By Bitcoin Revista - acum 1 an - Timp de citire: 12 minute
Bitcoin Cântec: Cum banii fiat ruinează civilizația
Fiat money leads to a degradation of incentives, creating a society motivated only by the consumption of resources and zero value production.
This is an opinion editorial by Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin dezvoltator, educator și antreprenor și programator cu peste 20 de ani de experiență.
Vrem lucruri frumoase. Ne dorim să trăim într-o casă drăguță, să mâncăm mâncare bună și să avem relații împlinite. Vrem să călătorim în locuri exotice, să ascultăm muzică grozavă și să trăim distracție. Vrem să construim ceva care să reziste, să realizăm ceva grozav și să lăsăm o lume mai bună pentru mâine.
These are all part of being human, of participating in society and of progressing humanity. Unfortunately, all these things and more get ruined by fiat money. We want nice things, but we can't have them, and the reason is because of fiat money.
Governments want the power to decree prosperity, fulfillment and progress into existence. They're like the alchemists of yesteryear, who wanted to turn lead into gold through some formula. Actually — they're worse. They're like a five-year-old that thinks by wishing hard enough, that she can fly.
Being the delusional power-drunk politicians that they are, the elites think that by decreeing something to be so, it magically happens. That's indeed where the word "fiat" comes from. The word literally means "Let there be," — in Latin and in English, it's become an adjective to describe creation by decree. This can be most easily seen in Genesis 1:3 in Latin. The phrase there is "fiat lux" which means "let there be light."
Of course, creation by decree doesn't quite work like it does in Genesis. If you want a building, you can't just say, "Let there be a building." Someone has to dig, pour a foundation, add framing, etc. Decrees don't really do anything without capital and labor. In the absence of the market forces of supply and demand, decrees require people and resources to be enlisted. In other words, as much as governments would love for reality to be different, a decree by itself doesn't really do anything. By itself, a decree is about as useless as an old man yelling at the sun. There has to be some coercion involved to fulfill the decree. Fiat decrees are a euphemism for using force and violence.
For buildings, it's obvious that creation by decree doesn't do anything. Yet for money, decreeing it into existence seems legit, maybe even compassionate. Keynesian economists see fiat money as something that by itself does something. Of course, they're wrong and no amount of calling it "datorii pe care le avem față de noi înșine," changes the fact that it's theft. That's about as honest as Enron's contabilitate.
The deviousness of fiat money is that it makes government violence look like a market process. Fiat money printing steals from the other holders of the currency and pays people to do the government's bidding. That theft is hidden and combined with a good dose of Keynesian propaganda, which makes fiat money seem innocuous, perhaps even benevolent.
In a sense, fiat money is less violent than other forms of fiat rule. But that's like saying mobsters that give you a chance to pay them off are less violent than street thugs.
Dictatorii folosesc violența evidentă pentru a-și obliga cetățenii să-și îndeplinească dorințele dictatorului. Conscripția forțată, războiul și sărăcia sunt comune în aceste societăți, iar a lor este o existență mizerabilă, cu puțină libertate umană de a vorbi. Guvernarea Fiat este teribilă pentru umanitate, așa cum se poate vedea clar în cât de înapoiată a fost Uniunea Sovietică sau cât de înapoiată este Coreea de Nord acum. Progresul este foarte greu într-o societate construită pe munca sclavă.
Fiat money, by contrast, at least looks voluntary. Yet in many ways, it's still very harmful to civilization. Fiat money is more like organized crime, which makes everything seem voluntary.
Fiat Money Ruins Stimulente
Fiat money ruins many market incentives. The reason is because there's a special buyer in the market that has much less price sensitivity. That buyer, of course, is the fiat money creator. They can and do print money for all sorts of reasons — some benevolent (welfare for the poor), others not (military buildup). They spend like drunken sailors who just found pirate treasure.
The problem with a buyer like the government is that someone always sits in the middle. It's not the "government" per se, that actually buys a fighter jet or an office building. There's always someone care acționează ca un agent al guvernului care face această cumpărare. Agentul lucrează în numele guvernului pentru a procura diverse bunuri și servicii, iar guvernul îi încredințează agentului autoritatea de a cheltui în numele său.
Unfortunately, this arrangement is ripe for abuse. The agents are essentially spending other peoples' money for other peoples' gain, so they aren't incentivized to trade very efficiently. Their incentives are as skewed as the Turnul din Pisa.
When we are buying and selling in the market with our own money for our own benefit, we do complicated economic analyses to figure out whether we'll benefit enough from the good or service to be willing to part with our money. Thus, we'll be price sensitive and attempt to get the most value for the money we pay.
For a government bureaucrat that's in charge of procurement, however, getting value for the money is not their priority. They are incentivized to spend in a way that's for their own benefit and not the governments'. This doesn't have to be in obvious ways as with bribes. They can spend much less time examining the goods and services, or buy from people that they like. The result is generally a bad trade where the agent gets some small benefit at a much larger expense to the government. In a sound money economy, the government would fire such people — but in a fiat money economy, the government doesn't care as much since money is abundant and they're not price-sensitive. You can do that when there's a cookie jar that you can always steal from.
Deci, la matematica finală, agentul beneficiază în detrimentul tuturor celorlalți. Acești oameni sunt ceea ce numim noi solicitanții de chirie. They don't add any benefit but still get paid. And it's not just government bureaucrats. If you are an investment banker that takes extremely leveraged bets, you are a rent seeker, too. Generally, they get to keep the profits when their investments win, but get salvat when their investments lose. They, too, don't add anything and leech off of society. What's worse, these are supposed to be some of the most talented and driven people in society. Instead of building things that would benefit civilization, they're engaged in grand larceny! Of course, they're not the only ones guilty of rent-seeking theft. Sadly, most jobs in a fiat money society have a huge rent-seeking component.
One rule of thumb that we'll get to later in this article about how to tell if something is rent seeking is by seeing how much of the job is political and not value-adding. The more politics involved, the more rent seeking there generally is.
Rent-seeking jobs cheat the system and when people have the incentive to cheat, many will. You only need to look at online gaming to know that. Cheating is attractive because it's a lot easier than doing hard work and if the cheating is normalized, as it is today, there's little moral impediment. We've all become that soccer player that pretends to be in pain to influence the referee.
Rent seeking is understandable since creating a good or service that the market wants is not only hard, but it's very fickle. What you produce today is an innovation away from becoming obsolete. Rent-seeking positions, even with less compensation, are nevertheless more desirable because of their certainty. Is it any wonder that rent-seeking positions are so sought after?
Think about how many people want to become investment bankers, venture capitalists or politicians. They're way more profitable than providing a good or service, require way less effort and have lots more certainty.
Stimulentele de bani Fiat sunt mai stricate decât Sam Bankman-Fried.
Banii Fiat ruinează meritocrația
Existența atâtor poziții de căutare a rentei înseamnă că o mare parte a economiei nu funcționează pe baza forțelor normale ale pieței cererii și ofertei. Chiar și posibilitatea de căutare a chiriei înseamnă că bunurile și serviciile trebuie să țină seama de o înclinare a terenului de joc. Banii Fiat ruinează meritocrația.
Într-un sistem normal de piață, cele mai bune produse câștigă. Nu sunt cele mai legate de produse politice. Nu produsele care angajează cei mai mulți oameni. Cele mai bune produse câștigă pentru că satisfac nevoile și dorințele mai multor oameni. Banii Fiat schimbă ecuația adăugând politică.
Când guvernul poate tipări bani, oamenii care beneficiază cel mai mult sunt cei care au acces mai întâi la acești bani. Aceasta se numește Efect Cantillon and it's the reason why rich people get richer without adding much, if anything. So how does the government determine who gets access to the money? As with everything government related, decisions on who gets what money is determined through politics. And when the money printer is political, everything else becomes political. Politica este un cancer care se răspândește pe întreaga piață.
The "haves" in a fiat money economy tend to be the ones that are good political players. They know how to get newly printed money directed toward them and they have a large advantage over those that don't. Politically savvy companies will do better than the non-politically savvy companies that make better products. Thus, surviving companies in a fiat money economy are very politically savvy. It's no wonder so many companies seem to be led by politicians rather than entrepreneurs, especially as these companies age.
Astfel, ocupanții cu cunoștințe politice au un avantaj enorm într-o economie cu bani fiat. Aceștia îi vor înșaua pe noii veniți cu costuri de reglementare și vor fi subvenționați cu bani nou tipăriți, osificându-și poziția. Piața va fi plină cu mărfuri mai vechi și mai proaste, iar mărfurile mai noi și mai bune nu vor veni niciodată pe piață, având în vedere aceste avantaje nedrepte. Incumbenții se apucă să joace CalvinBall and change the rules whenever they're losing.
Sindicatele, companiile zombi și vechii politicieni sunt toți indicatori că instituțiile durează mult peste utilitatea lor pentru societate. Toți folosesc mijloace politice pentru a compensa lipsa lor de a-și îndeplini dorințele pieței. Decrepiții și cei pe moarte nu mor niciodată pentru a face loc inovației. Politica înăbușă antreprenoriatul și creativitatea. Este un cancer care distruge celulele bune care mențin corpul în viață.
Meritul, cu alte cuvinte, a fost depășit de politică peste tot.
Fiat Money Ruins Progresul
The ubiquity of politics over merit means that it's become harder than ever for civilization to improve. Better stuff doesn't necessarily win and markets tilt toward the political. Fiat money protects the existing politically connected players against the newer, more dynamic players from gaining market share.
Prin urmare, banii fiat ruinează progresul. Civilizația se osifică deoarece jucătorii în funcție au mult mai multă putere de a opri jucătorii noi. Adesea, aceștia vor ridica mari șanțuri de reglementare, vor prețui mai puțin concurenții mai noi prin subvenții fiat, vor angaja cei mai buni angajați cu bani fiat sau, ca o ultimă respirație, doar cumpără noii jucători cu totul. Toate aceste strategii funcționează prin accesul la bani nou tipăriți. Zombii supraviețuiesc mâncând creiere.
Ar trebui să alimentam totul acum, dar acea tehnologie este completă înăbușită by regulation. Government can enforce this mandate through fiat money. Oil, natural gas and coal continue to dominate because we don't make scientific progress on other ways to provide better energy. Technologies like wind and solar get government backing because they're politically popular, despite their clear inferiority in variance, energy density and portability. We're going backwards in energy.
Luddites win in a fiat monetary system because fiat money and political considerations essentially force everything to stay the same. It's profoundly conservative in that the old and decrepit are saved at the expense of the new and meritorious. If that sounds familiar, it should. That's the exact math that was used to justify the lockdowns of the past few years.
Putem vedea această dinamică în linie aeriană industrie. Timpul pentru a călători de la New York la Londra este mai rău acum decât era acum 50 de ani. Această dinamică o putem vedea și în mașinile de spălat vase. O mașină de spălat vase acum 50 de ani putea curata a full load in under one hour. It now takes more than 3 hours. Regulations protect incumbents and put politics as a priority over merit. The result is that civilization doesn't progress.
Instead, fiat money has regressed civilization. The nuclear engineers of yesteryear are working on React.js apps and scammy Web3 products because that's where the money is. The inventors of yesteryear are investment bankers creating high-frequency trading systems. The incentives are broken — merit is no longer a consideration, so is it any wonder we're regressing as a civilization?
We peaked as a civilization in 1969 when we landed a man on the moon. Everything since then hasn't pushed humanity forward, but turned it inward. At best, it's preserved what we already have. At worst, it's destroying humanity's progress.
What's worse, all this rent seeking has inflamed the entitlement mindset. Having good political connections, these rent seekers think they are entitled to these negative-sum positions. Nothing is more toxic to progress than people whose incentives are to keep things from getting better. Fiat money changes productive people into entitled brats.
Banii Fiat sunt profund conservatori
Stimulentele proaste sunt la baza banilor fiat. Dacă poți fura în loc de muncă, majoritatea oamenilor vor fura - și pot, prin politică. Politica, din păcate, este un joc cu sumă negativă și asta înseamnă regres pentru civilizație. Ca și războiul, politica înseamnă consumul de capital acumulat.
Fiat money redistributes wealth so that the incumbents can stick around. There's little room for new ideas or new goods or new products because the incumbents have so much political clout.
Indeed, we've reached a tipping point where there's more rent seekers than there are productive people creating stuff. How many people work email jobs? How many people even work? Way too many people are happy with an XBox, a mattress and pizza delivery. Do these people benefit society in any way? It's no wonder so many people are atât de deprimat.
Politizarea și zombificarea economiei au avut consecințe reale asupra modului în care funcționează societatea. Codurile de construcție creează noi forme de carcasă foarte greu de construit. Reglementările companiilor aeriene fac noile modele complet ilegale. Reglementările nucleare fac diferite forme de energie mai eficiente, cu adevărat scumpe.
Industriile antice, companiile care au trecut cu mult de data de expirare sug productivitatea economiei. Ele oferă o valoare mică, dar continuă să fie subvenționate prin bani fiat. Industrii precum petrolul, trenurile, companiile aeriene și mașinile au devenit toate zombi și sunt protejate de dispariție prin bani fiat. La naiba, chiar și unii producători de electronice și companii de software, care sunt relativ noi în economie, sunt zombi în acest moment. Zombii câștigă.
Și zombificarea se accelerează. Facebook probabil Tranziționat de la producător la solicitant de chirie mult mai repede decât, să zicem, IBM.
Din păcate, aceasta este realitatea banilor fiat. La un moment dat, producătorii se transformă în solicitanți de chirie pe măsură ce politizează. Zombii încep în curând să depășească oamenii normali și totul merge la vale.
Bitcoin Remediază acest lucru
Vestea bună este că Bitcoin fixes these incentives. Removing fiat money means the normal market process of supply and demand and prices can work. Politics takes much less of a role and the zombification of the economy reverses. Civilization can progress again. Bitcoin is the antidote and the great hope for reversing the decline.
Unfortunately, we have about 100 years of rot to clear out and that's going to take some time. The people most embedded in the current system, the Cantillon winners, such as Ivy League business school graduates, rich old people and bureaucrats of all types, are the least likely to convert to Bitcoin and will fight tooth and nail to preserve their positions. These people are not going away quietly and you can already see that they're making their own bid to further zombify with CBDCs.
Din fericire, Bitcoin has the advantage of time on its side. The Cantillon losers, such as young people, citizens of developing countries and actual producers of goods and services will inevitably turn toward the much fairer system in Bitcoin. The zombies will be consuming themselves.
Bun venit la revoluție. Acum, salvează civilizația.
Aceasta este o postare invitată de Jimmy Song. Opiniile exprimate sunt în întregime proprii și nu reflectă neapărat cele ale BTC Inc sau Bitcoin Revistă.
Sursă originală: Bitcoin Revistă