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420 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury OP 1 Nov 2023 \ on: _Broken Money_ book club, part 3 bitcoin
You can attain grotesque levels of education without ever learning about the petrodollar system, its origins, and the influence it's had on the world. What's your overarching impression after reading about it in chapter 11 of the book?
Establishing and protecting the dollar's dominance makes a lot of sense. It's not easy sense to make, but you can imagine the depressing calculus.
It's scary because after the FOIA request it's still treated like a conspiracy. Grotesquely educated people still aren't aware of it. I'd guess fewer than half of federal officials fully appreciate it if they're aware of it at all. The government was caught naked and we all closed our eyes.
On the other hand, it's reassuring that the money I grew up with was backed by something. It means it isn't mere decree that makes a global reserve currency. Without the petrodollar, the dollar's dominance didn't make sense to me.
I first learned of the petrodollar system from @gladstein1. When I last visited my Persian family, I got to drop petrodollar knowledge on my uncle who has intuitions around the dollar being backed militarily. It helped back up my bitcoin zeal.
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If I could roll back time, I think starting btc discussions w/ an intro to the petrodollar would be The Way. It's just so clean, and so much snaps into place. I feel a little bad about my past self, who didn't have the pieces to put together.
I think this is mostly what you're saying, but in my own head, when I hear "the dollar isn't backed by anything" I correct it: the dollar is backed by oil. It is grounded in oil, and that is as consequential a grounding, from the PoV of the world, as anything you can think of.
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Too long, didn't read.
It's no accident that government schools don't teach much about the monetary system. Grifters generally don't like people looking too closely at the grift.
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