Banking
Bitcoin and the Founding Fathers – WiM Weekly
Jul
A weekly rundown of new WiM podcast releases and some food for thought
“Paper is poverty. It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.”—Thomas Jefferson
“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”—John Adams
“Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice”—George Washington
“When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense—to fight the government”—Alexander Hamilton
America was founded on the three pillars of free market capitalism: private property rights, rule of law, and honest money. The American Constitution authorized states to issue gold or silver currency, outlawed income tax, and prohibited national central banking. Unfortunately, upon successful implementation of the American central bank (after two failed attempts), the private property rights foundational to free market capitalism became vulnerable to limitless violation via inflation and fiat financial regulation. An example of this failure came with the “Great Gold Robbery of 1933” (aka Executive Order 6102): an unconstitutional decree and blatant violation of private property rights.
All government decrees by fiat are lies (including fiat currency), for truth need never be forced. Free market forces always zero-in on truth.
Bitcoin is the ideological synthesis of gold and the internet; it perfectly exemplifies the three pillars of free market capitalism undergirding the idea of America in a form that cannot be perverted by fiat decree. As its money supply cannot be changed, its holders are immune to confiscation via inflation, thus perfecting their private property rights (Pillar 1). Disputes within the Bitcoin network are settled consensually, and it is impractical to employ violence in an attempt to sway this process, thus perfecting the process of nonviolent dispute resolution embodied by the rule of law (Pillar 2). By perfecting these first two pillars of free market capitalism, Bitcoin is a self-fulfilling prophecy predestined to perfect its final pillar by becoming the ultimate evolution in free-market-selected honest money (Pillar 3).
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”—Thomas Jefferson
“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”—Thomas Jefferson
“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”—John Adams