Working my way through the back catalog. It started as a great podcast with tips on making yourself better to maximise success. Then it seems the gents drunk the crypto koolaid. It’s rather awkward listening to be honest.
They’ve literally “done their own research” and now are monetary and financial market experts, and can’t wait to talk up the benefits of crypto. Like every other crypto bro who knows it’s a massively speculative play but the only way to keep the thing going up is convincing as many people as possible to buy in. Surprise surprise, every guest is pro crypto. For an infinitely more thorough and academic deep dive into crypto, check out the rational reminder podcast’s 17 part series.
Anyway, its more the monetary and financial systems they discuss that has me cringing the most. Obviously a few years on I have the benefit of seeing how things panned out, but given they’re demonstrably wrong on so many fronts, I’m surprised many of their earlier podcasts remain up.
At one point they conclude that because the people in charge are boomers with heaps of real estate, interest rates won’t go up purely so that market is kept afloat to maintain the wealth of these guys in charge and their mates. It’s laughable.
Their argument is based on individuals’ behaviour being led by the old Charlie Munger quote “show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome”. They make this argument a number of times through numerous podcasts and base a large part of their argument on the flaws of the monetary/financial systems on this. It’s gobsmackingly oversimplified to advise people to base their investments on this tenuous argument. But they do.
But as history has shown, interest rates did go up, completely contradicting their predictions that they’ve sold to listeners as a virtual guarantee. At this point, instead of a humble admission of how wrong they were, they double down and make other arguments about how the system is broken and the sky is going to fall in. In my most recent podcast that I listened to, they conclude that everything has changed because of the old average (emphasis on average) 7 year boom to bust cycle has been confined to history. Now its 2-3 years. After a single economic crisis. That was driven not by the business cycle, but a virus. Ignoring of course that once the previous crisis (GFC) is taken into account, the last couple of crises have averaged about the 7 year spacing. Their advice: the world is changing, get into crypto. Haha at least they’re predictable I guess.
They also refer to Ray Dalio fairly often. A guy whose thoughts were always a little wacky, using selective evidence and fancy YouTube videos to make his point. But I’m afraid to say Ray has been outed as a con and an egotist. I’m not denying his success as a fund manager. But being great at that doesn’t give you a crystal ball at the economic future of the world. His fund is now in freefall, his managerial theories debunked (Bridgewater is a toxic place to work), and his name is now basically rubbish.
Quite frankly, its a little embarrassing listening to these guys talking about this stuff. If they’d stuck to what they did know, instead of going down the rabbit hole of crypto loving, fiat currency and centrally controlled monetary system is the enemy path, it would’ve been a great podcast.
It’s a sad indictment on a couple of guys who are probably pretty good at getting people back on track to achieve financial success in life.
