Economics, Inflation, Interest Rates, & Natural Competition | The Saylor Series | Episode 9 (WiM009)

they're dominating because they're able

to

deliver force faster

harder stronger smarter

so if we ask the question what is money

money is the highest form of energy that

human beings can channel

bitcoin is channeling human

ingenuity into making it

better and and every commodity

is channeling human energy into making

it

worse the lowbrow or the the

the historic colloquial term is total

right hold on for dear life or just

total or save whatever

and the highbrow term would be adopt as

a treasury reserve essay

[Music]

hey guys so as you learned uh by

watching the what is money show

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really is simple

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all right thanks

all right guys welcome back to episode

nine

of the sailor series uh today

is another deep episode we're actually

getting towards the end of the line here

and uh covering some of the last bit of

ground in the macroeconomic domain

and tying it back into actually some

philosophy towards the end which i

thought was really interesting

so today we're going to talk a bit about

how bitcoin

is an elemental innovation uh time is

back to episode one

actually uh where we just discuss stone

age technologies

including fire water and missiles so

um we're actually making the case that

bitcoin is an elemental invention akin

to one of these stone age technologies

which as a reminder if you haven't seen

the prior episodes

highly recommend you go and check those

out as they build a long

and strong intellectual edifice to get

us to this point

uh secondly we're going to talk about

fiat currency how it's a contaminated

form of money uh that actually leads to

socio-economic decay

and we're going to go into interest

rates uh an area that's commonly

misunderstood by even people uh

typically considered financially

sophisticated

then we're going to talk a bit about

central bank price manipulation how that

influences markets

we're also going to look at market

competition and

the law of decimation how that plays out

in nature

and throughout history then we're going

to get into the philosophical domain

uh we're going to touch on a bit of

stoicism

and how sailor has used this in his own

life

and how he sees its importance in

markets in general

and then finally uh we'll leave off

with a bit of discussion on

anti-fragility and

the vitality of life so excited for this

one

uh another crazy episode with the the

incredibly brilliant

michael saylor so with that let's dive

in sort of the purpose of humanity has

been to

channel energy through our intellect

right that's how we've

developed everything essentially

and i'm reminded of a quote by alfred

north whitehead

that i'll paraphrase it he said that

it's common

wisdom for people to say you should

think before you act

but that in fact civilization advances

by us being able to execute more

important operations

without having to think about them all

right so we're actually

when we can embed these things uh these

certain important actions in a protocol

that we don't need to think about it as

much it frees us up to do other things

right that's kind of the layers

upon which we build civilization and

it just seems like this digital age

we're going into

is something radically new it seems to

be

as profound as the renaissance or as

profound as the enlightenment do you see

it that way are we

are we co-evolving with the tools that

we're creating

in like the next 500 years are gonna be

something so fundamentally different

than what history has been that it'll be

hard to recognize it in a few hundred

years

i i do think that um

the creation of bitcoin and the creation

of the

of the first effective crypto network

isn't is an elemental force

a is a true invention akin to the

discovery of fire

or the discovery of atomic energy or the

discovery of

of we can make a list of a lot of

uh fundamental things maybe one

interesting thing is just

the science of uh or the science of

sterilization

right germs medicine modern medicine and

the awareness of the importance of uh

sterilizing instruments and and

the way that disease spreads right

immunology

once we figured that out we were able to

go from living 50 years of living 70

years because

we realized that we were just

every time we entered into a

medical procedure including the birth of

a child

we were moving into an unsterile

environment that was

life threatening in fact life uh

soul soul sucking right like uh

life stealing right the death rate um

the death rate uh from childbirth was

huge right

the average life expectancy was short

and we needed that breakthrough to

realize that we were swimming in germs

and the very simple solution

is wash your hands sterilize or

instruments

and you put that together with

antibiotics and the human life expects

to jump by 50

so what if we're actually doing

economics with dirty money

and so we've been dealing we've been

using

monetary energy which is bleeding

right it's it's the same way as

operating with

with uh non-sterile instruments

and the patient keeps dying and we don't

know why

and um the significance of bitcoin

is we're going from from defective money

which is somewhere between toxic it may

just be

uh bleeding like ineffective bleeding

two three four percent a year

or it's toxic when it gets to minus 10

or minus 15

real yield so using toxic money

how is that different than using toxic

instruments

when i commit surgery on you like

how is it different than feeding you

toxic food

i think i think we're breaking through

this new world we sterilize our

instruments we encrypt our money

we're moving uh we're moving toward a

science of non-toxic

economic energy madam curie

died of radiation poisoning and she died

of cancer from the radiation

they didn't realize that radiation

killed you that it

caused cancer there's a lot of basics

in and life that we don't understand a

bit a big breakthrough in

and uh health is when we realized that

sugar was toxic

my mother didn't know sugar was toxic

right i mean uh

conventional wisdom and governmental

advice would you need your four favorite

food groups and pursue a low-fat diet

but starch and sugar was fine

and of course now we know that too much

starch and too much sugar

makes you insulin resistant makes your

type 2 diabetic gives you cancer

my mother became diabetic became

overweight got cancer

we thought it was just unfortunate

doctor said we don't know why these

things happen

it's just unfortunate you know if i

could go back in time

i'd be like i know exactly why it

happens i know exactly how to solve it

now

right don't eat sugar don't eat starch

stop eating fast sometimes you know i

never

i never eat before like one two one in

the afternoon i only eat an eight hour

window

and i'll go two or three days and i

won't eat i mean i adopt fasting

and i won't drink anything with sugar in

it

right you want to live a long time don't

dose yourself with sugar it's toxic

the instruments are toxic the germs are

toxic we killed george washington

because we bled him to death

toxic the money's toxic that's

fundamentally the issue

the money is toxic that i mean

that's the fundamental issue with with

inflation and we

if we segue into the discussion of

inflation

it's everybody keeps thinking there is

no inflation because everybody focuses

upon a market basket consumer goods

and if you look in the u.s and you look

in europe they leave food

and energy out of the basket of consumer

goods and they say

we left out the highly volatile food and

energy from the index

well highly volatile means it went up

and the number would change

right quality is another word for signal

we left out everything that actually

changes

in price from our price index

right okay people it literally is like a

jedi mind trick

and it's like a triple mind trick it's

like

we have a consumer price index and we've

left the prices that vary out of the

index oh check

we have a consumer price index well

first of all

it's not a scalar it's a vector it's an

n-dimensional vector dynamically

changing in time you've just created a

skill

we've created a market basket of things

that we think you want

yes your basket is what i want

the market basket of things that you

want does not include assets

no i would never want to buy an asset

only rich people buy assets

poor people do not buy assets how do

poor people get rich

you have to buy assets to go from being

poor to being rich i didn't

i didn't go from being poor to being

wealthy

by not buying assets or not trading

assets you create them or you buy them

so the entire field of inflation

is defective and the irony is that 99

of the economists that talk about it

they they already have accepted the

notion that a market basket of consumer

products and services is acceptable and

it's acceptable to throw out

energy and food and i never seen an

economist

say why don't we actually define the

things

that are working a 22 year old is going

to want to buy by the time they're 32

and here's one thing early retirement

right i want to retire i want to buy

early retirement by the time i'm 32. how

do i do that

i need to buy a bond that pays me 75 000

a year and interest risk free

and i need for the 75 000 a year

to pay my living expenses

and if the interest rate was seven

percent then i need a million dollars

for that

but the interest rate goes to point

seven percent i need ten million dollars

so from 2010 to 2020

the interest rate went down to 60 basis

points on a 10-year

government bond which meant that the

bond went from a million dollars

to 10 million dollars which meant that

the 22 year old

suffering from 22 inflation on early

retirement

but because that's not in a basket

because that's not something that you

would ever want to give them

there's no inflation

you can actually track it and you can

see that the inflation rate changes

across a thousand different

if you just started with a simple

principle inflation is a basket of

products services or assets

if you just did that that's kind of the

equivalent of saying oh it's possible

the sun

revolves around the earth but it's

possible the earth revolves around the

sun let's find out which

has anybody ever asked the question

whether or not the basket should include

assets or

products or services right no one's even

questioning the most basic premise and

it goes it goes to this

the the most you know it's pernicious

rule of propaganda and it's attributed

to joseph goebbels and the nazi regime

he said

and it's also attributed to old movie so

maybe it's apocryphal

but he said all of our focus groups

show us and tell us we can't tell people

what to think

but we can tell them what to think about

i cannot change your mind once you've

made it up and if you have an opinion

but i can get you to focus upon

something so if i just keep saying

inflation cpi and it didn't go

up and this is what it is when's the

last time 100 million people said what

we really wanted to buy

was early retirement

well i didn't even know that was a

product i could buy

because i couldn't conceive of it well

it is a product you can buy

it's a government 30-year bond that

yields six percent

interest in a non-inflationary

environment that's a risk-free

retirement you can buy that

right now the problem is at 140 basis

points

that would cost you you know 30 million

dollars

for 60 grand a year

how do i make that at 75 grand a year

salary

saving 15 grand if i'm making 500

000 a year and i save a hundred thousand

you know i pay 200 000 in tax i make

three hundred grand i save a hundred

thousand

if i save a hundred thousand for twenty

years i've got two million dollars

and investing that in the government

bond

at sixty basis points or a hundred basis

points

i've got nothing wow

so so the problem starts with

the fact that inflation is misdefined

the right way to think about it

is every single product service or asset

has an inflation coefficient and the

inflationary coefficient

right is that's the rate at which the

price will change as i

pump my money into the money system

and so the coefficients vary and they're

a function

of the scarcity of the asset

and the demand for the asset the

information

content of the asset uh

the material cost or the variable cost

of the asset and then the modularity

of the asset if i can stamp out the

asset a million times out of a factory

it's going to be less inflationary

because

because the fixed cost is higher and the

variable cost is lower

cell phones mobile phones will not be

inflationary because everything's in the

fab

software will not be inflationary

because there's no variable cause

things you know streaming music on

amazon music or apple music will not be

inflationary

because i can stream it a billion times

a picasso will be inflationary because

there's only

you know 20 50 100. right

that's you know five acres of beachfront

property

in the middle of miami beach will be

inflationary to the extent

people want miami beach five acres in

ohio will not be inflationary because

there's a lot of land in the world the

only land people want

is in the middle of new york the middle

of london the hamptons

miami beach the middle of la the middle

of san francisco the middle of tokyo

you fly across this country and look

down there's enough land

to park 10 billion people on five acres

each right now it's just got to be

in demand and scarce may i ask you a

question about this

so the coefficient itself

in my mind would be a product of the

scarcity of the good or service relative

to the scarcity of

the money it's denominated in right such

that

if the money supply is outpacing the

production of the good or service

that good or service will inflate in

price right

and then so my so to your point it's not

a single variable it's not cpi as

inflation

everything has its own inflation rate

and then my second

so our second part of that question

would be why

is the narrative surrounding inflation

so distorted do you think it's

intentional

by governments that are clearly heavily

indebted

um because i i don't see any equitable

benefit to inflation whatsoever it's

purely a mechanism

for reallocating wealth and i don't

understand why the narrative's so

distorted

200 years ago people thought they had to

bleed george washington's death to save

his life

and everybody agreed on it

people you know people the whole point

of paradigm shifts right

everybody agreed that the sun revolved

around the earth everybody agreed the

world was flat

everybody agreed that humans would never

fly

i mean everybody agrees on stuff until

they realize that they're just utterly

and totally and horrifically wrong

so in this particular case

i blow a bunch of of liquidity into the

system

there's let's say there's a there's 50

trillion dollars worth of

energy like pick a number any number and

i blow

10 trillion dollars worth of money in

the system and so

there's still 50 trillion worth of

energy but now the money is

diluted by 20 right so

if i have a product and i can measure

the pure energy

content of the product

then the then if it's 100 pure energy

the price has got to go up by 20 if i

expand the money

supply by 20 assuming it's completely

liquid and in demand

what's an example of that like maybe um

a bond

like a pure financial instrument

something that is a rib eye

something that is tangible and you

cannot produce it with any less energy

right this is you know this is why proof

of work is bitcoin is torture

if it takes me a tangible amount of

energy to produce that thing

then its inflation coefficient is going

to be

like a hundred percent and on the other

hand

the cost to produce a streaming youtube

video

you know is going to be the the energy

content is one percent of the value

added or the value in use

and 99 of the value in use is um

is information but not and and

non-scarce information so it's got a

variable cost of

one percent an iphone's got a variable

cost of 30

35 40 right everything's got a different

a different variable cost gold's got a

much higher variable cost right

right because because it's it's holding

its energy

so if when you look at all these things

you'll be able to calculate different

inflation coefficients

and therefore different inflation rates

across an array of

thousands of things it'll be different

inflation rates in new york city

manhattan

versus you know farmland in kansas

it'll be different right so you can't

really you can't say oh this asset class

there'll be different inflation rates on

different stocks

right because it'll be a function of the

you know you notice um

if the cash flows are likely to continue

from the stock

right subject to or less affected by

inflation then it's

it's uh it's going to go up so

i i think that the pernicious mistake

everybody makes

is they um

they don't really think about in energy

density and information density

of their products services and assets

they're not applying conservation of

energy

if the law of conservation of energy

applies that when i increase the money

supply

by 20 and if the energy is constant

right then all of them all the numbers

have to change and if they didn't change

on um on the deflationary products they

must have changed more

on something else so you can't very well

be printing 10

more money and not have the inflation

it's just we're choosing

to pick just one percent of

the things that are inflated the

deflationary assets we put them in a

bucket

and it's almost too easy if i get to

throw out all

assets all real estate all stocks

all bonds and then i get to throw out

energy and then i get to throw away

food right well what is how could you

possibly generate inflation

right because you could print 100

gazillion trillion billion dollars and

the cost of free streaming

twitter and youtube is not going up

right

yeah you're throwing out everything that

changes so it's self-defeating

so so bottom line is inflation is um

there's no such thing as a free lunch

but in fl the inflation that's being

reported

is an irrelevant metric i call it it's a

metaphysical metric

that's that's been uh artificially

defined

in order to provide some comfort and

it's working

the great majority of people not only do

they not think there's not

they don't think there's inflation you

literally have

politicians lamenting that they can't

create inflation

and how important it is to create

inflation even as

they're inflating every scarce asset

on earth to the point where no one can

afford

look robert like i'm a rich man like i'm

i'm a very wealthy man i can't afford to

buy a house in the hamptons

like like i'll go you know like i'll go

look at these things and i'm like

who's paying 47 million dollars or like

like they're selling houses for 25

million dollars on two acres i'm like

are you guys out of your minds like

like how you know or like you go to new

york city and someone's paying

25 million dollars for a 5 000 square

foot

apartment wow and you know

25 000 a square foot

i mean at the end of the day it's

obscene

and what you what you can see is

we're running 10 to 20 percent inflation

for the past

decade we're just running it

on all of the scarce luxury

assets that have high information that

have high energy value

that i mean what's the definition of

scarce right maybe the definition of

scarce is it has high energy energy

value because

if i could stamp out a billion trillion

of them for the same unit of energy

i must be diluting the energy down right

distinct things that are hard to produce

right so gold and bitcoin they're all

inflating and i would say that it's

it is a lie right i don't i'm not sure

necessarily about

the intentionality you could argue about

that but it's definitely a lie

this is that cpi is inflation and it

seems like it's being used to cover up

this widespread system of theft that is

monetary inflation i'm not even sure

they realize

that it is theft or that they're doing

it i i'm half convinced that 80

of the people in government don't even

realize

that the inflation metric is a wrong

metric

and irrelevant i

it's like i'm burning myself to death

and i'm calculating the temperature on

the counter six feet away

and i guess it's like they're just not

feeling the pain

and that you know and and because of

that it takes us to the issue of

interest right

and if you think inflation is not coming

so you keep printing money

and you keep driving the interest rate

down the problem we have

is really just a warren currency a war

on time

we re rendered the money toxic if you

hold the money

once you understand that the the real

inflation rate is 10 to 15

because that's how assets are clocking

then you realize that any currency

you're holding is is uh draining energy

from your life at ten percent a year

it's almost like i put in a battery that

drains two percent a month or

one percent a month i i can't store

energy you know you know uh

another metaphor for what happens in the

human body when you can't store energy

like robert if i took you and i dropped

you

in the middle of the arctic circle and

it was 20 below

your body would start losing energy at a

rapid rate

you'd freeze to death it's literally

like i come into your office and i crank

the temperature down

20 degrees and i'm freezing

to death because i'm pulling the energy

off your skin

and so what do you do insulate

cover up right how to

but what if you can't if you're a

wealthy person you put on a fur coat

right or maybe you're smart enough to

realize

like what do wealthy people do you drop

them in the arctic and they get on their

jet and they fly to the caribbean

where it's warm right because they can't

and what do you do if you're poor

i dropped in the arctic or or even worse

right i go to your hometown and i just

turn the temperature down to 20

below and you can't leave

but but you know it's like i slowly

freeze you to death

i don't do it fast it's like you don't

even realize it's happening

if it happened at a gradual enough rate

it's like i know i'm working hard i'm

just not getting ahead

i'm working i'm not getting ahead

because every time i put money in the

bank

right the cost the price of everything

keeps going up

the price of a house in miami beach it

was a million dollars on the street

where i live and then it's 2 million and

that's 3 million there's 4 million then

it's five million it's eight million

that's 10 million

i'm not talking about every decade i'm

talking about every year i'm talking

about

2000 to 2010

you know during that administration we

were printing money so

fast that we had this housing bloom and

everybody that owned houses

were happy they're refinancing their

houses but you're looking you're like

how is it possible people

bought this house in 1998 for a million

dollars and i'm being asked to pay 10

million

for the same house

it's like if you happen to be working

for cash

that's what pop would say you can't work

for

if you're working for cash and paying

taxes and then you're putting

cash in the bank then you're suffering

from

from inflation and shadow tax

like your life energy is being robbed

from you and so that takes us to this

this issue of real yield right um

if the actual nominal yield is one and a

half percent on a 30-year t-bill

or zero percent on short-term money and

if the

asset inflation rate blended across all

stock

all liquid assets stocks and bonds and

the like

it's probably 15 right now

maybe 12 13 14 15 but let's just say

it's only 10

just to be nice well then you're looking

at

a real yield of minus 10 you've never

seen that number printed

in any kind of public media no i mean no

one would dare

say we have a negative real yield of 10

percent it would create a panic

but if you if you did think negative

real yield of 10

what happens in action cycle through and

you say well if my cash flows of the

stock aren't going up by more than 10

percent that's deluded

the only equity you can you can buy

where you're going to make out on

is where the company is able to grow its

cash flows

more than 10 a year right and then

you've got to buy it in a decent price

so if your cash flows are growing 20 or

30 a year maybe it's a good deal that's

why people like

you know tech like facebook or google

because they did

on amazon they did for a while i don't

know if they will going forward

it's a lot harder to over the next 36

months it seems much less likely that

you'll see

20 cash flow growth will you see 10

i don't what percentage of the s p 500

will grow cash flows more than 10

this year any

5 10 like probably not more than 10

right right we could figure it out but

if you're not doing that then you're

dilutive of course that means any any

fixed bonds that aren't generating 10

they're they're long-term dilutive yeah

so where does that leave bitcoin right

well bitcoin's got a positive real yield

because

you don't you're not getting hit with

that 10 percent

currency yeah debasement

and so let me ask you so this

just to jump back a little bit to

bitcoin as a unit of account

or a financial frame of reference yeah

do you suggest here that it is actually

useful

to look and i guess you could do this

with bitcoin or gold but to look at

these historic

price charts denominated in bitcoin or

gold

to strip out a lot of this central bank

induced market manipulation

via inflation i think that that'll be a

lot more useful in the next 10 years

with bitcoin the first 10 years of

bitcoin was it was so

developmental going from zero you have

this asymptotic

zero number and so if i think that

if you look over the next 10 years i

think that'll that'll become a

valuable thing people have done it in

gold and i think that's probably

uh it's a more stable

application because gold was a bit more

stable through this time period

but again it's manipulated to a certain

extent and it's like got its own problem

so we talked this would help

this would help eliminate some confusion

i think for people that

think the s p is just going up forever

if you actually denominate it in gold

the chart doesn't look that great right

it had a boom in 2001 but it's not been

good ever since

if you if you simply divide it by the

monetary supply

like if the monetary support going up by

seven percent and the s p is going up by

eight percent

then the overall market's flat and that

makes sense because

why do people think that uh

stocks should always go up eight percent

i i'm in business robert

it's it's hideously competitive

like the do you think that we don't have

a competitive market for everything in

this country

it's obscenely competitive

and so what you've got you look at the

nasdaq is you have like five companies

apple amazon facebook google

right microsoft

right those five and aren't they

responsible for like 80 percent

of the gain everybody else is competing

and it's competitive market and what

does that mean it means it's hard

to grow 20 a year because whenever you

do anything someone else is copying you

and they're pushing on you so unless you

get a dominant digital network with a

near monopoly

with these massive exploding economies

of scale on a zero variable cost low

variable cost

it's it's very very difficult to perform

and most of the s p

isn't right to the extent that the s p

isn't apple amazon facebook google

microsoft

they're just a bunch of companies

competing with each other so you would

think that they would grow

at the uh at the productivity growth

rate of the overall economy

but of course which what two percent

three percent why shouldn't they

if you had hard money and by the way

coming back to that theory of uh

bitcoin network value bitcoin network

value goes through the roof

skyrockets in the early days when

there's massive adoption and massive

technology

explosion but in the in the later stages

of the s

curve when it's fully diffused and when

it's mature

it just grows with the gdp it grows with

those with productivity of the people in

the network

if they grow two percent a year it grows

two percent a year

so any mature equity market you would

expect

equity indexes equity prices to grow

with the gdp if they're growing faster

it's the monetary expansion right expand

the monetary supply seven percent

expand the gdp one percent s p should go

up

eight percent it's going to be

disproportionate

the big tech the leading edge innovative

tech

is going to be going double triple

quadruple that

and then the trailing edge laggards are

going to be

tanking and then everyone that's working

their asses off as hard as they can is

going to be barely

keeping up right because you have to do

a hundred thousand things right

just to stay in business in a real

darwinian and capitalist economy

it's like being flat means defeating

99 of the rest of the market being flat

to be up you have to you know amazon's

up because they beat

15 000 companies you know

the next two are just slightly okay

and there's some that are flat and

everybody else gets destroyed because of

the natural effect there this reminds me

of the the red queen

from i think alice in wonderland or said

in my kingdom

everyone has to run as fast as they can

just to stand still

right

[Music]

i'll give you i'll give you another

example

there are 3 500 publicly traded

companies

9.99 of humanity

right that makes you this number one out

of 10 000 people

if you were smarter than 99.99 of

humanity

there are 750 000 people on the planet

smarter than you

and 99 of them one

want what you have if you have a billion

dollars

if you if you have a publicly traded

company 99

of the people that that are smarter than

10

000 other people

don't have what you have and they can

probably raise a billion dollars

and chase you right they're harder

they're smarter they're faster they're

stronger

than you are right i'm sitting at a

company as

one of 3500 and the world is full of

people

that are smarter than me that can raise

a billion dollars

that want what we have want what i have

that's darwinian competition

like there's the view from one side of

the table which is

oh yeah well you made it you're

successful

there's the view on the other side of

there's a guy that's going to work 80

hours a week that's going to be

surrounded with 100 other people they're

going to work 70 hours a week they're

going to raise

infinite money that are going to target

you and do everything they can

to take your market from you

now that that's a very humbling

observation that's why

you can't rest on your laurels there's

something

beautiful right and that terrifying

concept that's what drives humanity

forward

keeps you honest right it is the core of

stoicism

and it it reminds you

your best chance is to focus all

of your energy all of your assets

on just this one thing that you're going

to be

the best in the world at and you better

stay humble

if i take my own business i came public

in 1998

there's a 99 mortality rate

99 out of the 100

companies i competed with are gone but

my peers i'm the only person

probably i'm probably i'm talking about

100 publicly traded companies

there's probably 500 ceos that launched

a company with

20 30 50 100 million dollars of capital

and they're all gone that's

what the open market the free market

will do

and it is what it is i mean that's

that's why the human race

is what they are right there's always

someone

and when they attack if you're

distracted

if you're arrogant if you're if you're

fat dumb happy comfortable they're going

to eat you

and if you're if you're half focused or

defocused they're going to take your arm

off

and if you completely focus

you can react if there's something

they're doing that's good

you channel it you inherit it you evolve

you you live and you grow stronger and

um

and otherwise you shrink and they

squeeze you out of the entire market

there's there's something i observe

and again it's it's very stoic it's

everybody everybody thinks

when you're when you're young you want

to acquire as much as you can acquire

so young men are acquisitive young young

business people are inquisitive

can you acquire the thing

that's generally the easiest hurdle to

jump the next question is can you

maintain

the thing can you stay competitive

that's ten times harder

and then the biggest hurdle is are you

going to be able to commercialize the

thing

or profit from it can you

buy something or build something and

continuously improve it

forever so that you're competitive and

then do it in a manner that is cheaper

such that you can charge more for it

than it costs you to do that thing

that's obscenely hard so typically

everybody thinks that they can acquire

something then they