The fight for freedom starts in your wallet
We are living through the most fascinating moment in history. It is the change of Empire.
A lot of us would say that freedom is a human right. But this is a relatively modern and a rather ephemeral phenomenon. Generations still alive today know a world virtually devoid of the freedoms we experience today in the west. Of course freedom is relative to potential to exercise it. E.g. The freedom to travel was quite different just 1 short century ago compared to today's ubiquitous air travel possibilities. And freedom comes in many different forms: freedom to move (travel); freedom to express yourself; freedom to associate with others; freedom to be an economic actor and trade with others, just to list the main ones.
If these freedoms we are experiencing are only a recent phenomenon, then how did we get here? and what can history for the struggles for freedom teach us about maintaining and fortifying our rights to these freedoms?
Physical freedom, the freedom to move around was possibly the broadest several centuries ago, and this was mainly due to the lack of means or opportunity. Most people toiled their whole lives in one place just to survive, so the luxury of travel was completely impossible. It was a freedom they had, but could not exercise.
The other freedoms were more fragile though. Freedom of speech and association are far more important to humans. This is the very bedrock of our social species. Speech is the way we express ourselves, show our identity to the other members of our community and society in general, and the audience we choose to express ourselves to is as much a part of the message as the expression itself. The fight to gain and preserve these 2 freedoms are the ones that have undoubtedly cost the most blood and suffering.
Whatever we may think of our political and civil leaders, they (or some other organising systems) are necessary to operate a human community or society efficiently. This seems to be a necessity to operate as a species like ours, at our current scale. And whatever this system is, it requires communal cooperation, this implicitly requires people to adopt a degree of conformity toward the communal good. This is a sticky phrase when it comes to individual freedoms. The two seem to be in competition with each other. I don't want to go into the weeds about this because it would derail the subject of this essay.
Freedom of speech and association are not only social, but also economic. In fact society and economics overlap each other to such an extent that they can (should) be considered one. Of course in certain highly centralised economic models, society and economics are segregated to as great a degree as possible, but left to themselves, the strong tendency is for them to overlap and blend together. Furthermore, societies on a centralisation trajectory require force to separate the society and the economics of a community. Simple greed (and the lust for power) seem to be the obvious driving forces at play here.
Strategies to erode freedoms of speech and association are driven by preservation and expansion of centralised power.
The most powerful tool authorities have to erode these freedoms is the power over money and currency (money and currency, aren't these the same? No, and the difference is important, but it will not be covered in this essay). Today this power is held in a seeming coalition between the state and the banking/finance industry. Without getting too technical or abstract, these two things overlap more than they should. They know it, and would not be happy if we learnt the truth about it. The golden rule about power is: Power is insatiable. It always wants more and will never be satisfied with less.
We are living through the most fascinating moment in history. It is the change of Empire.
The US empire, which took the baton peacefully from the British empire, in what could be considered the first bloodless handover of empire in the history of mankind, and has enjoyed omnipotence since the end of the cold war (1989), is now visibly waning. A loose coalition centred around China is now clearly ascending. In fact the change is happening at breath-taking speed.
The optimism, and progress of integration of the nations that make up the BRICS and SCO organisations, not to mention the growing list of non-trivial nations lining up to join them, are in stark juxtaposition against the irrational paranoia and outright warmongering posture of the G7. Recently both groups held their meetings and the various media press releases were very instructive indeed. (I am tempted to spoon feed you links, but I urge you to look up these yourself as part of your own independent research).
Now I want to dispense with this preamble and get to my point. The control of money/currency is the war on our freedoms that we need to be watching. Why is this so?
Freedom of belief, expression, association, and movement - freedoms, which we in the west currently take for granted, all stem from our economic freedoms. Our freedom to trade with whomever we want, to found a business aimed at fulfilling any demand (almost), to associate with whatever businesses we wish. Our freedom to allocate our labour to whatever industry or business we want, and finally, to allocate the economic energy we accumulate with any of these activities (use the money we earn), in whatever way we want.
Encroachment on any of these economic freedoms inherently curtails freedoms of belief, expression, association, and movement. This can be done directly (if you are blocked from buying a plane or train ticket), or indirectly (the things you say and believe in can be influenced by arbitrary fines, or other restrictions on the use of your own financial resources).
So to those in power who covet yet more power, or at least fear dangers to their current power, expanding their control over the monetary system is the single most potent way to reach their goals.
It has taken some years but those in power finally stopped laughing at Bitcoin. They have been orange pilled but in the wrong way. They see how, just by existing, Bitcoin endangers their exclusive control over the monetary system.
Prior to 1971 (August 15 to be precise) Gold restrained the control the state and the banking/finance industry could exert. It played watchdog on those that lusted for the enormous powers they would gain if gold could only be neutered. The printing of money was limited only by how much gold there was to back it up. (or perceived to be backing it)
Since then, the monetary system has been completely untethered. It's been abused and over printed recklessly. It's been funnelled to the crony supporters and sponsors of those in power. It has financed massive violence, and made a small number of people ridiculously wealthy. In short, it's been a stupendous gravy train for the insiders, and the single worst systematic global economic distortion.
Gravy trains can only accelerate, and they either disintegrate from their own ridiculous velocity, or they run out of track. Either way, they end, and usually spectacularly.
When Bitcoin appeared in 2009, its design showed how antiquated and ridiculously overcomplicated and corrupt the current monetary systems are. Bitcoin showed how we can have brutal transparency while retaining some privacy. Bitcoin proved that a digitally scarce commodity is possible. Bitcoin created a monetary system that is completely self-sustaining, global in reach, and limitlessly decentralisable.
Anyone who has read the 9 page Bitcoin Whitepaper (https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf), cannot overlook how elegantly simple the system is. A slightly deeper look with a different mindset, and you can see how, if it were slightly modified, it would turn into the most extreme tool of dystopian surveillance and control. The heart of the difference is the way Bitcoin miners work. If becoming a Bitcoin miner was permissioned instead of permissionless, as it is today, we would flip the most profound invention for monetary freedom and privacy, into the autocrats wet dream.
In fact the permissionless nature of the mining process is central to the way Bitcoin works. In order to create a truly randomised process of transaction verification, miners compete in a digital treasure hunt to mine a new block. This is the part where they use large amounts of electricity to try and guess the solution to a tough maths problem, the first to guess the correct answer wins. Even large organised syndicates of miners can only increase their odds of finding the correct answer, but theoretically, a child running a miner on an old laptop at home can also win a block. This randomisation mechanism means taking consistent and planned control of the network is very hard, very expensive, and that control will be extremely ephemeral indeed.
The mining process is also how Bitcoins are distributed without bias. Miners in the Bitcoin system use energy to win the treasure hunt, the winner is rewarded Bitcoins for their effort. Miners use Bitcoin to pay for the energy. The mechanism is self regulating, adjusting the difficulty of the treasure hunt depending on how much hash power (the overall computing power) is participating, resulting in the treasure hunt being resolved every 10 minutes on average. It is a self reinforcing system of incentives that has run virtually without fail for 14 years with no one in charge.
Going deeper with the story of Bitcoin would completely derail this essay, but I wanted to explain this crucial part of Bitcoins architecture because it is key to understand the state of play with those in power of the global monetary system and the coming financial crisis that in fact must now happen, because it's literally baked into the cake.
I said Gold was the restraining force, or the watchdog keeping those with the powerful incentive to overprint a currency in check. That check was removed in 1971. Bitcoin is not a fresh replacement in the same way, rather Bitcoin offers a liferaft in the event of an economic meltdown where the very currency we are using inflates away at ever accelerating pace. Think Venezuela, Türkiye, Argentina, etc…
CBDC’s as they are currently intended to work, can be described as being Bitcoins evil twin. They hope to ride on the positive image of Bitcoin and flip its virtues so they can take more control over the financial system.
So how can they do this from Bitcoin’s core design?
Simple!…
If miners are coordinating instead of competing, then there is no need to use the energy Bitcoin mining consumes, so the promoters of CBDC’s can already claim that as a win (which they do - and quite vocally).
If the miners coordinate amongst a closed pool (central banks), that means they can see all and every transaction before they are finalised into a block. This gives them COMPLETE AND ABSOLUTE real time control and surveillance over what transactions will and will not be cleared (added to the next block). This is in stark contrast to today's Bitcoin miners who are economically incentivized to only verify whether a transaction is valid, and add as many of these transactions to their block in order to maximise the fees earned.
Furthermore, with CBDC’s the ‘miners’ know the private keys of all wallets! So they can themselves add transactions to a block which can affect any wallet in the network. This means they can AWARD OR PUNISH anyones wallet in real time.
In fact the blockchain structure of Bitcoin, which from a data storage perspective is very poor, could be discarded all together and replaced by a modern database gaining a huge speed advantage over Bitcoin. Bitcoins Blockchain data structure sacrifices performance for a far more valuable quality. I think it is not oversatating it when I say: It is a revolution in computer science! when it is coupled with a verification system like Bitcoin’s miner system, it creates verifiable digital scarcity. This is what all that energy is paying for. It is embedded into the blockchain to ensure a truly decentralised, yet auditable record of transactions.
CBDC’s will be the opposite. Central banks do not want any of these privacy or transparency features, so they can forgo the compromises which Bitcoin has taken to enshrine them at the protocol level.
The amazingly coordinated desire from central banks around the world to introduce CBDC’s and rapid rate at which they are building and deploying them are suspicious and frightening. The claims that central banks are apolitical and independent specifically so they can serve the best interests of their populations is a lie. There is certainly some coordination happening, which contradicts the claim of the best interests of their populations. I wonder whose best interest CBDC’s are actually in?
So, just as in history that many have fought and paid the ultimate price for the freedoms of future generations, today it is our turn to fight for the freedoms of future generations. We should embrace this fight wholeheartedly because if we do it now, it may very well be a war won without bloodshed. If, through apathy, CBDC’s are permitted to become widespread, their dystopian purpose will become baked into our cake which we will all be forced to eat after it's too late.
Practical steps.
There are plenty of things you can do today to help prevent this dystopian future from emerging.
Learn about gold, Bitcoin and the way the current financial system works. Believe me, it will shock you when you finally wake up and learn how you have been duped.
Share what you learn in whatever way you can. Don't burn bridges with those you love who are still asleep. Intelligence is no measure of awareness in this regard.
Finally, start to take steps to save yourself and those who depend on you. Divest yourself from the Banking system in whatever way you feel you can. Learn how to safely hold a portion of your wealth outside the formal financial system.
And stay vigilant! This is all unfolding at breakneck speed, but still behind the curtains which keep most people in the dark. The more of us who wake up, the harder it will be to keep those ones still asleep, passively slumbering.
Remember, Our very freedoms depend on us being awake to this.
warning: this is not financial advice.