After reading Jeff Booth’s book in early 2020, his insights helped shed light on a few aspects of what was happening in the world that I just didn’t fully understand. There were a multitude of conflicting problems with inflation and the rise in authoritarianism in the world that I was not capable of understanding, with the knowledge I had back then.
Jeff Booth clears up everything that's happening with the economy, in simple way that anyone can understand
Jeff Booth’s book ”the price of tomorrow” was such a magnificent book, that I had to get him on my channel for an interview. The way in which he looks at the global economy from a technology being exponentially productive and therefore deflationary stand point, was something that I had never heard before. He is one of the most intelligent people I’ve interviewed and if you are reading this, please buy his book asap. Unfortunately I am not an amazon affiliate, so I cannot give you a direct link, you’ll have to source the book yourself online.
Inflation is a Hidden Theft
Inflation causes our money to be continuously worth less over time and we as a society never question whether that is a good thing or not. We just accept it. Everything we measure in society is based on the belief that we need inflation. But this constant inflationary creep, in fact hurts the poorest in our society, while the wealthy who own hard assets continue to get wealthier.
Jeff Says that is took $185 trillion dollars in stimulus to grow the economy by $46 trillion, which is approximately $4 of leverage for $1 of growth, which is obviously unsustainable. This amount of stimulus was measured before the pandemic hit, so I could only imagine how bad it is now.
Jeff says that the printing of money is what’s holding this system together and governments around the world cannot escape this cycle. If they stop printing money the entire system will collapse around them.
Another aspect of Jeff’s arguments, was that society has increasingly been set up to erode the wealth of the people at the bottom of society, while increasing the wealth of the people at the top. He seems to argue that this is unfair, which is quite reasonable in my opinion.
Deflation Can Set Us Free
I can’t remember exactly how Jeff Booth put this exactly, so bear with me. Deflation is when technology helps everything become more efficient and therefore cheaper. This is a good thing but is not being embraced by any governments around the world. Jeff points out that a highly productive society can provide everyone with all the goods we need, while working less hours.
If technology makes everything more productive, then we get more for less right? Jeff Booth argues that we should embrace this, instead of fighting it.
And I totally agree.
Who Will Be The Masters?
Can you remember everything that has happened in the past?
Jeff Booth points out our limited capacity to memorise the past in detail, he refers to a study that suggests that 40% of the time, our memory can be incorrect. When a human’s brain’s capacity is compared to artificial intelligence, us humans are being left behind.
When we analyse the best in any field, we discover that practice is what made them an expert or the best in their chosen field. Some say that 10,000 hours of practice is required for someone to become the best in their chosen field. Artificial intelligence on the other hand, can practice at such a rapid rate that no human can keep up, this leads Jeff Booth to assume that AI could very well be the new masters in all fields.
AlphaGo (AI) was referred to as an example of superior artificial intelligence dominating humans at the board game ”go”. This AI has the ability to play the game with itself continuously, thousands of times over and over again and learn faster than any human is capable of doing. When compared to the ability of a person to practice, we could never keep up.
Artificial Intelligence will be our masters
Us Verses Them
This was the chapter that Jeff outlined his theory on how the us verses them phenomenon could possibly play out over the coming years. People tend to identify with groups and tribes. Jeff identifies as an entrepreneur, skier, hockey player, thought leader etc, just as a few examples of groups he may identify with. This often leads us to form a bond with those groups, while naturally, mostly unintendedly excluding others.
He discusses an experiment done on teenage boys who were separated into two groups, then made to compete over scarce resources. This lead boys with no behavioural problems to become aggressive and even violent towards each other. This was a great way to explain the competition between USA and China.
Then Jeff moved the reader into a discussion about game theory, the prisoners dilemma. Where the best scenario is for both sides to cooperate with each other, instead of working against each other. This was a great way that Jeff seemed to explain how the global economy could work better for everyone, just as long as we work together.
Jeff talked about cheating in a fair and open system too. To me, most of this book had some relationship to what was happening between China and USA.
Authoritarianism
The natural conclusion of this book, was Jeff Booth’s fear that without rational cooperation, the world would become more authoritarian. But Jeff Booth is reaching out to the possible leaders of this new authoritarian world, by warning them that eventually it will back fire on them. He explains that the people at the bottom with eventually revolt, due to their dire circumstances and that the leaders of authoritarian governments should avoid it, for their own self interests too.
