 It looks like we have a few moments left if anybody has any questions for our speakers this morning or About their particular topics or just questions about the Institute or economics generally. I'm sure we could come up with something Okay One of the students watching online asks when did inflation begin and why did it begin and Rothbard talks about some of the historical inflation that The Fed hasn't been around forever, and we haven't they haven't had the the kind of Fiat control that the government has now instead what happened is That Rothbard talks about in a great a great essay called what has government done to our money? That's a really great a great essay to read and he talks about Debacement so he says debasement was the state's method of counterfeiting the very coins it had banned private firms from making So the it declared a monopoly on coinage Sometimes the government committed simple fraud Secretly diluting gold with a base alloy making short-weight coins more Characteristically the mint melted and recoined all the coins of the realm Giving the subjects back the same number of quote pounds or marks or what we would say now dollars But of a lighter weight the leftover ounces of gold or silver were pocketed by the king and used to pay his expenses So that's the way Government used to profit from a heck of a great question or was that not all part of the question? Anybody in our live audience here with a question All right Bitcoin I'll let Mark handle that and we ought to be done in by about six tonight No, I'll try to keep it short I'll try to keep it short Bitcoin is a new digital form of currency And it has many interesting characteristics About it that we're you know kind of thrilled about In one sense it's it's non-governmental money It was something that was an idea of a single person and it's through a market-type process It's emerged as a as a way of making transactions basically and one Aspect of Bitcoin is that you actually have to expend real resources computing power and electricity in order to solve algorithms in order to earn Bitcoin and so that part of Bitcoin the idea that You know that you real resources have to go into it in order to make more bitcoins That's a market form of money in the sense that Like gold and silver you would actually ask to dig up the gold and silver or and go through a process Which ultimately Resulted in gold and silver coins and so there's a check on the amount of money that can be made through the Bitcoin process And so there it's very difficult to have inflation especially the type of inflation That we're talking about here where the government can essentially just let the printing presses roll with more zeros on it And so in Bitcoin is also we weren't surprised to see it come Precisely at this time because the governments of the world and their central banks are inflating like crazy. And so The fact that it emerged at this point time in history is not a just a simple coincidence It's a reaction against the The bad qualities of government fiat money So just a few more remarks about Bitcoin not only It are there limits like what mark talked about But there's also a hard upper limit that that there's a certain number of bitcoins that the program won't allow itself to to expand beyond and One of one of the presenters at the Austrian economics research conference, which is a great conference that we have here every year Matt Gilliland he gave a presentation about Bitcoin and he also talked about another a use value of Bitcoin because Austrian's we don't we don't say that the cost of production Gives something value Rather, it's the value of what's of the product that that gives value to the to the things that were put into producing it And Matt Gilliland talks about how Bitcoin can be used for property transfers So it it can be used for contracts for the non-third-party Contracts and so he talks about that that sort of legal service as being a use value of Bitcoin but you know sort of fundamental point is You know Bitcoin is being used today as a medium of exchange to facilitate certain transactions But it has not yet become or it is not a Commonly accepted medium of exchange you can't walk to Mama Goldberg's deli next door and buy or lunch with Bitcoin So we would say Bitcoin is not presently money because money is a commonly accepted or generally accepted medium of exchange But it is used as a medium of exchange in some transactions, and it may well become money someday We have a question in back my question is to the rarity of it It seems to me that the only way that that's rare in any real meaningful sense is if Nobody else starts their own Bitcoin system. If everybody started their Design their own Bitcoin system. You wouldn't know which one to use and it wouldn't be rare in any meaningful way Is that correct? Well, I mean keep in mind with any kind of Medium of exchange mark mentioned seashells Cattle, I mean there are a lot of times and places in history where different alternative media of exchange have been traded within the same Geographic area and there are certain advantages to standardizing on one or the other But just as for example, you know throughout history not only gold But also silver have typically functioned as as monetary units as money So you could imagine lots of entrepreneurs experimenting with different kinds of digital currencies and other kinds of non digital currencies and If consumers decide that their advantages to standardizing on one as opposed to another we would expect one to sort of outcompete the other So there's no reason why you couldn't have multiple competing digital currencies But just personally My version of weekly basis eating out a lot less frequently than I used to I would just guess that my prices have gone up 30% And I guess my question is What are they measuring how you reckon it's all the difference and where can you see what real inflation is? Where can you go to see what? That's a great question the fact that The government's printing up a lot of money and yet the consumer price index that the government calculates It's not going up much at all But of course that wouldn't be too surprising and if you had of a crooked game to begin with and you're keeping score You're gonna tell everybody the other doing fine in the real world of course prices, you know the money gets into the system and the prices Change this is one of the things that Danny was talking about and Peter was talking about It depends on where the money is coming in and how it impacts prices So for example, Manhattan and Washington DC real estate prices are skyrocketing, you know to record levels Stock market in the bond market are at all-time record levels right now So some people are making, you know tremendous gains the price of farmland is at record levels And so some things have really really skyrocketed and Other things have not now in terms of your own little consumer basket, of course I think that the prices of consumer goods Are going up, you know, they for example, they'll very often report the consumer price index without food and energy But of course food and energy are kind of pretty important stuff and most people's consumer basket of goods in terms of looking at Another source where you could find information about price inflation John Williams at shadow stats comm calculates the consumer price index using the method of calculation back in the 1990s in the 1980s and See the government basically where they change the rules of how they calculate this on a periodic Basis and so if you go back and you look at the old ways that they calculated it the prices of goods and services and consumer goods and services have increased Much faster than the current way that they're doing it So if you've got a crooked game and you're keeping score and you can change the way you Score the game Don't depend on those kind of numbers Yeah, I always think it's funny that you hear the Federal Reserve officials say we were worried really worried about inflation We're keeping a close eye on the CPI But thank goodness house prices are going up again And we've got a robust recovery in the housing market. What that means is price inflation of houses So it's a bad thing they say if the prices of tomatoes are going Rise but it's a good thing if the price of houses rises Well, that's inflation and if you're looking to buy a house an increase in house prices is not good for you And I would just add that deflation the opposite of inflation can be a very good thing for consumers James Grant You might have heard of him from Grant's interest rate observer was recently here at Mises giving a speech About Henry Haslett and he remarked that deflation can be seen as progress in other words Most of us like it when the cost of that big-screen TV goes from $3,000 to $500 and that's a result of a lot of different things but nonetheless if we are did if we define deflation as I guess broadly as a decrease in consumer prices that happens faster than a decrease in corresponding wages Then that's a healthy and happy thing for most folks So the idea that the Fed targets In effect a particular rate of inflation Whether that's 2% or or not And thinking that this has no harm On society if you look at compounding interest if you look at savers if you look at especially Elderly folks who oftentimes have a fixed income In nominal dollars and you know if you're older you might not have the ability to sort of retool your life and go out and make a Bunch of money or change careers or otherwise Increase your income you might be very dependent on the fixed income sources You've got when you're 80 years old and so it's it's these people Who are who are counting on their savings and their fixed nominal income to get them through their later years? Who are perhaps most hurt by inflation that gets one thing I meant to say in my talk But I forgot is that The people who benefit from inflation are often pretty rich people So when I was talking about how people wouldn't like if they knew that wealth was being transferred away from them and towards Other people well, especially if they realized how rich the people that were getting the wealth were so so the privileged bankers are often really well off and your fault and and the and the people who get the money earlier are usually Better off and even debtors you would people often think that oh debtors They must be poorer than say savers But actually it's these investors who are leveraged who are heavily leveraged and build up all this debt to make these big bets that that they're the ones who benefit these rich rich investors and And like like Jeff said a lot of times it's these people these poorer people who are on fixed incomes that get hurt the worst Socialism can't work because it doesn't require private property and freedom Remarkets and stuff like that. Why do we have? Politicians and economists saying that that's the way to go when we know we can't go that way Well, I would say it's for starters socialism works for the political class I mean it's a it's a very good question I mean I'm tempted to say because they haven't taken this course which would you have but as Jeff points out There there are private interests that benefit from socialism and interventionism. I mean if you look at the you know So-called Affordable Care Act, right? I mean there are a lot of a lot of analysts who say who see this as a Making a bad situation worse It sounds like socialized medicine or whatever, but of course the insurance companies are benefiting tremendously from Obamacare some doctors and hospitals will benefit from Obamacare I mean they're always private interests that benefit from any interventionist that benefit from interventions in the economy Not to mention the class of socialist leaders who benefit from economy-wide socialism, but it's also fair to point out that economics is difficult for some people to understand and What seems to a lot of us like fairly straightforward principles really common sense Is these principles are easily twisted and distorted? I mean, I would say if you listen to us, I mean, you know, we're clear as a bell Right what we say makes perfect sense We don't use a lot of fancy jargon words and we don't put up a lot of confusing charts and diagrams But the average person in society who holds the title Economist right as someone you would never invite to a dinner party in a million years They're boring and they they're confusing and they use weird terminology It's completely unclear and so I think a lot of people just don't understand They've been misled into thinking that well, of course we need the government to To intervene in markets, I mean after all it's the Affordable Care Act if we don't have this we won't have affordable health care Well, that's that's that's sort of a hundred year March through history kind of question But a short answer and a in a viable short-term solution would be simply for the American people to develop the political will To force Congress to allow competing currencies Now there was without getting rid of the Federal Reserve without getting rid of the US dollar We could the we could simply allow American people to conduct business to go to 7-eleven or mama Goldbergs in and use Forms of money other than US dollars and not go to prison For doing that and that I think very quickly you would find a marketplace for Gold and silver coins that had a uniform weight and measure they wouldn't be news numismatic or pretty necessarily But they would be very functional and I think very quickly you would find sort of a parallel Market developed for money and then we could find out if the Fed is right and if the Keynesians are right and if the monitor is right and we can Increase money and basically in effect print dollars forever and ever and the rest of the and never get poor Have a collapse as a result doing it. Well, then they can continue to do so and prove us wrong But if they're wrong then we can offer the American people a chance to save themselves before something horrible happens By having gold silver or whatever it might be it could be Bitcoin It could be another cryptocurrency. I don't know I suspect it would be gold and silver because because coins Are something that are tangible and they just make sense to us We all we all get it and so I think consumers and merchants would sort of have a comfort level with that but Again legalized competing currencies that would be my three-word answer after that long answer. I just gave you and One other point is that probably the most effective way of making that happen is not to actually call your congressman or Or do anything like that But but to do what we're doing today to to spread The ideas about sound economics and sound money because what happens is that the more people understand The the less they're willing to to put up with these Restrictions and and if government just knows that that they they need to you know withdraw some of these Restrictions because people are just going to you know start using Bitcoin or start using using gold dollars on on the edge and the the the more that that people are just clamoring for a change and the more that just people understand that the need for change then the more that change will actually happen I Just tie it up by Noting that Austrian economists generally fly under the banner of the gold standard that doesn't necessarily mean we advocate Everybody use gold money or everybody use silver money or that we even necessarily have to have Coin money. I mean it could still be debit cards and credit cards and checkbooks and and all the rest of the You know improvements in the transaction system that we have in the economy But we just generally refer to that as going back to the gold standard I think we have time for one more question before we get you on your way Any volunteers in the front my question relates to What you spoke about the way to talk about these things is to educate educate the public And so I try to do that. I'm a novice. I'm a biologist not an economist What would you recommend if someone does show an interest how should we start them like? What reading? Hamlet essays because nobody's gonna sit down and read a book on economics The atmosphere there's great little time But I have people who are interested and I want to point them to the right things Because sometimes you can point people to things and they go running like mad. Thank you all are are Crazy or fringe So what do you recommend? I was started on the wall and I never look back after that So Well, it sounds like we need a gateway drug I mean the law is of course excellent Henry Haslitz economics in one lesson Which is what almost 60 years old now is still excellent specifically on money I would recommend Rothbard's what has government done to our money Which is a short pamphlet that's easy to read He there are longer treatments like Rothbard's mystery of banking that are very good. All of these are available Free online most of these at Mises dot org What are some other intro readings that would be good case for a hundred? Yeah, Murray Rothbard has you know What has government done to our money the case for the? 100% gold standard and the case against the FET so there's three small things, but you can also do things like Put these lectures up on Facebook Put them up on Twitter Like us on Facebook. We're getting we're very close to getting a hundred thousand likes on our Facebook page But if you go out and put up on a regular basis Material that you find interesting and informative at Mises dot org including the daily articles You know read that daily article and say now what should my friends or relatives would be most interested in that You can be starting one person at a time to change the world Oh, yeah, and I would recommend to all of you who are interested in Helping to convert and move people in the right direction Joe Salerno's class Joe is the really the number one money macro guy in Austrian economics And he has a Mises Academy class Starting Tuesday the 15th, so we all know April 15th is a bad day But this is the good part of it. It's a start on the road to sound money, and it's called understanding monetary chaos Most people don't understand that the world is in a tremendous sense in a monetary chaos We're in a world currency war where all the governments and central banks around the planet are battling one another to Devalue their own currency and help their export industries vis-a-vis other Other countries industries and exporters and so Joe's course is really You know it's he's gonna lay the whole thing out. I'll be a guest lecture during the course as well And so I encourage everybody here and watching us to sign up for that class Folks we have run out of time, but thank you very much for coming here today spending your Friday with us Drive home safe, and we all hope to see you again. Thanks