Lesson 12: Bitcoin Is Imposing The First Global Free Market In History

Preview

If the natural state of the free market is deflation, yet prices continue to go up year after year, Booth argues we have never lived in a global free market. In this lesson Booth argues that Bitcoin represents the first global free market in history. In this intriguing analysis we start to extrapolate some of the virtues of an authentically free market economy built on sound money.

To do this Booth methodically breaks our existing mental models, all rooted in a fiat system, and guides us through step-by-step to arrive at his conclusion. The host of this video is good proxy for most of us, who will likely struggle with some of Booth’s assertions. After all, it isn’t easy to understand something that is entirely new. If you find yourself struggling with any aspect of Booth’s argument, that’s ok! Push back, ask questions, challenge Booth’s first principles, and in the process follow the truth! There is so much to digest in this one, you may want to watch this a few times.

Bitcoin Is Imposing The First Global Free Market in History

Key Takeaways

• The natural state of a truly free market is deflation – entrepreneurs constantly compete to deliver more value, technology makes production cheaper, and prices should fall over time so that people get richer every year even if they do nothing.
• Our current fiat/credit system fights deflation with inflation – money is lent into existence, credit must grow exponentially, and inflation is used to keep the system solvent, which quietly steals purchasing power from workers and turns asset inflation into wage deflation.
• You have never lived in a genuine global free market – every monetary system in history has centralized money, manipulated it, and used inflation to extract value; even “capitalist” societies are running on a control system that must increasingly centralize and misallocate capital.
• Bitcoin is imposing a new set of rules from outside the system – as a neutral, decentralized, energy-bounded money, Bitcoin measures real productivity (deflation) and “reprices the world,” turning housing and other assets back toward simple utilities rather than inflated stores of value.
• This shift breaks people’s mental models – because all our reference points come from the inflationary system, understanding Bitcoin’s deflationary, global free-market paradigm creates cognitive dissonance, but it also offers a peaceful path out of modern “time slavery” into a more abundant, cooperative economy.

Additional Resources

• The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future
• Jeff Booth on Inflation, Bitcoin, and Why You’re Getting Poorer in a “Free” Market