From Scarcity to Abundance within our Monetary System with Kristen Ragusin of Raymond James

Our Guest: Kristen Ragusin: Pioneering Prosperity in Finance and Beyond

Kristen Ragusin, a seasoned wealth management pro, currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Investments at Raymond James in Boston, Massachusetts. With over three decades of experience in the financial services industry, Kristen is a prominent figure in wealth management. Throughout her extensive career, Kristen Ragusin has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to her clients, innovation in financial services, and a passion for global exploration.

Beyond her wealth management expertise, Kristen is a best-selling author, renowned for her book, “The End of Scarcity: The Dawn of the New Abundant World.” This publication reflects her profound insights into global economic dynamics and her vision for a future marked by abundance and prosperity.

Kristen’s educational background is as impressive as her career. She holds a Master’s Degree from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Her dedication to staying ahead of industry trends is evident through certifications in FinTech from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in Sustainable Exchange from the University of Cumbria, London. Kristen’s adventurous spirit extends to her personal life. She’s a world traveler, having scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, ventured through the Sahara desert, and studied at a spiritual school in Southern India.

Episode Transcript

Kristen Ragusin: There’s the old hierarchical structure that has maybe suited the world well for the past 6000 years, but we’re ready for more of a flat-line structure. We’re ready for more of a peer-to-peer sort of flower of life or circles overlapping structure than that pyramidical tight control.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Welcome to PayPod, the payments industry podcast. Each week, we’ll bring you in-depth conversations with leaders who are shaping the payments and fintech world from payment processing to risk management and from new technology to entirely new payment types. If you want to know what’s happening in the world of fintech and payments, you’re in the right place.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to PayPod. I’m your host, Jacob Hollabaugh, and today on the show, we are going to be talking about the future, the future of fintechs and payments, yes, but even more broadly, the future of money and the entire monetary system taking a look at how it all works, why it works that way, our mindsets as individuals in a collective around money, and everything in between. It’s a big broad topic set and a fascinating one at that. And that is because my guest today has some big and fascinating ideas around how it all could or maybe should work. I have the great fortune of being joined today by Kristen Ragusin, the senior vice president of investments at Raymond James, as well as the author of the number one Amazon best-selling book, The End of Scarcity: The Dawn of the New Abundant World. Kristen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Kristen Ragusin: Oh, thank you so much, Jacob. It’s so great to be here with you.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Yes, the pleasure is mine. Everyone on this show that comes and joins us is an expert in their field, Titan in the world of the financial world but it’s not often I get to also be joined by a fellow author. And so I love that and I am portioned to the way through your book have skimmed the whole thing of read a majority of it. It’s what we’re going to mostly be talking about today. It’s a great book. We will, of course, list, I’ll be referencing it throughout the conversation. It’ll be in the show notes below for those who eventually would like to go purchase it and read it themselves. But before we dive into some of the big ideas that you have in this book, let’s start with a little background, because I think with the idea of being as big as the ones you tackle, it’s important to know who the person behind them is and how they maybe came to these ideas. So can you tell me a bit about how you originally came to work in the financial world and where along your career you started thinking about these kinds of ideas, putting forward this idea for the book, and then ultimately deciding to sit down and write it and put it out into the world?

Kristen Ragusin: For sure. Even as a little girl, money was a big part of my life. Believe it or not. At five years old, my father used to have me earn my allowance explaining the stock market to him.

Jacob Hollabaugh: That is incredible. That is so cool.

Kristen Ragusin: We get a whole dollar if I got my questions right. And even as we grew older, he would practice buying stocks with us and he would guarantee my losses, which I thought was okay. But I thought that he should guarantee my gains. I had no idea what a good deal I had going, and so it should have been no surprise that after college I started at Merrill Lynch in their professional development program. Now, this was some time ago, so it was the cold-calling world and very cutthroat. In fact, I was in an office that was closing in Boston. So if we didn’t bring that amount, I had to bring $10 million in two years. And every Friday they had a quota. And if you didn’t meet it, they fired you on the spot.

Jacob Hollabaugh: My goodness. That’s mean. It’s a cutthroat world in finance, but that is above and beyond I would say. 

Kristen Ragusin: It was extreme. So I think we went from 120 people down to 20 by the time and I had survived just because I kept my head down worked. I fell in love with the business when I sat with my first clients or prospective clients because I saw how much emotion and angst there was around money, which I had sort of been buffered with as a child because I saw it as a positive tool to help humanity. We just had to figure out how did you want to serve, how do you want to work, what can you earn? And then I could go to the town and buy the doll I wanted, or the glass animals or whatever it was. And so I loved my business for many years. And I was doing a master’s degree at Tufts University in Boston, 2007, and I was working on my thesis, which was still sort of Economy 2.0, maybe some principles with Web3 thinking, decentralized, owning your own data, those kinds of things. And I got back to the office and noticed some very strange movement in very secure fixed-income notes. I called the desk in New York. They told me not to worry about it. I worried about it, and pretty soon you could see the rumblings of 2008 coming. So I got really lucky. I pulled the vast majority of my clients out of the market who were not income-dependent, and I was getting ready to work on a second master’s degree at B.U. Heading out of the country and the market went straight up for 21 days, even though I had like 80% of people out.

This business really never gets easier. But by the time I came home, the big crisis of 2008 was on our doorstep, and that was a watershed moment in my life. It was hugely changing. Even though I was in sort of an ideal spot, I was heartbroken and shocked watching the incredible pain of all the people around me. Men who had worked there for 40 years, all of their life savings, their clients just evaporating. And I knew I was missing something in my worldview. And it was at that point that I stopped and I decided to look. What on earth truly could have caused 2008 this real meltdown? And it was very different than what I thought. It was not a political, economic, or social issue. These were just the symptoms. And when I found the real root of what caused 2008, it blew my mind. And I was a little heartbroken. And then I was completely obsessed with finding the solution. And of course, the problem turned out to be the way we create the money. And money, just being technology that helps us exchange our goods and services with one another. But unfortunately, the way that we are shaping using creating money today, it is actually what produces scarcity.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Yeah. That’s a great segway into the first kind of high-level topic from your book. We’ll dive into a few topics from it. And obviously, there’s a reason you wrote a full-length book on these topics. They’re very in-depth, but hopefully, we can scratch the surface really well today here for the listeners and then whoever wants to go dive in and grab the book, read it in full. Again, it’s titled The End of Scarcity. It’ll be linked in the show notes below. I highly encourage everyone to go get it but let’s start here. What is the simplest way you just use the word scarcity? What is the simplest way you can describe abundance money versus scarcity money?

Kristen Ragusin: It’s so interesting. I often find people say, Well, what do you mean by scarcity? And it is sort of that pervasive feeling of not-enoughness which flows constantly through the culture. We’re reinforced all the time. Not enough time, not enough this, not enough that. And even worry about how our dollar lasts. What will things cost? How long will we live? So scarcity itself is a prototype how money is often created. It creates this complete contortion of society where humanity lives for the money. We live for the money. And for as much as we try to make negotiations and bargains with ourself, that it’s okay or this gives me X, Y, Z. So therefore I’ll go to a job that I really steals my soul or these kinds of things. This is what happens when we simply miss design the money. Mankind is reduced to literally being in service to money, and it’s the opposite of why we created money. We created money so that it would help us serve one another and live a better life together. So the concept of abundance money that I’ve sort of labeled in the book because I clearly prototype how the simple rules when we fall into this enslavement for money versus, wow, here’s the incredible opportunity for empowerment for everyone by designing the money correctly, which has been done many times in history, we now live in an empowered state and money serves humanity. And it really becomes that social contract which said, hey, wow, you’re a unique, amazing individual with talents that you might not even fully know about yet. But the world is waiting for you to explore all of this. And money itself was a technology that we created to assist us in having a better life.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Yeah, what would be one of those, because as you said, you do go through there’s been plenty of times where we’ve been on either side of that equation. What would be would there be a time in history that would maybe be the most familiar to people today? I know our our history lessons are sometimes as lacking as our financial lessons when we were children, which I’m still blown away by the foresight your father had to have you developing that financial literacy at such a young age. But is there a moment in history that you could give as example of when we have used it in the abundance way versus the scarcity mindset?

Kristen Ragusin: Yeah, for sure. It’s actually very rooted in the American culture or the root of America itself. I have two chapters that are really about monetary history, really fun. I even had a very cynical reporter from New York City, tell me that this is the second book he finished since Harry Potter. So it’s really I wrote it to, it was the education I wanted when I was so devastated seeing what was happening. And it’s the education that really belongs in the early years in school. So the founding fathers or all the people that founded this country came here because they were in debt. Often we don’t know this, but they were all in debt. And we grew up with the principle of understanding that money has to be scarce to have value. And this is really not quite true. Money should not be unlimited, but money should be in specific quantity equal and fluctuating to how productive the people are. So we would still need an appropriate measurement of the productivity, be it GDP, whatever mechanism we were using. But when the colonists came here, their communities were small enough that they could determine how productive they were or how productive they wanted to be, so they were able to issue just enough money constantly that represented that real supply and demand or the real amount of business that looked to happen. And if there was more pent-up business, they would issue more script. But the big deal is it was not fiat it was actually backed by productive land. It was backed by productive farms. So it in essence was the promise to deliver goods and services. Their money was a credit, which is what investment capitalism is built on. Investment capitalism is supposed to be the basis of banks creating credit or loans for businesses who are innovating. They’re going to provide new job opportunities for communities. It’s not supposed to be created as consumer debt. And there’s a big difference. So in England, in for 600 years, the end of 1100, really to about the beginning of 1700, they did money correctly. They issued it constantly just in the capacity of how productive the people were. And they had a really great king at the time who was more enlightened. And they used a form of money called tally sticks, which was able to again be issued and taken away based on how productive the people were. And they got the Magna Carta in 1250, which was the precursor to our Constitution. So the Constitution was 500 years in the making. So it’s a really amazing, beautiful document that came from the basis of this freedom, recognizing that money which represents our each productive value of what we contribute to one another is the basis of freedom. It’s a foundational freedom of all freedoms. And they even brought about the king started giving up sovereign powers. The parliament came, so self-governance came. So you get freedom hand in hand when you do the money correctly.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Yeah, absolutely fascinating. And you use the term in there properly created money, which is something I’d love to double-click on and expound upon with. Another example, you had a recent LinkedIn post or you shared a LinkedIn post about it was about a new credit card law, but that it may change how rewards points work. And in it, you refer to rewards points or loyalty points as a properly created money. Could you use those are something we all listeners are very familiar with at this point and pretty much all consumers’ rewards and loyalty points. Could you use loyalty points, rewards points as an example to explain what you mean by properly created money and then discuss why the infrastructure choices matter so much to be able to have those?

Kristen Ragusin: Yeah, they really do. Our entire life literally changes. It is so critical that even if you see the dollar or we see a digit in our screen, it depends how it comes into existence. And today, 97% of our money is coming from consumer debt. The Federal Reserve does not create our money. This is, again, something that we hear those reserves that the Fed creates just sit on the balance sheet of the banks. They bolster a balance sheet of the bank. But the only money that really comes into a society is when someone goes to get a debt from a bank, which is largely mortgages, maybe some college education. And so in essence, it’s consumer debt. And this is why college and housing has gone up so exponentially in the past 30 to 50 years. And young people feel like, wow, capitalism has failed them. No, it’s the money. We’re using the wrong gas in the car and it’s because the loans are available, houses go up exponentially and wages don’t. The credit should be there to invest in businesses. So wages go up and college educations were never meant to be on the price point they are. But when you create money out of consumer debt, you have to literally find reasons to in debt people in order to create that money. So there are two fabulous examples, even one I’ll take from American Express back in 2008 through 10, maybe this was the period 9, 9 through 11, something like that. With the Great Recession, a lot of people were out of work and they said to cardholders, listen, if you want to volunteer, if you want to contribute in a way, here are our sanctioned charities. If you want your own, just go and verify it and fill out the form and we’ll double-check that.

Kristen Ragusin: You in fact contributed labor for hours and then they turned around and they journal entry points to people real fungible points that they could use and spend for anything. So those dollars, which were American Express points at that point were issued off of contributions and labor from people, and they were real non-debt dollars. In essence, in Canada, we have a huge example for many, many years, I think even since the late 50s, there’s Canada Tire, which is equivalent to our Walmart, maybe some version of Amazon. And I think they issue like a million Canadian tire dollars a year. And these are loyalty point dollars and they really are like, I think they’re paper dollars and now. Of course, they’ve gone to digital forums, and people in Canada are so used to them that they hire each other, paying them in Canadian dollars because they’re ubiquitous. They you can get pretty much most things that you need to live. So it really becomes a beautiful alternative currency. And the reason why it’s so profound is that it represents X amount of supply that Canada Tire can deliver limited by the demand from the people. And this is how we know money is legitimate, is that it represents a certain amount of our creativity, our productivity, our services, our goods, and that’s how we know the value of that money. It’s not really backed by gold and silver, which it could be, but it’s more proper when it’s backed by productivity and enterprise. But then the quantity is limited by supply and demand, and the issuers can reissue the more supply they have checked by the real demand that the public has or their customers.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Well, you mentioned the word capitalism in that a couple of different times, and I would venture to guess at first glance, if someone just came across your book or came across like a little bit of these ideas or even maybe now in the beginnings of this conversation, they might just given where the climate of our culture here in the US and outside of the US, but certainly here that they might think this is these ideas are anti-capitalism in some way or are a strike against capitalism in some way. And it sounds like from what you were referring to throughout, that it’s not this is in no way anything you’re saying is that capitalism itself has failed us or is not the appropriate structure or a part of the appropriate structure. It’s something adjacent to that. Am I reading that correctly?

Kristen Ragusin: Yeah, definitely. The real issue is that we may not have true investment capitalism even. It’s almost certain we don’t have investment capitalism right now because you have to use a proper form of money for investment capitalism to function because that’s the capital. So that’s the actual gas that’s going into the car. It’s funny, I was just coming back from Wyoming where I had a really neat opportunity to speak at the the stampede with the governor of Wyoming. And they’re doing some amazing things there. And I was flying back through Denver and I was in the airport and I just happened to talk about this with a few people. And it created quite a stir. And I had one man next to me who got upset, who said, Wow, we already have an over capitalism and over consumer. You’re going to do more about this. We’re destroying the earth and this and that. And I said, actually, no, we’re having a different conversation. We’re having a nuanced conversation. You’re talking about the car. I’m talking about the gas. So investment capitalism, even originally corporations got charters from the state to show that they were providing a true value that people wanted, like farmers. Banks really had an opportunity to legitimately extend credit and verify how much credit was needed for real businesses bringing good into this world.

Now, if that sounds quaint, it’s very easy to bring that into this sophisticated world because once money begins to be issued as it’s really the democratization of the legitimate access to credit, the legitimate access to creating money, and it’s legitimate money that we’re creating, that’s really where the word legitimate belongs. Very important today, sadly, we have more like corporatism. You get a lot of oligarchical kind of mechanisms in there. People often get conditioned for communism or sort of this bipolar thing. Oh, wow, look at all these evils of capitalism is destroyed. The environment or this and that. Well, no, it’s because we’re using debt, which means you have to get more, make it, throw it in the dump, make it throw it in the dump in order to keep that hamster wheel going of creating new debt as money. And so, sadly, people will get bought into a little bit that maybe socialism could help or communism. And very quickly life ends. And it’s usually quite brutal when these systems begin to roll and I crossed the Berlin Wall in 1987 and saw a very stark difference between East and West Germany. And it’s not pretty, but when the money is done right, capitalism becomes this beautiful, thriving, participatory citizen.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Yeah, more nuanced conversations are very helpful because it’s what led me to ask that question originally of just someone from the outside might be predisposed to just knee-jerk reaction to this. We live in this binary type of world or where we like to use the binaries and just react. It looks like it’s over there. So I’m going to react on this side and we need to be able to have that nuance. The tools and systems that we need currently exist, still are still in use in some form and we just need to ramp them up or do we need to recreate from whole cloth new systems, new tools to be able to make this happen?

Kristen Ragusin: They really do exist. The further, further work in the digital assets work world is always going to be appreciated to verify that supply and to even track it through the supply chain, those kinds of things. But this concept can be put in on any level of technology. You could get a small community that said, Listen, I’m completely blockchain averse and I want to create some type of laminated ticket with some type of seal on it X, Y, Z, or go to a community where they’re really bought in to say, Wow, money is the most impactful tool that we create in society. We have to really make sure we’re doing it right. And they would do it as an experiment within a permissioned or closed community. Gift certificates basically can be the same thing. Somebody paid me an Amazon dollar. Would I accept it? Probably! And for as much as I’d like to say, although Amazon has another end where they really are supporting small businesses, Etsy, these kinds of things, Uber could easily start doing this or Airbnb and close the loop where they would raise capital without any interest by selling their own ride backed or state-backed dollars. Right? Alternative currency, if they sell a stock or a bond, why can’t they create a dollar and backed by a certain amount of promise to deliver? At that point, they certainly could close the loop and prosper their drivers and their properties by buying insurance, tires, car washes, cleaning the house, or even remodeling a bathroom.

You really could build in a whole private equity thing in this big grocery stores could actually begin to do this by doing a capital raise discounted in their stores so that when people traded in their fiat money for the food-backed dollars, they get a discount. Then these big stores could go and invest in their farmers without any interest and then they could be paid back in food. You really could readily have a closed loop. Amazon itself has already begun that if you take your packages more consolidated, they give you credits for Kindle, they give you all different kinds of credit. Amazon has played with that Amazon coin and I really believe this is the true next revolution that’s coming. We have yet to see the money revolution and though I think Bitcoin is quite a real thing and an important thing to me, it’s still a commodity. Even when I read the white paper on the internet in 2009, I said, Really cool idea, but that’s a commodity. And the blockchain was significant. So I think the stablecoin environment is now it’s ripe for the revolution.

And what will change it are these labor-backed, product-backed script money, which is what the 1800s were all about wildcat banking, where producers, fishermen in Gloucester, Massachusetts, issued their own script backed by a certain amount of fish, deliver leather factories, boots. Every single state in the union did this in 1800. So now we have the opportunity with blockchain to actually go and open democratize that access to credit for legitimate products and services that people want, backed by a certain amount of legal promise to deliver. So you know what the worth is that this is no fancy cryptocurrency or fly-by-night stuff. This is simply alternative currency. This is simply money. And the big deal about this kind of stuff is it would remain at parity. It would be at a dollar, a dollar, a dollar, a dollar. Nothing here would be about speculation or investment. This would simply be the tool of exchange. And it’s how we would know these dollars would stay at one. And on top of it, when they’re backed by the product to deliver, they maintain their purchasing power. This is what all of our grandparents and great-grandparents, people knew. This common sense wisdom about money was known in just the vernacular of society. And now we’re bringing it back.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Yeah, I’m glad we’ve gotten into the realm of the blockchain and the different currency options because I think that is the other kind of at first glance someone would maybe think of, this is a book about Bitcoin. I will admit I expected I didn’t quite have that direct thought, but when I first picked it up and looked at it and read the description, I was like, at some point in this I’m going to be told that Bitcoin is the future and like that because I’ve read some other books that kind of starred in the same path or maybe with some similar sentiment or ideas, and that’s where it leads. So I’m glad you referenced that as like Bitcoin is a commodity. This is different. So if someone has that first blush reaction of, oh, is this just the world would be better if we all bought and sold cryptocurrencies? It’s not that, but could you double tap on that a little bit further of the importance of the blockchain, what the blockchain technology itself allows and opens up here? And then you gave a bunch of great examples of that of companies that could issue their own coin. But are there any that are already currently in existence that you could use as an example or possibly I know the the US government has been recently floating around the idea of their own stablecoin being offered through the Fed. If you have any thoughts on that, I know that’s a bunch of different things I threw at you at once, but I really love. That was one thing I think people would immediately go to. Is this about Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies and being able to get into what it is and isn’t about within those worlds?

Kristen Ragusin: As soon as Canada Tire goes digital, it’ll be a real producer credit. And if they follow those principles of only issuing by supply and demand, it will remain at a dollar and it will remain relative to a certain amount of product. I believe. Richard Grant, who is in Orange County, California. I think he goes by Richard Edward Grant. They’re issuing a production-backed coin soon, backed by a certain amount of cybersecurity services to deliver. Again, the quantity that goes out has to be limited by supply and demand. You can reissue every product cycle. So if Toyota were to do it, you do your 2023, then your 2024, then you’re. So it’s because the money is just the equal sign. And then once it’s actually returned for the original product that the issuer delivered, it would be burnt. And then you would just issue the next series because again, we want something that is an equal sign. We’re not looking for a speculative this is really, truly, I think, the next evolution of what we would see in digital assets, the speculative Wild West, massive of cryptocurrencies and some positives in there have brought about still more fear for the bulk of the population. But producer credits become the solution for money. Bitcoin is still really important in my opinion. I’m not giving financial advice or any of these kinds of things, but at the same point in time it’s a wonderful thing and it’s really important because it brought out the blockchain, which was just an accounting book, right? A peer-to-peer, legitimate accounting book in which we could, for all intents purposes, replace administrators, replace banks to some degree, even though it offers banks the opportunity to return to banking, to return to credit verification, and really back to the 1934.

It’s a Wonderful Life movie version of George Bailey Banks. And so when you create money as consumer debt, everyone, even the Federal Reserve gets caught in the snare of speculation and just sort of feeding the worst projects because they create money the fastest. And like that 1994 movie speed that Sandra Bullock was in, you have to step the pedal on the gas as hard as you can before the bomb blows off. So really dysfunctional but bitcoin, I have to say, the only beef that I have about it, calling it money, is that the primary thing that gives it value is its scarcity. Now, that’s not bad for Bitcoin or other commodities. It’s just a violation of the principle of money. And so if Bitcoin is one of the forms of money if the price stabilizes and everybody has access and it does circulate properly, then it’s going to be another wonderful tool to use. But because it’s created out of the principle of scarcity and the whole network around it, which gives it its value, ideally you’re back to scarcity money because a certain BlackRock, whoever could own the bulk of it, they could choose not to circulate it. I’ve had a few maximalists get angry with me when I say these kinds of things, but when you still make money scarce by principle, someone still can corner the market. Money was meant to be an equal sign. And so if I have 100 equations to see how many solve, I don’t have to go dig up or mine equal signs in the backyard. I just have to make sure the equations balance. If three plus four wants to trade with seven, boom, there’s an equal sign and that is what money is meant to be.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Yeah, I love that. Let’s switch gears slightly. You’re obviously not some outsider writing and promoting all these ideas from outside of the financial world and system. You’re firmly in the middle of that system with your role at Raymond James and previous roles that you’ve had, which begs a couple of questions. The first being, do you think that it’s going to take more insiders or groups of insiders to be able to change a system or are there advantages and disadvantages that come with being both inside the system or those outside the system wanting to change it, promoting these ideas?

Kristen Ragusin: Yeah, in a way it’s a difficult path that I’m walking because both of my worlds are quite separate. And like any other institution, when people are used to it, they don’t want it to change. And so a lot of people that I’ve known, I’ve been in the investment business for 31 years. A lot of the people that I’ve known forever don’t want to talk about this. And even though we see the dollar being more challenged, even today, we see interest rates spiking. And what tools does the Fed have left and these kinds of truly worrisome type of things? But it’s still very different from the world that we’re living in. And so I view it as a crescendo down and a crescendo up. We have to participate in this world with the rules that are there, and we have to build the new world. We have to do both at the same time. And I think that who has the most power are communities. Communities who come together and say, listen, we’re going to build an alternative currency. We’re going to just put a community currency in place. But if we use it with the principles that the founding fathers or all throughout history people have used in Massachusetts, in the Berkshires, there’s something called BerkShares, and I believe they’re going on the blockchain. They are even from just talking to them a tiny bit, they are interested in back by farm production. Now again, when you do this, you change the world because you make sure there’s constant legitimate credit, access to farmers who are providing they’re the true 1% in this world. They’re making sure we’re alive. Energy producers could do this. So I think, yes, I see corporate America stepping into this because, wow, what an advantage if you could avoid the bond markets or the equity markets and like crowdfunding, you just start issuing your own dollars to your consumers and people might be quite comfortable owning product backed dollars just in terms of saying, gosh, my purchasing power is going to be maintained here.

And on top of it, I have a wallet just like Pre-euro. Europe had Deutsche marks and Lira and Francs and today with technology, these things are just going to be exchanged for us. People are not going to have to do math. They’re going to go into the store and they’re going to have the option with what credits they want to pay with. So the one thing I will add with this, after just leaving Wyoming, they are looking to do a stablecoin maybe by the end of the year it will still probably be backed by fiat, which is not their optimal, but at least it gets it out the gate. And I was talking to the governor and many other lawmakers, really amazing state and I said, gosh, could you not back it by a certain amount of ranchers, cattle or farmers or Wyoming is incredibly rich with minerals and power and these kinds of things. And they said absolutely. So as they get that protocol up and running for their stablecoin, it would be so beautiful if farmers could plug in and energy producers and builders could plug in and issue their own credit backed by a certain amount to deliver following these principles that stablecoin would stay at one and it would simply be an alternative currency. And Tennessee is having some discussions. Texas is doing some stuff. So this money revolution may really be just beginning to take root.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Yeah, during the pandemic, there was obviously the kind of since 2008, the biggest financial crisis, if you will, that we’ve had since then, or the biggest kind of flashbulb moment. What changes did it make? Did it possibly accelerate these ideas coming back into vogue, into market? Did it hurt these ideas? Did it accelerate our if we’re currently heading our trajectory is currently downward in the scarcity realm? Did it accelerate that? What kind of effects came out of this would be? Would someone like in Wyoming the governors of of states and things be as interested in these things? Did that have any effect overall where now that we’re kind of a year or two post-pandemic here or post the big crash of the pandemic on the financial side, what were the impacts of that on seeing this future come about?

Kristen Ragusin: Yeah, extraordinarily profound. Definitely a watershed moment. My perception of Wyoming itself, they were ready for thinking and they’re very thoughtful. They will slow their process down and consider all sides because they really view what they do as being representative of Wyoming itself. So you have a really interesting state to watch. But the pandemic itself, number one, with the destruction of the supply chain, a lot of lack of access to energy politically in all different kinds of ways. And then we really had helicopter money, meaning money that went home to households directly from the government, by far more extreme than we’ve seen before. And this really ignited this intense inflation in which is very provocative. And it’s like we have a fire under the pan that we’re sitting on. So it’s bad and good, it’s both. And I like to often say sometimes when I picture the caterpillar transforming into the butterfly and the chrysalis, I used to think that caterpillar was just having a nice time transforming into that butterfly. And now I can see from personal experience, oh no, it’s quite painful. It’s quite scary. And it’s a whole roller coaster of emotions. And I think this is what we’re going through in humanity, which really is a transformation. Now, it can go either way, right? So because the central bank digital currencies and some people will argue that they’re just neutral, that it’s really just an evolution next stage for better payment systems. I don’t think so. That’s yet to be proven for me. I think we’re on to the age-old that just some people like to have more power over other humans.

Kristen Ragusin: Then that old hierarchical structure that has maybe suited the world well for the past 6000 years. But we’re ready for more of a flat-line structure. We’re ready for more of a peer-to-peer sort of flower of life or concentric circles, overlapping structure. Then that pyramidical tight control. But I still think this will be like the squeeze of a birth canal or something that will ignite new thinking. There is concern that when you bring out a technology-based dollar and a few people have a lot of power for that, people could determine who has access to their own money, and universal basic incomes can go this same route. And so where we have the pressure of seeing supply chains crash or capitulate or all different kinds of dysfunction in terms of scarcity, that still gets created because the frequency, inhumanity of our imagination, creativity, true altruism is really our root of humanity. And many people may argue with me about that, but I know that our immune systems get stronger when we see when we just witness an act of kindness. It’s quite extraordinary. I put a few scientific studies in the book about even how monkeys really the Darwin had talked about the survival of the fittest was actually those who were able to get along better with others. And that was actually really considered the wisdom of survival of the fittest. So we really are wired for altruism. And the big thing here is that what I think Covid did, or this whole thing that we’ve been through is, yes, it woke a lot of people up to say, whoa, life can change immediately.

Freedom and maybe many other things. Life itself is fragile. And the biggest thing for me is that money itself cannot replace community. What’s really been like a gong for me, if I were to crystallize, the most important message would be that often when we have to earn money or save money and all these kinds of things, we think that money is a thing. We feel like, okay, we have to accumulate X amount of it and it has a certain amount of power or freedom associated with it. And I would say, you know what? It’s a skewed perception because the stability of that money, if it still represents our contribution of what we do for one another, it’s legitimate. And the idea that having enough money could actually replace community is where we fall off and go into the dark abyss and all kinds of bad things start happening. So when we come home to the idea that even if you had $10 million in the bank if suddenly you don’t have access to it from a new technology system because you don’t pass someone’s approval list or your band or something like this happens, or also there are no more supplies. So the whole idea of creating money properly, which is by producers issuing the credit, you now create that avenue for funding of legitimate ideas to be opened in the right quantity. And now the natural abundance that’s looking to manifest does and we get this level playing field underneath instead of a skewed sort of perverted form of money robbing us of this incredible mystery and adventure of life.

Jacob Hollabaugh: Absolutely. The final question then I’ll get you out of here on is this has been absolutely amazing and fascinating for those who listen and maybe go read the book, they’re convinced of the arguments. They align with the ideas you’re putting forward. What can we do right now, like as individuals, as much as it’s infrastructure change and monetary system change, it starts with changes in thought, changes in perception, ideas in mass. So besides reading the book, which you can highly recommend, what are some ways folks on an individual level can start being more informed, can learn more, can start to adopt this new paradigm, or helped this shift take place?

Kristen Ragusin: Yes, we really a small percentage of the population for the light to go off. And the world changes dramatically, no matter how scary it looks at times. And it’s really probably three 5% of the population that’s required. The first thing definitely, as you articulated it, is reading the book, and this has nothing to do with me. If somebody else wrote it, I would say read the book because it’s the education that we need that’s missing. It’s also inaudible, so you can listen to it. I even am due to read the book again soon with the shift in consciousness that will come is that money has no value without you. Money is dependent on you and Regal, who is a grand monetary reformer. He was from Indiana. He was trying to stop World War 2. And he would say when you realize when you really realize that the money power is within you. You can no longer blame anyone else for things not working out because it is your volition to serve that actually brings money into existence. Now, how do we actually begin to put this framework in? Number one, I really think we start to just express even some gratitude to all the people in our lives and to realize that without each other, everything is relationship. There is nothing in this life and we’re all doing so much for one another, even if we think people do not enough for us. Right? That one cup of coffee that we drink in the morning probably involved. I don’t know how many millions of people to arrive in my hand. So first is really looking at your community and for people who feel alone to know that they are inseparable from the fabric of this society and needed that.

Kristen Ragusin: Every person was born with divine unique gifts and there is something where only they can add to the rest of us. So also reaching out to your community if it means meeting one neighbor a week or a month, and then also going and finding your local farms, your local producers supporting them. The more that you could even switch one thing over to buying from your community, strengthening the fabric of that community, and then coming together and saying, Hey, would we want to build an alternative currency? I just had a woman contact me from a state. She was so engaged, she reached out to her state rep. She has a meeting with him on Thursday to talk about these ideas. People are ripe to put them in place. So first, realizing how invaluable you are to others and others are to you, reaching and building your strengthening your community, building some circles, and starting to look as to how to build these local currencies. And very quickly we change the world. Also, I’ll just add that we do have a Facebook group that I’m building. If you just go to my website, which is my name, kristenragusin.com or theendofscarcity.com. You can sign up for a newsletter. I do plan to put a lot of resources out and then also a community that’s building where people will be able to talk amongst themselves to support each other, to kick off these ideas. Much more coming along these lines.

Jacob Hollabaugh: That is absolutely wonderful. And you answered my final question for me there. If that’s all the places we can go to learn more and to be able to follow, you will of course link to those and more in the show notes below. Kristen, I can’t thank you enough. This has been a fascinating conversation, a true pleasure to get to speak with you today. Thanks for your time and knowledge and I hope to catch up again sometime in the future.

Kristen Ragusin: Thank you, Jacob. Totally a pleasure. Appreciate it.

Jacob Hollabaugh: If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, head on over to soarpay.com/podcast to subscribe on your podcast listening platform of choice. That’s soarpay.com/podcast.