Yes, that's true. A thesis I had when I wrote my book about this was that it makes it easier for people to understand the policy when you trace it back to the concrete place, time, people and events when it actually started, and that this would be good to lay out for others in all other countries. It's IMO an important part of every nation's history, as well as it is a perfect way pedagogically to teach people about it.
Not exactly, more like constant debasement, possibly also by forcing them to come back again and again to get coins with the "new and valid" design.
I am an activist, because I believe that we need to reclaim our right to use whichever money we like best - what we call monetary freedom.
Without this very basic human right we cannot IMO be free in any meaningful sense of the word.
Having read a lot of about the economics and politics of money in previous years, I stumbled upon the following story in 2008:
A 1000 years ago, Einar Tambarskjelve was the protector of my ancestors - the free people of Trøndelag, which is a large region in the middle part of Norway.
Harald Hardrada, the evil Viking king and ruler of Norway, killed Einar Tambarskjelve and his son Eindride in a cowardly plot in Nidaros in 1050, the city which today is known as Trondheim.
The killing of Einar and Eindride made it possible for Hardrada to enslave my people, as he became the first ruler of Norway who, in the same year, successfully introduced inflation as a policy.
The picture shows an example of the silver coins that were struck in his mints in Trondheim and Hamar.
Hardrada introduced a law that said that people who didn't accept these coins could be punished by death.
The people would have to bring their silver to his mints in order to get usable money. Harald took some of their silver as a fee for the "service".
In just 16 years he reduced the coins' silver content from 90% to 33%. By doing this he effectively tripled the nation's money supply, while he at the same time amassed an enormous wealth and political power.
The average speed of the devaluation of the nation's money was just shy of 7% per year.
This inflation rate is the exact same as we have had in recent years, both in Norway and in the US, for instance between 2002 and 2022.
Harald knew that he could use this policy to enslave my ancestors.
We don't learn anything about this in the school or from MSM. You probably wouldn't have heard about this story if I hadn't decide to tell people about what I learned 15 years ago.
We shouldn't be naive and say to ourself that today's rulers don't understand the power of the inflation policy. They might not know precisely the mechanichs of the monetary system.
But our politicians know exactly how important inflation is for them to keep us under their heal.
I strongly believe that we can reclaim our right to have monetary freedom
Today I will explain one of the most powerful graphs you will ever see in your whole life.
But before we look at the graph, I can mention that about 60% of Americans invest in stocks and about 50% of Norwegians invest in stock funds.
Few know that the value of their investments in stocks isn't able to keep pace with the money's reduction in purchasing power over a longer period of time, when measured against all types of economic goods.
The reason is that few understand the effect of monetary policy and that their investments compete with an inflation of the money supply which is roughly on average 7% per year, both in the US and in Norway.
The red line in the graph refers to the official M2 money supply (Norwegian kroner).
The dark blue line is the Oslo Stock Exchange's main index. This includes dividends paid to the shareholders.
As you can see the stock index isn't able to keep up with the rate of the money printing.
You get about the same results with USD and the S&P 500 index.
The dark blue line isn't adjusted for capital gains tax. The more money that is printed, the more the price of the stocks will rise and the more you will have to pay in capital gains tax.
Neither is it adjusted for management fees. Investopedia says that "Management fees can range from as low as 0.10% to more than 2%".
When you take capital gains tax and management costs into account, it's very, very few who can beat the 7% rate of increase in the money supply.
That's why professional traders "gear" their stock investments by borrowing money so they can double or triple the investment and their profits, as they go in and out of stocks.
Access to cheap credit and understanding how the stock market works makes it possible for them to beat the index.
It's the same with large corporations who invest in real estate, factories and other forms of capital. They use cheap credit to make a profit.
The yellow line is the price (NOK) of physical gold. It has performed just slightly below stocks. When you take into account that the risk associated with buying gold is lower than the risk associated with buying stocks, it looks like gold has been a better investment than stocks.
Many people believe they are saving when they buy a house that they can live in. The green line shows that the average nominal price of homes in Norway cannot at all keep up with the rate of money printing. Norwegian households are more indebted than in any other countries, because they have bought into the idea that buying a house is saving, which it in general clearly isn't.
The light blue line at the bottom of the graph is CPI, the Consumer Price Index. This is important, because wages are adjusted by CPI, give or take a few percentage points. The development of wages is far, far lower than the rate of money printing as well as the stock market index, gold and homes. This means, for instance, that buying a home becomes more and more costly in real terms for wage earners as time goes by.
But this is how the monetary policy works. The few who gain from money printing have to make someone pay for it. And this group is the wage earners, ordinary workers like you and me.
Roughly speaking it's the government and the wealthiest 1% of the people who benefit from the money printing. A few more manage to preserve the value of their savings by taking risks and investing their earnings in securities.
The overwhelming majority lose out. We are the ones who finance what the 1-percenters and the government earn from the system.
This is also what explains the ever increasing wealth gap and concentration of economic resources on fewer and fewer hands.
Without this redistributive effect, the government wouldn't bother to have a monetary policy based on inflating the money supply.
Perhaps you now begin to understand that it's no coincidence that those who wake up to this reality become interested in gold and #Bitcoin
The rarer truth becomes the simpler the truth has to be for it to create a signal that shines through the noise of all the lies. That's why Bitcoin is so important.
#Bitcoin needs to be a happy freedom project.
I believe #bitcoin increasingly will be used conciously by smart millennials' in their attempt at defending themselves against the political, social and economic shitstorm of a heritage that the boomers and generation X are trying to talk them into taking over.
It must have been a historic revelation by Jeffrey Sachs when he 6 days ago explained in The Duran Podcast that the Western countries decided to save Poland from hyperinflation in 1991, while they decided to let hyperinflation destroy Russia's economy and throw the former superpower into a complete chaos. To me it was the final piece in the puzzle, as everything made sense with regards to how the new world order with the US hegemony and the so-called "Chinese miracle" emerged after Soviet Union's collapse.
Inflation is a policy. Why don't they teach us this in the schools?
New op-ed, this one I wrote together with Alexander Ellefsen, published today in Bitcoin Magazin.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/economics-in-norway-paves-way-for-bitcoin
Not teaching money and inflation in economics is like not teaching gravity in physics.
The combination of the short term volatility and the long term number-goes-up proposition of bitcoin might lower people's time preference, as it disincentivizes actions aimed at a quick profit and incentivizes actions aimed at long term benefits.
I posted a positive note on Bitcoin on Facebook today and I've so far only received one hateful comment.
Bitcoin helps us to rediscover values that are decoded in the human genes. It's basically gene therapy.
CBDC has total faceplant encoded in its genes
I like your reflections. Few have responded. That's a bad sign. This is an important subject. And when a leading institution and visionary come out like that, repeating the message of some other famous bitcoiners, I become uneasy. Because if Bitcoin becomes a religion, that might undermine the whole project in the long term, IMO. And then I'm not saying that being a religion will only be a bad thing.
Thx for responding. I think the question is important. And I think religion can be very positive. But I find it necessary to ask if Bitcoin really is - or should be - religion.
Swan says "Bitcoin is a religion".
I ask if that is a good idea.
Bitcoiners now seem reluctant to answer.
What are your thoughts?
I'm inclined to see lack of engagement as a confirmation of my suspicion that many Bitcoiners don't like the idea that bitcoin is a religion, or that normies think of bitcoin as a religion.
I see myself as a Bitcoiner newbie. And I'll state my view about this question later, in some more detail.
https://twitter.com/enur72/status/1676246611968630784?t=rEDjuSvNpt-OnTHo9ODz4A&s=19