Please join us outside of either book and get inside. Thank you so much [applause]. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] it is their Nonfiction Author book you would like to see featured on book to be . Send us an email, book tv at cspan. Org. Tweet us apple tv. Or post a comment on our wall, facebook. Com book tv. George, how many books have you written. Guest 17, if if you count that is 18. Host what are the topics. Guest the topics have been politics, marriage and families,s tax, fcx, technology, microchips, life after television, the telecoms on, knowledge and power which i really think is a book of a few years ago that summed up all of these various subjects through the exposition of information clearing which i think is the major scientific breakthrough of the century. Behind all of our technology and i believe it is best explained in our economy. Host you identify as an author or what. Guest im i may be the 27th most influential but i am a writer but i also have been an investor. Im a venture capitalist. I am really serious about that at work which has supported me as much as my books over the years. What has been your bestseller. Wealth and poverty. As a venture capitalist, what are are the things that you invested in that are needed. Guest a Company Called gershon lehrman, is the leading Knowledge Network company, it creates Software Program that connects you to a consultant and they signed up hundreds of thousands of consultants and you just call up gershon and they will text and it has been a tremendous success. And i was the first major investor. But also another company which is the nextgeneration Internet Company that renders 3d images across the internet and has signed an agreement with the National Hockey league to actually transmit 3d images of hockey games in the future. And an Israeli Company that spent a lot of time supporting various israeli companies, including easy chip which will eliminate the cell towers ultimately by moving all of the processing from yourself on, that voice processes the two data centers. That that would mean all you would need to collect the signal from the cell phone would be a small antenna. They can be assured hanger. Its just a simple antenna rather than a complex Computer System that is involved in these big cell towers you see everywhere. So a ubiquitous antenna. Mostly invisible and tennis. And then ive been supporting a Company Called him you saw which wants to move drug production, pharmacology, away from big drug factories around the world where in puerto rico or wherever they are two the human body itself. The human body has trillions of ribosomes and it can be programmed to produce any proteins or molecules you need for a lifetime. You change the dna and the immune system and it can permanently correct chronic conditions. This was started by a young Computer Scientist to saw a Discovery Institute which i was the founder of the Discovery Institute. He saw that the human body is like a computer, its programmable. He set out to program it. Peter has been a major vested in that company. Hes the best best investor in the world for my money. Host how did you become you . Where did you get started . Guest i started writing speeches for politicians, probably my real shaping experience was in lansing, michigan for one whole year writing for George Romney who is running for president. It was called the mission in the dream. I was in a motel room and they did not pay me regularly, it was somewhat reckless campaign. It was in east lansing, michigan and it was not all that inspiring even with michigans state. But i learned economics while i was out there. The mission in the dream later evolved which i could write effectively because i previously developed the ideas in lansing. Almost suicidally unhappy. That was a key experience. Host who is your favorite economist . Guest probably highend. Mark is one of my favorite, marks thousand is really a terrific economist. He is at freedom fest, where i am at the moment. Host you did not mention Milton Friedman. Guest Milton Friedman is brilliant and logical mind and Nobel Laureate economist, but this book, my newest book which is sort of a short book is called the 21st century case for gold, a new information series of money. And it tries to refute Milton Friedmans monetarism. Its been adopted by people who is a conservative magazines have adopted it. It prevails in the World Economy and it has resulted in a currency market that transacts 5. 4 trillion worth of currency every 24 hours, thats one third of u. S. Gnp every 24 hours. Thats 100 times all the transactions and all of the stock markets in the world put together. It is 25 times all the trading goods and services around the world put together. Yet, its purpose which is to find a value for money in every country around the world fail because as a measuring stick the currency values change more rapidly than Economic Activity they are supposed to measure. So, this this currency trading, 5. 4 trillion a day of currency trading is an utter failure. It is based on Milton Friedmans belief that currency should float which has been adopted by liberals eagerly and is really a foundation for Monetary Policy around the world. This book targets that ridiculous way of setting a monetary index. Host how do you set it then . Do you return to the Gold Standard . Is a politically feasible . Guest the Gold Standard has been a great success. During the industrial revolution, 200 years of fastest growth in the world and it ended the long multi millennial stagnation. The Gold Standard is measurable in part by identifying the time we really establish government control of money. That was in 1913 with the establishment of the federal reserve. Since 1913 and the establishment of the feds, if you had 1 million of dollars, they would be worth around 20000 today. Well if you have 1,000,000 dollars of gold in 1913, it 13, it would be worth about 40 million today. 40,000,000 dollars roughly corresponds to the growth of the worlds economy. The gold really measures, its a measuring stick of value that far exceeds the measuring stick of any currency. Currency has become meaningless. The reason it has become meaning in list is the measuring stick is because it is part of what they measure. The essence of a measuring stick as it has to have roots of value outside the domain it measures. You dont put a measuring cup in the cave for the plastic to melt. But thats our money policies essentially does. It takes a measuring stick and puts it in the cake. The results the economy is now about 35 of all profits that are generated by financial activity rather than by actual real, economic production. That is the dire problem. Host lets take a step back, what is the Gold Standard . Guest it is a method of valuing goods and services, for a specific amount of gold. The reason gold and Gold Standard works in this capacity as a measuring stick is because just by happenstance through history, gold has canceled out Economic Activity in its price because as man mean Mining Equipment and exploration gear has improved from panning nuggets out of streams in california and the gold rush to gigantic my Mining Equipment of today. Gold has become more difficult to mine. So in effect, the increasing difficulty of mining gold, more remote loads, and thinner distribution has canceled out the effect of the huge improvement in gold Mining Equipment. Less gold is a measure of time. Gold is the measure of the time it takes to extract it. Because it is in time, it is the element that remains scarce when Everything Else goes abundant. Time is outside the economy and it is a measure of everything that happens within the economy. So because gold, the value of gold is rooted in time, it can actually provide a permanent longterm measure of Economic Activity that a separate. You do not have the self referential circles where the currency is valued by what it buys, and what it buys is valued by its currency. It is a loop that effectively means the government gets to decide what the money is worth and who gets it. That is the definition of a bad economy. Host being on the Gold Standard would take the government decisionmaking and the governments influence out of that . Guest out of the monetary standard. The way entrepreneurs in the economy decide what resources they are going to use and what amounts, and what the products theyre going to produce, and where, and where they are going to sell the is all determined by in the view of another of my favorite economist hayek, by a money information system. My book is a new information system, new information series of money. I came to this theory, which really is contrary to all of the previous analyses of the Gold Standard, because all of the previous people thought gold is as good as money because it is intrinsically valuable as jewelry. My friend Richard Vigil on today told me that, no jewelry is valuable and people cherish it because it is really money. Money is separate from the economy. It is the measuring stick and the root of the value of money is in time. This insight i sorta of came up with but not fully because mocking noto, which is the new Digital Currency for the internet chiefly, but could ultimately become an important role. The coin is explicitly based on zeroing out the impact of technology, so more is lost as the computer power doubles every 18 months to two years, he was worried that if he made his good points dependent and responsive to Economic Activity in the computer industry, it would not be as stable measuring stick. You just function as the ingenuity of Computer Scientists. So he nullifies the advance of technology by making the coin explicitly based on the time it takes to mint another block. This is the genius of him who has been an anonymous figure, we dont know who he is, although i have my suspicions who influenced him at least. I discuss that in my book. Whether it is him or not it is a brilliant mind who really invented that gold which is a precursor to a bit coin. Bit coin is gold for the internet. Because it has the same source of value as gold does. Gold roots its value in time because it cancels out all of the other fractures. All thats thats left is the time it takes to produce it. Similarly bit coin zeros out everything but time. Time is the perfect monetary measure because that is scarce, and remains scarce when Everything Else goes abundant, time remains scarce. It cannot be aborted, and must be spent, it cannot be stolen very well, it is equally distributed to everyone, and is the universal standard rooted in the one major constant of the universe, which is the speed of light. In fact, all major units of measure are ultimately rooted in time. I go go through that in the book. All of the existing measurements are all finally, from the meter to the kilogram, to the mole, all of these measures are ultimately a frequency or some factor that finds this stability in the constancy of time. Host george your the 21st century case were gold written for the layman . Guest yes it is. At least its an attempt to write it in the layman. It does assume an interest in economic and some sort of awareness thinking. But not a degree in economics or anything like that. A degree in economics will probably prevent you from understanding that. Host when you say that . Guest because economists have been taught, they dont understand information theory. Economists in my book, knowledge and power i have developed a new theory of economics based on shannons information very. That is completely different from, adam smiths theory. I dont think capitalism is really an incentive system. I think its an information system. Claude shannon, the great inventor of information series defines information essentially, and if everything i tell you today you already know zero information has been transmitted information is the unexpected bit. Shannon was developing, he named the bit and the bites, and developed a theory that underlies the entire internet, the seven layers of the internet. From physical layer and the actual machine to the wires, up to the application layer, the apps. I believe we need a new step in information theory that goes beyond shannons mere surprise all of information. Two layer eight on the internet, layer eight which would be the transactions layer based on the big coin. Transactions of valuation layer. You have time, transactions, covenants, titles, patents, facts, ways of establishing stance on the internet without reference to third parties outside the internet. I think bit point can transfer form the internet, among the things it can do is return the power to the producers of content from the a great gators of content. Today, largely because there is no transaction layer on the internet, the internet fills up with clutter. It is a third of all webpages are serious. Advertisements on the internet are mostly minuses. Its to pop up and interrupt, protocol for advertisements. But the power today is in the hands of people who can aggregate lots of five balls. Even though most of the advertising is not wanted by recipient. The value subtracted advertising so, we want value added advertising, future of life after google will explain how we can have value added advertising that will allow content producers to collect their own payment. Not be dependent on all of these big aggregators. That is the real promise at this point. To automate transaction and thus remove the has a lot of transactions on the internet. Host what you mean by velocity . The word velocity . Guest this is the flaw in Milton Friedmans theory. He recognized toward the end of his life, and 2003 he actually acknowledged that everyone is adopted now was in fact not accessible. In an interview with financial time with him. The reason it was not successful is that is equation was am v equals nt and that is money supply and the velocity which is the turnover of the money supply , how much people spend it equals prices times transaction. So roughly gdp. Monetarism assumes that in that equation money rules. More music factor that that controls economics. That assumes that money cannot role unless velocity stable. Part of friedmans nobel prize came from a theory of velocity which said that it was stable, it was reflected the psychology of human beings which is outside the economy of people who say when theyre young and they say when theyre old and theres a cycle. It means velocity at any point is a constant dependence on the psychological propensity appears you have the nobel prize for that. It is wrong. Velocity turns out to be anything but stable. It has been wildly unstable. During this last recession, money supply rose like a rocket. The high powered of the fed went from 800 billion to 4 trillion. We would all be rich if velocity stay constant. But that velocity fell like a rock. It nullified all of the increases in velocity. I mean all of the increases in the money supply were claps by a loss of velocity