Time Preference

learning about human action

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

the wealth gap isn't widening because of capitalism

it's widening because asset owners benefit from monetary expansion while wage earners suffer from currency debasement

the cantillon effect isn't a market failure, it's a policy feature

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

stop pricing bitcoin in fiat

one bitcoin is only ever one bitcoin

what matters is the money they can’t control

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

keynesianism dominates high school economics worldwide

like a rampant disease, it infects more and more young minds

the only solution

is the austrian solution

fix the money, fix the world

[Handre @Handre]

But who will build the roads... in France?

While French politicians debate infrastructure spending, private highways consistently outperform their state-managed counterparts in every metric that matters. The contrast hits you immediately: smooth private motorways carry you swiftly from Paris to Lyon, then dump you onto crumbling state asphalt where orange cones and half-finished repairs create endless bottlenecks.

Private highway operators like Vinci Autoroutes maintain 8,000 kilometers of French motorways through direct user fees. No political interference. No budget committees deciding whether pothole repair can wait another fiscal year. When your revenue depends entirely on drivers choosing your roads, maintenance becomes urgent business rather than a bureaucratic afterthought.

State highways rely on tax funding filtered through layers of political calculation. Politicians prefer ribbon cuttings for new projects over unglamorous repair work. Bureaucrats face no immediate consequences when roads deteriorate because drivers have no alternative. The incentive structure guarantees inferior outcomes.

Private operators face immediate market discipline. Poor road conditions mean drivers seek alternate routes, killing revenue instantly. Customer complaints reach decision makers within hours, not election cycles. Quality maintenance protects profit margins while political highways drain budgets regardless of performance.

The French model proves what free market economists have argued for decades: property rights and profit motives solve coordination problems that democratic processes cannot. When you own something, you maintain it. When everyone owns something, no one does. Private road quality reflects ownership and accountability. Public road deterioration reflects diffused responsibility and political time horizons.

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

The socialist calculation problem still presents itself, yet socialists blindly ignore it.

Prices are required as signals for an economy to function.

No prices = No economy

[Saifedean Ammous @saifedean]

Time preference is the control knob of your destiny.

The hardness of your money is the control knob of your time preference.

Inflation destroys human civilization, as we see all around us, because it forces people to have a high time preference.

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

when money gets cheaper, mistakes get more expensive

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

every intervention creates the conditions for its successor

central planning fails for the same reason no one can download human preferences

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

and people still ask me why fiat is bad

[kylei 🧶 @ruledbymercuryy]

found my mom’s grocery receipt from 2006, and I just fell to my knees omg…🧎🏾‍♀️

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

the socialist doesn’t want to lift the poor up

he wants to pull the rich down

he’ll settle for the rubble

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

they promised to eat the rich

they ended up eating everyone else first

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

a low time preference lifestyle

requires an outlook on life

away from quick pleasures

closer to what matters

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

german deindustrialization is fifty years of intervention presenting its invoice simultaneously

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

the student debt crisis is what happens when the state subsidizes demand and calls it education policy

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

fascism is socialism

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

the fed broke inflation

then broke the banks trying to fix inflation

the austrian calls this the intervention chain

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

every covid era billionaire is a cantillon effect with a press release

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

the ai boom is the fed’s cheap credit finding its next host

the bust is already being funded

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

those who don’t understand the cantillon effect

can’t grasp modern day inequality

stop blaming it on “you can’t earn a billion dollars”

and fix the money to fix the world

[Time Preference @TimePreference_]

the pension crisis in every western country is the same story

promises made at artificially low discount rates

assets invested in a zero rate environment

the rate normalised

the gap became undeniable

the beneficiaries are discovering that a promise from a high time preference institution is worth the discount rate it was calculated at

[Peter McCormack 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧🇮🇪 @PeterMcCormack]

Gary, good to see you finally talking seriously about asset inflation, the real enemy of the voters. This is what is creating the deep wealth divide and this is what is hollowing out the country.

Truth is, we both benefit from it. We both sit on the winning side of a system of asset inflation as we both hold assets (I’m assuming you do because you’re rich init).

But your argument collapses here:
1. Blame the billionaires
2. Tax wealth harder bro

You can’t just conclude that every crisis since 2008 is blame the billionaires, unless:
1. You have no idea what you are talking about
2. Or you do, but you’re playing politics for someone else’s agenda
3. Or you’re just a commie and the shoe fits

All those people paying for your Patreon and watching your YouTube can’t be expected to know these things work, so let’s honest, yeah?

The 2008 crisis was a debt-fuelled financial system on crack, backstopped by governments and central banks.

I’m deeply suspicious of the role asset managers play, but you have to acknowledge the role that politicians play. If we keep electing half wits we will keep having problems.

Central banks pushed interest rates to zero, because their goal is to maintain power, juicing the system helps this. Any economist knows that the economy has cycles and rather than allowing them to play out, they have paid off credit cards with new credit cards. Great for you and I, shit for most people.

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon (thanks Milton), and the rich will always take advantage of this. But this is also the choice of the state.

What do you expect people to do with this cheap money, they’ll of course buy cheap assets. Everyone should.

That isn’t simply rich people being greedy, it’s the entirely predictable mathematical outcome of a monetary system designed around perpetual expansion of debt and currency.

You know this though. You do right? Please tell me you know this.

If the Green’s were ever to win power, they will face the same fiscal challenges - especially with all their spend promises, these will get more challenging if they think they can solve this through higher taxes and crushing business.

So guess what, they’ll have to inflate the money supply too. Argentina, Venezuela, how many examples do we need for how this plays out?

You correctly identify the symptom:
asset prices detached from ordinary living standards. Cool. High five.

Your weakness is moralising the cause. Emotion is good for clicks but we should strip away emotion and deal with facts.

Can we please agree that the problem is deeper than inequality.

The problem is a system where governments create the problem because their common goal is power, power means promising things they can’t afford - the resulting debasement extracts wealth upwards and the poor and middle class absorb the losses through purchasing power and wage stagnation.

Tax wealth harder sounds good when you have created the enemy, and even if you do (they’ll leave), even if they don’t leave (they will), if the underlying monetary architecture remains broken, all you’re doing is redistributing claims inside a structurally inflationary system. Hello socialism. Hello universal misery.

You cannot tax your way out of monetary dysfunction. No credible economist thinks this. And MMT is garbage.

We have so many problems that need fixing which can create long-term prosperity:
- Fix the energy crisis
- Fix the productivity crisis
- Fix the housing supply crisis
- Fix the regulation crisis
- Fix the demographic crisis
- Fix the thick politician crisis

You could confiscate half the wealth in Britain tomorrow and we would still not build enough homes, produce enough energy or generate enough productivity growth. I know these aren’t simple slogans, facts are hard.

We have a debt-saturated fiat system fused with an overgrown state that increasingly protects asset holders while hollowing out productive society.

Blaming the rich is cheap politics.