-economic-crisis/ 
• Private Policing in San Francisco - https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=2672 
• Edward's Twitter - https://twitter.com/edstringham 
• Edward's Website - https://edwardpeterstringham.wordpress.com/ 
• Edward's Profile on AIER - https://www.aier.org/people/edward-peter-stringham/ 

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

How much of the fiat food science taught in your universities is just agribusiness marketing PR? To find out, we host former big food marketing consultant Calley Means to discuss his experience with manufacturing fiat science for industrial junk food sales!

References

• Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford appointed to DGA committee - https://twitter.com/DoctorTro/status/1617344477332373506 
• New government funded food-pyramid says lucky charms are healthier than steak - https://www.goodranchers.com/blog/new-government-funded-foodpyramid-says-lucky-charms-are-healthier-than-steak
• Fredrick J. Stare wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrick_J._Stare 
• Carnivore diet references - https://justmeat.co/ 
• Shawn Baker Episode - https://saifedean.com/podcast/40-dr-shawn-baker-on-meat-fiat-foods-and-bitcoin 
• Michael Goldstein Episode - https://saifedean.com/podcast/9-bitstein-on-bitcoin-meat-and-arctic-carnivore-diets 
• How to Grill a Steak and Beat Fiat food - https://saifedean.com/podcast/7-how-to-grill-a-steak-and-beat-fiat-food

Calley Means

• Website - https://calleymeans.com/ 
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/calleymeans?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

Alex Gladstein joins us to discuss the destructive influence of the World Bank and IMF on the development of poor countries, and how fiat facilitates their operation, a topic discussed extensively in Saifedean's book, The Fiat Standard. With an infinite fiat credit line from the Federal Reserve, the "misery industry" is always looking for an excuse to get countries indebted, and the results have been catastrophic for the world's poor, but highly lucrative for fiat banking cartels.

Resources (All links available on saifedean.com/podcast/155-imf-world-bank-misery-industry-with-alex-gladstein)

• Alex Gladstein's article: Structural Adjustment: How the IMF & World Bank repress poor countries and funnel their resources to rich ones
• Alex Gladstein's book: Check Your Financial Privilege
• Full text of Fiat States, Chapter 11 of The Fiat Standard

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

Eminent historian Niall Ferguson joins us to discuss the history of fiat money, its relation to war, its development over the past century and the prospects for bitcoin. Why did Britain join World War I, and was it a wise choice? How eager were the British to join war? We debate whether it was the gold standard, or the suspension of the gold standard, that prevented recovery post-WWI and laid the foundation for World War II. And we discuss Professor Ferguson's views of bitcoin and its future prospects.

Resources 

• Article: Bitcoin winning the covid-19 monetary Revolution -  https://www.fa-mag.com/news/bitcoin-is-winning-the-covid-19-monetary-revolution-59155.html?section= 
• Book: The Ascent of Money - https://www.niallferguson.com/the-ascent-of-money
• Book: Pity of War - https://www.niallferguson.com/pity-of-war  
• Niall Ferguson website - https://www.niallferguson.com/ 

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

After three years of hyperinflation, is there light at the end of the tunnel for Lebanon? The currency has lost more than 97% of its value, the largest bill is worth $1.5, the real economy is de facto dollarized, and only those dependent on government are having to suffer from hyperinflation. Fiat is dead and there are are no IMF bail-outs or natural resource revenues to get the ponzi going again. Is the death of fiat suffocating the parasite class and freeing the rest of society from having to finance them?

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

We are joined by Jonathan Chester, the founder and CEO of Bitwage, a bitcoin payroll company which allows you to get paid in bitcoin no matter who is paying you, and allows companies to set up bitcoin payrolls for their workers. We discuss the genesis of the company in 2014, how it grew through bitcoin bear and bull markets, what its future plans are, and how Jonathan sees the development of the industry over the years. 

Resources (All links available on saifedean.com/podcast/152-bitwage-with-jonathan-chester)

• Bitwage
• Bitwage Twitter 
• Jonathan Chester's Twitter and LinkedIn

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

What is "ESG" and why is it such a dangerous scam? We are joined by Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur in the healthcare and technology sectors and bestselling author of Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam, as well as Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence. Vivek explains why ESG is more dangerous than silly corporate virtue-signaling, and what its long-term economic, social, and political implications are. We also delve into a deep discussion of the role monetary policy plays in corporate corruption, and whether bitcoin can fix this. Vivek contends bitcoin cannot fix everything, and Saifedean attempts to make the case for why it, in fact, does!

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

Sam Apple joins us to discuss his fascinating book 'Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection'. We discuss the connection between diet and cancer, and the Warburg Effect, which states that cancer cells thrive on dietary glucose, and why Sam thinks it's not entirely accurate because it ignores the role of insulin resistance. We also discuss Hitler's fascination with cancer research, which allowed Warburg to survive the Nazi era even though he was Jewish and gay, and Hitler's infamous addiction to sugar. We further discuss why this enormously important work has been ignored in modern science, why alternative genetic hypotheses are woefully inadequate, whether modern medicine can be reformed to focus on dietary causes of disease, and, of course, how bitcoin fixes this!

References (All links are available on saifedean.com/podcast/150-the-cancer-diet-connection-with-sam-apple)

• Sam Apple’s official website.
• Buy Sam’s book on Amazon, The Book Shop and Norton.
• Chris Palmer
• Econtalk with Gary Taubes
• The Nazi War on Cancer by Robert N. Proctor 
• Lewis Cantley Harvard page

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

Is humanity running out of resources, or are resources more abundant than ever? Gale Pooley is the co-author of Superabdundance, a fascinating and optimistic exploration of how economic progress has made life better for humanity. He joins us to explain why goods continue to become more abundant, why fears of overpopulation and resource depletion continue to be refuted forcefully by reality, and why human time keeps getting more valuable. We discuss the work of one of our favorite economists, Julian Simon, and how he brilliantly refuted the common view of resource scarcity, and reframed scarcity as the scarcity of human time. We also explore how inflation reverses economic progress, and how much better life would be without it, and conclude with a discussion of bitcoin's potential.

 Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here. 

This episode contains most of the final lecture of The Fiat Standard online course, which just concluded, based on the last chapter of The Fiat Standard. After having studied the bitcoin and fiat monetary systems extensively in The Bitcoin Standard and The Fiat Standard, Saifedean analyzes how bitcoin can continue to rise in a fiat world. Can central banks adopt bitcoin? Will bitcoin lead to hyperinflation? Or will bitcoin be an orderly upgrade and debt jubilee, allowing us to unwind fiat painlessly as it devalues everyone's debts? Will bitcoin speculative attacks carry the day? And how do central bank digital currencies affect bitcoin's rise?


 Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses – including his ongoing course ECO22: The Fiat Standard – and read chapters of his forthcoming book, Principles of Economics, by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here.