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The Fiat Standard: The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization - Hardcover
$39.40
by Saifedean Ammous (Author)
The Fiat Standard: The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization by Saifedean Ammous offers a provocative and incisive examination of the modern monetary system, treating fiat currency not as an inevitable economic reality but as a deliberate technological construct with profound flaws. Building directly on the framework of his bestseller The Bitcoin Standard, Ammous dissects the shift from sound, commodity-backed money like gold to today's government-issued fiat currencies. He outlines how this system is engineered—through mechanisms like loan creation and central bank policies—and exposes its inherent instabilities, including unlimited inflation, unchecked debt accumulation, and widespread economic distortions that ripple into everyday life, from distorted markets in food and energy to misallocated resources in science and education.
With sharp analytical clarity, Ammous draws compelling analogies between fiat "mining" via debt expansion and bitcoin's decentralized protocol, highlighting fiat's advantages in spatial salability while condemning its catastrophic failures in temporal salability and long-term value preservation. The book argues that the fiat standard has entrenched a form of debt slavery on individuals and societies, fueling endless government intervention and eroding human civilization's productive potential. Ultimately, Ammous positions bitcoin as a potential successor: a hard money alternative that delivers the benefits of fiat's global reach without its destructive excesses, offering readers a radical yet reasoned vision for escaping the current monetary paradigm and reclaiming economic sovereignty.
Number of Pages: 382
Dimensions: 1.1 x 9.1 x 6.3 IN
Publication Date: November 16, 2021