By Bitcoin 雜誌 - 1 年前 - 閱讀時間：12 分鐘
Bitcoin 歌曲單張：法定貨幣如何毀掉文明
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 擁有超過 20 年經驗的開發人員、教育家和企業家和程序員。
我們想要美好的事物。 我們想住漂亮的房子，吃美味的食物，擁有美滿的人際關係。 我們想去異國他鄉旅行，聆聽美妙的音樂，體驗樂趣。 我們希望建立持久的東西，取得偉大的成就，並為明天留下一個更美好的世界。
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 "我們欠自己的債，" changes the fact that it's theft. That's about as honest as Enron's 會計。
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.
獨裁者使用明顯的暴力來迫使其公民實現獨裁者的願望。 強制徵兵、戰爭和貧困在這些社會中司空見慣，生活悲慘，人的自由幾乎無從談起。 法定統治對人類來說是可怕的，從蘇聯曾經是多麼落後或者朝鮮現在是多麼落後就可以清楚地看出這一點。 在一個建立在奴隸勞動之上的社會中，進步是非常困難的。
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.
法定貨幣破壞激勵
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 它作為政府的代理人進行這種購買。 代理人代表政府採購各種商品和服務，政府委託代理人代表其消費。
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 比薩斜塔.
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.
所以在最後的數學中，代理人以犧牲其他人的利益為代價。 這些人就是我們所說的 尋租者. 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 保釋 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.
法定貨幣激勵措施比 Sam Bankman-Fried 更糟糕。
法定貨幣破壞精英統治
如此多尋租職位的存在意味著經濟的很大一部分並不是在正常的供求市場力量下運行的。 即使是尋租的可能性也意味著商品和服務需要考慮到競爭環境的傾斜。 法定貨幣破壞精英管理。
在正常的市場體系中，最好的產品獲勝。 不是最具政治聯繫的產品。 不是僱用最多人的產品。 最好的產品之所以獲勝，是因為它們滿足了更多人的需求。 法定貨幣通過加入政治改變了等式。
當政府可以印鈔票時，受益最多的人就是最先拿到錢的人。 這被稱為 坎蒂隆效應 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. 政治是一種癌症 傳遍整個市場。
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.
因此，政治上精明的現任者在法定貨幣經濟中具有巨大的優勢。 他們將使新來者承擔監管成本，並通過新印製的貨幣獲得補貼，從而使他們的地位僵化。 鑑於這些不公平的優勢，市場將充滿舊的、劣質的商品，而更新、更好的商品將永遠不會進入市場。 現任者開始發揮 卡爾文鮑爾 and change the rules whenever they're losing.
工會、殭屍公司和老政客都表明機構的存在遠遠超出了它們對社會的用處。 都是用政治手段來彌補自己在滿足市場慾望方面的不足。 衰老和垂死的人永遠不會死去，為創新者騰出空間。 政治扼殺創業精神和創造力。 這是一種破壞維持身體活力的良好細胞的癌症。
換句話說，功績已被各地的政治所取代。
法定貨幣破壞進步
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.
因此，法定貨幣會破壞進步。 文明僵化是因為現任玩家有更多的權力來阻止新玩家。 現任者通常會建立巨大的監管護城河，通過法定補貼壓低新競爭對手的價格，用法定貨幣僱用最優秀的員工，或者在最後喘息時干脆買斷新參與者。 所有這些策略都通過使用新印製的貨幣來發揮作用。 殭屍靠吃腦子生存。
我們現在應該擁有核動力的一切，但該技術完全是 窒息 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.
勒德分子 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.
我們可以在 航空公司 行業。 現在從紐約到倫敦的旅行時間比 50 年前更糟。 我們也可以在洗碗機中看到這種動態。 50年前的洗碗機 可以打掃 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.
法定貨幣非常保守
不良激勵是法定貨幣的核心。 如果你可以偷竊而不是工作，大多數人都會偷竊——而且他們可以通過政治來偷竊。 不幸的是，政治是一種負和遊戲，這意味著文明的倒退。 就像戰爭一樣，政治就是消耗積累的資本。
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 如此沮喪.
經濟的政治化和殭屍化對社會的運作方式產生了實際影響。 建築規範使新形式 住房 很難建造。 航空公司的規定使新設計完全違法。 核法規使不同的、更有效的能源形式變得非常昂貴。
陳舊的行業、早已過期的公司從經濟中吸取了生產力。 它們提供的價值很小，但會繼續通過法定貨幣獲得補貼。 石油、火車、航空公司和汽車等行業都變成了殭屍，並通過法定貨幣得到保護，免於滅絕。 哎呀，甚至一些電子產品生產商，和 軟件公司相對較新的經濟，在這一點上是殭屍。 殭屍贏了。
殭屍化正在加速。 臉書大概 轉變 從生產者到尋租者的速度比說 IBM.
可悲的是，這就是法定貨幣的現實。 生產者在某一時刻變成了尋租者，因為他們政治化了。 殭屍的數量很快開始超過正常人，一切都在走下坡路。
Bitcoin 解決這個問題
好消息是， 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.
幸運的是， 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.
歡迎來到革命。 現在去拯救文明。
這是 Jimmy Song 的客座帖子。 所表達的意見完全是他們自己的，不一定反映 BTC Inc 或 Bitcoin 雜誌。
原始來源： Bitcoin 雜誌