If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to read Jeff Booth’s The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future…I cannot recommend it enough. We recently did an interview with him here. Jeff does a phenomenal job outlining how the exponential nature of technology is rapidly changing our world.
We know that technology and its affects on society are nothing new, however, the exponential growth in data aggregation and the way its changing our life is certainly accelerating.
Jeff walks the reader through how the inflationary economic paradigm is collapsing under its own weight, while the deflationary effects of rapidly advancing technology heap deflation onto goods and services faster than any central banks can keep up. Jeff’s primary thesis is that in order to de-risk this transition, a paradigm shift to a deflationary economic model is mandatory.
Technology fills in the gaps of inefficiencies in markets. The rate at which technology is now advancing promises a future of falling prices and abundance in nearly everything. But without a shift to a deflationary economic model, the benefits of these changes are shunted, and worse yet, the inflationary paradigm becomes increasingly unsustainable.
What we admire most about Jeff is his ability to reason from first principles when explaining these concepts. Even the most dogmatic of academic Keynesians would be hard pressed to refute Jeff’s logic. I think his book is a great way to get the conversation started about money, without requiring the audience to read through 3 or 4 treatises on a priori economics (although I still highly recommend it).
If the economic arguments aren’t enough for you, or if you are convinced that the 1971 data inflections were a whole lot more than just the severance of Bretton Woods, then Jeff’s book would be a great place for you to go next.
Listen to our interview or check out his book in the links above, and let us know what you think. If you’re looking for more reading on the subject, check this out.
Book of the Month:
The Ethics of Money Production by Jorg Guido Huulsman
-“In no period of human history, has paper money spontaneously emerged on the free market”
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