The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

by Saifedean Ammous

It is no coincidence that when recounting the most horrific tyrants of history, one finds that every single one of them operated a system of government-issued money which was constantly inflated to finance government operation. There is a very good reason that Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Ze Dong, Adolf Hitler, Maximilien Robespierre, Pol Pot, Benito Mussolini, Kim Jong Il, and many other notorious criminals all ruled in periods of unsound government-issued money which they could print at will to finance their genocidal and totalitarian megalomania. It is the same reason that the same societies which birthed these mass murderers did not produce anyone close to their level of criminality when living under sound monetary systems which required governments to tax before they spent. None of these monsters ever repealed sound money in order to fund their mass murder. The destruction of sound money had come before, hailed with wonderful feel-good stories involving children, education, worker liberation, and national pride. But once sound money was destroyed, it became very easy for these criminals to take over power and take command of all of their society's resources by increasing the supply of unsound money.