The Slavic term czar means ruler, evoking the Latin term Caesar. At some point over the last century, the term moved from Russian history into American politics. The precise point when that first happened is a contested matter, and a question of triviality.
The continuation of such preposterous behavior, however, is a daily decision and quite relevant, because the thinking involved is a persistent imposition on freedom.
Czar could be translated as king, but it carries more meaning. To a Russian favoring the monarchy, czar may convey something along the lines of: effective cultural figurehead, national treasure, visionary of the populace, a bygone figure of bygone glory days.
In America, the term in practice has come to mean, “Nameless, faceless, ineffective bureaucrat, soon to be even-less-known than he is today.”
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Can You Name An American Czar?
With the exception of one, likely soon-to-be-forgotten individual, can even 1% reading this name a single American czar?
America has a border czar we learned during the 2024 election, Kamala Harris. Though it ended up a hotly publicized term, the truth is few people knew America had a so-called border czar, and few people cared. Had she not been running for the office of President, the identity of Amerika’s border czar would still be unknown.
At this point, the role of Kamala Harris as border czar is almost better known than the far-more-significant detail that she was America’s first, illegitimate, black vice president. She is an interloper, a pretender, a thief of the role, just like her running mate Joe Biden. This is a pair of people who will forever have asterisks next to their names in my writing and in my household, because the 2020 election was illegitimate and almost certainly stolen, in a coup against the American people, a color revolution.
The Importance Of Constant Self-Examination
To let that detail slip away and let bygones-be-bygones just because a better candidate won in November 2024, would be a disservice to honesty in understanding history. Furthermore, the political prisoners now in federal custody are Living Heroes who need to see the light of day, and need recompense and Presidential medals, after the deep state sought to destroy the lives of them and their family members as collateral damage in the Color Revolution of 2020.
On the political left, the term czar tends to be taken seriously. On the political right, the term tends to be mocked. It is good to mock the term across the political spectrum. It is bad for the political right to follow the political left down this road.
A Crypto Czar Has Been Proposed
On December 5, 2024, President Trump, the legitimately elected 45th, 46th, and 47th President of the United States announced the appointment of David O. Sacks as crypto czar.
David O. Sacks might be a neat guy, with more insight than many in Silicon Valley. Donald Trump might be a better President than most. But some wisdom from the past might be helpful at such a moment. Before America had such a thing as czars, designed to spread central planning into the United States, and before the people of Europe had much more than a taste of the socialism that was to come, Ludwig Von Mises wrote a book deriding the stupidity of such endeavors. It was called Socialism and published in 1922.
Useful Wisdom From The Past
In that 1922 book, Mises wrote a still-pertinent detail we must be mindful of, “The word ‘Capitalism’ expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.”
We must eschew socialist ideas that increase the role of government in our lives or that legitimize existing roles of government in life. Drastic shrinking of government is needed. Every passing day of a same sized government is a day of legitimizing the evil of the existing socialism around us. If we are to claim to support freedom, we must not let pursuits of freedom be dominated by socialist thinking.
G. Edward Griffin, in his biography of Robert Welch, entitled The Life and Words of Robert Welch, highlighted an important reality of government: it is better to have 300,000 of the most awful, thieving bureaucrats running a country than to have 3,000,000 perfectly upright citizens. The bigger a government is, the more certain they are to individually turn into tyrants, many even without realizing it, thinking themselves nothing more than diligent and upright in their work.
Insightful Application Of That Wisdom
With these fundamental realities in mind, the only good appointments from Donald Trump are appointments that will be serious about protecting freedom in this land by shrinking the size of all departments bigly.
For starters, a reasonable expectation for anyone serious about preservation of freedom in the United States and the world, is that all departments be shrunk to 5% of their current size within the next 3 years and 11 months. 95% of roles must be eliminated and replaced with nothing. That would be a good start.
This should be done by Election Day 2028, and ideally much sooner, because the sooner government is shrunk bigly and that shrinkage normalized, the harder it will be to reverse.
Regulatory Clarity Has Been Called For In The Cryptocurrency Industry
Donald Trump made this proposed appointment of David O. Sacks as crypto czar with the following statement: “He will work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S.”
Based on my industry experience and political experience, I agree that regulatory clarity is needed.
In 2013, I co-founded an early Bitcoin exchange in downtown Manhattan, right next to the New York Stock Exchange. The full-length documentary Banking on Bitcoin was made partly about that endeavor. I have been involved in the industry since that time.
The term “regulatory clarity,” is used to push forward all the most toxic policies from both evil and clueless individuals, so we must be careful with using that word absent clear definitions. During my decade plus in the industry, I agree, it would be good to have regulatory clarity. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”
What Should That Regulatory Clarity Look Like?
To follow the suggestion of Thoreau, the great American thinker and writer, let me illustrate exactly the regulatory clarity that would earn my respect, let me illustrate exactly the regulatory clarity that my expertise in the industry points to, and let me do so in three simple, and hopefully, easy-to-understand government actions:
The Three Holidays
Holiday #1 — Crypto Tax Holiday — All proceeds from all activity utilizing cryptocurrency will enjoy a tax holiday for the next 45 years. That includes transactions, investment, speculation, money transfer, financial privacy measures or any other economic activity in which at least one party uses a free-market cryptocurrency.
Ideally, this tax holiday will be recognized as so good for the growing of this sector of economy, that it will be sought and imitated by other sectors of the economy. America will grow more and prosper more when all possible federal taxes are removed. This one behavior will make David O. Sacks the most known American “czar,” to have ever existed and will make Donald Trump, the most important President since the end of World War Two and possibly the most beneficial US President ever.
Give Americans a 45-year tax holiday, and for the next 100 years, Americans will be allergic to the growth of the dual headed beast of economic and political tyranny that exists as government confiscation of private property through the form of immoral theft known by the innocuous name “taxation.”
If the crypto czar can accomplish one thing, he will long be remembered as one of the most important Americans to have ever lived. That one thing is to pass the following words into law: “All proceeds from all activity utilizing cryptocurrency will enjoy a total federal tax holiday for the next 45 years.”
If he still has energy and still seeks to make a name for himself and his boss as two of the greatest Americans to have ever lived, there is more that can be done to offer regulatory clarity for the cryptocurrency industry.
Holiday #2 — Crypto Regulation Holiday — If the crypto czar can accomplish a second thing, he will long be remembered as one of the most important Americans to have ever lived. That second thing is to pass the following words into law: “All activity utilizing cryptocurrency will enjoy a total federal regulation holiday for the next 45 years, making it entirely exempt from all federal laws and regulations during that time.”
Do you want to see the most amazing regulatory environment known to man? Do not use the ineffective and corrupt method of political regulation. Instead, allow consumers and entrepreneurs to shape the regulation through the marketplace. This is what that powerful mechanism looks like: What consumers like, they buy. What they don’t like, they don’t buy.
While there are many negatives about the cryptocurrency industry and many negative aspects to Bitcoin, a free market in Bitcoin can be used to usher in a new era of freedom, at least for those who wish to be freedom’s ushers. Gone are the days in which only metals can be used. Freedom’s ushers must recognize that and lead, without abandoning the important role of metals in protecting freedom.
Donald Trump may prove to be one such usher in this era. What Donald Trump must be sure not to do is to not rest on the broken elitism of the East Coast Establishment. That broken elitism says, “More compliance, less freedom. More regulation, less privacy.” The opposite is needed.
Holiday #3 — Crypto Socialism Holiday — The best is saved for last. Few people reading this will understand the extent of the pernicious evil that this third holiday will combat, but it is just as vital as the first two, if not more.
One of the most significant exports of the US Government since the end of World War Two has been anti-financial-privacy measures. That is a sad detail to recognize. With all the good America could have done spreading freedom in the intervening years, this instead was one of the most significant exports. How the last three generations of Americans have let both their ancestry and their posterity down. But that grim past can be changed.
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Government pencil pushers, with a desire for total control over the world have failed to obtain that control, but have, in the process, made the lives of many law-abiding people miserable by doing away with financial privacy globally. They have illegalized privacy. Among the most egregious form of socialism in the United States today is the idea that if you do not disclose everything to the government whenever asked you are assumed to be violating a law. There is no financial privacy from government eyes. All financial activity is totally known by government or easily accessible. If you do not comply you are presumed an illegal money launderer until you do comply.
Like the previous two concerns raised, this too can easily be remedied with a single one-sentence act by the federal government.
To remedy this overreach, “All activity utilizing cryptocurrency is exempt from Know Your Customer laws, Anti-Money Laundering laws, and all other anti-privacy laws for the next 45 years.”
Let The Systems Compete
This will allow the marketplace to come up with a more freedom-oriented option than the present toxic environment allows for. At least two options will be created for the consumer: 1.) a private environment in which privacy is not criminalized, and 2.) the existing privacy-free environment in which privacy could earn you a decade in prison. Let the two systems compete with each other these next 45 years, and we will see which proves more successful.
By spending the next four years assuring these three protections be instituted as law by the federal legislature, David O. Sacks will become a permanent hero of the American people — the first American czar worthy of being remembered.
