The World Doesn’t Need A Hero, It Needs You
Let’s make this the year of sound money and free markets.
Well, another year has passed. Do you feel richer or poorer? It's a question we should ask ourselves every year, and not just for the financial aspects of our lives. In fact, once on a relatively stable financial footing, how much money you make quickly stops dictating your happiness level. However, many people who started 2022 on solid ground financially are there no longer. It was difficult year. Markets were down, crypto was decimated, and that includes Bitcoin.
On the flip side, there's a few silver linings to celebrate. So many centralized Ponzi schemes in the crypto space collapsed, letting everyone know who the legitimate players really are. More people than ever took their Bitcoin off the exchanges, and many abandoned scam cryptos for a Bitcoin only mindset. I was one of those people.
In addition to the refinement by fire of the crypto space, a new decentralized social network has appeared called Nostr. Rather than relying on a centralized corporation to dictate what content is or is not acceptable, individuals running their own servers - known as relays - get to make that decision for themselves. It was popularized by a tweet posted by Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO. It's still a little rough around the edges, but the apps are improving at lightning speed. Since bitcoiners love all things decentralized, it has become very popular in the space. I'm personally writing a web-based client to access the network.
As bitcoiners are want to say, bear markets are for building. When prices are down, you see who the sincere players are. Some folks talk a good game during the bull run, but when the House starts winning, they disappear from the crypto Casino. If you're reading this in January of 2023, you are likely a true Bitcoiner.
I believe that 2023 should be the year that we work hard to educate people on the benefits of sound money and why the world needs Bitcoin. After all, in a world based on Bitcoin, people won't feel compelled to make risky investments in order to keep their head above the fiat waters. One of the most beautiful things about sound money is it grows in value over time rather than losing value due to inflation. In a sound money world you could just live beneath your means, save your extra money and know that years (or decades) later, when it’s time to retire, the money you’ve saved will be worth far more than it was when you earned it.
To support the Bitcoin education movement of 2023, I am starting to do some work with the Konsensus network, a Bitcoin media startup and publisher of the Bitcoin Bible, The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous. I am scheduled to appear on the Freedom Footprint Show podcast with Knut Svanholm on January 10th. It should be a great discussion regarding my cult background, my journey into Bitcoin and sound money generally.
I have also started a Bitcoin YouTube channel where I create educational videos based on my substack articles. Konsensus will be cross-posting the videos to their own network as well in an effort to spread the word. I have plans to write a book called The Cult of Fiat that details the parallel tactics of the cult I was raised in with the fiat world we live in. As Jeff Booth so eloquently stated, what kind of a world would you expect to arise from a system built on theft?
If there’s anything the past few years have taught me, it’s that there is no hero coming to save us. There’s no White Knight and there are no “good guys” in power. The only people that can stop the madness of the current world are you and me. We can do that by ignoring the rules when those rules are tyrannical and by taking our money out of corporate pockets and putting it into local businesses.
I was having a drink with a friend the other day and he brought up a great example of how normal people can change the world with their buying habits. For decades the grocery stores sold only the lowest quality fruits and vegetables. As an example, I grew up thinking I didn’t like apples, but I only felt that way because I’d never had an apple that wasn’t picked too soon, dyed to make it look more red than it really was, put on a truck and shipped across the country to sit in the grocery store until some poor shmuck bought the nasty thing.
People grew tired of this and began to look for alternatives. Thus the popularization of the Farmer’s Market and eventually entire grocery chains like Whole Foods and Sprouts and Fresh Market dedicated to selling regional meats and produce. It didn’t take long for the grocery stores to realize they were losing money, so they also began selling better quality produce and offering a large selection of organic foods.
No laws were past that made this happen. No politicians railed against the evils of the food quality and stumped for the passage of some new bill. The FDA didn’t step in and demand change. Why would any of the institutions bought and paid for by big corporations ever take any meaningful action against them?
No, it was normal people voting with their money and refusing to hand it over for grocery store garbage. That’s what forced the change. It’s how free markets are supposed to work. True and lasting change happens from the ground up, not the top down.
So this year, put as much time as you can into educating yourself about sound money and Bitcoin, and get to know your local mom and pop shops and markets. Many are struggling after our dear government tried to destroy them by forcing them to close during the nonsense of the last 3 years while making more Big Corp billionaires than ever before.
We can fight this, and we can win. But it requires commitment, and it requires being willing to inconvenience ourselves a bit for now. Maybe you have to drive further to get to the locally owned store rather than Walmart, and maybe the Farmer’s Market fruits and vegetables cost a little more. However much you can do, you should do, but of course we all have our personal circumstances to look out for.
Think about it. If the roughly 250 million American adults decided to ditch the Big Box chain for just one shopping trip a month, hundreds of billions of dollars a year would flow into local communities rather than being piled away in ever-fattening corporate coffers where it gets locked up and reported for the benefit of stock holders and nobody else.
I once saw a bumper sticker that said, “Forget world peace – try using your blinker!” You don’t have to save the world, but little things add up, and those things we all have the power to do. So let’s do them together and create a better world in 2023. I believe we can do it. The world doesn’t need a hero, it just needs you. May it be so.