Just to come right to the point, you should buy the new book The Big Print. It’s outstanding, and the country would be better off if every single citizen read and understood it. That’ll never happen, of course, but one can always dream. Anyway, let me back up a bit.
A couple of weeks ago, when I was on Amazon, The Big Print was presented to me as a recommended purchase. I was intrigued by the title, and after reading a brief summary (and seeing the good reviews), I decided to buy it. It arrived a couple of days later, and once I started reading it, I had trouble putting it down.
It didn’t start off great, because when I read the Foreword to the book, it was made plain to me that this would be a celebration of Bitcoin and its opportunity to save us all. I had already purchased and read enough Bitcoin books to not want to endure another sermon, but I decided to press on, and I’m glad I did.
In case there’s any doubt as to my devotion to reading this 356-page gem, I couldn’t even stop reading it when I was cooking. Yes, that’s a highlighter you see. I’m a multi-tasker.
It would be improper and a bit silly to try to boil a book this rich with information down to a few pages, so allow me to offer a few bullet points which I think capture the points the book seeks to make:
- Fiat money will inevitably decline to worthlessness;
- Our Federal Reserve System is inherently evil and the cause of untold misery, to say nothing of the grotesque levels of wealth disparity;
- Because money is broken, society is broken;
- The only way to cure society is to have a utterly reliable and stable currency (that is to say, Bitcoin).
Speaking personally, I 100% support the first three of those points. Indeed, the photo below from a decade ago speaks well to my disposition toward the Federal Reserve:
As to the 4th point, let me get back to that in a moment and just say a couple more general things about the book.
There wasn’t much in the book that came as an outright shock to me. In a way, I pretty much knew everything that was being discussed, but the reason I felt like a kid in a candy store is because there was such a richness of information. Plenty of charts, tables, historical examples, personal anecdotes, all presented in an engaging and entertaining way. The author, Lawrence Lepard, is also honest enough with himself and with the reader to share some personal losses and travails he had endured, all of which help enrich the narrative. Mr. Lepard seems like a very good man, and although I’ve never met him, I respect him by way of his writing.
I would also note that the reviews of the book are very strong. There were a handful of 1-star reviews, and I was curious where on earth those could have come from (maybe Jerome Powell or Janet Yellen?) In point of fact, these outliers were the same kind of stupid reviews one encounters in which the product itself isn’t being criticized, but some peripheral aspect (like it arrived a day later than expected, or, as shown below, people were struggling with the Kindle version). My point is that all the actual reviews related to the book itself were almost exclusively 5-stars.
As for the final point, about how we should all adopt Bitcoin as a store of value and, ultimately, a medium of exchange, I’m still not convinced. Let me be clear that this book put me WAY closer to being convinced than anything I’ve read to date, and that’s really saying something. I’m teetering!
One problem I have is that crypto is a cesspool. Mr. Lepard is VERY clear that Bitcoin and Crypto are two different worlds, or at least Bitcoin stands far, far above the fray of the 10,000 junk coins out there. Still, on this very morning, I look at a piece of dreck like Trump coin and when I wonder what caused it to jump:
I soon find my (comical) answer.
The other larger reason is just sheer nervousness on my part. I find it hard to move a bunch of good old reliable (but ever declining in value) cash into a BTC wallet just out of fear. What if it plunges? What if some quantum computing breakthrough makes the security of BTC moot? I mean, diamonds used to hold their value amazing well, but now that a new technology has come along (lab-mined diamonds) it won’t be that many years before they are nearly worthless!
Even without the Bitcoin theme, however, this is a sensational read. The author is, as I am, an advocate of The Fourth Turning, and he correctly perceives that we’re right in the thick of it. I know that Mr. Lepard is a major Bitcoin advocate, and he can take solace in the fact that although I haven’t been “orange pilled” quite yet, if I ever am, he played a big part in it.
