Harvest Of Greed - Understanding The True Cause Of Inequality
We are reaping the harvest of greed and putting the blames on “money”. Inequality exists only because some of us exercise our greed better than others.
The mistake we make as humans is thinking we can fix something by building another layer on top of the broken thing, it really cannot work.
The only way to “fix” the world is to tear It down and build a new one, but can anyone here so much as dare?
Do we really want to?
Of course, that's a quest one would not even know from whence to begin.
Fundamentals Are Too Crucial
I could never learn to write a meaningful sentence if I didn't learn the basics - the alphabets.
Every growth has a root from where it builds from, a shiny top with a damaged root is just a catastrophe waiting to happen.
There's been some conversations lately on “fixing” the flaws of traditional money and so far, the idea here is that fixing money means fixing inequality, which is believed to be the grass root of the problem.
Fixing the flaws of traditional money is the solution to global inequality, according to pioneer cryptographer David Chaum.
Chaum, a legendary computer scientist known as the "father of online anonymity," thinks traditional money is flawed since it is subject to inflation and devaluation, which have particularly severe effects in developing nations.
In Chaum’s view, money in its current form exacerbates global inequality and polarization, which threaten human civilization.
“Money is not the kind of thing you want to hold,” Chaum said in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph during COP28 in Dubai. "This is what keeps the global poor poor.”
First of all, money is money, quite simply, it's not a store of value, it's simply a medium of exchange, even bitcoin in its original state isn't a store of value, expect a post on this later.
So when we say that money is subject to inflation and devaluation, we're ignoring the actual problem:
Humans and Greed
Humans are the problem, we fuck things up as fueled up by our greed.
Chum here is proposing using artificial intelligence to fix money:
As an alternative to money, Chaum developed a new project called “Better than Money,” a “universal medium of exchange” that allows users to exchange value directly from their portfolio of assets.
“It’s simply the idea that you can pay someone by transferring value from your portfolio of assets directly into their portfolio of assets,” Chaum explained.
According to the cryptographer’s vision, the portfolio will be managed by AI, which will be more effective than banks in taking care of people's assets.
I am yet to watch the full video on this as the link that was provided says the video has been deleted by the uploader.
Anyways, we can for now focus on the topic of money and inflation.
Value Is Not Measurable
I'd try as much as possible to not go into great details here on this topic of value as I want that in a different post.
Value is not exactly quantifiable. Some of the biggest lies we've told ourselves when it comes to money in essence is that it's a viable unit of account and that shits like inflation and deflation exist.
I know, I know, I sound crazy but hear me out.
Inflation and Deflation exist but they do not exist exist if you know what I mean.
They only exist because we believe they do.
Unlike units of measurements of weight like grams, kilograms, and the rest, money cannot actually measure value because unlike weight that can be quantified, what is of value differs amongst people.
How something is valued by the general markets in real time is not a reflection of what it is worth. Products and services never have “real value” ; they are constantly either overpriced or overvalued, undervalued or really just at a fair value or price.
And guess what? All of these levels of value or price are really just from individual perspectives, none are defined.
This is why some random analysts today will tell you that Bitcoin is overvalued and next day, someone else will say that it is undervalued.
Both may be great analysts, just speaking by perspective looking at various market indicators that convinces them on the direction of the market.
So how can we say that money indeed suffers inflation or gets devalued?
Money doesn't actually change in value, it's not what many want to agree to, people simply start demanding more for products or services and other times demand less.
It's a psychological thing.
Business developers and owners look at seasons, exposures, trends and experiences and decide on how to price their products and services.
Even if bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency became the universal unit of account, we would still battle the problems of over valuation of goods and services.
What we call inflation and deflation would continue.
The only flaw of money itself is that a highly concentrated body controls its supply, which simply comes off as unfair to everyone else because they get greedy with it.
Of course this plays a role in the trends of prices of products and services but it's still really a thing of “oh, these people are printing money again? Let's take this chance to skyrocket food prices and blame it on them”.
The governments are greedy and the people too are greedy.
If we all weren't greedy, why would prices of goods and services increase but salaries to employees remain stagnant?
Shouldn't everything increase accordingly?
Guess what? If everything did increase accordingly, inflation wouldn't exist because why would I care that fuel prices have increased if my salary has increased accordingly?
So you see. It's all humans displaying greed.
Value lives in the head and nowhere else.