Ep 272: The Future Stakes of Social Media and Money

Social media is a massive aspect of modern life. Like most anything else, it can be a platform for good, or it can be used for the opposite. We are forced to wonder the ways in which social media influences our lives – especially with Elon Musk’s recent involvement in Twitter – and how people may use it as a tool to direct people’s behavior. Regardless, social media allows people who may not have any physical-social outlet for what they believe, like libertarians, to communicate with like-minded individuals across the globe.

Internet platforms can be a vital tool for organizing movements or allow people to communicate regardless of the distance; however, can this lead to a “Tower of Babel” situation? Due to this capability of social media, many people believe it should be regulated. Social media can be addicting, feed into false senses of reality, and socially-disassociating for some, so how do we avoid the internet and all of its platforms from driving us into greater antisocial behaviors? We discuss how curating healthier family cultures are crucial when it comes to combating teen depression supposedly caused by the internet. But with so much lack of trust in the powers that be, the internet may be people’s only avenue for freedom. It could even act as a private form of rebellion to both state and fellow private institutions that are unsatisfactory or untrustworthy.

We also were joined by Olivia Langarica – who is helping us translate Faith Seeking Freedom into Spanish – to talk about the founder of Austrian economics, Carl Menger, how some of his works were impossible to translate, and the modern relevance and importance of El Dinero. Many leftists believe profit to be the main driver of inflation; however, as Menger showed in El Dinero, prices are driven by the insufficiency of centrally-planned flows of currency leading to the unrealistic supply-and-demand of money.