Check Your Financial Privilege, A Review
Alex Gladstein has written a very solid book in the form of a compendium of articles. The book highlights the stories of a number of Bitcoin entrepreneurs and users around the world, focusing particularly on the less fortunate.
While Gladstein certainly understands Bitcoin and its benefits, he is rather naïve in the realm of political philosophy. I say this with regret.
The book tells the story of the creation of Bitcoin, its key features including the famed hard cap, permissionless transactions and internet native money. Gladstein then uses these features to tell the story of the growing American Empire, its global financial rule and more as manifested via the Petrodollar.
The book does a nice job explaining the nuances of the petrodollar system as well as France’s little brother version of it, the CFA. Of course, having the world reserve currency is a massive benefit to US citizens and other users of the US dollar. Unfortunately, world reserve currency status yields a heck of a lot of power which always corrupts.
World reserve currency status certainly has its benefits but it also has its drawbacks, especially when it is enforced on a global population not adopted voluntarily. First, the US government can get away with a lot more money printing than it otherwise would. Second, it results in moral hazard leading to more “need” for intervention around the world to ensure the dollar remains the world reserve currency. This is not exhaustive but highlights that the dollar is not in fact the reserve currency of the world because it has outcompeted others, rather, it is explicitly non-market reasons it is the global reserve currency. It is force (or the threat thereof) that keeps the dollar on top.
Contrary to the US dollar as the world reserve, a Bitcoin Standard, would likely be adopted only voluntarily by millions and then billions of consumers and does not benefit any single government in the form of being able to create more units of money. Of course, a Bitcoin Standard could very well provide a mechanism to get out of debt for any government smart enough to stack some sats and encourage global adoption but I digress.
After laying out the petrodollar system and the negative impacts it has had globally, Gladstein turns his focus to dictatorships and other poorly run jurisdictions. From Palestine to Cuba to Togo to Iraq and Afghanistan, Gladstein shows how the nature of the permissionless network is a godsend to users in those countries. It provides a way to save wealth over time, it provides a way to remit money from one jurisdiction to another (i.e. to pay for schooling for a child in Europe or the reverse to earn money in the US and remit it to a family back home in Latin America).
The one issue I have with Gladstein’s book is his rather reactionary and not well thought through support of democracy as good and strong men as bad. While I do not advocate for strong men generically, I do think we must realize that sometimes they are better than the alternative.
In the case of El Salvador, regardless of reason, it is simply unquestionable that Nayib Bukele has done more to help the average Salvadoran than any of the previous democratically elected leaders. The same can also be said for Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Of course, we can take the example even further and point to the great Lee Kuan Yew and the example Singapore has set for the world to highlight that strongmen are required to get things done at certain time and place.
While not only can strongmen be good for governance, Gladstein also fails to realize that democracy is a very poor form of governance. There is no country in the world in which my role as a voter substantially impacts the policies of my government. I have no say and never will. Further, it will always devolve into voting for more free stuff as Hans Hoppe has clearly shown in Democracy the God that Failed.
While supporters of liberty and freedom can be encouraged by Gladstein’s efforts to see the good that Bitcoin does for those less fortunate, we need to hold our thought leaders to a higher standard in terms of thinking through the questions of governance. Democracy is not synonymous with good and strong or powerful individuals are not synonymous with bad.