The Filthiest Latin F-Word of All
A prophylactic against common conflation
Friday salutations to all and sundry,
It's time to clear the air, to free our minds of confused conflations, messy misnomers and nomenclatorial (careful with that pronunciation now) non sequiturs...
Once and for all, let's get our latin f-words straight. Herewith a handy trifecta, all commonly confounded...
Fiat: By decree; let it be done
Fallacia: Deceit, trickery or stratagem
Floccinaucinihilipilification: The action or habit of estimating something as worthless
For example, "To indulge in floccinaucinihilipilification by labeling Bitcoin as 'fiat' would be tantamount to flagrant fallacia."
Why? Because... whatever else Bitcoin is - and it is many things - it is not fiat.
It is not assigned value "by decree." Whatever value it has (according to the capricious whims of the free market) it has by consent... the very opposite of authoritarian decree.
Bitcoin has no guns... no state... no board of directors. It threatens no violence... claims no authority... and issues no mandates.
In short, it has no "decree-er."
So let us call Bitcoin a bubble, if indeed we think it is one... let us label it a fad, or a farce or a fancy flim-flam... but let us not call it what it is, in fact, not: fiat.
That way, we can cheerfully reserve the filthiest f-word of them all for the government-issued, state-decreed abomination most deserved of it.
All of which brings us to this week's podcast... an event that was more of a "digital symposium" in the end.
Addison Wiggin was kind enough to host Dan Denning, Anya Leonard and yours truly for a roundtable discussion which roamed freely across subjects from Socrates to Satoshi and plenty in between...
From the Battle for the Classics to Gramsci's "Long March" through the institutions... the colonization of the mind to the corruption of sound money... the campus of St. John's College to Addison's shameless appropriation of Swiss culture (cancel him!)...
...please enjoy this week's installment.
And, as always, enjoy your weekends...
Cheers,
Joel
P.S. Note also that you can now listen to ALL the BPR episodes on...
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Twitter: @JoelBowman
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