Fiat maximalism

When it comes to money, the mental model the masses of us have adopted — consciously or not, is that of fiat. This word is Latin forLet it be done. In other words, authorised and enforced by the state. Not backed by any precious commodity which money typically is backed by.

**The tragedy of fiat is that we are conditioned to accept the fact that our central banks – duty bound by the state can, and do manipulate the money we trade our scarce time for.**We literally indebt ourselves to a system which is controlled by a small group of unelected money manipulators. Making decisions behind closed doors and affecting our lives more directly and profoundly than our democratically elected politicians are able to.

**Despite being at the sore end of this deal, many of us remain staunchly loyal to the fiat monetary system and fail to see the need for an alternative.**This kind of tunnel vision is largely due to the fact that we were all born during the time of either partial or complete capture of money by the state. And so as fiat overtaken the financial system and its repercussions embedded themselves in our economies, culture and society, it has in turn overtaken us — our behaviour and our assumptions about what money is at its core.

The depths of our conditioning, which manifests as fiat maximalism, varies between ourselves, and gives rise to questions like, *Why is it that people regard Bitcoin in such unexpected ways?*You would expect Libertarians and general freedom maximalists would embrace the decentralised nature of Bitcoin and the “Separate Money from State” ethos whole-heartedly. But in reality, often they remain deeply sceptical, preferring to remain cosy with money issued by the state construct they so passionately rally against.

We can assume the primary factor is proximity to the money printer. The extent to which the individual can benefit from newly issued money.* Whether they are an entrepreneur, civil servant or an employee of a corporation that is able to receive cheap capital.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it

Upton Sinclair

On the other side of the economic spectrum, a person living on the edge of their means might become a staunch fiat maximalist as they are so deeply consumed by the pursuit of money, the notion of trading their scant savings for a money issued outside of the construct they are trapped within might be foolish or even laughable to them. It is unfortunate that the people who would benefit most from a hard money that doesn’t inflate, wouldn’t typically have the spare cash to convert.

The level and voracity of fiat mind-control exposes an acute recency bias in us. In that the concept of fiat money is actually quite new, only fully actualised when then US president Nixon ended gold convertibility in 1971.

In the timeline of humanity’s usage of rare commodities to solve the coincidence of wants problem, fiat money is a nothing but a tiny blip. From the usage of Rai stones on Yap island to Aggri beads, to precious metals such as silver and gold, rare commodities have been the dominant medium of exchange. Decided upon and incentivised by the free market for some 5000 years.

**As soon as Satoshi mined the genesis block, the writing was on the wall. The start of the end of the unsustainable fiat monetary system, to be replaced by Bitcoin.**The resumption of a hard money standard for the digital age, based upon the principles of what defines the best form of money — valuable across time and space, scarcity, portability and immutability. Money you can’t f**k with.

It’s simply a matter of time for the fiat maximalists to see it.

*This phenomenon is known as the Cantillon effect. In broader terms, how well an individual is able to live within the current system.