The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Floyd Marinescu, UBI, Land Value Tax and The Future of the Economy

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES This week we welcome Floyd Marinescu to the program for a discussion on UBI, Land Value Tax, and other novel ways to help a modern economy make the transition to a future state without destroying the middle class and stratifying the social fabric. Follow Floyd on X: https://twitter.com/floydmarinescu More of Floyd's work: Floyd Marinescu's Homepage From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠Discord: ⁠ ⁠⁠https://discord.gg/ESRCZWpb ⁠⁠ A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠⁠https://easydns.com/⁠⁠⁠EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠⁠The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost. The show is meant for entertainment purposes only, and we hope you enjoy the program. Friends and enemies, welcome to another episode of the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast, third night in a row with me, Joey Lenzoff tonight, just as he was yesterday. Tonight, a special guest, a little off the beaten path for the CBP. We have Floyd Marinescu, who is a leading voice, I would say, in the realm of both UBI and of land value tax. He's the co-founder of C4 Media and the founder of UBI Works. It's a topic we

cover a lot on CBP. And I know that Floyd and I will have some disagreement on the UBI programming and some of the things that he thinks, but I think there's a lot of common ground between Bitcoiners and UBI proponents. And I'm interested in hearing his thoughts about the land value tax as well. It's something that we talk about a lot. I know a lot of people in the Bitcoin space who are my age and younger, late 80s, early 90s kids. The frustration that led them to Bitcoin in a lot of cases is the unaffordability of

modern life, specifically the unaffordability of housing. And so I think you're going to be interested in this conversation. Before we get started, though, as always, sponsors Mark and EasyDNS, the best. If you want to host a domain, he's your registrar, man. That's where you go. Grab your website, grab your domain name, hoard your domain name, you know, squad on it. I don't know if Lloyd thinks there's a land value tax option for domains. I'm kind of looking at him in the background there.

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he'll help you migrate whatever crummy service you're using over to something better at EasyDNS. And of course, if you use the promo code CBPMedia, or just tell Mark we sent you, 50% off, no questions asked. Easy, man. You can't beat that. The second sponsor, Bull Bitcoin. These guys are the most dedicated, the most mission-focused Bitcoin exchange in the world. Not the country, not the continent, in the world. Francis and team, the team who we were just with actually at Tom and Nick Karadz's Your Life Returns event on the weekend, outstanding people. You're not going to find guys like this who are aligned with you in terms of mission and vision as a Bitcoiner very often.

They have obviously what we think is the best product, whether it's e-transfer buys, e-transfer sells, the KYC free option, which is maybe coming to an end. Maybe not. It will be coming to another Canada post probably in the next week or so on the 15th, I believe. So you're running out of time for that. But there might be something else on the horizon. We'll see. They have all this stuff available to you. You can pay your bills with BoldBitcoin, with the bills platform, whatever you want, property tax, cell phone,

credit card. I don't know. What other bills are there? I don't have that many other bills. I think that's pretty much it. Your mortgage? You could probably pay your mortgage. I don't know. Find out. All that stuff available. Use the code in the description. I forget what it is. Or we bought the domain, Iwantbitcoin.ca. You can go there. I forget what it is. Or we bought the domain. I want bitcoin.ca. You can go there. And once you fund your account, you get $21.

You can't beat that. Every transaction has CoinJoin by default. Every transaction is not custodial by default. You can't beat that. So we look forward to seeing what you guys do on that platform. Floyd is here. Great background.

I have to ask, is that your home office? Like what? That's like a lot of storage there. Are you having, there's a lot of paper behind you? platform floyd is here great background i have to ask is that your home office like what that's like a lot of storage there you have there's a lot of paper behind yeah this is like some uh i'm a 60s vintage wall units i got two units from two different houses used and put them together they happen to be from the same maker around the same time period which is uh it was quite lucky very strong very strong i like that so floyd i want to thank you for coming. I know I've listened to a number of your interviews over the last few years. I think this is going to be a little off the beaten path for

you as it is for me, as I mentioned in the intro, but maybe before we start and get into some of the things that you're thinking of as far as UBI and land value tax, tell people a bit about yourself. You have an interesting story. And one of the reasons I thought you'd be a good guest is because in Bitcoin, what we often see, especially when it comes to trying to move the political football forward, a lot of people with just zero skin in the game trying to do it. They have the loudest voices and they just are trying to impose changes on people that are just not going to affect them, period, end of story. But you are not in that boat. So tell people a bit about your background and how you got here. Thanks a lot.

It feels great to be seen. You've done your research. Yeah, my background is I've been running a software developer education company for over 18 years. We run large conferences for engineers. One just finished this week in London called QCon. I had like 1,100 attendees and been doing that for a while. So I love creating community. I love people 1100 attendees and I've been doing that for a while. So I love creating community. I love people learning, getting better at their craft. And being a

technologist, I also am very interested in systems thinking. The whole Bitcoin, the whole crypto ecosystem is very interesting for all the reasons that I'm sure all your readers are involved. And as I became successful in life and had excess funds, I wanted to make a difference. So I've been funding a digital activism group, as well as a marketing sort of think tank. One is UBI works to promote basic income in Canada, as well as a Commonwealth.ca, which is researching land value tax and solutions for the housing market. And yeah, just because I think these are things that we absolutely need to have a better

future. I'm also invested in crypto. I've been following the movement since way back in 2015. Been friends with the people at BlockGeeks before BlockGeeks existed. And so, yeah, I'm in the space. I wouldn't say I'm an expert. I'm probably an enthusiast. And, you know, I've done some basic trades and have some holdings.

I like that. There's no better way to know that someone is not an expert than them calling themselves an expert. So you're off on the right foot here for sure. Let's talk about some of these, I don't want to call them controversial, but certainly they're not yet mainstream, let's say. UBI is one, but that's one that people I think know a little bit more about than the other, which is the land value tax. Now, my understanding of the land value tax is that if I think about myself as a homeowner, I'm accruing value in some way based on, I think what you would say is the value of the land, not necessarily the house, not necessarily things that I've done to help accrue that value, but the land is going up in value and the land value should be

shared amongst everyone to provide better services, better roads, better schools, maybe less taxes, I think, as you would say. Do I have that right? Why don't you give me a little bit of a breakdown, take a minute or two and sort of give me the crash course on what exactly you mean by land value tax. Sure. So land value tax is a form of property tax that only taxes the unincrued value of land. It's a very old idea from the beginnings of capitalism. In the Wealth of Nation, Adam Smith went well out of his way to say that this is the best tax because landlords don't really earn their keep. They just hold property and then rent it out to others. And that was a big problem. That's the old feudalism, right? So the idea is that currently we're incentivized to treat land as a wealth creation asset that no one actually worked for. So we have a housing

market that is shifting increasingly to investors who have more money to afford to buy and hold, which bids up prices to the place of being unaffordable for the next generation and for people who actually need to live there. The reason is we have two markets for housing right now. We have the market for people who need to live. That's been competing with the market for people's want of wealth. And you have to distinguish that there's two actual kinds of wealth creation affecting housing or in capitalism in general. There's profit you make by providing a service and innovating and being productive, which is good, and that's what makes capitalism work.

And there's profit you make just by holding on to something and then renting it to others. In the case of natural resources like land and oil and gas and minerals, a lot of that profit is honored because the land value accrues, is created by the community around you, not by the work of the landlord. So that creates some perverse incentives that are making prices too high. People are buying properties and not renting them out because they're waiting to find a higher buyer because the value of the property stays higher in some ways if it's not rented

out. We have people who have more property than they need because the carrying cost is so low. Maybe they bought it 30 years ago and it was cheap. Meanwhile, we have a lot of families who need places to stay. We actually have more than enough bedrooms in any country, particularly in Canada, that would satisfy all the need that people seem to live. It's just the allocation is wrong. And part of that is because,, it's, it's,

it's more profitable to just hold onto a property, even if you don't need it and wait for prices to go up. So a land value tax is a form of property tax that taxes again, the unimproved value of land so that we are actually capturing publicly created wealth for public benefit, whether the benefit is paying for public services, whether it's paying a UBI, whether it's paying a UBI, whether it's paying for affordable housing. But overall, since the very beginnings of capitalism,

it was recognized that a land value tax is the best kind of tax because you're taxing something that cannot be changed in quantity. Taxing it does not change how much land is created. It just optimizes how we use it and make better use of this largest asset in any economy. And that's a fundamental thing that an economic system is supposed to do, is optimize the use of resources. So again, currently we have a system that incentivizes people to buy and hold at the expense of future generations. And I've done it too. I own real estate property and I read all the books on real estate investing. And I didn't realize at the time that this is actually not wealth creation. It's actually wealth collection.

You're collecting wealth from future generations, not from the rent you charge from the property because offering the property is a service like leasing a car, but rather from the part of the rent that comes from the value of land, which landlords do not work for. And so, you know, we're advocating for a system where we're taxing close to the full rental value of land, which would bring the value of lands near zero, which would cost make housing very cheap with aligned incentives. You'd have more construction, you'd have less speculation, you'd have better utilization, more conservation, more green space. You'd have a system that, and you could also eliminate other taxes. You could have with the

revenue from land value tax, no one's advocating for a tax grab. They're advocating for a tax shift where you can reduce or eliminate income taxes altogether, or you could use this to pay people back a rebate of sorts like the carbon rebate in order to actually give a chance to future generations to own homes and have housing be affordable. Okay. That's a lot to unpack. I have to say sort of like at first glance and surface level, and how it has to be affordable. Okay. That's a lot to unpack.

I have to say, sort of like at first glance and surface level, I agree with a lot of what you say, Floyd. I'm not a huge proponent of additional taxes. My beef, and I think a lot of Bitcoiners share this view. My beef is not necessarily with tax.

It's with the way that the tax money is spent. I'm not convinced that giving more money to Leviathan, if we're going to go back to the classics here, giving more money to Leviathan doesn't seem like a good idea to me. But that aside, I think there's a lot of value in what you're saying. I'm going to push back on something that I heard from you there, this idea that homeowners are sort of accruing profits or accruing value in a way that's, I don't know, what would you call it? Unfair maybe? Is that a fair characterization? It's like an unfair way to gain wealth? Because as you mentioned, I kind of half agree, honestly, you didn't do anything for the land value to go up in price. You just kind of own the house for

30 or 40 or 50 years or longer in some cases, if you're talking about really dynastic thinking and families, why should you reap the benefits at the cost, like you say, of future or even current generations not being able to get their feet off the ground? I get that. What would you say though, if I were to say, Floyd, I don't view myself as accruing profits. I view myself as trying to protect my assets, and this is the best way for me to do it. If you remove that speculation from the housing market, let's say, are you not worried that it'll show up other places that could be detrimental as well? And maybe the second part to that question, are you worried that you're treating a symptom and not a cause here? Because when I hear you speak, I hear a lot of, this is a problem that we're having in Canada and it's happening in other

places too. Although here, I would say it's almost as bad as anywhere in the world. But what I think people are really doing, whether they articulate it or not, is just trying to get away from the risk of the stock market or other speculative investing to keep up with the rate at which the currency is being debased. Obviously, it's a little near and dear to me as a Bitcoin guy, but what do you think about those two things? Am I on the right track there or am I off base? Yeah, well, there's two questions there.

And the first one I would say, don't hate the player, hate the game, so to speak. We have a system that has incentives. first one, I would say, you know, don't hate the player, hate the game, so to speak, right? Like, we have a system that has incentives, we're all incentivized to buy property, because it's an easy win long term. But stock market is also an easy win long term, like the long term S&P average, isn't it like well over 8%. So we have a system that makes housing seem like the safer asset of the two, and also has leverage built in through bank mortgages versus very few people have the risk appetite to leverage for stock purchases. But somehow it's okay for housing, even though a lot of people will still lose their shirt in the housing market. It happened in 2008. So we have a system that is dramatically blowing up bank profits. All of us

have been sold that housing should be the primary wealth creation vehicle that most people have. But it just so it doesn't need to be that way. There's nothing wrong with owning a diversified stock portfolio, with starting a business, with owning crypto. Like why housing? So the fact that we've decided to make housing that financial asset is why, again, we have these two markets that are outbidding each other. And investors will always win over families and things will never be affordable. So there's nothing, again, wrong. There's no moral hazard, I think, for someone who's in a system that they've been taught is how it should be. I don't really think that way. I just think we should recognize

that the system isn't working and it's reaching a point of no return. People are spending over half of their income on rent and mortgages. Well, where's this going to go? Eventually there'll be a huge crash. It happened in Japan. It's probably going to happen in Canada in the next few years. And the one in 2008 in the US, I think was just a preview of what's to come. And until we get this under control. And I want to differentiate again, there's nothing wrong with being a property manager, providing homes for others to rent. So I want to distinguish between the word landlord comes from lording of land from a long time ago. If you separate, if you make a system where instead of paying income taxes or other taxes, we pay a land tax, then no one profits from offering lands to others.

Rather, you're a steward of that land and you're only profiting from the house. The house is good. That's where you want capitalism to flourish. You want to be incentivized to build more units. You want to maintain and upgrade your property and realize a yield. So what we're talking about is a new housing market where people profit from the yield from the building, not from the appreciation of the land. And that's a more honest business model where everybody wins because the more money you make from yield, the more rental property is probably going to be built and the more people can afford to rent or own in such a situation and hard-working people are rewarded because they'll pay less of other taxes that punish their productivity i mean this is why people are moving to texas and florida they have

high property taxes and no state income tax so having a system that shifts primarily to a land tax would be like that in other parts of the world. And it would keep housing costs low. So I think that's the first part of your question is that, again, there's nothing wrong with it, but the system just isn't working. And yeah, to your second point question is, is this the actual root cause? Well, I would ask the readers to stop and think about this from an asset point of view. Like what is the largest cost in anyone's monthly budget? Yeah, it's shelter. It's shelter.

It's shelter. And if you look at it from a macro view, the largest asset in any economy is land. Like in Canada, that land value is twice the value of the Toronto Stock Exchange. I think it's 20 times the value combined of all the world's billionaires. It's 20 times the value of all Canadian billionaires put together

is Canada's land value. While we're sitting here worrying about wealth taxes and being distracted by left and right narratives about the rich, actually, the thing under our feet is the biggest cost and the biggest source of inequality in anyone's life uh and so i think that's it's just almost wasting time with all this left right vitriol when both left and right can could agree and in fact they do agree economists agree that land value tax is the best tax because it doesn't distort behavior. It doesn't distort markets. And it's taxing unearned income, not earned income. So I would argue this is a root cause because in anyone's life, again, housing is the most

expensive thing. It is driving debt markets. The higher land values go, the more people are in debt. The more debt gets issued, the higher houses pricing gets bid which ends up meaning land prices because in the cities uh land is roughly usually 80 percent of the value of any home is the land there's this like vicious cycle between the mortgage market and land prices that just keeps spiraling out of control um so i i think our relationship to land is a root cause behind a lot of the problems you see in the news. It's just no one's really talking about it because it offends homeowners. It does for sure. I don't know if I'd call myself offended, but I'm a little concerned here thinking about this. Let's talk a bit about the incentives. So I like thinking about the reasons why someone might move to Florida,

Texas, whatever, pick your sort of hotspot. I live in the GTA and in my area, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with like the Hamilton Toronto market at all, but the area I live in is like, yeah, that's why I live in Dundas. And it's like a busy kind of, you know, it's, it's a price place to live, honestly. And, and, and I don't, I don't know if, you know, everyone wants to live in Dundas or Hamilton or Toronto, but I do know that more people want to live there, it seems, than almost anywhere in the prairies, let's say. The middle of the country seems to me to be very sparsely populated. Is it, in your view, a reasonable thing to maybe say before we go to a land value tax, is there a way for the federal government and their provincial counterparts

to say to people, especially new Canadians, look, we want to help you start a life. We realize there's a problem with affordability in a lot of places in Canada because there's just too much density in terms of demand and not enough density in terms of available units, bedrooms, as you said. Why don't we have people who come to Canada move to these other places and start to populate these areas where presumably the land values and as well the real estate values would be lower and start communities there. Is that a reasonable step to take in advance of a land value tax? Or should these things work together? Or am I way off?

I would say it's a good idea. They're not really related concepts. I mean, I think immigrants will move where the jobs are. And the jobs are often where things are the most expensive. And, yeah, I mean, I think it's good for government to try and spread people around across the country to help because sometimes jobs, available workers will create jobs. Sometimes it's the other way around. So certainly that's the case. But in the case of land economics, like land has a location value. People are willing to pay to be close to their work as much as they can afford.

And that's why, for instance, like a land value tax would encourage more density within any city center. Maybe Hamilton would have some skyscrapers, for instance, but as opposed to so much sprawl. Like we don't want Ontario to look like Los Angeles, where there's like never no green space anywhere. It's unlimited sprawl. So if we have denser city centers, even small towns, that's a good thing

because it keeps the periphery more affordable. If someone can only afford to live in Dundas but they work in Hamilton, well then, great, power to them. Maybe more immigrants would do that because they can afford to. And a land tax would encourage, again, density in the right places. I live in Toronto almost my whole life. I live in Milton and now I spend some time in BC. I remember

seeing someone picketing outside a farmer's market in Milton to avoid the building of a few mid-rises on the main street in Milton. I'm like, that's not a frigging farmer's market, right? I don't know. I didn't go talk to the person, but I was like, this is the problem. Why not have mid-rises

along the main street? That's exactly where the density density is needed it would help those businesses on the main street it would help create more jobs near near to where they're needed why should some homeowner protest that and uh so like these are all perverse because it's perverse incentives right like it's they just don't understand uh that this would actually actually would increase their land value in the end. But by then holding people out, it still gives them a steady growth of property value that they want to maintain, even though actually the land value would probably go up if there was density not far away. Yeah. How do you sell this to the homeowner? I mean, it's one thing for you to sell it

to maybe the 65-year-old who, as I've heard you mention in past interviews, probably should right-size. That's a term I don't agree with, but it's a term that makes sense, at least if you're proposing the land value tax. It's easier to convince them because maybe stairs are getting hard or their kids are moved out or whatever, right? I understand why a lot of older people would want to move to smaller locations, and this would help with single family, with family formation and things like

that. How do you convince somebody who is maybe my age, who bought a house, you know, lives in it? Is this land value tax for the sort of primary residency as well? Is it for everyone who's owning a home and accruing value in the home, accruing equity in the land, let's say through the home? That's one thing I'm kind of having a hard time with. I don't understand how someone in my shoes would deal with that or someone a

little older than me even would deal with that. Yeah. I mean, this is a great question. That's why there's so many approaches depending on someone's priorities. I mean, to seniors, I would say, well, do you want to live near your grandchildren? Do you want them to afford to live near you? This is how we get there because we need to have density in the right places. We need to reduce the cost of housing so that people can afford to buy and live near where they are. To young people, to working people, I think the sales pitch is tax relief, that you may be better off after a shift off of income and other taxes if you're young and working instead of paying tax on land, which is a fixed cost, which is, again, it's why people are moving to Texas because there's less income tax and so they pay higher property tax. So I think a land

value tax paired with income tax reforms done correctly would provide tax relief to most while costing maybe the top 10% of income earners a bit more, depending on where they live. So if you want to live in a sprawling mansion, then you'll pay more. It's similar to the arguments for the carbon tax rebate, which I know has a lot of opponents as well as supporters. But if you pollute more, you pay more. If you pollute less, you pay less. But it's the same with land. If you use more land, you pay more. If you lose less, you pay less. I shouldn't be name dropping here, but a certain really high-end person in the crypto space who has probably hundreds of millions of dollars lives in a condo. So under the system, he'd pay less tax than if he lived in a big house in Rosedale. And there's nothing wrong with that

because he's conserving land. I do. I have to say there is some pros and cons. Do you care to get into some of the details of what the Commonwealth has found in terms of how something like this could be applied and maybe the ups and downs of existing taxes when land value tax is implemented? I'd love to hear it because I think a lot of people are probably raising their eyebrows a little bit about, yeah, maybe I could come out ahead, but I need to hear more. So talk to me about it. Yeah. Well, the mayor of Detroit right now is on a big campaign to try and get people on side with reducing property tax and adding a land tax instead. So he's not proposing it as increasing city revenues. He's proposing it as a way to shift in a revenue neutral manner, tax off of property and onto land.

And he's claiming that 97% of residents will have tax relief. Um, because the, the, the burden of, of funding city will fall more on, uh, people that are holding property that don't even live in the state because, because property is dilapidated. A lot of people just own old homes as a lottery ticket in case Detroit's fortunes turn around. But that means there's a lot of blight. There's a lot of ugly homes that no one lives in, which is punishing and bringing down the values of local homeowners. So by shifting off property tax to land tax, you're untaxing what you want more of, which is homes and properties, and you're taxing what you want less of, which is vacant land or underutilized or undermaintained land.

So it's a compelling message. So I would argue that also, like anywhere in any neighborhood, you can go down, you can probably see, there's already still parking lots in downtown Toronto that are being taxed, not being taxed based on the true value of that land, when right next to the parking lot there's a condo building that is actually generating probably 100 times more tax revenue for the city. That's not fair.

Why is that parking lot paying less when it's literally taking necessary space away from the public domain, which could be condos, could be other things. They should be paying the same amount, which would incentivize the parking lot to go like a 10-story parking lot with condos on top. That would be a much better use of that space. And similarly, look at the example I gave in Milton. If you have homes right behind the main street where all the restaurants are, the land value tax would be higher in that area,

which would incentivize them to sell to developers to build meteorizers, which would be more people sharing that same land plot, paying less land tax overall because they're sharing that land, and actually would improve the quality of downtown Milton. So yeah, anyone who's working and being productive and living in an area that is suited to their needs may experience tax relief unless they're mega wealthy and holding super high-end property that maybe should be condos but isn't. I'm not talking about people in the periphery of a town in single-family homes paying more than they can afford.

I'm talking about people in single-family homes near transit lines or near main streets or near downtowns. Those should really be minimized. A land tax would facilitate that transition so that people only pay more if they have more than they need and they pay less if they're being conservationist now you know we're not arguing some mass shifts to condos we're arguing people simply living in accordance to like what they want based on what they're earning and and what they can afford and not taking away from others

more importantly you're not afraid to be unpopular at all like i can just i'm kind of laughing because i agree with a lot of what you're saying but i just think like my god i would never say this like at dinner i would just be never invited back uh one thing i want to ask it's a bit of a sharp question i'll admit but i see at least one person in the chat asking it a brave soul there is at least some potential floyd that when you move um let's say an elderly couple or an otherwise well-to-do area into a system of land value tax, what you will wind up getting as prices of real estate decline are people who are less well-to-do, perhaps in lower quality jobs, lower quality educations. A lot of the stuff that makes certain parts of the world, you mentioned Detroit, for example, makes that city less valuable, will come to these areas that were deemed valuable and bring the value down.

Is this something you guys are concerned with? This sort of social change, changing the social fabric of an area, the income level of an area in terms of the value, in terms of, I don't know, the sort of palatability for a city to have something like that happen? Is that something you guys have considered at all? Well, with regards to seniors, there's a lot of solutions to that and low-income people. One of the solutions with seniors is tax deferral. We realize this is a generational shift that will actually improve the lot of future generations. So for this generation of seniors, they can defer the land tax and just pay it upon the sale of the home.

That's a way to solve that. For low-income people, you know, I'm a big fan, obviously, of a guaranteed basic income or a VBI. So a land tax is an ideal and very just way to pay for a basic income because it's like saying that, you know, those who have been excluded from the property market, from having the basic necessities of life, from access to land, historically, like I'm going back thousands of years, like the private land system excluded half the population or more from ever being self-sufficient anymore.

They had to get jobs when they used to have access to land. A basic income will ensure that they can afford a place to stay on low incomes. So yes, there is an issue with the transition for the current generation because a lot of people have benefited in an under and manner from all this growth in property value. But if they care about the lot of their children and if they care about the future of the country, we have to understand that this system is just not working long term. When some are profiting at the expense of others, that's not really how capitalism is supposed to work.

What I mean is, obviously, you pay for services and someone profits, but not when it comes to basic needs, like a place to stay, like land. We like to think that capitalism lifts all boats but but our relationship to land is more feudalist than capitalist because no one earns land value right so we have a bit of capitalism sprinkled on top of feudalism right now with regards to the housing market another way to think about it is you know elon musk's wealth doesn't make anyone poorer but but landlord's wealth does so elon musk's wealth is tied up in businesses. That's the poster child of actual innovative, productive capitalism. But BlackRock, which is buying out tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of homes everywhere, they're not creating any innovation at all. They're just buying an asset, holding it, and then renting it to others for, in many cases, more than they can afford. That is not what capitalism is supposed to do. It is supposed to make things cheaper, not hoarding it to make more expensive for others. So, yeah, so we want to have a transition that treats the current generation well, doesn't actually harm people with such a transition because it's worth it for the next generation

to be able to afford homes. Yeah, I think there's some element of the expectation that people will concede their wealth in the moment for the betterment of their own family and other families as well. That's a steep hill to climb. I'm impressed. Yeah, it's very optimistic of you, I think.

Because I would imagine, and I'll tie this into my next question, where have you met opposition? I would guess that this sort of longer time horizon thinking is one place, but politicians don't want to push this either, I would suppose. Yeah, I mean, for politicians, it's always like, I'm having this podcast talking about what is the grand vision, right? It's a grand vision where the value of nature, of land, of energy, of minerals, that part

is a component of that profit that is shared by all and is a better source of taxation than our incomes and other productivity. That's a future that could lead us to Star Trek instead of Star Wars with regards to everyone benefiting as society improves. That's good. Print the shirts. Print the shirts, Floyd. You got to get that on a shirt.

ASAP. Yeah. I mean, that's a future where we know that our progress benefits everyone as opposed to benefiting only those who got there first and bought up all the assets. Right. So, yeah. But in today's Overton window, when talking to politicians, you know, a smaller incremental additions of land tax, not like the big eliminate income taxes and add land tax instead, but

just smaller amounts can really shift the incentives. So like the mayor of Detroit, he's talking about reducing people's tax on buildings by a few hundred dollars and increasing the tax on land by maybe two or three times a few hundred dollars, like by ratio per property. Small amounts just to change the incentives, right? So that people that have more land than they need or vacant lands are more likely to sell to developers uh and also more importantly we're not punishing productive development why should you pay more tax because you added several units

uh to to your home uh when you just did something that society needs right so we shouldn't be taxed for productive contribution society uh it's much better better that we pay for the amount we're taking from society, which is how much land we're using that others cannot use. So anyway, but back to the incremental small shifts to land tax could really help how the housing market works. And that's something that politicians want to hear about because they have to have answers for affordable housing. You have to have answers for how do you fund more transit? So if you take as a principle, like the philosophy of land tax is that what is publicly created wealth or community created wealth should be shared within the community. Then you can find other adjacent policies that are easier to think about. Like, for instance, you could have, we could build a fucking Hyperloop in this country if it's funded by the land value increase of the areas where the hyperloop stations are uh in in columbia i spoke to a guy who knows the mayor there apparently in columbia if they build a major transit line or some major public

infrastructure then all the homeowners around the area of a radius of a few kilometers have have a tax imposed uh for their share of the growth in land value because they never earned that land value that the taxpayer did so so they can they can choose to pay that tax or they can leave it attached to their properties and they pay it when it's sold that seems really fair because you know if i'm going to build a subway station at you know at a somewhere in scarborough uh all those homeowners around it have will have like probably an increase of $20,000, $30,000, maybe $60,000 on their homes. They did nothing for. But what if the city could get that money back by having a land value capture method on those homes so that it could pay for the subway station?

This is how we get Hyperloops. This is how we get all the infrastructure in a way that does not offend taxpayers because it's not coming from income tax. It's coming from the specific homes in the area who gained a land value increase that did not work for. I really think that that is your strongest point. I'm glad you made it, that there is a community element to the wealth that's accrued based on land value tax, and it's not going back to the community where it accrued or to the people who helped accrue it. This is the strongest point of the entire vision. And I think that people need to consider that. We don't often in Bitcoin agree with notions that involve at all government telling you that they're adding an additional levy to something that you own.

But we do agree in Bitcoin that strong communities are what build stronger communities. And you don't get to start at third base in a lot of cases. You have to start somewhere. And this is, I think, I'm going to make some enemies here, Floyd. I don't think this is that bad an idea, buddy. I don't think it's that bad an idea. One of the whole ethos in the crypto ecosystem, which I love, is those who are contributing are gaining back. You're not creating monopolies that are taxing those who are part of the whole ethos in the crypto ecosystem, which I love, is those who are contributing are gaining back. You're not creating monopolies that are taxing those who are part of the ecosystem. This is very similar to that.

It's quite within that ethos. Yeah, I think that's great. Okay, so let's move on here to UBI. Now, UBI is a whole different beast. Maybe it's paid for by the land value tax. This is a whole different beast. We've done a lot of UBI stories in the past. And I think Hamilton was part of an Ontario pilot. There's at least a few people in Hamilton who were on a pilot, I want to say seven or eight years

ago. I think it was $1,000 a month. And there was a lot of stories about how people were, for the first time in their lives, secure in their income level and made secure in their income level by this additional funding. I don't know if funding is the right word, but this additional income. And they were taking on passion projects and doing things that they were good at, things they thought were helping the community or helping build skills that they wanted to improve on and whatnot. That's one side of the UBI story.

The other side of the UBI story, in my opinion, I'm not speaking for you, although I do obviously want to hear your thoughts. The other side of the UBI story, at least in the Bitcoin space, a lot of us view this as just inflationary. And I've heard you mention in the past that there's a clear upward pressure on prices, thanks to things like first-time homebuyer benefits and whatnot. I'm curious, how do you square the circle knowing that that contributes to higher prices in housing, but not that UBI will contribute to higher prices in widgets and services in the communities where it exists? So I want you to tackle that, but maybe start with your grand vision, as you call it, for UBI. I'd love to hear it.

Yeah. I mean, first of all, it's important to note there's two kind of conceptions of what basic income is. There's the one that I think countries inevitably will move towards once the political discourse becomes more serious, which is a guaranteed basic income, which only goes to those who need it most. It's imagine that everyone has a benefit and the benefit reduces a bit in size, depending on how high your income from your job is, so that it helps low income workers because two thirds of people in poverty are are working it's a fucking tragedy how could be in poverty while working but that's that's again in part because of our relationship to land where values keep going up and it's it's only certain people profiting off that but anyway it's not only for people in

poverty it's not only to replace social assistance programs which trap people in poverty for the most part uh it's it's really for everyone it's for people on low incomes. They have a supplement, which makes life more affordable. And a supplement tapers off to zero once the income reaches a certain point. So the taxpayers are only helping those who need it most. That's a guaranteed basic income. And in Canada, the debate, the bills in Parliament are all very much centered around that idea, because it's the least amount of tax increase. And on our website, ubiworks.ca, we put out funding plans for how it can be paid for primarily by the financial sector, by ending certain tax breaks for large corporations and wealthiest individuals,

while avoiding the kind of political hot buttons like wealth taxes and all that. Just like simple stuff that would be hard to disagree with, that would not cost working people. The net cost of a basic income, of a guaranteed income could be as low as 24 billion dollars which is not a lot it's actually what what the care of the child benefit costs today it's which is just a bit over 24 billion dollars uh in perspective that's like uh that's not even like uh five percent of that's like actually that's like two and a half percent of like total government revenues at all levels of city provincial and and uh and federal um versus uh you know i've seen also a net cost suggestion of 51 billion dollars uh on on a commonly discussed guaranteed basic income which is equivalent it's as if you added three percent to the federal gst tax meaning that

if everything costs three percent more more, we could almost end poverty in this country. And I'm not advocating for that as the funding method, but that just gives people a sense of how cheap it could actually be. Like 3% more on your transactions could pay for a basic income for those who need it most. And then the other concept of basic income is a real UBI where everyone gets the same amount. And in five years or more of spending time on this topic, I realized that UBI only makes sense if we're owning some asset together that pays dividends. Like in Alaska, they took oil revenues, they put it into an investment fund,

and Alaskans get a dividend check every year off of a share of that fund, which is pretty amazing. So they're not sharing direct revenues from the oil and gas industry of the current year. Their revenues buy stocks and bonds and other investments on a real market. And then the return from that portfolio is what pays people the dividends. So in doing so, they've achieved some intergenerational equity because future generations will still get dividend checks, even if the oil is depleted, was depleted in a past generation because they created an investment portfolio.

So I'm very much for both. I think this country could use a guaranteed basic income right away to reduce poverty and reduce the costs of poverty on society. And we should be looking at creating sovereign wealth funds like Norway has, like Saudi Arabia has, like Singapore has, that could pay everyone dividends for things that really should be owned in common, whether it's oil fields or telecom stuff. The carbon tax, for instance, could have been paid into a fund, and then we got the proceeds off the gain, off the interest from that fund, as opposed to giving everyone rebates right away.

Because you could argue that future generations should be compensated for the pollution that was caused by past generations. Why should boomers have it so easy when young generations have to pay more? Young generations should be compensated for that. So those are very different reforms. So I guess I wanna tell the listeners here that I've come to the conclusion that just a pure UBI on its own doesn't really make sense.

It's always gonna be more expensive than a guaranteed basic income if your goal is to reduce poverty. Where an actual UBI dividend, a social dividend makes sense, is when you're owning something together. It's like having tokens in the whole country that were somehow, the value of those tokens go up and everyone gets a share. But that's not what a guaranteed basic income is.

So, yeah, I think it's quite realistic we might get something like a guaranteed basic income in the next 10 years. We're already starting to approach it in Canada because we have a number of programs that target low-income people. We have the Canada Child Benefit. We have the Canada Housing Benefit. We have the Working Tax Benefit, which is like the EITC in the US. They don't amount to enough to make a huge dent on poverty except for the Canada Child Benefit, which has reduced poverty in Canada by 20%. We were the only G7

country to have done that through one simple cash transfer program that was increased in 2015. So you know you asked about inflation basic income no one's no one is seriously suggesting I mean some are but no one no one in who would ever talk to a government official no politician would ever suggest printing money to pay for basic income. So it's just simply absence. No one in Canada is talking about that. So how could it be inflationary if you're just recirculating existing dollars around in a way that's more efficient?

More efficient because people are living below their means right now. If at least they live at their basic needs, you'd have more money flowing into businesses, into local retail stores where it's actually needed so people can actually live. And for this narrow band of the population, maybe the bottom 20%, who would have a substantial increase in purchasing power, those kinds of resources are pretty elastic. Food, clothing, basic needs like that, the market can respond without major inflation, even if there's maybe a brief temporary inflationary blip, which I don't think there would be. The bigger issue is on housing, but I think even on housing, the kind of housing that people in

lower incomes would buy, again, it's a limited buyer segment. I'm not talking about everybody. I'm not talking about 40 million Canadians having more money and just spending more on housing. You're just talking about the bottom 10%, 20% of people who have really shitty housing who can now afford slightly better housing. And what impact would that have? Well, again, you still need to have other affordable housing programs and things happening there. But we have not seen rental appreciation or rental inflation in Manitoba, which has given like like half of the basic income in in the form of a program called the manitoba rent assist it's literally unconditional cash given to renters like up to 700 bucks a month to afford rent we never saw that increasing uh inflation and housing

costs because it's it's a limited number of people that are getting this benefit who actually need it the most is it is it not going up are you sure it's not going up because there's controls there? Like in Ontario, you give all the renters $700 or more and the province still caps at 1.5%, right? That's not the reason? Is that a fair criticism at that point? That would have a limited effect for those who are not willing to move, I suppose.

But you've heard of rent evictions. I mean, rents are skyrocketing compared to 15 years ago, rents were more than double what they were, right? So, yeah, I mean, again, from a micro level, on an individual basis, there may be some cases like what you're saying. On a macro level, we just haven't seen it cause inflation. BBI Works' website to how to pay for basic income would be coming primarily from large sums of money, of wealth in the financial sector or tax breaks on passively earned income in large corporations, things that don't actually harm productivity, things that don't drive inflation.

You're talking about taking from money that's being inefficiently used and using it more efficiently for people's need to live. That's really the dream with all money that goes to the government, but we'll save that story for another time. One of the things I think is important about this work is that this is going to be a really gradually then suddenly moment for a lot of people. And you didn't really mention it there, but in other appearances you've done, and one thing we talked about on the show as well, we've mentioned this a few times, there's going to come a time in the next five or 10 years where a significant swath of the population, not just blue collar, but white collar, redundant data management type jobs are going to be completely

wiped off the economic slate. They're not going to be on the ledger anymore. They're going to be done by some kind of artificial intelligence, or one person's going to be able to do the work of 10 because of assistance from AI or some kind of synonymous helper. This is why it's important to do the work on UBI now when we don't, quote unquote, need it. Some people may argue we do. I think there's a little bit of gray area there at least. But it's almost impossible that it's not going to come. Do you guys have a view on sort of a timeline? Because one thing I think, a problem you're having in the housing thing, and you didn't say this, but I'm saying it, is that the most sort of affluent people don't agree with you. They

want to tell you to FO, right? You're not taking my money. You're not taking my house. You're not doing any of that stuff. On the UBI side, the people who are co-opted and their employment opportunities are basically going to nil. They're going to be from that same class of people, the influencers, the earners, the university educated, the people who know the ins and outs of the political system and know how to exercise influence. Surely you guys have said to these people or some interest groups along the way, listen, you may not realize this now, but soon it's going to be too late for you to think on it it's going to be happening to you what kind of support have you gotten from from these places like it's hard it's it's got to be something you

guys have considered oh yeah i mean uh my own journey and all this began with because i was seeing the impacts of automation on the job market as a software engineer like this really mattered to me in fact my own dad and uncle uh they had jobs in ontario's automotive manufacturing sector which shrunk by almost 50 in the early 2000s when there was a mass automation wave in response to china chinese competition so every time there's like a major um economic recession you have all the technologies that have been sitting on the sidelines that companies have not been so interested in because they're on the gravy train, times are good. They immediately start bringing in technologies that will save them money so they can survive. And then you have huge shifts in money that's been made in the job market because people

aren't hired back when things bounce back because companies become more efficient. It happened to my father and uncle. They were in the automotive manufacturing sector and suddenly new software was brought in where the same jobs they were doing can be done cheaper by people with less experience. So automation generally means lower wages for skilled people. And it also means a shrinking of the middle class. So I would say in some ways we're already there. We have 50 years of automation, factory floors that used to have tens of thousands of people now have hundreds with robots. We already have the impacts. And the impact we're seeing is a smaller middle class relative to population.

We're seeing a decrease in job quality for the bottom half of the population, which are taking what's left that hasn't been automated yet. And we're seeing rapid automation coming in to compete even more with low-income workers and high-income workers. This time it's competing with high-income repetitive knowledge work. So, you know, I've seen predictions or I've seen Mark Carney, who used to be the governor of the Bank of Canada in England, which might be the devil himself, the Bitcoiners, was literally saying that the future of work is going to be bespoke and more artisanal, things that cannot be automated.

We need to have a way for 40-year-olds to go back to university or to retrain somehow for vocational jobs because the future is going to be rapidly automated. And it was amazing that someone of his experience was saying that. So this is happening. And I think it's already happening. That's why things are so hard today. That's why cost of living, why wages are not surpassing cost of living. We have these two problems that are happening simultaneously, automation holding wage growth down and then the cost of living going up in part because of these land value incentives that are driving speculation, bidding prices up.

People are just being squeezed in the middle, and it's going to reach a point where it's just unbearable. And you'll have elections being won on populist grounds with people posing the wrong reasons. So, you know, what I'm hoping that actually happens is that we see one sector be automated so fast that people are protesting in the streets. And then you'll see how fast basic income is put back on the agenda. And trucking could be that thing. I think it may not be. So here's, and I mentioned earlier that automation leads to lower wages, not necessarily elimination of jobs. I'm sure a lot of your readers, your listeners will say, oh, but it leads to more jobs.

They become more productive. Well, let's take trucking as an example. I actually think automation of trucking jobs may lead to more trucking jobs, but there'll be lower paying jobs. And here's how that looks. The long haul routes, which are very tedious that people can make six figures on, those will be gone because it's easy for robots to drive on highways. But that'll make the cost of transportation lower, which means there'll be more transportation, which means there'll be more Uber, Amazon delivery style jobs within the cities, which pay less because there's so many people there trying to get those jobs.

So you may have more truck jobs, but they'd be cheaper paid. And if you apply that example to tons of other sectors, to secretaries, to accountants, to lawyers, you see a mass shift towards lower-income jobs over time. And that's what's going on. And that's one of the pain points we're experiencing in society and why things are so bad. So I mean I don't know if truckers will ever be doing blockades and like complaining about losing their jobs because there may be more truckers in the future. But another thing I'll say to people who say yeah but we always create more jobs in the end and this is also from Mark Carney's

talk you can find it on UBI Works' YouTube channel, is that the benefits of automation in terms of labor and job quality usually happen several generations later. Like 100 years later, people have better jobs, but in part not because it just magically happened due to market forces, in part because they have labor movements that demand it and claw it back. And so today's automation will harm us. And the benefits may not be felt for generations to come. And the social instability that creates in the meantime, is very scary. And that's why we need something like a basic income to ensure people have basic security to retrain to go back to school to be able to afford to negotiate better pay. We saw

that during various basic income trials. And currently, there's like dozens of trials the US and in cities. We're seeing people get better wages because they can afford to negotiate for better pay. And that's a good thing, right? If you believe in freedom, you should believe people should be free to say no to a shitty job so they can negotiate better pay. And the basic income will help them do that. What if I told you, okay, I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on here for a second. I encourage you to do the same. What if I told you that I am of the opinion that the Canadian government is already starting to run what basically equates to a UBI program via public employment. If I look at jobs data over the last year or so, you see, what do you see, Floyd? You see private sector getting crushed basically in every silo, whether it's tech, service, hospitality, you name it, across the board getting

crushed. But what do you see going up every quarter by 4%, 5%? It's public sector. And that's not just federal administration, although that's part of it. It's stuff like police, nurses, fire, teachers, all that stuff. Anyone who gets a check that's stamped with the municipality, the province, or the big Canadian flag, that number keeps going up. Are you concerned? And I'm going to use a phrase that's popular on this show. The accelerationist in me would say that really to rip the bandaid off of this, we have to stop expanding the public service and people need to feel the pain. The stove has to get touched before we start going this direction. Like you mentioned, it's difficult, but it's necessary. I think as part of the transition

that people understand this is going to hurt if we don't do it. Is there some part of you that says, this is as good as UBI, just continue to expand the public service and have people doing these jobs that maybe... It's hard to discuss, right? I'm not really sure if it's good or not good,

but you tell me, what do you think about it um well i mean i haven't looked at that issue a lot but i've heard that the size of public service has expanded almost 50 percent in like 10 or 20 years or something maybe last 10 years even it sounds a bit suspicious right a little scary why why what are these people doing um i actually have fucking no idea but but i'll distinguish that there's a difference between a federal jobs guarantee, which is a policy a lot of people are a fan of, especially in the U.S., a jobs guarantee as opposed to a basic income. A jobs guarantee is a way more expensive way to ensure people have income. Like you're actually hiring people to do jobs they might not want to do and they never want to leave or they can't leave because they'll make less money somewhere else. Like that's not very efficient. A basic income is more efficient.

Make sure people can afford basic needs and let them work in the private market towards whatever, you know, suits their skill set and have time to go back to school and retrain. So, yeah, is it happening? Yes. I don't know why it's happening. I don't think it's as efficient as paying for a basic income. I wonder if the actual net cost to government of all these extra jobs, what is that actual number?

And would the number go to pay half of the basic income? That would probably be a better use of that money. Just give people money and let the market sort it out. But I don't know. It's strange. Yeah, there's an interesting dynamic there between public and private sector. I finished the housing discussion on a toothy question. So I'll ask you a toothy question here.

Some part of me, and these are my words, not yours. Okay, so I'm going to be a bit abrasive here. Some part of me thinks that a lot of the UBI proponents, sort of the recipient of the recipient group are really just widget buyers. They don't have any long- just widget buyers. They don't have any long-term thinking capacity. They don't make a lot of good decisions when it comes to money. They, you know, in some cases took jobs they didn't want because they got degrees that really carried no value and were talked into it, et cetera, et cetera. Now I will admit that there's

external factors and pressures there that maybe cause some of those decisions. But I think by and large, the argument that I would make and others have made too, it's not mine, is that some people below a certain line of impulse, let's say, can't really be helped. How do you help somebody who just is never going to make a good decision, whether it's 700 or 1,700 after they get every month? What do you say to that? Is there any merit to that at all?

Do you have some examples? Because I know that people in my audience will say, you got to show me some success stories here before we start talking about redirecting tax money to a UBI. Yeah. Well, again, looking at the actual trials that have been done, including this year alone, I think a couple dozen trials have ended in the US at a municipal level. We consistently see people working more. We consistently see wage growth going up. We see vice spending often going down. People spending less on alcohol and drugs. And like,

I don't know of any trial in the last 50 years that has shown drug and alcohol spending going up, at least not at a macro level. Maybe there's individual examples of people who actually really need help. And so I would say the difference is hope. When you have no long-term security, you're going to make very mostly short-term decisions, often the wrong ones because you're on a hamster wheel. You can't really afford to spend time really preparing yourself to do what you really are lit up to do. You have to just think of one day at a time. And that leads people off with desperation. Like some people are

escaping the job market through distracting themselves through like video games and, and other distractions, because they don't really have long term security. So yeah, you can anyone can bring up tons of examples of their neighbor or someone they know who would probably be lazy and stay at home. But I would argue, does that person actually have long-term hope? And that's what basic income changes. It provides long-term financial security so people can make better decisions. The decisions you'll make when you know that you have a few months of security versus a

few years of security are profoundly different. And I would argue that the worst case scenarios, which are easy to bring up, some of those people are not really employable anyway, at least not now. And they need help. They need help of a different kind that money itself won't solve.

But money itself is a foundation to have them find that help so they can finally actually be productive and do other things with their lives. I think that's a good answer for the Bitcoin crowd too. We talk a lot about time horizons and expanding your thinking to further than just the nose at the end of your face.

Okay, Floyd, I can't let you go without asking about Bitcoin because we didn't- Yeah, you haven't asked me any crypto questions. Because I don't want to. We bring guests on. I bring you on because you're an expert in this silo and this is what I want to talk about. Sure, that's awesome.

Floyd, it's my show. So we talk whatever I want. So about Bitcoin now, you said you're, you've been into crypto. We don't deal with crypto here. We deal in Bitcoin. Tell me something. Uh, do you have any insights, any predictions, any thoughts on where Bitcoin might take us both in terms of price and in terms of, uh, maybe wider adoption? You know, you have a tech background, you're in this space that's, I think Bitcoin adjacent, honestly, UBI and housing reform and things like that are becoming Bitcoin adjacent. And maybe to finish, once you answer that,

do you have a pitch outside of any of the stuff you've offered to the Bitcoin crowd, who I think is about to become a significant part of the political landscape, thanks to the Bitcoin crowd, who I think is about to become a significant part of the political landscape, thanks to the growth in the price. So the floor is all yours. Okay. Well, I think there's nothing wrong with having multiple currencies that people can use. Absolutely. I support that. I think things like Ecuador is doing is really cool.

And yeah, I mean, I hope crypto becomes a real third party, like an option that's realistic for people in their normal everyday circumstance. It's not like we all have multiple currencies today. It would be great to have a currency that is not controlled by any government. I don't know. I haven't thought about what is the pitch to Bitcoiners for UBI and land tax specifically. But, you know, maybe I would say I think there's an ethos in crypto that you kind of earn, you get what you've earned, right? Like everyone who participates in various networks, like people who provide Bitcoin mining nodes, everyone's doing their part.

And they get back what they earned. In the real economy, that's actually not the case. We have monopolies. We have dynasties. We have a lot of unearned wealth that is being privately inherited. And I would argue if you agree in private inheritance, you should also agree with public inheritance. So it's time to reform these things so that the basic value of nature,

things that no one created should be shared more equitably so that people can then benefit more through their own private endeavors. Tax that less, tax the use or abuse of nature more. And I don't think it'd be hard for a Bitcoiner to oppose that because owning Bitcoin doesn't harm anyone. You know, you're not taking away from someone else when you own more Bitcoin. In a sense, you are if you're privatizing a lot of land value that someone else will have to pay you for when you sell your house and you never earned it. So it's fundamentally not really compatible. The current housing market is not compatible with, I think, some of the reasons why people invest in crypto. And wouldn't it be fucking great to have an actual asset-backed

currency? Real assets, right? What if we had a land-backed currency or a land, oil, natural resources-backed currency? Charles Eisenstein talks a lot about that in his book Sacred Economics. And this is actually what that would do. It would make the Canadian dollar or any currency that is primarily paid for from the value of land or natural resources, it would actually make it a real asset-backed currency more than it is today. So maybe that's a pitch I just made up that I think of. Actually, Charles Eisenstein made that up and he's a great thinker. I highly recommend his book, Sacred Economics. It would be hard for any crypto person to dispute the idea of sacred economics. That's the pitch.

Okay, Floyd, you've been an amazing guest, man. I'm glad we finally did this. Give people a handoff. Tell them one more time where they can find out more about you, UBI Works, all the stuff you're working on. It's all yours, buddy. Sure. Great. Well, I post a lot of these ideas on my own personal Twitter, so you can follow me, Floyd Marinescu.

UbiWorks.ca and Commonwealth.ca. You can join those mailing lists if you want to get involved. On UBI Works in particular, we have a lot of campaigns that you can click on and just that'll literally in a few clicks with an email, your member of parliament with a message about why we need basic income. So if you want to see a world without poverty, if you want to see a better future for everyone, like just go there and just fill out one of our petitions. And we've generated over 800,000 emails to government officials at all

levels in the last five years. So we're really engaging Canadians in digital activism. And so everyone can participate in that. They love it. They love it. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time. Don't forget everybody lots of other stuff on cbp media network including two whites and a blue me joey my brother-in-law mike and our friend will talk about all the problems millennials

are having with finance romance and just getting by uh if you like cbp if you like the nhl 94 podcast i guarantee you'll like that one. Search for it. Two whites and blue anywhere you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you.