The Fiat Standard: Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization Hardcover – November 16, 2021

Saif is a genius and completely educates & elucidates us on the free market, gold standard, history of money and Austrian economics versus the plundering corrupt Keynesian centrally controlled money

Really enjoyed this book. Offers compelling insight into how fiat economies came about and the subsequent effects that the transition to fiat has had on many different aspects of society such as education, food quality, science, and more.Good quality print, too.

Great read

This is a MUST read for anyone and everyone who is disillusioned with the current trend of increasing government control over money printing, inflation ‘statistics’, your freedom of thought and expression, and most importantly, your wealth preservation for you and your children and grandchildren.It was an extremely enlightening and understandable view (I’m an engineer) of how FIAT money works now, how it came in to being, and how it has eroded wealth for everyone except the bureaucrats who control the printing and their already established cronies in the banking and investment areas. BTC is simply a moral and ethical imperative, to eliminate war and violence and bring economic opportunity to the creative, the independent, the under privileged, despite the possible risks involved in moving in that direction. BRAVO Saifedean!

After reading the Bitcoin standard this was a great reflection about the fiat system.Well written and easy to underatand. This should be your fiat 101!

If you read only two books on economics and money, it should be The Bitcoin Standard, and this sequel, The Fiat Standard. This is a two-book master class on economics, money, and how governments destroyed them for their own gain - at your expense.You'll get a little background history here (but more in his first book), as he traces the path to today's bubble waiting to explode. Then the chapters on how fiat money has enabled terrible health, bad energy policies, destruction of social relations, etc., is a priceless and eye-opening discussion. If this doesn't impress upon you how important it is to understand and get her head out of the sand, nothing will.The devaluing of money, the constant "printing" of currency, has made us unwitting slaves to system that claims to be democratic. On the surface, maybe it is, but when you realize what the elite have done to your wealth and earnings, you never support the status-quo again.

The Bitcoin Standard, The Fiat Standard and Principles of Economics ....a great trilogy!

I read both The Bitcoin Standard and this book, and until about 1/2 way through The Fiat Standard, I was really impressed and excited about Saifedean's point of view and arguments. But then things started going off the rails. He descended into the very failure modes he was criticizing, which obviously compromised his credibility. In particular, when attacking climate change, he sounded like a raving lunatic railing against anyone who supports work to combat climate change as a servant of the evil empire. He essentilally argued for just continuing with the hydrocarbon-based society. What could go wrong? I mean, there's no need to worry about the fact that we're burning through billions of years of natural hydrocarbon production in hundreds of years. I was amazed at his incredible ignorance about technology development. His argument that renewable energy is complex and expensive is wrong-headed to the extreme. It ignores the fact that we're early on the development curve for these technologies, and fundamental tech like this is generally extremely expensive in the early days. Is it worth it? Well, I guess if you believe that pumping arbitrary amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere forever is fine and that somehow, hydrocarbons are actually renewable, then sure, great. Let's do it. I'm in. But, well, there *is* a fair amount of evidence to the contrary of both of those points. Consider that, while oil at one time was quite easy to find and exploit, today it is incredibly difficult to find and pump out of the Earth, requiring advanced technology and large amounts of capital. Of course, we also have a very mature hydrocarbon-based society with all the associated infrastructure, so it is straightforward to justify such investment. To transition to another paradigm, it is expensive and uncomfortable, but it is, to say the least, shortsighted to think such a transition is optional. Saifedean's aggressive preserve-the-status-quo argument is disappointing on multiple levels. It demonstrates that he actually is not truth-seeking in the way he presents himself to be. It shows that he ignorant about science and the nature of discontinuous innovation. It makes one question all other arguments he makes in the two books, given that he provides only minimal true support for them. With such a great start, it is sad to see him snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.