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This is Not Financial Advice
44 Plays1 year ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about boofing caffeine, running across non-Newtonian pools, do a deep dive into the meaning behind currency, and a bunch of other weird stuff in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Cult of the Lamb - Amdusias
Outro:
- Cult of the Lamb - Darkwood
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Bye!
Introduction to Soapstone
00:00:36
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going to tonight, Dave? I am Eepy and Aiki. So I will start off low energy until I get into the rhythm. Around the 15 or 20 minute mark, you'd be like, Oh, did Dave say he wasn't feeling good? Mm hmm. Be like, that doesn't sound like him.
Decaf vs. Energy Drinks
00:01:00
Speaker
um I have some nice decaf here. I'm going to ask you this question and you can answer it. That's how the question works. Thanks for breaking that one down, bud. Do you ever, do you ever drink decaf and you find that you kind of like get peped up almost like you were drinking caffeinated coffee?
00:01:22
Speaker
No. Okay. That's just me then. I also haven't had it in a while. So it's hard to say. Yeah. Because typically my caffeine stuff is just energy drinks because I'm like, oh, no preparation involved. not My favorite. I'm very lazy at times. um But when I was making coffee at home, I was just doing calf. That's fair. Yeah. I mean, there's not much of a reason to even go for decaf unless you are addicted to coffee, as some people may or may not be, and they want to like move some of the caffeine out of their system throughout the day so they can actually get sleep. Can't empathize with any of that. like That's not me, obviously, but um decaf is nice for that. But I'm pretty alert. I'm pretty awake.
00:02:11
Speaker
I still miss ah Jonesing off of the the local brunch place by where we used to live. Yeah. They had a French press of some whatever the Brazilian, you know, they always advertise like, oh, it's yeah it's ah exotic. um But it tasted good, but it was also a very strong taste.
00:02:34
Speaker
So I would like sip some throughout the course of like three days. yeah I would ration it out. But like for me, I'm like, ah, I like the the vibes of coffee. Even if it's not, you know, like hot and fresh, you're like, ah, the aroma. It just it hit a certain spot of catharsis and taste. Yeah.
00:02:55
Speaker
where I'm like, oh, I can just ration and that all out. And it's also like a little hit of caffeine every time. Microdosing caffeine, if you will. Pretty, pretty much. I mean, that's the ah if you want just caffeine, coffee is such an inefficient way to get it. Right. There are drinks out there, even ones that don't kill you in two servings. Shout out to Panera. But like there are drinks out there that have crazy amounts of caffeine that are just so much more efficient to ingest compared to coffee.
00:03:24
Speaker
Like, coffee will get you around 100 milligrams, a little bit less depending on the size and the weight's brewed. But, like, in the US, you get 200 milligram caffeine beverages, like, no problem. Yeah. I mean, I guess it is literally marketed as it's an energy drink. It's supposed to be for energy.
00:03:47
Speaker
of But I also don't want to like stop my heart in the morning. Like I can't have, as I've said before on here, like I can't have a full one in the morning and then just be chill. Right. Like I need a lot of stuff to balance it out. Otherwise my stomach's going to feel gross and be like, we need food to balance this out. My heart's going to be pounding. I want to be going to like a cold sweat. I need like a slow release caffeine throughout the day. Right. Like an IV trip. Hmm.
00:04:19
Speaker
That could work.
Coffee Culture and Beans
00:04:20
Speaker
Um, yeah, the issue with the drink is if it's there, you're probably going to just unconsciously sip it. So even if you're trying to ration it out, what you would really need is a.
00:04:31
Speaker
low concentration, um, coffee that like has very little caffeine, and but I don't know if that's much of a thing. I know that people go for like decaf, which reduces the, um, caffeine in a cup to like two milligrams or something nearly kind inconsequential. Um, it's almost all of it. Um, but I don't know if there's like, oh yeah, this cup of coffee has like 10 milligrams of caffeine, 20 milligrams of caffeine.
00:04:58
Speaker
my My elementary math skills are saying mix them together and now you have half as much caffeine in the total volume. There's like there's like two, i so i I don't know all of this, but I know some things. like There's two major beans that are used for coffee, but like overwhelmingly, predominantly. I don't even know how to say it, but it's the Arabica type of bean. Basically, if you have a taste for coffee, it's basically that bean. It's the most ubiquitous a type of coffee bean that's used like everywhere. um
00:05:38
Speaker
And so also, like watch out for climate change because it's the one that's going to be hit the most. So they literally are like, OK, maybe we should diversify just so our industry doesn't get wiped out. Water levels rise or something like that. But um that's fun. um But because of that, you might be able to mix and match, you know, like, oh, it's the same type of being, you know, similar roasting strat, maybe.
00:06:07
Speaker
could work. yeah I don't know how it tastes, but you could try. I was just thinking of like a, my initial idea of like if I had to ration it out is getting one of those quote unquote party hats that you have at like sports events where like you put in like two beers and you have like a really long ah Bendable straw that like goes to your mouth. You're just drinking out of your hat, right? That would be good Yeah, but essentially like you have like a very small straw going like into Your mouth. Mmm, and it's just very slowly drips. God, you're not really even drinking You're just occasionally like you're always like you've built up too much saliva. Yeah But it tastes like caffeine Interesting or coffee or what have you
00:06:55
Speaker
I'm sure someone's done it. I have some concerns for the potential effects of that. You could just boof it. You could just boof it. Yeah, that's the most efficient.
00:07:06
Speaker
um Yeah. Imagine like
00:07:12
Speaker
trying to think of the situation where this would happen, but like just maybe like skinny dipping. But for what for whatever reason, like you think it's a pool of water, but it's in fact just all coffee. Ah, okay.
00:07:27
Speaker
So there was, it wasn't literally coffee, but you are describing something that I did in our Cyberpunk campaign once, which was had a hallucinogenic extract that was basically stolen from a company, but it was like a massive shipment of it. And somewhere,
00:07:44
Speaker
located in the facility and they already got samples. the The player characters had already gotten samples of this. It was mixed in with a water um and it caused them to hallucinate that they were fighting
Exploring Gases and Fluids
00:07:54
Speaker
like monster energy cans and sharks and squids and all this other stuff. um Kind of just a just for fun hallucinogen trip and stuff like that. Then they found a pool full of it. And this is like i was I was hopeful that there were some people that were cautious enough to just like take a step back and evaluate. um And they were, thankfully. Someone wanted to jump in, and I was like, I had prepared over here. It's like, here is how difficult it is to survive if this stuff touches your skin over your entire body all at once. And it would have been a tough time.
00:08:36
Speaker
but um There's very few substances you should put over the entirety of your body Uh-huh. Yeah as a rule of thumb. This wasn't one of them I think someone one of one of their player characters just to finish the story dipped her hand into it I'm like it got up her arm I made her make like a resist drugs and torture check, which is a check in cyberpunk I'm pretty sure it knocked her out for four hours It was It was a lot. I just imagine like being tripping balls like that and then going to shake somebody else's hand who doesn't know. And they're like, you just literally get contact high. Yeah. Architecture and Helsinki made a song about it. It's just called Contact High. There's not much more to it than that. I thought it was going to be like some depth up there. You're like, no, it's the song name. I mean, it's also a lyric in the song, but predominantly the name. Yeah.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah. Do you remember watching the movie? I'm going to feel so bad. It was a Robin Williams movie where he was. Which one Peter Pan? No. This is out of the way. You son of a bitch.
00:09:53
Speaker
It was he was essentially like a clown and he was trying to make like terminally ill patients. Oh, my gosh. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Happy laugh. Yeah, it was. Patch Adams. Patch Adams. Yeah, you got it. Took as bad I got there. But there was like a lady who had like a wish of.
00:10:15
Speaker
She's now widowed, unfortunately. I'm sorry, go ahead. But she was like super old. Like what's what's her one wish? She's like, oh, I always wish I could like swim in like a pool of spaghetti. And so like they got like a kiddie pool and they filled it with spaghetti and they like helped walk her into it and she was just overjoyed at the idea for this fantasy coming to life. And I've always been curious about doing something like that. Right. Or like jello or just anything that's not water because that's like your most common thing. You're in a bathroom.
00:10:46
Speaker
In a pool, you go swimming somewhere. Like, like, but what if we did other things? What would that be like? Right. I wouldn't want to spend three thousand dollars on pasta or cello or whatever. The one that interests me the most is non Newtonian fluid. Get like a I would be worried I would drown. and Well, you don't want it to be deep. No, you don't want to fill a full pool with this because you will die.
00:11:11
Speaker
um It's basically designed to kill you, actually, if you fall into it. But what was the the OG? It was like baking soda or baking powder and water, I think. I think it's yeah, just baking soda and water. Yeah. Did you ever try it at home? Oh, yeah, absolutely. yeah yeah I love that stuff. Like I hopefully hopefully everyone has this because it should be part of the core experience for adolescents.
00:11:43
Speaker
But like if you punch it or you try to move it rapidly, it's basically like a solid. um And it'll kind of like rip and tear, not like doom, but more like um like dry, sort of dry, silly putty or something like that. A Play-Doh would be a better expression. That's like kind of drying. But like if it's not fast, then it's like a slime.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's just so cool because you're like, how does this exist? How does this work? Because as you're growing up as a kid, you're like, OK, here are the basic shapes. Here's some basic, very basic ah physics principles you don't even realize are for physics yet. um And then this comes up in like an episode of Zoom or Bill Nye and you're like, holy shit.
00:12:31
Speaker
And then you're like, oh, it can't be real, right? Then you try it just like you tried the healing with the balloons. So I can actually alter my voice, is it? Full on chipmunk. Yeah. And it's the the the dream for me is actually to have a larger pool of it, but it doesn't have to necessarily be deep, but you could run across it. That's the thing. Oh, yeah. As long as you ran, you could run across. Doesn't matter how deep it is. The issue is if it does start to.
00:12:59
Speaker
like pull you in, any effort that you take that's rapid to try to like resist it is going to try is going to locally solidify the stuff where you're trying to exert more force, more more pressure against it. And then you die. That's why it can't be. That's why it can't be deep. um There was that you mentioned helium, though, and my wife was actually talking about this recently, like the reason that helium is not dangerous to us because I never even thought about this. I was playing like oxygen not included and it led to this conversation somehow, but like helium is lighter than oxygen. So if you breathe it in, it's in your lungs or whatever it wants to escape. So when you talk, it goes out. um But if you had a gas that was heavier than helium,
Currency and its Value Discussion
00:13:53
Speaker
You could not get the same sort of effect because it would stay in your lungs and you would die unless you were upside down, in which case it would drain out. And I was just like, yeah, it really only works and it's not like crazy suicidal because it's lighter than oxygen. I never even thought of that. Yeah, I just assumed it was fine because people didn't die doing it when I watched them do it. Yeah.
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, it is crazy how much stuff is in our world like that. I was watching a little YouTube short of somebody messing around with a heavier gas. And again, like you can't see it. It's literally a gas. yeah um But they're like, hey, let's put this little aluminum foil boat on here. And it was just floating because it was sitting on the gas.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah. um And then like the assistant was just literally like taking and a pitcher that was empty and just kind of scooping out the gas and pouring it into the boat and started to sink. Which again, it looks just like an optical illusion because yeah you can't actually see the gas itself, but you see the effects of it. It is crazy. Man, I wish I would have learned things in school.
00:15:10
Speaker
I did. But a lot of this stuff I could have picked up. But i'd I'd rather learn like fun, interesting things and like, hey, this is you have to memorize this and it won't be applicable at all. Ever. Right. Yes. Arithmetic. like What the crap. Anyways, only a little bitter about that one. One, two, skip a few, you know. There you go. Last number. Ninety nine a hundred. i can't I don't know. I have no concept of four digit numbers in beyond. yeah I think we all had that. You know, I'm sure I did have that that teacher that was like, you're not always going to have a calculator with you.
00:15:48
Speaker
And every morning, like clockwork, they come out, they pick up their morning paper, and then I throw my phone at their face, right? It's a learning experience for all of us. but
00:16:01
Speaker
You can't, unfortunately, use that argument now because technology has advanced so much. You can pretty much have anything be portable now. Yeah. Which I can't even fully appreciate. It's just it's been a part of my lifetime.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I've definitely seen some technological changes. We no longer use VCRs. Um, so like media, they found a way to be more efficient with it and store it. But yeah, I'm sure if I took a step back and to a fully appreciate it. Oh yeah. Cause the only thing I can really notice and like talk about is inflation. Like I remember when like a can of soda was like,
00:16:45
Speaker
A quarter or 50 cents typically depends on which machine you went to. Um, and now like a can of Coke, if you get it like at any place is like, Oh, that's going to be $3. Yeah. Yeah. It's just three, three bucks for a Coke. Wow. Yeah. Something bad.
00:17:03
Speaker
No, i I definitely saw that. I don't i don't see like soda vending machines that much, but I saw them fairly recently somewhere. I can't remember exactly where and I was like, ah, okay, that was a good indicator. thing Things are, you know, 50% more and than they used to be. And there's a certain convenience to like um having two quarters for a can of soda or something like that.
00:17:26
Speaker
I remember like, I'm sure I've talked about redners ad nauseam, but with drt we'd drive. We'd bike down the hill. There was a park down there and then across on the street ah from the park, there was just a redner's. And I remember being like, oh, if we wanted to like grab something, it was usually going to be fairly cheap. Maybe maybe had a couple of dollars in our pockets. But if we ever needed more money,
00:17:50
Speaker
It was not difficult to find change. It wasn't it wasn't just ah littered all over the ground, but like you could look around for like five, 10 minutes and probably find a quarter or two. Yeah. So you could you could sustain yourself if you needed to. You could I could spend the awareness for money. It changed like actual coinage um is dang near useless. I. um I don't know if I want to admit this publicly. um There are often times where I will throw away coins in protest that we we use it at all yeah because it's stupid. yeah We could even just like have less denominations of coins and that would be a step in the right direction.
00:18:42
Speaker
um but holy shit, I hate it so much. It takes up so much space. It smells bad. Everybody and their mother has touched it. Like it carries, so I mean, Paper Mike does too. Yeah. Just carries a lot of bacteria. And it's like, it's at least fabric, right? Is there not a better way for us to be doing this? Oh yeah. We just, you don't. And that business. I want to put the, the large,
00:19:10
Speaker
odd What would you call it if you put a coin into essentially like a large funnel? And it kind of just starts taking a spiral down. Oh, I know you're talking about like the sorting machines and stuff like a coin star. Well, coin star is where you just dump a huge pile of change, but they had like these, at least in renders, they had like a hey, this is for mini drugs.
00:19:35
Speaker
We just put like a coin in and it would slide down on the outside of the funnel and that would keep going in and in and in got very slowly. ah But it was fun to like put in a couple of coins in sequence.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what those are called, but I know what you're talking about. They're essentially just large curved funnels. Yeah. It's like, hey, can we just take people's money and they just provide it willingly? Yeah, pretty much. As long as the money is a cool trick, it's yours. Yeah, I remember there was um years ago, I don't know exactly when they started going around, but people started comparing like to explain how some people had a lot more wealth than others, the like how much how high of a denomination um a bill would have to be for them to like see it on the ground and then pick it up and for it actually to be worth their time. Because like when I was growing up, like you wouldn't leave a quarter on the ground. and like courty Quarter's good. Quarter's like, you just buy a piece of candy for a quarter.
00:20:39
Speaker
um And now it's like, what am I going to do with a quarter? um it's It's not worth anything, basically. like I can't get anything at the lowest ummin denominations of cost where a quarter is going to help me. um Paper money, I'm sure I'd probably consider.
00:21:02
Speaker
but I'd also be very suspicious if i just I wasn't too gross of like a five or a 10. Mm hmm. And there wasn't anybody else like around to be like, oh, it could be theirs. Right. Type thing is like i can see grabbing that like a hobo with fishing line attached to it behind a bush somewhere. And he's always stronger than me. Yeah, the fishing line doesn't snap from my way. Yeah, nothing, nothing like that.
00:21:31
Speaker
um But yeah, it's interesting to think about. That's helium though.
00:21:41
Speaker
Helium could be a form of currency. There you go. There you go. I mean, in a, in science fiction, eventually you reach a place where like Money kind of, it still has its unit. So our money isn't backed by anything. It used to be backed by gold. And now money is meaningful because you can buy things with it.
00:22:07
Speaker
But it has no other intrinsic value, right? Yeah. um Cryptocurrency is just this jacked up to a million percent. It's like, depending on the currency, you can't spend it on anything. And the value is entirely just whatever the group thinks it is.
00:22:25
Speaker
um But if you get macro enough with it, eventually like raw resources and time and labor are the things that actually have value.
00:22:39
Speaker
And the same way that gold was. And so sci-fi kind of like sometimes uses this idea where it's like, um, um, conventional people, like they don't really use money anymore. Cause you know, maybe their needs are provided for if it's Star Trek, um, or something like that. Um, but if there's big trade going on, it's in these massive like resource shipments. And so that's how it gets back to helium. Cause maybe helium is the end currency, you know?
00:23:08
Speaker
What was the, uh, I would much rather actually, I don't know if that's true. If I want to trade through like a barter, where it's like, Oh, we need to agree upon something of equal value. Cause I don't know what I have around, right? I would have to spend my money to get things that could be tradable and a value. Mm-hmm.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah. And the only, uh, it's worth noting that this whole like thought experiment or like economic experiment really only exists in a post scarcity society. Because if people have anything on Maslow's hierarchy of needs that they still need to accomplish before self actualization, like food, housing, protection, all that stuff. Like if you don't have that, someone's going to try to sell it to you.
00:24:00
Speaker
basically. Right. And then money exists. Then money has a purpose again. Um, it's only once everyone has those things that money for your average person becomes meaningless. Hmm. I mean, let me know when we get to that point. Yeah. I feel like it's really easy to turn on the news and be like, ah,
00:24:26
Speaker
There's, there's some issues here. Yeah, no, no. Yeah. It's a, it is purely a hypothetical and there is no guarantee that humanity will reach that point because this is a sci-fi utopia. Yes. Right. And there are things in sci-fi that have been brought into reality. Um, and there are other things in sci-fi where it's like, I don't really know if that was going to happen or not. It's not a sure thing, but Imagine there had to be a time before currency was ever used, where someone's like, dear God, it's going to be a real pain in the ass to have to like haggle with different people all the time and not have the same exchange rate from person to person. It's a very well-exploited idea.
00:25:17
Speaker
Because like something not becomes the like the quote unquote, the stuff, the sarge, the stone of Jordan from Diablo to yeah this is your unit of currency and value and things we measured in this many dollars, this many stones of Jordan, this many something.
00:25:37
Speaker
So anyways, this is now the currency episode, but that you raise a good point. And prior to the introduction of currency, I say this as an amateur fake historian.
00:25:49
Speaker
um The advantage was, the primary advantage was, it's very difficult to hoard wealth. If you live in a nomadic society, um then maybe you can have some number of tents. Maybe you can have some number of camels. Maybe you know you can exchange some of those tents or camels or whatever you're using um for people to help you out. But it's very difficult to concentrate wealth all into yourself.
00:26:17
Speaker
and The definition of wealth is very different in that case because it's literally things that you tangibly can have and own and have possession of, right? On the very, very far opposite end of this, we have online banking and now it's like you do not need any sort of tangible attachment to something to be immensely astronomically wealthy.
00:26:45
Speaker
Well, yeah, because essentially, again, everything was given a value. So like, let's take those camels and tents, for example, and basically just got consolidated into units of something. And then we tracked those units. This sounds like I'm high and I'm not abstractly talking about currency and economics, but.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, still, it's very much um whatever is agreed upon. Right. In your example, it would be backed by camels, right? Like if you had an intermediary currency, maybe you had like coins or sheets of paper or something like that, that's kind of difficult to make or easy to put your watermark on. You'd be like, this is exchangeable for two camels.
00:27:32
Speaker
okay And there you go. Now you have a currency that other people would actually expect and use. But if you tried to introduce a currency and it didn't have an intrinsic value in this sort of society, they'd be like, why would we ever use that? right See, but here's the thing, right? But that did happen with cryptocurrency. It did. Yes. And it still boggles my mind that Someone's like, hey, let's just roll with this. And then some people go so deep into it. But I feel like for the most part, I've really only seen it turn into profiteering and scams where people will essentially falsely inflate the value of something by having your community buy into that currency. And then they just kind of sell off the whole thing while it has value. Yeah.
00:28:26
Speaker
And and like for the non-core cryptocurrencies, that happens all the time. right yeah like It's literally called a rug pull. It's a Ponzi scheme. It's whatever you want to call it. It's um artificially inflating the value by making giving people the impression that it has a lot of value or will have a lot of value in the future and then you cash out with whatever your share is um once that value goes up for a currency that actually matters that you actually care about um or can be used for other things. Crypto is interesting because like even even early, and like there were a couple places that considered allowing you to pay
00:29:16
Speaker
um With it. I think like the go-to story for me was like there was a ah local pizza place and the guy there was like kind of familiar with currency or whatever, and he allowed people to buy a pizza for like 50 Bitcoin. And that's a lot of money right now, but it really wasn't then, right? Like 50 Bitcoin, i think of I think one Bitcoin is like $10,000 right now, something like that. So a $50,000 pizza, is like it's got to be pretty good.
00:29:47
Speaker
um But it was all speculative. That's, that's the word for it. Right. Certain sites will accept Bitcoin like Newegg, I think does. And some other online markets might, um, because they can immediately turn around and cash that out. Or they have a little bit of faith for one reason or another, that it's not immediately going to go to zero.
00:30:12
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's again perceived as retaining some value. Exactly. And to be fair, to give a little bit of credit to crypto, like it does not It's not like our real United States dollar currency is backed by anything either. But so many people use it. So many people have faith that it's going to retain some value. I mean, and then it's long established. Exactly. I think it's the main distinction there.
00:30:52
Speaker
and it's And establishment, like, buy-in, stakeholdership, like, is really important when it comes to a currency. Because if I could get paid in the equivalent amount of US dollars or or Bitcoin at the same rate, you know, or whatever, I can actually do stuff with the US dollars. Bitcoin, I basically have to either sell or sit on more or less, right? Like, and that's kind of it.
00:31:16
Speaker
so The only reason you ask for Bitcoin in that scenario is you want to sit on it. You know, you want to see if other people will have more faith on it in it for the future. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. But there was no way that people would have faith in as many currencies as we're coming out. Still blows my mind that we have literally so many currencies just in the world. Yeah.
00:31:42
Speaker
Cause like technically there is the possibility that we could have just had still a universal currency, but for one reason or another, I obviously have not looked this up. um I have, I can jump in once you, once you got the question.
00:31:59
Speaker
But like between us and Japan, they use yen, you and it's a lot more yen for something than it is dollars. Yes. Right? Now, I can't say how that came about, but there are lots of other countries as well that have just different forms of currency.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, there are a lot that go into both There's a lot of things that go into currency, right? So there's the supply, which is important because say like the US Treasury, um it only prints so much money.
00:32:38
Speaker
um If it prints more money than it otherwise was planning to, then it devalues the currency that already exists um because it's providing this money to other institutions, to banks, well to whatever. um you know Oftentimes in the case of loans, but it's putting more money into circulation.
00:32:58
Speaker
um There's money that's lost because it's just like the paper wore out. That's a fairly small amount um compared to, you know, everything that's digital now. um My question though is how do you keep track of that? The stuff you so the stuff that wears out or how much gets printed?
00:33:21
Speaker
Well, like how much money is in circulation? So like, let's say there's a thousand single dollar bills throughout the United States. Yeah. We know that each one is a dollar, right? Now, let's say they printed five times as much. So now we have and instead of a thousand, we have, I mean, technically six thousand for just doing additive.
00:33:45
Speaker
So if we look at it, if we have 6,000 and the base used to be 1,000, obviously that $1 is not worth as much now right because the supply has increased so much. But how do you keep track of that?
00:34:03
Speaker
i mean so it it's I believe, and I could be wrong, but again, I'm a fake a money person, that it's based around inflation. so They want to keep inflation a certain percentage. I think the ideal is around 2% a year.
00:34:20
Speaker
um but But money being printed isn't the only thing that, and and loaned out and stuff like that, isn't the only thing that impacts inflation, like interest rates do as well, how much are consumers spending, whatever. But the key is, at the end of it, there's a whole bunch of math right here in the middle, right? At the end of all of this math, they're like, we think that if we print this much money, it will have this impact on the economy.
00:34:48
Speaker
A good example of this to take it out of the abstract and bring it back to reality is the um stimulus checks that went out during the pandemic because that money basically just appeared. right like It was just added to the economy in ways that like money generally isn't. right like It usually goes to banks and stuff like that in the form of loans and they lend it out and all that jazz.
00:35:14
Speaker
um But just every average Shmo and Joe and everybody like that got a check, or it depends on like the number of people in their house or whatever, um and could use that to buy something that they wanted to buy or pay rent was the main goal um for a lot of people, and that's the reason it went out.
00:35:33
Speaker
um But it was money they didn't have beforehand, so naturally impacted people's spending habits, and there was some impact on um inflation because of that. Because if everyone has more money than the stuff that people will can buy naturally and needs to be more expensive.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just still I guess in a gray little box of not exactly sure how that is all determined. I mean, it's also it's not like they absolutely know, right? There's going to be some speculation to it where it's like, oh, this is the amount of money that we created this year. This is the amount that we think we should make this year. and I'm sure it's not in a year by year basis, but.
00:36:17
Speaker
Um, like they can be wrong and and they have been right. Like sometimes there's people hate when inflation really goes up, but if inflation goes up and people still spend money, then economists still consider the economy healthy. It's, it's a hot market. Basically it's, if inflation goes up and people stop spending money that they start to be like, Oh, cause spending money is growth. Um,
00:36:50
Speaker
But yeah, economy, it's a fun thing.
00:36:56
Speaker
if If you hear me being silent, it's because I do not know ah that much. No, it's it's it's it's all good. I mean, I don't either. And um I don't that's I actually don't even have to make the disclaimer. But this isn't financial advice because I'm not in a financial advisor. here So I'm free. I can say whatever I want and get away with aha but it. But there is um I mean, obviously, local governments treat currency differently, but you mentioned the idea of having like a single currency for the world. um That would only really ever be possible if the creators of that currency, like where it was coming from, could determine like a common source of value.
00:37:43
Speaker
And that's not at all possible right now. Now it's like there's a lot of I don't think there could be like one country. It's like, oh, this will be the standard of currency. Yeah. And what we will own how however much gets printed. Also, we'll do the printing that comes from our economy. Like that's that's going to it's going to come from us and other people are going to use it. Yeah, you're not going to get that until you militarily conquer everyone else on the planet, basically, which brings me to my next point. Right.
00:38:11
Speaker
um space laser. That's all I'm saying.
00:38:17
Speaker
ah yeah and There's also people who would who would really gain from having their economy merged into a bigger economy. Like, the EU is a perfect example of this. like um Countries that have their own weak currency, but they use the euro, or they're they're they're relatively weak economies, but they use the euro are basically uplifted by the fact that the euro is so valuable in all these different countries. But if you're outside of that,
00:38:49
Speaker
you can run into situations where like maybe your government changes and they're like old currency but can't use that anymore here's the new hotness this is the new currency this is the stuff you have to use or we want to be rich let's just print a trillion dollars we own the government i would like to be a trillionaire a trillion dollars and they're like well I care a little bit less about dollars now that there's a trillion of them, right? In your example, there was a thousand out there.
Insurance and Business Landscape
00:39:21
Speaker
um So you kind of can't do stuff like that or else the trust goes away and people realize it's all made up and nothing matters. so Yeah, it is. I feel like a lot of things, if you spend like five minutes just doing like a deep dive and just having like ah a mental experiment, exploration, a lot of shit's fucking crazy. Oh, yeah.
00:39:44
Speaker
but A lot of it comes back to like human psychology. And for the most part, people do what they keep doing. They don't necessarily question what they do day to day. So the fact that I don't see any of my money, it just magically appears in the bank and then it vanishes when bills come due. I don't think about that, how much money is actually going through that pipeline. It just happens, right?
00:40:13
Speaker
I also don't budget so I get you. yeah i I have a spreadsheet and it shows me what the numbers are. but like unless the end of there's, there, there's a value at the bottom, which is like, how much money did I make after what I spent? And sometimes that number is just a number with a dollar sign. And other times there's parentheses around it. And those are the two States I know of whether things are going well or poorly. Yeah. It's.
00:40:53
Speaker
I mean, money is like an easy example of how the fuck does this work and it's just because we say it does. But like business kind of operates the same way. Yeah. Where like a lot of it is just agreed upon stuff.
00:41:10
Speaker
um it I got to stop. I'm really going to sound like a crackpot as far as like. all but We live in a society is what dave' started with society. I think insurance is a scam. um Yeah. Like there are so many things, institutions where like it was just enough people agreed on this one thing and and other people are like, yeah, sure. I guess. And it's just been that way ever since. Right. Yeah.
00:41:48
Speaker
It is kind of we live in a society. I think that's probably the way that is the take. But youre you you are correct. You are correct. Like a lot of that stuff is not. It's not beneficial to the consumer or the end user or however you want to classify the person who's consuming the service, um because somewhere along the chain, it became more beneficial for the company that runs it to run it in a different way. Yeah.
00:42:17
Speaker
Like the idea of insurance, not actually crazy. It's just like, oh, it's kind of expensive when my car gets all donked up and I'd like my car to not be all donked up. How do, how do I, how do I pay money for that?
00:42:35
Speaker
But paying into a common pool of money so that someone can take care of that for you only works if that company actually covers you when something happens. yeah And it's also not in their best interest to continue to hoard wealth like a dragon if they offer all of these claims or if they honor all of these claims. So.
00:43:01
Speaker
It's a mess. And you could also make an argument that because insurance exists, that means mechanics can charge more money because now they're not dealing with, you know, Joe Schmo, who doesn't have that much money, but rather they know there's going to be a claim, but whatever. I'm not, it's all a conspiracy.
00:43:23
Speaker
All I'm saying, man, is it doesn't add up, man. And the reason it doesn't add up is because they never taught us arithmetic. We've come full circle.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah. um Before I go full crazy, I will just say I think the world is a. A very interesting dynamic place all across the board. um And you really don't have to look far to see how crazy slash how beautiful some stuff is. We can do better. That's that's the optimists take on it. Yes, we definitely can. We can do better.
00:44:04
Speaker
um Earth 2.0 that one we're gonna nail it. I'm gonna make the same mistakes We're not gonna hoard wealth. We're not gonna form banks when I all you can do other stuff. We're gonna make it Day two, I want to kill those people why I don't they're not close to me geographically uh-huh Immediately starts war ahha We just I just want a group for the people that are close to me. It's gonna be relatively short It's gonna be based off of I played a game. We'll call it tribe tribe. There you go. We'll call it a tribe The idea that we dislike other people, tribalism. There we go. We're good. we're We're figuring it out as we go. One thing I've always been fascinated by, and this kind of goes back to the ah rug pulling scheme is how people make money in general, right? Right. So like I am employed. So there is a company that makes money and they pay me.
00:44:59
Speaker
and There are a lot of other people who are self-employed where they need to like interact the customer directly. yeah um What's really interesting about artists, whether they be like drawing artists or musical artists or actors and actresses, like there needs to be a certain degree of People liking you and getting like the the goodwill of the public especially figure small local business, right? Like you have to stand above the competition to be able to sell ah your goods or services to people, right?
00:45:37
Speaker
and it just It takes a lot of working commitment to do that because there are so many people, there are so many other businesses. yeah like If you want to start a restaurant, where's it going to be? What are you selling that's different from what somebody else is? How do you draw those people in? um this Again, I'm lazy because I'm an employee. I am not right running a business. um But it's it's always interesting to see all those variables and factors come together and to be like, oh, this person became successful because of this.
00:46:14
Speaker
right Yeah, it's it's interesting to think about because like we don't live yet entirely in a cyberpunk universe, but we are approaching. We're getting some of it's starting to rhyme a little bit, right? Like one of the things in cyberpunk is that these corporations have faces.
00:46:36
Speaker
almost always the CEO. And it's just like when you think of that corporation and you think of a person associated with the corporation, that's the face, right? um And for a lot of these olds,
00:46:50
Speaker
ah for previous generations of businesses and things like that, you can actually identify a person who maybe like even established the business. I don't think that this, no no judgments about this person's integrity or anything else that they've planned or have like have done or whatever, Papa John's, right? Founded by a guy. He's not with the company anymore, but it was founded by a guy, um Jeff Bezos, in a garage.
00:47:20
Speaker
founded by you know a guy so like There is a success story of people who started from literally nothing, saw some opportune. Well, I say literally nothing, but maybe there was significant financial contributions, I don't know, comparatively nothing. um right um And it exploded into like Amazon. right It doesn't matter how much you started with. If you compare that to where Amazon is at right now, it does not make any sense. But they did it. It's astronomical.
Human Ingenuity and Technological Progress
00:47:52
Speaker
Um, and I think part of that is like, there's a little bit of that old, like, Oh yeah, I could start a business and that's my, my railway to success. But we only see the people that like escape the stratosphere. Right. Like we don't see all of the mom and pop stores that closed during the pandemic. Um, we see the Jeff Bezos, we see the Papa John. That's very funny considering both of those people together, Bill Gates, whatever. Right. Um,
00:48:21
Speaker
Yeah, there's not that much room on the podium once you get that high. um And even even the names that you don't see, like you you you work for a company presumably and they have a board or a CEO or something like that. Those people are really high up. Like it's very rare for a person to get that high up. It is not a sure thing.
00:48:54
Speaker
Yeah. But again, like kudos to human ingenuity and everything, because like at a point, these things were either not possible because of technology or just not possible because like the infrastructure did not exist yet. Or there really wasn't a demand for that service or need. Right. um I think a lot of times about the, as seen on TV infomercials, you watch it like 2 AM and then you have like a very small stand in a store. It's like, Oh, that one back scratcher that also tickles your balls or whatever it is. One end cap yeah dedicated to products. But again, like it was successful enough because somebody or enough people saw a need for said product and determined value in it. And we're like, yeah, we would get that. Right.
00:49:50
Speaker
But again, like as we keep progressing as humans, we keep doing more and more crazy stuff. like There's always going to be a degree of advancement. Right. Yes, we fuck up a lot and do stupid things.
00:50:07
Speaker
I gotta get off this fucking soapbox, dude. My feet are... I thought your legs would be getting tired at this point. I just get into like weird ranscations. I gave Dave a cane 15 minutes ago. He's leaning heavily. But this is something I learned recently that I was not aware of, but this kind of speaks in the same regards to that is apparently for PhDs,
00:50:32
Speaker
um to get a PhD, you actually have to do something beyond what is currently in that field of study. Yeah.
00:50:44
Speaker
So that's kind of nuts. like You actually have to push the boundaries of that field of study to get a PhD, which means everybody who has a fucking PhD has actually advanced something. It's not like they just tinkered around with something. They're like, what if I put a spoon and a fork together and made a sport? Well, that was someone's PhD. We can't do that. Maybe it was. You can't do that one now. Most useless tool to man.
00:51:08
Speaker
um I mean, it saw wide adoption. I guarantee you that if the person who invented the spork still has royalties and rights to the sport, that is a wealthy person. I can't remember the last time I saw a spork. It was Taco Bell for me, but they don't really use it much anymore. Bendy straws. That person is probably rich.
00:51:26
Speaker
yeah um But yeah yeah, you have to do actual research yeah to do it do a PhD. You can't just grab other people's results and slam them together into your idea. You have to go out there and form ideas around a topic. I mean, you can use other. You should use other people's basis. Yeah. Like, yes. These are things that are.
00:51:49
Speaker
proven to be true within a field of study. ah This is what we know so far. What can we extrapolate from that? Exactly. With these inputs, here's an output someone else hasn't suggested. Yeah.
00:52:02
Speaker
But yeah, people who have that drive to come up with something brand new or to just push beyond the boundaries of not even like humanity, but like just what's within their bubble or their group. Right. Is always impressive to me.
00:52:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it really is. I think um there was ah earlier in the episode, we talked about like post-scarcity and jazz like that. I mentioned Star Trek and like what you're describing is literally the core, the beating heart of Star Trek, because like Star Trek is a ship full of people who are very capable with very capable technology, who are paid zero dollars for what they do.
00:52:50
Speaker
and all volunteered to go off into no man's land to figure stuff out. And as it turns out, it turns into a bunch of interpersonal human problems and things like that. I mean, and anyways, because it's a TV show, but like, that's such a cool idea, right? The idea that like Captain Picard doesn't get a salary is insane to, you know, to my mind, but like,
00:53:19
Speaker
No, it's just because he's really good at flying the ship and people trust him and he's proven himself and ah he wants to go out and accomplish this goal. He believes in it. um And that's the true believer I can get behind, right? That's the people who are pushing the badgers. We need rapture, is what I'm saying. What do you mean? Just strip all the ethics out of science. Oh, I thought you were talking about getting rid of all the Christians at once. Oh, no, no, no. Please. Yes, please. No, it's...
00:53:55
Speaker
very This is just a hot take. I have no evidence to back it up. My intuition is that the biggest breakthroughs and um man like in society and technology and stuff like that, it's because of necessity and necessity isn't always pushed by money.
00:54:16
Speaker
Like sometimes it is, but like, even if the necessity is we really want to get to the moon before the Russians do, right? Like that's where so many of these, this advancement came from in space science. There's a word for that, but you know, space science.
00:54:31
Speaker
um And it's kind of depressing, but whenever there's like a major, we actually have to defend ourselves from an aggressor war. Technology jumps. yeah so like We got to be good at this stuff.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's again, very cool. Well, like people can do when they put their minds to it because humans are very adaptive and capable. Yeah, we have like the Olympics going on right now and any of the stuff that they're doing is insane. um But again, like these people worked very, very hard to get where they're at. um all the time. And like they're pushing the boundaries of what people have been able to do. Like if you look at, let's say like 30 year difference, um, like new records are still being set, I'm sure each time. And that, blah, that's my mind. You mentioned the Olympics. You want to hear, do you know about the river?
00:55:38
Speaker
in Paris. No? Okay, so there's I'm going to give you the brief one. For the long version of this story, um see Fringe of the Show, New York Times podcast. Anyways, so I think it was New York Times, could have been Wall Street Journal, can't remember one of those. Look it up, do your own research.
00:55:56
Speaker
but Basically, there's a river in the middle of the city or goes through the city and ah it is not clean as one might expect. The reason for this is because um whenever there's rainfall and stuff like that, the sewer system gets overfilled.
00:56:14
Speaker
and it just washes into the river which is great as long as you're fine with that and you do not want to interact with the river in any way that requires making contact with it. um It has like a bunch of it had a bunch of like microorganisms and stuff like that very unhealthy E. coli that was a shout out big shout out to our friend E. coli Um, and in general, like the idea of going into the river is insanity for, uh, people of Paris. There's probably a word for that. Uh, Paris, Paris people, go call Paris. parasite There you go. Thank you. Probably Parisians, uh, princes, princes. There you go. Um, but.
00:57:01
Speaker
For the Olympics, they wanted the swimming events to happen in the river, which is crazy. And they realized it was crazy. But some of their local government across like.
00:57:15
Speaker
decades has been like, we should really do something about this, right? Wouldn't it be kind of cool if like the water wasn't poison to human beings? will phone And so what they did is they like built a massive underground concrete basin.
00:57:35
Speaker
Um, I think it was, uh, it had like the depth or the width, can't remember exactly some dimension of two Olympic swimming pools, just a massive, massive amount of this. And they went through and they hooked up, uh, a lot of the sewer system to it. And the main goal of this is just to have more capacity. So when it rains, the sewage doesn't overflow into the river.
00:58:01
Speaker
and it can be processed there and sent to like um to treat wait waste treatment. setting um And it's literally like, it's crazy. Like we dig a big hole in the ground and we like build all of this with concrete and stuff just to make the river clean. And it almost succeeded. It rained like way too much before the Olympics yeah started. And so they had to delay some of the the swimming events. And if it was going to delay too long, they would go to like other locations. And that's the only thing I know about the Olympics. So I don't know exactly how it all worked out, but like um it either succeeded or it almost succeeded and could have succeeded. And that's that's crazy. That's the human element. It's just like, man, I want foreigners to swim through our city.
00:58:52
Speaker
Let's go build a giant underground concrete construction to hold poop. And that's just, I don't know. If that's not humanity, I don't know what is. Like the like the old phrase says, necessity breeds ingenuity. And our rivers breeding the Coli. So means we have necessity.
Episode Conclusion
00:59:19
Speaker
I feel like the the most relatable example of that is you move into a new apartment, you've unboxed enough stuff, and then as you realize you you don't have a can opener and you can't find it. But your only food currently is at 10 p.m. You can't go to stores. It's let's say like ah canned potatoes. okay How are you going to get in there, friend?
00:59:43
Speaker
and you become arguably unsafe, but you figure some stuff out. You might have a dented counter. You might have a potato tasting night. I don't know. ah Might have cuts on your hands, but you figure out ways to do things, right? Even if it's not the best way, you you experiment, you try and you build, you build upon it.
01:00:09
Speaker
I think that's a that's a good motivational note that would be perfect to end on. So instead, I'm going to mention that everyone uses a can opener wrong, apparently. Did you know this? Yeah. I see. I didn't know that I i someone told i heard about it like two years ago. I have not changed the way I do it else at all. I don't know if I've opened a can since then. I literally had tuna yesterday in a fashion way, you know.
01:00:34
Speaker
Uh-huh. That's got intended. Not man. There's, um, there's electric can openers. <unk> Not sure if you remember these. It was pretty big. What's that? Yeah. My grandmother had one. Um, and I had no idea how the fuck to use it because it does it in the quote unquote, correct way. Yeah. It cuts the top off the can. Yeah. It cuts the top off versus you cutting in and just taking that circle out. Yeah.
01:01:04
Speaker
No, it's crazy. Look up how to, if you guys are curious, look up how to correctly use a can opener and just going to blow your mind if you still use canned goods. I don't find where that I do that that much actually, but, um, I'm sure it's going to come in handy at some point. Telling you, man, tuna. Tuna. I'm back on it.
01:01:23
Speaker
back on that tuna. You're off you're off off the wagon back on the tuna. I used to like have tuna so much growing up. And then at some point, I think somebody said like, oh, tuna gives you some degree of some mineral that like your body can't process and you'll eventually die from it. You kind of hear that off hand. It's like mercury or something. Yeah. And then you eventually just kind of taper down your tuna intake and then it doesn't become a part of your diet anymore.
01:01:49
Speaker
um But a friend of mine, May was recently up visiting and they brought me some tuna because we used to have tuna a lot as like teens. ah So I appreciated the throwback. And then I had someone was like, this is good. Why did I stop eating? Yeah. Why do we stop eating tuna? Yeah. Yeah.
01:02:09
Speaker
No, that's entirely fair. I had a thought, but it's reached that point where they kind of just just, they cease to exist. They go out into the ether. Someone else can capture meditation. Thoughts come in, they go freely. ah There is no retention. Someone else just had that thought and they're like, man, I'm going to like write a book or something. Good, good on you. I'll, I'll read it if it ever gets big. Um, but for the people out there open a can the right way. Oh.
01:02:38
Speaker
Even the construction, I remember the thought now. Sorry other person, I'm stealing it back from you. The construction of cans and like the way that that they are shaped for maximum integrity, and also crazy. Like people do crazy stuff, it's awesome. I mean how like they're they're ribbed? Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so it's not just like a single- A cylinder, yeah. If it was just a cylinder, it would have nowhere near the strength it actually has. um But they're ribbed for our pleasure. So if you guys have good ideas,
01:03:08
Speaker
like aluminum cans or anything like that. And you want to surrender those ideas to Soapstone Incorporated nonprofit, whatever we are. Send them in. Soapstonepodcast.gmail dot.com. Don't post those to Facebook. Meta will steal them. If you have other things, though, bad ideas, post those to our Facebook. Facebook dot.com slash Soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.