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@@ -191,6 +205,15 @@ const booksWithFormattedDates = allBooks.map(book => ({
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Bitcoin District · Book Club
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The Price of Tomorrow
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Jeff Booth
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Jeff Booth
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Canadian entrepreneur. Founded and led BuildDirect — a tech platform that used software to drive down the cost of building materials, eliminating layers of middlemen in the process.
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His thesis came from lived experience: his own company was deflationary by design, yet inflation kept eroding the world around it. The Price of Tomorrow is his attempt to explain why, and what comes next.
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Discussion Topics
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Icebreaker: Technology Making Things Cheaper
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+ Booth opens the book with a striking observation about Moore's Law: the cost per
+ megabyte of storage fell from roughly $1 million in 1967 to just 2 cents by the
+ time he was writing — a collapse in price of nearly ten billion times. This is
+ technology doing what it always does — driving prices toward zero.
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+
Think of a product or service that has gotten dramatically cheaper or better
+ in your lifetime purely because of technology. How much would it cost today
+ if technology hadn't touched it — and who would own it?
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Discussion Topics
+
The Great Conflict: Deflationary Tech vs. Inflationary Money
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+ Booth's central argument is a collision between two forces: technology naturally
+ drives prices down (deflation), while central banks target 2% inflation every
+ year — essentially cancelling out the gains that technology would have given us
+ for free.
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If technology is silently giving you more purchasing power every year,
+ and inflation is silently taking it back — who actually captures the
+ productivity gains? Is inflation the largest hidden tax most people
+ don't know they're paying?
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Discussion Topics
+
The Debt Trap: Borrowing from Tomorrow
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+ The "price of tomorrow" is what we pay by borrowing against future prosperity
+ today. Since 2000, global debt has ballooned from $62 trillion to over
+ $247 trillion — yet that $185 trillion in new debt bought only $46 trillion
+ of real economic growth. If you paid it back at $1,000 per second,
+ it would take nearly 8,000 years.
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Booth says we have no painless exit from this debt trap — either we inflate
+ it away (destroying savings) or we face a deflationary collapse.
+ Is Bitcoin a third option, or does adopting a Bitcoin standard just
+ make the reckoning arrive sooner?
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Discussion Topics
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AI, Automation, and the Ownership Problem
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+ Booth asks whether AI will eliminate far more jobs than it creates — and unlike
+ past industrial revolutions, cognitive work may not be safe: "If every job
+ is a function of our intelligence, as computers beat us at intelligence,
+ how could any job be safe?" If AI is owned by corporations or governments,
+ the gains accrue to very few.
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If AI compresses wages toward zero for most cognitive work,
+ who owns the AI becomes the defining question of our era.
+ Does holding Bitcoin — a form of capital with a fixed supply — offer
+ ordinary people a seat at the table in an AI-driven economy?
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Discussion Topics
+
Bitcoin: Money Aligned with Technology
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+ Booth frames Bitcoin as "an attempt at a solution" — a system with a
+ fixed supply of 21 million coins that cannot be manipulated by governments.
+ In a deflationary world, fixed-supply money means prices fall and purchasing
+ power rises: you keep the gains from technology instead of watching
+ them confiscated by inflation.
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Booth says under a Bitcoin standard, your savings would naturally
+ appreciate as technology improves — no investing required,
+ just holding. Would this change how people think about work,
+ risk, and time? Or does falling prices create their own trap
+ (why spend today what will be worth more tomorrow)?
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Discussion Topics
+
Cooperation vs. Competition in a World of Abundance
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+ Booth closes the book with a game-theory argument: currency debasement is a
+ prisoner's dilemma — each nation defects for short-term gain, triggering
+ retaliation, until everyone loses. In a world of genuine technological abundance,
+ this zero-sum thinking is irrational and destructive.
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Booth argues a Bitcoin standard would remove the temptation to defect —
+ you can't print your way to advantage, so nations must compete by
+ actually creating value. Is this optimistic or naive?
+ Can nation-states genuinely choose cooperation,
+ or does power always revert to zero-sum competition?
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Trivia
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Tap or click the answer box to reveal each answer
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1
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Trivia
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According to Booth, what does technology always do to prices over time?
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Answer
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Drives them down — technology is inherently deflationary
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*Introduction: The End of Inflation
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Tap to reveal →
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2
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Trivia
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Since 2000, global debt grew from $62 trillion to over $247 trillion. According to Booth, how much new debt was created to achieve just $46 trillion of economic growth?
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Answer
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Approximately $185 trillion of new debt
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*Introduction: The End of Inflation (Institute of International Finance, Q3 2018)
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Tap to reveal →
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3
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Trivia
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What inflation target do most central banks around the world aim for each year?
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Answer
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2%
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*Introduction: The End of Inflation
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Tap to reveal →
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4
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Trivia
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Moore's Law is used by Booth as a key example of technological deflation. What does Moore's Law describe?
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Answer
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The number of transistors on a circuit board doubles approximately every two years. Moore's original 1965 prediction was every year; he later revised it to every two years. In practice, the doubling has occurred approximately every eighteen months.
+
*Chapter 4 – The Technology Boom
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Tap to reveal →
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5
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Trivia
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What specific technology does Booth identify as the primary driver of the next wave of deflationary disruption?
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Answer
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Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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*Chapter 6 – The Future of Intelligence
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Tap to reveal →
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6
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Trivia
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In Chapter 4, Booth illustrates Moore's Law with a storage cost example. One megabyte of storage cost roughly $1 million in 1967. What had it fallen to by the time he was writing the book?
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Answer
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About 2 cents — a price collapse of nearly ten billion times
+
*Chapter 4 – The Technology Boom
+
Tap to reveal →
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7
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Trivia
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Booth argues that in the current system, the gains from AI and automation flow primarily to whom?
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Answer
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Those who own the technology and assets — "If AI is owned by corporations or governments, then the benefits will accrue to very few"
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*Chapter 7 – The Future of Work
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Tap to reveal →
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8
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Trivia
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What does Booth say happens to debt in a deflationary environment?
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Answer
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It becomes harder to repay — the real value of debt increases as prices fall, making it potentially unpayable
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*Chapter 1 – Printing Money / Introduction
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Tap to reveal →
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9
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Trivia
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In Chapter 9, Booth uses a concept from game theory to argue that currency debasement is self-defeating. What is this concept called?
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Answer
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The prisoner's dilemma — nations that defect (debase their currency) gain short-term advantage but trigger retaliation, leaving everyone worse off than if they had cooperated
+
*Chapter 9 – Can We Cooperate?
+
Tap to reveal →
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10
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Trivia
+
In what year was The Price of Tomorrow published?
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Answer
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2020
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*Published January 14, 2020
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Tap to reveal →
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