It took Samuel Adams and others over a decade to change the mindset of enough people in the colonies to make the American Revolution possible.
The American Revolution began with an idea just as the bitcoin revolution began with an idea.
The story of Samuel Adam and the American Revolution shows that Bitcoiners can break through America’s common perception that the Federal Reserve Cartel’s government-controlled fiat money is the only monetary system that can be trusted.
The brilliance of Bitcoin’s design has proven its resilience over its 13-year lifespan, but bitcoin as sound money needs to evolve further so that it becomes more than someone’s get-rich-quick scheme.
A survey of 1,000 Americans found that 62% of cryptocurrency investors believe they will get rich. There is not enough.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to have a good time. I certainly hope that bitcoin helps secure my financial freedom, but my nuance is another, and I think, a deeper goal than just getting rich.
Getting rich is the rallying cry of the current oligarchic, take-team-waste economic paradigm.
America has been living in this get-rich paradigm on steroids since Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film “Wall Street,” proclaimed that “Greed is good.” In the film, Gekko goes on to say that greed will save the “malfunctioning corporation called the United States of America”
Consider for yourself how much greed has improved America in the 35 years since this movie.
Most people don’t want to think about the money system itself, but when they think about the money in their pocket, they live in fear that they won’t have enough money to live their lives comfortably. I know that fear and have found myself bankrupt twice.
Because our current paradigm of money drives fear while being rife with greed, deception, and get-rich-quick schemes, we are left with a severely deteriorated American society.
Under a mental paradigm where greed reigns, it is never enough.
As Robert Breedlove brilliantly points out in his intro to DC Schindler’s book on Plato, “Force and fiat are shown to be incompatible with human reason, thus generating a collapse into relativism…where someone’s ‘truth’ is only as credible as the threat of power that supports it.”
Doesn’t this seem like a good description of America falling apart today?
Have you ever considered the possibility that our monetary system itself may be creating the fear and social isolation that so many Americans suffer?
Money is a critical social system, and like all social systems it must be judged by the results it produces.
As Jeff Booth suggests, the dominance of money as a social system can be shown because money has historically trumped the law with the laws always changing over time to favor money. This is not a healthy outcome.
I am convinced that a healthy monetary bitcoin economy that stimulates fair trade will change everything.
Civilization began because of fair trade. It is time to take the next evolutionary journey into a solid monetary system that stimulates fair local trade, social well-being and environmental sustainability.
America’s monetary blind spot is a direct result of living under an outdated mental construct, a paradigm, a history of money that is outdated and needs to evolve.
But first we all need to recognize that each and every one of us to some extent lives under and is influenced by this existing fiat money paradigm that drives both fear and greed within us.
It is time to move up the evolutionary ladder and develop a more sophisticated worldview now that we know the limits of our planet; limits that the current monetary paradigm does not recognize.
The current corporate sustainability fad called Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is simply lipstick on the pig.
Fighting the current fiat money paradigm is futile if we cannot offer an inspiring alternative.
That means we need a new paradigm, a new story, a new way of looking at money – one that serves the whole, and not just the small self.
Bitcoin is the technological innovation of this revolution. But what is the social innovation? It must begin with a new story. How do we articulate the new sound money paradigm?
The second part of this essay will explore ideas about a new story of sound money, call it a sound money paradigm shifter, that could accelerate the development of the vibrant Bitcoin economy we all know is somewhere invisible over the horizon.
This is a guest post by Frank Nuessle. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.