It is the perspective of the sovereign individual that seems to concern the nation-state most today. This strange perception of threat has been the consequence of a political genealogy that, in the generations since the American Revolution, has increasingly come to equate the state with society, while constellating the individual as the enemy of both. This equation would have been deeply disconcerting to the founders of the American republic, who called for a new national project precisely to prevent the abuses of an entrenched and predatory upper class – an aristocracy – that considered itself the legitimate custodian, in perpetuity, of destiny. and the best interests of a people. Therefore, the political question that animated the founders of the United States was: How can a people govern themselves without creating a hereditary class of governors? How can it be enough strainbut conflictIs it between State and society to preserve the rule of law without becoming a prison?
The founders devised an ingenious solution to this problem based on a revolutionary premise: that the rights of the individual, not those of the state, are fundamental to a free society.[1] In other words, people have rights; Governments have no rights. Governments have powers, but only those powers that are explicitly delegated to them by the people they represent. Stated more precisely, the people have all of the enumerated and unenumerated rights, while the State only has those explicitly enumerated powers. Any action taken by agents of the State outside of their enumerated powers is an usurpation of the rights of the people. The people must safeguard these explicit limits and may regain the enumerated powers of the State at any time.
In other words, the American founders inverted the dominant political assumptions of their cultural world: it was not the people who had to prove that they deserved rights, that they were innocent under the law, or that they had freed themselves from inherited obligations. to the state. Rather, it was the State that bore the burden of proof: that it was trustworthy; that he had the power to take a particular action; that any person or entity was guilty under the law; or that his war powers should be exercised with the blood and treasure of the people. Concretely, this meant that during the era of the United States Constitutional Convention, when the debate between federalists and antifederalists was intense, a formative consensus emerged that the American state would have no power of its own, no money of its own, and no army of its own. The American Constitution stipulated that all of these things would be effectively provided by the people, in whom true sovereignty resided.
But things have changed profoundly since the Constitution was ratified. The United States not only quickly established a standing army; that army has been involved in almost incessant warfare (more than a hundred conflicts both internal and external, declared and undeclared) since then. While most Americans today would probably be familiar with the large-scale conflicts their nation has participated in (the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and two world wars, for example), they would probably be surprised by most the wars in which the United States has been involved. During the 19th century, those wars were fought primarily against American Indian tribes as part of the drive to colonize the West, while during the 20th century they were predominantly fought against socialist and communist movements around the world. The conflicts of the 21st century, in turn, have been pursued under the banner of the war on terrorism and, more recently, the containment of adversary nations. Although the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to declare war, in practice, Congress has declared war in only a few major conflicts: the War of 1812, the wars against Mexico and Spain, and wars against particular belligerents in the First and Second World Wars. The rest have been carried out through some form of unilateral executive action, either by presidential decree or by determination of military officers.
Just as the US government now seems to have its own military, it seems to have its own money. In 1913, Congress passed the Sixteenth Amendment, giving it the right to impose permanent income taxes on the American people; Estate taxes, gift taxes, capital gains taxes and corporate taxes followed soon after, while other permanent forms of taxation have been introduced in subsequent decades. Since then, this money has come to be known as “government revenue” rather than “people’s money.” But the federal government does not limit its spending to the people’s money; rather, it borrows extensively, supporting an expanding administrative state whose agencies are so numerous and ill-defined that there is no authoritative reference to exactly how many there are. The Federal Register, the Federal Register Online, the US Government Handbookhe Sourcebook of the Executive Agencies of the United Statesthe Unified Agenda for Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, FOIA.gov, and USA.gov list very different agency numbers and definitions.[2],[3] These agencies function as rule-making and enforcement bodies, merging the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial) into one in their own operations. This eliminates the checks and balances that the framers of the Constitution put in place to limit state power, subjecting the American people to a growing thicket of laws that they had no part in crafting and which they have no electoral power to alter or repeal. . As a result, the illusion is created that the government has its own power.
But while military conflict, taxes, and bureaucratic rule are visible manifestations of state power, they are underpinned by a platform that today seems so normal and ubiquitous that it largely goes unnoticed: a financial system in which central banks issue and manage the supply and price of irredeemable fiat currencies. These currencies serve as the monetary base that commercial banks, in turn, use as reserve assets to grant loans. Commercial banks and central banks around the world form a network of financial intermediaries that share with each other information about every transaction that passes through their networks, which is also shared with the military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies of governments and intergovernmental organizations around the world. The government’s gaze on the economic activity of every person and organization anywhere in the world is not effectively limited by any privacy law or constitutional provision on search and seizure of assets. This alliance between banking power and police power took hold at the beginning of the 20th century in what can be called the Banking Revolution, a revolution so successful that few are even aware that it occurred.
The Satoshi Papers, a project of the Texas Bitcoin Foundation and edited by Natalie Smolenski, will be available for pre-order on November 19 in print and limited library edition.
[1] Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence read: “We hold these truths sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent [emphasis added]that inherent and inalienable rights are derived from that creation, among which are the preservation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” See Thomas Jefferson, “Image 1 of Thomas Jefferson, June 1776, draft of the Declaration of Independence,” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.001_0545_0548/?sp=1.
[2] Clyde Wayne Crews, “How Many Federal Agencies Are There?” ForbesJuly 5, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2017/07/05/how-many-federal-agencies-exist-we-cant-drain-the-swamp-until-we- know/?sh=535830391aa2.
[3] Molly Fischer, “What is a Federal Agency?” Directory of Federal Agencies, Louisiana State University Libraries, March 28, 2011,
