Inflation is theft | Robert Breedlove and Lex Fridman

[@unkelfaka6216]

Inflation will kill the working class dream of retirement.

[@unkelfaka6216]

@Brandon May Exit plan my friend. Philippines, Mexico, Colombia, Bali, ext ext. Do some cost of living expenses charts. Have some wealth in gold, silver, doge coin, land, houses, business, dividend stocks if you can. I am going to escape the rat race and move a day south of the USA border hopefully in 5 years or less. Millions of US expats have done the same. Or you can justify the USA standard of living and work till death. You have choices. Sacrifice now for later. The Russians have a 5 year plan. Dedicate yourself.

[@chadjones6313]

@@unkelfaka6216 well said

[@Greyalien587]

@@unkelfaka6216 I’m 25 have lived in both Spain and the phillipines..you are right my man , countries like phillipines is truly an exit plan. Now I have seen the truth and will work work work and just save my ass of and move to phillipines

[@unkelfaka6216]

@Brandon May Its your right to choose your own happiness. For me exiting the western world rat race propaganda and living a free life of not being a wage slave is good to me. America is getting taken over by the government and corporations. Good luck fighting that fight. I am going to be riding my horse back from the beach to drink a cold one and have some tacos.

[@unkelfaka6216]

@Brandon May I have lived in the best towns in America. Right now I live in Hawaii. You should travel. Did you know that you have more personal freedoms in Mexico? Good luck to you my friend. I am going to go swim with mermaids.

[@marcusarmenius2908]

This guest is VERY good at explaining things in an easy to understand fashion ⭐️

[@seane6171]

His name is Robert Breedlove and is also a KZbinr. He's got some good stuff, might wanna give his podcast a go too.

[@geoffgjof]

You really need to get Bob Murphy on to talk about Economics.

[@savageo1343]

Inflation is what is keeping people in poverty....

[@kenneths4156]

Big fan lex. Love your vids keep them coming!

[@Kamil__Cic]

That was really well explained. Great videos!

[@mycul_]

This guy is extremely intelligent. He has a very great mind and proposes interesting perspectives. Good job, Lex. Keep killing it.

[@kandorofficial2161]

The snooze button analogy was brilliant 😂

[@juanfelipe8484]

This guest is phenomenal

[@157dixon]

The only thing that is good about inflation is that it makes debt cheaper because debt remains the same while money becomes cheaper

[@Roninbuilt]

Yes. This works only as long as you can increase your income to match the rate of inflation!

[@157dixon]

@DeusVult1683 loaned money is debt.

[@SGI077]

The problem with that is that the people that save money get to pay your debt because if something gets cheaper it means someone else is paying for it.

[@tiananman]

only certain people are able to take advantage of this property of inflation, and it turns out it's mostly the same people who benefit from inflation generally: the already rich and the politically connected.

[@157dixon]

@@SGI077 well you need to make investments

[@fantasyfilters580]

I hate inflation !!! Been working and saving little by little now It's not worth the same as usual 😡😡😡

[@deepseadarew6012]

Can you bring in someone from the Central Bank to elaborate on inflation? And then someone!

[@bennypinaula1231]

Truth matters.

[@TheoKoulouris]

Keynes..... he was wrong.

[@muttshaman2040]

How can this guy be so utterly gorgeous and so smart too?

[@muttshaman2040]

@@lliamjurdom9505 Oh woke liam, i just must

[@nelsonianb1289]

Recent inflation just killed middle class families buying property in the northeast.

[@Dan16673]

I am big mises fan but I've recently seen the wisdom of richard werner

[@johnnastrom9400]

One of the most complex and worst explanations of inflation I have ever heard. And the fact that so many people in this comment section are stating that he is "very good at explaining" demonstrates the principle that people will agree with someone who has a position they don't understand merely because they fear sounding unintelligent. Inflation is simply a decrease in a unit of currency's purchasing power due to a tightening of the supply of goods and/or an increase in the amount of currency available for purchasing those goods. Inflation caused by increasing the monetary supply is theft because a guy who has been saving money in the bank for 10 years can lose half of his purchasing power due to inflation going up faster than the interest rate being paid on his savings. At the same time, governments and other entities with enormous debt have their effective debt reduce relative to their current income and the increased value of their assets.

[@voluntarism335]

No inflation is the increase of the money supply, it has nothing to do with the production of goods. The consequence of inflation is that purchasing power is siphoned from everyone else to the newly minted coins, paper money, digital money or even crypto currencies one's that do not have a MAX cap supply like bitcoin. The gold standard had inflation but that wasn't theft, the purchasing power of your dollars would go down if the supply of goods didn't increase, more gold is mined making gold less valuable assuming that the amount of goods doesn't increase and therefore your money would buy less in such a world. We do not see that because the supply of goods increases faster than the supply of gold backed money. The mining of gold is siphoning the purchasing power of everyone else's gold, and yet no one calls that theft.

[@kidscartoons169]

Just from the title I agree

[@angusdog22]

A crash is coming we’ve been on an unsustainable path for 70 years . We just keep taking from tomorrow to pay for today.

[@thekwillis2830]

Anarchism approaching like a thief in the night

[@surplusstock8778]

Amazing how parents don't spell this out to their kids,living an absolute lie.

[@bubblewhip382]

Inflation has been the meta way of controlling the economy because naturally the purchasing power of the dollar goes up in any fixed currency system as economic productivity and value goes up. This makes prices very unstable since something that cost $100 today might be $400 tomorrow which that inefficency of dealing with refunds, price changes ect damages productivity. You want general steady inflation because it discourages money hoarding. If your cash is becoming less valuable every day by sitting under your mattress you are more inclined to spend that money either on material things or financial investments, which can include a bank with guaranteed savings who uses that money to finance low risk loans. Inflation as theft is as pretty niave way of viewing things when the alternatives are not conducive to a productive and happy economy.

[@darkfazer]

You sound like someone who went to London School of Economics. These guys made a science of justifying theft.

[@bubblewhip382]

@@darkfazer explain to me how I do a 60 day return policy on Bitcoin that makes any sense without using other fiat currencies.

[@darkfazer]

@@bubblewhip382 A return policy is simply an agreement to do a reverse trade in a set amount of time. You can do that with any trade. You return whatever you received for your bitcoin and you get your bitcoin back. What does that have to do with anything? I don't know.

[@bubblewhip382]

@@darkfazer With bitcoins static currency amount the purchasing power of Bitcoin will always increase over time. So if you buy something for 1 bitcoin, you could potentially purchase 1.5 or 2 of those things with 1 bitcoin 60 days from now. Therefore the bitcoin in the future is worth more than the bitcoin in the past. Which is why a return of the same amount makes no economic sense.

[@darkfazer]

@@bubblewhip382 100% annual deflation rate would mean that what you purchased on the 1st of January would be worth a half of that on 31st of December. So you could purchase two for the price of one if your return policy was 1 year and deflation would be at 100%. The deflation would obviously be nowhere near 100%. You are correct in your premise, but you got your scale way off the mark. In reality after 60 days you'd lose less than 1% of value, which you may either include in price, treat it as a exceptional customer service which attracts buyers or not offer it all and let the market decide what attitude towards returns is best..

[@Danny_j_m_90]

Ernest Cyborg 9 🤖

[@voluntarism335]

Inflation is the increase of the money supply but it is not theft. Monero has inflation but yet no one calls the reward 0.6xmr theft. Gold has inflation yet no one calls that theft. Inflation has the consequence of siphoning the store of value from everyone else so it can look and feel like theft. Siphoning the purchasing power away from people's savings is not a good thing and the government and central banks should not be increasing the money supply.

[@brianburrous4775]

I don't totally follow this argument so maybe someone could clarify. Inflation is the rate of change of the price index, right? So inflation is the natural result of individual actors within a system raising prices. So increasing the monetary supply *could* create inflation, but it's just one variable. As people work to become more successful within the economic system, they'll undoubtedly raise prices, searching for the upper bound of what people will pay for their good/service. Inversely, deflation or even a lack of inflation suggests that each individual actor on average believes that people are not willing to pay more for their good/service, and they probably figured that out due to a lack of demand. I think it's safe to assume that in a complex, constantly changing economic system, a constant equilibrium point is unrealistic (this may be where my understanding falls apart), so you'd have to choose between inflation and deflation. And since deflation is a sign that the future is worse than the past (you'll be faced with low demand, so low that you decide to lower prices), and be forced to accept less money for the same good/service, then some low degree of inflation would be ideal (individuals constantly optimistic about the future, trying to make more money for themselves through increased prices or higher salary. Though I think a much more interesting metric to optimize for would not be inflation or deflation, but productivity. Only by increasing the efficiency of production, or the distribution of wealth (the later potentially falling into the realm of Marxism, with pretty obvious problems), can individual economic status (a proxy for quality of life) hope to increase. This strange machine we call the economy is all based in some real production of goods/services so increasing that productivity allows one person access to more, better things for the same unit of labor (on average).

[@fitzgeni16]

very well said and I work for a family owned business. It would suck mentally too have to lower prices. I agree that with what they said that this could just delay the bubble popping. I see it as that we are always in a growing bubble and as history goes ALL bubbles pop eventually. lets go back to the 90s haha

[@darkfazer]

You indeed seem to have completely missed the point. The point of economy is to satisfy our needs, precisely the only thing we should be concerned with is the productivity. The thing is that increased productivity increases supply. We either make more chairs per hour or we make the cost of making cheaper by increasing our productivity. The demand for chairs is fairly stable as people don't randomly grow any more bums, stable demand with a growing supply equals lower prices. Deflation isn't a goal, it's just a result.

[@quosswimblik4489]

If you look at the economy of 1800's America inflation and deflation played a role but over all the prices deflated as efficiency improved and that is a natural market flow. After the fed got in it inflated ever since. A natural market favors efficient innovation. The odd thing about today is that if we went as efficient as we could go many people would loose their jobs and deflation would be a lot more rampant. Although it would benefit things like nature and industrial output efficiency. So we have a choice prop the human workforce up in a less efficient way or cut 2/3 of the work force and have a lot cheaper goods and far more efficiency. This issue wasn't such an issue in the 1800's as the market wasn't capable of being as efficient as could be today so people had enough time to adapt. So what do you do it's more mentally healthy to have most of the work force working but you still want the benefits of efficiency. Also if you don't siphon money off the masses you get higher inflation and the way the modern world does it is to create more rich with that money as to generate a wider capitalist market employing more people plus inflated government spending propping up the work force. It would be nice to think that humanity can adapt and diversify with lot more efficiency around right now however most humans wouldn't be able to adapt quick enough to such a market. Note the low inflation model is more recent as efficiency has become more inevitable due to technological progress. It's all one big human dilemma bubbling up and no matter the currency used this hyper efficiency issue won't go away it'll get worse. Human minds were not design by nature to cope that well mostly being consumers that don't work. What distinguishes modern humans from more earlier humans is our ability to delegate responsibility in large groups where each individual plays their part. From an AI perspective it might be more efficient to get AI with speedups to mine the realm of whats possible with less and less human input but that would not be fair to us humans. it would be like taking us the out of the loop to much so. instead AI should be kept as an evolving tool to aid human development because although we might not evolve as fast as AI going it on it's own it's our planet and our development that's important if we wish to stay relevant and not fizzle out. There are ways you can gradually evolve a biological brain with out having to wire our brains into hardware and we need to be very careful to keep up the human momentum and actually get further on in this reality. How do they put it the only thing inevitable is that things will change. Imagine a massive singularity happened today and AI did more and more for us until we are totally kept does anyone really want this even though the alternative option involves more hardship and much adaption I think it's a more worthy pursuit that will help us stay relevant into the longer future.

[@darkfazer]

Hard to imagine more nonsense crammed into one comment really. "We need to steal from people to keep them employed" is close to being the dumbest thing I read on the internet.

[@anthonyfaucy2761]

Working hard for the sake of it is stupid and egotistical. We need to automate everything so we work less

[@meowbih]

meow

[@devinbrisco2311]

This guy is smart.. but is just not qualified enough and does not have enough substance behind what he is saying to make the claims he is stating. I expect more from a CEO/“ex hedge fund manager.” Of course the Fed and market make mistakes and inflation can be harmful and volatility will always exist, but there is a reason why every economic textbook states the proper level of inflation is a good thing. He makes good points but he is jumping from A to Z to fit his narrative on crypto (which makes money for his business). It causes me to question whether he is just manipulating people or actually really believes this. Our economic system is far from perfect but to me this is essentially postmodernism for economics. Don’t get me wrong It’s good to have skeptics and continually change but his analogies are disingenuous to say the least.

[@darkfazer]

"There is a reason why..." and what reason would that be?

[@anthonyfaucy2761]

And a rando like you does know? Lol nope I'll trust his word over yours

[@Nicolas-uu3jr]

shows/tells how he was raised 😏

[@rey82rey82]

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