Of course fiat has value. Is that even a question? The protection of the American Empire proved more valuable than the assurances of non-sovereign money. The destabilization of the rest of the world created a demand for the debt notes of the Empire. A strategic arrangement with Saudi Arabia created further demand. The threat of violence that will be visited on you if you don’t pay your taxes creates further demand. On top of all of this, it’s pretty easy to spend fiat in tiny denominations for coffee, or large denominations via wire transfer. It’s relatively easy to track with double entry accounting systems. And if you can get legal permission to manufacture this currency in the form of credit, you can actually acquire material goods as well as power and influence with those tokens. If you and I don’t, someone else will. Then they will use that power and influence to rule us.

Now, that may not be a fair game; indeed, it’s extremely rigged. But that didn’t stop those playing that game from literally conquering the world with it. It was the better tool for conquest and power, and it was used to those ends.

Fighting against this reality has been futile - it’s a self-powering flywheel. The fiat monopolists print the money that gives them the power to hire the violence to enforce the monopoly, and around again we go. Participating in this system is less an empowering choice and more a survival instinct.

Subjectively, people value the life they can live participating in this system more than the life they will live trying to fight it. Survival and conflict avoidance is a perfectly rational impulse.

Successfully fighting this Empire is impossible with outdated technology. You’re not resisting this tyranny with shells and bow and arrow, or even gold and gunpowder. The Leviathan got the upper hand technologically in the 20th century.

While it is not yet certain, it is my hope that the balance of power shifts away from tyrants and empires in the 21st century, enabled by the radical defensive technologies of encryption and Bitcoin.