Love & Hard Money

Brian
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Love & Hard Money is a weekly podcast that explores the intersection of Bitcoin, ethics, and business strategy. Each episode features deep dives into sound money principles, monetary history, and how Bitcoin fits into a principled business approach. Hosted by Brian Bundy, founder of Satoshi General, the podcast is designed for business leaders, CFOs, and entrepreneurs who want to understand Bitcoin beyond the hype—grounded in economics, ethics, and practical business experience.

  1. 4D AGO

    Don't Poop In The Well

    SHOW NOTES Episode Summary Brian traces the tragedy of the commons from medieval English pastures through Venetian banking to the modern dollar network, arguing that monetary history is the history of shared resources getting captured by whoever is closest to them. He connects this to the deepest pattern in biology — every organism consumes until collapse — and asks what it means that humans are the only species capable of seeing the constraint and choosing differently. Bitcoin is examined as the first monetary commons that is structurally, not just legally, protected from capture. Key Concepts Covered Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons — The iron law of commons capture — Fractional reserve banking as upstream pollution — The Cantillon effect as toll extraction — The 2022 Russian reserve freeze as the Cuyahoga moment — The biological default of consume/peak/collapse — The prefrontal cortex as evolution's most expensive investment — Bitcoin's 21 million cap as collective constraint-encoding — The Ordinals/inscription debate as commons contestation — Network vs. unit distinction in monetary theory Recommended Reading The Tragedy of the Commons — Garrett Hardin (1968) The Bitcoin Standard — Saifedean Ammous The Sovereign Individual — Davidson & Rees-Mogg What Has Government Done to Our Money? — Murray Rothbard The Selfish Gene — Richard Dawkins (useful biological frame) Debt: The First 5,000 Years — David Graeber (useful foil)   www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529

    31 min

  2. APR 28

    Why You Can't Afford A House

    The 30-year mortgage didn't make housing affordable. It made it permanently more expensive. Here's the only thing that actually fixes it. Episode Summary Brian traces the systemic causes of housing unaffordability — from the 30-year mortgage to securitization to the Cantillon effect — arguing that every proposed fix fails because none of them address the monetary premium at the root of the problem. He then makes the honest case for Bitcoin as the demonetizer: not a quick fix, not without volatility, not without a difficult transition — but the only path that actually resolves the underlying cause rather than managing the symptoms. Key Concepts Covered The co-op covenant as a real-world controlled experiment on financing and price — The elevator inversion as a technology value-structure analogy — The financing-inflates-prices principle across housing, student loans, and healthcare — The 30-year mortgage as inflation transmission mechanism — Securitization and the socialization of mortgage risk — The monetary premium in housing — The Cantillon effect on first-time buyers — Early adopter benefit vs. Cantillon extraction — Bitcoin volatility as demonetization in progress — The genie/baby thought experiment — Living in both worlds during the monetary transition The Baby and the Bridge — Thought Experiment The core analogy: asking a genie for the best bridge-building technology and receiving a human baby. The baby cannot build a bridge today. Critics who evaluate it on those terms are not wrong — on those terms. But the baby grows up. Bitcoin is the baby: the best long-run monetary technology that exists, evaluated unfairly by critics using short-run criteria. The right question is not 'can it do X today' but 'what does this become?' Recommended Reading & Resources The Bitcoin Standard — Saifedean Ammous What Has Government Done to Our Money? — Murray Rothbard The Price of Tomorrow — Jeff Booth The Richest Man in Babylon — George S. Clason (starting point for anyone new to saving) Nostr — decentralized social media with native Bitcoin tipping (lightning wallet required) Data Points Referenced Median home price to median income ratio: approximately 3x in 1980, 6–8x today in most US markets (Census / NAR data). College tuition increase: ~1,200% since 1980, vs. ~300% general inflation (College Board data). US healthcare spend: approximately 2x OECD average per capita (WHO / OECD data). Median US homebuyer age: 59 years in recent NAR surveys, up from 39 in 2010 and 31 in 1980. Bitcoin drawdowns: approximately 80%+ peak-to-trough in 2011, 2014–15, 2018, 2022 — with each subsequent cycle floor higher than the prior cycle peak. www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529

    32 min

  3. APR 21

    The Monkey, The Rat, The Amish and You

    Episode Summary Brian traces the arc from evolutionary biology to monetary policy, arguing that the rage and tribalism of modern political life are not caused by cultural failure or moral decline — they are the predictable output of a monetary system that exploits humanity's hardwired fairness instincts while hiding its own role in doing so. Key Concepts Covered Frans de Waal's capuchin fairness experiments — Displaced aggression in stress research — Interest rates as civilization's operating system — The monetary premium in housing — The Cantillon effect and institutional credit advantage — Maslow's hierarchy as a diagnostic tool for monetary policy — The Amish data point on mental health and economic structure — Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments — Bitcoin as a restoration of rule-based fairness Recommended Reading The Theory of Moral Sentiments — Adam Smith (1759) The Age of Empathy — Frans de Waal The Bitcoin Standard — Saifedean Ammous What Has Government Done to Our Money? — Murray Rothbard Maslow's hierarchy original paper: A Theory of Human Motivation (1943) Referenced Research de Waal, F. & Brosnan, S. (2003). Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature, 425, 297–299. Displaced aggression research: Dollard et al. frustration-aggression hypothesis; subsequent refinements by Marcus-Newhall et al. Amish mental health studies: various, including work by Egeland & Hostetter on affective disorders in Plain communities. www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529

    28 min

  4. APR 15

    The Eight Forms Of Capital

    Episode Summary In this episode, Brian explores a framework from permaculture that expands what we mean by wealth. Drawing on the work of Ethan Roland and Gregory Landua's 2011 paper Regenerative Enterprise, he walks through the eight forms of capital — and argues that sound money and regenerative living aren't competing philosophies. They need each other. He also gets personal: what it means to sell chemicals for a living while believing in regenerative agriculture, why the family is the most underrated unit of resilience, and why Bitcoin may matter most not because of what it stores — but because of what it gives back. What We Cover The system we built — Why a world optimized for efficiency is quietly becoming more fragile. The soda can supply chain as a case study in converting living capital into financial capital at a loss. The real problem is time — All capital is just time and energy stored in different forms. When money can be created without either, everything gets mispriced. Scarcity and abundance — Why real abundance comes from constraints, not from removing them. And what we've done by creating artificial abundance in money while destroying real abundance in soil and health. The eight forms of capital — The full framework from Roland and Landua, with Brian's commentary on each: Financial capitalMaterial capitalLiving capitalSocial capitalIntellectual capitalExperiential capitalCultural capitalSpiritual capitalPlus one Brian adds: time capital — sovereignty over your own attention and futureThe two incomplete solutions — Bitcoiners see the money problem clearly but often miss the living and social capital question. Permaculturalists see the ecological and community problem clearly but often ignore incentives. Neither works without the other. The synthesis — Locally rooted. Globally connected. Not isolation, not collapse-fantasy, not nostalgia. Balance achieved through distributed consensus. The family as base layer — Why every form of capital ultimately lives or dies at the household level. What it actually looks like to build systems optimized for healthy families. Bitcoin as the base layer for money — What sound money actually restores, and why the most important thing it might give back is time. Referenced Ethan Roland & Gregory Landua, Regenerative Enterprise (2011) — the original eight forms of capital frameworkSri Lanka's 2021 chemical fertilizer ban and the famine and political collapse that followedKey Quotes "Sound money is necessary. It is not sufficient." "You can understand Bitcoin perfectly and still be completely dependent on fragile systems." "When you lose sovereignty over your time, you lose everything else too." "The goal isn't to tear down the system. It's to stop needing it for things it was never meant to provide." "Real wealth isn't just what shows up in your bank account or your hardware wallet." Follow Love & Hard Money is available on Fountain, Nostr, and all major podcast platforms. Bitcoin accepted. Fiat tolerated. www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529

    22 min

  5. MAR 31

    The Unspoken Sermon Of Satoshi Nakamoto

    No one wrote this sermon. No one preached it. But if you pay attention, it's there. In Episode 12, Brian explores one of the most provocative ideas on Love & Hard Money yet: that Bitcoin — without intending to — encodes principles that every major religious and philosophical tradition has tried to teach for thousands of years. Don't steal. Tell the truth. Respect limits. Honor your word. This isn't an argument that Bitcoin is sacred. It's an observation that it rhymes with something that is. What We Cover Why every civilization across history converged on the same moral warnings — and what that pattern meansHow major traditions — Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism — each point to the same underlying reality about honesty, limits, and consequencesThe Tower of Babel as a mirror for the fiat era — and why Bitcoin may be the common language we lostWhy fiat money isn't just bad economics — it's misaligned with truthThe crucial distinction: religion works on the inside, Bitcoin works on the outsideWhy Bitcoiners who treat it as a digital savior are making a category errorHow the kind of money you live under shapes not just your finances — but your thinking, your time horizon, and who you becomeKey Lines From This Episode "It's not moral. But it rhymes with morality." "Religion says: you should not steal. Bitcoin says: it's much harder to." "Maybe that's not climbing toward heaven. Maybe that's just… coming back to earth." "Bitcoin fixes money. It doesn't fix you — but maybe it gives you the breathing room to work on yourself." "No one wrote this sermon. No one preached it." If This Episode Resonated The thesis of Love & Hard Money is simple: the money you use is a moral choice. Fiat is built on lies. Hard money — money that can't be inflated, manipulated, or conjured from nothing — aligns with how reality actually works. If you're new here, start with Episode 1. If this one hit something for you, share it with someone who's never thought about money this way. Love & Hard Money is a podcast about sound money, Austrian economics, and Bitcoin — hosted by Brian Bundy www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529

    12 min

  6. MAR 24

    The Cost Of A Dollar

    Episode 11: "The Cost Of A Dollar" Henry Ford believed that if Americans truly understood the banking and monetary system, there would be a revolution before morning. In this primer episode — built to share with the Bitcoin-curious — Brian walks through three acts: how dollars are actually created (the Treasury/Fed/fractional reserve cycle, and the Cantillon Effect that tells you who benefits), what that monetary architecture has produced in the real world (fiat food, fiat health, fiat relationships, ugly culture, opioids, endless war — and why politics cannot fix any of it), and how Bitcoin's fixed supply and inverted incentive structure points toward something genuinely different. No prior Bitcoin knowledge required. Start here. Send it to someone. Topics covered: The money creation cycle: Treasury bonds, the Federal Reserve, and fractional reserve lendingThe Cantillon Effect: why newly printed money enriches those closest to the printer firstTime preference: the hidden variable connecting monetary policy to civilizational decayFiat food, fiat health, fiat relationships, and the epidemic of meaninglessnessThe opioid epidemic as a wages-of-despair storyWhy sound money constrains war — and fiat money enables itWhy both political parties have agreed on one thing for over a century: print the differenceWhy the structure of the system makes political resolution impossible — and what that means for how you spend your energyBitcoin's 21 million supply cap: the first truly fixed monetary asset in human historyThe incentive inversion: how hard money produces long-term thinkingAddressing the objections: volatility, criminals, intrinsic value, competitionFour practical steps you can take todayRecommended reading/watching: What’s the Problem – Joe Bryant (https://youtu.be/YtFOxNbmD38)The Bitcoin Standard — Saifedean AmmousThe Sovereign Individual — James Dale Davidson & William Rees-MoggWhat Has Government Done to Our Money — Murray RothbardPrinciples of Economics — Carl Menger  www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529

    34 min

  7. MAR 17

    Do Tariffs Matter?

    Episode 10: Do Tariffs Matter? The tariff debate is one of the most consequential economic conversations of our time — and it's almost entirely missing the point. In this episode, Brian argues that the fight over tariffs is a second-order argument happening inside a fraudulent frame. The real question isn't whether tariffs are good or bad. It's whether free trade is even possible when the money itself is corrupt. What we cover: Why money is half of every transaction — and what happens when that half is crookedThe proof-of-weapons network: Simon Dixon's framework for understanding what actually backs the US dollar (hint: it's not the economy)How the petrodollar system, SWIFT, the IMF, and military force form an interlocking system that controls global purchasing powerA candid look inside Gravitas Chemical — how tariff whipsaw forced a costly supply chain migration from China to Indonesia, and why the math on reshoring doesn't work for small businessesThe two completely different things being called "reshoring" — and why only politically connected corporations are eating from the government troughWhy free trade also means free movement of people — and how dollar hegemony drives the very migration crisis politicians blame on migrantsWhat a Bitcoin-denominated world actually looks like: peer-to-peer trade, honest war financing, and individual wealth sovereignty that no army can seizeWhy "stack accordingly" isn't a political statement — it's a rational response to an unstable signal environmentKey idea: You cannot have free trade without honest money. Half of every transaction is the unit of account. If that half is controlled by the proof-of-weapons network — by the alignment of central banks, defense contractors, and political establishments — the price signal is lying and the measuring stick is crooked. No amount of tariff negotiation changes that. Bitcoin fixes the money. Honest money gives trade a chance to actually be free. Mentioned: Simon Dixon — proof-of-weapons network frameworkNixon closing the gold window (1971) and the petrodollar arrangementGaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Ayatollah Khamenei as historical examples of dollar hegemony enforcementCHIPS Act, TSMC Arizona, Intel, MP Materials — industrial policy reshoring vs. small business reshoringLove & Hard Money Episode 9 (Solzhenitsyn / Live Not By Lies)www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529

    29 min

  8. MAR 10

    Live Not By Lies

    Why do smart people go quiet when you explain inflation to them? They hear the words. They understand the logic. And then they change the subject. In this episode, Brian explores what's really happening in that moment — and why Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's challenge to Soviet citizens in 1974 may be the most relevant framework for understanding Bitcoin's role in the world today. The lie doesn't survive because powerful people enforce it. It survives because ordinary people participate in it — every day, in small ways, by choosing comfort over truth. Solzhenitsyn's ask wasn't revolution. It was quieter and more dangerous: just stop repeating what you know isn't true. Brian connects this to the hidden nature of inflation, Jeff Booth's deflationary thesis from The Price of Tomorrow, and the civilizational stakes of Bitcoin as an honest measuring stick. He also confronts a real tension: the difference between Bitcoin expanding and Bitcoin being domesticated — and why self-custody isn't just a technical preference but a philosophical commitment. In This Episode Why people shut down when you talk about inflation — and what's really going on beneath that discomfortSolzhenitsyn's description of how systemic lies work: everyone knows, no one saysTechnology is deflationary — so why does everything keep getting more expensive?Bitcoin as the first monetary measuring stick that can't be quietly stretchedThe co-optation risk: ETFs, custodial products, and the difference between adoption and domesticationThe beautiful game theory: why decentralization must be actively defended, not assumedTruth as the foundation of cooperation, prosperity, and civilization itselfReferences & Further Reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Live Not By Lies (1974 essay)Jeff Booth, The Price of TomorrowConnect Stack sats. Live free. Tell the truth — and insist on truth in money. New episodes every week. www.satoshigeneral.com linkedin.com/in/brian-bundy-b30a529

    19 min
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About

Love & Hard Money is a weekly podcast that explores the intersection of Bitcoin, ethics, and business strategy. Each episode features deep dives into sound money principles, monetary history, and how Bitcoin fits into a principled business approach. Hosted by Brian Bundy, founder of Satoshi General, the podcast is designed for business leaders, CFOs, and entrepreneurs who want to understand Bitcoin beyond the hype—grounded in economics, ethics, and practical business experience.

Information

  • Creator
    Brian
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Love & Hard Money
  • Show Website
    Love & Hard Money