Once you see a new world, you can’t unsee it.

Unfolding across America and the world is a new, parallel economy—nay, even a parallel life. It started with the most promising solution to a broken money and headed downstream from there. Inflation, money printing, misallocation of resources, central bank bailouts, and interventions—many of us saw these for what they were and recognized how damaging their mishandling has become to economic affairs and the fabric of society itself.

Now people receive their information via unstoppable, decentralized freedom networks like Nostr, share encrypted messages over programs like Signal, and hold their wealth in unstoppable, decentralized monies. Additionally, people increasingly acquire their sustenance from local growers and tell the IRS squat about it. More people than ever—somewhere between 5% and 10% of American schoolchildren—are homeschooled. The new world unfolding is slowly making the legacy one obsolete.

To assist you and bring you some needed entertainment on the journey, is Knut Svanholm, author of Bitcoin: Everything Divided by 21 Million and Praxeology, last year’s excellent attempt at marrying the worlds of Bitcoin and Austrian economics. He has now teamed up with his podcast sidekick, Luke de Wolf, in producing Bitcoin: The Inverse of Clown World. It’s a freedom manifesto, a rallying cry for a better world, and a hilarious anti-festschrift for the broken, clownish world we see around us.

Across thirteen easily-digestible chapters, we are treated to personal anecdotes and some insight into guarding one’s own attention; game theory and praxeology; Hoppe and argumentation ethics; critical thinking about democracy and collectivism. The chapters are intentionally written to be self-contained, stand-alone essays—perfect for a short read before bed or on the beach. At times, that makes them echo-y, with the exact same quotes and phrases used repeatedly.

We get musings on creativity, Stoicism, and what the relationship is between freedom and responsibility. Small steps toward freedom in your own life creates more “freedom dioxide” in the global atmosphere. The authors ask how “wokeism” works and deliver plenty of thoughtful dissection in between the laughable values and behaviors worn with pride by the lizard-like creatures running the political theater.

The result isn’t a Bitcoin book, though there’s plenty of Bitcoin-related themes in it, rather radical skepticism, distrust in (fiat) authority, appeal to exit, and trust in technological solutions. The allure of The Inverse of Clown World is to see that all the madness in the world—political grandstanding, gender delusions, the broad moral, fiscal, monetary, and political decay—calls out for an explanation. Most trends we see around us, from the latest social fad, to the outdated universities; along with troublesome regulations handed down by some glorified village buffoons that seem so obviously irrelevant and so obviously stupid. Why is that happening? How did it come to this?

Svanholm and de Wolf have an answer for us. It’s the broken monetary system: “When the money stops working, everything becomes political and a farce.” Like many of us attuned to technological options to enhance freedom in our own lives, Svanholm and de Wolf see the world changing rapidly:

We are facing a societal paradigm shift of immense proportions, where our perseverance in the present will determine the fate of our children’s future. Are you willing to stand your ground and fight for your freedoms, or will you choose the convenience of being mere voting cattle. Are you willing to bite the hand that allegedly feeds you?

Indeed, it’s already happening to some extent among Bitcoiners. (“This parallel reality is already unfolding for those who have embraced the Bitcoin revolution”). The world they envision is mostly here:

Virtually everyone can look each other in the eye and communicate verbally without lag, no matter how geographically far apart they are. Combine that with Bitcoin, and you quickly realize that national borders are already obsolete. If no one can stop you from communicating, not even monetarily, barriers to global commerce dissolve.

Bitcoin is a step-function in civilization’s journey toward more and more difficult ways to confiscate that which belongs to someone else—the foundational purpose of property rights. When money is pure information, rather than permissioned sums on the balance sheets of hyper-regulated banks, “confiscating it becomes much more challenging.” With teleportable digital gold, that affectionate hipster way of thinking about hard money in modern times, every robber from petty criminals to the taxman have a hard time knowing how much loot someone has available—or whether what they stole was but a small portion of what else the victims might have.

Even despite the crackdown on Samourai and other coinjoin services this year—charges that are unlikely to stick—discerning the paper trail history of who once owned what amount of money is prohibitively costly. “Stealing information from someone’s memory is inherently more complex than confiscating their physical possessions.”

Altogether, the book that Svanholm and de Wolf launch today on Bitcoin Infinity Day (don’t ask…), is excellent and wonderful. Will it change the world? Probably not, but few books ever do that. Will it change your world? Maybe. The learning and opportunities for self-reflection contained in Inverse of Clown World and the spot-on humor with which it is delivered just might alter your way of looking at things.

“The future is already here,” Svanholm often quips. All you have to do is to live it.

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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The recent European Parliament elections have brought the question of the role of Ireland in Europe to the forefront. Bombastic slogans adorned the leaflets of the European candidates, pledging to rightfully bring Ireland to the European orbit or to protect the country from the clutches of the mainland-based bureaucrats. Whatever the stance, it seems that the Ireland-Europe dichotomy is particularly entrenched, indubitably enhanced by our insular condition. Let us, however, try to shed some light on these identitarian questions.

The first question to ask is: “What is Europe?” We encounter the first obstacle geographically, since the geological continent is Eurasia. Traditionally and instinctively, one tends to place the limit of Europe in the Urals and the Caucasus, splitting the vast country of Russia among two continents (despite ethnic Russians dwelling as far East as the okrug of Chukotka, opposite Alaska), letting the shores define its natural borders on the North, West, and South. Linguists, including the author, would feel tempted to base the answer on Indo-European languages, which would leave us facing the conundrum of the Indo-Iranian languages in Asia plus non-Indo-European tongues on home soil such as Basque, Finnish, or Hungarian.

I once heard a creative approximation using the acronym Eu.Ro.Pa. as Euangelion-Roma-Parthenon (Gospel, Rome, and Parthenon); that is to say, the synthesis of Christianity, Roman law, and Greek philosophy. This cultural interpretation will loosely identify Europe with the concept of Christendom that reached its culmination in the Middle Ages. I believe this interpretation to be a rather accurate one if we allow some leeway for the various indigenous underlying cultures that contributed to the development of the aforementioned synthesis. This would give Catholicism a particular flavor different from Coptic Christianity, for instance, or propitiating the evolution of Common Law and our Mediæval epos (bearing in mind the caveat of fluctuating Muslim incursions in both ends of the continent). We are clearly tending towards the concept of Western civilization here, which transcended geographical barriers over the course of the past five centuries, but whose cradle lies unequivocally in the European continent.

It seems that an element of subjectivity and some compromise will be inescapable in any definition we might reach. Nevertheless, for the sake of this discussion, let us agree to find a common ground between the previous approaches and define “Europe” as the land consisting of the Western peninsula of the Eurasian continent, limited by the Urals and Caucasus and including adjacent islands, inhabited by peoples of mostly Latin, Greek, Germanic, Celtic and Slavic languages, possessing a common culture derived from Christian religion and classical Græco-Roman tradition with varying degrees of local peculiarities (notwithstanding anomalies like Basques, Muslim Bosniacs or Cyprus).

In light of that definition, the inherent European identity of an island off the mainland, of Christian religion and Celtic culture, seems incontestable. History not only confirms this, but would allow us to take it a step further. The first evidence of Ireland as part of a larger cultural continuum comes to us in the Neolithic henges, tumuli, and dolmens that align this island with the megalithic culture of the Atlantic façade, comprising the West coast of Europe from the Iberian to the Scandinavian peninsulas plus the British Isles. The subsequent Celticization of the island brought it again into the orbit of the main culture of the continent’s Iron Age, spreading from Portugal to Turkey. Posterior arrival of Christianity without direct Romanization propitiated its natural development into a very idiosyncratic culture which forms the backbone of the country. And it is this Celtic Christianity, strongly spiritual and erudite, articulated through monasticism, which results in the culmination of Ireland’s place in Europe.

In the turbulent transitioning times following the fall of the Roman Empire, the Island of Saints and Scholars kept the flame of classical culture alive. The lives of Irish saints and their evangelizing journeys across Europe; their exquisitely-crafted, illuminated manuscripts conveying wisdom from the past; the monasteries founded both on the island and the Continent which would become the main centers of learning and host students from all Christendom. All these bear testimony to the inestimable role that this island played in European history. Not without controversy, American scholar Thomas Cahill considers Ireland the true savior of Western Civilization in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. The thesis is that, albeit somewhat hyperbolical, is founded on solid historical arguments. We can therefore conclude that, not only is Ireland an inherent part of Europe: Ireland is Europe and Europe is Ireland, existing in a contingent rather than symbiotic relationship.

Does that mean that Ireland’s rightful place is in the EU and that “Euroskeptics” are embarked in a nefarious endeavor against the country’s natural destiny?

A quick glance at our history will quickly reveal that Europe has never been politically united and any attempt to do so has always been met with natural resistance. The Roman Empire—more of a Mediterranean rather than a pan-European endeavor)—Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler; they all failed, or succeeded only temporarily and marginally. And such enterprises are doomed to fail because they go against the very essence of Europe—a set of political divisions, propitiated by our unique geography, yet possessing a cultural unity, expressed in a common heritage, culture, and religion.

Unlike Asia, whose geographical features favor the development of agglutinative political units, such as in China or India, Europe thrives on territorial fragmentation. Renowned historians and political scientists like Eric Jones, Gary W. Cox, and Joel Mokyr consider this fragmentation not only an inherent or inevitable characteristic of our continent, but one of the reasons for its unparallel development compared to other parts of the world. For example, the so-called “Great Divergence,” amply studied in Jones’s book The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia. The high number of small political entities in Europe fostered competition and a thriving market of ideas and technologies, whereas our common culture also favored collaboration and trade, aided by use of a lingua franca—first Latin, then French, and now, Béarla (English)—which also supported the development of a European intellectual class.

The European Economic Community, in theory, was created with the laudable aim of facilitating free trade. But the best free trade agreement is the one that does not exist. Surely, economic agents do not need any agreement to trade freely; they simply need to be left alone. The metamorphosis of the initial economic community into this current ever-growing political behemoth has been considered inevitable by many political analysts. From some mild monetary and commercial regulations, we have gradually reached a status wherein Brussels is taking over crucial decisions in matters of economy, ecology, immigration, trade, defense, and industry, often with overarching deleterious consequences. To add insult to injury, the ever-increasing political role of the EU not only threatens our freedom and economic development (which it initially vowed to protect), but its policies are also fostering a process of undermining the very common European Christian culture that made us flourish.

Political union, and dissolution of our common culture, is a complete subversion of the true spirit of Europe—political fragmentation and cultural unity. Whatever our stance on European elections, we would do well to remember that Ireland is as European as the EU is anti-European.

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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Many egalitarians and socialists argue that liberty is only of value to those who enjoy the privilege of having free will. They argue that many vulnerable people lack free will and that the state should, therefore, out of compassion for those trapped in unfortunate circumstances for no fault of their own, intervene with support, even when such interventions undermine individual liberty. These arguments reflect a misunderstanding of free will.

In drawing upon the natural law as the foundation for his ethics of liberty, Rothbard highlights the philosophical links between human nature, human reason, and free will. Natural law, as Rothbard depicts it, is based on “the ability of man’s reason to understand and arrive at the laws, physical and ethical, of the natural order.” This ability to reason is inherent in being human, a point on which Rothbard quotes Frederick Copleston:

He [Aquinas] shared with Aristotle the view that it is the possession of reason which distinguished man from animals [and which] enables him to act deliberately in view of the consciously apprehended end and raises him above the level of purely instinctive behavior.

Rothbard argues that both reason and free will are essential in choosing which ends to pursue: man “possesses reason to discover such ends and the free will to choose.” Thus, he views both reason and free will as essential components of human nature. Both reason and free will are universal characteristics of all human beings. It is, therefore, mistaken to suppose that vulnerable people are not responsible for their actions, for example, when they commit crimes, on grounds that they do not have the free will to decide to desist from crime and are “forced” into crime by their poverty or other disadvantages. Rothbard explains that free will is inherent in human nature and is, therefore, common to all human beings:

And here we come to a vital difference between inanimate or even non-human living creatures, and man himself; for the former are compelled to proceed in accordance with the ends dictated by their natures, whereas man, “the rational animal,” possesses reason to discover such ends and the free will to choose.

Therefore, everyone, no matter the circumstances of his life, has the free will to make choices. Rothbard’s explanation for why reason and free will are universal human attributes is that they are elements of self-ownership. He explains:

The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his “free will.” He also discovers the natural fact of his mind’s command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self.

Based on the concept of self-ownership, everyone is free to think, free to choose which ends to pursue, and free to exercise his reason as he wills. One may feel constrained or trapped by circumstances, for example, feeling trapped in poverty, or one may feel under irresistible temptation to commit crimes, but that too is a choice and an exercise of free will. Everyone has the ability to say yes or no, to think before acting. Rothbard explains that “any man, has freedom of will, freedom to choose the course of his life and his actions.”

The fact that we have different reasoning abilities, and may often be unreasonable and prone to error, does not mean that human beings lack the capacity to reason or the freedom to choose. By the same token, the fact that people’s decisions may be strongly influenced by their material circumstances or their station in life does not mean they lack free will.

A related argument often advanced by egalitarians is that free will is only meaningful if people have the freedom to exert their will. Rothbard rejects that argument by distinguishing between “free will” and “freedom of action.” Freedom of action may be constrained by some form of impairment, physical, mental, situational, or circumstantial, but that does not extinguish free will. We all have free will, and free will is inalienable, but this does not mean that everyone is free at all times and in all places to do whatever they want.

In this connection Rothbard also distinguishes between “freedom” and “power,” as human beings are of course not omnipotent and, therefore, do not have the power to do whatever they choose. Our choices and actions are constrained by the laws of nature—we are not free to “leap oceans at a single bound,” to use Rothbard’s example.

Freedom of action is also constrained by the laws of society, for example, when held in bondage. No man lives alone on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe, but instead lives in a society where his property rights are bounded by the property rights of others and attendant laws. Free will, therefore, cannot mean unlimited freedom to act:

If a man’s free will to adopt ideas and values is inalienable, his freedom of action—his freedom to put these ideas into effect in the world, is not in such a fortunate condition. Again, we are not talking about the limitations on man’s power inherent in the laws of his own nature and of the natures of other entities. What we are talking about now is interference with his sphere of action by other people.

What people are free to do is materially, socially, legally, and politically constrained, which is precisely the concern in debates about liberty. Yet all these debates about the meaning and scope of liberty must recognize the innate capacity of human beings to reason, to decide which ends to pursue, and the free will to choose.

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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ESG has become a buzzword for both the American Left and Right. For the Right, it is just a Trojan horse for progressive social attitudes to sneak into business. For the Left it is an alternative to the “cruel” profits-only business model of Milton Friedman. Some on the Right abhor ESG because they worship profit in some abstract material sense. They treat it as if consumerism and profit are materialistic ends to worship in of themselves. But what they ignore is the crucial insight that all action accounts for social welfare.

ESG does not improve care for the environment or social causes, it actively undermines social welfare.

Humans are not only impelled by their physical desires to act, but also social, cultural, and religious desires. Mises describes this in Human Action:

Whether it is possible to separate neatly those actions which aim at the satisfaction of needs exclusively conditioned by man’s physiological constitution from other “higher” needs can be left undecided . . . It cannot be denied that the demand for goods is widely influenced by metaphysical, religious, and ethical considerations . . . and many other things. To an economist who would try to restrict his investigations to “material” aspects only, the subject matter of inquiry vanishes as soon as he wants to catch it.

When a man builds a church he still acts purposefully even if there is no bodily need for a church building. When a monk chooses to take up radical poverty, he acts purposefully. When someone chooses to donate their money in order to plant trees for the environment, they still are acting. Human action doesn’t entail the satiation of our carnal physical desires, it entails all our actions to change the state of affairs around us. Donations, conservation, and the like are all possible forms of action.

So, when we pursue profit, it is always a reflection of an increase in social welfare. Profit isn’t just “making more things.” Rather, it is the allocation of goods and resources to the most urgent economic demands in society. This is done so by the capitalist-entrepreneur who anticipates future desires of the consumers and forwarding present funds for future goods. If they correctly anticipate what society will desire and value in the future, they reap profit. If they do not, they are punished with losses for wasting resources. Those resources are then liquidated and more competent entrepreneurs are able to make use of scarce resources.

A consumer who values a cause like environmentalism may value the psychic profit reaped from buying a good from a firm that donates to the environment more than from, say, Walmart. As a result, they may be willing to pay more for such causes. Others may be more willing, but are unable to because of material circumstances. Our concerns and cares for various social causes are imputed into every action and choice we make—our choice of a path in the causes we support. This includes the brands and stores from which we choose to purchase. It is not just the physical pleasure derived from consuming a good, it is also all of our social values. All of our social, religious, physical, and psychological values are imputed into our actions. Our action is then mediated through the market and exchange.

The market finds a compromise of interests and maximizes welfare where exchange occurs. If a scarce resource or labor is being exchanged, the social, personal, and religious values are present in the choices of consumers and producers.

Producers are another side of the equation who also carry values. They too may prefer to incur some costs and reap less profit so they might donate to some cause. Matt McCaffrey and Carmen Dorobăț gave an example in a Mises University session in which they noted that a businessman may be happier to reap only 8% profit and donate to help the environment rather than 10% profit with no donation.

If the welfare derived from these things was widely demanded by consumers and producers there would be no need for ESG scores. ESG scores force firms into over-weighing certain social values that are already implicit in profit-exchange. Profits do not only mean the creation of more physical goods for physical satisfaction but also the creation of value in these non-material areas. By diverting from profit, ESG actively undermines the careful balance of these values. Turning away from profits means that less value is created for both consumers and producers.

Not to mention the fact that it is economic growth that allows for more care of the environment. It is only when we are able to meet our basic needs that we can afford to care for the world around us. London itself provides a perfect example, with air pollution first increasing with industrialization and eventually declining even lower than when it was first measured in 1700. Economic growth gives us the means to care for the environment. If you cannot feed yourself, you will be unable, and likely unwilling, to care for the world around you.

ESG and similar strategies undermine the very things they claim to facilitate. Care for the environment and social causes (ones actually held by the populace) are already implicit within all human action. ESG foists imbalance on exchange that already cares for these social values. If we wish to maximize care for these things, we should seek economic growth in part and understand that profit reflects value—and value comes from many places.

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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View the video version of this article below, or on Twitter/X.

One of the myths being endlessly repeated in this inflationary cycle is the myth that rising prices are caused by greed.

For example, Democratic senator Bob Casey is running around Pennsylvania campaigning on the idea while claiming he’ll solve the problem if you re-elect him. Kamala Harris is doing the same.

But the fact that greed doesn’t cause inflation is obvious if we just ask why prices across the board have surged since 2020. Since then, consumer prices rose more than twenty percent, knocking off about a fourth of the value of every dollar you hold.

Is that all because greed suddenly got worse after 2020 for some unknown reason? And, if so, why is it that greed was magically barely a problem at all for many years during the last decade when official CPI inflation rates often came in between 1 and 2 percent?

There is no explanation for this greed thesis, and the reason is that there is only one cause of generally rising prices— the thing we could call price inflation. The only cause of this is monetary inflation—that is, a rising money supply. Or, as sometimes stated more casually: printing new money.

So, if the question is why did we see the consumer price index go up by more than 20 percent over the past four years—with home prices rising by 50 percent and wages not keeping up? The answer is that the central banks literally created trillions of new dollars during that period. (When we say they “printed” this money, we don’t mean they physically printed it, although they sometimes do. When we say the central bank “printed money, we mean the central bank created new money out of nothing.)

Recall how during the covid lockdowns, the government was paying people to stay home and not work. Where did this money come from? The central bank printed it. There was not money to be had from the Treasury, of course, as the federal government itself was already running huge deficits.

The central bank created so much new money in fact, that the money supply has increased by 32 percent since early 2020. And nearly one quarter of all the dollars that are out there right now, were created since then. These are astounding numbers.

And, we can go back further than that. You want to know why stock prices and real estate prices have been going up so relentlessly for more than ten years? It’s because since 2009, when we began the age of quantitative easing, the money supply is up by 185 percent.

For many years, the monetary inflation appeared primarily as rising prices in assets like housing. That’s why CPI inflation seemed “low” for a long time between 2010 and 2020. But, eventually, the piper must be paid for relentless monetary expansion of the type we’ve experienced since 2009. The frenzy of money creation that occurred since 2020—and the rising prices that followed—have made this clear.

[Read More: “Money-Supply Growth Accelerates as Wall Street Demands Even More Easy Money“ by Ryan McMaken]

Of course, politicians are now trying to have it both ways. First, they’re claiming that there isn’t much price inflation at all, and Bidenomics already solved that somehow.

At the same thing they’re saying that yes, there is price inflation, but it’s the fault of greedy corporations who are trying to price-gouge you.

Neither of these claims are true, though.

Prices aren’t falling, or even flat. By the government’s measure, food now costs 26 percent more than it did only four years ago. And prices still rising. Last month, the feds’ own measure said there was 3 percent growth in the CPI. That’s 3 percent on top of all the other increases of recent years. And, the farther down you are on the economic ladder, the lower the odds your income has come close to keeping up with that. Meanwhile, home prices have risen far beyond the CPI measure.

And then there’s that other claim that if there is any price inflation at all, it’s all caused by greed.

Yet, the real cause of rising prices is right in front of us. It’s 15 years of money printing to bail out banks that started back in 2009. And on top of this, we got even more of that newly printed COVID money.

The problem is not greed, it’s the growth in the money supply.

Its elected officials and their friends who CAUSED this problem, of course, but they certainly aren’t going to tell you that.

Price inflation is NEVER caused by greed. It’s always caused by a growing money supply. The money supply has grown big-time since 2020, and now we pay a lot more for food and housing. More: https://t.co/4tJNgoq1Th pic.twitter.com/s5g5bDiKz4

— Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) August 30, 2024

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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