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The Price of Tomorrow

Jeff Booth

Jeff Booth

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.

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.

Discussion Topics

Icebreaker: Technology Making Things Cheaper

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.

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?

Discussion Topics

The Great Conflict: Deflationary Tech vs. Inflationary Money

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.

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?

Discussion Topics

The Debt Trap: Borrowing from Tomorrow

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.

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?

Discussion Topics

AI, Automation, and the Ownership Problem

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.

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?

Discussion Topics

Bitcoin: Money Aligned with Technology

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.

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)?

Discussion Topics

Cooperation vs. Competition in a World of Abundance

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.

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?

Trivia

Tap or click the answer box to reveal each answer

1
Trivia

According to Booth, what does technology always do to prices over time?

Answer
Drives them down — technology is inherently deflationary
*Introduction: The End of Inflation
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2
Trivia

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?

Answer
Approximately $185 trillion of new debt
*Introduction: The End of Inflation (Institute of International Finance, Q3 2018)
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3
Trivia

What inflation target do most central banks around the world aim for each year?

Answer
2%
*Introduction: The End of Inflation
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4
Trivia

Moore's Law is used by Booth as a key example of technological deflation. What does Moore's Law describe?

Answer
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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5
Trivia

What specific technology does Booth identify as the primary driver of the next wave of deflationary disruption?

Answer
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
*Chapter 6 – The Future of Intelligence
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6
Trivia

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?

Answer
About 2 cents — a price collapse of nearly ten billion times
*Chapter 4 – The Technology Boom
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7
Trivia

Booth argues that in the current system, the gains from AI and automation flow primarily to whom?

Answer
Those who own the technology and assets — "If AI is owned by corporations or governments, then the benefits will accrue to very few"
*Chapter 7 – The Future of Work
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8
Trivia

What does Booth say happens to debt in a deflationary environment?

Answer
It becomes harder to repay — the real value of debt increases as prices fall, making it potentially unpayable
*Chapter 1 – Printing Money / Introduction
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9
Trivia

In Chapter 9, Booth uses a concept from game theory to argue that currency debasement is self-defeating. What is this concept called?

Answer
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?
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10
Trivia

In what year was The Price of Tomorrow published?

Answer
2020
*Published January 14, 2020
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