Seeing the cracks in the global financial system is easy. Knowing what happens next is much harder.
Brent Johnson argues that investors can get into trouble when they mistake an unsustainable system for one that must fail soon. Markets can defy expectations for years, and deeply flawed systems can endure far longer than seems reasonable.
For investors, that makes resilience more valuable than certainty—and being prepared to be wrong just as important as having conviction.
Read the transcript below.
Transcript
Monetary Metals
Welcome back to the Gold Exchange Podcast. We are live at the Limitless Expo. I’m here with Brent Johnson. He’s the CEO and the founder of Santiago Capital, and you might know him from the Dollar Milkshake Theory. Brent is also on the board, the advisory board of Monetary Metals. He joins us today to talk about all things macro and of course, gold and the dollar. Brent, welcome back.
Brent Johnson
Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
The Dollar Milkshake Theory
Monetary Metals
All right, Brent, people always ask you about the Dollar Milkshake Theory. Is it working? Is it not working? Is it breaking? So let’s start there. What would you have to see in the environment to say, you know what, I think this whole thesis—I never thought it was always going to be perfect, but this is making me think, wow, I need to rethink the whole thing?
Brent Johnson
Well, I think if we went into a sovereign debt crisis and that sovereign debt crisis produced pain for the United States and it didn’t produce pain for the rest of the world, and they somehow started to outperform the United States despite the crisis, then I would have to start thinking about it. So it’s not that I can’t be wrong. I can obviously be wrong. I’ve been wrong many times in my life. But based on, you know, kind of the mechanics of the system, with the United States sitting at the foundational level of the entire system, it would be really hard for the foundation to have a crisis and not affect the upper floors. But if that happened, I would have to rethink things.
Why the global system favors America
Monetary Metals
And part of the thesis is it’s a relative game, right? There’s a relative game between the US and other countries. between gold and the dollar. There’s kind of all these relative plays, and you might have a personal opinion of, oh, I like this asset versus that asset, but you have to think, hey, what’s going to fall first? Just logically, is that kind of the bedrock of the system there?
Brent Johnson
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it is a relative game. And, you know, if you focus on the United States and you really dig down into the analysis, the only conclusion you can come to is that this is a disaster and it’s going to end really, really badly.
But the problem is, is if you zoom out and you don’t just look at one tree, but you actually look at the forest, you realize all the other trees have just as many problems as the United States, but they don’t have nearly the number of advantages that the United States has. And in fact, the system is actually set up—you could even call it rigged if you wanted to go that far—in favor of the United States.
Now, is that fair? No, but it’s the way it is. And if you’re going to put your actual hard-earned money on the line, You should actually bet on what’s going to happen as opposed to what you would like to see happen in some kind of fantasy dream world.
Monetary Metals
What do you think is the biggest mistake that investors—is it they say, well, I like the US, therefore it has to work, and they don’t kind of think about the rest of the world? Or is it they think, wow, there’s this boogeyman, there’s a specter out there, and, you know, it seems like we’re on top, but in reality there’s this BRICS or this gold thing that’s going to happen, and I got to be careful with US assets. What is that mistake that investors are making?
Brent Johnson
Well, I think the biggest thing is, obviously, when you live in America, you’re going to see America’s problems first. Right. And I don’t want people to ignore the problems America have. But I think it’s very easy to extrapolate what you see in your own life and assume that it has to be better somewhere else. The grass is always greener.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
The reality is, is if you go these other places and you focus on their economies and you look at their, their politicians are not smarter than our politicians. Right. They are just as dishonest as ours are. They have the same problems that we do. They have inflation higher than ours.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
Their debt stack is as big as ours on a relative basis. And in some cases, They owe it in a currency that they can’t pay or print. Right. And so if you were to remove the names of the countries and you were to just stack up the different, you know, problems and issues and you didn’t know which name applied to which one, you wouldn’t necessarily say the United States is the worst.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
And then if you also stacked up all the advantages that all of these countries have, you would be able to quickly identify the United States because it would dramatically outperform number all of the other countries. And until I started doing that, I was probably as lost as many other people. But once, once I figured that out, everything kind of clicked. You know, going back to the Dollar Milkshake Theory, I came up with that at a specific time because I thought there was a specific set of circumstances that could lead to a sovereign debt crisis. And I thought when that sovereign debt crisis happened, asset classes would perform in a certain way.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
Now, we got pretty close in 2022. You know, the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, the ECB, and China all had to intervene in their markets in order to stop certain things from happening. But ultimately, the crisis didn’t happen. They were able to keep the plates spinning, so to speak. But the asset classes moved in the way that I thought they would. And so from an event prediction, the Dollar Milkshake did not come true.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
But from an asset flow and foundation framework level, it worked great and it continues to work. And part of that whole thesis was that the United States would draw capital in from around the world, whether you like it or not, whether it’s deserved or not, whether you think it should happen that way or not. That’s what would happen. And that has happened in a big way. And I think that’s why the United States has outperformed the rest of the world over the last 6, 7 years.
Hard assets become a national security priority
Monetary Metals
And how does this apply to assets that are maybe not as politically tainted? So the dollar has this kind of, hey, it’s not a neutral asset, it’s really a US asset. Gold is kind of seen as a neutral asset. But what about things like copper or real estate? Obviously, real estate is local, right? It depends. Hey, if you’re in this jurisdiction, you got to follow these rules. But what about assets like copper that don’t really have a sovereign tint to them? Do they kind of work in a different way to the Dollar Milkshake Theory?
Brent Johnson
Well, I’ve always said I thought we were going to get into a period of time where there’s going to be a crisis. And when a crisis happens, everybody’s going to like buckle down and try to take care of themselves first. Right? Right. Everybody is—everybody’s always willing to cooperate when things are good.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
When things get bad, everybody wants to protect what they have. And so I’ve always thought that the kind of nationalization, national security, these types of things would end up coming into play in hard assets. Right. Because at the end of the day, you need hard assets to have an economy. They kind of sit at the base layer of every economy. And that’s what we’re kind of starting to see now. On the one hand, it makes it—yes, you should absolutely invest in those areas, but it also makes it challenging because where are you going to invest is much different now than it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, You could buy—let’s just use copper as an example.
Monetary Metals
Sure.
Brent Johnson
Invest in a company, in a mine in Africa or Asia. And that wasn’t an issue because we’re all cooperating and those—the products could get shipped.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
But now we’ve got tariffs, we’ve got conflicts, we’ve got wars, and that shipment and those supply chains are broken and they’re being rebuilt. And so I’ve been doing this for over 25 years now. For the first 20 years of my life, the main guiding principle for companies or industries all over the world was who can make the needed widget at the lowest price in the fastest manner and deliver it on time.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
So it was basically a price competition.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Why the law of one price is breaking
Brent Johnson
Who was, who was the fastest and the best? That’s no longer the primary driver. Price is no longer the primary driver. Now, national security, redundancy, resiliency, who can actually deliver it when the walls come down? And so price is no longer the primary determinant. And as a result, we’re also starting to see the erosion of the law of one price.
And when this is this law of one price, I can’t remember if I read this somewhere, or if somebody said it to me. But the law of one price, as I talk about it, is that again, for most of my career, the price of a commodity traded at the same price regardless. And now they’re around the world in Asia, Europe, gold in Dubai, the US, and maybe around the same price.
Maybe there’s small differences due to certain taxes and preferences, but for the most part they traded. And if it got—if that price got too wide, traders would come in and arbitrage it out. But again, we’re starting to see that break down. You know, over the last year or 2, we’ve seen gold trading at different prices in China as it does in the United States.
Brent Johnson
We’ve seen oil trade at a different price in Asia than it does in the United States. We’ve seen natural gas trade at a higher price in Europe than it does in North America.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
And so that law of one price is kind of part of all of that. It tells you that hard assets, resources, commodities, they’re super important, not just from an economic perspective, but from a national security, national sovereignty perspective. And so on the one hand, it clarifies that that is a place you need to invest, but it makes it more difficult to do it.
Monetary Metals
I think you’re someone who’s kind of popularized this idea of a financial justice warrior, someone who thinks, well, I want the world to be a certain way with, you know, the best producer producing the goods at the cheapest price. And we have free markets with no tariffs. And there’s this kind of idealized world where you might think this is how it should be.
We should be using gold as money. We should be having the the lowest price for commodities, right? But then there’s the actual reality of the world where people say, well, the national interest is more important than the free market economics. How do you think people should, as an investor, kind of balance those things?
Hey, I want the world to be a certain way, so maybe I have some gold with Monetary Metals because I like the whole idea. But I got to be honest and say, listen, a copper mine in Africa is no longer the same thing as a copper mine in the US. How should investors think about, well, the political reality versus what they want to see in the world?
Brent Johnson
Yeah. So my friend Chase Taylor actually is the first one I remember saying financial justice warrior. So I’ll give him credit. I don’t know if he heard it from someone else, but I think it’s a fantastic way because it kind of sums it all up. You know, it’s one thing to want the world to be a certain way, but if you’re putting your own hard-earned capital into an investment, you better not just want it to do well.
You better have bet on the factors that are actually going to make it do well. That’s why I bring that up so often. I don’t want people wasting their money just because they want something to be a certain way. And so Coming back to a copper mine in Africa versus a copper mine in the United States. Now, I would always say that probably even historically it was riskier to have a copper mine in Africa, but maybe the upside was a lot higher.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
I don’t know that that’s the case anymore. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. But now there’s a whole new host of risks that are associated with that. And I think as we move forward in time, those risks are going to increase.
I think each nation is going to look at the resources they have, and if there’s a foreign country in there exploiting them and not necessarily even illegally, start just legally exploiting that resource and sending the profits back home, they’re going to say, hmm, that seems like a pretty easy source of revenue for me. I’m putting a tax on it. I’m putting an export ban on it. I’m going to nationalize it. I’m going to take it. And by the way, I’m not just talking about companies in Africa, right?
I’m talking about the United States is going to do the same thing. I’ve said this many times that I think you would be better off watching a few seasons of Game of Thrones than going to business school, right? Because it’ll teach you more about the real world than 10 economics classes.
Monetary Metals
And I say it jokingly, but I’m also serious.
Brent Johnson
Like, I think we’re in a world now where competition is going to get more fierce, not just from an economic perspective, from a political perspective, from a geopolitical perspective. I think lines are going to be drawn and you’re going to be forced to choose one side or the other. You’re no longer just going to be able to get along with everybody. I wish, and again, this is a perfect example of me wanting one thing and thinking something else is going to happen. And so I’ve tried to focus on when I talk about things, I tend to talk about what I think’s going to happen. I try to keep my own personal views out of it, right? Of course they seep in from time to time, but I try to keep my own opinion out of it as much as possible.
The end of globalization
Monetary Metals
And let’s talk about this kind of grand narrative, which was that we have this world, there’s cooperation, whether you like the president or you don’t like the president, everyone agrees, come on, we got to get along and at least trade with each other. Do you think that that world is basically gone? Because, well, when Trump had tariffs and Biden came in, he didn’t get rid of those tariffs, right? You would think, well, if he pushes a little one way, we push it back in the next election. But Do you think we’re in a world now where this kind of globalization trend of everyone getting along, that’s kind of broken for good? Or do you think, hey, maybe the Democrats get in power, there’s a little more sanity because of the competition? Where do you see us going?
Brent Johnson
So from a big picture perspective, I think it doesn’t matter who the president is and which party is in power. I think the world we had where the pendulum was swinging towards globalization and cooperation, I think the pendulum is swinging now back.
Now, I often say things don’t go in a straight line. Sure, sure. And so maybe we swing, maybe we back up, maybe we swing, maybe we back up. But I think that is the overall momentum and direction for, I think, the next several years, if not decades. And I don’t really think to a certain extent it matters who is in power.
And the other thing I’ll say is the United States is driving this right now, but it’s not only the United States. Like, China is doing this too. Right, right, right. Russia is doing this too. Europe, like every country is doing this. Now, perhaps the United States has the biggest microphone and is doing it in the most unglamorous or undiplomatic way. But they’re all doing it and they all know that they need to do it for their self-sovereignty as well.
The storm before the storm
Monetary Metals
What do you think pushes the pendulum back? Or do you think, hey, this is going to be a decades-long trend? Don’t worry about when the pendulum’s going back because we see Trump saying, hey, maybe I take a little part of Intel. So for an investor, should they think, wow, like what does it mean to have nationalization of companies? Because this is going to matter going forward. Or is it like, well, this was a bit of an anomaly, so, you know, maybe I’ll just kind continue with my 60/40, my gold? Should they think like, wow, you know, the pendulum’s not going to swing for a little while? Or should they be looking for signs? Like, what are those kind of trigger factors that make you think, well, the pendulum’s moving one way or the other?
Brent Johnson
Well, so I’m going to use an example. I may have discussed this example with you before, but there’s a great book called The Storm Before the Storm, and it takes place in Rome, 120 BC to 60 BC. So it’s like a 60 or 70-year period. And basically what it is, is it’s the fall of the Republic. And over a 60, 70-year period, you see the pendulum is swinging that way. All the stuff that’s happening then has eerie responsibilities to what’s happening in the United States now.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
Political infighting, inflation, immigration, certain parts of the society who don’t have the ability to vote, number of foreign wars draining resources. Again, all the same. But it doesn’t happen in a straight line. You know, there’s periods of time where it’s going this way and then another political faction comes in and it gets a little better. Right.
And then somebody else comes to power and it goes that way. So it fits and starts. It fits and starts. But that is the line. And I think that’s what we’re in. And what I’m going to say here is that a lot of people will hear this story and say, yeah, it’s the fall of Rome. That’s what the United States is. The United States is doomed to fall. No, no, no. That’s not what the message of the book is. The message of the book is that was the fall of the Republic. But what came after it was the Empire.
Monetary Metals
Right. Even more time.
Brent Johnson
And the Empire lasted for 400 years.
Monetary Metals
Right, right.
Is a new American empire coming?
Brent Johnson
So the point is, is that just because we’re seeing the same things in the United States right now doesn’t mean that we’re going to fall. We could see the fall of the republic, but I think if the republic falls, I think more likely than not what we see is the rise of the American empire. In other words, I don’t think the United States is going to have this great crash and China’s going to rise because they avoided it, or Europe, or whoever it is. And by the way, the empire is more autocratic, more dictatorish, more authoritarian than the republic, right? Because now it’s not the people making decisions, it’s the person.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
And unfortunately, I think that’s kind of where we’re headed. Russia’s already there. China’s already there. We have examples. So the idea that the United States is the only one doing this, no, no, no. Right. In some regards, we’re the anomaly in the world. We’re the anomaly. And the other thing I’ll say, this is a little bit controversial maybe, or perhaps misunderstood, is that from an investment perspective, Authoritarian regimes are often good because what it does is it reduces the number of outcomes. And so—
Monetary Metals
Less volatility.
Brent Johnson
Less volatility, right? And there’s more organization, there’s more centralization. Now, ultimately, it ends very badly.
Monetary Metals
Right. It’s bad in general.
Brent Johnson
Right. And I don’t want this to happen. But my point is, is that, you know, the perfect example is China.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
China has been an authoritarian society forever, Forever. But yet look at their rise over the last 20, 30 years.
Monetary Metals
So there’s a breakdown between the correlation of authoritarianism, bad politically, but hey, look, I mean, it’s not like their economy has not grown at all because there’s a strongman in power. Right.
Brent Johnson
And timing is important. So will this all end badly? Of course. But it might be 30 years from now. Maybe it’s 3 years from now, but it might be 30. It might be 40. And so You can’t just sit on the sideline and not participate because authoritarian markets are bad or we’re due for a crash because this can’t end well. I’ve popularized saying this is not a story that ends well. It just doesn’t end yet.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
And so if you want to outpace inflation and you want to grow your portfolio, you’re going to have to play the game.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
And so my job is trying to figure out this game to manage my clients’ money. And then, you know, doing these podcasts, doing interviews, going to conferences, I’m trying to explain to people what I see happening so that they can then apply it to their life and at least understand what’s happening.
Inflation, deflation and stagflation
Monetary Metals
So in this shift, right, less cooperation, more authoritarianism. To me, my thought is this is going to be a more inflationary environment where in general, rather than getting goods at the lowest possible price and benefiting as a consumer, now I got to think, well, yeah, the copper mine’s actually cheaper in Africa, but We just have to get copper from the US producer. So that means higher prices at the grocery store, at the pump, just in general. That’s kind of an inflationary world. Do you agree with that kind of take? And in that world, is that where you say, well, maybe a bigger percentage of your portfolio in gold or in commodities? Where do you see that kind of world in terms of a kind of asset portfolio?
Brent Johnson
So I do agree with you, but I think you have to separate a specific asset class versus overall. Okay. Because I think there’s definitely inflationary aspects of this, but there’s also deflationary aspects of this.
Monetary Metals
Give me an example of that.
Brent Johnson
So deflationary aspects is all the debt in the world. All the debt in the world makes efficiency harder. It makes it less productive, and it can end up creating a lack of demand because all money is now going to service debt and it’s not going to—
Monetary Metals
Right. So they’re crowding out—so much debt.
Brent Johnson
And then growth starts to stall. And as growth starts to stall, prices come down. So you could have Higher prices in copper because it’s harder to get.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
But you had the stock market going down and home prices going down and other things going down because there’s just not enough money to either service it or to help it grow or whatever it is. So I used to think that stagflation was a cop-out because I thought it was somebody just didn’t want to make a call whether there was inflation or deflation. But I actually think it’s true now, now that I’m kind of living in it. Like, I can see certain things are going to inflate in price. I think other things are going to deflate in price. AI is another big deflator, right?
Monetary Metals
Okay.
Brent Johnson
You know, if a number of people get put out of work because AI is now taking their jobs, where’s the money going to come from to push these asset prices higher, whether it’s copper or stock prices or gold or whatever it is? Again, I don’t know which of those forces is going to win, but it’s a big battle, right?
And this is why I say, rather than trying to be right about everything, just try to be prepared for everything. Have assets or a portfolio that will be okay regardless of what happens and that that portfolio will grow over time. And a huge part of that is, in my opinion, is gold. I’ve always thought gold should be like the base of everybody’s investment pyramid. It is the foundation. It’s been proven it should be the foundation for centuries, right? Thousands of years.
And so why wouldn’t you want an asset that has proven itself over 5,000 years? Of course you would. So I think having that as part of it makes a lot of sense. And the nice thing about monetary metals, and part of the reason I joined your board, was because one of the big knocks against gold is it just sits there.
Brent Johnson
It’s not productive.
Monetary Metals
Shiny pet rock.
Brent Johnson
And actually, for a part of your portfolio, that’s totally fine. Not only is it fine, it’s appropriate. But in most asset classes, there’s a spectrum, low risk to high risk. In gold, there’s traditionally just been bullion.
Monetary Metals
Miners.
Brent Johnson
Low risk and miners, high risk. And there’s nothing in between. And what I thought you guys were doing a little different, you’re trying to capture that middle ground. This is not just me saying that. The math proves it. You know, if you put gold in a portfolio, you get a higher return with a lower level of risk. If you put gold with a yield in the portfolio, it’s even higher. Right? Right. And so I’m not saying everybody should get rid of their gold. That’s just insurance. Go away with insurance gold. But you can use gold to be productive as well. It’s just that people have forgot how to do it.
Gold and the all-weather portfolio
Monetary Metals
And that idea of an all-weather portfolio, you say, hey, there’s some storms ahead or there’s a storm before the storm. I kind of want to get in this all-weather portfolio breakdown for our audience, the benefits of the all-weather portfolio and also what asset classes tend to go in there.
Brent Johnson
Well, so it kind of depends on who you are. So this is not the same advice for everybody.
Monetary Metals
Sure.
Brent Johnson
But I focus on this because most of my clients that I actually invest for, they are already wealthy. They did not come to me to turn them into being a rich person. They came to me to keep them from becoming a poor person. And so those portfolios, Or somebody who’s either in retirement, moving towards retirement, or who’s already made a lot of money. You know, that’s kind of a resilient portfolio. It’s not necessarily a growth-at-all-costs portfolio, right? If you’re 19 years old, if you’re 21 years old, you should be taking a higher level of risk than these people, right? Because you have a longer time horizon for compounding.
Monetary Metals
And if you make a mistake, hey, it’s not that big of a deal.
Brent Johnson
But even though I think—yeah, exactly. You got a lot longer time to ride it out. But even though in the younger people, I always say you should always have a portion of your portfolio Or some part of your life. Maybe it’s your job that pays you a nice income. Maybe it’s some kind of a hedge against the portfolio that you’ve put in place. You should always have some kind of down protection, downside protection, even if you’re doing a high-growth portfolio with your savings.
Because if you zoom out and you look at asset prices over long periods of time, 20, 30, 50, 200 years, asset prices tend to go up and to the right. But if you then zoom in a little bit, you’ll see there’s often 10 or 15-year periods where they don’t go anywhere or even go down. And so the trick is not to get wiped out during those downturns. The last thing you want to be is a distressed seller. The last thing you want to do is have to sell at the bottom, right? Because you’re just out of the game. So the trick is just stay in the game.
Brent Johnson
If you can stay in the game, you’ll make money over time. At least history tells us that. And one of the ways you stay in the game is you always have some kind of downside protection.
Monetary Metals
And do you think that idea of, hey, you buy and hold in general assets just as a group go up and to the right. Was that true in your opinion because of this inflationary regime where basically if you’re taking assets versus currency, they’re making a bunch of currency and not a bunch more assets. So in general, they tend to rise because of supply and demand.
Brent Johnson
I think that is true, but I don’t think it’s only true because if you, again, if you take these charts back 200 years, same thing, they say the same thing. Or if you just go back 100 years, you know, when the United States was on a gold standard for a while, there were still booms, there were still busts.
Monetary Metals
So in your idea, owning assets just in general historically is just better than saying, hey, stick it under the mattress and hope for deflation.
Brent Johnson
That’s right.
Monetary Metals
Okay.
Brent Johnson
That’s right.
Monetary Metals
And going forward, people think, okay, we think there might be some inflation. There might be a push kind of towards a more authoritarian or empire-based kind of globe. They have some gold, maybe they already acquired some monetary metals. They might have some stocks, some bonds, some real estate. What are some things that maybe they’re not thinking about? Maybe it’s outside of investing. Hey, you know, meet your neighbors or get married young, right? Like what are some of the things outside of just investing they should think about?
Brent Johnson
Well, I think the most important thing is to have a network of people that you can rely on, whether it’s family, whether it’s friends, whether it’s people you meet at conferences like Limitless. You have to build up your own network and your own community because despite all your best efforts, you may be in a hole someday and you’re going to need to be able to work.
And not only that, maybe you’re not in a hole, but maybe you just need help with an idea or something. And not only that, maybe you’re talking to your friend and they tell you about some opportunity that they’ve discovered that you haven’t. But the point is, is that there will come a time, hopefully it’s not a bad time, but there will come a time where you’re going to need somebody else. And so the bigger your network and the better your network, I think you should invest in your network.
The other thing is, I think this AI thing is real. I think you’ve got to learn how to use AI. I think AI is going to be certainly in my lifetime, the most impactful development. It’s already impacting my life.
Brent Johnson
It’s impacting most things that I look at. And I feel like you can either be a victim of it or you can be a success of it. And I think those who learn how to embrace it and use it will be able to ride the wave higher.
Monetary Metals
Yeah.
Brent Johnson
And I think those who don’t are going to get left behind, unfortunately.
Monetary Metals
Brent, you’ve got some kids. What’s something that you’re telling them as they kind of move forward? Are you saying, hey, listen, embrace AI, kind of like try a different trade, you know, take some big risks? What are the things that you tell your children? Hey, you know, I’m Brent. Everyone knows me as Dollar Milkshake, but you’re also maybe Dad Milkshake Guy. What are you telling them?
Brent Johnson
Well, I’ve, I’ve kind of created a monster in this regard. Number one, I tell them to keep an open mind. I tell them there’s 2 sides to every story. And I tell him that don’t agree with somebody just because they say something and then think for yourself. And I will often now tell him to do something and he won’t do it. And when I ask him why, he’ll say, because I thought about it myself and I decided I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. And I’m like, I told you to do this. So, but anyway, no, I’m joking. But I think that’s probably good advice for anybody, whether you’re young or old, you’re going to get things wrong. Have an open mind and certainly don’t take something as gospel just because somebody said it.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
I think one of the biggest problems we have in the world right now is everybody has their own dogma that they’re ascribed to. And it’s very hard. It’s very easy to get trapped in dogma and it’s very hard to get out once you get in. The key is to remain an optimist, but be skeptical. Things are going to work out. Human race is really hard to bet against. I think the future is bright, but it doesn’t mean you need to believe everything you hear and you got to be careful along the path.
Monetary Metals
All right, Brent, before we end, a couple of books, maybe some podcasts. What are you listening to, reading? What goes into the Brent Johnson production function?
Brent Johnson
Yeah, well, probably the biggest impacts on me have been The Fourth Turning was huge. There’s a book called Never Leave Well Enough Alone, which very few people have heard about. It’s kind of the godfather of industrial design. But his point was, you know, you’re never satisfied. Always look how to make something a little bit better. Fascinating story. And the other book, The Storm Before the Storm, is an absolute must-read for everybody. And then one that I’ve, I don’t, I have not read it yet, but it’s on my list. It’s called, I think it’s called True Believer.
And it’s about the cult of personality. And I’ve been told that it has a lot of relevance to what’s going on in the world today, whether it’s Putin, whether it’s Trump, whether it’s Xi. We’re coming back into this age of the strongman, I think.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Brent Johnson
And I think we’re going to see a lot of these cult of personalities. I have not read it yet, but it’s on my list and I’ve been told that it’s great.
Monetary Metals
All right. Plane reading on the way back. Brent, what’s a question I should be asking all the future guests of the Gold Exchange Podcast?
Brent Johnson
I think I would ask them, how sure are you that you’re right? And how much are you betting on the fact that you’re right? And what have you done to prepare for being wrong? Most people think that I’m so certain that I’m right. I have high conviction, but I don’t have certainty. I talk to so many people who think they have figured it out and this one thing is the thing and that’s going to win the game. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you better have a plan in case you’re wrong.
Monetary Metals
Brent Johnson, always great speaking with you. Thanks so much.
Brent Johnson
Thank you.
