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Prices Aren't Rising. Your Money Is Dying.

Episode 95 · 14 October 2026 · 1 hr 3 min

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Bitcoin and Inflation: Prices Aren't Rising, Your Money Is Dying

Bitcoin and inflation are two sides of the same story in Episode 95 of Tales of Abundance. Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino look at why inflation isn't really prices going up. It's the dollar being diluted. They cover the Cantillon effect, the history of paper money, and why Bitcoin's fixed 21-million-coin supply is a different kind of money.

Prices aren't rising. Your money is dying — and there's a difference that will change how you see everything.

Every dollar printed steals a little from everyone who already holds one. Napoleon figured this out in 1796 and banned paper money. The world spent 200 years forgetting his warning. This episode is about why Bitcoin was built — and why it may be the only money in history that no one can take from you.

Inflation, the Cantillon Effect and Bitcoin's 21 Million Cap

What you'll discover:

  • Why inflation is not "prices going up" — it's your money being diluted at the source
  • The Cantillon Effect: who really wins when the government prints money (hint: it's not you)
  • How Napoleon's France banned paper money in 1796 — and what happened next
  • Why Bitcoin's 21-million-coin hard cap is the most radical monetary policy in history
  • Anthony's skeptical case (is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme?) and Randy's takeaway: absolute scarcity

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Cold open — France's paper-money collapse and Napoleon's return to gold
  • [01:14] From the gold standard to Nixon ending it in 1971
  • [02:29] What is fiat money?
  • [03:40] Kublai Khan's birch-bark paper money
  • [04:28] "Full faith and credit" — how money printing steals productivity
  • [07:08] Hard money, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class
  • [08:21] Argentina, Zimbabwe and currency debasement in modern times
  • [09:15] COVID stimulus and the half of Keynes everyone forgets
  • [10:57] Federal Reserve data: the money supply never comes back down
  • [12:10] The Cantillon effect: who benefits first from money printing
  • [13:16] Bitcoin basics: 21 million coins, no exceptions
  • [15:54] What is Bitcoin backed by? Energy, compute and math
  • [19:22] Prices aren't rising — your money is losing value (ribeyes and houses)
  • [22:20] From $400 to $85,000: game-theorying a debt default
  • [23:26] Rising 10-year yields, $40 trillion in debt and negative interest rates
  • [26:00] Weimar Germany, hyperinflation and political upheaval
  • [27:51] Boomers vs. Gen Z — blaming the wrong thing
  • [29:34] How countries recover: austerity, England after the Napoleonic Wars, Greece
  • [35:03] Growing our way out? Bessent, DOGE and AI-driven growth
  • [39:05] Anthony's skepticism: is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme?
  • [41:21] Randy's takeaway: absolute scarcity
  • [47:01] Abundance Briefing — OpenAI's 722 AI-written math papers
  • [51:22] 100 humanoid robot shopping guides and a 39% sales jump
  • [53:19] AI agents vs. phone trees and government forms
  • [54:29] AI that cancels subscriptions and finds money you forgot
  • [56:41] 86,000 Tesla Powerwall homes feed California's grid
  • [57:52] Home solar, peak-time buyback and state regulators
  • [59:33] Electric cars 100 years ago (Musk on Letterman, 2009)
  • [1:00:25] Is Gen Z the wealthiest generation? Fed data, anger and bots
  • [1:03:14] Wrap-up

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with no guest. Randy Lorensen is an entrepreneur whose work runs from direct sales to bringing AI into traditional industries, including Premium Cabinets. Dr. John Oberg is a healthcare entrepreneur behind ventures such as Sedera and Precina Health. Anthony Marino spent 30+ years as a C-suite operations executive and grew a Pella distributorship from under $1M to $30M in sales. (Bios summarized from the host pages linked below.)

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Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It comes from the episode recording and has speaker labels. It hasn't been proofread yet, and the time markers follow the raw recording, so they can run a minute or two off the published audio.

Randy Lorensen [00:00]: Travel back to 1789, right after the French Revolution. France had a problem. The government was broke, the king was gone, the treasury was empty. So they came up with a plan. They were going to issue paper money. Backed by the land that they'd seized from the church. Real assets, real value. What could go wrong? It worked. Well, for about a year. Then, guess what? The government needed more money. So they printed more. Then more. In four years, they printed forty five billion of these notes. By 1796, the paper was worthless. Prices had risen 13,000% in just a few years. People were actually burning the currency to stay warm because it was cheaper than burning wood. Napoleon came to power largely because of this. One of his first acts, he outlawed paper money and returned France to gold and silver. He said, While I live, I will never resort to paper money. And guess what? The rest of the world didn't need the warning. They were already there. The United States put gold and silver in the Constitution in 1792. England had been on gold since Isaac Newton set the rate in 1717. The entire Industrial Revolution, the railroads, the factories, the steel, all of it was built on a foundation of hard money, gold and silver. For most of the 1800s, if you earned a dollar, it meant something specific. You had a fixed amount of gold, a promise nobody could break. Then the twentieth century happened, more specifically World War I. Governments needed to spend more than they had. England suspended gold in 1914, most of Europe followed. The Great Depression hit. England left gold for good in 1931. FDR banned Americans from owning gold in 33. In 1944, the world agreed the dollar would stand in for gold. In nineteen seventy one, Nixon ended even that. Fifty-five years ago, the entire world fell off hard money for the first time in history. Napoleon learned the lesson in 1796. The whole world knew it by the eighteen hundreds. Well, that's the true source of a lot of today's issues, and there's a lot of parallels with what's going on today. Cost of living, a country turning on itself, and gentlemen, that's exactly why somebody built Bitcoin. One of my favorite topics, so. I know

Dr. John Oberg [02:39]: Mm-hmm.

Randy Lorensen [02:39]: you guys have some questions and you guys are both own Bitcoin but are not nearly as staunch supporters as I am.

Dr. John Oberg [02:48]: Randy, let's start by just describing fiat money for somebody. I think that's a term that gets thrown around and I think a lot of people know what it means, but just for a listener who may not be totally clear, what is fiat money?

Randy Lorensen [02:58]: Fiat, I believe the definition is by decree, but it's basically money that's not backed by anything. So when we were talking about whether it was Napoleon or the US or the UK or Germany or Russia or the entire world, in the US, it was $20 was an ounce of gold. So you could take a $20 bill, take it in, and they could give you an ounce of gold, or you could take an ounce of gold and get a $20 bill. Well, that's not what we have today. Today they're just Paper. It's made up. I would argue it's the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, but that's probably a little too radical for most people. but it's not backed by anything. It's just paper. Really, it's numbers on a screen in twenty twenty six.

Dr. John Oberg [03:40]: we had an episode a long time ago where we talked even Genghis Khan did this where he he kind of grabbed all of the hard currency in his community and issued paper money so that he'd have control of that, right?

Randy Lorensen [03:53]: Yeah, it was actually Genghis Khan's, I believe his grandson, Kublakon, did it. And it was during the Silk Road. and it was they took birch trees, and they basically took the bark off birch trees and wrote, and when you came in to the country, you had to give them all your gold, silver, brass, bronze, and they would give you the equivalent paper currency. The problem is that well, there were lots of birch trees. There was no scarcity, so they just kept writing

Dr. John Oberg [04:19]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [04:19]: more notes, and all of a sudden There was a lot more paper currency than there was gold, silver, et cetera, to back it up. So that that

Anthony Marino [04:26]: Right is.

Randy Lorensen [04:26]: was fiat currency back then, instead of hard money.

Anthony Marino [04:28]: Let me ask you a question, Randy. When when you hear the term or the phrase full faith and credit of the United States stands behind our currency, what what what what is what does that do to you?

Randy Lorensen [04:42]: Anger, sadness, like it's it it's just theft, right? Because the United States and every single country that's ever lived that's had fiat currency, this experiment, by the way, has been done thousands of times over over history, and it ends the same way every time. Humans, right? There's no rules if because Kublai Khan could go take the bark off birch trees and trade it for gold, he did. Right? If somebody ran a business and they had a money printer in the back. Even if it's the best person, let's say it's George Washington that would never go do it, right? Well, with his kids, his his his grandkids, eventually somebody prints the money just this one time. Imagine during COVID, how many businesses would have printed the money just this one time, even if they were the most outstanding citizens to get through? And then once they do it, they do it. But man, the thing that about abundance and technology is throughout all of human history. And I don't think this is so hard to quantify. But technology makes everything more abundant, everything cheaper, life better. But when you when you print money, you steal that productivity. When we talk about inflation and people are struggling today, we can't even comprehend how much easier life would be if the government didn't print money. Because they talk about whether it's 2% inflation or 5% inflation. What we're not considering is How much easier is it to build a house than it was a hundred years ago? Housing prices shouldn't go up, they should go down. How much easier is it? Like we need one one hundredth or one one five hundredth or thousandth as many farmers as we needed a hundred years ago because of all the new technology. Food prices should be almost free. But they're not. And it's because of money printing. It's really theft. I would argue this is probably too extreme. It's

Dr. John Oberg [06:31]: Well hold on a s w let's let's

Randy Lorensen [06:34]: yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [06:34]: Can can we stay away from the characterization for this conversation just to be a little bit helpful? I hear I hear the way you characterize it, but I think that, may maybe not so helpful for for a listener right now. Like yes, it should be cheaper in terms of labor for food, and and it is, it's much cheaper for labor for food, but somebody still has to pay for the technology, right? And I'm not even saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that there's new there's new expenses in the value chain that also have to get paid for. And what you're saying is that even in light of those expenses, net net it would still be significantly cheaper than than on on a re on a real dollars to dollars inflation adjusted basis is the argument you're making, right?

Randy Lorensen [07:13]: Well here's a here's a better way to put it then, John. Let's talk about what we do know. When we were on hard money, the greatest advancement in abundance and productivity for rich people, it was the creation of the middle class was the industrial revolution. We just got done talking. The entire world was on a gold standard. It might not have been the the US, twenty dollars was an ounce of gold. In the UK, it was more like ten pounds was an ounce of gold. But you could trade pounds for dollars, and you were really trading gold for gold. You just needed two dollars for every pound to get the same amount of gold. That was the greatest advancement. Like that was the creation of the middle class. More people came out of poverty. The most rich people of any time in human history, including today, were created during that time frame. And this didn't just happen here. This happened in England. It happened, it was happening in Germany, all over the world,

Dr. John Oberg [08:04]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [08:05]: France, because everybody. was on real hard true money. And this experiment has been run thousands of times, but we don't remember what was done in France or the Dutch did or Kublicon did or the Romans did. Like this has been done over and over and over again and every time it ends the same way. It comes with a debasement of the money. More recently we've watched it, was it Argentina, their money became so worthless recently, when they had an election they ripped it up and used it as confetti in the streets because it was cheaper than buying confetti. It was cheaper ripping up Argentinian pesos and throwing them into the streets. Right. It's

Dr. John Oberg [08:43]: Yeah, I Zimbabwe's another example of that in kind of recent memory, that last twenty years that's happened. I in defense of your position, like I think we've seen that not just in distant history, but we've seen it in in in modern times in the last twenty years we've watched this happen. And so now on the flip side though, what what's the argument about what would have happened to many, many small businesses globally? during the COVID, for example, that pandemic, like what would have happened to all those businesses? And I think you could make an argument that what would have happened was better or worse. Take us through both sides of that.

Randy Lorensen [09:16]: Well, the argument is that, well, we can print money so we are, and temporarily we're going to increase the money supply to help everybody out. By the way, this is I'm not a fan of Keynesian economics, but even Keynes, when he did this, that was the theory. Is you take the paper money, you print it. But the other part of Keynes' theory that nobody wants to acknowledge now is you then have to take that money back out of the supply. It's a temporary injection. That was what he argued. Everybody's forgotten that last part now because that's uncomfortable, right? It's no different than you or I, if we put things on a credit card, you have to pay for it in the future. Or if your business takes out a loan, you get to spend more money today and hopefully that makes you more productive. That's the good use of money, right? If you could argue that if a government uses money and they print it to make roads and bridges and power plants and education, hospitals, whatever. That makes society better, improves it, and is a good use of money. But that that should also correspond with an increase in productivity and wealth. And therefore, you should be able to pay that money back someday. The problem with fiat currency is the more they print, if you look back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, when we would print money like crazy, right? Productivity went up and I forget what the return was, but we were actually at one point getting a positive return on the money that we printed. Now, because it's so easy to print money and there's no governor and they just want to buy votes, there's no return on the investment. It's a negative return on the investment when you look at it. And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's it's really stark. It's it went from a positive investment to a negative investment.

Dr. John Oberg [11:06]: Hold on before you jump on, I just wanna this is supporting Randy's position about the two money supply. I've shared the screen and so you're supposed to kind of reduce the money supply. And we had a moment of trying to do that, right, from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty four, but then right back up in terms of, this is from the Board of Governors Federal Reserve System, so trillions of dollars in circulation. All right, rank you can take us away, Anthony. just wanna to Randy's point, we've never really reduced the money supply back.

Anthony Marino [11:32]: So so the end the end result that you're worried about is that this printing of money irresponsibly across the universe basically impoverishes society. It makes everybody poor. And that's what you're worried about. So tell us, let's move on to your solution, which is your solution is Bitcoin. Or not just Bitcoin. You've talked in the past about hard assets, owning gold, owning real estate and so forth, but Bitcoin is at the core of of your safety net. So tell us what first tell us what is Bitcoin? What is this thing?

Randy Lorensen [12:14]: Let me let me put a dot on something you just said, then we'll I'll answer that question. The reason the money printing makes everybody poor, it's something called the Cantilian effect. And it is the people closest to the money printer benefit the most. So imagine you're the person that gets to print the money. You get to print it, you get to buy everything at today's prices. But more, by the way, for all of human history, for thousands of years, inflation was designed was was defined as a inflation of the money supply. More money means everything costs more. Recently the governments changed the definition because they didn't want the personal responsibility, and now they talk about prices. Okay? But if you're the person that gets to print the money, you get it at today's prices. The person you give it to gets it at almost today's prices until it gets down to the worker. Eventually the worker's wages go up, but by the time that happens, They've been paying at the old wages at the higher prices. So it's really taking from the bottom of society and giving it to the people, really, Washington, politicians, lobbyists, big corporations, and all of that. So Bitcoin, how does Bitcoin solve this? The difference is nobody can print Bitcoin. There's only 21 million. There will only ever be 21 million. And no matter how much one person wants to, they can't just give themselves more Bitcoin. You have to work for it, right?

Anthony Marino [13:41]: What is it? What is Bitcoin? What i what is Bitcoin? Define it.

Randy Lorensen [13:44]: It is it is a digital currency. It is think about gold, okay, and all of them the the money needs certain characteristics, right? One, it's gotta be scarce. It cannot be the bark we talked about, the Kublakon could just peel off of trees. Okay, and there have been different things used over time, but paper, so it's it's gotta be scarce. That's one of the beautiful things about gold. Right? There's only a certain amount of gold. Now, I think there's going to be more gold in supply. That's a whole different topic. But Bitcoin is a digital asset. It's guaranteed by energy, by math. I don't want to get too technical into what it is. But the reason that scarcity is so important is money has to store value. Doesn't really matter what it is as long as it holds value, right? But it also you have to be able to send it to people, give it. One of the the dollar works fantastic for that, right? We walk into a store, we want to buy a cup of coffee, we want to buy a new TV, we can give them cash, we can give them a check, we can give them a credit card, we can buy stuff with it. Okay? Gold falls down a little bit here. It does great in the store of value, but what are you gonna do? You're gonna go in and chip off some of your gold. And by the way, to solve that problem, they created paper money. That's where the dollar and all these things came along. was because gold was money and they were like, well, but I don't want to go in and flake off some gold and have to weigh it and see if it's real. So here's these bank notes, right? and it also has to be divisible. And and look, an ounce of gold is an ounce of gold. It's the same, same thing with Bitcoin. One Bitcoin is one Bitcoin. One satoshi which is one 100 millionth of a Bitcoin. Doesn't matter. It but dollars are good that way, right? We got dollars, we got dimes, we got pennies. You can break it down. It is a it is really the world's greatest money. And look, people are gonna have to sit with this a while. This took me a while when I heard about it. Bitcoin for me was freedom money a lot when I came in. I had recently dealt with some things with trying to send money overseas to a brokerage account in Hong Kong and it taking nine days and forty dollars and they stole some of it on the exchange rate. So being able to instantly send something digitally to me was amazing.

Anthony Marino [16:08]: Okay, stop.

Randy Lorensen [16:08]: Right.

Anthony Marino [16:09]: Stop. I need to ask this question right now. You you you talked about the dollars being backed by gold and no longer backed by gold. It's backed by the full faith and credit of the United States or whatever. What is Bitcoin backed by? Why is it why is it why is it different than the dollar bills that you talk about? What backs it up?

Randy Lorensen [16:34]: It's energy. It's compute.

Anthony Marino [16:36]: Okay.

Randy Lorensen [16:36]: The biggest computer network in the world is the Bitcoin mining network. Bigger than Amazon's network, Google, Apple, Microsoft, big all bigger than all of them together. In fact, like a hundred times bigger. Now it's shrunk a little bit because some of that's gone into AI, some of those that that power and those grids. But it's energy, it's compute. There are Billions and billions of dollars every year that go into securing the system. Okay. it's also math. The Bitcoin network has never been hacked. We'll talk about security later, I think. I know you have questions about that, Anthony. And wallets have been hacked, exchanges, which are basically banks, have been hacked. The Bitcoin network has never been hacked. Right? So it's it's that security. Yes, it is made up. if I was gonna take the other side, I would say, What's the difference between Bitcoin and Air?

Dr. John Oberg [17:31]: can I play this out back to you, Randy? Because I'm I don't know Bitcoin like you do. But I think Bitcoin is it what what it is, it's backed by an open ledger where everyone's agreed to what that compute is worth, right? Based on an open market rate. And then people are getting paid to mine it up to some number of coins, is I think it's twenty-four or thirty-four million coins, whatever it is. And then

Randy Lorensen [17:55]: Twenty one million, but yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [17:56]: Twenty one million, yeah. And then once that happens, that compute has to continue so that people some some number of those coins are reserved to pay for the ongoing the ongoing support of that system so that people who maintain the ledger get paid to maintain the ledger, as I understand it. And I think I think the kind of math they do is kind of the halfway to the wall math, if you're familiar with that, where like every time if you s if you start ten feet away from a wall, and you step half of the way there every time how long will it take you to get there? And the answer is never. Like you'll never get there because you're always cutting the the amount in half. And so that's similar to the amount of Bitcoin that's been set aside to pay for the ongoing compute. So as long as people believe that they're getting paid fairly to keep that open ledger, o online, so to speak, then then that's where the value is stored. Is that d is that about right?

Randy Lorensen [18:51]: Well said, John. It's well said, yeah. And it's a rules-based system. Back to Anthony's question, it's a rules-based system, right? We have rules in America, rule of law. And originally gold was $20 for an ounce of gold. Well, then FDR made it $33 or $35 for an ounce of gold. And then Nixon took us complete. And they kept changing the rules. At some point, I think it became $42. They kept changing. They can't do that in Bitcoin. So When you hear backed by the US government, well the government keeps changing the rules. And new politicians come along and they vote themselves things and they print more of it. They deva every time they print, they devalue what you have. Okay?

Dr. John Oberg [19:33]: I think that's the important point, Randy. Let's st dig into because I hear what you're saying, I agree with what you're saying, but without characterization, there's some facts behind here that are really powerful. So let's just walk through some of that math.

Randy Lorensen [19:46]: This is a concept that it was hard for me to get my head around, but once I got it, everything became clearer. Prices are not going up. Your money is becoming less valuable. Let me say that again. Prices are not increasing. Your money is becoming less valuable. And to prove that, is a ribeye worth more now than it was five or six years ago? Now, there's a little maybe that's a bad example because there's a little bit of a beef shortage right now. But ribeye has more than doubled in five or six years. But a ribeye is still a ribeye, but it takes twice as many pieces of paper. Right? It it's the same thing as a car, is anything that you buy, a house. When is a house its most valuable? If you buy a house today, build a house, and you have a brand new foundation, brand new roof, brand new everything, and you live in it for 30 years. Is the house worth more or less than it is it was 30 years ago when it was brand new? It's obviously worth less. You have a 30-year-old foundation, a 30 year old air conditioner, 30-year-old windows. But the money is less valuable. So real estate is a good investment because it goes up. And because of rules from the government, they keep changing the rules. There's incentive to put money into real estate. So it's been a very good investment for several years. But it's not that houses become more valuable. they actually become less valuable over time because the money is what's losing value instead of prices going up. Does that answer your question, John?

Dr. John Oberg [21:26]: Yeah, I mean I th I think yeah yeah, exactly. It's like if there's if there's the same amount of goods on day one in in the world as there are on day two, and day two there's double the amount of money, then everything's gonna cost twice as much money. in a in a in a number perspective. And and and again, pe they don't double the money supply overnight, but that's a a way of for that I was able to understand like, hey, and so if I haven't gone out and earned more of that money and all that money sits somewhere and is being given out somewhere, then then my money is now less valuable, which is I I think without being I'm trying not to be like sensational or characterize things, but to me that's a form of taxation, right? Because what someone's done is they've taken tax they they've taxed away my spending ability, without a vote in that particular case.

Randy Lorensen [22:12]: Yeah. I I I would argue it's the most vile form of taxation because it's not honest and people don't understand it.

Dr. John Oberg [22:18]: That's a care I get it. That's a c and there's the characters I think that's a I I don't know that I would disagree with you, but I think that's a strong position to take for sure.

Randy Lorensen [22:27]: Very unlike me to take strong positions.

Dr. John Oberg [22:29]: Ha ha ha.

Anthony Marino [22:29]: Okay, so all right, so so let I'm I'm To be honest, I I I hold some Bitcoin. and I certainly at one time was a skeptic and then an advocate. And I I don't know what I am now. So this thing called Bitcoin is worth one Bitcoin used to be worth $400. It's now worth $85,000. It's gone up as high as $125,000. So let's let's game theory this and in 10 years. None of these countries can pay their debt and they and they all default on their debt and they've got to print even more money, I suppose. And what tell us what what the the Black Swan event is and what what life is like ten years from now when when all hell breaks loose, Randy, and and how does Bitcoin at that point solve the problem?

Randy Lorensen [23:25]: Well, look, if if it's really that value is food, water, guns, ammunition. Let's let's not go there. I don't think I don't think we're going to that extreme. And we're really beneficial that we live in a time of abundance with AI, robotics, and a lot of the things that are coming that I think are probably gonna give us a little bit softer landing. But You're watching what's going on right now. If you watch the 10 year bond rate in the US, it has been going up, up, up. And you go, the Fed raised rates last month. They did. A quarter of a point. Twenty-five basis points. Yet the tenure went up more like sixty basis points. More than double what the Fed raised rates. What is that telling you? That is telling you that the United States is over forty trillion in debt. The debt is growing by about a trillion dollars every hundred days and increasing. And people are becoming less confident that the US can repay its debts. It's not just the US. Japan, a couple of years ago, had a negative interest rate, negative point two five to negative half a percent. So literally, if you bought their bonds, you got less money back at the end. I know this is insane. Like Europe was pushing for the same thing. There were zero interest rates all over the world. Well, why first thing, that's not real. Nobody is gonna borrow somebody else money and have them pay them back less later. That's just they're not gonna do it. So there's again, that's a whole nother topic we could go into, but clearly something's broken there. Okay. I think we can accept that, that that's just not logical. But the rate should be what do you need for time preference? Instead of spending the money today, Anthony, if you loaned me money. How much would I have to pay you back at a later date to make that worth it instead of you spending the money today on your family, on a house, on a car, on a trip, whatever, right? On a ribeye. And that number is going up and up and up. Well, why does it go up? If if people are selling bonds, it's because they think there's a greater and greater and greater risk. We mentioned Argentina recently. Argentina's defaulted on its currency five, six times in the last hundred years. They just keep doing it, right? And hopefully they're out of the woods now with Malay and some of the stuff going on there. We'll see. But Argentina not that long ago, you could get 10% on Argentinian bonds. Then it was 15%, then it was 20%, then it was 25%. That's more extreme version of what's happening in the US and Europe and Japan and other places. But people were telling

Dr. John Oberg [26:05]: Reverse.

Randy Lorensen [26:05]: you, I need a higher return to take this risk.

Dr. John Oberg [26:10]: And Randy, if some some people got left holding that bag, right? To what tell t

Randy Lorensen [26:13]: Yeah. When it goes down, when it goes, I mean the money becomes again, these are the same people that were ripping it up and using it for confetti in the streets because it was cheaper than buying confetti with their money. The money became so worth they just they print so much that it becomes worthless. The story that we hear the most is the Weimar Republic, Germany, after World War One, because of the war debts, they had to print so much money that money became worthless. You had to take a wheelbarrow to the store. full of money just to buy a loaf of bread. Right? I mean, bars people

Dr. John Oberg [26:47]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [26:48]: would go in and buy their beer at the beginning of the night because by the end of the night the prices had gone up. mean that's what happens eventually. It's inevitable. The well, hold on.

Anthony Marino [26:58]: And then and then what happens? Hold on. And then so let's use that example because it's a great it's a really good one and it's topical. And then what happens? So the money became worthless. And but Germany's still here. And in fact, during the 40s, 50s, and 60s, they became an industrial powerhouse. How did how did how did it how did it get better? What happened? Do you know?

Randy Lorensen [27:22]: Well, it had to get really, really, really bad first. And this play so what happens plays out different ways, Anthony. Right? What played out in Argentina recently is not the same thing that played out in Germany. What played out in France and what played out in Germany, we gave the example of Napoleon. Napoleon came to power primarily because the country was in a shambles and everything was broke and the economy was terrible, and that allowed Napoleon to come to power. The same thing happened in Germany. If Germany wasn't broke, we wouldn't know who Adolf Hitler was. He would have remained a struggling artist. And this little Nazi party, the National Socialist Party or whatever the hell it was called, would have stayed irrelevant. But because the money was worthless, people wanted change. And they demanded change. And people start fighting and they start arguing. It's it's look, we're seeing it in America today. Like, look at the division. Look at the boomers. Your generation, Anthony, is getting, my God, there is so much hatred for the boomers. I, by the way, defend the boomers all the time now. I think that did has the boomer generation benefited more than other from money printing? Yes. If they own stocks and they own houses, they've benefited the most. But they're not the ones that made the rules. The politicians made the rules, some of which were boomers, but they just played by the by the game and the rules that were in front of them. And for a while, It's a good ride. And now all these millennials and these Gen Z are like, well, that's great for you, Boomer. You're you bought a house for twelve dollars and now it's worth 48 million. That's an ex extreme on both ends. But I can't afford a house. And I'm tired of working two jobs and not being able to afford a house But they're blaming the wrong thing. It's not the boomer's fault. It it's it's just not. It's the money printer, it's the politicians.

Dr. John Oberg [29:13]: Radius it Without without taking away your argument, I I wanna suggest that maybe it's not a single variable. I think there's also this idea that people should be able to buy the house of their dreams as their first home versus kind of working through a stair step of things that boomers had to go through. you know, like like you know, my mom's first house was a two bedroom house that was a shotgun house, you know, very small, small piece of property. It w so I think and I think people have different expects so I think it's it's maybe a multivariate.

Randy Lorensen [29:46]: Yeah, but fiat fiat ruins everything that it touches, right? And everything that they print money and they throw it.

Anthony Marino [29:50]: Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I gotta I I got you you're you're I gotta get you back to Economically. So it gets terrible, people are broke, they have the money's worthless. But in then in the by the seventies, Germany was a powerhouse. Economically, I'm trying to understand how did they get back on their feet? They and and by the way, they entered into a very expensive war, you know, when once Hitler became it got it got into power. But how what what happened inside of that country? Let's just keep it right inside that country. Don't go anywhere else. What did they do? Did they have incredible austerity? Did they wipe out all their social programs?

Randy Lorensen [30:40]: Yeah.

Anthony Marino [30:41]: Did they become did the hundred percent of the population become entrepreneurs and start building businesses that were able to export goods and and bring capital into the country? Something went on that got them out of that hole. Now they're heading back to it, I get it, today, so let's not go there. I'm just at that moment in time, that thirty year period, what

Randy Lorensen [31:02]: Yes, they I

Anthony Marino [31:04]: happened?

Randy Lorensen [31:04]: I got it. Yes, austerity has to happen, right? They have to stop spending. So to your point, it

Dr. John Oberg [31:11]: Okay, hold on, back up. Someone explain austerity. Not everyone on the c I I so w to talk

Randy Lorensen [31:15]: Stop spending more than you make, right? So it it's it's literally, let's take it out of the country and simplify it, Anthony. Let's say you wouldn't do this, but let's say you're talking to a young person. They make a hundred thousand a year and they spend 150,000 a year. What would your advice be to them?

Anthony Marino [31:37]: My advice to them would be to stop doing that because it's gonna be a problem for you at some point.

Randy Lorensen [31:44]: But Anthony, I wanna take a trip. You know what, we wanna go to Italy this summer and I can just put it on a credit card. And Anthony, you know, I I know I gotta pay the credit card back, but you know what, I can refinance my house and then I can buy the new car.

Anthony Marino [32:01]: Well the answer's obvious. Eventually that's a that's that's a your own Ponzi scheme that's gonna collapse on itself because you're not gonna make enough money to to pay people back. And that we know that's what that's what the countries have done. I want I want to know what they I I want to know specifically what they did. Because if we're heading to the same sits, I know what England did in this in the 1800s. England was in a very similar situation in the early 1800s. And they went on an austerity program and they and it got really bad, right? They it got really bad for people in terms of their, you know, there was very little social services and people had to figure things out on their own. is I guess that's that's where we're headed, right? I mean, that's

Randy Lorensen [32:45]: England is the one country to reach 120% debt to GDP and get out of it. And by the way, it was the Napoleonic Wars that put them in that problem in the first place. They were broke. They cut government spending by 80% for decades. But the problem, and here's the thing, by the way, if you believe that's going to happen in America, you should not buy Bitcoin. You should not buy Bitcoin if you believe that's gonna happen. I don't believe that's gonna happen. Can you look at France? France is just talking about they're not even as far in debt as we are. And France is just talking about cutting some social programs and s cutting government spending, and they've got protests in the streets because people don't want their freebies taken away. Can you imagine what would happen if we cut spending even forty or fifty percent in this country? By the way, forty percent probably at this point is not enough. Like to do that, you have to go after Social Security, Medicare, the military, like big, big things. We're getting to a point where 25% of the money that we print is going to just pay the interest on the debt and it's growing. But it's again, you're looking at it in the country. I want you to go back to the family because the answer is the same, Anthony. That person that is making a hundred, spending 150, and going further in debt. Now their expenses actually go up because they're paying more interest on their credit cards, more interest on their mortgage, everything that they refinance. One of two things are going to happen. Because they don't have a money printer, right? They are going to either s cut spending, austerity, and get out the way England did after the Napoleonic Wars, took them decades, and they had the benefit of the, or you have to make a lot more money. Right? All of a sudden you start making $500,000 a year, you can pay your debts. But governments, just like most people, if they were spending $150 at $100 and they go to $500, they now spend $700 instead of $500. And governments are the same way. It's the same answer. But I think it's much easier, for me at least, it's much easier to understand on the micro scale of a family. The difference is the family doesn't have a money printer. So the government, instead of ever making the hard choices, they just print more money because that's easy. And that's how you buy votes, and that's how you stay in office. By the way, people go bankrupt. Many, many governments have gone bankrupt. People go bankrupt and they go back to build great businesses. Greece went bankrupt a few years back, or I don't know, it's 20, 25 years ago now. Right? They cut government spending by over 90% because they were bankrupt and they had to. Greece is still there. Did it suck to live in Greece for a while? Yeah, it sucked. But by the way, the people that bought gold back then, if Bitcoin would have been around, the people that bought gold did very well. There are assets that you could have, and even if you were in other currencies, you could probably do well. There's ways to protect yourself. Like this, we we we do need some point to get back to abundance on how to protect yourself. But

Anthony Marino [35:53]: One thing one thing one thing you missed though about England in particular, and I think this is probably what happened in Germany as well, that while they did cut spending and things got really, really tough on people, they grew their way out of it. In other words, their their economies grew because of their industrialization and their productivity and so forth. So, you know, one hypothesis currently being espoused by Scott Bessant and others. Is that you know, with you know the revolution in technology, with the reindustrialization of the United States, we can grow economic. You know, our growth rate has been running two or three percent. If we grow six or eight percent a year in terms of our economy, the wealth that we create, we can we can grow our way out of this situation without. draconian spending cuts. Not to say that we shouldn't we shouldn't, you know, have some form of austerity, but their belief is that we can in in a matter of ten or fifteen years grow our way out of this debt crisis that

Randy Lorensen [37:03]: So money printing increases the money supply roughly seven percent a year for a long time now. So it's got to be more than seven percent a year to really do this. But I want to take you back to what this group of people said bescent. What the what were they saying during the election and shortly after the election? Were they talking about growing our way out or did they have a different strategy?

Anthony Marino [37:28]: I I don't remember what what they what their strategy was.

Randy Lorensen [37:29]: Well, Doge. They were talking

Dr. John Oberg [37:30]: Doge,

Randy Lorensen [37:31]: about Doge. They were talking

Dr. John Oberg [37:31]: Doge, yeah.

Randy Lorensen [37:32]: about cutting, they were talking about cutting

Anthony Marino [37:33]: Right. That is.

Randy Lorensen [37:34]: two trillion. That was our last hope. Like the Doge could have worked. This isn't a Republican or a Democrat issue. They both want to spend the money. They might spend it on different things, and they might keep you arguing, blaming blue and red. But they tried Doge. That was their answer is we have to cut spending. This is ridiculous. When they figured out that wasn't gonna work. And they could never get that through Congress to get behind it, then they went to growth. Right? It will work, by the way, but Besson's numbers won't work. You need Elon Musk numbers, right? Like you need 10 plus percent growth. By the way, we have a fighting chance. I really believe with AI robotics, like we could be the luckiest people right now. We have built this ungodly debt, and we may not have to pay the full penalty. Generally speaking, I like the analogy of it's like a hangover, right? Somebody gets really drunk, and then you have to, you gotta go through the hangover before you rebuild. Just like the person that goes in debt, just like the country. And going back to your thing, Anthony, Germany went through a hangover. Like you're just jumping from broke war reindustrialization. There were years you could go at that time. Like you could go over there with a few ounces of gold and buy the most expensive real estate in downtown Berlin. It was basically given away if you were an American or an Englishman. A lot of that benefit went to the US and England, right? And Frenchmen and stuff buying their real estate because people were desperate. But they had to go through a hangover from being drunk and overspending. We have this, but imagine if all of a sudden somebody just invented a magic pill that you didn't have to have the hangover anymore. AI, robotics, all the things that are happening, give us a fighting chance for that to happen in today's world. I'm not betting on that. I'm still buying Bitcoin because by the way, if that happens, it isn't gonna matter. If Elon Musk is right, it doesn't even matter if you haven't you have savings. We're gonna be great and everybody's gonna be fine. I'm just covering my bases in case he's wrong this time. I'm and I'll be more fine because I've actually done some I mean, I I think in a world of abundance, things that are scarce become even more valuable in that world, but everything will become cheaper. So you

Dr. John Oberg [40:07]: I guess let's hear so as as we're drawing this thing kinda to a close, Randy, w if so today clearly your answer is buy Bitcoin. I think that's been your answer for a long time. Anthony, what have you has your thinking changed in the last forty minutes?

Anthony Marino [40:24]: what I where where I've not I'm not there yet, but Bitcoin was created out of thin air. Okay. Is it is it really a Ponzi scheme at the end of the day? Was this thought up by someone using the things that Randy's talking about, the fear of the the dollar and and various currencies becoming worthless. And they created this digital currency literally out of thin air. It's was was owned 21 that it's being mined by people who mined it at a certain low, low valuation. It's run up tens of thousands of percent. have people cat have the the the creators cashed in. It was that wasn't really a just a Ponzi scheme. And some of the things Randy's been talking about make me think that, yeah, there's a risk, but there's also a way out of this. And if that's the case, then at some point does Bitcoin become worthless. Now, there were a lot of brilliant bankers and economists who in the beginning basically said what I just said, who are now buying Bitcoin. So this dichotomy has got me really shaken up in terms of, you know, kind of what to do next is really where I am. So I'm in a I'm in a state of confusion and concern at this point about the very specific, both the dollar and the economy and what what we should at what I should acquire or maintain to protect myself. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Dr. John Oberg [42:09]: Yeah, in that in that environment, V Visa and MasterCard might be the biggest losers there. If Bitcoin does nothing but displace the interchange rate, that could be pretty world changing. Randy, I wanna give you the last word though today. Like this is a topic that you're clearly the most educated on from the three of us. So if you were gonna gu kinda give me and Anthony just like the one big takeaway, you've you've watched our journey for the last ten, fifteen years. What'd be the one thing you really hope we'd leave with today?

Randy Lorensen [42:37]: Think people have to really get into the problem. Right? And this is not, this is tales of abundance, and Bitcoin is the abundance and the solution. But until you really understand the problem, and this is a little bit harder in America, we've never lived through hyperinflation. But this experiment has been run over and over and over again for thousands of years, and every single time. It ends the same way. It ends with the money becoming worthless. Earlier we talked about in France, they were burning it because it was cheaper than firewood. Okay? Same thing happened in Zimbabwe not that long ago. Same thing in Argentina, Turkey, all these countries. Mass inflation is going to happen. If you think if we go back to Anthony's thing about Germany, think about people you owned an apartment building in downtown Berlin and you would sell it for a few pieces of gold because everything that you You bought was backed by German fiat currency. And if you wanted to eat and take care of your family, you needed something that they couldn't print. Right? Like if you're buying anything back by the dollar, and that's what argue, I would argue it's the euro, it's the yen, they can print it. They get it first. By the time it gets to you, if you're gonna do anything by property, buy oil, build, by Buy things that will keep and have value in the future. I would also encourage you to think about absolute scarcity. Bitcoin is the only thing I know with absolute scarcity. Even gold, they mine 1% to 2% a year. We build new houses. Like around me, there's houses going up right and left. There's places in Dubai, Panama,

Dr. John Oberg [44:23]: Real estate.

Randy Lorensen [44:25]: around the world. They're building islands, right? John, where you live. There may not be new real estate, but there is because they're going high, right? You're in downtown Austin. Hardly

Dr. John Oberg [44:34]: Yeah, sure.

Randy Lorensen [44:35]: anybody used to live in downtown Austin. Now

Dr. John Oberg [44:38]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [44:38]: they're going 80 stories in the air or whatever, right? stocks. If a stock price gets too high, the company issues more stock. Right? I mean, there's nothing else really has ultimate scarcity. Even gold, by the way, I believe that robot there, you know how much gold is on the bottom of the ocean? Like, If if robots figure out how to pull the gold off the bottom of the ocean because humans can't get down there safely and do it, all of a sudden the gold supply could go up 5, 10x, making gold less valuable. Gold bugs don't want to hear that. But the ocean, the moon, we're about to mu we're about to mine the moon. The moon's got a bunch of gold. Asteroids, there's asteroids with with quadrillion dollars of of gold and different resources. Like all of these different things. Even rare earth minerals that we don't have here, again, they're on the moon, they're on the asteroids, and technology is coming to bring these things home. Well There'll still be twenty one million Bitcoin, even if there's more of all

Dr. John Oberg [45:39]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [45:40]: of those different things. So I believe it's gonna hold its value because I don't believe the government is ever gonna stop printing money until they're forced to, which means austerity, which means they won't cut spending until they go broke and nobody will buy their bonds. And Anthony, you read my book. My prediction was that the Japanese bond market would go. And if you've been watching, and we we're out of time, but it's happening. I then said this would cascade into the US and US bond prices would go up. If you reread the end of that book, Anthony, you will see what I predicted. And I just said this is one possible outcome. I said it was the most likely outcome, but it's playing out pretty much exactly what I wrote a few years ago. Okay. I mean, it now, does something else come along? Maybe, maybe not. Okay. and I did a lot of research. Jim Lynch, who we've had on the podcast recently, he was instrumental in me trying to think through that process. And that's a I mean, I spent I spent months thinking through that process. So it's I don't think that I can cover it the next five seconds here. But I would say if if they're gonna

Dr. John Oberg [46:47]: Guys, that's a it's a great plug, Randy, to read the book.

Randy Lorensen [46:49]: keep printing money, you should have Bitcoin.

Dr. John Oberg [46:52]: Yeah, Demystifying Money is the book. You can see it in Randy's background. It's it's a good read to get knowledge. And I think any game you should know the rules of the game if you're gonna play the game. And here's a game we're all playing, whether we like it or not. So knowing the rules of the game is gonna help you create the abundance you want, and and then you can at least make the bets that you wanna make well informed. So stick around, we're gonna be back right after this with our our abundance briefing and just a short message from our sponsors.

Randy Lorensen [48:14]: The abundance briefing. Gentlemen, OpenAI just released seven hundred and twenty-two AI-written math papers. And mathematicians aren't real happy about this. We'd we've announced recently, Claude, and OpenAI, they've been solving all these math problems like crazy, but seven hundred and twenty-two of them this week. I mean, that's amazing, but let's talk about what does this mean in the world? Like, what are the impacts this can have and the changes and the abundance this can bring in the world? Anthony, what What jumps out to you the just real world impact here?

Anthony Marino [48:47]: Well, what what jumps out to me is the things around hurricane forecasting and probabilities, what what is you know, everything is based on math at the end of the day. So cancer research so much is is is based on mathematics that there's there's no telling how this is gonna be leveraged. You mentioned that the mathematicians aren't happy about it. I was listening to a podcast yesterday and they gave an interesting overview of why they're not happy. It wasn't so much that the the problems were solved or they're they're using available information to to do it. This affects their ability to get grants and continue to work. If machinery is doing the job that they've been spending years and years of research doing, what does it mean to them? So there's a there's a real stunning issue for those guys. So it's interesting. But I mean this is this is a turning point. people are very excited about the things that the the next steps because of these solutions that have been been handed to So a lot of it's over my head for sure.

Randy Lorensen [49:57]: John, before I go to you, I want to comment on the mathematicians. And I think this is similar to farmers a hundred plus years ago, right? It used to be every almost everybody, 98% of Americans or whatever, worked on a farm. And then we started getting better technology and fewer and fewer people. Well, that was that upset society, right? Some of those people went into factories, but it also meant more people became doctors, lawyers, engineers, whatever it is, right? And more people could work in science to get us to this point. That wasn't possible without those people losing the farm jobs. Well, now if people don't have to work on mathematics, if they can just put it into an AI, what does that enable those people to do? Right. And it it is sad that, you know, people are gonna have their lives upset, but what opportunity to take really smart people and redirect them at making the world a better place and being able to do things that they couldn't do even three or six months ago. So I There might be some blood in the streets, which is not great, but I really think this is one of the keys to opening up abundance. So John, what what jumps out to you from what these things do that just real world impacts?

Dr. John Oberg [51:08]: Yeah, I'm gonna build on what you said too. I think, you know, I'm not sure about your experience with AI, but mine is that you need an expert to drive it. And I think these really great mathematicians are gonna need to drive those math functions further. So I think that maybe the blood in the streets is a little bit more Than is necessary. I think we're gonna have to have really, really smart people driving these frontier models forward to solve really big problems. And when we do, we're gonna get things like hyper efficient wings and turbines for planes that are gonna make air travel probably much better for the environment, faster, safer. Things that were not considered safe before because we have new tools. I think that's really amazing. You know, if we can get you know hurricane and flood forecasting that actually is more accurate and correct, not only is it gonna give people probably more. time to get ready for them, you probably won't have the same amount of mass evacuations across Swaziv area that aren't gonna be impacted. And then AI itself is gonna be cheaper. You're gonna have you know cleaner ways to deal with combustion and you know if hydrogen engines come online I I just and it's probably gonna mean a lot for things like, you know, computer security in the future. So I d I just think there's a lot of things that the math problems solve. And, you know, as science moves forward, we've seen this happen for a long time. We we let go of old things and we start new things. you know, we someone thought the world was flat for a minute.

Randy Lorensen [52:27]: Yeah. I I I I think it's amazing. And I I don't even think my monkey brain can comprehend what solving seven hundred and twenty-two new math equations does and what opportunities that opens up. I don't think anybody's can, to be honest. So I I just think it's I think it's really exciting and what a wonderful time we live in. let's go to the next one. A Chinese appliance brand, Ashita, I think is how you say it, they put a hundred humanoid robots as shopping guides in a hundred different stores. They live streamed continuously for three days. This was just a month ago. And each robot worked ten hours a day interacting with customers, providing product information, guiding purchases. What happened? Sales jumped thirty nine percent within three days. Anthony, I got a feeling you hate this. Am I wrong?

Anthony Marino [53:17]: I do. I do. This is a no, this is

Dr. John Oberg [53:18]: Ha ha ha

Anthony Marino [53:20]: I'm not disputing the numbers. This is a novelty. Everyone heard about it. They rushed down there. They they pulled purchases forward that we're going to make in November or December or whatever. And they bought some, they bought additional stuff. Were the robots helpful? I'm sure they were. But you know, to think that it's it it it's a isn't a bubble. supply and demand, you know, product market fit is what it is. They'll they'll be more efficient, that's for sure. They'll maybe more effective. They may pull for sales forward. for the business itself to to run on run on automation versus human labor. It's always a that's always a good thing. That leads to higher productivity, better margins, they can expand more and so forth. So it's both a good thing and a novelty in terms of the the the the sales. The real win for this store is their cost savings.

Dr. John Oberg [54:21]: Yeah, I didn't read anything into this. Like w was this just checkout or was this actually interacting and trying to drive average ticket value and all the things that you know that managers hope salespeople do in a retail environment? Do we know?

Randy Lorensen [54:34]: That's my understanding, John, is they were working as basically salespeople and giving people information. Yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [54:42]: That's cool.

Randy Lorensen [54:43]: I think it's great. Like, I gotta tell you, when I call in now and I get an AI or I'm on a site, I pray that I have a competent AI. I mean, I a couple weeks ago I was doing something with Chase Bank. And by the time I got done phone trees and I was talking to my agents and doing other stuff in the background on space on a speakerphone, it took me 90 minutes. And the and the time I spent answering the same thing in their stupid old phone tree. And then finally when I got to a human, They didn't speak very good. It asked me one for English, two for Spanish, whatever. They didn't speak very good English. I could hardly you know, I had to have them repeat themselves. I actually really hope that I deal with AIs. Right. And I just I this is on a complete tangent. I told you guys this, but my best use of AI yet. Last week I needed to create a DBA for a business and I despise govern like getting into some government website that looks like it was built twenty five years ago by a third grader. And not being able to navigate, I told Grockbot to go do it. It went in, it created the DBA, it filled the form, it said it gave me control of the screen. I put in a credit card, paid $25 for it, and went on with my day. I mean, it was it was look, it it's a simple little thing, but that's a real pain point for me that it solved. And sometimes dealing with bad salespeople is a is an even bigger sales point for me that I don't have a lot of tolerance. So

Dr. John Oberg [56:06]: Should we sh should we skip to the AI saving money people money, which is tied directly to that, Randy, and come back to the other topic?

Randy Lorensen [56:12]: Go ahead, Anthony, you had this topic about AI saving people money. Jump there.

Anthony Marino [56:15]: Yeah, finally a useful tool, you know, that

Dr. John Oberg [56:18]: Ha ha.

Anthony Marino [56:19]: that I will tell you, it that you know, mu you've heard about everyone's heard about Muse and Grokbot and how that these these two tools are able to basically be a personal assistant in a lot of ways. It can book flights, it can do a lot of things. this this particular topic, people are taking AI and having it go through their bank accounts and Going through their subscriptions and canceling subscriptions and so forth, so it's so. So it's a real useful, a useful tool. what I think can now, we may be on the road to because we're putting it in the consumers' hands, and the consumers are everyday people, this could be a way out of Doomerism. Now people start to see, hey, this stuff is pretty cool. This is making my day-to-day life easier. You know, it's, it's, it's lopping, it's saving me 15 minutes to two hours a day that I can do other things. Just like you said, Randy, you were working in the background while AI logged you into a government website. If it if it starts to get down to the people and they find it useful, this Doomerism group that's, you know, hovering out there telling everyone that. the where humanity is gonna end in 10 minutes, that could start to dissipate. So that's the real value that I saw in this. You know, put it in when when consumers get to use things, you know, people's spirits are lifted.

Randy Lorensen [57:49]: Yeah. All right. John, you you got any experience with this?

Dr. John Oberg [57:55]: yeah, I mean I use AI all the time in this way to try to kind of go through emails, but there were some cool things in this article that Anthony passed around about like how it was being used to go like find money on government websites that have been abandoned by the person. Like we had an experience in our household where there was a couple thousand dollars we found, that you know, and so that that's cool. Like that pays for some AI utilization for sure. So

Randy Lorensen [58:18]: Yeah, I heard somebody the other day said they used it to go through all their subscriptions and give them suggestions and they unsubscribed from a bunch of stuff. There's services out there, right? But you can just do it yourself now. So John, let's talk about this Tesla Power Wall Homes in your home state of California and basically creating a power plant, right? It's not really a power plant, but power storage. So

Dr. John Oberg [58:42]: It's power storage, which is super cool, right? So like I think if we kind of walk through some of the numbers, there was 86,000 or so power wall homes in California dispatched 601 megawatts to the grid at evening peak hours at the peak and a total of 932 megawatt hours in a single event. So 601 megawatts, 932 megawatt hours is the data that I found. previous record was five hundred twenty seven days earlier, but think about what happens if we can have all this kind of store of energy in people's homes that they can release back to the grid at the peak times when it's necessary. Like I think battery technology's really, really important for our future. I know you know, it matters for space travel and, you know, colonizing the moon and Mars and all that great stuff. But I think it's cool too for like evening out the power consumption curve just here on on terra firma. So pretty excited to see that we're Getting a network effect and and that people are finding a way to monetize that for themselves, which is great.

Randy Lorensen [59:44]: All right.

Anthony Marino [59:44]: Yeah, the miniaturization of the solar panels and the ability of people to generate power and store it and then use and then sell it back to the grid during peak times can help eliminate brownouts and things like kind of flatten the the ups and downs of of electricity and and we're moving to you know a more electric environment, whether it's you know heating systems and cooling systems in our homes and so forth. this this is like this is a piece of it. And then la I think it was last week or the week before, two weeks ago we talked about people putting individual solar panels on their not just to take care of the elect their personal electric needs, but again to send it back during peak times to to the grids. The government's in the way of this in a lot of ways. States are state regulators are in the way. For instance, in a state like Arizona, which is sunny 300 days out of the year, the the amount that you can sell the the power back to the grid is very, very low and it's not cost it's not cost effective to put sol imagine it being not cost effective to put put to put solar panels on a home in Arizona right now, because the utilities have locked up the politicians and, you know, are not allow are not really allowing it. Whereas California, you know, almost everybody has a solar panel on their roof now in California because it's so cost efficient to do it. Texas is similar, by the way, to Arizona. So we've got to get the governments out of the way to really move this forward, which is a typical problem.

Dr. John Oberg [1:01:29]: You know, Andy won Randy, one of the things that that was Interesting this weekend my wife pulled up a video of Elon Musk with David Letterman from two thousand nine and Letterman was asking about some of the work Elon was doing back, you know, seventeen years ago. And they talked about the history of cars and I didn't realize that electric motor cars were actually in competition with internal combustion cars a hundred plus years ago and just the efficiency of the electric motor and the batteries wasn't in a place to do that or we'd already have electric cars, you know, a hundred plus years ago, because the electric motor was around at that point. and they just there was there was too much j just distance issues. You couldn't get enough out of a battery to make the car work.

Randy Lorensen [1:02:09]: Yeah, there was there was a lot of fight back, and I think you know, I th I think that that was the battlefield, right? I think those companies, the oil companies, did their best to kill that technology at that

Dr. John Oberg [1:02:20]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [1:02:21]: time too, from what I understand. I'm not super educated on that. all right, our final topic, and I think this one's controversial, at least it is to me, but you know, everybody says Gen Z is the wealthiest generation in history. Well, a recent thing from the St. Louis Fed that you you shared from from them earlier, John. But millennials and older Gen Zers made significant wealth gains in 2022. And you know there's a chart down here just saying that they're richer at the same time. I I'm not sure I believe this. I don't know that I see evidence of this around. And it would be very interesting though if this is really true and I'd I'd like to find more more data here. If this really is true, why is there so much division, right? Why is there because the anger is just growing and right now it seems like we go from group to be mad at to the next group to be mad at, and it seems like lately the boomers are catching catching hell at at this time from from young people. Or just they're they're they're legitimately angry. This is saying they don't have a reason to be angry. Right? But certainly they think they do. I'm not sure what I believe here.

Anthony Marino [1:03:32]: they the the one thing to believe is they they are angry and why are they angry? Sometimes it's misplaced anger. Okay. You have a situation where we we now live in a world where it is so easy to gather and disperse information. you talked to we talked about the the French Revolution earlier, you know, you know that that took years and years and years to build. Today A piece of news comes out, little data comes out, and in milliseconds, it's spread all over a community. And people get people are getting riled up faster and faster over things that may or may not be true. so I it a lot of it I think has to do with the society we're living in these days. So the data could be correct, but you know, the way things work, you People are influenced.

Randy Lorensen [1:04:29]: Yeah, I I I commented on something on X here a couple weeks ago about somebody was just really mad at the boomers and I was trying to trying to explain that it had more to do with money printing and devaluing the dollar and they, you know, the pain's real, but they're blaming the wrong people. So you know what happens, that gets that into my feed, and I started seeing things like this. And I would look at things and I would just hover over the person's name, and it was bot after bot after bot. after bot. Like almost every posting and then people were reposting it, but almost every one when you went back to the original post, it was somebody posting with very few followers, you know, them following some people, very clearly a bot, which leads me to believe this is most likely well, I I don't want to blame a country because I don't know, but I think we all know probably who I'm thinking who that would be. So it it just seems to be like this is the latest thing where they're trying to divide us instead of bringing us together. So all right, gentlemen. Well that's a wrap. Everybody, thank you for listening. You know it, help the algorithm, download, subscribe, tell your friends, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever it is. Search for Tales of Abundance. And until next week, just go out and spread a little abundance in the world.

Dr. John Oberg [1:05:45]: Thanks, Randy. Thanks, Anthony.

Randy Lorensen [1:05:47]: Thanks, John. Anthony.