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The Price of Tomorrow

3 min read

Summary

Jeff Booth (Canadian entrepreneur) argues that technology is inherently deflationary — it makes things cheaper over time — and that central banks fighting this natural deflation with cheap credit are creating an increasingly unstable system. The solution is a deflationary monetary system aligned with technological reality: sound money (Bitcoin).

The book is notable for arriving at the Bitcoin conclusion from a technology/business perspective rather than from Austrian economics or cypherpunk ideology.

Structure (10 chapters)

  1. The Complexity of Economics — why economic models fail
  2. Creative Destruction — Schumpeter’s model and how it normally works
  3. The Technology Boom — exponential improvement in technology
  4. The Energy Future — renewable energy cost curves
  5. The Intelligence Future — AI and the coming productivity explosion
  6. Abundance and Cooperation — a world of radical abundance
  7. Debt and the Trap — why cheap credit is a trap
  8. Where We Are — the current debt crisis
  9. The Deflation Problem — the real problem central banks are hiding
  10. A New Narrative — the path forward (deflationary money)

Core Argument

Technology is deflationary: Every major technology improvement reduces the cost of goods and services. Computing, communications, energy, manufacturing — all getting dramatically cheaper. This is good — it creates abundance.

Central banks fight this: The mandate of central banks is to maintain ~2% inflation. In a deflationary technology environment, achieving 2% inflation requires massive monetary expansion. This creates:

  • Asset price bubbles (cheap money flows into stocks and real estate)
  • Zombie companies kept alive by cheap credit
  • Misallocation of capital at massive scale
  • An ever-growing debt burden

The trap: Debt now exceeds the world’s ability to repay it at any meaningful interest rate. Central banks cannot raise rates without triggering debt crises. They cannot stop inflating without deflation (which they fear). The system is trapped.

The exit: Align the monetary system with technological reality. Technology will bring deflation regardless. Better to have a deflationary monetary system (like Bitcoin, with fixed supply) than to fight technology with increasingly desperate credit expansion.

Why Bitcoin

Booth doesn’t come to Bitcoin as a maximalist — he comes as an entrepreneur who worked through the macroeconomic logic and arrived at the conclusion that sound, deflationary money is the only coherent exit from the debt trap. Bitcoin is the best candidate for that money.

Complementary to Ammous

Where Saifedean Ammous (The Fiat Standard) argues from Austrian monetary theory, Booth argues from technology business cycles. They arrive at the same conclusion: the fiat debt system is unsustainable and Bitcoin is the exit. The two books are natural companions.

Sources

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