Happy 125th Independence Day!

This blogging contest for June initiated by @hiveph reminds me of my years of stay in South Korea, from 2012 to 2016. During my four years of stay there, I remember a day when I participated in a lecture in Seoul sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. That was on 26 May 2014.

The topic in that lecture was Freedom Barometer in Asia. The speaker emphasized that political freedom, the rule of law, and economic freedom are the three aspects of freedom that are discussed in contemporary discourse. I learned then that there are ten variables utilized to assess the freedom status of countries in Asia. At that time, the Philippines ranked eighth out of seventeen countries.

Preparing this piece, I visited the site where I got that information before, but the links are all dead. I am curious to know the current freedom status of the country after nine years. This is an inescapable reality in the cyber world. What you think about content that will stay on the web will soon disappear without you knowing it. And this is what I like about blockchain technology. Whatever you put on the chain will be there no matter what. Such a stable feature of this cutting-edge technology is somehow comforting, but at the same time should make us extra cautious in creating content. You cannot remove it; it will stay there even after decades that you’re no longer here on this side of life.

Among the ten variables, access to sound money is a key component of economic freedom. This caught my attention. I was a gold bug then. I saw that sound money as defined by Jorg Guido Hulsman and Thorstein Polleit of the Mises Institute is a vital aspect of economic freedom.

However, my view changed after encountering blockchain and cryptocurrency in August of 2021. For so long, since the 2008 crash of the housing market, I have been looking for an alternative monetary system, and I thought that the return to The Gold Standard is the only way.

Just two months ago, that was 09 April this year, Milan Stanojevic published his opinion on bitcoinmagazine.com about the possibility that the move of the BRICS nations to return to The Gold Standard can usher into the hyperbitcoinization of the world. I am not sure if you agree with his opinion or not, but that’s how he sees the current trend in geopolitics and macroeconomics.

Returning to my independence topic, I think it is not inappropriate for us Filipinos to be reminded by none other than our national hero himself saying that economic freedom is essential for complete independence. In other words, political and cultural freedom are not enough. They could be illusory and can give us a shadow of independence.

In commemorating the 125th Independence Day of the Philippines, I hope and pray that an increasing number of the younger generation in the country will come to realize the correlation between freedom and an alternative monetary system. If returning to the Gold Standard is not the way to achieve it, then how about the option provided by blockchain and cryptocurrency? We have been learning here on Hive that the platform can provide what we badly need that can give substance to our understanding of economic freedom.

Responding to the question about the importance of independence, yes, I do believe that independence is very important. However, in the digital world where the reality of globalization is at anyone’s fingertip, I think we are not far from the truth if we will begin to embrace this idea of a digital nation. And the number one threat to this new kind of freedom and independence is no longer a powerful nation, but those who posture themselves that they know better than us what we are supposed to do not only in our social media interaction but also in our online financial transactions. This to me is the new battlefield in our time.

Grace and peace!

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