The Debt Slavery System as an Alternative to Human Civilization
In The Fiat Standard, world-renowned economist Saifedean Ammous turns his unique analytical lens on the fiat monetary system, explaining it as a feat of engineering and technology — just as he did for Bitcoin in his international bestseller The Bitcoin Standard. This time, Ammous examines the historical departure from the gold standard toward today's system of government-backed fiat money.
He outlines the purpose and failures of the fiat standard, derives the broader economic, political, and social consequences of its use, and explores how Bitcoin will influence this system over time. With penetrating insight, Ammous analyzes global political currencies in analogy to Bitcoin: how they are "mined" whenever government-backed institutions extend credit, their lack of inherent inflation constraints, and the unchecked government interventions that have led to severe, devastating, and persistent distortions in global markets for food, energy, science, and education.
Through these comparisons, Ammous shows that Bitcoin could be our next step forward — possessing, like the fiat system, high spatial salability, yet without leading to uncontrolled debt as fiat does. Rather than a chaotic, hyperinflationary collapse, the rise of Bitcoin could act as a debt jubilee and an orderly upgrade of the world's monetary operating system, revolutionizing global capital and energy markets.