Money Is Civilization’s Measuring Stick
Imagine building a house without a ruler. Every board would be cut “about right,” every angle guessed. The result would be chaos. A measuring stick isn’t glamorous, but it’s essential. Without it, construction is impossible.
Money plays the same role in civilization. It is the measuring stick of value — the tool we use to compare, trade, and store our efforts. When that stick is honest and consistent, societies can coordinate and build lasting prosperity. When it’s warped or manipulated, everything built on it becomes fragile.
Money as Information
As Saifedean Ammous explained in The Bitcoin Standard, money is not just a medium of exchange — it is information. It records the value of past labor and transmits it across time and space.
Farmers use it to store the fruits of a harvest.
Builders use it to plan projects.
Families use it to save for the future.
Accurate information makes cooperation possible. Corrupted information makes coordination collapse.
Fiat’s Broken Measuring Stick
Fiat money destroys accuracy. By inflating supply, governments bend the stick. A dollar in 1950 measured something very different than a dollar today. The “unit” itself has been debased, leaving society with distorted signals.
That’s why economic decisions feel chaotic. Businesses chase short-term profits, investors speculate wildly, families struggle to save. The measuring stick itself is unreliable, so rational coordination becomes impossible.
It’s no different than trying to build with rulers that keep changing length.
Sound Money and Low Time Preference
Sound money fixes the measure. By holding its value, it allows people to trust that their savings will endure. This lowers time preference: people save, invest, and plan for decades instead of scrambling for tomorrow.
Civilizations with sound money have always built higher, deeper, and longer-lasting foundations. From Rome’s aqueducts to Europe’s cathedrals, societies that measured accurately could build for generations.
Bitcoin as the Honest Stick
Bitcoin is the first perfectly honest measuring stick. Its supply is fixed. Its rules are transparent. Its ledger is incorruptible.
This gives humanity, for the first time in centuries, an accurate ruler for value. With Bitcoin as money, trade becomes clearer, investment more rational, and savings reliable across time.
Bitcoin doesn’t promise utopia. But it provides the measuring stick civilization has been missing.
Civilization Needs Accuracy
If money is broken, everything built on top of it will be unstable. If money is sound, everything gains a firm foundation.
Civilization itself depends on accurate measurement. Bitcoin restores that accuracy, giving us the chance to build not just higher, but stronger and longer-lasting.
