I contemplate myself a progressive particular person as a result of I look all over the world and I see that it isn’t simply, honest, equitable, or peaceable. I’ve all the time seemed for methods to make the world higher, and I’ve all the time carried out that from throughout the methods I acknowledged as damaged. For many of my grownup life, I’ve anticipated the federal government (one instance of a damaged system) to make guidelines and legal guidelines that nudge the system nearer to justice, equity, fairness, and peace. Isn’t that the very best we are able to hope for?
One motive why I encourage you to study Bitcoin is so you may query the present system by means of one other lens. Studying extra about how and why Bitcoin works is just one half of the journey. Bitcoin additionally supplies a possibility to look at the unexamined, research the water round us, and ask powerful questions concerning the methods we’ve all the time lived with. It presents the chance to ask questions we by no means actually ask. What’s cash? Who controls it and the way? Who ought to management it? Studying about Bitcoin empowers you to think about what issues could be like if we change a construction we intuitively know is unjust however have by no means had the vocabulary to query earlier than.
The concept that the financial system would possibly sooner or later be all the best way fastened has by no means appeared like an actual risk. The concept that the complete system may very well be changed—the water round us that we don’t discover—has by no means been a risk both. But whereas a lot of my liberal mates are very adept at declaring systemic inequities, proposals for systemic change to exchange the methods that trigger these unfairnesses are few and much between. Actually monetary and financial methods are methods that one doesn’t normally study, however a greater understanding of Bitcoin curiously presents you a greater understanding of the methods it seeks to exchange, and why incremental change gained’t essentially tackle its unfairnesses. It additionally lets you think about, maybe for the primary time, a world with out these inequities.
The world is managed by political, social, financial, and navy methods that each create and rely on the hegemony of the US greenback. Unfairness, inequity, and violence are woven into the material of those methods. They’re inexorable elements of these methods, not simply unlucky externalities that exist on prime of in any other case wholesome constructions. To take only one instance, wealth inequality is not only an unlucky factor that occurs as a result of some grasping individuals break the foundations and get away with it. It’s a crucial and built-in characteristic of a system that relies on a hegemonic United States greenback being a world reserve asset (see Chapter 7). However now, for the primary time in human historical past, we’ve a possible financial invention that would overhaul the system, not simply tweak it from inside to be somewhat extra honest.
In my expertise, the extra an individual is aware of concerning the legacy monetary system, the extra they dislike it. Henry Ford is credited, most probably incorrectly, with having mentioned, “It’s nicely sufficient that individuals of the nation don’t perceive our banking and financial system, for in the event that they did, I imagine there can be a revolution earlier than tomorrow morning.”5 Bitcoin may very well be the nudge that can assist you study our banking and financial system and begin a peaceable revolution.
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5: “The Reality Is Out: Cash Is Simply Created, and the Banks Are Rolling in It,” Underground Community, accessed November 29, 2022, https://underground.web/cash/the-truth-is-out-and-the-banks-are-rolling-in-it/.
This put up A Peaceful Revolution first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jason Maier.
