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Number 1 takeaway: This book finally connected the dots between the economic philosophy and the technical.
  • Hayek is emphasized right from page 1 and is reintroduced several times throughout the story as the technology slowly progresses towards the realization of his concept of a Denationalized Money system.
  • This book will show you how various groups of futurists, hackers, and scientists worked together to try to fulfill Hayek's dream of a decentralized economy, referred to as a 'spontaneous order'.
Before reading this book it always puzzled me how the cipher punks even got the idea to make money external to a government or bank.. Where does that idea even come from... I have read all of the papers referenced in the whitepaper and the original idea for this kind of money system is much older than any of those fields of research. This book has that answer, it's Hayek.
This book finally connected the dots between the economic philosophy and the technical.
Perfectly sums it up. I just re-read your reply. Great insights, particularly re Hayek.
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I made notes while I was reading. I was going to say that Chapter 1 was a perfect primer on Austrian economics, but I soon realized he kept coming back to it throughout the book. I really enjoyed the Hayek/Keynes clashes, and the little anecdotes were great. For instance, I didn't know that Hayek didn't originally take a Mises course because he was a socialist as a young man. Another thing that struck me was the Austrian property rights philosophy juxtaposed with the FOSS sharing non ownership culture. In fact, I think that's worth talking about in its own post.
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