My daughter gave me a copy of The Portable Beat Reader for my birthday. I randomly opened it to this quote from Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums :
i've been reading whitman, you know what he says, cheer up slaves, and horrify foreign despots, he means that's the attitude for the bard, the zen lunacy bard of old desert paths, see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, dharma bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and there have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, tv sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, i see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up into the mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em zen lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures
I realize I see everything through the lens of bitcoin nowadays, but this passage had me thinking about fiat and debt slavery. It was written long before "Nixon's surprise". It's a stretch to see the beats as precursors of bitcoin. It's likely wishful thinking on my part. On the other hand, John Perry Barlow was influenced by them.
@carlosfandango knows more about this stuff than me. I hope he chimes in.