{"id":61446,"date":"2022-01-13T08:34:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T13:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61446"},"modified":"2022-01-13T08:34:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T13:34:27","slug":"ending-fiat-money-wont-destroy-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61446","title":{"rendered":"Ending Fiat Money Won’t Destroy the State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ending Fiat Money Won’t Destroy the State<\/a><\/h3>\n
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A certain meme has become popular among advocates of both gold and cryptocurrencies. This is the \u201cFix the money, fix the world\u201d meme. This slogan is based on the idea that by switching to some commodity money\u2014be it crypto or metal\u2014and abandoning fiat currency, the world will improve greatly.<\/p>\n

Taken in its moderate form, of course, this slogan is indisputably correct. State-controlled money is\u00a0immoral,\u00a0dangerous, and impoverishing.\u00a0It paves the way for government theft of private wealth through the inflation tax, and thus allows the state to do more of what it does best: wage wars, kill, imprison, steal, and enrich the friends of the regime at the expense of everyone else. Privatizing the monetary system and imposing a \u201cseparation of money and state\u201d would help limit these activities.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also important to not overstate the benefits of taking money out of the hands of the state. The temptation to push the \u201cfix the world\u201d idea to utopian levels is often seen among cryptocurrency maximalists, and among\u00a0some gold promoters as well<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For example, at least\u00a0one bitcoin enthusiast<\/a>\u00a0thinks bitcoin will bring \u201cthe end of the nation states.\u201d And in one particularly over-the-top paragraph from\u00a0another bitcoin promoter<\/a>, we\u2019re told that cryptocurrency will essentially cure every ill from poverty to corruption to environmental destruction.<\/p>\n

The idea that changing to different money will somehow end theft, poverty,\u00a0or even war<\/a>\u00a0is the sort of messianic thinking that would have given old-school Marxists a run for their money.<\/p>\n

Yes, we can all agree that if we \u201cimprove the money\u201d we also \u201cimprove the world.\u201d But removing the state\u2019s money monopoly won\u2019t make states fold up their tents and slink away in the night. (And, needless to say, simply changing the money won\u2019t make bad food or poverty disappear either.)<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ending Fiat Money Won’t Destroy the State A certain meme has become popular among advocates of both gold and cryptocurrencies. This is the \u201cFix the money, fix the world\u201d meme. This slogan is based on the idea that by switching to some commodity money\u2014be it crypto or metal\u2014and abandoning fiat currency, the world will improve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[15611,951,3918,374,379,536,14776,1309,25781],"class_list":["post-61446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-currency","tag-fiat-money","tag-gold","tag-government","tag-money","tag-ryan-mcmaken","tag-state","tag-the-mises-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61447,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61446\/revisions\/61447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}