Uncle Marty has been on bit of a history tip recently. For some reason, a lot of the conversations I've had on the podcast in the past couple of months have been steered towards discussing warnings of "don't fuck up the money" throughout history. Yesterday, while perusing the interwebs, I came across this article, felt compelled to send this tweet, and was promptly reminded of the letter the Thomas Jefferson quote came from; From Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 27 May 1788.

The letter seems to be a simple pow wow between two pen pals catching up and bouncing ideas off each other. Two things really stick out to me in this letter. One of them is the aforementioned "don't fuck up the money" warning that Jefferson sends while commenting on the state of British monetary system which had "20 millions of coin, and three or four hundred million of circulating paper... paper is poverty, that it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." The other is the prescient warning of the inevitable, natural entropy of Liberty only 11 years after the Declaration of Independence.

Liberty is something that must be fought for constantly. The forces of human nature are such that a few of us will be sociopathic and try to control others by taking away some of their liberties. The intentions and actions of these sociopaths are carried out by the machine that is the State. Over time, as individuals become complacent, the State begins to metastasize and spread. Slowly but surely encroaching on individual liberties until very few truly exist. One of the tools with the highest amount of leverage over individual liberties is the ability to print money. Pretty crazy that we're able to receive this sage advice in passing because history was able to preserve a passing conversation between a founding father and a fellow statesman from Virginia.

Final thought...

Ready for my return to Charleston.