On the issue of central bank independence, which is now clearly being challenged: I've never really understood this. I get why independence is desirable--the Fed is one of the most powerful bodies in America--but how does it actually work? To be independent is to have no boss, but that also means there is no accountability. If the Fed chair or the governors are independent, then who decides if they are doing a good job? How do we change them if they aren't? At what point do the American people get to weigh in after someone has been appointed? It seems odd, in a democracy, to create very powerful positions--I'd argue more powerful than any single mayor, governor, or member of Congress--then declare "and they'll be independent", with the implication they'll always do a good job. Even the President doesn't get that kind of freedom. Indeed, executive positions in US politics were originally designed to be the weakest. None of this is to support the current politicization of the Fed, that is clearly dangerous and bad for America. What I'm arguing is that the whole idea of an independent Fed was always something of a fantasy: An opaque institution that gets to exercise ever greater power over the American people, power whose consequences would directly impact politics and political outcomes, but with almost no accountability back to the political process. It doesn't help that over my lifetime, the Fed has used every single crisis to drastically expand its powers. Or that despite being supposedly independent, it has clearly conducted blatantly political actions, as we saw during Chokepoint 2.0. In crypto, we are all about "can't be evil" vs "don't be." We aim to design systems that not only push back against the harsh realities of politics and political capture, but are in some ways designed to thrive in their presence. Bitcoin was built for a world that assumes the worst in human nature--not as individuals, and maybe not today, but rather in aggregate and on a long enough timeline. The Federal Reserve and other central banks were built for a more utopian, and in my opinion, unrealistic world, one that puts really powerful people in untouchable positions and hopes they do well. In this regard crypto is actually far closer to the democratic ideal espoused by the political philosophers of the past and America's founding fathers. Guess who is winning?