Dr. Rist Simanjanowski is a tenured Professor of Public Administration at California Baptist University. Most recently, his published research explores digital assets in the public and private sectors.
In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published the novel “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today”. While the text should not go unrecognized, possibly as a result of a direct attack on American politics, it is a brilliant piece of literature that bitcoiners may find amusing. In any event, I strongly encourage readers to take a look at it. The relationships Americans face in 21st century politics are highly reflective of history. The correlation with bitcoin is easy to trace, in my opinion.
One of my favorite Twain quotes said, “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress, but I repeat myself…”
Twain, and the lesser-known Warner, had a knack for satire in a way that was at the time slightly offensive and obscene, if not compelling and true, then mistaken. If Twain had a Twitter account, it would have millions of followers and probably the same amount of outspoken protestors.
The deep corruption of American politics is widespread and systematic at every level. All viewpoints agree that corruption exists, with government officials choosing winners and losers in business and business and returning the favor by funding their next “elected” official. Ironically, the actual era, i.e., post-Civil War America, is now literally defined as “The Gilded Age”, drawn directly from the satirical book of Twain and Warner.
The process of gilding is pretty straightforward: you take something of little or no value and paint over it to create the illusion of wealth. One can imagine a tin coin, painted with a golden hue to resemble a gold coin.
At the time, what appeared on the surface to be a booming economic and industrial era for the whole of America was gilded. There were huge disparities between the rich and the poor as well as a heavy focus on materialism in some circles.
The rich financed their empires on the backs of the poor, as did local and national politicians; One could argue that not much has changed today. With this method of financing, the paucity of funds increased and the cumbersome lifestyle faced by a starving working class ended. What appeared to be golden on the surface was useless beneath. How many times have we seen politicians pass laws that ultimately turn tax dollars into dividend payments for their personal portfolios?
Don’t allow your business professors to proclaim that this era was the economic boom of a lifetime in America—these moments defied greed, slavery, and corruption. Regular Americans had little or no recourse. If bitcoins were around during the Gilded Age, the government itself could be considered a shitcoin. More recently, the fall of Luna is a reminder of this corruption and greed. As always, bitcoin is different and its importance will only become more bright when more centralized scam projects collapse in a cascade of carnage. No matter which side of the aisle you are on, if you are targeting the opposing side, you are not paying attention; Greed is apolitical.
Between 1870 and 1900 the world noticed that America was booming (for some). As a result, there was a mass exodus to the West. Native British, Scots and others undertook grueling sea and land voyages in an attempt to seize an opportunity for new prosperity. Unfortunately, many of these talents were wasted as immigrants were mostly John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Railroad and Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel Company. (In case you were unaware, the Carnegie Steel Company eventually became JPMorgan’s U.S. steel monopoly… and the oil tycoon also has deep roots in Big Pharma. There’s a reason many medical-sector products have a petroleum base. Just saying Has been… but let’s get back to bitcoin.)
Perhaps Twain and Warner were doing something in their acceptance of inequalities during this period. The Gilded Age was, in many ways, as much political corruption as freedom and opportunity. Has anything changed or just updated the veil and strategy?
There is a popular phrase in the bitcoin community that says, “Fix the money, fix the world.” What if bitcoin existed at the time and any excess currency earned by workers could be kept free from political corruption, confiscation, inflation or political partying? Technically, all that existed at the time was gold and silver, yet the poorest people in the country could not buy even fractions of coins; In bitcoin, it is possible to buy fractions of coins.
I would propose that fiat is a gilded currency, that centralized protocols are gilded projects and that society is watching, in real time, the proverbial paint away. The unhappiness that society is facing is not with each other as the media forces us to believe; Unhappiness stems from the realization that everything we have been sold and the money we need to buy it is gilded. Many politicians themselves offer gilding. If fiat personalities were a thing, followers on his Twitter would crave his golden hue.
Yes, fiat currencies are important as a medium of exchange, but they are (and will continue to be) a terrible store of value. The deflationary aspects of bitcoin, in particular, the fact that there will only be 21 million bitcoins and the reward for mining the coins is cut in half every four years, only making the asset more pristine for those who don’t have any. Bitcoin is not. They reflect history and get exposed to bitcoin. The economic crash that will happen throughout 2022 will only affect more bitcoiners.
Bitcoin fixes money without gilding. However, can bitcoin also address an unfulfilled soul by providing humanity with the opportunity to seek their true purpose? My recent belief that a society that does not rely on a gilded reality may have even questioned its own existence.
In previous articles and a book, I have addressed an unfulfilled soul, but how can fixation of money help the soul or address this issue of a gold world? I propose that these concepts are not interdependent, but they may be interconnected. Yes, corrupt people with more resources will spread corruption; But what about the good guys?
What if good people, good intentions, strong values, and a solid moral compass had access to the same resources that robbers did during the Gilded Age?
What would the world look like? What about politics? Business? industry? your family?
I suggest that the cool bitcoin community (QBCs are the ones that aren’t trending on Twitter) is going to forge a new path for the next generation as they turn their backs on centralized projects and adopt bitcoin.
These newly minted bitcoiners are not gilded, they are real, and they are genuinely frustrated by scam projects and centralized greed. Many in the “cryptocurrency community” are becoming bitcoiners as they watch the paint chip go away.
this is a guest post Dr. Riste Simonjanowski, The opinions expressed are solely their own and do not necessarily represent those of BTC Inc. either . reflect the thoughts of bitcoin magazine,
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