Review by Olivia Broadway, Queen City Freedom Fellowship

Many consider The Bitcoin Standard to be the "Bible" for Bitcoin, and I can see why. The majority of the book is actually focused on the history of money and what makes money valuable, which is really important to understand if you are going to understand the case for Bitcoin. Ammous' writing style is engaging, and his love of Austrian Economics comes through loud and clear, which I appreciated. He takes aim at both Keynesians and Monetarists, since both see a role for the State in regulating the money supply, albeit to different degrees. As I read, I realized how little I actually knew about the history of money; such things as sea shells, glass beads, and heavy stones had been used in various civilizations, which had subsequently suffered economic catastrophes with the inflation of their money supplies when someone figured out how to easily make/find more of the "money."

The book doesn't get into the tactics of how to actually buy and store Bitcoin, but it does present a compelling case for Bitcoin as the best money we have, particularly from the "store of value" perspective. A money's "store of value" is largely based on its stock to flow ratio (stock = existing supply; flow = new amount created). The harder it is to create new amounts of the money, the higher the stock to flow ratio, and the more likely the money will be a good store of value. This is how gold became the standard across the globe for millennia. And this is why Ammous argues that Bitcoin could be "the best store of value humanity has ever invented."

This was a fantastic book that I found to be an easy read, explaining concepts in layman’s terms, while not losing the substance of the argument. I highly recommend this book for both the interesting history as well as the introduction to the case for Bitcoin.

Review by Olivia Broadway, Queen City Freedom Fellowship

Economics in One Lesson is a libertarian classic. Though the title may lead you to believe it to be a dry book of economic theory, the book is anything but that. Hazlitt begins the book by presenting the reader with "the lesson" in chapter 1, and he spends the rest of the book explaining how the lesson applies to real situations. He does this in layman’s terms, using examples most of us can relate to, without jargon or complicated graphs, so it is easy to read and understand.

What is this lesson? The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. Hazlitt encourages us to think longer term and more broadly about the downstream impact of our decisions. For example, who really benefits from tariffs? Sure, the protected company or industry benefit in the short term, but what about everyone else? Hazlitt points out that tariffs hurt our exporters, and they make "the industries in which we are comparatively inefficient larger, and the industries in which we are comparatively efficient smaller…In the long run, [a tariff] always reduces real wages, because it reduces efficiency, production and wealth." The chapter on inflation also stood out as a timely reminder of the disastrous effects of an increase in the supply of money.

Economics in One Lesson was originally penned in 1961 and updated in 1978. The effects of our economic policy decisions were predicted decades, if not centuries, ago. Indeed, there seems to be nothing new under the sun. I highly recommend this book to anyone trying to understand what is going on in our economy. This lesson is still as true today as it was in 1961.