SKZ - Episode 7 - Check Your Financial Privilege Review

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Review of Check Your Financial Privilege by Alex Gladstein. READ IT!!!

Hey everybody, Joe here. This is the SKZ podcast, bringing you another book review. This is the 2022 book, Check Your Financial Privilege by Alex Gladstein. He actually has another book out this year, 2023, that I haven't read yet, and I'm looking forward to reading once I can get my hands on it. But this book is a really useful way to just kind of reframe Bitcoin from being an investment to being a movement is maybe a better way to say it. And I think that it's really easy for people in the West to look at Bitcoin as this speculative investment, right? There are a lot more problems coming up in the last couple of years with inflation,

but still, I mean, it's like survivable. I'm coming from a United States perspective, and a lot of, you know, my friends, my siblings, things like that, they don't really understand Bitcoin. If I talk to Bitcoin about Bitcoin with them, They're thinking of it as an investment, right, of something that you go on Coinbase and buy or, you know, why isn't it available in my 401k or IRA or whatever it is, things like that. They think of it just like a stock or the way they think about a bond, something like that. But I think this book really just, as the title says, check your financial privilege, right?

It explains that people in other countries, they don't really need as much explanation. of what Bitcoin is or how it works to get it, right? If they understand, oh, there's only 21 million of this and there's no way that my government can, you know, double it this year. Like has happened in a lot of countries like Argentina, Turkey, a lot of these countries have had, you know, triple-digit inflation recently, not to mention Zimbabwe, a lot of African countries, you know, go through very harsh periods, endless periods of inflation, right?

and this book explains kind of what bitcoin is and then goes into a lot of specific stories about people's lives in different countries and explaining how they're using bitcoin to kind of get out of financial repression honestly so there's chapters about Cuba there's a chapter about Afghanistan, there's a chapter about Togo, which I found really interesting actually is explaining how a lot of African countries that used to be colonized by France are basically just screwed over completely by the French system.

They have to store a majority of their wealth in, I think basically just the French Central Bank, and then they have to, the French have a first right of refusal for all of their exports. So basically the French get basically deals and cheaper prices, things like that on their exports. That really kind of screws over a lot of these countries. So I think people might really resonate with different chapters throughout, right? But I think each chapter has its own story of people on the ground in this country using Bitcoin, what it actually looks like.

And coming from the United States where we already have PayPal, Venmo, things like that. And there are problems with that, right? We know that, you know, if you're a Canadian trucker or something like that, you can get your, you can get your money and your ability to transfer money censored by the government if you do things that they disagree with, right? Which I just disagree with that principle, right? Right or wrong about a specific protest, it doesn't matter. You should be able to protest the government and not have all your financial rights taken. away. And we, so anyways, we've seen some of that kind of crop up in the West recently,

but we are in a very, at least me. I know maybe not all my listeners are in the West, right? But as a Westerner, I have a high level of privilege of already having a lot of these use cases of Bitcoin just in my daily life. But a lot of these people don't, a lot of people in developing countries in general, right? Don't have bank account, are using a currency that inflates at ridiculous rates where there's basically no way for them to save money and save up for anything.

And I think that reading about some of these stories, as the title says, can kind of help you check your financial privilege and realize that Bitcoin isn't something that's just an investment. It's something that actually is truly helping people in developing countries liberate themselves, right, and get out of rough situations, right? There's very few countries that have explicitly have slavery still, but, I mean, people are damn near close to slavery in a lot of situations when, you know, your money is inflating at such a rate where you literally can't save. You can't even imagine, you know, saving up enough

to buy a nice house or something like that for your family, different things like that. Like there's a lot of hopelessness that comes from hyperinflation or superinflation, or whatever we want to call it when it's, you know, currency is still surviving, but it's at 50% or whatever it is in these different countries. So, yeah, I would say, I mean, this is a really valuable book to read for anyone. I don't even want to go into the chapters too much because I really just want to encourage you to read this book. And I know I've talked in the past about using that.

reader reading at three times speed. I think this one was a little longer. It's 300 pages and it took me about four to five hours to read using natural reader, but it's a really easy read in the sense that, you know, compared to something like mastering Bitcoin that I talked about before, there's no lines of code or complicated diagrams to look at or anything like that. It really is stories of people's lives, right, for most of these chapters. So I think just knowing some of these stories and maybe even having some of them to explain to someone who isn't that into Bitcoin or thinks that it's evil, right, because it's destroying the environment, whatever it may be. In addition to having other resources to explain, hey, there's actually a lot of environmental

benefits to mining and that it helps build out renewable infrastructure and it's not actually producing any CO2 directly. It's just using electricity, which a lot of other data centers do, things like that. I think having these examples of people using Bitcoin to gain financial freedom can help people understand why Bitcoin is so important, right? And I think this is a great book for that. One of my favorite chapters was the one about Afghanistan and how basically there's these women who like have no financial rights in this country, but they were able to use Bitcoin to start. transacting and actually, you know, profiting from businesses, things like that. And even when Bitcoin's price is volatile and goes down, it's, there's one quote that says,

you know, the volatility is the price you pay for the rest of the benefits, right? Of having that financial access and having financial freedom. So again, I don't want to say too much about each specific chapter because I do want you to go and read this book and hear some of these stories because I think reading these stories really helps you understand why Bitcoin is important for the world, and it's more than just some kind of crazy, risky financial investment. Like, that seems secondary after you read this book. It's literally just a way for people to gain financial freedom in situations where they're completely screwed over by their country or, you know, a neo-colonizing country like France.

So, yeah, anyways, that's the gist of the book. again it starts with a couple of chapters about what bitcoin is its history things like that but really the bulk of the book is these chapters where each chapter is a different story from a different country and kind of a few people who are using bitcoin in that country and how it's helpful for their specific situation where there's a lot of overlap in the situations but there's a lot of unique elements to them too of course so anyways i hope you enjoy this review i hope it's helpful and leads you to want to go read this book whether it be i know it's on audible so if you're into audiobooks you could buy it there. I'm sure there's other places you can find it,

things like that. But yeah, it's a really useful book. And I think, you know, maybe even sending a specific chapter to someone who is interested in human rights, but doesn't understand freedom, right? Or doesn't understand Bitcoin, sorry. Someone who is really interested in freedom, human rights, things like that, and, you know, wants to help out people in developing countries but doesn't understand what Bitcoin is or how it could be helpful or thinks of it just as an investment. Like sending a specific chapter to them could be really, really helpful in just gaining that perspective, getting out of that bubble where you think that Bitcoin is just an investment. So anyways, hope you enjoyed this review or kind of discussion of

check your financial privilege by Alex Gladstein. And I hope you go and read this book and let me know your thoughts on it if you've read it or if you're interested in reading it or if you're interested in reading it or if you do read it because of this podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And if you're listening on Fountain, feel free to leave me boostergrams, stream me some sat, something like that. If you're listening on other podcast platforms, feel free to review me there, help other people kind of discover the podcast. If you found any of these book reviews helpful, let me know and let me know any other books. This might be the last one for a little bit, just because we've done several book reviews recently. But yeah, I've found all these

books that have covered recently to be helpful, interesting, and just useful to understand different aspects of Bitcoin, aspects of monetary history, aspects of how all these different colonial forces are screwing people over in developing countries, especially in this book. So, yeah, thank you so much for listening. Have a great rest of your day.