My interactions with Golumbia indicate otherwise. He completely rejects the very basic mechanism of inflation as an erosion of purchasing power, in fact he misunderstands basic economics so profoundly that it is near comical. He thinks the BLS calculations on the purchasing power of the dollar over time demonstrate that the purchasing power as increased, not eroded. He then claims that any arguments that inflation erodes purchasing power (which is almost a truism) is right-wing extremism and conspiracy theory.

Further the idea that criticisms of the Fed should be rejected because they ultimately originate from right-wing sources is, as a noted in the article, a type of logical fallacy. It doesn’t matter what that political leanings are of anybody originates a criticism of Fed policy, only the policy and the criticism should be examined (or dismissed) on their own merits.

Thank you for your review. I enjoyed reading it. You are a powerful writer.

I just finished Golumbia’s book myself, and I wonder if I may offer a dissenting viewpoint from yours: The book doesn’t say that all criticism of the Fed is necessarily right-wing. Rather, the book says that the Bitcoin community’s criticism of the Fed, which is focused on its ability to print money, is ALSO used by the far-right as part of a wider right-wing philosophy. He talks about ideologies and how they can be spread on page 40.

Golumbia doesn’t bother claiming that the Fed is above reproach because the focus of his study is the Bitcoin community’s relationship to the Fed, especially as compared to the far-right’s relationship to it. He doesn’t investigate the Fed. He investigates the Bitcoin community.

Golumbia’s concern is that the supposedly apolitical Bitcoin and the far-right’s rhetoric are identical regarding the Fed’s authority to print money, and thus Bitcoin promotion, in addition to whatever good it may be doing, is ALSO spreading far-right ideology wrapped in a delicious, technologically revolutionary tortilla.

Don’t you think that’s a more accurate reading of the text?

Nice informed post. I was particularly impressed with the following: “The crypto-currencies that successfully create a governance structure around their ecosystems will succeed, those that don’t won’t.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I help with the governance structure of Dash. I would appreciate it if you would spend a few minutes seeing exactly why Dash will succeed and Bitcoin will fail.

https://www.dash.org/governance/

“On the issue of inflation: I have sometimes wondered whether it might be the fairest form of taxation. ”

Frank Zappa (of all people) once suggested in his book that income tax should be eliminated and replaced with a universal goods and services tax. His reasons were pretty sound (including that even though criminals hide income, they all spend money) and it would scale evenly across the income curve.

You have done a great job in analysing a work of nonsense. I should have been tempted to summarise as: “If I could find anything substantive with even a glimmer of apparent validity, I should have attempted to frame an answer.”

On the issue of inflation: I have sometimes wondered whether it might be the fairest form of taxation. The only problem is that you can only inflate when people believe the currency has some value to start with. That means either precious coinage (which can be debased slowly, as was done in ancient times), or requiring some other general tax to be paid in the currency.

We have become used to a world where general prices rarely fall, so economic actors are slow to cut nominal prices when the market demands it. Inflation has become a tool to overcome the psychology of never allowing prices to fall. The central bankers fear that currency will be hoarded during a deflation, so prefer the continual breaking of the value promise that inflation represents.