How Government Gets Power By Controlling Money

If the free market opts out of the fiat paradigm, government loses power. Over time, Bitcoin will reduce government to a ghost of its former self as it erodes away its monopoly on money.

Throughout history, this has already happened with many bank and currency failures that forced governments to return to a hard money (gold) standard.

Then over time, as the public forgot, the ruling elite would sneak back in various regulations, laws, policies, decrees, and other nonsense to return to their monopoly on money.

The primary difference between then and now is humanity now has the world's first uncensorable, unconfiscatable money–#bitcoin. And unlike gold, no government can create a monopoly on Bitcoin nor prevent its use.

And that's why I have hope that our new "reset" or "turning" will be a completely new paradigm that will move humanity forward rather than into the same broken cycles of the past.

The bank issues paper money far beyond the amount in its vaults. Once this is public knowledge, people demand their deposits, which are not there. The debased currency results in rapid inflation. The government attempts to fight inflation by mandating price controls.

As prices are artificially low, people stop producing, and the economy suffers from shortages in the supply of goods. Further economic dislocations occur, resulting in wealth inequality, political discontent/extremism, civil disobedience, or regime change.

This is why we have cycles: FIAT and government monopoly on money - they mismanage, over time the market realizes it and opts out, then they come in with some major intervention. Sometimes it works and other times they have to temporarily go to a gold standard long enough to slowly go back to FIAT as the market/citizens forget . Then the cycle repeats.

The pioneer of central banking was the Sveriges Riksbank of Sweden in 1668, as a response to the collapse of the Bank of Stockholm, which had issued too many notes on too few deposits. The Riksbank was not given permission to issue bank notes (paper backed by nothing) until 1701.

However, this right was not granted to it exclusively until the end of the 19th century, meaning other private banks could also issue notes. Sweden had a history of relatively sound banking practices, and its paper money was backed by gold in some form until 1931, when it experienced its most severe recession in history.

Today, Sveriges Riksbank is the oldest surviving bank in Sweden. While the Riksbank was the first, the Bank of England was the template for modern central banking. It was created in 1694 amid financial disarray and war with France. Prior to this point numerous bank charters had been granted in England, and the issuance of fractional money led them all to fail. W.A. Shaw, in Theory and Principles of Central Banking, states: “Disaster after disaster had to come upon the country…. [because] of the indifference of the state to these mere private paper tokens.”

The Bank of England, the government’s creator of debt-based money, was favored and saved multiple times from insolvency through acts of Parliament. The Bank of England assisted the government in paying off its debts by printing money and lending it to the government (paying off debt with more debt).

In return it was granted the right to print bank notes, which were pure fiat money (not backed by any monetary medium). Despite being declared legal tender (legally required to be used in some form) these notes were rejected by the market, as failures resulting from this type of money were still a recent memory. Subsequently, the bank issued exchequer bills in 1696 – bills fully redeemable in gold. The Bank of England failed to implement a fiat monetary system because the public rejected the fiat money. In 1707 the Bank of England was given the responsibility of managing its own currency.

The bank transitioned back to bank notes of fractional money, which gradually replaced existing bills by the middle of the 18th century. In 1797 the Bank could no longer meet demand for physical delivery of its fractional reserves. Parliament intervened and authorized the bank to suspend payment in specie (i.e., forbidding people to redeem the gold backing their paper money). Prior to the government suspending payment in specie, the bank was required to redeem payments in gold. By force of law, the Bank was now exempt from having to honor its contract to return gold deposits.

In 1815 price controls were implemented by the government in response to high inflation (i.e., the famous CornLaws). England went into a deep depression and riots ensued.

By 1825, another crisis began in England, resulting in 64 bank failures. The convention of a “lender of last resort” was established – meaning the central bank could choose to freely lend to banks if they were at risk of insolvency. A former governor from the Bank of England referred to this as “the most mischievous doctrine ever breathed in the monetary or banking world.”

The Bank of England’s fractional reserve system resulted in a run on the banks, inflation, price controls, recession, and social unrest.

France tries it:

Shortly after the establishment of the Bank of England, the Bank of France was established. France had accumulated a significant amount of debt from the wars of Louis XIV and needed a solution. John Law convinced the king to establish the bank and decree that all taxes and revenues be paid in its notes. In 1716 it was chartered as a private bank and then nationalized two years later. With its legal tender status, the bank, like many others before it, began to issue more notes than it had in reserves. Wild speculation ensued in the famous Mississippi Bubble. The result was a run on the banks in 1720 with roughly 50% inflation of the currency. The term banking came to be associated with fraud, and France did not establish a central bank for another half-century.

-The 7th Property

If you believe in property rights, then you must believe in sound money since fiat robs the wealth of humanity.

If you believe in natural law and human rights, you believe in #bitcoin

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