I agree that governments can manipulate their monetary policy in ways that are not in the best interests of their people. But I also don't see how widespread crypto currency would 1) have prevented the '08/'09 financial collapse, and 2) it appears that fiat monetary policy has more flexibility in responding to such crisis by inserting liquidity, facilitating the controlled dissolution of defunct financial institutions, etc.

2008 is a great example of why fiat currency is helpful. The government can simply create more to stimulate cash flow and/or prevent a crisis of confidence in a non-government institution.

But when the government 'simply create more', they are not creating any more wealth. They are creating more units of currency to represent the same wealth as before, which eventually makes every unit of currency worth slightly less.

The people who have assets in cash end up paying for it. That includes the poor who have most of their net worth in cash as they live paycheck to paycheck, and whose purchasing power has been stagnant for decades.

If the government "prints" money and immediately distributes it uniformly to the population, it benefits the poor most of all. Especially debtors.

This year was a great example. Mortgage refinancing bonanza. If inflation really takes hold, those debtors will be very happy.

> And that’s not a “rich get richer” kind of thing — the poverty rate fell. And it’s no surprise. Peter Ganong, Pacal Noel, and Joseph Vavra found that under the CARES superdole, “two-thirds of UI eligible workers can receive benefits which exceed lost earnings and one-fifth can receive benefits at least double lost earnings.”

https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-cares-superdole-was-a-huge-...

Twelve years later and I'm still waiting on that severe/total economic collapse wrought of quantitative easing that the libertarian hawks envisaged.