“A libertarian rejects the legitimacy of a government initiating aggression against a peaceful drug consumer, but would not reject the right of individuals to refuse to live next to, work with, or be part of the same security agency as a drug consumer.” Principles Of Economicss by @Saifedean Ammous

Principles Of Economics

“In a free market for security, private providers have no tax revenue to subsidize them, and so must economize to survive and succeed. They would aim to minimize violent conflict and, to the greatest extent possible, seek peaceful solutions because doing so is good business. Private security guards in private establishments have nowhere near the same nasty reputation as police, precisely because they operate in a free market with accountability to the customer, and they have rational market calculation motivating their decisions, training, and operation. Private security guards everywhere illustrate that it is possible to provide security without having a monopoly and without being in charge of applying and interpreting the law that governs your behavior.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

"Tax-funded security providers have no economic incentive to minimize human and monetary cost, as customer satisfaction is tangential to their job. They are able to take the least economic choices available, as their operation is not constrained by an operations budget or a budget for recruitment and training of manpower. Monopoly army and police can treat their members as dispensable cannon fodder since they are not being allocated by entrepreneurs who succeed or fail in their enterprise by their prowess in allocation. The startling trigger-happy nature of modern police, notorious for wasting life and endangering police and citizens alike, cannot be understood without reference to the lack of market discipline imposed on police services." Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“Rather than peaceful cooperation under the rule of law applicable to all, society under government eventually degenerates into competitive conflict and aggression between people seeking to gain control of the power to dominate others. One common statist objection to the idea of a free market in defense is that the largest, most powerful group of thugs will take over and control society. The anarchist’s response is that this is merely the reality of what the state is. Statists present their own cognitive enslavement as an argument for itself. Understood correctly, the state is the largest gang of thugs, and the progress of human civilization depends on minimizing the damage from this gang, not on commandeering it for the impossible task of using its license for evil to do good.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“The struggle for civilization is the struggle for humans to deal with each other based on the principle of non-aggression, where everyone agrees to respect the property rights of everyone else in their person and justly acquired property. When this principle is overturned in favor of a violent monopolist, the exception begins to seep into all other aspects of life, for the violent monopolist will seek to control all other aspects of life. And with the population conditioned to pliably accept the legitimacy of violent coercion in the sphere of defense and law, it is not very difficult to convince them to extend it to other aspects of life, beginning with money, as in modern fiat capitalist economies, and ending with the concept of property itself, as in communist societies.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“The more time one spends examining modern state-funded schools and universities, the more one sees their entire purpose as consisting of promoting acquiescence to the state.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“With the right of secession granted, the state cannot take for granted the allegiance and revenue from its citizens and needs to work for them. Without the right to secession, government becomes a territorial coercive monopoly.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“As long as a majority of the population continues to believe they are bound to receive security as a gift from a hopefully benevolent monopolist, its provision is likely to be deficient, as is the case with all market monopolies.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“Mainstream fiat economists are quick to provide voluminous rationalizations for why markets fail, why humans are irrational, and why only coercive intervention can succeed in improving things. Yet closer inspection shows that markets function regardless of economists’ objections and that the real failure of markets occurs when coercive intervention, under alluringly altruistic pretexts, is used to try to fix these markets.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

While in a leadership role never ask your people to do what you’ve never done, what you’re not capable of doing, and what you’re not willing to do in the future.

“But markets do not tend toward monopolies, except through the use of coercive violence. Quite simply, individual producers who charge exorbitant prices cannot stop competitors from undercutting them—unless they resort to force. In decades of examining this question, I have never come across a single example of a monopoly provider whose monopoly status was secured on the market peacefully rather than through coercive intervention. It is always government rules and regulations that create monopolies, as they are the only barrier that can stop peaceful private enterprise. The irony here is that government mandates turn specific industries into monopolies, which then normalizes the idea that this industry inevitably can only function as a monopoly, making it a “natural monopoly.”” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“Profits are not just a mechanism for greedy people to get rich—they are what coordinates the entire structure of market production, allowing producers to calculate the costs and benefits of their various options while searching for a way to serve others the most and produce optimal gains for themselves.” Principles Of Economics y @Saifedean Ammous

“Subsidies lead to the overproduction and overconsumption of goods away from what people would freely choose when able to freely calculate. When subsidies are given to individuals based on their economic situation, they create a stronger incentive for people to choose the condition that makes them eligible for those subsidies. Welfare encourages those with low income to stay on a low income. Subsidies for the unemployed create an incentive for unemployment. Worse, by being financed at the expense of the employed, they also lead to the erosion of the incentive to work.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“Money, as discussed in Chapter 10, is unique in that it is the one good that is obtained purely to be exchanged for something else. It is not consumed, like consumer goods, nor is it used in the production of other goods, as capital goods are. Since its sole purpose is to be passed on, and it performs no physical function to its owner, a claim on it, or a substitute for it, is capable of playing its role in a way that cannot be played by any substitute or claim on another consumer or capital good. A voucher for a steak cannot be eaten, a receipt for a machine cannot produce the goods that the machine produces, and an airplane ticket cannot make you fly. But a claim on money can perform the essential function of money: It can be exchanged for other goods.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“The manners and mores that make human society possible also suffer when time preference rises, as broad discounting of the future leads to increased interpersonal conflict. Trade, social cooperation, and the ability of humans to live in close contact with one another in permanent settlements are dependent upon them learning to control their basest, hostile animal instincts and responses, and substituting them with reason and a long-term orientation. Religious, civic, and social norms all encourage people to moderate their immediate impulses in exchange for the long-term benefits of living in a society, cooperating with others, and enjoying the benefits of the division of labor and specialization. When these long-term benefits seem far away, the incentive to sacrifice for them becomes weaker. When individuals witness their wealth dissipate, they rightly feel robbed. The supposed social contract appears to have been torn up, and they question the utility of living in a society and respecting its mores.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“Rather than expecting money to appreciate and thus reliably retain value into the future, fiat returned humans of the twentieth century to far more primitive times, when retaining value into the future was far less certain, and the value of their wealth was expected to be reduced in the future, if it survived at all. The future is hazier with easy money, and the difficulty in providing for the future makes it less certain. This increased uncertainty leads to a higher discounting of the future and thus a higher time preference.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“The twentieth century’s shift to an easier monetary medium has reversed this millennia-old process of progressively lowering time preference. Rather than a world in which almost everyone had access to a store of value whose supply could only be increased by around 2% a year, the twentieth century gave us a hodgepodge of government-provided abominations of currencies growing at 6%–7% in only the best examples, usually achieving double-digit percentage growth and occasionally, triple-digit growth. The numerical average for the growth of all national currencies’ broad supply during the period between 1960 and 2020 is 30% per year. Calculating the average weighted by currency size shows us roughly a 14% annual increase in the market supply of all fiat currencies, which can be viewed as the average money supply increase experienced by the average citizen of the fiat nations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.” Principles Of Economics by @Saifedean Ammous

“The simple reality, demonstrated throughout history, is that any person who finds a way to create the monetary medium will try to do it. The temptation to engage in this is too strong, but the creation of the monetary medium is not an activity that is productive to society, as any supply of money is sufficient for any economy of any size. The more that a monetary medium restrains this drive for its creation, the better it is as a medium of exchange and stable store of value. Unlike all other goods, money's functions as a medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account are completely orthogonal to its quantity. What matters in money is its purchasing power, not its quantity, and as such, any quantity of money is enough to fulfil the monetary functions, as long as it is divisible and groupable enough to satisfy holders' transaction and storage needs. Any quantity of economic transactions could be supported by a money supply of any size as long as the units are divisible enough.” — The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous @Saifedean Ammous https://a.co/6nobgsA