🍬 The Marshmallow Choice

This story introduces the fundamental economic concept of "time preference," the ratio at which individuals value the present compared to the future. Because the future is uncertain and humans must consume to survive, all humans naturally have a positive time preference (we prefer things now rather than later). However, the lowering of time preference is what initiates the process of human civilization, allowing us to defer immediate gratification to build a better future. The story adapts the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment to illustrate this. Sound money naturally encourages a lower time preference. Because its supply is strictly limited — nobody can inflate it away — it offers a strong economic incentive for individuals to delay consumption today and save for tomorrow.