#133 - Karl-Friedrich Israel - Inflation, Inequality, Socialism & the Future of Europe

What are the left wing reform proposals in this situation? They say, let's tax the rich. What are the libertarian reform proposals? Let's get rid of inflation. To some extent, that means the same thing. We would indeed indirectly tax the rich because we would prevent asset price inflation. So I think if people were just to come together and talk a bit about these issues, rationally, they would see that there might actually be room for a broad coalition, between people who are concerned with some of the issues that we've been discussing. That's funny. From the left and the right, and then instead of taxing the rich, you just get rid of inflationary policies, and I think the outcome would be much healthier. This episode is brought to you by our lead sponsor, a massive legends, Iron, the largest Nasdaq listed Bitcoin miner using 100 renewable energy. Now they're not just powering the Bitcoin network. They're also providing cutting edge computer resources for AI, all backed by renewable energy. Now my boy Danny and I have been working with their founders, Dan and Will, for quite some time now, and we've always been super impressed with their values, especially their commitment to local communities and sustainable computing power. So if you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute power, Iron is setting the standard. And so you can find out more at iron.com, which is iren.com. That is iren.com. Alright. Morning, Karl. How are you? Good morning, Peter. I'm fine. Good to see you. Thank you for inviting me. It was interesting time, to talk about economics and interesting time to talk about politics, especially in Europe. Would would you say the decline of Europe is now inevitable or can we reverse this trend? Well, it can always be reversed, I would say. Just depends on, the political will. And I don't see that to be there at the moment. But in principle, it could be reversed. It's all a matter of economic policies. If we put in place the right policies, we can reverse the trend. Does politics reward bad bad economic policies? Well, yes. Clearly. I mean, the incentives for politicians right now, such that you want to give, visible short term benefits to certain groups and ideally disperse the costs on a large part of the population and ideally, push the costs into the future. So one way of doing this is inflation. Right? Inflationary finance of government policies allows you to provide all kinds of benefits in the short run for selected groups. They are visible. You can point at those and say, look what we have done. And the cost will come later in the form of inflation and, higher government debt. I keep making an argument to, mainly people on the left, that if you vote for a party that has economic policies that are inflationary, you are making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Yet ideologically, you talk about …