Saifedean Ammous: The monetary system is what enables people to continue treating war as a spectator sport. This issue can be traced back to the start of World War One. It has persisted, and I’ve mentioned this before, even in a popular tweet that garnered both attention and mockery. Nevertheless, I genuinely believe that Bitcoin is the only technology that can put an end to the consequences of World War One.

Ever since World War One began, we have been embroiled in an unending cycle of conflict that continues to this day. If you examine the world’s current conflicts, most of them can be linked back to World War One. This is because when the Pandora’s box of government control over money was opened, there was no longer a real restraint on war, except for complete defeat, utter destruction, and the loss of countless lives. War had to be total.

Before that, under the gold standard, kings would send professional armies to battle each other on battlefields. As soon as it became clear that one side was gaining an advantage, the fighting would cease, and the kings would then negotiate new terms because it was extremely expensive to maintain a professional army, and funds were running low. So the wisest course of action was to halt the fighting whenever possible.

Wars would occur, you know, with countries battling each other on the battlefield. However, in the cities, life continued as usual, and people from both countries would engage in trade. Life carried on while the war raged on as an independent aspect of politics. It was like saying, “All right, we have an issue regarding this piece of land. Let’s settle it through battle on the battlefield. We won’t fight in civilian areas; we’ll take it outside. We’ll have the battle with professional armies.

And, in fact, sometimes the complex situation involved armies lining up. They would have a small contingent from each army engage in battle, and as soon as one side gained an advantage, they’d declare the winner and move on. Governments were much more cautious about their war policy when they couldn’t print money. However, this has changed with fiat currency, giving rise to a new class I like to call “chicken hawks.

These are individuals who work in offices, such as the entire foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C. They’ve never experienced war firsthand, and their children won’t either. They won’t bear the financial burden of war, nor will they suffer the consequences of war in their own homes. They make decisions based on flawed teachings from fiat-financed universities regarding politics and geopolitics, leading to decisions like invading countries and sending more troops, all enabled by the endless money printer.

That’s why, you know, in the days of the gold standard, if you were a warrior, you actually went and joined the war. The ones pontificating about war were those with firsthand experience, who sent their own children to battle and funded the conflict with their own resources.

Now, we have many individuals in Washington, D.C., and similar places worldwide who have never fought and will never face the consequences, yet they manipulate global currency values to send others’ children into senseless conflicts based on misguided political ideologies they learned in fiat financed universities.