“Bitcoin,”  economist Dean Baker argues at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “won’t put food on the table. Bitcoin also won’t put gas in your car or provide medical care for your family.  … Bitcoin doesn’t actually produce these items or anything else that we directly consume.”

Baker is absolutely right. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies don’t produce  the various goods or services that we directly consume.

Neither, however, do dollars, euros, rubles, rupees, etc. produce the various goods or services that we directly consume.

For the most part, that is. Dollars, euros, rubles, rupees, etc. — and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — do produce one thing, and it’s possibly the most important of all consumables: Trust.

When your employer pays you on Friday, you trust that the money he pays you with will in turn be trusted by those who sell you everything from gas to groceries to gardening tools.

Trusted as a medium of exchange that can be spent forward on other things.

Trusted as a store of value that will remain approximately as valuable to other people tomorrow as today.

Trusted as a unit of account that allows accounting to work, making the other two trust types feasible.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are at least potentially capable of besting  government-issued currencies on all three metrics.

Bitcoin is highly trustworthy as a medium of exchange and unit of account for two simple reasons.

First, it requires trust only in the system/algorithm that processes the transactions — not in third parties who might, to quote Darth Vader, “alter the deal” at any time and without your permission.

Governments and central banks can’t inflate Bitcoin’s value away, stealing a little bit of your wealth at a time, by magically creating more — as they can with dollars, etc. Per the system’s design, there can never be more than 21 million Bitcoins.

Nor can dishonest parties “charge back” transactions as they can with debit cards — once a Bitcoin transaction has taken place on the blockchain ledger, it’s immutable and irreversible.

That 21 million Bitcoin limit ticks the second box, making it a solid unit of account.

As for the middle function, “store of value,” yes,  Bitcoin — like all other currencies — will fluctuate in value as people find it more or less attractive and useful.

That happens with all forms of money. If it didn’t, traders wouldn’t be able to profit (or lose) on currency trades by predicting those fluctuations correctly (or incorrectly).

Bitcoin has, correctly, been called “volatile” when it comes to fluctuations versus other currencies.  But it’s worth noting that the “volatility” has trended upward. Some (not all) fiat currencies may be less volatile … but most continuously lose value due to inflation, while Bitcoin’s volatility will likely fade as adoption/use increases. Its resistance to government/central bank inflation makes it far less vulnerable to volatility worries.

Baker’s real problem with Bitcoin seems to be that it doesn’t fit into his Keynesian-leaning economic ideas on government control of money. But that’s a point in favor of, not against, Bitcoin.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On December 13, president-elect Donald Trump pledged on Truth Social that in his coming term the Republican Party will “use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time.”

It’s not very often I agree with US presidents, but I like to give credit where credit is due, and I’m 100% with Trump on this. It’s long past time to end the semi-annual American ritual of “springing forward” and “falling back.”

Trump characterizes that ritual as “inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.” He’s right on both counts.

Every year, twice a year, Americans’ bodies spend days or weeks adjusting to a sudden one-hour real (as opposed to clock-designated) change in when we go to bed and when we get up.

That’s both annoying and costly.

Less annoying in the age of “everything connected to the Internet” than it was back in the days when every clock in the house had to be manually adjusted, but still annoying … and annoying in different ways to different people.

I know people who prefer their daylight “early” (for example, because they’re driving to work at 7am). They’d prefer to end Daylight Saving time and remain on “standard” time.

I know people who prefer their daylight “late” (I’m one of them — if I have outside work to do at home, I prefer to do it in the evening). They’d prefer that the current Daylight Saving Time become “standard” time year-round.

I don’t know anyone who likes hopping back and forth. If the idea ever made any sense, back when not everyone had electric lighting, farming wasn’t very industrialized, and most businesses ran fixed daytime shifts, it stopped making that kind of sense a long time ago.

As for the practice being “costly,” some economic analyses do posit costs to businesses — higher utility bills, etc. — from the changes, but the most obvious cost is counted in human life.

“Springing forward” results, according to a 2016 study, in an average of 30 extra deaths in car accidents each year — exactly the outcome one might expect from millions of tired drivers with discombobulated circadian rhythms  getting behind the wheel when it SHOULD be daylight but is instead still dark.

That cost in human life has economic consequences as well. According to the National Safety Council, each car crash death comes with various costs to various parties totaling $1.869 million. Traffic fatalities from “springing forward” cost $56 million every year. Injuries and “fender bender” costs probably total far more.

By comparison to a century, or even a few decades, ago, America has become a  flexible 24/7 society rather than a said daylight-to-dark society. Having the government dictate clock setting changes makes that fluidity more annoying, costly, and dangerous. Pick a standard and stick to it year-round.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In 2016, Donald Trump ran for president as a kinda-sorta, maybe-a-little-bit, “antiwar” candidate.

Once in office, however, he escalated every war he had inherited, ending none of them, “surging” US troops into Syria and Afghanistan, making a public head-fake at withdrawing from Syria before changing his mind, abrogating the Iran “nuclear deal,” and negotiating a withdrawal agreement on Afghanistan that he could have completed, but chose not to, leaving the task to his successor so as to shift blame for what a lost war looks like.

This year, Trump once again ran — and won — as a kinda-sorta, maybe-a-little-bit, “antiwar” candidate, mainly on his claim that he could negotiate a “deal” with Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the US proxy war in Ukraine.

Should we have believed him this time? His prospective appointees to office are a mixed bag on the subject of foreign military entanglements, but a recent event in Congress provides strong evidence that the answer is “no.”

On December 9, Republicans selected US Representative Brian Mast of Florida to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mast was considered a dark horse candidate for the position, entering the race late. How did he win?

“Insiders,”  the Jewish Telegraph Agency reports, “say that President-elect Donald Trump lobbied the Republican Steering Committee, which names committee chairs, to choose Mast.”

If you’re looking for a foreign military misadventure, Mast is your man in Congress to drum one up on demand and with enthusiasm.

He’s most notable for being pretty much the most “pro-Israel” member of the House — so much so that, after the Israel-Gaza war broke out last year, he wore his Israeli Defense Forces uniform to the Capitol.

No, I’m not kidding. In 2015, Mast volunteered with the IDF in a non-combat role (he’s a double amputee, wounded in Afghanistan as an explosive ordnance disposal technician). To each their own, I guess, but a congressman wearing the uniform of a foreign power’s army to the Capitol probably wouldn’t fly if it was any foreign power other than Israel, Washington’s favorite welfare client.

In 2016, Mast called for “an all-out military effort” in Syria.

Last year, supporting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, he opposed humanitarian aid, claiming it was “not a far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians.”

While he did vote against additional US military aid to Ukraine earlier this year, his reasoning wasn’t that US intervention is a bad idea as such, but rather “because Europe has all the money it needs to ensure Kyiv’s survival if only it would open up its wallet to the extent it expects America to do.”

Mast isn’t just a “hawk.” He’s a warmonger of the first order. And while he’s turned out to be a Trump toady on most issues, his bellicose foreign policy positions are what he’s primarily known for.

Trump’s backing of Mast for a key foreign policy position establishes, to a high degree of confidence, that Trump has no intention of a second term that’s even kinda-sorta, maybe-a-little-bit, “antiwar.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY