Is Money a Religion?

Since before the dawn of recorded history, the power of belief has been a driving force for human civilization. Spiritual movements have risen and fallen, only to be replaced by other belief systems. Today much of the developed world is considered increasingly secular -- or is it? Join the guys as they explore the strange and troubling question: What if, instead of becoming less religious, the world has simply switched to another religion… the church of money?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic power. Since government conspiracies history is
riddled with unexplained events, you can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,

(00:23):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt a
k A Daddy two hands, and my name is Noel
a k. A big money hustler dollar billboy Brown. Oh
I thought they were calling you flashback. I'll take it. Oh, well, anyhow,
I stacked them. I stacked nicknames like I stacked my duckets.
There we go frequently high. Yeah. Hello, ladies and gentlemen,

(00:46):
they call me Ben. You are you that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know? Uh, this will
be an episode with many nicknames involved, right. Uh. This
will be an episode where instead of too much of
an anecdote at the beginning, we're going to jump right
into it. This is a strange question. Uh. And we

(01:07):
even thought of a little bit of a theme song
to introduce it, which no, if you'll, well, we gotta
do it together. We we couldn't get clearance from the
o JS. Guys, let's do Okay, so we'll do We'll
change it up slightly, okay, um, dollar dollar, dollar dollar,
And then you gotta go, then you go. Dollar Yeah yeah, okay,

(01:31):
yeah yeah, that works, that works. I think I think
we're you see what we should we have to be
disposed of, uh perhaps, but we will finish this episode,
even if they're dragging us out to be shot one
by one. Today's episode is about money. The scratch, the cheese,
the cheddar, the moon law, the bucks, the dollars, the Benjamin's,

(01:55):
not to be confused with bend bucks, the gibraltars, the
gray ends. I'm just looking for slang for money here.
Uncle Jimmy's folding papers. That's my favorite so far. Well, yeah,
let's let's just get the badger out of the back here.
Today's episode ask whether money is a religion? Womp them wompom. Yeah.

(02:18):
See here, I'm stuck. I'm stuck on that question. Is
money a religion? That's that's intense. It all go back
to that old saying. Is that the root of money
is the love of all things good in the world.
Isn't that how it goes? Something to that effect or

(02:41):
or the the love of money is the root of
the problem, right, or the love of money is the
root of all evil? Is much more positive? Sound? I
feel like yours was much more positive. Maybe this saying
comes from a a more negative earlier time. That's fair.
You know, we can we can take it to the
Bible if you want to. I've got a verse here

(03:04):
from the King James version from Luke. You want to
go said, this is the dam show. This is Luke
sixteen thirteen. It says no servant can serve two masters,
for either he will hate the one and love the other,
or else he will hold to one and despise the other.
Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Now you might be

(03:27):
asking yourself, what the heck is a mammon? What the
heck is a mamon some sort of gland. Well, it's
a word that refers to either the physical wealth like riches,
or to the emotional state of greed. And interestingly enough,
in the Middle Ages we're talking Europe five century to
like fifteenth century, that name mammon was commonly referred to

(03:50):
as an actual deity, a demon, a demon of wealth
and greed. Right, yes, so we see that there is
a little bit of an entire well, little bit is
an unfair We say that there is clear antagonism throughout
civilization between organized religions and uh financial power, although the

(04:10):
two are very much linked in many cases their fingers
on the same hand. So to some people listening, this
is and an offensive question, right, how how dare you
or if we want to get old biblical with it,
how dare ye uh compare something worldly with something spiritual,

(04:32):
especially if you're you know, a fairly wealthy person, especially
you know, by any comparative standard, but you also feel
deeply religious and that's not just you know, and that
that's not just Christianity. We're talking overall spiritual religious practices.
To others, the question maybe irrelevant. They may say, well,

(04:54):
I am an atheist, right, I don't. I don't believe
in any of this stuff, so it as a matter
to me if money is considered a religion. But the
three of us think this is a pretty interesting, dare
we say? Fascinating question, and we've been going back and
forth on it for some time now. So first things first,

(05:14):
let's let's define money. What do we mean when we
say something is money? What is what's money? I mean
it's like a thing that represents another thing that that
says I'm I have the power to this much power? Nuggets? Sure, Yeah,
let me read off the outline. What says here. It's
a measure of value, a means of payments, a current

(05:35):
medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes
known as currency. Okay, this one, this is better. We
should go with this. I don't know, I like the
opening because I'm kind of into this power nuggets power.
I mean, I just feel like money in general. That
that if you if when thought about in a certain way,
the question what is money can be pretty an existential
you know. But we'll get to that. We'll get we'll

(05:58):
get to the we'll get weird with it in a
little bit. So one way we could explain this concept, uh,
this measure of value is uh that I've got a
beautiful and oversimplified way to explore it. So let's think
of money maybe as well. People say money is debt, right,
essentially it is. But let's think of money as a
representation of effort over time. And we can practice this

(06:22):
equation in a hypothetical day to day life. For example,
let's say let's say one of us has a has
a job where you make sixty an hour. I'll take
it pretty sweet gig, right, sure, yeah, our our producer,
our producer is also nodding. I think Gallex is in
uh so, sixty bucks an hour pretty sweet gig just

(06:43):
to fill out this hypothesis or this daydream. So what
does somebody do where they would make sixty bucks an hour? Sailor?
That sounds pretty good, okay a sailor. So, uh, this
means that if if Nolsons is your idea, we'll have you.
Is the example. So Noel is a sailor, uh, and
you make sixty dollars an hour. This means each dollar

(07:05):
Noel possesses represents one minute of labor. Now, let's say
Noel goes and buy something for five dollars, like the
latest issue of Mad magazine or a really sweet advisor?
Is that is Mad Maxine? Only five dollars? I think
it's actually less. I'm not sure I need to start
picking that up again. Well, if you if you're nol

(07:28):
the sailor, and you pay five dollars for this, you
are literally spending five minutes. Only a sailor would read
that trash? Are you serious? Bite thy tongue curse like
a sailors sailors? N Yeah, no offense sailors. That was
a very anachronistic conception of the sailor's life. People, it

(07:53):
makes you wonder why we say. You know, this comparison
is wildly oversimplified, but it makes you wonder why we
say things like spend time or pay attention. You know,
and the three of us have often talked about this
off air too, when we're hanging out about what the
most important currency of our ages and for us as

(08:13):
podcasters and producers, the most important currency is really time. Sure, no,
but most of us remember the age of purely physical currency, right,
We're most most of us listening are old enough to
remember that there was a time before digital currency. Yeah,

(08:35):
my parents would only bring out the credit card if
we're gonna make some huge purchase, like a refrigerator or
something that we had to fix in the house. Otherwise
it was cash. Or if you needed to buy more
mattresses to keep your money in because the other ones
you feel you ran out of space. That happened, yeah
for you, for you, your family didn't. Yeah, we're sorry.

(08:56):
I had to find out about it this way. Didn't
you ever wonder why they had so many mattresses? I
thought we'd just would like to be really comfy. Yeah,
I guess, and both physically and uh, you know the
other way. Actually, Okay, so our ancestors may not have
been familiar with the concept of banknotes, but paper money

(09:21):
is only one late stage of the same concept. In
the past, people use all sorts of stuff to represent
power nuggets exactly like shells, are you know, shiny stones
or I mean that these are I'm just kind of
making these up. I know those are both true. Yeah,
give me some more, Oh, peppercorns, roof time. See, I

(09:42):
can see that because that's sort of a useful item,
you know, you can it's one seasoning nugget, you know
as well. It's not only a thing for you know,
to represent work, it's also you can use it for
something just yeah, like gold, which is such a ductile metal.
You can take it and shape it into something, you know,
which you can't. I mean, I guess you can practice

(10:04):
the orgami on a on a dollar bill in much
of the West. Now, currency is in a state of
transition from a physical to an increasingly digital medium, right. Yeah.
This is not even bringing in bitcoins yet. This is
just saying that someone could be a millionaire and literally
never see the cash, never have the what do. What

(10:26):
do you used to call it cash on hand? Yeah,
I have the petty cash, cash on hand, all that
stuff you're what do they call your liquid all that
liquid cash? You know, it's it's so weird because working
a job like this back in the day, I used
to get a check and I was all excited on
paid a because I get a check and go turn
it in. And for years and years now, I don't

(10:49):
see any of that unless I check my account. You know,
it's like it doesn't even exist. There's a picture of
a check on there for you. If you desire, you
wanted to, you could. You could print them all out
and put them in a little scrap book. That's your thing,
the checkbook. But it really is strange to think of
it as just so in the ether, And yet we
still use a lot of the same technology that you know,

(11:10):
we used when checks were more prevalent, like routing numbers
and the way banks communicate with each other. If you
ask me, it's pretty antiquated then. And I had a
fun little mix up where I deposited his check into
my account because they were identical checks for a thing
we did, and he uh had my check and I
had his and I was able to deposit it. I
used the mobile deposit thing and it went through, and

(11:31):
then I was able to deposit my check too. And
there's whole conundrum of like, well, who which bank do
we call? How do we figure out how to get
this money back? I know'm derailing the conversation will be here,
but it made me man. It took forever and we
only just now got it sorted out barely. Come on, banks,
get more digital. I'm afraid of that. Actually, don't do that, banks, please,
it's too late. It's too late because it seems like

(11:55):
it is an increasingly digital medium, which is weird because
if we look currency that used to be or money
that used to be based on a tangible commodity, the
gold that sits in the bank somewhere. Silver. Yeah, you
can take this inget and you can keep it for yourself,
or you can carve it into something where you can
trade it. Or you can take these peppercorns and you

(12:15):
can pay somebody else with it, or or Salt was
also used. Mark Klanski has a great book called Salt,
where he created. The least creative thing about the book
is the name, But it looks at the history of salt,
and how Roman soldiers were paid in salt, which is
where we get the phrase cough it up to pay
for something um or worth his salt, which I don't

(12:38):
know if people still say that, I haven't heard in
a while, but I guarantee you it exists. So what
happens with paper money? What does what does paper money represent?
This is what's known as fiat currency, which, rather being
like Ben said, being backed by some physical tangible thing,
is backed by just the guarantee of the person or
entity that issued it. Okay, that's all I mean. It's

(13:00):
just I guarantee that this is worth something. Okay, Now
you don't have to So it's like a promise, yeah,
a promissory note. It's literally an iou, yes, I promisory note.
You're right, So, uh yeah, that's that's a great way
to put it. It's a promise. Sometimes I've heard it
derogatorily referred to as a coupon. I do have to
recuse myself here, because again, I do believe in ben

(13:21):
bucks as a viable currency. Uh, and I believe that
we should all consider starting our own alternative currencies, you know,
sure like I would, I would, but you guys would
look great on money. You're also a ravenous couponter. That's
also that's true. That's true. So this this be odd currency.
This idea of issuing it in this way and having

(13:43):
money as back to this way. It causes a lot
of problems, or it has at least the potential for
a lot of problems, depending on the reliability of the issuer. Right. Yeah,
and critics argue that this paves the way for massive inflation,
along with cover ups and conspiracies. Not to derail us
too much, but Matt Nolan, I have been working on

(14:06):
a couple of different projects that may or may not
come to fruition, and it had us exploring different assassination
theories briefly as a symptom of this or as a
side effect, okay, as a side benefit. Uh. In the US,
one of the most popular conspiracies concerning the assassination of
jfk Hinges on Fiat currency's author named Jim mars And

(14:30):
in his book Crossfire, he argues that Kennedy was trying
to reign in the Federal Reserve, which is the issuing
quasi governmental entity here in the US, the one that
issues the currency and um Mars says that forces opposed
to Kennedy reining in the FED. Uh, they may have

(14:51):
played some part in the assassination. Specifically, he alleges that
Kennedy issued a thing called Executive Order one one one, one,
zero four ones in a zero, two eleven's in a zero.
That's the best I can do in an audio show.
That he issued this executive order to transfer power from
the FED to the Department of the Treasury the way

(15:14):
it used to be, replacing these Federal Reserve notes with
silver certificates, the kind that say, uh, payable to the
bearer on demand by in silver in silver. Uh. That's
that's a hugely popular theory. However, just to be fair,
critics note that Kennedy was phasing out silver certificates in

(15:38):
favor of FED Reserve notes. But this executive order was
just a technicality that was only meant to be a
temporary measure. Anyway, other people are saying, no, they he
tried to take control from the central bankers and they
popped him. Well, yeah, And as we know, there are
a lot of conflicts between private central banks throughout the

(15:58):
world and governments to which those banks are issuing money.
It's a it's a thing, and it's a thing. But
for right now, in this current age which we record
this globally speaking, fiat currency rules the roost. There are
other kinds of money. There's representative money, silver, gold certificates
like we talked about, redeemable for some amount of metal.

(16:19):
And then there's commodity money, which which no, you were
you were bringing up here. Some older US coins are
actually commodity money, you know, like silver dollars made from silver.
You want some silver, you can. You got a dollar's worth,
you just melt it down. But that gets weird because
then the price of silver changes, and then that one
dollar is worth a lot more true or less? Yeah,

(16:43):
like the old Do you guys remember the old debate
about pennies cost more to manufacture than they're actually worth. Yeah, yeah,
And I believe right in And let us know, I
believe Canada abolished the penny. The US gets close to it.
Our pennies are actually made of zinc, and when prices
went up, it costs more than a penny to make

(17:04):
a penny. I only ever used pennies when I'm cashing
in my jar of coins like that. The coin star
at the grocery store, and I never spend pennies. You know.
You know what's weird is nowadays I don't even see
people pick pennies up off the street. It's like going
to the doctor or whatever I get from touching this
penny is going to be more expensive than picking up

(17:25):
the penny. But that's okay. So that's that's currency. That's
our current understanding of currency. Oh boy, is it time
to get into religion. Yeah, disclaimer nol matt Our producer
Alex and I are never going to tell you what
you should believe Alex Mike, he's kind of Pushy's gonna

(17:46):
you guys had to bring Alex into it right now. Yeah, welcome,
Welcome to the show. Alex. All right, okay, uh nat No,
what what's religion? Knowl Well, it's so it's basically like
power nuggets, you right, that's it's power nuggets. Hey, you're

(18:12):
gonna asking, man, what's religion? Just read it off the
thing again? All right, I'll read it off the thing again. Okay,
here we go. Okay, So apparently, according to this here,
religion and its most basic form, it's I'll you know,
freestyle it a little bit. It's it's it's a personal
set of beliefs or institutionalized system of beliefs or spiritual attitudes. UH.

(18:36):
And everything that goes along with that be it ritual UM,
be it the way you exercise your faith UM in
a day to day way. A lot of times there
are religious texts involved that are specific to individual religions.
I think everyone pretty much gets the gist of that. UM.
A belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power,

(18:59):
a deity, most notably some sort of singular god or
a group of gods, as with some of the world's
most prevalent religions. So across time and history, humans have
practiced numerous religions, countless religious. You know, I'm sure if
you've guys to watch the show American Gods, which we love. UM,

(19:22):
it's all about the idea that things only the gods,
only exist as long as we believe in them. And
throughout time and history, likely there are many that they
just don't exist anymore because no one talks about them
any They get lost in the oral tradition. And no
religion has ever entirely conquered humanity. I mean, there's there's
always been UM debate as to which one is the one.

(19:45):
You know, you talk to certain people, they'll tell you
they got it all figured out, and then you talk
to others and it's like no, no, no, no no, no,
they were the one. It's also it's definitely which has
always been the thing that it's interesting to me about
this pursuit. It's just this idea of being so convinced
that you have the right answer, because I try to
live my life relatively open mindedly and know that I

(20:07):
have more to learn. So it feels a little self
defeating to me to just say unequivocally this is it,
this is But there's a lot of comfort in that.
And again, we're not trying to tell you what to do.
This is just me throwing it out there how it
hits me. I grew up in the church, as did
Matt um, so we've definitely been through a lot of
that stuff personally. Um So, while there's never been a

(20:31):
single universal agreement as to which deity rules the roost,
you have to remember that these religions have millions of
adherents all across the world and throughout humanity. Religion, at
its heart, it's an attempt to explain things to explain
our situation, what finds us here in this existence on

(20:53):
this planet. Why do certain natural processes exist the way
they are? Why do people die? Where do we go
and we die? These are important questions to us as
humans that are curious but also maybe a little scared,
and they're comforting, like you were saying, out of their
way as to kind of, you know, explain away some
of our fears and put our faith in a thing

(21:14):
that will help us guide our behavior, hopefully in a
positive way. I appreciate that aspect of religion very much. Yeah,
And to do this, religion often reaches beyond the bounds
of the observable world, you know. So there are the
big questions, just like you said, existential questions. Where where
do we come from? Where are we going? What are

(21:36):
we supposed to do on the way? And this Uh.
One of the crucial parts of this of this concept
is asking the believers of a religion to have faith
that the explanation they are receiving is true. In many religions,
this concept is crucial. Somebody has to agree to follow

(21:58):
a religion after inner contemplation, a deeply private period of
soul searching, to arrive at an inner truth that they
have discovered. Right, So this is not necessarily a thing
where someone says here is undeniable proof. They'll say, this
is undeniable proof to me, this is an inner realization

(22:22):
I have had and I want to share it with
you or force you historically, force you to do to
to at least pay lip service to this um because
it is true, and to be fair, religious systems approach
this and wildly different ways. You know, there's there's like
in the ancient days, that would be the right of passage,

(22:44):
right and go to the woods and return an adult
or an accepted member of this tribe, or it's a
it's another like a baptism for instance, is another example.
And in some belief systems in the modern day, not
all human beings are allowed to participate. One must be

(23:06):
born a member of the religious community. There's no way
to convert. I think most of them do have a
way to excommunicate someone, but you know, there there's only
an exit door, there's no entry way. So I think
the big thing with religious organizations that we kind of
covered right there is that there are a ton of
different ways to practice, all of us in a ton

(23:29):
of different beliefs that it could exist amongst one of
these organizations, but the big commonalities still exists there. It's
a system that's set up for a belief. I think
the thing that's interesting too to take from when we're
looking at the past history of religion is that it
usually was very helpful in organizing a group of like
minded people in a way that would help them survive

(23:50):
and and honestly, it's still serves that function today, only
it's more about how do we figure out how to
make money. It's almost like a club. It's like, how
do we who are to be the like mind of
people that we're going to hang out with that kind
of like create these communities of like minded individuals that
are in the same kind of social strata and give

(24:11):
It's almost like like the secret societies and groups where
you kind of like can meet and network with people
through you know, your your church groups and stuff. Yeah,
I mean I think that's I think that's an excellent point,
you know, because the quick and the quick and three.
I'm sorry, I know you guys are both heard me
have a few drinks and rant about this way too often.

(24:32):
But you know, if we look at the rough evolution
of society. We start with like the individual, and then
the family group just surviving, right, and then the the
assembly of a tribe, which is almost always hand in
hand with the creation or the discovery rather of a
religious belief that just like Noll said, we're like minded.

(24:54):
We're out here fighting for survival against you know, mammoths
and other eight and like apex predators that are better
than people at hunting. But why are we doing this?
And now it's it's a similar thing, but maybe the
the game has changed a little more social. I mean,
we out we don't have to depend on each other
to protect ourselves from poisonous plants that could kill us,

(25:17):
or you know, have religious rituals that sort of teach
us life lessons about which buries not to eat or everything.
Now it's a little more about creating these social constructs
which revolve largely around you know, economic systems. It's a
global supply chain, predatory loans, medical debt, which is huge
in the US. Right. Uh, that's that's a very powerful

(25:41):
and dangerous comparison. I like it. Well, let's let's think
about that. We've got these similarities. What what makes financial
organizations different? How do they differ to religious organizations. Well,
let's be ready for this, you guys. I'm pulling this
directly out of Investopedia, so prepare your ears. Here he comes.

(26:01):
Do I detect some potential jargon? It's no, it's not jargon.
It's just when you speak about money a lot of times,
there are so many words and things that feel like
they don't have to be there. But we're gonna get into.
The financial institution is a company engaged in the business
of dealing with monetary transactions, such as deposits, loans, loans, investments,

(26:26):
and currency exchange. Financial institutions incumbas a broad range of
business operations within the financial services sector, including banks, trust companies,
insurance companies, and brokerage firms or investment dealers. Oh, virtually
everyone living in a developed economy has an ongoing or

(26:46):
at least periodic need for the services of financial institution.
I don't know why I said sharks earlier, but did
you did you hear that at the end? There? Virtually
everyone in any developed economy has some kind of ongo
or at least periodic need of a financial institution. And
we hype man that a little bit because it is

(27:06):
true that people. Can you know, you can your ears
and your eyes can kind of glaze over when it
goes to that um hate over. Yeah, well, no one
at the office wants to tell you because it's weird.
But that's that's an important point. So financial institutions are
in every part of rold lives. I think we've defined

(27:26):
religious organizations pretty well at this point. And you know,
our our earlier definition may have seemed a little bit vague,
but it's because we're we're trying to be as general
as possible to address the entire practice, right and we
have to make sure we look at these statistics when
we talk about religious organizations. You can watch uh many

(27:51):
news channels here. I believe Fox Network would be one
of the one of the most prominent examples of this.
But every year there's the War on Christmas right Easter
or Easter or Auster or Auster Yes, uh, the that

(28:12):
is I think a great example of what is seen
as the rise of secularism or the decline in uh
active practitioners of religion. So right right now, some of
the like some of the best statistics indicate that eleven
percent of Americans born after nineteen seventy were raised in

(28:35):
secular homes, so we're raised not not practicing religion. And
here in the southeastern United States, Uh, there are a
lot of people that pastors referred to as the what's
Chris Easter Christmas? The Christmas Easter Christians. Yeah, I don't know,
there's there are terms for it. I can't get off. Well,

(28:57):
it's a it's a term for some family we or
some group of people or people who show up twice
a year. It's basically like fair weather Christians. Yeah, there
we go. I like that. Yeah. And this So this
rise of secularism is seen as a threat not just
here in the US, not just with Christianity, but with

(29:17):
multiple religions right all over the world. It leads us
back to that at times antagonistic relationship between money power
and spirituality. There's a great quotation from an author named
Philip good Child that sort of compares and contrasts the
um the difference between money and religion. And he refers

(29:42):
to just a note here. He refers to religion just
by the phrase God. So here's a quote. It is
easy to observe how such an activity naturally leads to
secularization and a direct opposition between God and money. Where
God promises eternity, money promist is the world. Where God
offers a delayed reward. Money offers a reward in advance.

(30:06):
Where God offers himself as grace, money offers itself as
a loan. Where God offers spiritual benefits, money offers tangible benefits.
Where God accepts all repentant sinners who truly believe, money
may be accepted by all who are willing to trust
in its value. Where God requires conversion of the soul,

(30:27):
money empowers the existing desires and plans of the soul.
Money has the advantages of immediacy, universality, tangibility, and utility.
So money has a one up there, at least according
to good Job. Well, but I feel like those things
only hold true if you believe in the religion that
he's talking about. Kind of right, because it could Yeah,

(30:50):
it is true, and uh, good child does have a
background coming from a religious stamp. I guess what I'm
saying is, I feel like, you know, God does not
offer you ultimate absolution if you don't fully accept and
believe everything about him, you know, who's not unquestioning. You
have to you have to contribute something to that equation

(31:12):
as well. M hmm, that's a that's a good point.
And good Child is a philosopher of religion by training,
so I thought it was interesting for him to pose that.
I'm not trying to um discounted. I mean, I think
it's very well put, but I just think it's it's
actually it does a good job of showing up similar
the two things. Is it possible that these two concepts

(31:35):
have much more in common than we think? We'll find
out after a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where
it gets crazy. So what if instead of living in

(31:56):
a world that's turning away from traditional religions the way
it feels like it is, we live in a world
that's actually embracing new ones. What if money, or this
new global economy in which we exist, what if the
economy itself is a religion. I'm going right back to

(32:16):
the episode that I just watched last night of of
American Gods, and it's weird to me out I was
thinking about it was that the season for now, for
the record, this it's not okay to spoil that. I
am not spoiling it. It's just it deals directly with
some of this, Okay, So we'll return to Philip good

(32:37):
Child here for another quotation. Where European philosophers have often
sought some decisive term that give shape to the ways
we think and act, such as being truth, difference, the sublime,
the void, time, or even God. It seems to me
that money actually plays the decisive role in our society,

(32:57):
for money is at once an object that can be handled,
an institution which is the basis of all our cooperation,
and a structure of thinking. We unwittingly have made a
theology of money. And then he goes on to say
the finitude of currency has been overcome by treating signs
of monetary value as themselves valuable. I got you, okay,

(33:21):
Ensuring the value of newly created money by issuing it
in the form of loans attached to debts, rates of
production and rates of interest escape finitude by compound growth
um production for the sake of profit replaces production for
the sake of use. Let's unpack. So okay, So that's

(33:42):
pretty that's pretty interesting because when we had commodity currency,
commodity money, right, we stuff that was useful. Right. If
Noel and I are gambling and our currency happens to
be peppercorns, then there's no debating that those peppercorns have
a value. So what about golden shovels. Okay, yeah, golden shovels,

(34:02):
because if you don't want to shovel, you can make
it into something else. So this, this is a really
this is a really good point that in that in
something that is directly a resource, there is a limit
on how how much that resource, how much of that
resource exists in that form, And we know that if

(34:24):
there's too much of it, then the currency loses its value.
If everyone as pepper, you can't pay with pepper, right,
But you can overcome that by treating the sign of
value as just as important as the actual thing. So
now instead of let's say Matt strikes it big in

(34:44):
the competitive polka circuit, oh you better believe it ranks
the competitive underground polka circuit. And he gets that's true,
that's true. You know, I didn't think you would know
it by looking at me. Took a took the old

(35:06):
glance in the mirror. There, the kid's got it. Well,
we will see you later. Oh gosh. But the point is,
you know, now he doesn't if he's paid in gold, Uh,
he would have to carry around all that gold or
find a place to put it. But now he is
able to take a coupon that represents it right, printed

(35:28):
on historically a linen. So something's may be difficult to
reproduce but not intrinsically valuable on its own. So now
we have a symbol that says this right. So now
Nola is a peppercorn. Billionaire has has multiple checks or
pieces of linen. Let's say, you know, one hundred thousand

(35:48):
peppercorns or power nuggets like power nuggets better. I think
power nuggets is like my new jam for this um.
So this means that now you can just start creating
those symbols. You can. You don't really need to have
a billion peppercorns to make new peppercorn notes. But that

(36:11):
opens up a whole another bag of rabid, greedy badgers
because it does, yes sir, yes, sir, Because we also
know that expanding production right the constant. You know, people
have often said opponents of capitalism have often said it's

(36:32):
just a leviath and that consumes everything in its path,
and that it depends on continual growth, which after a
certain point is impossible. Yeah, and you're making way too
much to continue to be profitable. But if it's continuing,
if it's if we're just creating symbols that represent you know,

(36:52):
debt or effort over time, or fictitious peppercorns ring gets
of gold, or I think Holland had a problem with
tulip bulbs once upon a time, then there's you know,
it's Katie bar the door, the sky is the limit,
and we start going to a state where we are
just producing things, not to use them, but to simply

(37:16):
have more symbols representing their existence, and then betting on
the number of symbols and where the symbols exist and
how they're going to change to make more symbols. When
you start getting into futures and derivatives and all the
things that are just creating more of these symbols based
on what the other symbols are doing actually creating anything,

(37:37):
and it gets through into weird territory, it does. It
quickly gets into a very abstract territory. So it's true
that currently, let's bracket that for a second. It's true.
It's currently there are no churches where people bow in
front of like a big dollar sign or something. Right,
I haven't seen one. Okay, you some one, No, but

(37:58):
I'm picturing it in my mind, right yeah, And I'm
picturing like maybe some robes that also have dollar signs
dollars exactly. Let's I mean, let's build it. But it
does seem that money and religion have increasingly similar characteristics.
So what are some of the things you have in common? Well,
they have symbols in common, and then those are very
important for both of these, right, I mean we're just

(38:19):
talking about that. If the dollar didn't have the symbol,
the exact symbol on it in the exact, you know,
perfect way, and even the serial numbers on it, it
wouldn't mean anything. Oh, it's counterfeit and that's a crime. Yeah.
And then if you look at let's say, just a
crucifix or something, if it's not made in the correct way,
you know, there it's debatable on whether it is true

(38:42):
or not, or any other symbols from any other religion.
If a Koran is written just slightly incorrectly, then it
is you know, invalid. What about stock symbols, you guys, Yeah,
I mean think about that, Like the stock market to
me seems like the closest thing to a god. As

(39:04):
like this system we're talking about we have because it's
what is it. It's kind of like a volatile, a
knowable thing that you can kind of predict, but it's not.
It's got it's got no time for your you know,
and you can plan, you can pay obesience to it.
Exactly right, Yeah, exactly it had. It literally has its
own temple on the street where people just hang out

(39:25):
there all day kind of looking up at it. Yeah,
and they're really serving it their real world effects to Absolutely,
that's what I'm saying. But then sometimes it's just like
just takes a dump in the bed and it's just like, Okay,
it's over. I will arraign my vengeance upon the Yeah.
Because you know, we think about think about during the

(39:46):
Great Depression, right, sick market crashes, commodities are in flux,
and people are starving in cities right and in the
same country, not two or three states away. Farmer ers
are pouring milk and creeks and uh slaughtering pigs because
the prices are too low for them to sell, so

(40:08):
it's better that they raise the market themselves. And then
you get into the butterfly situation. Was it the actions
of the many people that caused these things to happen
to the other people or was it the God? Yeah?
It was it? Was it? Like it's like Sodom and Gamore, right, Like,
you know, did God wipe out Sodom and Gamore because
they were doing horrible stuff? Or was it? Yeah? Yeah?

(40:32):
And that that's that's a really good question because this
all starts to go into belief and faith. One thing
that can startle a lot of people. When we hear
pundits in the West talk about and I mean the
ideological West. When we hear pundance in the West talk
about stock markets, you often hear the weird phrase investor confidence. Yeah,

(40:56):
what what investor confidence? Because I believe in this, I
will buy some uh I will buy some shares of
it because I'm gonna sell it. So it becomes an
indicator of how many people believe in something at a
given time. That is pretty spooky. Yeah. And and Nolan,

(41:18):
I uh no, have a friend who is pretty good
at dividing some of these pathways and predicting some of
these trends. But even he will tell us, um, even
he will tell us that sometimes you just don't know
what's going to happen exactly. I mean you know, you
can get it right some of the time and follow

(41:38):
a trend to its conclusion, but then you know, or
to what you perceive as its conclusion as far as
you're willing to take it. But sometimes playing that short
game and really trying to like put one over on
the market doesn't really work like that. You know, It's
like it's it's a lot of it is up to chance,
and people kind of like have these self fulfilling prophecies
or these like confirmation biases that convince them that their

(42:00):
actions are actually having an effect on the system. Then
that really it totally runs itself. That's such a great point.
It makes me think of on a microcosmic level, for
anyone in the audience with kids, when you take your
kid to the grocery store and you get one of
those specially for kids grocery carts with the little wheel,
that they could feel like they're steering and no control. Yeah.

(42:25):
But but so we're seeing a lot of this is
based on faith, right, and of course we know that
of course we know that there are tangible assets at play. Right,
So like dal Chemical makes chemicals, they make a real
thing that people use, and the us without getting too

(42:50):
far into it. The US currency, which is what most
of us are the most familiar with on on this show.
US currency is commonly called a petro dollar because of
a deal that Nixon cracked back in the day where
OPEC of most of the OPEC nations agreed, including Saudi Arabia,
to only sell petroleum in dollars. We're only training in

(43:12):
these dollar bills, y'all. That's sounds like Nixon impression. So
we we know though that no matter how we want
to tie these two tangible assets, in some degree, call
it what you will, confidence, faith, belief. It plays a

(43:33):
crucial part in today's financial market. And we've seen, just
like religiously motivated wars or massacres in the yester years
of civilization, we've seen economic ideology have the same disastrous effects.
You know, like the World Bank and the i m

(43:53):
F have made some huge missteps, right, and we've seen
these um we've seen these ideas applied as though they're
gonna work just because a group of economists and the
think tank believe that that's how the world should work.
That's where you're really getting into the faith stuff with

(44:14):
the economists. Did you guys ever take any big economy
classes in college. Yeah, yeah, that stuff is fascinating because
it really does feel as though nobody really knows exactly
what's going on and you can't really control it that much.
You can just control it mostly at the micro level

(44:37):
and then hope that stuff works out. It's a lot
of different schools of thoughts seemed to vary pretty widely.
Like the different it almost is more of a philosophy
than an exact science. That's exactly what almost like a
like a money priest, you know, saying like this is
this is definitely the way. Yeah, it's like that money priest.

(44:57):
So so yeah, money rist is yeah, and like different
administrations have different pet um economists, you know, and so
but when you compare them, they're like, it couldn't be
more different, you know. Now I got you. So we
have this faith, how does an individual human being, uh

(45:21):
practice that faith? What kind of worship do we do
for money? I don't know. Well, we talked, we talked
about Mammon the quote from loop out of here. So
let's get into just comparing some of these rights and
rituals that you would do. So my my experience comes
from mostly the Methodist Church here in the United States

(45:43):
where when you were going to take communion. Let's just
give that as a as an example. You drink a
little bit of in my case, grape juice, supposed to
be consecrated wine that's been blessed about, and what this
ritual is supposed to do is get you close to
in this case Jesus or a deity and bring you know,
bring some aspect of that into you personally. Question yes,

(46:06):
question from the audience, Uh thin bull and stuff? Then
what you know, a big fan Uh yeah, just uh,
just to get this straight. So in the Methodist in
the Catholic Church, they practice transubstantiation, right, so you're actually
blessed and it actually becomes the body and blood of Christ.
But in the Methodist Church, is that is that also

(46:28):
a belief or is it more like a symbol representative thing?
From my ten year old understanding, it was very symbolic,
because if it wasn't, I would definitely be weirded out
a lot more than I probably already was. Okay, so
there's like communion, then that would be a ritual. So
they're all these rights and rituals that a single person
does when they are of a faith A certain religion

(46:51):
they do to either humble themselves in you know, the
light of whatever god or gods they worship, or just
to get them closer in some way to that deity
or to perfection, whatever that sort is. Um. So, I
was imagining popular culture, uh, and the way that we
seem to worship money right now, with celebrity and with wealth,

(47:15):
and the way that is played up as the ideal
a lot of times, at least in Western culture with
a big w And I was imagining masterps uh toilet,
master masterp, master p. I don't, I don't know. Yeah,
and yeah, never sounded wider. I just master p is

(47:37):
master p is. It's Dr Dre So I'm not Drew.
So I'm just I'm imagining that toilet seat and that
whole golden toilet as this weird just worship of wealth,
worship of money as an object, and creating a golden

(47:58):
god of sorts. Are we forgetting about the golden calf,
the idol? Yes? No, I mean like that that is
exactly what that was all about. That was about worshiping
wealth and you know, um pretension and and just like
just gross displays of decadence kind of you know, what

(48:18):
was what story was that in Again, I believe that
was in Exodus. When the people saw that Moses was
so long and coming down from the mountain, they gathered
around Daron and said, cold, make us gods who will
go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought
us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has
happened to him. And Aaron's I'm gonna paraphrase a little said,

(48:40):
take off the gold ear rings that your wives, son's
daughters are wearing. They brought him to him. He okay.
He took what they handed him and made it into
an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashion
up with a tool. Then he said, these are your gods,
your gods now, so you know, golden calf, idol, master

(49:02):
p toilet. There's a correlation there. And dude, the show
is called American Idol. Let's not forget about that. We
talked about these people. We worship these people and they
worship wealth. Therefore, let me using the royal we hear
we worship wealth. There aren't a lot of poor celebrities. Well,

(49:23):
it's also difficult to argue. You know, we've we've talked
about this off here too it's difficult to argue that
celebrities have not replaced the pantheons of old, you know,
because I think a lot of people are still kind
of surprised when we learned that. You know, in in
Greco Roman times, there wasn't just Zeus who does this,

(49:48):
or Vulcan or in Festes who does this. In different towns,
they would have different incarnations, you know what I mean,
different aspects or like facets of the jewel that is
this overall being, and this would mean that they have
there are a bunch there are a bunch of different
versions who specialized in different things. And you know, if

(50:10):
you want that specific thing, you're probably best to go
to the pilgrimage, to the one town where they were like, hey,
we like this thing so much that there's a statue
about it. And they also require probably different offerings and
different rituals depending on which version of the deity and
which services you seek. So speaking of Grecian temples to
the gods, let's talk about temples to money. Think about

(50:32):
the Bank of America building here in Atlanta, that giant
towering thing. It represents a global banking company, as you
the city of London. Yeah, have the city of London itself.
I mean, I'm just trying to imagine the World Trade
Center and the symbol of global trade. This the tallest

(50:55):
building in the world, and we built it because of
trade and money. M right. So I guess that leads
us to figuring out how how experts determine the value
of money. Right. We're building temples to it, right, and
we're building institutions to institutions. In some ways, you're kind

(51:18):
of like denominations of our religion at this point. So
we know that there are rights, we know there are rituals,
but how how do we actually figure out what what
this dollar thing is? Or what the you know, the
lira or the euro or yeah, or the you know,
have you have your picked the pound? The pound? Uh
will tell you after a word from our sponsor, welcome back.

(51:51):
We're still here, and we hope you are too. You
are right, You're you're still there and I left for
a minute, but I'm back. So there are three ways.
Hey guys, sorry, break, I just got back. Jeez, I
didn't mean to start without you better. I was just
under the table, all right. So there are three ways

(52:12):
that we measure the value of let's say the dollar
in particular. All right, Yeah, the first is how much
the dollar is going to buy in other foreign currencies
that's not the dollar. Uh, that's what the exchange rate measures.
You will hear people talk about that a lot. For
extraders in the foreign exchange market determine these exchange rates.

(52:33):
These are the guys who decide what it is worth.
It's sort of like the guy that weighs your soul
in the afterlife. Interesting. Yeah, so they take into account
supply and demand, like how many people not just like okay,
not just how many dollars does Matt have and how

(52:53):
many yen does that equal? But how many other people
are looking to convert dollars to yend versus converting yen
to dollars And what kind of trend do we see
forming here that we can speculate for a year, ten
years in the future. Yeah, and this is the reason
why in this in one day you're the money that

(53:15):
you have can fluctuate, usually not wildly, but sometimes there's yeah,
like in uh, like in the past with Germany when
it was experiencing hyper inflation and people had wheelbarrows full
of money that they had to get rid of. That day,
you know. Yeah, So what's the what's the second way. Well,

(53:39):
the second method is the value of treasury notes, the
te note at least here, uh, chairis dollars. The value
on the ten year te note. I'm about to tell
you what that thing is, the tina. They can be
converted easily into dollars through the secondary market for treasuries
when the demand for reasuries is high. The value of

(54:02):
the U. S. Dollar. Yeah, a treasury note or T
note as uh nolan kiras dollar. Want to say, does
everybody get kiris doll Is he like, does he go
to all of the United States? I think he's syndicate.
Come on, get with the NBR pro market places, an
NPR show, Get with the NPR programming, which is uh,

(54:25):
which is um for anybody who says, oh, NPR is
uh too politically one way or the other for me, uh,
marketplace doesn't really touch that. Now. It's just a nice
entertaining look at international finance. Um. But the guy's kind
of snarky sometimes every time. That's today. But first let's

(54:49):
do the numbers. Yes, yeah, So a treasury note or
teo is a government debt security and it has a
fixed interest rate, and you can get it back after
between one to ten years, so they're always available from
the government and you. They're really popular investments because they

(55:15):
are pretty secure, they're pretty reliable. Is this like a
bond like my grandpa gave me when I was a
little little boy, and then I cashed it in for
a lot more money than it was worth when he
bought it. Yes, sort of, because the the real difference
is the time you have to wait before you collect
your money, before you get your money back. So treasury

(55:38):
bills have maturities of year or less. Treasury notes go
between two to ten years. Treasury bonds are long term
and they have maturities at ten to thirty years. Yeah,
that's the one are you talking about. You got one
of these from your grandpapa. Yeah, but it was only
like ten bucks or something, but it was worth it
was worth I forget exactly how much it was. I
was surprised. I was like, man, why don't we put

(55:59):
all our mone in these things? Do you have to
wait a while? Well? About of approximately five trillion and
outstanding debt is not made up of savings bonds, but
of marketable or tradeable securities called bills, notes and bonds,
and this is kind of a vote of confidence in

(56:21):
the US government, right. Uh. And when the demand, when
a lot of people are saying, oh, I gotta hot
take it on some T notes, just as Noel said,
when when more people want those things, the value of
the US dollar overall rises and in other countries by
these two. It's not just you know, uh, Jane and

(56:44):
Joe Americana just the name I made up. Anyway, there's
another way to do this, right. The third way is
through foreign exchange reserves. That is, the amount of dollars
held by foreign governments. Um, the more they hold, the
lower the supply. It makes sense, and that makes US
money more valuable. So if foreign governments were to sell

(57:05):
all their dollar and treasury holdings, the dollar would collapse.
So this is like what when when people called China
a currency manipulator, this idea that it can somehow cause
some sort of serious fluctuation of our currency value by
flooding the market, selling off like selling off all their
all their holdings of US dollars and stuff and saying

(57:26):
we don't want it. But apparently that's that's a myth.
I mean, that's not even really a thing. Well, it's
kind of a nuclear move because it would also be
it would also have a dangerous effect because the US
is one of China's largest markets. So it's kind of
a shooting yourself in the kneecap despite your business partners.

(57:48):
I'll show you, uh yeah, it's you know, it's it's
like codependent relationship. So we've got this right. These are
the three man bids we've outlined, which in some way
or another depend on this aggregate demand of other people.
What does the rest of the world want, What does

(58:10):
the rest of the world believe will be more effective?
So what happens when this goes wrong? If money has
no intrinsic value, then it can potentially be moved in
a relatively arbitrary manner. No one wants to spend too
much time on this in the mass media because, in
my opinion, and this is just my opinion, folks, it
would create an Emperor's new clothes situation. All it takes

(58:32):
is for one person to go, hang on and I
think that guy's naked up right right. It could literally
endanger the U S economy for this, this house of
cars to fall. An example of this would or example
of when this came close would be the what's known
as the lib or scandal. It's a little dry, so

(58:54):
please help me out with any like hype man stuff
if you want. We'll keep it to the basics. BOAR
is an acronym for what's known as the London Interbank
offered rate, the average of interest rates estimated by each
of the leading banks in London that it would be
charged were it to borrow from other banks. So these

(59:16):
banks estimate how much, you know, like the Her Majesty's
Bank of matt would say that's that's perfect. It would say,
you know, we go to the Royal Bank of Noll
and they would each say, well, we to borrow funds
from one another, we would assign it at the following rates. Yeah,

(59:42):
And what it turned out, surprise, surprise, the banks were
falsely inflating or deflating their rates together so they can
make a bigger profit or give the impression that they
were better off than they were. That's about right. Let's
give it up for Nola on the sound effects like

(01:00:03):
a morning show, now like the morning zoo, tell me
the gooch? Oh no, what was the other can be
skeeter and be could be Benji I know Benji is
a terrible name. Give me what's your what's your morning?
Is your name? That's me? You're the douche, I'm the

(01:00:25):
good I thought you were two hands. Oh yeah, two hands.
I guess I would go with um. What sounds weird?
What would be good for a sound? Cute? Uh? Sneak bite?
Oh good, that's good. I like that steak by all right?
How about steak knife? About the whole thing? Snake bite,

(01:00:45):
steak knife? Moving on? What's wrong? Gooch? You're walking away
from this? Pick Alex, keep keep what you will of this. No, Alex,
we're rolling. We're keeping this all wells here alright, so
boite being Uh. If money was pinned to an existing commodity,
a tangible asset, then it could not have its value

(01:01:07):
moved as arbitrarily. Right as a guy named Tom Hayes
was the only person convicted in connection with this scandal. Uh.
Six other bankers in the UK were accused of it
but cleared in early These guys were literally writing emails
to each other say, LOI they change that interest, right,

(01:01:31):
but I'm not sure what that was. Well, that's this
is a familiar thing that you might know when banks
get in big trouble for manipulating something or doing allgal
legal deals with drugs or other bad no no things.
It's a little bit of a snap of the wrist.
That's literally how I view the banks. Think, Oh, that's
a no no, I guess we shouldn't do. It's the

(01:01:52):
same way my one year old treats touching the dog's
water bowl. It's like, oh, is it a no no
hand in the water bowl? Oh? Was that a known
up hand in the water bowls? My girlfriend would eats
you alive. She literally made fun of me for saying
melty the other day. She's like, you talk like such
a dad, like me, melty, melty, it was a drink,
it was melt. It wasn't melted. It was me. It
was melty. I ever said in the face. She would

(01:02:19):
well keep her away from me, all right, she's she's
she's scary. Well, I think you make a good point, daddy,
No no. But the whole point, the whole point of
that is just to say, I'm not gonna punish the
heck out of my little son because he's just touching
the water bowl. He's just having a good time. It's
the same with these bankers. They're just trying to make
that money. Well, I think it's just normalized as a

(01:02:39):
cost of business, at least here in the US. You know,
if you're doing something illegal and you make five million
dollars off of it just for the sake of argument,
and then you're find thirty million dollars, but you don't
go to jail and you can keep doing business. That's
just the tax. But but bless we get too derailed.

(01:03:03):
How is money handled in religious organizations? Hey, should we
go back to the Bible, you guys for a quick verse.
I'll tell you one thing they got a different name for.
They don't call it money at all, do they they
call it? That is a whole situation that we're gonna
have to get into. But let's start with Matthew ten
through twelve. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was

(01:03:25):
stirred and asked who is this? The crowds answered, list
is Jesus, the prophet from now's Earth and Galilee. Jesus
entered the temple courts and drove out all who were
buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the
money changers and the benches of those who were selling doves.
It is written he said to them, my house would

(01:03:48):
be called a house of prowl, but you I'm making
it a dinner rubbles. That Jesus is interesting, Okay, so
let's get into tystly different flavors of differents right different
the latest episode. So this is showing that way back

(01:04:08):
in the day, Jesus one of the most central figures too,
well these central figures to Christianity, but one of the
most central figures to any religion that has ever existed
in the history. Is they're going into the houses of
worship in a very big place in in Jerusalem and

(01:04:29):
throwing literally throwing out the people who are dealing with money,
and he's flipping tables left and right, bulking out on
the money changers, even the dove. The people just trying
to make a little scratch on doves. The money changers
or the ancient loan sharks might be practicing usery, which
is huge, huge problem. Also, Yeah, as Matt said, Jesus
is a central figure in Abramaic religions. He's a very

(01:04:51):
prominent prophet. In two I've actually believed Jesus as a
prophet is quoted more in the Koran than he is
in the Christian Bible fun fa x right. But now
it leads us to a situation where we literally do
not know how much money the Catholic Church has. The
Catholic Church it's changed has, yeah, now has a huge

(01:05:14):
financial footprint and impact. We have other we have other
episodes that go in depth upon this, and we do
ask you to check them out if you're interested. You
can find them all and stuff they don't want you
to know dot com. But money interacts with religion. One

(01:05:34):
of the money is one of the primary circuits of
power now, right, And that circuit of power is being
used by various religious movements, and does it exist now
as a religious movement of its own. We I think
we've done an alright job of outlining some pretty surprising similarities.

(01:05:58):
And of course we're not den and rating anybody's religion
or a denigrade in the economy, but we do see
that these things are not as dissimilar as they might appear,
you know, And and this is without even getting into
prosperity theology, which you guys know, and Nolan, Matt and

(01:06:19):
Alex and I know about this because we're in the
south of the United States, we're talking about and trying
to dollar trying to get those ties that we were
talking about, get that he needs another goal plate a jet. Yeah,
I mean it's got to get places. Or you know
my Versace suits that I gotta wear because I have
to look good before God. You look great in those
VERSACEI suits, Matt Well, and just the idea that you

(01:06:41):
can convince other people that that is true enough that
you get enough money for a plane. Yeah, yeah, I
don't know. It's It's like, when you look at it
that way, you could argue that religion has its own
specific purpose that can be positive in people's lives. Money
also obviously gives you the ability to have a um

(01:07:04):
easily discernible way of taking care of your family and
getting services provided for yourself that you need. But they
can kind of be tools of each other, like money
can be a tool of religion, and religion can be
a tool of the powerful to manipulate people and get
people to fall in line and act as they they
the they in our show. I guess um right, Yeah,

(01:07:25):
you are a peasant because that is the natural order
of the world. Or like during the an Age of
Chattel slavery in the American South, where they would have
pastors twisting religious ideology to say, if you are good
slaves and do not rebel, you will go to heaven
where you will wear white sackcloth and serve your masters forever.

(01:07:47):
I think you're right. People are very very good at
twisting things to their own ends as we as we
look at this, let's let's recall the definition of a god.
What is a god. It's a being or object to
believe to have more than natural abilities and powers, and
it requires human worships, specifically one controlling a particular aspect

(01:08:09):
or a piece of reality. So then by that definition,
is it arguable that even if money itself is not
a religion, it could be defined as a God. Oh,
I think so. I absolutely think so. If if God's
like Zeus, Indra, Odin or Wodin, let's just call him
Wednesday and Almond can exist inside the human mind for

(01:08:32):
thousands and thousands of years as these unseen influencers that
control various parts of life. The way you know this
definition of God is then this tangible thing, this actual
thing called money, that has measurable control over the fate
of everything living on this planet and the planet itself.
I think that thing money should be considered the same,

(01:08:54):
if not more powerful than a god. That's that's kind
of crazy to say. And sorry that I said it
for some of you, but for others. There you go. Well,
you know, think about it. It's like the old Batman argument,
which they finally acknowledged in the latest trailer for The
Justice League. It does Batman have a superpower? Well, if

(01:09:15):
money is a representation of effort over time, then Batman
most certainly does have a superpower. He has money to
the point where it's like time travel. How many years
would it take to build a cave and a batmobile
a bat suit alone by yourself to your own So
now you have, Yes, now you have the hours of
other people's labor. Is very close to time travel. And

(01:09:37):
as paper currency continues to be phased out in favor
of digitized numbers and accounts, money begins to seem more
and more like an abstract, unseen force, you know. And
again it's it's a very We are not We are
not saying that there are people who literally worship money,

(01:09:58):
and we are not saying that any belief that you
choose to have is anything other than your own. But
we are saying that there are a surprising amount of
similarities here and it's an interesting question. And you know,
we we went back and forth a little bit on
who the who were the they of this episode. They

(01:10:20):
could be the people who are fixing interest rates just
arbitrarily amongst themselves, conspiring to do so. That's not a theory,
that's a fact. It could be the people that print
the money, the central banks and institutions that actually create
the currency that gets loaned out. Yeah, but what do

(01:10:41):
you think we want to hear from you? Which reminds
us Uh, Usually we do three of these, but I
think we've we've gone a little long today, so we'll
just do too. It's time for Chat at Conners. Our
first shoutout goes to Zachary. Zachary says love the show
at the end of the last episode. I think this

(01:11:01):
one is referring to the Serial Killers episode. I believe
there was a discussion on essentially laundering bitcoin, and you
guys weren't sure if it was possible. It is, and
it's done via via a tumbling service where your coins
are deposited with the tumbling company and then they send
you a randomized set from other users. So I guess

(01:11:22):
it sources bitcoins from other users and send your bitcoins
to fill back into their accounts UM and thus it
breaks the traceable link. But I would say that's still traceable.
But maybe not. Maybe the tumbling service doesn't keep a
record of where the stuff went or all the different
chards may maybe it makes it much more difficult to track.

(01:11:44):
I can see that. Thanks Zachary, I didn't know that
tumbling was a thing. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting because I
had I had no idea, And I'm still sort of
skeptical whenever somebody says, I'll launder this for you, right,
even it if I brought the bag of laundry through
a laundrom Matt and I am like, hold on snake By. Uh,

(01:12:06):
snake By doesn't trust new launderers. But the the thing
that I am skeptical about often is when people say, oh,
this this is anonymous online just because of the nature
of the gate keeping, I think you can make it
difficult to trace something. But also I completely believe that

(01:12:26):
the public at large does not know the extent of
intelligence agencies tools. We don't know, uh, the information that
we get in leaks is probably several years old, so
I am skeptical, but to know that it's even possible, Zachary,
thank you so much for writing to us. Our next

(01:12:46):
shout out comes from and too. I guess is a
shout out before? Is it to some money or are
they shouting out at um just like yelling at each
other and just kind of this is we should change
the end of the segment to the stuff that don't
want you to know Echo Chamber. Oh man, you know,
I don't know about that, because I think people really
enjoy I'll be right in, Ladies and gentlemen, let us

(01:13:09):
know if you have a name that you would prefer.
But I think I think we all really enjoy shout
out corner and skadooche. Yeah, sometimes you catch lightning in
a bottle. I don't know. It's like a second and
second catch raiser rebrand though, what do you guys think
I'm gonna I'm gonna say we stick with it unless
because all of our best ideas come from you, ladies

(01:13:29):
and gentlemen, unless you have one that we think will
really just just pop. I mean, it's a tall order,
like I'm gonna tell you, don't don't get uh don't
get your hopes up because I'm a big fan of skadoos.
What if it's and to Zachary. Our next shout out

(01:13:50):
comes from iron Wang on Twitter. What um, yeah see
this his name? I don't know, it's probably is last name.
It's a big world, guys, A lot of people, a
lot of things going on. Nicknames abound. Um he uh
I am. Mr Wang asks have you already or thought
about doing a show about the thought police in her

(01:14:11):
censorship or expression online? And he says, alright, yeah, well, well,
iron Wing, I think that we have done a couple
of things that you might enjoy. We talked about how
bots or shills as they're commonly called, will attempt to
control a narrative for a controversial issue, uh, and you

(01:14:34):
can check that out on our website. As far as censorship,
we talked a little bit about the search bubble in
the past, right, and that's where uh, for advertising purposes
or for what they call a seamless experience, places like
Facebook or Google will attempt to show you things they

(01:14:57):
think you will readily agree with, rather than things that
would challenge our existing view. And it makes me, yeah,
it makes me think about the what is allowed to
be talked about, or the views that are allowed to
be held, at least from a social norm perspective, like
what is allowed at what isn't allowed to be said
and thought about just just by the other other people

(01:15:18):
walking around by yourself. Even that's interesting and that changes
country to country and sometimes culture to culture even right, Uh,
that that's a that's a great question, iron Wing. Thank
you for I think this concludes our gosh, but not

(01:15:40):
our show. Never fear, Matt Noel and I will be
returning the very next week with something that will be
completely different, we can say, We can say that much.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed our exploration of this,
this very fascinating question. Money can be called a religion?

(01:16:03):
Right in let us know your opinion of this and
and let us know if there's something more to the
equation that you believe your fellow listeners should consider. In
the meantime, as we always say, you can check out
every episode that Matt Nolan I have ever ever done
on our website Deep Breath Stuff they Don't Want you
to Know dot Com. If you prefer to visit via

(01:16:25):
social media, you can find us on Instagram and you
can find us on Twitter. That's correct. We are conspiracy
Stuff show on Instagram and conspiracy stuff on Twitter and Facebook.
All right, everybody, If you don't want to do any
of that stuff, you're a little paranoid about, you know,
where you write things publicly on the internet, because you
should be. If you're not, send us an email. We

(01:16:48):
are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.