Mailbag: Why is my ETF paying a higher dividend? September 7, 2025

23:19Take out the undergrads. Okay, now we've got 600. All right. Take out the graduate apply. Okay, now we're going to have 300. Right, we're starting to talk about it. Take out the Masters of Finance rather than 100 there. Take the CFA chart, I go 50. Right, I can deal with 50 applicants. And if that's what's happening in the industry, then you may have to just play the game because you've got to play the game. Sorry, mate. That sounds a bit negative. Get a job in the industry. Learn about business and keep investing on the side. Do your blog to Ram's point and see what that gets you. Yeah. One from Paul who says, Dear Scott and Ram, the pod machine is in good hands with you two chaps operating it.

23:50Well, Paul doesn't know we actually literally operate it. Andrew's got a little pedal cycle under his, like the school of the air. So he's got to keep writing while we do this. That's how the whole thing works. Kiss the ring, he says, and so on and so forth. One for Ram, says Paul. Okay. But Scott, please chip in if he gets carried away. You know, I will. I know. I know what's coming. Yeah. Interesting though. Would the rationale for dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin apply the same as in equities or businesses? I've summarised the rationale for my own DCE strategy into equities as trusting the efficiencies of capital allocation.

24:25A belief that capitalism continues to work over a long time to come, letting markets do their thing and don't make it more complex than it is. But what about Bitcoin? For the moment, my Bitcoin purchases have been based on pure speculation, if I'm being really honest, based on a belief that Ram's view of its potential function as a reserve currency will be true someday. Apparently BlackRock and other global fund managers agree with him. So how do I think about capital allocation into something like this? Or sorry, how do I, she'll be saying. or do I make peace with going blind with the purchase price given the lack of any intrinsic value in this thing?

24:57Thanks, gents. You're both awesome. Paul. Okay, Paul, first thing. Can I say this for Paul? Two words? Yeah. Stack sats. Yeah, that's good. Four words. Oh, go on. Stay humble, stack sats. But give us the long words. DCA? Yes and no. The point I wanted to start off with is for the love of God, Paul, please and anyone else listening, I know I'm enthusiastic about this stuff, but if that is the basis of your investment thesis, please. I just, I cannot, I cannot handle such responsibility. And I certainly, I would say this about any stock or invest, any investment I ever make. I'm, I mean, you know me, mate, I'm not, I'm not backwards in coming forwards.

25:39I'm really happy to share my opinion. I've got a lot of strong opinions, but I'm also full of hot air, right? So like just, I just, I cannot sleep at night knowing that, that someone has aped into something because I said it was good, right? And there's also another saying I'm very fond of, which is you can borrow an idea but you can't borrow the conviction. It's actually easy to be super high conviction. Some guy's waxing lyrical, oh, it's great, it's the best thing ever and the unit price is going up. You know, it's like it's easy. But then I guarantee you this thing will have some gut-wrenching drop at some point in time, right?

26:16Like it just will. And at that, maybe we've stopped doing the pot at that point. It's just sort of like, oh, God, what do I do now? What do I do now? And you don't know because the thesis was based on someone else's opinion. So build, before you do a damn thing, build your own conviction. And, yes, this probably comes across as a bit of backside covering, but I genuinely, genuinely believe it. No, perfect. You know, this is true for stock tips. I'm sure you, in fact, I've heard you say the same for all the recommendations that you guys give. You know, it's like, hey, this is my best idea. I'm not trying to con anyone.

26:49I really like this stock. But, you know, best you take this as an idea generator and take ownership of that idea because I just can't stress that point enough. So, yes, having said that, absolutely buy it. Buy it with your E's print bag. But buy it regularly, right? Save it and invest regularly? Here's the thing. So I'm in two minds. I kind of, it depends what your situation is. There'll be some people that have a big pile of capital and there'll be those that are just earning money and saving it. So I think in the latter camp, you'll DCA because you're forced to DCA because all of the money that you will eventually hope to put into the particular investment is not yet earned.

27:33So you'll just, I do that with my super. My super comes through once a month and boom, I buy some Bitcoin with it, right? And I just do it. I don't, I want it up, down, sideways, whatever. I don't care. I just do it. Am I dollar cost averaging? Yeah, but I'm not DCAing for any other reason than I kind of have to, right? If I had, you know,$10 ,000 and that was my savings, what would I do? That's a bit trickier. DCAing, the way Scott and I have answered this question a thousand times when it comes to index investing, and I think everything you and I have said there applies equally true here. We're very smart people, so probably.

28:08We are. I mean, I don't think anyone of us or any listener would bristle or push back on the idea if we said index is going up forever. Yeah, of course it is. It always has, probably always will. Not every day, but. No, absolutely not every day. In fact, it's going to go up and to the right like a roller coaster. So it's going to have all these, exactly the same kind of thing, right? So what do you do? Well, if you've got a long enough time horizon, probably just pop it all in. You might get unlucky and that's just the day before a 30 % drop, but still over the fullness of time you'll be okay.

28:48If you drip it in, the other risk is that it 10Xs the next day and you go, oh, God, why didn't I put it all in, you know? So you don't, but at least you know that you're going to smooth things out. So it's really, there's no right or wrong answer. Where I come from with this particular thing, and, again, And this is just one random dude on the internet's opinion, right? And so but if you think like I do that this thing is probably headed towards many millions of dollars a coin over decades, I'm not saying this is going to – the big, easy, crazy gains that you – they're gone. Those days are well gone.

29:24That's never going to happen again. There's just too much weight of money required to move it. It's a$2 trillion asset. You can't – those things don't 10x in 10 years, right? Like it just doesn't happen. So it's gone. It's the difference between investing in a small cap versus a blue chip, right? Small caps can do it. Blue chips very rarely can do that kind of stuff. Yeah.

29:47So if that's what you think and if you don't need that money to live on, then I would probably, in the short term or medium term, I would probably just put it all in. So I think Paul's, can I paraphrase what I think Paul's asking? because he talked about, he's saying, you know, how do I think about capital allocation into something like this or do I make peace with going blind with the purchase, given the purchase price, given the lack of any intrinsic value? So I think what Paul's saying is not so much do I invest at all now or DCA, which is kind of the usual question. I think he's saying if I can't pick a price, you know, if you're a stock picker, you might say, well, I won't buy Woolworths this month because of this price, but next month if it's that price, I might buy it.

30:27No, you want to pay an attractive price, yes. I think that's what Paul's asking is because of Bitcoin, there was no intrinsic value. It's hard to kind of know which months to buy Woolies and which months to buy Bitcoin. So do you kind of just go, I'm giving up trying to pick an intrinsic value or a price or whether it's high or low or undervalued? I mean, you kind of made the point in your answer by saying, well, you think it's millions of dollars at some point, so by definition it's a tenth of where it's going to be. So in that context, he's not going to lump some from the sound of it, but if you're getting regular money, do you try and pick the right times to buy Bitcoin or just dollar cost average?

30:59I wouldn't. I wouldn't. In the same way, I don't think you would argue if we were talking about the Vanguard index. You wouldn't, you're just like, no, buy it. When you've got money, buy it. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't know what's going to happen next year. It could be down 30%, but I think in 10 years' time it'll be much higher than today. If that's, and now you might not think that, and there'll be people out there going, this guy's an insane idiot. Like, you know, and if you think that, by all means, don't do it. But if you do think that, I certainly wouldn't overthink it.

31:26Just very quickly, this intrinsic value critique is a little bit bugbear for me. Because people go, he's got no intrinsic value, which is 100 % true. But intrinsic value is something that applies only to productive assets. It is a discounted cash flow. It doesn't produce cash flow, so it doesn't have intrinsic value. And people go, ah! And I was like, yeah, but what's the intrinsic value of gold? Yeah, yeah. What's the intrinsic value of the Aussie dollar, of the yen? It's like, oh, they don't. If I said, if there was an FX trader here from some swish big investment bank and they were talking about how the Japanese yen was very attractive and I said, yeah, but it doesn't have any intrinsic value.

32:03They go, what are you talking about, dude? No, it doesn't because it's not a business. And it's the wrong lens to look at it. It's like saying, you know, what's the, what is the sound of blue? It's like, it doesn't even make sense. I know those words individually but put together it's completely, and it just doesn't make sense. So no, it doesn't have any intrinsic value. Missy Higgins doesn't know the sound of white though. It's important to remember. Oh, okay. So I don't know that reference. I like your songs. If you listen to the sound of white, you know that song. Come on. I'm not going to sing it because I respect it.

32:36I listen too much. No, but you might have to sing it. There's your homework. There's your homework. You're right. Because there was no intrinsic value, you can't use that to work out the right price to pay for something, which is your point about dollar cost averaging. Yeah. I mean, it's just a utility, right? Yeah. Anyway, I won't go down the rabbit hole. Simon hates me more than it seems like Paul hates me. Simon has asked us, Dear Page and Phillips Incorporated, which I don't like, some evil empire. I think PTYLTD is our preferred structure though, right? I suggest that. Well, when the Caymans are slightly different, but let's not talk about that because it just gets in trouble with the ATO.

33:14Here's his question. What is Bitcoin? Oh, God. No, so he then says, is it an asset, a commodity, a currency, a collectible, or something else entirely? I'm assuming this is a simple question with a simple answer, but knowing Mr. Page, it depends. Thank you for your biweekly service on the pod machine, Simon from Perth. It's money. We'll stop. Next question. Okay. You know I can't. You know I can't do that. Oh, there is a next question. Oh, no, he is going to go on. No, no, no, no. No, I was bluffing. I totally did not want you to move on. I live, I wait each week for the opportunity to talk about this stuff.

33:58Yeah, it's money, right? We, again, I would just, again, I spent a lot of time last on Friday talking about the lessons of history. Yeah. You know, we live in a very peculiar point in human history where what we understand as money is a creation of government. I think that's important actually because when you say money, you're not really talking about money as most people would understand it. That's worth unpicking too. So keep going. Yes. So was it currency? Right. Or is it money? They're kind of synonymous but not really. Gold is a really nice comparison. Who chose gold? Do you know who chose gold?

34:36The market chose gold. There wasn't a king. Do you think some king said, I'm going to use gold? No, no, no. It was already being used. they standardised it because it's really helpful to have your picture on it because can you imagine having to slice off some gold, assay it, weigh it for every chance? It's a nightmare. So fiat's important. No, it's not. Sorry, I had to do that. Go on, keep going. But maybe it was just because it blew my mind and I assume that it blows everyone else's mind. But, again, it's like we've only had pure fiat currency since 1971. Like it's really. As in unlinked from gold.

35:14Unlinked. There were currencies. Yes. But the way you used the word fit to mean effectively value provided arbitrarily as opposed to backed by something else. Whenever you put humans together in every historical epoch since the agricultural revolution, money has emerged organically and without anyone say so. Some cases it was shells, even in early colonial America It was bales of tobacco. No government said, you know what, let's use dried up leaves as our, no. People chose it because it just had a set of characteristics, you know. It wasn't ideal, but it was reasonably scarce. You couldn't just click your fingers and make it appear, you know.

35:56It was somewhat fungible, et cetera. You know, you go through the list of all the characteristics that are desirable with money. And people chose it because it served a purpose. It allowed me to have a medium of exchange that didn't rely on what monetary theorists call, you know, the coincidence of wants. I make oranges. Scott makes shoes. I want to buy some shoes. That's only good if Scott happens to want some oranges. Turns out Scott wants pears. Okay, so I've got to find someone who has pears that wants oranges, so I swap with them so I can get them. That's ridiculous. So money just serves this beautiful mechanism that it just basically becomes the half of every transaction because it is just ubiquitous and everyone wants it.

36:45Salt was one of the better forms of money for the longest periods of time, right? We eventually got to a bimetallic standard, gold and silver. Gold being very good because it was very economically dense. Silver, less so, but it was good for smaller transactions. And then we standardized around it. So I'm just making the point that when you sort of step back for a second and you say to a modern human being in the modern world that what is money, the answer will be, I don't know, the government makes it. And that's true. That's exactly what money is as we understand it. But that is a blink of the eye going in human species and it's just, hey, we've always done it so I guess that's what it is.

37:25It will do, yep. You know? And so money is anything you want it to be. You go talk to my lad, he's 15 years old, and he'll tell you with a straight face and he'll be right. I'll laugh at him, but he's right. V-Bucks are money. For those that don't know, that's the currency used in the game Fortnite. Or my little girl likes Roblox, the Robux. No, it's not real money. Yes, it is. It's money for the people who use it, right? And who am I to go over to Japan and go, the yen's BS. It's not money. It's like, well, it is to us. No, take my Australian dollar. Don't want it. In the same way, I don't want your yen.

38:03Oh, I guess I can take it if I feel I can exchange it and go through all that kind of palaver. But money is a shared illusion, is all it is. And Bitcoin is so fascinating because it's the first time that we've seen a money emerge organically in the modern era and it's gaining ascendancy because people are just choosing to adopt it. Now, you might go, you're wrong. That's cool. that's totally an opinion. Don't do it. But for them it's real. And, again, I'll just shut up by saying of those characteristics, go through them yourself and you look at every characteristic. Actually, I'll do this. Search What's the Problem on YouTube, Joe Bryan.

38:44He does a wonderful 30-minute video on what money kind of is. And there's another one by Lynnell Alden called Broken Money. And really the interesting thing about both of these videos is that, yes, Yes, they do. The TLDR is buy Bitcoin. But it's really very, it's really making the case. Bitcoin just happens to be the instantiation that makes sound money possible. That's just all it is. People have been talking about this since the time of Mises, you know, like for forever. Hundreds of years people have had this monetary ideal. And gold was about as close as we could get to it. But you can't send gold through the internet.

39:25That's the trouble with gold. right? That's why we have paper money because it was an abstraction from gold that allowed us to do things. And then we went to databases and then we just thought, actually, we don't even need gold. And that worked really well until some banks started working out that, you mean I can just print this? So anyway, I'll shut up at this point. It's money. It's money. And that's what I love. And I want to, Simon, your question was, is an asset a commodity, a currency, collectible or something else? Money is an asset and a currency and the other thing? Collectible. Oh, it's a Medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account.

39:56Unit of account. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. So, yeah. But, very quickly, those things are path dependent. So that's a fancy way of saying that this is one of the semantic arguments against Bitcoin. They'll go, nothing is priced in Bitcoin. It's actually not true. There are plenty of things on the internet priced in Bitcoin. Nothing is priced in Bitcoin, therefore it can't be money. As in, I will only accept money at the point that everyone on the planet it happens to use it. Up until that point, it can't be money because not everyone uses it, which is sort of like it's a logical fallacy. It doesn't make any sense.

40:30So usually what happens, it starts as a collectible. That's what gold started as. And then it became a store of value because it's like, actually, I can just hold this here. It's very imperfect for exchange, right? But then it came better and then it's like actually enough people valued it for a store of value that they actually started exchanging in it. And then the final step is unit of accounts. Like, actually, why don't we just start pricing every – Rather than I could price everything in bananas or I could do it in dollars or I could do it in Bitcoin and do whatever I want. And those things are path dependent.

40:59So be careful of the people who go it can't, you know, it's like saying what the Wright brothers flew wasn't a plane because it couldn't get to 40 ,000 feet. Like, no, but that's your measure of success. Until you can fly at one kilometre a second, 40 ,000 feet in the air, it's not a plane. Like, no. Sorry, mate, I cut you off. That's good, that's good. I just want to make the point to Simon that for all things, he didn't say he said money, and I think that's right. Money and currency are considered by most people to be completely interchangeable. And perception of reality is that's what you think money is, that's what you think money is.

41:35But the broader kind of, the biggest definition of money, the biggest description of money is those things Andrew has talked about, and that's why it's not any of those things. It's a couple together. It's all three, really, collectible. If that's the sort of value, kind of different asset, I suppose. But, yeah, you're all over it. Simon, the answer is the combination. Yep. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

42:02Hey, really interesting question from Nick. It's a bit esoteric, but I think it'll be useful because a lot of people have ETFs these days. So Nick says, hi, gents. I'm a long-time listener and I've been a member of both of your services. Thank you, mate. On Scott's recommendation, I first purchased the Moat ETF in 2017. have topped up many times since. This is a VanEck product from memory, I think. Wide moat ETF is the longer name. Including my wife's and son's portfolios. It's been an excellent performer, and I'm happy to continue owning it. Thanks, Scott. You're welcome. Thank you. Money's in the checks in the mail, right?

42:35Something odd seems to have happened in the past few years, though. From inception, it was never much of a dividend payer. Consistently under about$1 a unit. For the past few years, though, it's been significantly higher, around the$8 per unit mark. I'm not sure where this comes from. as not many of its holdings are big dividend payers. I know it seems like a weird problem to complain about, but the unit price always drops by the amount of the dividend on the ex-dividend date. And it feels like I'm essentially forced to cash in a portion of my holdings and then pay the full whack of tax on it.

43:04I'm wondering if this is potentially some shenanigans by the ETF provider, selling out a portion of the holdings and distributing to shareholders, all to make the ETF look more attractive due to its high yield. I'm no expert and could be way off, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Cheers, Nick. Nick, I know a little bit about this one. And why I wanted to answer it, I mean, just, you know, this Nick and Alison know this, we kind of do really specific stuff because most listeners will just tune out. So if you don't own that ETF, don't tune out because this is important, particularly these days, the amount of money going into ETFs or exchange-traded funds.

43:35An exchange-traded fund is generally a trust, trust structure. That differs and, you know, blah, blah, blah. If you have a trust, a trust is obliged literally under law to pay out all of its income in a given year. They're not allowed to retain any income, right? So that's what companies can, trusts can't. So what's the problem? Well, if you don't buy or sell anything, you may only have the income you get from dividends. You pay that to shareholders, and that's the under$1 a share you mentioned, Nick. But if you buy shares in Page Incorporated at$1, and you sell them during the year at$2, you've made a capital gain.

44:16That gain needs to be distributed to shareholders or to unit holders, I should have to be really clear, sorry, that those unit holders are hold units in the trust. And so what happens? Well, you've got to distribute it to something. It gets distributed as a distribution, which looks like a dividend and they're kind of the same things, but a company pays dividends, a trust pays distributions. And so in this case, if the Moat ETF, the Wide Moat ETF, is making a lot of transactions or even just a few transactions and it's crystallizing some gains, those gains must be distributed. And if you look at even the NASDAQ ETF is all over the place when it comes to distributions.

44:48It's not the dividends that are paid by the company that are being passed on. And I'm pretty sure Wernicke are good people. I don't think they're playing silly bogus trying to get the yield up. In fact, the wide note ETF, I mean, they're trying to be Buffett-esque in their approach, right? I would imagine they'd rather not have the dividends to distribute, honestly. But yeah, I don't know. I can't speak for the trust itself. I can't speak for this particular ETF itself. So as always, do your own research. Contact the company directly if you want more information. But I would suspect with a very high degree of probability that this is one of those situations where they've changed positions.

45:18They said, oh, look, you know what? We like this company. It's now too expensive. We're going to sell it. If something goes from reasonably valued to too expensive, it's a nice problem to have because you made a gain and you must distribute that gain to unit holders. So I would 98.321 % sure that's what's going on here. Other years, by the way, it'll fall back if they don't make any changes. And by the way, that's also often when the market's falling. We mentioned on Friday about a stock picker's market. Yeah, even when share prices fall, they probably won't sell anything. If they did, they'll sell it for a loss.

45:45So they're nothing to distribute. So yeah, assume it's going to be super volatile. I'm very sure there's no Shandigan's going on. I think it's just the function of them selling stuff that got overvalued or just more expensive than they wanted to, and that's created some extra dividends for shelves. Nice problem to have, as you say, but neither here nor there. Yes, there's an extra tax requirement. It's hard because they're not franked dividends because it's a US-based ETF. So, yeah, I can't help you there, unfortunately, other than if you're paying tax, you've made some money. But you're right.

46:16It's something you ideally would avoid, but because of the structure they come. I have nothing to add, mate. I'm glad you were here to answer it because I wouldn't have had a clue. Thank you, mate. Let's go to two questions from Jim. I like this. Dear Scott, Andrew, happy pod day, he says, which I think should be a day. We should have an international day of the pod, should we? Oh, I like that. Oh, actually, Jim, you say, I almost gave you some more credit that you deserved. Do you know what Jim left out of the description of Happy Pod Day? Pod machine. Correct. Yes. You get that. Yes. Close Jim with no cigar.

46:50I still, however, will answer your question because I'm a nice person. Jim says, I, the unworthy retail investor, graciously request your opinion on some esoteric matters. And if we don't like esoteric matters for retail investors, then we're not here, Jim, so you've nailed us beautifully. Ram, Jim says, First, I've been struggling with something of late. For the past couple of years, I've been hearing about these record-breaking feats of strength. I purchased a Guinness Book of Records multiple times to read up on Andrew's achievements, but I can only conclude... Just when you thought this was in the past.

47:21All I'm saying is Jim is a good man. But I can only conclude, says Jim, he's doing these feats under a very clever pseudonym. I've listened to the pod machine forwards and backwards at fast and slow speeds, but still can't seem to find the clue. It must be a terribly clever one or I'm missing something obvious. Anyway, I'll keep searching. I'm sure I'll kick myself when I work it out. Jim, it'd be unreasonable of us to not let you have that journey of discovery for yourself. So we will just move on and let you discover it in time. We're not going to give it away. Please do because basically I've run out of things to demonstrate my strength and lack a lot of imaginative skill.

47:59On to my main question, says Jim. I've been looking around for commentary on MMT or modern monetary theory after the last few years of high inflation I assume that the experience has dampened enthusiasm for it I get that the MMT has a mechanism that's tax to dampen the inflationary impact of printing money you guys frequently make the point that politicians are bad at raising taxes even when it's necessary but my main question is do you think MMT is an idea that is now effectively dead Do you think the spending during COVID was tacitly informed by MMT-type thinking, but we've now learned our lesson and have moved on?

48:38Full on, Jim. What do you reckon, mate? I reckon I have very strong opinions. Thank God. You'd be a massive fan of MMT, knowing your love of Bitcoin. Oh, God, just a stupid, stupid, stupid idea. I mean, look, so for those that don't know, So MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, says that actually the amount of money in the economy doesn't matter. In fact, we can use our control over the amount of money for a force for good, you know, when things need, when there's not enough demand. Again, I struggle with that even as a perspective. But even there's not enough demand, we can sort of like create more money, give more money, and then when there's too much, we can take it out.

49:18It's one of those theories where maybe, maybe it makes sense if, and here's the biggest if you'll ever hear. Yep. If the people who are actually making the decisions are intelligent, are wise, are moral, are honourable, are honest, are farsighted, okay. Okay. Now if you find me a set of humans that meet all of those criteria, oh, and actually have perfect foresight too, sorry. You need pretty good, well, let's not set a too high a bar. Let's go with just some reasonably good foresight. If you have a group of humans that meet all of those conditions and that once they go, they will be replaced by a set of humans that have all of those kind of conditions and that they will be replaced and then forevermore we will always have a council of elders, pretty much my criticism of central banking in fact.

50:11It's like, yeah, it kind of works if all of those things are always and forever true. Now I don't think you have to be too much of a jaded cynic like me to think that humans will never meet that ideal. To err is to be human, right? Like, and it's not, some people go too far and they go, oh, they're, you know, the lizard people in the centre of the earth and it's all trying to, it's a big giant conspiracy theory. No, it's not. It's just humans being humans. And humans make, even well-intentioned, very smart humans can't see the future. They will make mistakes. And what it's going to do is it's going to, it's going to distort things horribly, horribly where we're all far, far poorer as a result of it.

50:54The other thing is as well is not only are we none of those things, we're incredibly self-interested in political creatures. That's just humans. Like I'm not, you know, I don't think that's a controversial statement to sort of say. And so now you get a situation where it's kind of like you just, I'm going to do it, you're going to do it, everyone's going to do it. It's like, you know, I've got one life boy to sort of throw into the eye. I'm going to throw it to my son instead of your son. I just am, right? And they're like, does that make me a bad guy? Probably, but I don't know, I've got to make a choice here and we're always going to choose our friends and family over others and that's what humans do.

51:32And so it's exactly the same with government spending. It's like, well, we'll tax in the good times so we've got dry powder for the bad times. Except they never do. They're really good at spending and you've already said it, Jim, like they just never, ever, ever tax. So I've now got a system where I'm going to rely on them being able to change tax policy. that quickly, that effectively, that prudently when times are good and that the populace is going to go, oh, I'm actually really cool that you're taxing me heaps more because apparently you know best for what the economy deserves and it's just I guess it's in my interest and we're all in it together and rah, rah, rah.

52:08It's a fantasy. And I will hasten to add people who promote it are good people. Yeah. Their heart's in the right place. They look at the problems of the world and they go, wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to have all this suffering? If I could create money and give it to the people that need the money, then that would alleviate suffering. If you're going, I'm a Pollyanna, those people are doing this thing on steroids. Like, do you know what I mean? It's like, dude, no. I love your intention. It's just you're asking too much of people and it's an impossible ideal. And that would be one thing.

52:48I'll shut up in a sec. It would be one thing if it was kind of like, yeah, but at least we can kind of mostly get it right. And if we get it wrong, the consequences aren't too bad. It's like, no, getting it mostly right is itself a very difficult task. And if you get it wrong, which you're in, maybe not today, maybe not next year, but at some point you're going to get it wrong. And when you do get it wrong, you're going to cause such distortions and misallocations of capital, all these fancy economic terms that just mean we're all going to be poorer. All of it. We're going to reduce our society's prosperity.

53:18I can't whip this dead horse enough. MMT, terrible idea. So, yeah. Well, you said this about communism. It's a wonderful idea. It just can't be done. It just can't be done. If we could all have - Communism, yep. Right, that's what it is. If we could all have everything new, would MMT be great? Yes, so would communism. And honestly, those who think communism is bad just because they think it's bad, have a good look at yourselves because you're an idiot. Nicely. Those who think it's bad because we've tried it, it doesn't work, they're the ones you want to listen to. And I'm being deliberately harsh, right?

53:49But somebody says, oh, communism would always be awful. It would be awful if we all had enough and no one went hungry and no one missed out. Would that be bad, would it? No, it would be great. We just can't do it. Exactly. So communism is not a bad idea. Communism is a bad system. Yeah. Because putting it into practice is what breaks it, almost by definition, right? You destroy the incentive mechanism. Yeah. Like, well, I'm going to get fed and housed no matter what I do. Someone else can go down the mine. which again if it worked would be great we don't think it should be an incentive mechanism if we didn't need one that'd be great too but the reality is both the incentive and disincentive mechanisms are real so you're arguing a system that just simply fails at the first hurdle because human nature doesn't allow it great if it did doesn't so and this is why capitalism for all the talk we've talked a lot about it and this is lowercase c capitalism I say every time it's the worst system ever invented except for every other one that's been tried why because for all of its faults it actually still allows for the least worst allocation of capital, the least worst range of outcomes.

54:48And we've got other mechanisms to help spread some of the wealth like tax and spend. That's the idea. We've got the best economic system we can find, the least worst we can find. Overlay it to try and smooth out some of the edges and make sure we didn't go to extremes. Look after people who were failed by it. That's the best you can do. Jim, MMT, yeah, there's two things about MMT. One is I've never yet had someone explain to me how it would work, even if the politicians were right, even if they did it properly. And I don't think this couldn't work. In theory, it works well as a closed system.

55:26I've yet to see someone explain to me how it would work in a system where there is actually international trade because the value of the currency still matters. And so you've kind of got this idea where you can say, well, we use money printing instead of – so we use tax instead money printing, we create, destroy dollars that way. And some other people with MMT fans said, oh, that's kind of what we do now. And it kind of is what we do now, but it's the same critique, which is why I'm against the central bank. Everyone thinks I'm a kook, but it's like I said during the week, it's like we've, as a society, it's an entirely non-controversial and accepted thing to say that central price controls are a bad idea.

56:01We apply it to everything except money. And it's kind of like, what? Anyway, it's a whole other separate conversation. Yeah, no, it's right. But same thing. And so you're right, Jim, when you say, you know, do I think COVID spending was informed by MMT type thinking? Yes, only in the sense that current monetary, orthodox monetary thinking and MMT are informed by the same thing. I don't think there were many people who thought, well, I'm sure there was no one who thought we could fix COVID by increasing the money supply in COVID, then taxing it to get out because they didn't do it. It's digits on a database.

56:33Right. That's what the money is. Like, how do you honestly think that changing a number makes any difference to the real world? That's the question you've got to ask. No, sorry, no, not you, Jim, but just the most senior economists in the country and in the Western Hemisphere. That's all I'm directing my rage at. So I think the COVID stuff was absolutely informed by the sort of last 50 years of monetary policy, and NMT has its roots in the same place. I'm not as sound money-ish as Raym is, but I've got to say for all of our Bitcoin conversations And I'm a Keynesian, but I'm a Keynesian on budget management, not on currency printing.

57:12And that feels like different things. That's a good nuance. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I think, you know, I think the counter-cyclical budget spending makes perfect sense to me for all the reasons we've talked about. And you can do that in a sound money system. Exactly right. And that's where, so, and honestly, that's where for a long time I have said I was a Keynesian because of that specific angle, not the money printing bit. and really it's only been - It's one of those loaded terms, isn't it? It depends what it means to what - Especially recently because when I went through school, Keynesianism was actually - I don't remember ever talking about money printing at school, but we draw a lot about the counter-cyclical budget measures.

57:47Yep. And so for me, I grew up with that being a Keynesian approach, which I still am fervently in favour of. Again, still being misused, but the ramifications aren't - well, maybe they're as bad as an industry policy. Anyway, different conversation. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. So I think, yes, MMT is dead because people thought it would – this is literally what happens when you don't do it properly. So, yes, we didn't do it as a call MMT, but this was a dry run. We look back and go, so if we couldn't do that without formally adopting MMT, what makes you think all of a sudden MMT works next time we try it with some other different way of doing it?

58:21The last thing, Jim, quickly for me is, yeah, we make the point that Polisher's about it raising taxes, absolutely. It's why I'm – if I'm not a central bank at all, which is fine. If we're going to have one, having the Treasurer with a finger on the button, any Treasurer of any party, when they've got an election coming up in one, two or three years and the bureaucrats say, look, the RBA equivalent, they're not working there anymore because the RBA doesn't exist. Well, maybe it doesn't. The Treasurer makes the call. Either way, they say, Treasurer, we've done the work. You need to put rates up.

58:47You say, what the hell I am. We're going to have an election next year. I'm not doing that. But Treasurer, it's the right thing to do. Oh, well, maybe you should reduce services then. Right. I'm not doing that either. At least the RBA has been working on one hand to affect... And by the way, if there was no central bank, this is the... And again, there's not a justification for it, so I'm not arguing that Graham's wrong in this case. I still would have one. But if there wasn't a central bank, the COVID hangover would have been far, far, far worse. Why? Because the central banks took money out of the system or at least increased rates of dampened demand over the last few years when governments did nothing of the sort.

59:22So imagine the scenario where a treasurer says, let's go spend like buggery and print money during COVID. After that, what are you going to do now, Treasurer? Now, you might generously say, Treasurers, plural, have said, we don't need to do as much because the OBA is doing something. Probably, right? But let's say the OBA wasn't there and didn't raise rates. Now, again, whether or not they should be raised is a different thing. But if the Treasurer didn't do that and only had fiscal policy to use, they would not. So today's circumstances would have been far, far worse if a Treasurer had the fingers on both the monetary and fiscal policy buttons.

59:52They were gutless as hell on fiscal policy. to imagine that somehow they would have discovered religion or monetary policy in that same context is madness. Do you want to take one example of that? Go on. I'm going to disparage an entire continent. Oh, good. That's unusual. The young people have gone. The finance brokers have gone. The mortgage brokers have gone. Can it be Antarctica so we don't lose too many listeners? Can you pick a small continent, please? No, not going to. And I'm going to stand behind this. Oh, God. South America, man. South America is a basket case of economic and monetary mismanagement.

1:00:25Every time, like pick a random South American. Again, I need to say it because people are myopic and silly, but it's nothing to do with people from South America. It's the governments that are there. Nothing inherent about their nationalities or backgrounds, just, yeah, governments. Dude, you want someone who's angry about the governments there, talk to a South American, right? Yeah. Do you think someone in Argentina's got anything favourable to say about their central bank? and they're going, they don't. Those people get it. They get it viscerally because it's not some textbook thing. I have lived through it.

1:00:56And someone who's like 60 years of age has seen the currency collapse five times in their lifetime. And you have to make a case that this is a bad idea. No, they get it. And they've managed to scrape any savings together. I 100 % guarantee you it's in a wad of greenbacks under the mattress because that's the best thing that they've got. And where is the stablecoin adoption run hottest? There. And then there's some crypto bro nonsense speculative BS. It's because it's just like I want the US. It's the best looking horse in the glue factory. I'm going to use my local currency where they're just going to print it to oblivion and steal from me or I'm going to use the US.

1:01:32And it is direct. It is no sugar coating it. It is theft. And, again, if you don't think so, let's play Monopoly where I get$400 every time you pass go and you get$200. And you can tell me that's fair, then I will call you a liar, a damned liar at that. So it's just I feel so passionately about this. Here's the reality, mate, is that money is just a measuring stick. It's all it is. If we're going to change the measuring stick at every political whim, we've got no clue as to what's happening here. Money is just, it's like if we're going to do an episode on this at one point in time, I promise you.

1:02:08But if you had a perfectly hard money system, there was just a set amount of money. Does that mean there's never any recessions? No. Does that mean that people never go bankrupt? No, of course not. Absolutely it does. But it's more it imparts a reality onto the scene and it recognises that reality. You did a bad investment. It just says play stupid games, win stupid prizes. And you can go, yeah, but that's unfair. It's like, well, is it? Well, let's pretend that's not true. Let's pretend that you can go ahead and do any kind of thing that you want and don't forget it goes really well in the early part of these things, right?

1:02:49Yes, exactly. So you can do, you can play, yeah, poof, there you go, bank's going to create a bunch of money, you go off, create a bunch of assets, enjoy the party. If you can cash out before everything comes due, then you're going to do really, really, really well. But when it does come due and the bailouts come and you're like, everyone else pays for the price for you and your dumb action. So in the grand scheme of things, reality again reasserts itself, except rather than the person who made the poor decisions being impacted, Everyone gets impacted. And generally the people who don't hold hard assets, if you don't own land, you don't own productive assets, even gold, right, like you're screwed.

1:03:27And who are those people? They're the poor and the lower middle class. So they're the ones that get screwed. Now flip it around saying that money cannot be inflated or deflated and is always forever more fixed. Any incremental productivity gain done anywhere at any point in time in the entire economy accrues to every single person using the money. Like, isn't that a beautiful thing? You mean I get to, some girl in her basement invents a better way from get to A to B and that makes the economy super productive and I get to share in that productivity gain just by using the same unit of account and store of value that they do?

1:04:04That's a wonderful thing. One more thing and I'm going to shut up. It's just my thing at the moment. But this is a really fun thing to do when you're on the couch tonight. Open up your phone, use Gemini, chat GPT, whatever you want, just say, ask this question. Hey, chat GPT, give me an example of every society in history that has used a sound or hard money standard. And it'll talk about the Roman denarii. It'll talk about the Venetian, I'm going to get blank on their money. It'll talk, look, we don't have to go far back in time. It'll talk about the 1815 to 1950s period, which was an incredible period of prosperity for humans.

1:04:42And if you want an even more recent an example, the good old Swiss. The Swiss didn't go off the gold standard. They clung to that much more longer than everyone else. And in that period of time where the Swiss had wasn't perfect hard money, but it was much closer than anywhere else in the West, they had virtually no inflation over that period. They had a much smaller wealth divide and they had a much higher standard of living. And that's just the case. That is the case. Now, you know, it's sort of like, and then you look at every time there's been a massive disaster, what has it been? It's when that discipline has been broken and it's always broken because of an emergency.

1:05:20It was broken 1914 because of the Great War. It was broken 1971 because of Vietnam and the excessive, well, the Yanks were cheating the system. They were printing more money than they had gold to back it. This is such a fascinating story. De Gaulle sent a warship into New York Harbor and said, give us back our gold. Nixon went, no. And he rung-pulled the French. And that was it. And now we're in the fiat society. And every single time that has happened, it is too compelling an incentive for any politician to say, you mean that I can just continue to spend and not tax? And the thing is it's very hard to see because it does, for a time, it works really well.

1:06:03Oh, you poor person, you know, that's not fair. Here you go, have some money. What about you? Boom, you have some money. And then like 10 years later we go, gosh, this inflation thing really sucks. Where did that come from? And we're surprised by it, right? And again, I promise, I promise, I promise. You can't promise. No, I can't. But if you, I think why it gets, I've thought about this a lot lately. I think the reason it gets a bad rap is because people feel as though it's unfair. Like we need to be able to control the money because we can help people. And so it's a really, like the MMT crowd, it's a really.

1:06:44It's like terrorist night. Yes. It's like I get where you're coming. It's like people who are like in the UK in particular, all the censorship. Oh, you can't say that. It's like, yeah, but you either have free speech or you don't. And like there are trade-offs that come with everything. And while your intention is very, very good, it leads to very, very bad outcomes because someone somewhere, and it's going to be a bureaucrat, gets to decide what's okay to be said, gets to decide who gets the newly created money. And again, maybe they are honourable, honest, farsighted, ethical, smart, wise, and all of those things, all they're human, and we all suffer a result.

1:07:26So if you care about fairness, if you'd like to see, if you'd like to, I mean, a sound money system is just as good to a New York billionaire as it is to an African peasant, right? Like they both get to benefit equally from it. They both get to save without having to be an investor on the sidelines, right? You see much smaller gaps between the rich and the poor. The wealth divide only grows because the people who get all the fresh money, the people with all the assets, and they use it to plow it into more assets. And the wealth divide grows. So if you're a hardcore bleeding lefty and that is my origin, man, I'll happily lean into that and you care about fairness, go the hard money standard because it is in the grand arc of history, it is far, far more fair to the underprivileged.

1:08:10And when you give a select group of humans an ability to control not just the volume but the price of money, bad things will always happen. And it's not just me just asserting that into the wind. And this is just, again, ask ChatGPT. Don't take my word for it. Don't even ask ChatGPT. Do some Googling, right? Okay, I think I'm done. I think I'm done. Talk me off that ledge, by the way, if you think I'm wrong, because I'm pretty heavily down this path. The chance of me talking off the Bitcoin ledge is remarkably, remarkably slight. And I'll just make the Bitcoin is just an instantiation that makes it possible.

1:08:43So it's really got nothing. This was all in train before Bitcoin was invented. Which is why we will do a Salmoney episode at some point, and actually about sell money rather than Bitcoin itself will cover some of these issues. And then the conclusion will be, I've got to get some Bitcoin. Which is exactly how Andrew wants to do it, by the way, Phil. Let's be honest. What can I? I think we've got nowhere to go. We've done a bit of a tangent. I'm not sure how I hope Jim's answer by adding to what you said, other than the reality of it. To Andrew's point at the very, very beginning, I would use. 20 minutes ago.

1:09:18Yeah, that's right. if you could be a benevolent dictator, the idea of using surplus and deficit budgets and increasing and decreasing the money supply at individual points in time, but with both having a structural balance, in other words, a return to zero for money and a return to zero in terms of deficits or debts and credits on budget, you would do it. Because the idea of policy, and this is the Keynesian stuff of the budget, is we own a deficit when welfare goes up and tax receipts go down during a recession. Now, the alternative would be to say, well, we're in a recession, businesses went broke, we're less income, let's take more spending out even at the very worst time.

1:09:59I know if you lost your job, we're closing hospitals because we haven't got the money for it. Of course, no one wants to do that, right? So what do you do? Well, you say, well, okay, we've got to keep the hospitals open. We're going to collect a little bit less in tax. We're going to pay a little more on welfare. So we're going to have a deficit of a billion dollars this year picking up. It's super small. Let's pick a billion dollars. And then next year when the economy recovers, the hospital's still open. Great. That's lucky. or didn't close it down. Businesses have started making money again.

1:10:21People are going back to work, so I'm spending less on welfare and collecting more corporate taxes, and I make a billion dollar surplus. Oh, good, okay, well, I'll pay back the overspending or vice versa. I could have made the surplus first and had the deficit. Why does that make sense? Because it helps the economy, in quotes, for all that's worth, and we've talked a lot about that, but it helps, it stops more people losing their jobs. It means I can't afford to pay for healthcare and police and, you know, police polluters. Or, God forbid, the army in times of war. Exactly. So you want to be able to do that at a structural level.

1:10:50So I'm a massive fan of that. And from an MMT perspective, could I either use taxes or money printing? Sure. By the way, why use taxes rather than money printing if you're going to do one or the other? It makes no sense to me at all, frankly. So even the premise of MMT is somehow it's better. The reason they do that is because they want to pretend debt doesn't matter because if you pretend debt doesn't matter, you can spend whatever the hell you want. That's how it starts. I mean, sign me up. If that were true, it would be fantastic. And it's all trade-offs. And so, you know, but if I was a benevolent dictator, I would have that system tomorrow.

1:11:20I wouldn't use taxes because that's just stupid, personally. You use money because you got it. And if you know that you're going to put it back and take it out, and you know that money, by the way, the only reason you use tax, actually, I'll half-step that back. Rams made the point when we print money, generally the asset owners get it. It would be possible in an MMT scenario to use tax policy effectively counter-cyclically and increase the tax rate threshold, for example, in bad times. So you can decide who gets the money. So tax and spend is always more surgical than monetary policy, which is blunt force because it has to be because you've got one and a half levers.

1:11:51It's the cost of money and the amount of money, which is effective, but it's pretty scutted going and it's really broad. So maybe you would use tax or both. Anyway, in a perfect world, if I was a benevolent dictator and I genuinely to ramspot all those things of being logical and honest and ethical and moral, of course you would do. You'd be mad not to, but again, for the same reason you'd be mad not to do communism if it worked. You can't in reality. Now, by the way, NMT slash even current Keynesian orthodoxy would work without needing communism and even without needing a perfect world. But you do need perfect applicants, to Ram's point, and you don't have them.

1:12:23And so even if it worked for a period of time, does the system look after itself or not? And that's why I've got a lot of time for sound money as a concept. I also would, by the way, put a structural budget balance in the constitution. And the only time you'll be allowed to go outside that is, you mentioned Times of War, Ram, when you had two-thirds, three-quarters, five-eighths, a plebiscite, some amount of us who have said, you know what, all right, we're supposed to run a structural deficit. We can't, we literally can't. Because structural means basically it comes good in the cycle. Wars don't apply to cycles.

1:12:54Famines don't apply to cycles. At some point you'd say, right. And by the way, you'd still say any law to override must also include a mechanism in that same legislation to make it back in the good times. So at the end of the week, we're going to authorise the government to print a gazillion dollars to fight the war against New Zealand. and as part of that bill, at the time of - Worth it, by the way. Worth every cent. Easy. As soon as the armistice is signed, a tax will go into place at 4 % more on every marginal tax rate until such time as the debt's paid off. Now, again, I'm living in Klo Kukul and such as anybody else, but that's - we're talking about EMTs who are in the same space.

1:13:30That's a much, much, much better way of doing it that actually lives in the real world, which says there are trade-offs, there are opportunity costs, there are consequences. if you had kids, teaching of consequences is the hardest thing in the world. MMTers seem to think the consequences can be ignored because you just come from the markers. Yeah, touch the stove and it doesn't matter. Right. Can I just double down on a point you made, mate? Because I think I've struggled reconciling some of your perspectives. I think you're mad, Philip. Until just now. Okay, go on. And I think you've helped me understand it.

1:14:02And I want to just tease it out a little bit. We're so deep into this now, what the hell, right?

1:14:10let's also get rid of the idea that a sound money system prevents a budget deficit. Yes, totally. Right? You can totally have it. Exactly. And then let's also, let's play this forward. Let's do what I think we should do, which is get rid of a central bank as well, right? So let's say we're going on our merry way, whatever money exists is the money that exists, and then boom, asteroid hits Perth, right? Yep, yep, yep. So not that consequential, but, you know, sorry. So the South Americans are gone, the Western Australians are gone. The Kiwis are gone, the young people are gone, the mortgage brokers are gone, and the finance industry is gone.

1:14:46How are we going so far? WA is actually one of my favourite places on earth. I've been to Perth in about 20 years. Oh, it's great. But anyway, you're a massive crater in the ground, sorry. And okay, gosh, it actually would make a lot of sense for us to spend. Now, how do we do that? How do we do that if we can't print money? Well, to your exact point, we borrow it. Now, you might say, well, we do that anyway. Yes, we do, but we do it with an implicit backstop. And this is where the world is at the moment, which I will not go down this tangent, I promise. But let's say that that happens and the government says, do you want hospitals?

1:15:26Do we want us to send food aid over there? Do we want to rebuild? Yes, we do. We can't do it with the taxes that we're collecting. We're not even going to raise the taxes, right? What we're going to do is we're going to - Which you could do, by the way, but go on. You could. Absolutely you could. But I'm saying without that, you go, well, let's borrow some money, right? Yeah. Now, there's a whole bunch of people that have got savings and go, well, I'll do that. What's the deal here? As I tell you what, we'll take your money and we'll pay you a bit of interest and then we'll pay you back in 10 years.

1:15:52I've just described a bond, a T-bill, if you're in America or a GILT, if you're in the UK. It's all the same thing. It's a massive IOU. you. Now, where the, and so you can still deficit spend, but there is still a check and balance in here because let's say that you go, all right, we did it. We've rebuilt Perth. Okay. Fantastic. Well, maybe we could borrow a bit more because now we could build a anti-asteroid defense system like that for a trillion dollars. Like, yeah, okay. All right, cool. But you need to go to the real market, not the pretend fake make-believe central bank market, the real market for people who have worked and saved and have savings and then say, hey, I know we borrowed all this money before.

1:16:38We want to borrow a bit more. And even in this instance, you might go, yeah, I can actually see the payback on that. I'm happy to do it. Now imagine a situation where 10 years has gone by and they've made no remedy of the situation to pull back that spending. In fact, the deficit it has become structural. It's been so deeply ingrained. And then the government goes, hey, can we borrow some more money? And just like your stinky uncle Paul who comes around every, you know, second week, goes, I need to borrow some money. I promise I'm good for it. You go, nah, you know, fool me once, et cetera, et cetera.

1:17:11Fool me 4 ,000 times, shame on me, right? And you know what would happen? They wouldn't, two things would happen. They either wouldn't raise the money or they would have to significantly increase the interest they're going to pay to make me tempted. Why is South American debt so much more than Australian debt? It's because you need that extra return to justify the risk because I know if I lend money to the Argentinian government that I'm going to be paid back in monopoly money. So at least give me enough of an interest rate that you're going to account for the inflation. So you still can do deficit spending.

1:17:44You still can do borrowing. But you can't do it ad infinitum. Because a central bank exists, this is what happens. We do it, we do it, we do it. And the bondholders know, they go, this is, seriously, the US is$36 trillion in debt and you're adding a trillion dollars of debt every 90 days? Oh, by the way, you've got$200 trillion of off-balance sheet debt in unfunded liabilities and pension and that? Okay, and each year you spend$2 trillion more than you earn? Yep. Well, I guess I'll lend it to you because worst case scenario, the central bank will bail you out. That's what, it's called moral hazard, right?

1:18:22And that is the problem of it. And what happens every time, and this isn't like go back into the year 1604 to find an example of it. In this century, which is only 25 years in, they did it recently with the gilt market when the trust was in there, right? They did it with COVID because the bank comes in and they will never say we're printing money to pay these. They'll go, we're doing yield curve control. We're doing quantitative easing. We're doing swap lines. We're doing blah, blah, blah, insert fancy BS jargon here. We're printing money and we're buying these bonds. So the government now, the US Treasury goes, gosh, we don't have enough money.

1:18:59Here's some bonds. The private market goes, here's the middle finger, man. I am not lending to you. You are like a drunken, so you are out of control. You know, you've got no more drinks for you. You had it. And the central bank goes, oh, we'll buy it. And they'll buy it with money that they just didn't exist. Exactly. And we all go, oh, well. And it's all, every time and always it's done under the guise of it's not ideal, but it's an emergency. Well, what, you're going to let the economy collapse? So they put a gun to your head and they say, you've got to do it. Because if you don't do it, really bad things are going to happen.

1:19:32See, and I would say, no, no, no, the bad things have happened because of this implicit backstop that allowed us to party like 1999 and think, well, it doesn't matter because we'll just always print our way out of it. As if that ever solves anything, right? So I just want to make the point here. They're two different things. You can be for big government. You can be for deficit and counter-synclical spending. You can be for all of those. And I've got a huge amount of sympathy for it. But if you're going to have to borrow the money from real savers to do that, that is an impost on you that keeps you in.

1:20:08So you don't actually need an institution or a regulator to say what's okay. the market will tell you what's okay because they're just going, I'm just not going to lend to you anymore. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, crap, we can't borrow any more money. Oh, crap, we're going to default on our bonds. Oh, we're getting voted out because everyone goes, you idiots, you really mismanaged things. And then more responsible people come in. Harmony is restored and everyone else, right, don't forget, I'm just little old me, plumber Ted, doing my thing, saving up some money here in a hard money.

1:20:40Oh, God, you idiots. It's like, I'm untouched by this because someone hasn't gone out there and diluted the buggery out of the savings. I had to work my fingers to the bone to get it. It's going, it sucks to be you, guys, but I'm okay. And you should be okay because you didn't do anything wrong. But the current system is, sorry, Ted, you've got to take one for the team. I know that it costs you$100 to buy a family of four groceries. Now it costs you$300. Well, too bad. Oh, by the way, let's go and have another misadventure in the Middle East for$400. You know, we spent$13 trillion in Afghanistan, and who rules Afghanistan?

1:21:13The bloody Taliban. We couldn't have done that on a hard money system, dude. You could not have convinced the American people in the West to go, by the way, we're going to massively increase your taxes, or we're going to have to get you to tip in all of this money into these IOUs because we're going to go over there because George W's got a bit of a bee in his bonnet about something. You know, so if you're for peace, if you're for fairness, if you're for less wealth inequality, sound money is for you. mic drop, walk away.

1:21:43Quick behind the scenes if you've listened this long, Andrew didn't sleep last night. I literally did not sleep last night. Our puppy had the snip and he didn't handle it well. You've done well, mate. That might explain it. No, no, no. The reverse, I'm saying you've done two episodes, the Friday episode, this one, on zero sleep, you've done incredibly well. So well done, mate. I'm not going to try to add to that. I'm very passionate about it. I'm very passionate. Yeah. Yeah. Let's have every day. Will you come back on Friday and be passionate again? Man, if we get a chance to talk about this stuff, I will always come back.

1:22:20I am going to fly this flag until someone can convince me. No one's been able to, right? You know, it's one of those, I said I was finished. I did one of that. Here's the thing that I find really bizarre is that is that when I go off on a little bit of a spray, as I want to do. Hypothetically, yeah. And maybe I really need to hold a mirror up to myself here. As I say that out loud, that's probably the answer. But it's sort of like when my friends, my family, they go, you're crazy and they go, am I? Tell me why. Well, and the answer tends to be it's like, well, we wouldn't do it if it was stupid.

1:23:03It's like, hey, are you telling me that humans never do anything dumb? Like it's called the end of history fallacy. It's like, well, gosh, gosh, humans from 100 years ago were dumb. Yeah, not anymore. We got it all figured out, you know. And it's like I have a different point of view, but just to say, yeah, but we've always done it this way, which is not true, and go that's the justification. Yeah. Again, my analogy is always go to the Incas, you know. We used to sacrifice our firstborn to make it rain. Always done it that way. What are you going to do? You're telling me if I don't brutally massacre my child that, you know, things are going to be okay?

1:23:45No, I'm going to stick with this. We've done it for thousands of years. It's madness and we are no more evolved than that. That got dark very quickly. It did get dark, right? But good example there, right? On that happy note. Thanks for listening. Have a great rest of your weekend. And full on. Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned. General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under Financial Services Licence 400691.