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Review: Bitcoin: The Inverse of Clown World

Published on September 2, 2024

by
Joakim Book
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Once you see a new world, you can’t unsee it.

Unfolding across America and the world is a new, parallel economy—nay, even a parallel life. It started with the most promising solution to a broken money and headed downstream from there. Inflation, money printing, misallocation of resources, central bank bailouts, and interventions—many of us saw these for what they were and recognized how damaging their mishandling has become to economic affairs and the fabric of society itself.

Now people receive their information via unstoppable, decentralized freedom networks like Nostr, share encrypted messages over programs like Signal, and hold their wealth in unstoppable, decentralized monies. Additionally, people increasingly acquire their sustenance from local growers and tell the IRS squat about it. More people than ever—somewhere between 5% and 10% of American schoolchildren—are homeschooled. The new world unfolding is slowly making the legacy one obsolete.

To assist you and bring you some needed entertainment on the journey, is Knut Svanholm, author of Bitcoin: Everything Divided by 21 Million and Praxeology, last year’s excellent attempt at marrying the worlds of Bitcoin and Austrian economics. He has now teamed up with his podcast sidekick, Luke de Wolf, in producing Bitcoin: The Inverse of Clown World. It’s a freedom manifesto, a rallying cry for a better world, and a hilarious anti-festschrift for the broken, clownish world we see around us.

Across thirteen easily-digestible chapters, we are treated to personal anecdotes and some insight into guarding one’s own attention; game theory and praxeology; Hoppe and argumentation ethics; critical thinking about democracy and collectivism. The chapters are intentionally written to be self-contained, stand-alone essays—perfect for a short read before bed or on the beach. At times, that makes them echo-y, with the exact same quotes and phrases used repeatedly.

We get musings on creativity, Stoicism, and what the relationship is between freedom and responsibility. Small steps toward freedom in your own life creates more “freedom dioxide” in the global atmosphere. The authors ask how “wokeism” works and deliver plenty of thoughtful dissection in between the laughable values and behaviors worn with pride by the lizard-like creatures running the political theater.

The result isn’t a Bitcoin book, though there’s plenty of Bitcoin-related themes in it, rather radical skepticism, distrust in (fiat) authority, appeal to exit, and trust in technological solutions. The allure of The Inverse of Clown World is to see that all the madness in the world—political grandstanding, gender delusions, the broad moral, fiscal, monetary, and political decay—calls out for an explanation. Most trends we see around us, from the latest social fad, to the outdated universities; along with troublesome regulations handed down by some glorified village buffoons that seem so obviously irrelevant and so obviously stupid. Why is that happening? How did it come to this?

Svanholm and de Wolf have an answer for us. It’s the broken monetary system: “When the money stops working, everything becomes political and a farce.” Like many of us attuned to technological options to enhance freedom in our own lives, Svanholm and de Wolf see the world changing rapidly:

We are facing a societal paradigm shift of immense proportions, where our perseverance in the present will determine the fate of our children’s future. Are you willing to stand your ground and fight for your freedoms, or will you choose the convenience of being mere voting cattle. Are you willing to bite the hand that allegedly feeds you?

Indeed, it’s already happening to some extent among Bitcoiners. (“This parallel reality is already unfolding for those who have embraced the Bitcoin revolution”). The world they envision is mostly here:

Virtually everyone can look each other in the eye and communicate verbally without lag, no matter how geographically far apart they are. Combine that with Bitcoin, and you quickly realize that national borders are already obsolete. If no one can stop you from communicating, not even monetarily, barriers to global commerce dissolve.

Bitcoin is a step-function in civilization’s journey toward more and more difficult ways to confiscate that which belongs to someone else—the foundational purpose of property rights. When money is pure information, rather than permissioned sums on the balance sheets of hyper-regulated banks, “confiscating it becomes much more challenging.” With teleportable digital gold, that affectionate hipster way of thinking about hard money in modern times, every robber from petty criminals to the taxman have a hard time knowing how much loot someone has available—or whether what they stole was but a small portion of what else the victims might have.

Even despite the crackdown on Samourai and other coinjoin services this year—charges that are unlikely to stick—discerning the paper trail history of who once owned what amount of money is prohibitively costly. “Stealing information from someone’s memory is inherently more complex than confiscating their physical possessions.”

Altogether, the book that Svanholm and de Wolf launch today on Bitcoin Infinity Day (don’t ask…), is excellent and wonderful. Will it change the world? Probably not, but few books ever do that. Will it change your world? Maybe. The learning and opportunities for self-reflection contained in Inverse of Clown World and the spot-on humor with which it is delivered just might alter your way of looking at things.

“The future is already here,” Svanholm often quips. All you have to do is to live it.

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About Joakim Book

I write, edit, proofread and research on all things banking and monetary. First Class from University of Glasgow, and Distinction from University of Oxford, I now freelance full time. I love keto, yoga, travelling, reading and arguing over economic issues - today and in the past. Find out more: https://www.joakimbook.com/

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