”By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."
John Maynard Keynes, “The Economic Consequences of Peace.”
Human life and society rest upon enigmas. Everyone talks 🗣️, but only a few can really explain what these enigmatic words are, or how they shape society from one word to the next.
- “Oh, language is a way to express information,” they say.
Cool—but can they explain what information is? We all use money, but who can someone explain what money really is?
- “Oh, money is a medium of exchange,” they say.
Neat—what are you exchanging? And what can be used as money?
People are ignorant about Bitcoin ⚡️ for the same reason they’re ignorant about themselves, who they are, what they do, and what they can accomplish. Their heads are full of what Aristotle called endoxa:
THE UNQUESTIONED, UNVERIFIED CONSENSUS OF THE ERA
And this unquestioned consensus is what Bitcoiners, just by existing, are targeting 🎯 in 2024.
When money was in the form of gold, it was easier to handle this basic blindness. When you inquire about the value of gold, most people can at least offer a coherent response explaining why gold matters. “It’s beautiful!” he might say. That’s not the reason gold is valuable, but at least it is a reason...
YET ASK ABOUT THE GREEN SLIPS OF PAPER IN THEIR WALLETS, AND THEY DRAW A BLANK. 😶
Here we have an entire nation—really an entire world—slaving away to earn green paper, but they don’t know the why or what. It’s come to a point where people measure someone’s human worth by that greenback: “So and so is worth $1 billion dollars,” “So and so is very successful, he’s earned $80 million dollars.”
And they all believe their money is finite… 👀
They invent slogans like—
”Take money from the rich and give it to the poor!"
…like they think (which I guess they do) that when someone makes a dollar, they're taking away a dollar that someone else could've had. And so the rich, who purportedly do this all the time, are basically stealing by having dollars that someone else could've had.
These are endoxa — uncritical, received opinions (traditions of thought) inherited from past generations that may or may not apply to this one.
In this video, the Chairman tells us (confidently, I might add), that Americans who are afraid that one person having a dollar means another person who can’t have that dollar... are just being paranoid.
“Don’t worry, that is impossible. The money is infinite.”
Our money is infinite. 🫠
THERE IS NO END TO OUR ABILITY TO CREATE MONEY.
That’s because the fiat currency we use is not gold. If our money were a commodity like gold, or something similar, running out of gold to exchange with would absolutely be a concern.
But we—Americans and the entire world that uses dollars—use a currency created by bankers. It has an infinite supply because it costs nothing to create it. It can be created at a whim either using a computer screen, 🖥️ or by printing more paper bills, or often both. This is what “money” has become 50+ years after President Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility with gold.
Do you feel comforted knowing the money is infinite? That another human being can print more of what costs you time and labor to earn?
- Did carriage operators feel comfortable about the invention of the car?
- Were washboard manufacturers happy about washing machines?
- What happened to scribes after the printing press was invented?
What you must work for, the central government can create with a key press. ⌨️ There’s nothing behind the currency in your pocket or in your internet bank account apart from the will of your government. For your money to have value, for your power to purchase to continue, you have to trust the power of your government fully.
NO ONE CAN BE TRUSTED WITH POWER OVER MONEY ITSELF
"I am of the opinion that the main and final cause why the prince pretends to the power of altering the coinage is the profit or gain which he can get from it."
Nicole Oresme
The Roman Emperors, when they needed money, could only tax the people more. But taxation isn’t just unpopular, it’s unpleasant. An Emperor who cares about the people is reluctant to raise taxes because it increases their hardship. An Emperor who doesn’t give a fig about the people is reluctant to raise taxes because it increases unrest. Either way, no one wants to raise taxes on the public.
What to do, what to do... “Oh I know, let’s take some of the silver out of everyone’s coins all over the country, then put that silver in our treasury.” PROBLEM SOLVED! 🫠
"One of the Christian fathers, Saint Gregory Nazianzus, commented that war is the mother of taxes. I think that's a wonderful thing to keep in mind: war is the mother of taxes. And it's also, of course, the mother of inflation."
Joseph R. Peden
Taxes haven’t been raised, but the public was plundered just as surely as if the Emperors had sent out troops to demand a payment of silver from every household. The action is hidden, goes unannounced, and done in the dark — but these are just more evidences of theft.
It should go without saying that devaluation of the nation makes the nation less valuable.
Value—related to such words as valiant—is a word describing the quality of strength. Devaluation is. a vampiric theft that drains a nation of its strength and vitality. Devaluation was the chief cause of the economic crises of Rome’s 3rd Century (which were simultaneously political and national crises). Knowing this, the Emperor Constantine introduced Rome’s own gold standard (the solidus, a coin still in use today under the name dinar) to remedy the crisis.
THE NEW MILLENNIUM OF BITCOIN
"It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights."
Ludwig von Mises, “The Theory of Money and Credit.”
It isn’t possible to understand the 20th Century without understanding that it led to the international subversion and overthrowing of the gold standard. Gold’s scarcity and hardness always put it at odds with governments resentful of the limitations on their rule.
The ability to speak money into existence by fiat, as in fiat currency, is, of course, much more amenable to their demeanor. If the public’s wealth is devalued in the process, if the ruler’s friends are rewarded by seigniorage in the process, so much the better.
“Our view is that if it is viewed scientifically and rationally (which is psychologically difficult!) that money should have the function of a standard of measurement and thus that it should become comparable to the watt or the hour or a degree of temperature.”
John Nash, “Ideal Money.”
With Bitcoin, we have introduced a scarcity scarcer than gold, and a hardness harder than gold, enforced, today and always, by the iron rule of mathematical law.
And all this is a past tense event. It’s already done. ⚡️
All that’s left is for the various sectors of the human race to encounter this emerging monetary system and adapt their lives accordingly. Everyone, from the paupers to the princes, will eventually be forced to take time out of their day to study Bitcoin and learn how things will be from now on.
Everyone you know will someday be “orange pilled.” It's only a matter of time. 🕰️
"I think the internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that’s missing but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash.”
Milton Friedman
End.
[p.s. Thanks for reading, SN. As per Siggy's encouragement to post more writing, this is the frst of a series of drafts I've been working on to explain the ongoing economic crisis and its “inevitable” solution to my local network of friends and relatives. My audience is primarily boomers who aren't completely ignorant but have a way of taking the current system for granted (or at least feel powerless about it), so I'm trying to really break things down for them.]