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About this Episode
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
Hosts & Guests
No transcript available for this episode.
