The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

by Saifedean Ammous

With government increasing its meddling in all aspects of life, it increasingly controlled the educational system and used it to imprint in people's minds the fanciful notion that the rules of economics did not apply to governments, which would prosper the more they spent. The work of monetary cranks like John Maynard Keynes taught in modern universities the notion that government spending only has benefits, never costs. The government, after all, can always print money and so faces no real constraints on its spending, which it can use to achieve whichever goal the electorate sets for it. For those who worship government power and take joy in totalitarian control, such as the many totalitarian and mass-murdering regimes of the twentieth century, this monetary arrangement was a godsend. But for those who valued human liberty, peace, and cooperation among humans, it was a depressing time with the prospects of economic reform receding ever more with time and the prospects of the political process ever returning us to monetary sanity becoming an increasingly fanciful dream. As Friedrich Hayek put it: I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop.