I sometimes think about the totality of how many people throughout human history have gotten totally fucked by their governments and had to flee their homes and communities with nothing more than what they had on them.

What has been the economic cost of this, what is the cost of always living in a state of fear that it will happen again?

While it can happen, at least with bitcoin you can keep some of your property beyond the violent expropriations of any government. The value of such a thing cannot be understood by dollars or purchasing power, but only through the cost of life and what real economy security means to someone who has seen just the smallest amount of the horrors of the genocides of the 20th century.