For the few of us who have had the miraculous luck of stumbling upon ‘Austrian Economics’, the Miami Bitcoin 2022 Conference was an opportunity to really see how far the vital ideas of ‘The Austrian School of Economics’ have made it to the mainstream. From my perspective the two best things about the conference were:
- The line to get autographed copies of Saifedean Ammous’ books, his classic ‘The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking’ and his new book ‘The Fiat Standard: The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization’ was never-ending. The interest in Bitcoin has motivated millions of people to learn about it and thus inadvertently learn about money and the vital fact that rising prices are due to governments creating more money to fund their competition-immune-expanding-bureaucracies that eventually bring about socioeconomic chaos. If there are 10 people in an island and each has $10 so there is a total of $100 in island, can anything sell for $150? Of course not, even if they pooled their money there would not be enough to reach $150. What if each person had $1 million so that there were now a total of $10 million? Then yes, things could sell for $150, up to $10 million. So for the general price to go up what needs to happen? You obviously need more money, and who creates the money that allows prices to rise? It is the governments via their central banks. This simple lesson, which interest in Bitcoin is spreading to millions, is helping people realize that it is the very Priesthood of ‘Economic Experts’ at the central banks that are responsible for the rising prices and ultimately most of what is wrong with the socioeconomic order. Every one of the expected 25,000+ attendees knew that prices go up thanks to money-creation by Government. But their curiosity eventually has the more astute and intellectually rigorous willing to dig deeper and ‘read a book’ about Bitcoin which brings us to Saifedean’s classic/bestseller “The Bitcoin Standard” which does a superb job pointing readers to Carl Menger and what is one of, if not THE most, important insight of the social sciences, the evolution of money, and the vital fact that, like language, money is something that spontaneously evolved and was not ‘planned’. This is the key to helping us understand how we live in this mind-bogglingly complex movie-like Matrix or ‘Social Organism’ (to borrow Herbert Spencer’s clever terminology) yet the masses and their politicians remain slightly smarter tribalistic apes ready to use government force to paralyze and destroy society via CovidMania lockdows, Communism, or tribal world wars. For a very succinct 30 minute article that summarizes these points and more I suggest reading “Carl Menger: The Vital Evolutionary Thinker and his ‘Austrian School of Economics’”
- The second-best thing I took away from the conference was, yet again, how ‘Austrian Economics’ is being so dominant that it was repeatedly brought up during one of the keynote discussions involving popular psychologist Jordan Peterson(discussion below)
The interviewer praised Jordan for being a good student while getting a wonderful lesson on sound ‘Austrian Economics’ from the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s Robert Murphy and recommended people watch the episode(below)
I should add that Jordan Peterson’s increasing free-market literacy is largely the result of behind-the-scenes efforts of people who appreciate the vital importance of ‘Austrian Economics’ and have made big efforts to reach him. Years ago libertarian Michael Heise who is the founder of the Libertarian Party’s ‘Mises Caucus’ physically gave Jordan a copy of Robert Murphy’s excellent book ‘Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action’ which is a summary of Mises’ treatise ‘Human Action’ . Robert Breedlove, who has quickly risen near the top of the Bitcoin world, once again, just like with Saifedean Ammous, thanks to his deep appreciation for ‘Austrian Economics, has also been one of the people reaching Jordan Peterson per great interview below.
Breedlove’s 4 hour discussion about money, bitcoin, Austrian Economics and more with Lex Friedman below was superb.
Again… Breedlove, Ammous… all crypto leaders are essentially people who are discovering the ideas of men who were simply way too far ahead of their time, and it is looking like perhaps we are beginning to catch up. Whether enough people catch up and are incentivized to somehow push these ideas in a manner that is able to reach people of influence in time to prevent the destruction of civilization…It is not looking too good at the moment IMHO. Hayek mentions below way more than 20 years ago:
“I think that if politicians do not destroy the world in the next 20 years, which is very likely, I think there’s a hope for afterwards, but we have to work for this distant date which I shan’t see happen. perhaps 20 years is too short”
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