The Great Realignment: Power, Money, Greed & Bitcoin

Introduction

Introduction

I hope you will indulge me for a moment before we begin the broader discussion. The content of this book will likely be discomforting to many. I am sure many sacred cows are sacrificed within the following pages. Likewise, those pages will undoubtedly challenge a number of orthodoxies. This is not simply for sport. The intention throughout is to highlight potential sources of error and disgorge unfounded assumptions of their sediment. The bulk of my life is governed by a disposition and orientation that is eloquently summed by the late theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. He says:

I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about.

Thus this book. The trouble I find with academia in general — whether it be law, history, politics, economics, or finance — is the observable reality that there is a market for the product of those disciplines. And those products are most certainly governed by market forces. Tenure track careers hinge on consistent academic publication. Lucrative financial rewards and professional esteem await the successful cross-overs to mass market literature and the speaking tour circuit. Indeed, many references in this book belong to those academics that have made the successful transition. The trouble is, mass media and mass markets are not amenable to nuance. And once embroiled in the prestige of popularity, it is often quite difficult for those academics to change tack mid-course, even if there are nuanced reasons to do so. Given the rarity of such successes in mass-market academic crossover, it is no wonder that points of view and narratives become entrenched. For the up and coming academic, the market demands they pay tribute and homage to those atop the publication hierarchy. Failure to do so is a fast track to irrelevance. Much the same is true in the worlds of finance, entertainment, social media and politics. Those who best express themselves while staying within the contours of what “everyone” knows tend to rise to prominence. As a social lubricant, this is all well and good. Or, as William “Matt” Briggs says, “You will never get fired for being wrong in the right direction.”

But this is fatal to rational inquiry.

Generally speaking, I think people gravitate towards the most reasonable sounding explanation that aligns with their subjective experience. But people today are no more sophisticated than the people of the ancient world. While we might like to separate ourselves from our seemingly unrefined predecessors, the humbling reality is that, outside of our gadgets, we are truly no different than they were. We have the same biases, the same emotional and logical errors and the same blindspots. While we may take for granted that we “know” things like the germ theory of disease, or that “balancing the humours” is a failed medical practice, what we really have are snippets of information that we are only loosely familiar with. Asserting facts based on a loose familiarity with information is really just an act of faith.

The purpose of this book is two-fold. I first want to challenge common assumptions. Ideally this will help to humanize and contextualize political-economic history. Second, I want to provide some useful theories to help people better understand Bitcoin and its role in the global political economy. Ultimately this is a book about uncertainty. And it is a book that attempts to construct a view of history from a novel perspective. The base concept underlying this book is simple: Most of what we know about the world is wrong. Which is to more accurately say, most of what we believe we know about the world is wrong. The number of people on earth that are true experts in the fields of history, anthropology, economics, biology, psychology, political economy, political science, international relations and dozens of other disciplines probably number in the hundreds. Most that are passed off as experts are not. These so-called “experts” are rather, and much more often, ego-centric mid-wits that further a political or ideological agenda under the guise of scientific rigor.

Worse yet, under that guise of scientific rigor, many of these mid-wits will boldly lay claim to truth. While I lay no claims to truth, I acknowledge I may well be one of those ego-centric mid-wits myself. That being said, while they parade their theories on whatever subject they study as definitive accountings of the world we live in, I am simply providing the theories that follow as a counter narrative. While media savvy academics know that certitude is a soothing tonic to lay audiences, I have little certitude on offer here. For any theory to be “true” from a scientific perspective requires that every single premise and assumption made must also be provably true, using a chain of arguments that leads to axiomatic principles. All economic theories fail this test. All political science theories fail this test. Most scientific theories will fail this test. Indeed, most of the theories in this book will fail that test. That is a good thing. That is the nature of uncertainty. That is the nature of improving knowledge.

As you have probably gleaned from the title, this book is broken down into four parts: Power, money, greed and Bitcoin. While there is much history invoked in the coming pages, this is not a history book. It is rather a book about history. Or, I should rather say, the absence of history. The trouble with history is most of it is lost. There is a span of several thousand years between the discovery and widespread adoption of agriculture and the invention of the written word. This is why the history books are full of tales of great empires going to war, but very little on how those empires came to be. Once history was able to be documented, it is much easier to follow the trail. But that which came after agriculture and before the written word is left to the realms of archaeology and anthropology. Ask any of them and they will tell you point blank there is far more they do not know than they do. The genesis of the armies and the kingdoms and the great civilizations is, quite simply put, a matter for scarcely informed speculation. It is within that great chasm of knowledge that I attempt a modest exploration here.

What I can say with some certainty is that these power structures, these monetary systems and these means of human organization are not the products of nature. They are man-made. They are constructs. They are ancient. And, as best I can tell, they all follow similar and recursive trajectories throughout the ages. I think there is very little that is new under the sun. That being said, I also think Bitcoin is a very new thing under the sun. It is a monumental achievement in the 12,000 years of post-agricultural human development. I truly believe Bitcoin changes everything. What follows is the reason why.