Freedom of money: a fundamental right

For our readers in the United States, I hope you enjoyed Independence Day with friends and family. Perhaps some of you took the time to reflect on the alleged ideals of this nation, where we lack them, and how we can nurture their virtues while reducing their shortcomings.

I was thinking about money.

Hands of our cash

I think of crypto today, not because it is a particular American theme, but because its proponents appeal to many of the same ideals that Americans – and the rest of the liberal-democratic world order – hold dear. Among these ideals are self-sovereignty, freedom from government interference in our affairs, and the right to personal liberties.

It is fashionable to talk about freedom when it comes to race and equality, equal access to justice and the right to vote. But all that overlooks the more fundamental freedom that had the most profound influence over the founding of this nation – the freedom to have moneyand to do whatever you want with it.

During the constitutional debates in 1787, there was broad agreement that rights should be given to the “People”, but a quick look at the historical record reveals a completely different worldview about who should be included in that group. In a specific oratorio dated June 25 of that year, Mr. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina divided the “People” into three distinct groups and was not met with any objections. These were: 1) “Professional men”; 2) “Commercial Men”; and 3) “The landed interest” (See Robert Yates, Secret proceedings and debates of the convention gathered in Philadelphia in 1787).

Nowhere were the poor or women mentioned; slaves were forced to count as three-fifths of a human being, and the indigenous people were completely ignored. No, the “people” were clearly definable in Pinckney’s eyes. They were people with money.

This is because having money is the closest thing to having the freedom that any society can really afford. The right to make money – and the right to do whatever you want with it – is historically more American than any other ideal. The colonial reaction to the unbearable actions of King George and his Parliament regarding taxes, tariffs, freight rates and free trade returned to one thing: keep our hands off our money.

A similar ghost haunts the crypto world, as governments fight over how to regulate non-custodian wallets, how to classify digital assets within traditional frameworks, and of course how to tax them. Some, especially China, have introduced the directly dystopian concept of a state-controlled digital central bank currency, giving themselves virtually unlimited power over who buys and sells, which transactions are acceptable (and which are not), and to decide who gets to participate. in the economy at all. As Western nations also explore CBDCs, it is not surprising that many people get nervous.

Authoritarian governments have always relied on either controlling the money or being close to those who do. Ever since Mesopotamian priests began collecting silver reserves in temples to control the money supply, the playbook has been the same: you can have as much power as you want, as long as you can afford it.

Blockchain supporters claim that crypto solves all this, and although it still has growing pains to get through, the promise to eliminate the need for overlords who control how money works is obvious. That control is at best clearly centralized and at worst directly fascist.

The American folk singer Woody Guthrie, who was one of the most important influences on the protest singers in the 1960s and beyond, famously wrote the words “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” over his guitar to make a strong point. The idea was simple: get a life-changing message in front of as many people as possible, and let their hearts and minds do the rest. Guthrie’s songs were hymns of freedom and, in many real ways, decentralization of power.

“This machine kills fascists” would have been a worthy epigram for Bitcoin Whitepaper and would not have been misplaced in the Ethereum documentation section. Like Guthrie’s guitar, cryptocurrency is in itself just a fruitless tool without a knowledgeable player knowing how to use it: these are not universal remedies that will solve all our problems just by existing, but with proper narrativeization and a few good users. , their potential to persuade people to change the world for the better is clear.

Controlling the economy is an endgame for fascism: if you control money, you control the people who trust it. Crypto changes all that. Bitcoin broke the mold with the pure genius of its innovation, and Ethereum took things a step further with its focus on applications that can be used by humans. These innovations, which place money firmly within the owners’ control, are fundamental building blocks in the decentralization movement and are likely to be absolutely crucial to it. For this very reason, there are still those who want to rule the place back in; Whether this is possible or not remains to be seen, however.

Happy Fourth, everyone.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.