You're Not Imagining It

I came to Lincoln City Centre with a sign and two questions. Do you feel like money buys less than it did five years ago? Uh yeah, 100%. Oh yeah, absolutely. Sorry. Yeah, prices have gone up, yes. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I do, definitely. Every single person that I spoke to said their life feels harder than it should. No, minimum wage goes up, but only like slightly. You can't really like afford to live. Hardly anyone could tell me why. Not really, no. Banks are paper paper money. No. Oh no, I don't. This video is about why that is, why your life feels harder than it should, and what, if anything, you can actually do about it. So, does everyone actually know something is wrong? >> I I spend more money now than I did like say five years ago. Yeah, I did it I've done some trips to Thailand and I noticed like even though it was double the second time around that I went, accommodation, food, everything. I finished uni a couple of years ago, and like back then I was able to like you know save a lot more. Now I'm like you know in the job market, it's just kind of like Well, I can't really buy much now. Sorry. >> It's hard to It's hard to save. It's hard to you know actually like you know afford like things like groceries and stuff like that. >> And just for context, you can actually see this everywhere you look. The Conservative Party, one of the two parties that has governed this country for literally the entire time that any of us have been alive, is now predicted to be fourth biggest party at the next election. Fourth. A party called Reform that didn't even exist a few years ago is currently leading the polls. Donald Trump became president again. People are clearly desperate for change, and I get it. But here's the problem, it really doesn't matter who wins. Not because politicians are all the same, although some of them definitely are, but because every single one of them is trying to fix the problem from inside the system that's causing it. You can change the driver, but you cannot fix the car by changing the driver. So, who's actually causing it? It's not what most people think. It's our money. But does anyone actually know? Do you know where money comes from? Do you know like who creates the money? Cuz >> [clears throat] >> cuz most of it's all the most silver or pound coins are different. Yeah, I think everything has an innate value of itself, so it doesn't have to be on a piece of paper. No. I genuinely want you to think about this. Think about how a free market actually works. Businesses should only survive if they provide more value than what already exists, which just means more competition, more value. Things should be getting cheaper and better every single year because of this competition. We can actually see this in technology. Your TV is bigger, thinner, and cheaper than it was 10 years ago. That is what the natural state of the free market should look like. Yet Dorothy, who is easily my favorite person from the whole day, is actually onto something here. Yeah, everything's expensive. Everything's gone up, food, everything. And the big question to ask yourself, have we ever actually lived in a free market? The answer is no. The best proof I've got, a guy actually asked me the right question here. >> want to not print any more money and stuff. Yeah. Surely you couldn't do that cuz the population's increasing, so everything would go down. I mean, just think about this yourself. If we lived in a true free market, then nobody could control the money supply. Nobody should be able to decide whether to create more of it, and nobody should get to quietly make your wages worth less while you're not looking, which means the system is manipulated. And I want to be clear here, I'm not talking about evil politicians twirling their mustaches. Most of them don't even understand this themselves. We've all been living inside the system our whole lives, and politicians are just people like you and me. And also, it's just very hard to see the cage when you've never been outside it. But here's what manipulation actually means. There are people in charge of the money supply. They decide how much exists. They print more when they need to, and every time that they do, the money in your pocket buys a little less than it did before. That is inflation, the exact opposite thing to a free market, which means it's actually silent theft from everyone, seriously. Now, a few people did have a rough idea of what is going on here. >> Any case of like inflation and stuff like that. I feel like you know, it happens every year. You know, prices go up, you know. I think governments make money up, don't they? But here's the bit that took me years to get my head around. And did you also know as well every time that we take out like mortgages or credit card debt or anything, that actually just creates new money in the system? It is brand new money being created from nothing, which means our entire money supply is essentially just one giant pile of debt. And there is literally not enough money in existence to pay off all of the debt because the money and the debt are the same thing. All right, that sounds a bit crazy, mate, but what does that actually mean? Like couldn't we just go and get out of this broken system then by paying off all the debt tomorrow? No. Because your house would become a fraction of what you paid for it overnight. And with that, your mortgage doesn't shrink with it. You still owe every penny. The banks would freeze your accounts. Your job likely disappears. The shelves in Tesco start emptying within days, and you'd be on the street begging them to print whatever they need to print just keep it going. Just let me feed my family this week. This isn't hypothetical, by the way. We've already seen this happen in 2008. Banks handed out mortgages to anyone who could fog a mirror. Genuinely, if you had a pulse and a pen, you were getting a house. Interest rates were kept artificially low for way too long, and house prices just kept rising, and everyone assumes that they always would until they didn't. Do you know what the fix was? Cut interest rates even lower, print trillions, and bail out the banks with your money. Taxes. Every single thing that caused the crash, they just did more of it. And they haven't stopped. The debt is bigger now than it was then. The money printing makes 2008 looks like a molehill. So, the system cannot shrink. It cannot slow down. It has to keep going. Inflation, taxes, money printing. Because the moment it stops, everything stops with it, which means the amount being taken from you is increasing every single year at an accelerating rate. All right, so here's where most people land after everything I've just told you. They go one out of two ways. Either they just stick their head back in the sand and go back to arguing about whether Reform or Labour is going to fix the NHS, which is fine, genuinely, I was there for years, or they ask the only question that actually matters. If the system is broken beyond repair, and it is, what do I do? And look, I get how hard this is because admitting that we've never lived in a free market means admitting that almost everything we were taught about money, freedom, and choice was wrong. That's not a small thing. That's your entire world view doing a controlled demolition, and nobody nobody wants to hear that. I know I certainly didn't want to hear it either. But here's the thing, once you can see it, you just can't unsee this. And once you can't unsee it, you start looking for a door out. The good news? There is one. Now, before I tell you what this is, I want to make something very clear. I'm not talking about getting rich quick. I'm not talking about some magic investment that fixes everything. If that's what you're after, there are about 4,000 YouTube channels that would take your money and your time and give neither back. This is different. What if I told you there was a system, the first system in human history, where the money cannot be printed from nothing, where no government or anyone can change the rules mid-game, where the natural deflation of a real free market can actually reach you, where your purchasing power grows instead of shrinks every year forever? Because I asked people this question. Do you think it would be better if there was just a fixed amount of money and it couldn't just keep being printed? I'm not too sure. I think it's one of the things like cuz like you know the cost of things here is also like you know predicted by like other countries as well. Like the whole the whole situation in America. Half and half. Half and half. Okay. Uh I think so, yeah. I feel like for in order for inflation to stop, it would have to be something that the whole world would necessarily have to join in together. How would you do that though? Now, that is the right question. And by the way, could [snorts] you tell that I was just trying my hardest not to just blurt out that system exists. It's called Bitcoin. And I know what half of you just did. You either rolled your eyes or you clicked off, which is completely fine. I called it digital tulips in 2018, so I am in absolutely no position to judge anyone. And here's what most people think about it today. Have you ever heard of Bitcoin? Uh I've heard a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, crypto, yeah. It was like a big thing and everyone like was investing in it, and now it's just not as big as it used to be anymore, I don't think. Not crypto. Bit- It's It's slightly different. It is It is It is a cryptocurrency, you're right. But, there's there's a very big difference between Yeah, there's there's a limited amount. There's Yeah, there's a finite amount, but you can't create any more Bitcoin. I don't I wouldn't say I know enough about it to really form an opinion on it. It's not something that I've really delved into. I've had like, you know, friends that have like gone into it. Inflation does happen, but it's over a longer period of time where you look at it Exactly. over the course of a couple of months with Bitcoin and stuff like that. Very volatile. But, just stay with me for 30 seconds. There's a small country in Central America called El Salvador. Not that long ago, it was one of the most dangerous places on Earth. We're talking, proportionally, more murders than if America lost 350,000 people a year. Yeah, genuinely do not go there dangerous. In 2021, they did something no country had ever done before. They made Bitcoin legal tender. Not because they were rich, not because they had leverage, because the system that they were in clearly wasn't working for them. The dollar, the banks, the remittance fees swallowing 10% of every payment a father sent home to his family, they just stepped outside of the system. And here's what their president, Bukele, said about it. Why not the system that is open and free? It It sounds a lot more appealing to me than the old the old system. This is not a politician fixing things. That's not a new party with a fresh set of promises. That is what happens when you stop waiting for permission from the system that's failing you. And when Peter McCormack asked him if people should trust him to make this work You know, I mean, you don't have to trust me. You have to trust the system. And it's going to work. And it's going to benefit a lot of people. So, if you want to get on board that, you can. And if you don't want to get on board that, you just don't get on board. So, I bet you want to know if you meant it. Don't ask economists. Don't ask the IMF. You always ask the kids. That's where you get the truth. You don't have to wait for reform to win. You don't have to wait for the next election at all. You don't have to wait for a politician like Bukele to finally understand what a free market actually is. You can just walk through the door right now today. There's one big thing that really does make Bitcoin different to everything that's gone before it, including gold. And that is that you can actually hold it yourself. You can do what's called self-custody. If everyone did that, Bitcoin really is the first global free market that ever existed, because there is no way to manipulate it in any way. There's no way for someone to get hold of it. But, it really is daunting the first time you try and hold your own Bitcoin. And I remember this when I did it myself for the first time. Being solely responsible for securing your money, I get it. It took me years and, honestly, a couple of really expensive mistakes to figure out the best setup. But, I have found a way that even if someone finds my private keys, they can't access my Bitcoin. If you want to see how that's possible, step by step, I've put my Bitcoin security template in the link below. It's free, go grab it. I know I know this still sounds mad. It sounded mad to me, too. Honestly, just Google Digital Tulips and if you want the proof. But, look, we just established everyone knows something is wrong. And now, you know that there is a way out, which brings me to the question I can already hear some of you asking. Okay, Mike, but this is great in theory, but what does this actually look like in the real world? What happens to healthcare? What happens to the NHS? How does any of this actually fix the things that I care about? And here's the thing. It's not Bitcoin that fixes the NHS. It's the free market. Bitcoin just happens to be the first one that has ever actually existed. And in the next video, I go through exactly what that looks like, what a real free market actually does to healthcare, to housing, to the things that matter to you. Not in theory, in practice, with real examples. You can watch it here.