The Separation of Money and State

in #bitcoin6 years ago (edited)

Throughout human history, money has been created by governments and banks while interest rates have been controlled by central authorities. When a government has the power to create currency and control it's interest rate it doesn't rely on tax money to fund it's expenses and isn't limited by a budget because there is the option to borrow more money.

With every centrally controlled currency there is a point where it's linked to a commodity with value and then taken off of that standard and become a fiat currency. Once a currency has no connection to real value it ceases to hold any value and after being minted by the central bank will lose more value to inflation. Each and every time centrally controlled money has been tried it follows with economic collapse and crisis that put the individuals at risk of not affording food or having jobs.

How bitcoin can help

Bitcoin offers a unique solution to this problem because it is not centrally controlled and the function of increasing the supply is built into the protocol and is distributed across a decentralized network. This allows bitcoin to be practically impossible to control and even harder to alter the fundamental attributes of the software such as supply limit.

Most polls at this time reveal that fewer than 10% of Americans own any amount of cryptocurrency, let alone use it on daily basis as there main currency. The price reflects the demand of bitcoin and with the low adoption rates this price has still risen a large amount in the time it's existed. It's very likely we could see bitcoin upwards of $1 million dollars per coin if every American used it for daily transactions, and that's not considering it's globally accessible. With the global economy of today, bitcoin offers so many advantages over fiat currencies even in it's infancy.

The comparison to separation of church and state

The advances in culture that came through the separation of church and state are spoken about in high regard in western countries. Allowing individuals freedom to choose their beliefs and not be persecuted by their governments is something we take for granted and yet is a great freedom that individuals benefits from on a daily basis. It also deters these governments going to war for strictly religious reasons or motives due to the lack of support that it's citizens would express. We need to extend this idea to money and allow people to choose the currency they want to use to pay for goods and services without facing threats of force by their government. Furthermore if this currency is immune to control by said government it truly will protect the individual from the catastrophes faced all through the history of centrally controlled money.

How this can affect war

If there is one thing most people can agree on it would be that a world without war is preferable. Every time a government goes to war it adds debt or inflates its currency to pay for the resources needed in the war. This inevitably leads to the collapse in value of the currency and over time the collapse of the nation. With a currency like bitcoin it is impossible to fund these types of endeavors because war (destroying things) does not add net value to the country, and bitcoin cannot be endlessly spent. Hypothetically, if money like bitcoin was used by everyone then it's almost certain that endless wars would be a thing of the past unless people voluntarily gave their money to their governments to kill people on foreign soil (not going to happen).

How this can affect government budget/welfare programs

If the government wants to have welfare programs for its citizens they'll have to operate within a budget or literally run out of money to give people on these programs. It is possible they can still take loans out but these loans would come from existing money and that means that an entity would have to fund the government which can only occur to a certain extent. For example in a scenario where each bitcoin is worth $1 million dollars and there are a total of 20 million bitcoin then the entire supply of the currency would be equivalent to $20 trillion dollars. This is for a GLOBAL currency and if it were the price now, could just barely pay off the national debt in the U.S. The possibility of this occurring would be highly impractical as people need to pay for consumer goods and there is an entire economy outside of what the government spends money on.

The theoretical possibilities of a world without government control of currency is very promising.

Thank you for reading, please leave comments about your opinions on this topic.

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