As I argued in my previous post the financial system is broken, and it shows itself for example as the poor are getting poorer and the rich getting richer (US gini co-efficient 1990 – 2020). At the root of the financial system is the US dollar, which is no longer backed by anything else than ‘the might of the US army / IRS’, every dollar is an IOU to some-one else.
The message we hear in main-stream media is that spending is driving the economy, that the ‘mighty US consumer’ keeps the economy rocking and that ‘2% inflation’ is something the Fed should target as a worthwhile goal so that the economy can ‘grow’. Hold those thoughts in your head for a moment.
Does that work on an individual level? If one person spends all their money, and doesn’t focus on their earning power or saving anything – will that work? No, you will go bankrupt.
Does that work on a household level? No of course not – that family would end up on the street sooner or later.
Does that work for a company? A company spending tons on fancy offices, employee salaries, growing like a weed. Sounds like WeWork, and we know how well that worked. It ONLY worked as long as the company was growing.
So WHY in the world do we think that that advice, those policies are good for a nation?
The current consumerist, wasteful, opaque, spend it now messaging is due to the demands of constant growth, which is inherent in a debt-based, inflationary system.
We saw a small deleveraging happen in after the Financial crisis and the whole system almost came crashing down – because otherwise the costs of servicing debt will become un-tolerable.
I predict that the inflationary, fractional reserve, constant growth mandate will sooner or later inevitably meet the limits of a finite, resource constrained world. We are seeing overconsumption of natural resources, overconsumption of calories / energy, leading to climate change and chronic indebtedness – both public and private. There is only so much debt that households and countries can take on – this is shown even by mainstream economists like Rogoff and Reinhart.
The alternative is a deflationary currency that incentivizes actors to save for the long-term – to adopt a ‘lower time preference’. A lower time preference encourages actors to plan long-term, postpone immediate gratification and encourages global collaboration.
A deflationary currency that is immutable – such as gold or Bitcoin, have inherent properties that are favorable for bringing about a lower time preference. The Gold standard worked well for a long time, and IMO a Bitcoin Standard would work fine as well.
Imagine a nation where politicians were not able to spend money willy-nilly, and budgets actually had to be balanced? Increases in bureaucracies would actually be questioned, instead of just pawned off on consumers to pay – eg 95% of new hires in health-care since 1990 have not been doctors, but administrators.
Imagine a nation where wars actually had to be paid for, and you would have to raise taxes if you wanted to go to war? Eg in World War I – the first thing the combatants did was drop the Gold standard. We’ve just seen how we can spend Two Trillion $ in Afghanistan, without real oversight or deliberation. How many less wars do you think we would have had, and could be avoided in the future?
Imagine a financial system where savers, wage-earners, pensioners were able to keep their earnings, savings in the base layer money and actually earn yield on that, instead of being pushed into equities and junk bonds in a reckless chase for yield, chase to keep the value of your ‘monetary energy’ intact.
And finally as as an investor which asset would you prefer to build your financial house on? The Fed balance sheet has almost 10x since 2007, and the USD is getting devalued at the rate of $120 Billion per month. Meanwhile Bitcoin is algorithmically set to get scarcer (new BTC rate is halving every four years), and has a cap of of 21M coins by 2140.
That’s algorithmically set, immutable, open-source money.