This is an opinion editorial by Jimmy Song, a bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur and programmer with over 20 years of experience.
I have been saying this phrase for almost 2.5 years and end my podcasts, newsletters and speeches with this phrase. In this excerpt, I wanted to know its meaning and why I keep repeating it.
Carthago Delenda Esta
idiom Fiat Delenda Asta Comes from the phrase in Latin, Carthago Delenda Esta, which means that Carthage must be destroyed. The phrase is attributed to Kato the Elder. He would end all his speeches in the Roman Senate with this phrase, no matter what he was talking about. He was like a tormented mother yelling at her teenage son to come downstairs for dinner. And, as the teenage son allowed his food to cool down, Rome ignored Cato until he was harmed by the Carthaginians.
Who were the Carthaginians? He was the enemy of Rome. Like the Romans, the Carthaginians were a competing empire with the Mediterranean. As the two expanded, they clashed and some epic battles took place between the two competing kingdoms. Two Carthaginian generals, Hamilcar and his son Hannibal, caused some serious damage to the Romans,
We don’t really know that much about the Carthaginians because Cato’s words were eventually accepted. Rome didn’t just sack Carthage, they completely destroyed the city. They were determined to eradicate them, so the Romans made sure to leave the city in ruins for more than a century.
In short, Cato wanted to destroy Carthage because otherwise Rome itself would be destroyed. The victory over the Carthaginians was a major victory that would lead to the mythical position of the Roman Empire in history as it is now. The destruction of Carthage was the victory of the sign that propelled the empire to the heights it eventually achieved.
charter
The word fiat in Latin is not an adjective like in English. Here is Genesis 1:3 in Latin: “Dixit des fiat lux et facta est luxWhich means, “And God said that there be light and there be light.” Fiat Lux Here it means “let there be light.” Fiat is a verb in Latin that means “to be.” And that’s actually where the phrase fiat money comes from. It means let there be money. Money requires no work and ceases to exist, so as a result, fiat is an adjective in English meaning “by decree.”
Fiat is the idea that you can create something by telling it to exist, not by working to make it exist. Fiat mindset is the illusion that you can turn something into reality just by saying it.
But as any child can tell you, wanting something to exist doesn’t work. One has to do the work of making someone. I might say let the steak last all day, but it won’t happen until someone raises the cow, someone butchers the cow, someone cooks the steak and someone saves the steak.
Who does the work?
In other words, the question we have to ask is who or what actually fulfills the decree? Who makes this? Somebody has to invest time and energy to make something. Somebody has to do the work. Work is not given voluntarily in a legal system, but through tyranny. You get involuntary labor by force and violence.
Force and violence are not popular and they usually increase tensions and make it very difficult for the government to remain in power. Atrocities are properly opposed and revolution is not far behind. The former Soviet bloc used mandates and decrees to “make things up” at gunpoint. They were particularly cruel and authoritarian, all because they had the legal mindset that they could bring new things into existence. This is not new, of course. Ancient Egyptians as civilizations used force and violence to obtain things created by decree. It is no surprise that so many rulers considered themselves to be gods. The verdict he delivered will be fulfilled, but only at the cost of massive human suffering.
In contrast, the modern western world used a different form of decree through fiat money. Fiat money allows for soft mandates. Fiat money is still in existence, but all other decrees are not imposed on others, so much as payments are made through the printing of money. The main advantage of fiat money is that it is an indirect system of mandates. By paying people for their labor through inflation, fiat money creates the illusion of market forces. Because there is monetary compensation and monetary incentives, fiat money makes government mandates like the normal functioning of the market. Yet as we all know, inflation is a form of theft and their action is similar to that of a thief who uses your wallet to pay you.
Fiat money is a decree limited to the most tradable goods in the market – money. But because the money can be used to buy almost anything, the end result is that the authorities can force the market to do their bidding. The officials get what they want and the ruled become unknowingly slaves. Instead of being forced to work, they are seduced to work. The executives look like a generous employer, but in the background, they’re stealing from your savings to pay you. Like Tom Sawyer, they’ve managed to get us something through a trick.
fiat mentality problems
At this point the advocates of fiat money might say, well, what is wrong with this system because people feel good about providing these goods and services and we are not forcing people to gulag? While not as serious as the traditional authoritarian regime, there are some serious problems with this legal mindset.
First, fiat money centralizes power. Theft is very subtle and results in centralized power with a mild form of authoritarianism. Fiat money controllers can get us to do whatever we want by paying for it. It is a softer form of slavery than communism, but it is still slavery. The ability to steal money through inflation means those in power can control the output of our work.
Second, fiat money creates some serious civilization-destroying incentives. Fraud and theft have become widespread. I had a friend who in high school relied on some computer system that accidentally gave her access to the school’s grading system. He discovered it and he gave himself good grades. Of course, being a teenager, he couldn’t keep this information to himself and soon, his friends offered him money to change his grade. He took their money and changed their grades. Then the lovely girls would ask him to change his grade and he would do so. Soon, the whole school knew and as you might expect, he was expelled from high school when the news finally reached the school authorities.
Fiat money is much like that. While it lasts, working for fiat money is a cheat code for civilization. You are not required to provide any value and very few people know you are stealing. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy created by fiat money grows like a cancer and destroys civilization.
And this brings us to the end result which is the ubiquity of politics. Fiat money makes everything political. To see this, let’s go back to the bureaucracy that continues to grow. Hiring positions are political in nature and everyone wants one. After all, who does not want to earn a lot of money by doing a little work? Never mind that they are taxing a lot of transactions without providing any value. It is easy to rationalize such options when money is involved. Rent seeking is an easier way to earn money than providing goods and services in a volatile market.
So how do people hire positions? from politics. In politics, a moral high ground is a great way to get what you want. This is especially true in the fiat money society as there is an implicit obligation to do something about any kind of suffering for those in power. This belief ultimately means that everyone is tempted to make themselves a victim of some sort. There’s a reason we get bogged down in claims of being victimized. It’s because they all want stolen money!
lack of respect for truth
It just means that the truth doesn’t really matter. In politics, the one who gets the money is not the one telling the truth, but the one who can argue that they are being oppressed. And finally, it gets into everything as Fiat’s infection spreads.
This is the exact opposite of a world that is based on good money. In a fiat money system, we have slavery by tricking people into doing things. There is significant rent demand which leads to the destruction of productivity. In the end we get a society and political environment based on lies. Bitcoin, on the other hand, frees us from government interference, encourages production and is based on truth. As you can imagine, actual production and actual manufacturing are aligned with bitcoin and not fiat money.
that’s why i say Fiat Delenda Asta, Fiat must be destroyed because this fiat mentality, the illusion that you can make something out of nothing, is destroying civilization. Fiat is an existential threat. We must destroy fiat because otherwise it will destroy us.
how to destroy fiat
So how do we accomplish this? First, we destroy the entitlement mentality. Many people think that they can decide that others do something for them whether they realize it or not. For example, making health care an entitlement means that someone is being forced to provide that service. All rights are ultimately paid for by someone and only theft and/or violence confer it.
Second, we should punish those who demand rent. The best and brightest minds of the last 50 years are moving into rental businesses like investment banking. We should make this kind of behavior shameful and offensive. Why is it that someone like Warren Buffett, who has just turned money around his whole life, is one of the most respected people in the world? Compare this to 100 years ago, where the people who made stuff like Edison or Tesla were the most respected. Whatever the society respects, he will get more. We are giving respect to the wrong kind of people. Many people prefer to be hired and avoid productive work. We should create embarrassment for these tax collecting leeches.
Third, we have to make truth great again. Fiat money would not have been possible if truth had prevailed. Unfortunately, lies won out and we all suffer for it. A market economy cannot operate on lies. There must be a fundamental respect for truth for the markets to work. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived.
The truth is that there is a huge theft in the current system. This is at the core of how the fiat mentality thrives and the obvious counter is the adoption of money that is very difficult to steal. Bitcoin is that money.
Fiat must be destroyed if we want to save civilization.
Fiat Delenda Est.
This is a guest post by Jimmy Song. The opinions expressed are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.