How Great Empires Crumble from Within
Dear Reader,
This happened yesterday:
The greatest 50-day rally in the history of the S&P 500.
While more than 60 million worldwide have lost their jobs due to governments shutting down the economy. There are more unreported.
The disconnect between the markets and the real economy is outrageous.
Panic individuals end Pandemics; Panic governments destroy individuals.
This also happened on the same day, in the same country;
Are you awestruck by the juxtaposition?
A new era of commercial space travel - a new hope for our species to travel to the stars - coinciding with cities burning down below.
Yes. Looters are to blame:
One robs a nation, the other steals hundreds of dollars worth of cheap plastic goods.
But get this, only one of these things is a crime.
How do you destroy a nation?
By systematically destroying the value of money. Drain the wealth of the people with hidden taxation and expand debt perpetually.
Create overly complex financial instruments for borrowing and saving,
… which discourages basic financial literacy.
This in turn produces a dependent population ever reliant on welfare and handouts,
… which maintains a state of working subservience.
Keep the body, Take the Mind.
That’s how you disempower the majority to be able to both think for themselves and defend their ideals.
That’s how you encourage “Parasites” to feed on its own people.
George Santayana said, “Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.”
Historically, governments that steal from the people end up eating it’s own tail.
This happened in Rome at its highest pitch of greatness.
It was ridiculous to speak of Rome failing in the 5th century, but it did gradually sank into the Dark Ages..
During the following 5 centuries, the economy withered (check), long distance trade halted (check), cities depopulated (check), money vanished from circulation (check) and art and literacy almost disappeared.
Rome was so degenerate by the later stages of the 5th century that its “fall” generally eluded the notice of most people who lived in it.
Saying Rome had fallen was news that were bad for business.
It’s unlikely anyone would have dared to even hint at that possibility, saying “Rome fell this evening.”
That is why history’s great transitions are seldom spotted as they happen.
If you know nothing about the future, you can be sure that dramatic changes will be neither welcomed nor advertised by conventional thinkers.
Then as it is now, the Roman Empire faced constant coin shortages as precious metals flowed east. The emperors took to repeatedly debasing the coinage until the finances of the empire collapsed.
Debasement increased the money supply and thus the government’s spending power.
Stretching the money supply helped pay for their debt obligations, fund expeditions of war and more importantly keep their large body of troops fed (& ready to die).
Paper money or Fiat made it even easier to accomplish this…
Only this time, the whole world shares the same global standard of currency:
The US dollar standard:
The global reserve currency is always under the control of whoever the global superpower is at any given time.
And the U.S. became a superpower in less than 100 years because it developed the capacity to quickly convert its civilian population and economy into a vast war machine.
…thanks in part to the removal of the gold standard in 1971. (Benjamin Franklin shaking his head above)
Today, the real U.S. defense budget exceeds $1 trillion.
The only way you can finance such a large military force, larger than the next 10 countries’ military combined is by removing any remaining gold obligations.
This meant that the currency was no longer fixed to anything.
The dollar became a floating currency subjected to manipulation.
It can now be expended ad infinitum while keeping the face value of the dollar constant.
And that’s how you lose your buying power…
This is how governments steal from you to feed itself.
Once again, the massive increases in wealth that resulted from past economic freedoms fed the size and power of the State.
Economic freedoms create wealth…
…and wealth attracts more thieves and political parasites, whose greed then destroys the economic freedoms.
In other words, freedom metastasizes the cancer of the State.
The Government that starts off the smallest always end up the largest.
This is why there can be no viable and sustainable alternative to a truly free and peaceful society as long as money is left in the hands of a central power.
It’s the main reason why wealth today is widely considered to be tied to power.
Essentially, money is not wealth. Money only measures wealth.
How can wealth be measured then if it can be expanded forever?
Politicians, in particular, want to persuade you that if you give them enough power — for a long enough period — they will create wealth for all, equally distributed.
This is the great socialist lie — that wealth is a power blend.
Politicians are funded by the very people who have custody over our money. Banks.
But this trend is about to change though.
Remember, these things ebb and flow. They rise and fall.
Money evolves. The natural evolution of money is always as a store of value that’s easier to move, more secure and more private.
And the world naturally gravitates to the next best thing.
Something that is neutral, censorship-resistant, open, borderless and decentralized.
Something that cannot be killed. Cannot be hacked. Cannot be banned.
Now imagine a base metal as scarce as gold but can be transported securely over the internet.
It may sound ridiculous at first, but it makes perfect sense.
Bitcoin empowers the individual.
It is the Great Equalizer.
It gives us the option of opting out of a corrupt and unfair system.
It gives hard working people the option of saving value in the hardest asset known to man. And not let anyone, even the government or bankers dictate any policy that might undermine our position.
It’s apolitical money. Money born on the internet. Borderless, Neutral, Censorship-resistant, decentralized and Immutable.
Bitcoin is a peaceful protest. It’s opt-in. Never forced.
They want to divide us as right vs. left.
But this isn’t right vs. left.
This is top vs. bottom.
This is authoritarianism vs freedom and we are on the side of free.
Some may want to change from within. Others who are getting trampled on are willing to burn it all to the ground.
But Burning it down isn’t the focus here.
That’s not where we’ll spend all our energy.
Building the new is.
Don’t fund the parasites of the old system.
Buy Bitcoin if you are dissatisfied with your current government.
Buy Bitcoin if you don’t trust your financial system.
Buy Bitcoin if you believe in freedom.