the road back from serfdom, by el gato malo

Give government and its buddies the bankers control of the money and your society is doomed. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:

is a road that leads away from state controlled money

my article the other day about the road to serfdom and the ratchets of inflation and political power providing perverse incentives laid out the problem:

politicians who gain power by wrecking financial and social fabrics and gain revenues by wrecking currencies will run awful playbooks to maximize their perverse incentives and the worse they do, the more they get, which, in turn, makes things worse.

it’s a positive feedback loop and those only end in starvation or explosion.

so what is the solution?

the solution is to take money, commerce, savings, and investment away from not only state control but from state view. in the end, the truly operative phrase is “you cannot tax what you cannot see.”

it’s quite literally the only way to get a durable fix.

even outright rebellion and mass movements and “putting new governments in charge with better rules etc” is not a long term solution. best case, you just reset or move back on the tytler cycle. but the cycle will remain as inexorable as the seasons and you’ll be fighting the same wars over and over, probably at higher rates of speed. it’s a lot better than nothing and still a worthwhile undertaking, but i think we can do better. i think we can go our own way.

since time immemorial, governments have controlled currencies and done an awful job of it. we still call money printing “debasement” in reference to rulers mixing other metals into the gold or silver when striking coins. it’s just the classical version of “money printer go BRRRR.”

governments are lousy stewards of currency. always have been. always will be. they debase, devalue, and steal. let them run the banks as well and you are well and truly trapped. this is not some accident of financial evolution, it was done by design: rulers have always sought to control currencies because control of currencies is power and wealth.

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