The Greatest Trick Ever Played, And How Bitcoin Shatters The Illusion

This is an opinion editorial by Andrew Axelrod, a Bitcoin educator and writer whose LinkedIn posts have orange pilled thousands.

Throughout history, people have always been blinded by the cathedral of their times. Ideas of chivalry, caste systems and royal bloodlines were all incredibly powerful constructs that towered above any possible scrutiny, let alone rebuke.

Today is no different.

Just as fish cannot perceive the water they swim in, it is also difficult for people to recognize the cathedrals for what they truly are. Grandiose narratives, fanciful myths, and seductive lies make for invisible chains.

They are the walls of Plato’s Cave. They are the scrolling green code of the Matrix.

And no prisoner can break free from shackles that remain hidden.

Such illusions are shattered by bitcoin — like waves breaking against solid rock. This is because bitcoin unveils the three most powerful and enduring illusions of our time — those of the competent central planner, the common good, and fiat money.

Let us now step through the looking glass and dissect these magic tricks one by one, starting with the competence of central planners.

Ah yes, central planners. They aspire to positions of power in the guise of charismatic figureheads, lofty intellectuals, the spiritually enlightened or impressive polymaths who’s vast knowledge spans the fields of economics, finance, healthcare, engineering, infrastructure, energy policy and oooohhhh so many more.

Even better, they are packaged and sold as benevolent leaders that strive for a better tomorrow, acting only out of altruism and for love of the common good. Truth and justice are their names.

Intellect, wisdom and hearts of gold? Sign me up!

Of the three, this is perhaps the easiest illusion to dispel.

At its best, politics is often described as the act of jumping in front of a moving parade while claiming credit. And at its worst, central planners get drunk on the myth of their own competence which inevitably turns the parade into a chain gang shuffle.

This is because central planning at its heart must rely on coercion. Voluntary actions occur organically, bottom up, and on the individual level. By definition, they do not need to be centrally orchestrated.

Next, putting aside the laughable notion that an individual mortal could possess any meaningful level of mastery across so many complex domaines and ignoring the fact that these are flesh and blood humans, naturally prone to self-interest and subject to all the usual dark appetites, it is equally insane to think that an abstraction such as the “common good” could ever be agreed on let alone achieved.

But that, of course, is the entire point.

The common good has always been in the eye of the beholder and is therefore highly susceptible to every possible perversion. It is ideally malleable — custom tailored camouflage for the central planner.

In the name of the common good, central planners then take upon themselves the right to decide on the conflicts of nations, on conscription in war, on the hollowing out of industry, on the allocation of rations, on the burden of tax (either directly at gunpoint or discretely through inflation) and, most importantly, on who gets to be first in line at the money printer’s trough.

Bitcoin of course flips this on its head. More on that later.

But how does such a ludicrous belief in central planning perpetuate itself — the deranged idea that a miniscule group of people, or oftentimes even a sole individual, should with the flick of a pen decide the wellbeing and economic fate of millions?