From Bernie To Bitcoin: Fix The Money

Logan Bolinger is a lawyer and the author of a totally free weekly newsletter about the crossway of Bitcoin, macroeconomics, geopolitics and law.Part Two: The Big “This” That Bitcoin Fixes”Politics is the art of searching for problem, discovering it all over, identifying it improperly and applying the incorrect solutions.”– Groucho MarxIn Part One of this series, I discussed the very first significant breakthrough for me on my journey from being a fervent Bernie Sanders supporter to a committed Bitcoiner, which included confronting the idea of trust in politics and questioning how Bitcoins trustlessness could be leveraged toward a favorable political end through its possible to constrain lawmakers.Now I wish to discuss the 2nd significant development I experienced on this journey. I desire to begin by recommending something that is going to sound, at first blush, clearly antithetical to some in the Bitcoin neighborhood, but which I think may resonate with those who have actually emigrated to or have gotten to a belief in Bitcoin from a more left-leaning political starting place (like, state, the Bernie Sanders/progressive orbit or the liberal arts community): Progressives and Bitcoiners both determine and acknowledge a similar slate of issues with the status quo. Progressives would highlight and highlight wealth inequality, unequal monetary access, monopolies, an overpowerful cadre of tech business, excess corporate power, exploitative (and inequitable) big banks and, typically speaking, excessive influence being wielded by a small group of people and corporations as significant problems. This list is undoubtedly non-exhaustive, however I think its a reasonable representation of significant concerns.The bulk of Bitcoiners would concur with a lot of, if not all, of these criticisms, and would most likely include the pursuit of GDP (gross domestic product) development at all expenses and ubiquitous malinvestment, both of which are demanded and sustained by the current fiat system, to the list.(Source)Bitcoiners and progressives differ significantly, nevertheless, on the specific area of the source of these issues, as well as on the proper services to these problems.These divergent views are comparable to two medical professionals agreeing and examining a client upon the symptoms, but disagreeing on the remedy. I wish to tug on this medical/corporeal metaphor a bit more to extract some additional points because its illustrative of Bitcoins transformative and unique promise.Imagine our financial system as a body. This body lives hard and quick and starts to display signs of disease. Two medical professionals analyze this body and propose two starkly various remedies. Doctor A recommends giving the client some medicine, which is to say a targeted medicinal intervention, and sending her on her way. Then Doctor B recommends that the root cause of the symptoms are much deeper and recommends fundamental lifestyle modifications. This medical professional endorses routine workout, clean eating, drinking less alcohol, spending more time outside and so on. The client goes with the easy prescriptions of Doctor A.It does not take long for the patient to go back to see these 2 medical professionals with brand-new and worsening symptoms. It ends up the medicine has actually had side results, which now need to be resolved. Medical professional A recommends extra pills to resolve these negative effects, while Doctor B continues to advise wholesale lifestyle modifications to fundamentally resolve the root cause of the patients condition.You can see where this is going. Reactively dealing with signs without ever treating the underlying concern or worse, misdiagnosing/mislocating the underlying issue, results in a sicker client with more problems.Bringing it back to Bitcoiners and progressives, Bitcoiners find the source of many problems at the monetary level. The cash is no longer sound and this is the provenance of a number of the subsequent societal symptoms. Bitcoiners can trace this issue to an exact moment, 1971, the point at which cash efficiently ended up being debt and currency officially ended up being unbacked. From there, problems emerged, increased and intensified. For this factor, Bitcoiners propose fixing the money in order to begin healing the litany of consequent social maladies.On the other hand, progressives coalesce around different causal narratives. Often its the billionaires, often its industrialism itself, sometimes its corporations, sometimes its Mark Zuckerberg, etc. In some cases the narrative simply settles or devolves into an amorphous, all-inclusive oppressor/oppressed framework in which every human relationship or sphere of human action can be (and is) categorized by and by means of this binary. In this environment, scoring rhetorical points frequently takes precedence over developing thoughtful, considerate solutions. Instead, proposed services generally involve shoveling more dollars at various parties.Before I discovered Bitcoin, I was a dedicated advocate of spending nevertheless much money was required to “fix” issues like wealth inequality, excess corporate power, inequitable access to services, and so on. This, I concerned discover, just momentarily eases the pain, while leaving undamaged the monetary system that causes the discomfort in the very first place. We can see this today with inflation. We pumped the economy filled with liquidity and distributed stimulus checks. Sounds fantastic? Almost two years later and, would not you understand it, that cash did have to originate from somewhere after all. And by increasing the cash supply so dramatically to undertake these (largely) well-intentioned interventions, we guaranteed the inflation we are now experiencing. The force of which is borne by the very same wage-earning savers for whom the stimulus was meant to aid.IMF; M2 information; Central Banks (Source)Furthermore, the Federal Reserve Board is now in the position of raising rates in a slowing growth environment in order to suppress this inflation, which will itself most likely trigger an economic downturn– continuing to harm wage-earning savers. When the discomfort reaches a tipping point, the Fed will step back in again with a brand-new pain reliever of liquidity, decrease the value of the currency even more, even more enhancing the wealthy property holders, while additional penalizing the wage-earning savers. We will continue this vicious circle, failing to resolve any of the problems we were looking for to address. Fiat services can not fix basically fiat problems. Jim Bianco/ Bianco Research (Source)In other words, well simply continue to treat the symptoms till they end up being too various and ultimately, terminal.As an aside, I discover it intriguing that the Western world, with its worldwide distinct conception of discomfort and its painkiller medical culture (instead of a more holistic Eastern method of finding and attending to the source of pain) chooses to treat its financial system the very same method. The federal government deals with the cash the method Big Pharma deals with health and gets comparable results.But anyhow, treating the symptoms of an unhealthy monetary system without resolving the cause has the perverse effect of merely postponing more possibly terminal and severe future symptoms, while worsening the existing symptoms in the meantime.If I had actually not discovered Bitcoin, Im uncertain I ever would have understood this. And I presume theres a reason for that. Understanding Bitcoin incentivizes financial and financial literacy, which is neither widely taught nor extensively dispersed. I do not believe it strains credulity to suggest that a number of the folks in Congress charged with making these essential choices about fiscal costs, the spending plan, and federal government financial obligation are similarly underinformed about the downstream consequences of popular interventional concepts, a scenario that is intensified by an overarching interest in winning re-election. Appealing to give out more money, regardless of where that money comes from and regardless of any serious future effects it may produce, is a lot easier political sell to constituents than the pursuit of financial discipline. The former is a pain reliever that temporarily masks its source. The latter is an uncomfortable withdrawal that, as soon as undertaken and completed, provides expect more long lasting long-term health. I was a Bernie advocate because I wanted to resolve a litany of social problems. I am now a Bitcoiner because I understand that deca-billionaires, dominant corporations, “late-stage capitalism” and Mark Zuckerberg– though certainly objectionable– are not the reasons for these problems. They are the symptoms of a broken money. And attempting to resolve for these discrete symptoms will only lead to systemic contortions that permit other symptoms to metastasize. Its whack-a-mole analytical. In other words, Bitcoin made me recognize that it is difficult to fix the problems triggered by fiat money within the fiat structure. It is, in reality, difficult to have a fiat system in which these problems can be avoided. Which is why real solutions, the “big structural modifications” that progressives like Elizabeth Warren require and promote, need a rebuilding of the system itself upon a better structure, which means repairing the money.Bitcoins guarantee is the prospect of repairing this. And anyone who is major about addressing all the concerns progressives and Bitcoiners agree upon need to face the origin of a completely, irreparably damaged money at the base layer of society.This is a guest post by Logan Bolinger. Viewpoints expressed are completely their own and do not always reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

(Source)Progressives and Bitcoiners differ radically, nevertheless, on the specific place of the source of these problems, as well as on the suitable options to these problems.These divergent views are comparable to 2 medical professionals analyzing a client and concurring upon the symptoms, but disagreeing on the remedy. Reactively attending to symptoms without ever dealing with the underlying concern or even worse, misdiagnosing/mislocating the underlying problem, results in a sicker patient with more problems.Bringing it back to Bitcoiners and progressives, Bitcoiners find the source of many problems at the monetary level. The money is no longer sound and this is the provenance of many of the subsequent social signs. The federal government treats the cash the way Big Pharma deals with health and gets comparable results.But anyway, dealing with the symptoms of a diseased financial system without addressing the cause has the perverse effect of merely postponing more possibly terminal and extreme future signs, while exacerbating the existing symptoms in the meantime.If I had not found Bitcoin, Im not sure I ever would have comprehended this. And attempting to resolve for these discrete signs will only result in systemic contortions that enable other signs to metastasize.