
First Draft


In The Wealth Of Nations, Adam Smith argues there is an invisible hand that guides people to buy things from local people. They wold rather buy something from someone in their own community than from someone on the other-side of the world named Temu. He thought people would prefer to "the support of domestic to that of foreign industry..." This is not how most people phrase it, but the invisible hand Smith speaks of is the rejection of globalism. The invisible hand is a social phenomena that is an ideal deeply held by the upper middle class entrepreneurs: Shop local. Here is the paragraph where Smith writes about the invisible hand:

"But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather
is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital
in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its
produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours
to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He gener-
ally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how
much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of
foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that
industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he
intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led
by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his inten-
tion. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By
pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more
effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known
much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is
an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few
words need be employed in dissuading them from it."
-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations published in 1776.

That book was one of the foundations of the United States of America. They country because the citizens did not want to pay a tea tax to a foreign industry, King George III and his English Empire. So they started their own country and coined their own money.  According to the constitution, that money was to be made of silver or gold because the [first paper currency of the United States ended in hyperinflation](https://allthingsliberty.com/2024/01/the-continental-dollar-how-the-american-revolution-was-financed-with-paper-money/). 

The money in early America minted from gold and silver. This metal makes money a bearer instrument. It also stands to reason that Greshem's law dynamics existed back then too. Perhaps it makes sense to finance a war with paper money which means buying stuff with money created out of thin air, but you would not want to send your silver and gold to another nation. If you send your gold to China, that " my precious" might never find its way back to your pocket again. In this scenario, it is in my self-interest to buy clothes made in the USA.

That means, less gold for people in your country to pay you for your goods and services. 

![Nixon and Chous EnLai in 1972](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/President_Richard_Nixon_and_Premier_Chou_En-Lai_Shake_Hands_at_the_Nixons%27_Arrival_in_Peking%2C_China.jpg/2560px-President_Richard_Nixon_and_Premier_Chou_En-Lai_Shake_Hands_at_the_Nixons%27_Arrival_in_Peking%2C_China.jpg)

Since [Nixon decreed the dollar is no longer backed by Gold or Silver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock), globalism makes more sense. It makes sense to [open trade relations with China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_visit_by_Richard_Nixon_to_China#Travel_to_China). You're not sending them the gold. You're sending them paper.  If the paper burns, so what? You can always print some more. Of the gold gets locked in the Chinese coffers forever, you might never see it again and it is much more difficult to print gold than paper. Bitcoin has a similar situation, but the dynamics are a bit different.

## Trading With Sovereign Individuals

Bitcoiners want to or will want to earn bitcoin at some point in the Future. If They put their money in an exchange, the exchange has the bitcoin. They are essentially trading. You get a haircut and swipe your credit card. You pay the credit card off every month with sats. You're selling bitcoin according to the IRS. They like this because they can get spreadsheets that tell them how much you owe the IRS in taxes. This convenience is a centralizing force, but if you spend sats on shopstr, the sats become more distributed.

The dynamic is different with bitcoin instead of gold because of something Satoshi noted in the early days,

"As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold but with the following properties: - boring grey in colour - not a good conductor of electricity - not particularly strong, but not ductile or easily malleable either - not useful for any practical or ornamental purpose and one special, magical property: - can be transported over a communications channel If it somehow acquired any value at all for whatever reason, then anyone wanting to transfer wealth over a long distance could buy some, transmit it, and have the recipient sell it. Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you've suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange. (I would definitely want some) Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it. I think the traditional qualifications for money were written with the assumption that there are so many competing objects in the world that are scarce, an object with the automatic bootstrap of intrinsic value will surely win out over those without intrinsic value. But if there were nothing in the world with intrinsic value that could be used as money, only scarce but no intrinsic value, I think people would still take up something. (I'm using the word scarce here to only mean limited potential supply)"

If you send your sats to China, you might trade with them to get those sats back. You also ar able to trade with a fellow bitcoiner. This distributes bitcoin to people. The flag that determines what laws are made has nothing to do with bitcoin because bitcoin is money on the Internet. If you want bitcoin, you need to earn it. This bitcoin also does not get sold back to the exchanges, presumably. Either way, you are supporting a fellow bitcoin who may or may not be in your country. He or she might live in a different country. I might zap someone in Argentina, but they might zap me back because it does not require ships to show proof-of-reserve. The sats might come back to you. They might not





Sources: 

https://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf pg 349

https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/quotes/economics/