What really defines the value of money? Is it all about the gold standard, or is it just what we collectively believe? In this episode, we’re taking you on a mind-bending journey to rethink everything you know about money. We’ll start by breaking down its three core roles: unit of account, means of exchange, and store of value. Plus, we’ll bust some myths around gold’s worth, diving into both its physical properties and the societal beliefs that have kept it valuable for centuries.
Hop back in time to the 1600s and discover how modern banking kicked off with William Patterson’s game-changing idea. This revolutionary moment not only rebuilt the English Navy but also shifted us from gold to paper money, shaping the financial world as we know it. We’ll also explore the early barter systems and the evolution of commodity money that paved the way for today’s complicated financial systems.
Once you grasp the fluid nature of the value of money, your financial strategies will shift too. We’ll dive into how societal beliefs shape monetary value, and how you can better navigate today’s financial landscape. Learn the role central banks play and pick up some smart, income-boosting tips. By tapping into the knowledge of high-earners and continually learning, you can protect yourself against financial uncertainties. Don’t miss this eye-opening chat that’ll leave you thinking about the value of money in a whole new way!
Transcription
Dr James:
Hey and welcome everybody to this webinar on some things that you should know about money. This is the stuff that school doesn’t teach you, and I really have no idea why, because you know, whenever you know these things about how money works, the things avoid to reveal as this webinar progresses. Well, for me, it just calls you to look at reality and think about things in a rather different way, and all of this stuff is thoroughly researched. All this stuff is things that I’ve learned from my own reading, through experience, through conversation with others who are financial professionals and in the know, so to speak. So this is a compilation and a condensation of some of the coolest realizations from those conversations that we’ve had over the years. So, without further ado, let’s go ahead and get started. So this, of course, is not financial advice. I’m just going to make this super duper clear. What I’m simply doing is pointing out some facts whenever it comes to money and its workings and off the back of that, naturally, well, it’ll cause us to reflect and self-inquire and look at things in a rather different way. So, first of all, we have to start off and ask ourselves what is money? Well, it’s something that we use every day and, you know, to a greater or lesser degree, we’re probably habituated and conditioned into not really questioning it or not really thinking about it a great deal. But if we were to define it, a common definition uh, that is uh, for that is used for money is these three things, has to satisfy these three things unit of account, means of exchange and store of value. So, unit of account, what does it mean? There has to be. We have to be able to tally up our wealth, we have to somehow be able to measure it effectively. So it’s a measurement of value, so to speak. Means of exchange well, we can go to the shop, we can use it to buy stuff. It’s a commonly accepted medium which people will accept in the form of well in exchange for goods effectively. So, means of exchange, convenient means of exchange which is useful.
Dr James:
Store of value, as we were saying earlier. Well, we have to be able to give something to somebody else that has value. Therefore, it has to be able to retain its value, at least to a greater or lesser degree, so that we can do that. But of course we’ve got to remember that, yes, it is a store of value, but is it the best store of value? It really depends on someone’s goals and objectives and actually there might be better stores of value, stores of value that grow in value with time rather than lose value or depreciate, as money is known to do. But why does this happen? Well, it’s an interesting one, we’re going to get into it in just a second do. But why does this happen? Well, it’s an interesting one, we’re going to get into it in just a second.
Dr James:
So the one true money, the original, uh, money from back in the day, uh, and when I say back in the day, what I mean is really really, really quite some time ago. Uh, gold was the original means of exchange. Gold, as we know from the history books, was the original form, the original material, one of the original materials used in the form of coinage. Coins were originally made from gold. Pound coin nowadays doesn’t have a great deal of gold in it at all, but once upon a time these coins were a set quantity of gold and a set purity of gold.
Dr James:
And it’s an interesting one because we have to ask ourselves why does gold actually have value?
Dr James:
Why does anything have value?
Dr James:
Well, it has value.
Dr James:
Something has value because it makes some part of our life easier or provides some sort of function for us effectively. So, if you think about it, why does gold actually have value? Well, you know, the thing about gold is obviously it’s sought after as this precious material and it’s obviously referred to in that context a lot, and you know, people get really excited about finding quantities of gold. There was a reason why there’s a gold rush in the wild west around about the 1800s period. But why does it actually have value? Why do people get excited about it? Well, we have to ask ourselves this.
Dr James:
So it’s an interesting one, because we actually look at the physical properties of what gold does and the, the, the functions that gold provides to society, that it actually actually has quite limited use cases, as you may or may not know. So it has some industrial uses. Obviously it’s jewelry. It can be used for jewelry as well. Dental crowns we know that the physical property of gold is really good for dental crowns. They’re actually some of the indirect restorative materials with the longest, uh, the the best evidence to suggest that they last the longest, which is awesome. But beyond that, it doesn’t actually have that much use cases, and even you might argue that when it comes to jewelry as a use case, well, that’s purely based off our subjective valuation of it.
Dr James:
So if you think about it, really a lot of what gives gold its actual value is because we all think it has value. We all deem it to have value effectively, and when and why that is the case is because it’s pretty to look at. A big reason why is because it’s beautiful to look at it. A big reason why is because it’s beautiful to look at. It doesn’t tarnish, it’s got this deep gold yellow color, it’s shiny, it’s appealing to look at, it’s got this luster, and actually that’s a big reason why we all deem it to have value. It’s more because it’s beautiful than anything else. It’s more because it’s pretty to look at and that might sound really whimsical, but actually that’s one of the big reasons why people pay so much money for gold. So if we know that, it’s because if we know that gold has a big part of its value due to its appearance, well, anything beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Any, anything that is value based on its appearance is inherently subjective. So actually a big driver on the value of gold is subjectivity, is psychology, is because we all think it has value, and that’s an interesting concept because there’s lots of things in society that we all collectively believe to have value. However, there isn’t, maybe, a sound basis to that evaluation whenever we explore things or scratch surface a little deeper.
Dr James:
So let’s change gears slightly. Let’s talk about the Bank of England. So we’ve heard of the Bank of England. Most people who are watching this video are from the UK, so you will have heard of the Bank of England, but not many people know about the story of the Bank of England and how it actually began. So if we go back to the 1600s and we put everything in context as to that era, so the great plague happened in 1663 in london. The great fire of london happened in 1666, which is interesting because it also happens to be the number of the beast, as we all know 666, which is an interesting factoid.
Dr James:
And what people actually don’t know is to rebuild London, the King of England around about those times had to borrow a huge amount of money in order to do that, and the king of the time, charles the second, in 1667 basically borrowed a lot of money from London’s goldsmiths and he In essence said I’m actually just not going to pay your money back, guys. It’s not my money and there wasn’t a great deal that the goldsmiths of London could do about it because they were up against the King of England. So that happened, but naturally they weren’t in a rush to lend to the Royal family ever again. So the reputability as borrowers was also annihilated, even though, yes, he did get away without having to repay his loans at the time, which was lucrative for them, lucrative for him. It was pretty short-sighted move fast forward to the year 1690 and the English navy suffered one of their greatest defeats in history for the French navy at the battle of Beachy Head. And around about that time the King of England, william III, needed to borrow money to rebuild the English Navy, but of course, the Goldsmiths of London. Well, it wasn’t terribly long ago that what happened between the Goldsmiths of London and Charles II had happened. So, as I say, they weren’t in a rush to give him credit, so he couldn’t actually get credit to rebuild his navy.
Dr James:
And that was when, enter william patterson, an entrepreneurial banker, had a great idea to start a bank that used the crest of england in its insignia. They call it. They would call it the bank of england. People would be only too ready to deposit into the bank, given that it was aligned with the nation, given that it had the crest of England on its flag and therefore inspired immediate trust. But what they didn’t know was that money that they lent to the Bank of England well, that would subsequently the money that they deposited in the Bank of England that would be used to borrow against the King of England. King William III would borrow against that money that was in the bank, which was crazy, which is fascinating so he would be able to obtain the credit that he needed to rebuild the navy. And it was just that there was this extra tier of admin between him directly borrowing from the public uh, versus borrowing from the bank. But what it meant was that he could get his money, and this would all be shrouded in a few layers of bureaucracy, so that people didn’t necessarily know this. And what they also did was that people don’t know too was.
Dr James:
William Patterson quickly realized that he didn’t actually necessarily need to have people deposit in the bank to be able to print money, to be able to print the notes that he needed to lend to the king, because everybody had already believed, already used uh notes commonly throughout the course of uh, their, their existence around about that time. So he just he realized that he could just print a, a great deal of these notes, these paper notes that uh said uh, you know the pound on it, the british pound, and if he just printed them, because people had already been trained to use them, they would just habitually continue to use them. So he also realized that he could just print money effectively and lend it to the King of England without even necessarily having people deposit into the bank to back up that credit that he was lending to the King of England so effectively. It was a money printing machine and that was when people had this epiphany okay, wow, we don’t actually necessarily need to have gold to create currency against anymore, because people are already trained to believe that the notes that we use in common circulation have value. Crazy, and this is the same system that they still use to this day.
Dr James:
Few variations has evolved over the years. In a few ways it’s still, in essence, it’s the same system and that’s why we have to draw the distinction between money versus currency. There is a difference. Money pertains to what we were talking about just a second ago. Here’s the definition of money. Here’s the. Here is, uh, the. You know the qualities of money effectively.
Dr James:
So we talked about money just a second ago. We said that it was store of value, we said that it was a unit of account and we also said that it retains value. If we just go back to this slide right here store of value, unit of account, means of exchange, so money retains value. But actually the difference between currency and money is that currency does not actually retain its value long term. And you’ve heard of inflation. You’ve heard, you know about how the dollar goes through inflation. What inflation is? We’re going to save that for another webinar because that’s a 20, 30 minute explainer in and of itself, but, safe to say, most people know what it is.
Dr James:
So, if you think about it right, can we actually truly call the British pound money? Can we actually truly call the dollar money? We can call gold money because it actually satisfies all of these properties or characteristics on the left hand side of this table. But currency is not actually technically a store of value. Currency that we use day to day, and the reason is current currency is not actually technically money, and the reason is current currency is not actually technically money, and the reason is it doesn’t actually store value long term. Now it has some value, but it’s not actually a store of value long term because it loses its value via inflation. What a pound could have got you in the 50s versus what a pound will get you now is completely different, and that’s a continuous and ongoing process, and that is actually one of the main things we’re protecting ourself against whenever it comes to understanding, investing and also boosting our income as well. It’s actually one of the greatest ways to protect yourself against inflation.
Dr James:
Now here’s the thing. There’s actually four types of money. If we want to get into this, this is more an interesting factoid than anything else, but it helps give us context to all the things that we’re exploring in this webinar. So let’s talk about the history of money and where it all actually came from, and things will make way more sense. We’re going to go on a little bit of a journey now. We’re going to walk through each of these different types of money. There’s four different types. By the way, we’re going to use money and currency a little interchangeably in this webinar this evening, even though, strictly speaking, they are slightly different because of what we’ve just said. So, if you hear me do that, you can just equate the two to be the same for the purposes of this webinar.
Dr James:
So let’s go back in time, pre-money, before money was even a concept. Things had value and they could be exchanged. We could barter. We could trade a horse for a llama. Potentially, maybe that happened at some point in history, who the heck knows but point is that people could exchange items that they had in front of them. Maybe they would exchange some sort of jewelry or some sort of piece of clothing for an animal or whatever, or whatever they needed at the, at the market. This was how human society functioned for a long time.
Dr James:
But it’s interesting because the ancient Egyptians had no formal money. They had no agreed up, commonly agreed upon means to purchase goods from another one another or measure each other’s wealth. They just their whole society, existed on them bartering for goods. So people would just go to the market and exchange animals for what they needed, or grain or or wheat or whatever it is that they had at hand. They had no formal, agreed upon common currency, so society could exist. However, it was rather inconvenient, because what if you had some sort of animal and you wanted to purchase I don’t know some cloth or whatever, and that person who had the cloth didn’t actually need that animal, they wanted something else. It actually hindered exchanging with that, bartering with that person or doing commerce with that person.
Dr James:
So that was actually why money became used frequently and of course, the first type of money was commodity money. It was gold. The first type of money was gold. It was gold is a commodity, so we had commodity money. So, for example, someone go to the market and exchange a certain quantity of silver or a certain quantity of gold, precious metal, for the item that they wanted, and it had to be a certain purity of gold as well for it obviously to be, for it obviously to be accepted effectively. So that was originally how money came about. Originally people just started exchanging commodities for items that they needed. That’s how coinage became a thing, because obviously they just needed an agreed upon method of doing that. So when they had the piece of metal and they had the stamp on it, which is effectively what the coin is just a stamped piece of metal then they knew that it was approved and then they knew it was a certain quantity and that was why people used it, which is interesting actually Now with time. Oh yeah, and it is important to mention that actually, technically speaking, commodity money can really be anything that people commonly use or frequently agree upon, and these are some examples of commodity money that has been used over time. Apparently, in post-war Germany in the 1920s there was a lot of inflation, so people used cigarettes as currency.
Dr James:
Effectively, as people may or may not know, british sailors were paid in rum in the 1500s, 1600s, and you may or may not know that. That’s where the expression proof comes from proof, one proof of alcohol is a certain, is a certain quant, is a certain, is a rum with a certain percentage of strength that I think it has to be like 56 alcohol or something along those lines. And the way they would test it is they would see if the rum lit on fire. They would burn some of the rum and if it burnt they knew that it was not watered down rum and they knew they were getting paid properly again, interesting fact. Now let’s move on to the second type money, receipt money. So what is receipt money? So with time, people would deposit their gold in, in where are their, their commodities?
Dr James:
In warehouses, and they would have a receipt from the warehouse and the receipt would say you have deposited, deposited X, y and Z quantity of wood Now, or wood or gold or whatever the heck anything. Now, with time, these warehouses became so well known and reputable that people would actually take those receipts, those pieces of paper, because the warehouse would pay, would give it to the bearer of the receipt there and then I promise to pay the bearer on demand. This is where that expression comes from. Now, what people would do is they would take those receipts and they would use them to barter effectively, they would just give them to each other instead of having to have the inconvenience of carrying huge quantities of goods around. They would just give them the receipt and then the person who had the receipt would then redeem that at the warehouse and that’s actually where receipt money came from, which is interesting. Now, obviously, for the receipt to be redeemable, it would need to be backed by an asset at a one-to-one rate. So say, for example, if someone said if the receipt said hey, there’s a thousand pieces, there’s a thousand you know portions of timber in this factory, or a thousand portion you know kilograms of gold or whatever, and in the in the warehouse or another factory in the warehouse, then that would mean that that receipt was backed at a one-to-one ratio, because it would have to be literally that amount of gold or that amount of the commodity in the warehouse.
Dr James:
People started to realize with time that not everybody redeemed their receipts. This is where things get a little off piste, so to speak. Not everybody redeemed all their receipts at once, and so the warehouses realized they could actually issue more receipts than they actually had assets to back up these receipts, so to speak. So they realized that for every 1,000 pieces of any commodity in their factory, in their, in their warehouse sorry, then, what they could do is they could, they could give receipts on it. They could create receipts for 1,100 or 1,200, and because it was very unlikely that everybody would take all in these huge warehouses, that everybody would take all of their quantity, their goods out at once, they could actually get away with this a little bit. They could actually create more receipts than they had goods to back things up, and obviously that would mean that was basically them creating free money or printing free money for themselves, because they could go out and exchange this for stuff and nobody ever knew, which is the the crazy part, because no one would ever redeem all their assets at any one time. Of course it gets in the mercury charity, because you can just see how that people can get carried away with that.
Dr James:
Of course and this is effectively what banks have done with time they used to have gold to back up all the pounds that they created. The pound was originally a pound of sterling silver, a certain quantity of silver. So for every pound issued, there had to be a certain quantity of silver in reserve somewhere in a bank somewhere. But, as we know, with nowadays, a pound, a pound coin would not get you a pound of silver at all. And, by the way, when I say pound of silver, what? What I mean is a lib like an LB, you know, 14 pounds in a stone, as in the pound, in terms of weight or mass rather than value. But that’s actually where the unit of value came from. It was originally referring to mass, effectively, which is an interesting fact.
Dr James:
So, like I say, with time people realized they didn’t have to actually back up all these receipts that they were creating. But of course, this gets into murky territory, because what it means is if we’re using these receipts and we’re exchanging them on a day-to-day basis and we plan, and someone gives us one of those receipts and we want to go and exchange it for the good. That’s that that we believe we’re getting. Well, obviously, the issue would be that we might not actually get what we were promised and therefore were shortchanged. And, of course, like I said, that originated in warehouses and it became a thing in banks as well with time, just like the Bank of England. They started out with fractional money. They started out with creditors and fractional money and, with time, william Patterson realized that he could just create receipts continuously Fiat money.
Dr James:
And this is what happens. Whenever there is absolutely no backing to the currency whatsoever, it’s just created out of thin air. They just continuously print it and print it, and print it. And you might think that that sounds crazy, but that’s actually what happens across the whole entire world. There’s very few, if any, currencies that are actually backed at a one-to-one ratio in terms of receipt money. In terms of them being receipt money, uh, they’re all pretty much fiat money, um, which is crazy, because the only real reason we believe it to have value is because we are habituated to it, is because we’ve grown up with it and because that’s what we’ve used continuously. But it’s only really because everybody believes that it’s worth something, that it is because we’ve grown up with it and because that’s what we’ve used continuously, but it’s only really because everybody believes that it’s worth something, that it is actually worth something. That’s literally how the monetary system works, which is just crazy to me, to be honest with you anyway. So this is how the monetary system works. This is what we use day to day and what it just what it really drives home for me is it just really drives home how powerful conditioning is it really drives home how powerful we can, just really drives home how powerful conditioning is it really drives home how powerful we can be conditioned by those around us and the people around us.
Dr James:
Money is a complete social construct. It’s something that somebody well, once upon a time it was something that was backed by gold and other precious metals, which, by the way, we only really believed had value because they looked pretty and beautiful in the first place. So that was even subjective in the first place, but at least there was something substantial to substantiate them effectively. And then, as I say, with time what’s happened is it’s just, it’s just became this continuous free-for-all process where we can just make more and more and more, and you know, the issue with that is that the more money that they create, the more money that the government, the more money that the government creates, the greater the pool of currency that’s out there. And if supply and demand, if there is a lot of money being created and the supply of goods is roughly around about the same, well you can see how we need to exchange more currency for those goods goods because there’s just an overabundance of currency. And therefore, if everybody has more money, well, prices get bid up effectively.
Dr James:
If you think about it. Let’s use a really simple analogy just to really drive that home. If you think about it, if there’s ten people bidding for a house and they all have a hundred thousand pounds, well, they can only really bid up to a hundred thousand points for the house, right. But if there’s 10 people that want to buy a house, five of them have a hundred thousand pounds and five of them have two hundred thousand pounds, well, you can quickly see that the people that have two hundred thousand pounds will be able to bid the price up to a level that other people can’t, can’t bid to, can’t get to, can obtain. And you and you can see that in a nutshell is how inflation works.
Dr James:
Obviously, that’s on a macro level If we blow it up macro level, it’s less about how much money somebody has and it’s more about how much money somebody has relative to other people. That’s the crazy thing to realize, it’s a crazy thing to understand. It’s more about your relative wealth and the unit of account is the. The current, the pound or the dollar is just a way of measuring it. And, like I say, that’s the money, the, the number in itself is arbitrary. It’s, it’s about as meaningful to the universe. One to ten, to a million, to a billion is about as meaningful to the there. It doesn’t actually make that much difference to the universe. You know, there’s no, there’s no, there’s no way that. Um, there’s no law of physics that says that.
Dr James:
You know, a certain amount of money is, is worth, it will get you a certain amount of things, or anything along those lines. It’s not, it’s not like, defined in that sense. It’s just what we all think it is. It’s just what society commonly believes it to be worth. It’s more just perception than anything else.
Dr James:
And this is just a crazy thing to realize, right? Because if value is subjective and is everything that we believe about money is subjective, then what else is subjective? Are you with me how true are those beliefs? Where is the line Actually? What is too much money? What is too little money? What do all these things even mean? Actually, all of it of it’s subjective and actually it may have just been project. It’s well, it will have been projected onto us at some stage by somebody else. And how do we know it’s even true? And also, if we, how do we know if it’s even when we start thinking ourselves, how do we know it’s even true? We start thinking ourselves right, where is the line? Where can I get to whenever it comes to my income? How can I boost this? Because if we know it’s subjective, we know we have to look within in order to change it. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s inherently the case. Uh, whenever it comes to something subjective, it’s an internal thing, it’s a human thing, it’s a personal thing. And then also, we need to know that’s exactly where we need to look whenever it comes to the limits that we place on ourselves a lot as well. It’s all internal, it’s all a subjective thing. It can’t be anything else.
Dr James:
By definition, it’s literally a social construct. We promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of a dollar, but what actually is a dollar. Can anybody define that Really? Once upon a time, it was a certain quantity of gold. Nowadays, a dollar is just a dollar. It’s not. It’s not really. There’s not really any way you can define it in a more granular level than that. So when, when we say we promise to pay the bearer on demand one dollar, what actually is dollar? Let’s just think about that. And the same thing with the pound coin as well.
Dr James:
So the central bank model exists all throughout the course of the world. Uh, to this very day, even America’s central bank uses it the Federal Reserve. They based it off the Central Bank of England. How the Federal Reserve started is a whole big story in itself. If somebody wants to look this up, here’s an extreme scenario the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Inflation got so bad in the country they had to make a 10 million dollar note. Let’s just let that sink in 10 million dollar note. So that’s when money printing got so crazy that everybody’s currency was devalued and everybody’s wealth was devalued, so it necessitated the printing of this note. So this can and does happen, and we’ve seen inflation fairly recently being really, really, really, really high. So it’s all about how we can protect ourselves against it.
Dr James:
So here’s the thing it’s not fair to say that this system doesn’t have merits. I mean, it’s coincided with some of the greatest advancements whenever it comes to science, whenever it comes to human progress over the last 100 years, 150 years, so. So free for freeflowing capital does help with that. So it’s not to say that, intrinsically, this is actually even necessarily a bad idea to run central banks and the financial system the way that we run it. But what it is to say is that we’ve got to understand how it works. When you understand how it works, well, what it means is that you can adapt your strategy based off that knowledge and actually you can harness that wisdom to get real results in your life.
Dr James:
Just remember, it’s all subjective. It can’t be anything but subjective, because money is literally a social construct and it comes from our beliefs. It comes from the only reason that anything has any value, the only reason that anything has any value. Whenever you know any quantity of money has any values, because we all believe it to be. And if we know, if it’s a belief and it’s a subjective thing, well we also know that it’s inherently malleable, it’s inherently flexible. And how accurate is our concept of it to this point, and can we adapt that so that we can actually welcome more money into our life and understand more about investing? The real truth is a little more complicated. Whenever it comes to the full depth of the central bank model, however, today we’ve covered at high level and what we’ve got to understand is the biggest thing to understand is that when you know this stuff, you can take account of it and you can adapt your strategy in your life so you can protect yourself against it.
Dr James:
Because, remember, understanding money and understanding a little bit more about the investing side of things is mainly a defensive thing. First of all, because, think about it, if all our cash is in the bank, we’re just earning money and it’s coming into the bank and it’s just sat there not doing anything. Well, this process is happening. It’s being constantly devalued because of money printing across the world. So if that’s the case and we know that that’s going on continuously, tacitly, unless we do something well, it all of a sudden just gives us a huge impetus to go and take action. And actually boosting your income is one of the best ways that you can do that, because, if you think about it, if your income is boosted, you can be flat broke. However, you could go to work for a month and at the end of that month, have more money than most people do in their lifetime, if you’re, if you’re able to earn a decent sum of money.
Dr James:
I see dentists out there who are here very young in age and they’re bringing in 20, 30, 40 grand every single month in terms of income. That will be from the dentistry side of things and then also from their assets, from their investments. That’s possible. That’s out there, and this is the thing you know. Unless we get contacts, unless we’re able to understand what other people are up to, then we’ll never really be able to say where we are versus where we could be. So that inspires us and it makes us think to yourself right, okay, what do they know? What pieces of wisdom do they know? What things do they know that we can implement into our life?
Dr James:
And that’s actually the really cool thing about being inspired to learn about money, because it makes you think to yourself right, what else is out there? What did I believe to be true? That maybe necessarily isn’t true because, like I say, all of this stuff is subjective. Our concepts of money are subjective, they’re inherently subjective. And if that’s the case, and we know that that’s the case then we also know that to a degree, they’re massively malleable and we can enhance them, and we can enhance how we see the world and we can also adapt.
Dr James:
We can include those strategies that people are using out there day to day in their life to be able to generate that sum of money and be able to implement them in to your own life. Of course, it’s not a magic wand we’ve got to be clear about that but there is some really cool stuff out there and that’s why boosting your income plus investing is one of the best ways to protect yourself against all the things we talked about in this webinar this evening. Thank you so much, guys, for listening. I really enjoy presenting this stuff. Some really cool epiphanies in there. Trust me, there is way more to it than, uh, we’re able to fully explain in this webinar tonight, but it’s certainly a good way to whet our appetite and begin to inspire people out there to think to yourselves right, what is possible.
Dr James:
Hey and welcome everybody to this webinar on some things that you should know about money. This is the stuff that school doesn’t teach you, and I really have no idea why, because you know, whenever you know these things about how money works, the things avoid to reveal as this webinar progresses. Well, for me, it just calls you to look at reality and think about things in a rather different way, and all of this stuff is thoroughly researched. All this stuff is things that I’ve learned from my own reading, through experience, through conversation with others who are financial professionals and in the know, so to speak. So this is a compilation and a condensation of some of the coolest realizations from those conversations that we’ve had over the years. So, without further ado, let’s go ahead and get started. So this, of course, is not financial advice. I’m just going to make this super duper clear. What I’m simply doing is pointing out some facts whenever it comes to money and its workings and off the back of that, naturally, well, it’ll cause us to reflect and self-inquire and look at things in a rather different way. So, first of all, we have to start off and ask ourselves what is money? Well, it’s something that we use every day and, you know, to a greater or lesser degree, we’re probably habituated and conditioned into not really questioning it or not really thinking about it a great deal. But if we were to define it, a common definition uh, that is uh, for that is used for money is these three things, has to satisfy these three things unit of account, means of exchange and store of value. So, unit of account, what does it mean? There has to be. We have to be able to tally up our wealth, we have to somehow be able to measure it effectively. So it’s a measurement of value, so to speak. Means of exchange well, we can go to the shop, we can use it to buy stuff. It’s a commonly accepted medium which people will accept in the form of well in exchange for goods effectively. So, means of exchange, convenient means of exchange which is useful.
Dr James:
Store of value, as we were saying earlier. Well, we have to be able to give something to somebody else that has value. Therefore, it has to be able to retain its value, at least to a greater or lesser degree, so that we can do that. But of course we’ve got to remember that, yes, it is a store of value, but is it the best store of value? It really depends on someone’s goals and objectives and actually there might be better stores of value, stores of value that grow in value with time rather than lose value or depreciate, as money is known to do. But why does this happen? Well, it’s an interesting one, we’re going to get into it in just a second do. But why does this happen? Well, it’s an interesting one, we’re going to get into it in just a second.
Dr James:
So the one true money, the original, uh, money from back in the day, uh, and when I say back in the day, what I mean is really really, really quite some time ago. Uh, gold was the original means of exchange. Gold, as we know from the history books, was the original form, the original material, one of the original materials used in the form of coinage. Coins were originally made from gold. Pound coin nowadays doesn’t have a great deal of gold in it at all, but once upon a time these coins were a set quantity of gold and a set purity of gold.
Dr James:
And it’s an interesting one because we have to ask ourselves why does gold actually have value?
Dr James:
Why does anything have value?
Dr James:
Well, it has value.
Dr James:
Something has value because it makes some part of our life easier or provides some sort of function for us effectively. So, if you think about it, why does gold actually have value? Well, you know, the thing about gold is obviously it’s sought after as this precious material and it’s obviously referred to in that context a lot, and you know, people get really excited about finding quantities of gold. There was a reason why there’s a gold rush in the wild west around about the 1800s period. But why does it actually have value? Why do people get excited about it? Well, we have to ask ourselves this.
Dr James:
So it’s an interesting one, because we actually look at the physical properties of what gold does and the, the, the functions that gold provides to society, that it actually actually has quite limited use cases, as you may or may not know. So it has some industrial uses. Obviously it’s jewelry. It can be used for jewelry as well. Dental crowns we know that the physical property of gold is really good for dental crowns. They’re actually some of the indirect restorative materials with the longest, uh, the the best evidence to suggest that they last the longest, which is awesome. But beyond that, it doesn’t actually have that much use cases, and even you might argue that when it comes to jewelry as a use case, well, that’s purely based off our subjective valuation of it.
Dr James:
So if you think about it, really a lot of what gives gold its actual value is because we all think it has value. We all deem it to have value effectively, and when and why that is the case is because it’s pretty to look at. A big reason why is because it’s beautiful to look at it. A big reason why is because it’s beautiful to look at. It doesn’t tarnish, it’s got this deep gold yellow color, it’s shiny, it’s appealing to look at, it’s got this luster, and actually that’s a big reason why we all deem it to have value. It’s more because it’s beautiful than anything else. It’s more because it’s pretty to look at and that might sound really whimsical, but actually that’s one of the big reasons why people pay so much money for gold. So if we know that, it’s because if we know that gold has a big part of its value due to its appearance, well, anything beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Any, anything that is value based on its appearance is inherently subjective. So actually a big driver on the value of gold is subjectivity, is psychology, is because we all think it has value, and that’s an interesting concept because there’s lots of things in society that we all collectively believe to have value. However, there isn’t, maybe, a sound basis to that evaluation whenever we explore things or scratch surface a little deeper.
Dr James:
So let’s change gears slightly. Let’s talk about the Bank of England. So we’ve heard of the Bank of England. Most people who are watching this video are from the UK, so you will have heard of the Bank of England, but not many people know about the story of the Bank of England and how it actually began. So if we go back to the 1600s and we put everything in context as to that era, so the great plague happened in 1663 in london. The great fire of london happened in 1666, which is interesting because it also happens to be the number of the beast, as we all know 666, which is an interesting factoid.
Dr James:
And what people actually don’t know is to rebuild London, the King of England around about those times had to borrow a huge amount of money in order to do that, and the king of the time, charles the second, in 1667 basically borrowed a lot of money from London’s goldsmiths and he In essence said I’m actually just not going to pay your money back, guys. It’s not my money and there wasn’t a great deal that the goldsmiths of London could do about it because they were up against the King of England. So that happened, but naturally they weren’t in a rush to lend to the Royal family ever again. So the reputability as borrowers was also annihilated, even though, yes, he did get away without having to repay his loans at the time, which was lucrative for them, lucrative for him. It was pretty short-sighted move fast forward to the year 1690 and the English navy suffered one of their greatest defeats in history for the French navy at the battle of Beachy Head. And around about that time the King of England, william III, needed to borrow money to rebuild the English Navy, but of course, the Goldsmiths of London. Well, it wasn’t terribly long ago that what happened between the Goldsmiths of London and Charles II had happened. So, as I say, they weren’t in a rush to give him credit, so he couldn’t actually get credit to rebuild his navy.
Dr James:
And that was when, enter william patterson, an entrepreneurial banker, had a great idea to start a bank that used the crest of england in its insignia. They call it. They would call it the bank of england. People would be only too ready to deposit into the bank, given that it was aligned with the nation, given that it had the crest of England on its flag and therefore inspired immediate trust. But what they didn’t know was that money that they lent to the Bank of England well, that would subsequently the money that they deposited in the Bank of England that would be used to borrow against the King of England. King William III would borrow against that money that was in the bank, which was crazy, which is fascinating so he would be able to obtain the credit that he needed to rebuild the navy. And it was just that there was this extra tier of admin between him directly borrowing from the public uh, versus borrowing from the bank. But what it meant was that he could get his money, and this would all be shrouded in a few layers of bureaucracy, so that people didn’t necessarily know this. And what they also did was that people don’t know too was.
Dr James:
William Patterson quickly realized that he didn’t actually necessarily need to have people deposit in the bank to be able to print money, to be able to print the notes that he needed to lend to the king, because everybody had already believed, already used uh notes commonly throughout the course of uh, their, their existence around about that time. So he just he realized that he could just print a, a great deal of these notes, these paper notes that uh said uh, you know the pound on it, the british pound, and if he just printed them, because people had already been trained to use them, they would just habitually continue to use them. So he also realized that he could just print money effectively and lend it to the King of England without even necessarily having people deposit into the bank to back up that credit that he was lending to the King of England so effectively. It was a money printing machine and that was when people had this epiphany okay, wow, we don’t actually necessarily need to have gold to create currency against anymore, because people are already trained to believe that the notes that we use in common circulation have value. Crazy, and this is the same system that they still use to this day.
Dr James:
Few variations has evolved over the years. In a few ways it’s still, in essence, it’s the same system and that’s why we have to draw the distinction between money versus currency. There is a difference. Money pertains to what we were talking about just a second ago. Here’s the definition of money. Here’s the. Here is, uh, the. You know the qualities of money effectively.
Dr James:
So we talked about money just a second ago. We said that it was store of value, we said that it was a unit of account and we also said that it retains value. If we just go back to this slide right here store of value, unit of account, means of exchange, so money retains value. But actually the difference between currency and money is that currency does not actually retain its value long term. And you’ve heard of inflation. You’ve heard, you know about how the dollar goes through inflation. What inflation is? We’re going to save that for another webinar because that’s a 20, 30 minute explainer in and of itself, but, safe to say, most people know what it is.
Dr James:
So, if you think about it right, can we actually truly call the British pound money? Can we actually truly call the dollar money? We can call gold money because it actually satisfies all of these properties or characteristics on the left hand side of this table. But currency is not actually technically a store of value. Currency that we use day to day, and the reason is current currency is not actually technically money, and the reason is current currency is not actually technically money, and the reason is it doesn’t actually store value long term. Now it has some value, but it’s not actually a store of value long term because it loses its value via inflation. What a pound could have got you in the 50s versus what a pound will get you now is completely different, and that’s a continuous and ongoing process, and that is actually one of the main things we’re protecting ourself against whenever it comes to understanding, investing and also boosting our income as well. It’s actually one of the greatest ways to protect yourself against inflation.
Dr James:
Now here’s the thing. There’s actually four types of money. If we want to get into this, this is more an interesting factoid than anything else, but it helps give us context to all the things that we’re exploring in this webinar. So let’s talk about the history of money and where it all actually came from, and things will make way more sense. We’re going to go on a little bit of a journey now. We’re going to walk through each of these different types of money. There’s four different types. By the way, we’re going to use money and currency a little interchangeably in this webinar this evening, even though, strictly speaking, they are slightly different because of what we’ve just said. So, if you hear me do that, you can just equate the two to be the same for the purposes of this webinar.
Dr James:
So let’s go back in time, pre-money, before money was even a concept. Things had value and they could be exchanged. We could barter. We could trade a horse for a llama. Potentially, maybe that happened at some point in history, who the heck knows but point is that people could exchange items that they had in front of them. Maybe they would exchange some sort of jewelry or some sort of piece of clothing for an animal or whatever, or whatever they needed at the, at the market. This was how human society functioned for a long time.
Dr James:
But it’s interesting because the ancient Egyptians had no formal money. They had no agreed up, commonly agreed upon means to purchase goods from another one another or measure each other’s wealth. They just their whole society, existed on them bartering for goods. So people would just go to the market and exchange animals for what they needed, or grain or or wheat or whatever it is that they had at hand. They had no formal, agreed upon common currency, so society could exist. However, it was rather inconvenient, because what if you had some sort of animal and you wanted to purchase I don’t know some cloth or whatever, and that person who had the cloth didn’t actually need that animal, they wanted something else. It actually hindered exchanging with that, bartering with that person or doing commerce with that person.
Dr James:
So that was actually why money became used frequently and of course, the first type of money was commodity money. It was gold. The first type of money was gold. It was gold is a commodity, so we had commodity money. So, for example, someone go to the market and exchange a certain quantity of silver or a certain quantity of gold, precious metal, for the item that they wanted, and it had to be a certain purity of gold as well for it obviously to be, for it obviously to be accepted effectively. So that was originally how money came about. Originally people just started exchanging commodities for items that they needed. That’s how coinage became a thing, because obviously they just needed an agreed upon method of doing that. So when they had the piece of metal and they had the stamp on it, which is effectively what the coin is just a stamped piece of metal then they knew that it was approved and then they knew it was a certain quantity and that was why people used it, which is interesting actually Now with time. Oh yeah, and it is important to mention that actually, technically speaking, commodity money can really be anything that people commonly use or frequently agree upon, and these are some examples of commodity money that has been used over time. Apparently, in post-war Germany in the 1920s there was a lot of inflation, so people used cigarettes as currency.
Dr James:
Effectively, as people may or may not know, british sailors were paid in rum in the 1500s, 1600s, and you may or may not know that. That’s where the expression proof comes from proof, one proof of alcohol is a certain, is a certain quant, is a certain, is a rum with a certain percentage of strength that I think it has to be like 56 alcohol or something along those lines. And the way they would test it is they would see if the rum lit on fire. They would burn some of the rum and if it burnt they knew that it was not watered down rum and they knew they were getting paid properly again, interesting fact. Now let’s move on to the second type money, receipt money. So what is receipt money? So with time, people would deposit their gold in, in where are their, their commodities?
Dr James:
In warehouses, and they would have a receipt from the warehouse and the receipt would say you have deposited, deposited X, y and Z quantity of wood Now, or wood or gold or whatever the heck anything. Now, with time, these warehouses became so well known and reputable that people would actually take those receipts, those pieces of paper, because the warehouse would pay, would give it to the bearer of the receipt there and then I promise to pay the bearer on demand. This is where that expression comes from. Now, what people would do is they would take those receipts and they would use them to barter effectively, they would just give them to each other instead of having to have the inconvenience of carrying huge quantities of goods around. They would just give them the receipt and then the person who had the receipt would then redeem that at the warehouse and that’s actually where receipt money came from, which is interesting. Now, obviously, for the receipt to be redeemable, it would need to be backed by an asset at a one-to-one rate. So say, for example, if someone said if the receipt said hey, there’s a thousand pieces, there’s a thousand you know portions of timber in this factory, or a thousand portion you know kilograms of gold or whatever, and in the in the warehouse or another factory in the warehouse, then that would mean that that receipt was backed at a one-to-one ratio, because it would have to be literally that amount of gold or that amount of the commodity in the warehouse.
Dr James:
People started to realize with time that not everybody redeemed their receipts. This is where things get a little off piste, so to speak. Not everybody redeemed all their receipts at once, and so the warehouses realized they could actually issue more receipts than they actually had assets to back up these receipts, so to speak. So they realized that for every 1,000 pieces of any commodity in their factory, in their, in their warehouse sorry, then, what they could do is they could, they could give receipts on it. They could create receipts for 1,100 or 1,200, and because it was very unlikely that everybody would take all in these huge warehouses, that everybody would take all of their quantity, their goods out at once, they could actually get away with this a little bit. They could actually create more receipts than they had goods to back things up, and obviously that would mean that was basically them creating free money or printing free money for themselves, because they could go out and exchange this for stuff and nobody ever knew, which is the the crazy part, because no one would ever redeem all their assets at any one time. Of course it gets in the mercury charity, because you can just see how that people can get carried away with that.
Dr James:
Of course and this is effectively what banks have done with time they used to have gold to back up all the pounds that they created. The pound was originally a pound of sterling silver, a certain quantity of silver. So for every pound issued, there had to be a certain quantity of silver in reserve somewhere in a bank somewhere. But, as we know, with nowadays, a pound, a pound coin would not get you a pound of silver at all. And, by the way, when I say pound of silver, what? What I mean is a lib like an LB, you know, 14 pounds in a stone, as in the pound, in terms of weight or mass rather than value. But that’s actually where the unit of value came from. It was originally referring to mass, effectively, which is an interesting fact.
Dr James:
So, like I say, with time people realized they didn’t have to actually back up all these receipts that they were creating. But of course, this gets into murky territory, because what it means is if we’re using these receipts and we’re exchanging them on a day-to-day basis and we plan, and someone gives us one of those receipts and we want to go and exchange it for the good. That’s that that we believe we’re getting. Well, obviously, the issue would be that we might not actually get what we were promised and therefore were shortchanged. And, of course, like I said, that originated in warehouses and it became a thing in banks as well with time, just like the Bank of England. They started out with fractional money. They started out with creditors and fractional money and, with time, william Patterson realized that he could just create receipts continuously Fiat money.
Dr James:
And this is what happens. Whenever there is absolutely no backing to the currency whatsoever, it’s just created out of thin air. They just continuously print it and print it, and print it. And you might think that that sounds crazy, but that’s actually what happens across the whole entire world. There’s very few, if any, currencies that are actually backed at a one-to-one ratio in terms of receipt money. In terms of them being receipt money, uh, they’re all pretty much fiat money, um, which is crazy, because the only real reason we believe it to have value is because we are habituated to it, is because we’ve grown up with it and because that’s what we’ve used continuously. But it’s only really because everybody believes that it’s worth something, that it is because we’ve grown up with it and because that’s what we’ve used continuously, but it’s only really because everybody believes that it’s worth something, that it is actually worth something. That’s literally how the monetary system works, which is just crazy to me, to be honest with you anyway. So this is how the monetary system works. This is what we use day to day and what it just what it really drives home for me is it just really drives home how powerful conditioning is it really drives home how powerful we can, just really drives home how powerful conditioning is it really drives home how powerful we can be conditioned by those around us and the people around us.
Dr James:
Money is a complete social construct. It’s something that somebody well, once upon a time it was something that was backed by gold and other precious metals, which, by the way, we only really believed had value because they looked pretty and beautiful in the first place. So that was even subjective in the first place, but at least there was something substantial to substantiate them effectively. And then, as I say, with time what’s happened is it’s just, it’s just became this continuous free-for-all process where we can just make more and more and more, and you know, the issue with that is that the more money that they create, the more money that the government, the more money that the government creates, the greater the pool of currency that’s out there. And if supply and demand, if there is a lot of money being created and the supply of goods is roughly around about the same, well you can see how we need to exchange more currency for those goods goods because there’s just an overabundance of currency. And therefore, if everybody has more money, well, prices get bid up effectively.
Dr James:
If you think about it. Let’s use a really simple analogy just to really drive that home. If you think about it, if there’s ten people bidding for a house and they all have a hundred thousand pounds, well, they can only really bid up to a hundred thousand points for the house, right. But if there’s 10 people that want to buy a house, five of them have a hundred thousand pounds and five of them have two hundred thousand pounds, well, you can quickly see that the people that have two hundred thousand pounds will be able to bid the price up to a level that other people can’t, can’t bid to, can’t get to, can obtain. And you and you can see that in a nutshell is how inflation works.
Dr James:
Obviously, that’s on a macro level If we blow it up macro level, it’s less about how much money somebody has and it’s more about how much money somebody has relative to other people. That’s the crazy thing to realize, it’s a crazy thing to understand. It’s more about your relative wealth and the unit of account is the. The current, the pound or the dollar is just a way of measuring it. And, like I say, that’s the money, the, the number in itself is arbitrary. It’s, it’s about as meaningful to the universe. One to ten, to a million, to a billion is about as meaningful to the there. It doesn’t actually make that much difference to the universe. You know, there’s no, there’s no, there’s no way that. Um, there’s no law of physics that says that.
Dr James:
You know, a certain amount of money is, is worth, it will get you a certain amount of things, or anything along those lines. It’s not, it’s not like, defined in that sense. It’s just what we all think it is. It’s just what society commonly believes it to be worth. It’s more just perception than anything else.
Dr James:
And this is just a crazy thing to realize, right? Because if value is subjective and is everything that we believe about money is subjective, then what else is subjective? Are you with me how true are those beliefs? Where is the line Actually? What is too much money? What is too little money? What do all these things even mean? Actually, all of it of it’s subjective and actually it may have just been project. It’s well, it will have been projected onto us at some stage by somebody else. And how do we know it’s even true? And also, if we, how do we know if it’s even when we start thinking ourselves, how do we know it’s even true? We start thinking ourselves right, where is the line? Where can I get to whenever it comes to my income? How can I boost this? Because if we know it’s subjective, we know we have to look within in order to change it. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s inherently the case. Uh, whenever it comes to something subjective, it’s an internal thing, it’s a human thing, it’s a personal thing. And then also, we need to know that’s exactly where we need to look whenever it comes to the limits that we place on ourselves a lot as well. It’s all internal, it’s all a subjective thing. It can’t be anything else.
Dr James:
By definition, it’s literally a social construct. We promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of a dollar, but what actually is a dollar. Can anybody define that Really? Once upon a time, it was a certain quantity of gold. Nowadays, a dollar is just a dollar. It’s not. It’s not really. There’s not really any way you can define it in a more granular level than that. So when, when we say we promise to pay the bearer on demand one dollar, what actually is dollar? Let’s just think about that. And the same thing with the pound coin as well.
Dr James:
So the central bank model exists all throughout the course of the world. Uh, to this very day, even America’s central bank uses it the Federal Reserve. They based it off the Central Bank of England. How the Federal Reserve started is a whole big story in itself. If somebody wants to look this up, here’s an extreme scenario the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Inflation got so bad in the country they had to make a 10 million dollar note. Let’s just let that sink in 10 million dollar note. So that’s when money printing got so crazy that everybody’s currency was devalued and everybody’s wealth was devalued, so it necessitated the printing of this note. So this can and does happen, and we’ve seen inflation fairly recently being really, really, really, really high. So it’s all about how we can protect ourselves against it.
Dr James:
So here’s the thing it’s not fair to say that this system doesn’t have merits. I mean, it’s coincided with some of the greatest advancements whenever it comes to science, whenever it comes to human progress over the last 100 years, 150 years, so. So free for freeflowing capital does help with that. So it’s not to say that, intrinsically, this is actually even necessarily a bad idea to run central banks and the financial system the way that we run it. But what it is to say is that we’ve got to understand how it works. When you understand how it works, well, what it means is that you can adapt your strategy based off that knowledge and actually you can harness that wisdom to get real results in your life.
Dr James:
Just remember, it’s all subjective. It can’t be anything but subjective, because money is literally a social construct and it comes from our beliefs. It comes from the only reason that anything has any value, the only reason that anything has any value. Whenever you know any quantity of money has any values, because we all believe it to be. And if we know, if it’s a belief and it’s a subjective thing, well we also know that it’s inherently malleable, it’s inherently flexible. And how accurate is our concept of it to this point, and can we adapt that so that we can actually welcome more money into our life and understand more about investing? The real truth is a little more complicated. Whenever it comes to the full depth of the central bank model, however, today we’ve covered at high level and what we’ve got to understand is the biggest thing to understand is that when you know this stuff, you can take account of it and you can adapt your strategy in your life so you can protect yourself against it.
Dr James:
Because, remember, understanding money and understanding a little bit more about the investing side of things is mainly a defensive thing. First of all, because, think about it, if all our cash is in the bank, we’re just earning money and it’s coming into the bank and it’s just sat there not doing anything. Well, this process is happening. It’s being constantly devalued because of money printing across the world. So if that’s the case and we know that that’s going on continuously, tacitly, unless we do something well, it all of a sudden just gives us a huge impetus to go and take action. And actually boosting your income is one of the best ways that you can do that, because, if you think about it, if your income is boosted, you can be flat broke. However, you could go to work for a month and at the end of that month, have more money than most people do in their lifetime, if you’re, if you’re able to earn a decent sum of money.
Dr James:
I see dentists out there who are here very young in age and they’re bringing in 20, 30, 40 grand every single month in terms of income. That will be from the dentistry side of things and then also from their assets, from their investments. That’s possible. That’s out there, and this is the thing you know. Unless we get contacts, unless we’re able to understand what other people are up to, then we’ll never really be able to say where we are versus where we could be. So that inspires us and it makes us think to yourself right, okay, what do they know? What pieces of wisdom do they know? What things do they know that we can implement into our life?
Dr James:
And that’s actually the really cool thing about being inspired to learn about money, because it makes you think to yourself right, what else is out there? What did I believe to be true? That maybe necessarily isn’t true because, like I say, all of this stuff is subjective. Our concepts of money are subjective, they’re inherently subjective. And if that’s the case, and we know that that’s the case then we also know that to a degree, they’re massively malleable and we can enhance them, and we can enhance how we see the world and we can also adapt.
Dr James:
We can include those strategies that people are using out there day to day in their life to be able to generate that sum of money and be able to implement them in to your own life. Of course, it’s not a magic wand we’ve got to be clear about that but there is some really cool stuff out there and that’s why boosting your income plus investing is one of the best ways to protect yourself against all the things we talked about in this webinar this evening. Thank you so much, guys, for listening. I really enjoy presenting this stuff. Some really cool epiphanies in there. Trust me, there is way more to it than, uh, we’re able to fully explain in this webinar tonight, but it’s certainly a good way to whet our appetite and begin to inspire people out there to think to yourselves right, what is possible.
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