The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money | Book Review

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money — A BitLemmas Book Review Episode 15 | The BitLemmas Podcast What if the economy can fail not because workers refuse to work, but because no one commits to fund the work? Watson and B. Sovereign dig into Keynes' General Theory — the book that replaced classical economics' "supply creates demand" story with a diagnostic framework for demand failure, liquidity cascades, and the governance problem that Bitcoin builders are still wrestling with today. Topics Covered: [00:00] Introduction & the four counterintuitive truths [03:47] Say's Law and the standard story Keynes dismantles [07:37] Classical postulates and why they don't admit involuntary unemployment [10:51] Truth I — Classical economics is a special case [14:52] Special case vs. general case: flexible wages vs. demand failure [18:06] Truth II — Employment is set by effective demand [22:03] Truth III — Saving does not automatically create investment [26:57] Truth IV — Liquidity and expectations move the real economy [32:50] The liquidity cascade (and what 5.2% 30-year Treasury yields tell us) [40:51] Builder lens: Keynes' domain language as a design framework [45:22] What should we build? Protocols, investment platforms, community economies [48:04] Price-aligned tech: Bitcoin, Lightning, Fedimint, Nostr — and the anti-examples [50:59] Builder usability: making demand, liquidity, and expectations visible [53:51] One model, one story, one action — the demand audit [56:23] Closing Resources mentioned: Technologies & Protocols Mentioned: Bitcoin — bitcoin.org Lightning Network — lightning.network Fedimint — fedimint.org Nostr — nostr.com 🌐 Visit bitlemmas.com for past episodes and show notes.