Most of us relate everything to money.
Not you though?
Try to go an afternoon without considering the price of an item if you want to argue the point. Prices in dollars are everywhere we go and involved in nearly everything and whatever we do. And there is nothing wrong with that I guess, but it does make a comment on the flawed method we most use to value the varied aspects of our lives.
Cost/benefit analytics are normally performed before we make any transaction. And unless you are in the rockefeller club, this is a necessary feature of daily living, and in fact, it applies to them as well. Resources are not totally unlimited for any of us, regardless of humanly constructed power and wealth pyramids.
Authoritarian structures all over the world live, breath, eat and “pass money through their digestive systems”. They control employees with it; they rule using it as a weapon against those they view as adversaries or beneath them in some way. Sorry kids, that’s just the way it is!
And the currency used to reward and punish is normally fiat.. Fiat means trust, and that is all fiat currency is based upon. Blind stupid human trust! And I am hereby suggesting with available signed affidavit that perhaps this is the most stunning example of misplaced stupid human trust there ever was or ever will be! Since central banks print it up on computer screens at will, most of it will never even be printed into “hard” physical paper currency! It is ultimately, totally without any value whatsoever! And yet, strangely, wars are fought over it, lives are ruined over it, family ties are forever broken over it, and friendships destroyed over it and what it represents. So it’s worth the trouble to consider alternative value-storage/payment systems perhaps?
This article is not for those who love the present system as it is. If you love your system, you can keep your system…and rot along with it, lol. As for those of us who prefer more reality and less poverty in our lives, are there any means of escape available to us?
I have given this topic a whole lot of thought because fiat has affected my life so profoundly! Decades of suffering under credit card, mortgage, and line of credit debts along with rates that are specifically jacked up for the impoverished paid-slave class, ate up years and decades as I fought like a drowning man fights for air, all while attempting to hold my family of six together/ housed and fed. Looking back on it all, most of my biggest mistakes involved misplaced trust at some level or other. Perhaps we lend our trust too freely? Especially our trust in wealth and how we measure it?
What’s needed is some alternative means of escaping a system designed to harvest resources from whole nations until death and beyond! I can think of three exits from our overlord’s control system: digital currency, precious metals and barter.
My business involves moving people around in some fairly remote areas in the yukon territory of canada and I have noticed that different transport problems can be solved by using different methods. Some trips require aircraft, some motorboats, other canoes. Still others are best solved using horses or dogteams or more commonly these days atvs and snowmobiles. I think this principle also relates to our use of currency.
I have found that a total escape from fiat is pretty much impossible. How to pay your taxes for example? Will they accept potatoes from your garden? But, having said that there are a lot of alternatives in our daily lives and so what I am suggesting is a gradual weeding out of our use of fiat, much as one would weed ones yard of any troublesome pest. Fiat still has it’s place, it’s just going to have a smaller place in your life from now on, that’s all.
Whenever possible, barter instead of simply expressing your price in terms of money. Without giving specific examples, I have been able to use firewood as currency, favors going back and forth, and in fact, almost anything worth owning can be used in barter, bypassing the system completely. Check your local regulations and restrictions first though. Lol. The point is, the less fiat you spend, the less you need to earn and the lower your taxload will become. Which translates into fewer hours you will need to work to keep your credit card smiling, which in turn should mean an increase in the quality and enjoyment of your life.
It’s just so important to understand that every time you use that credit card, you are creating a hole which needs filling and income tax which needs paying. There’s the rub. Right. There. Can this transaction be avoided? Can it be reduced?
This principle also applies on the income side! Is there a trade I can accept instead of fiat? Can we use digital currency? Can favors be swapped? What about having payment for services transferred to someone more in need than yourself or a charity and avoiding the income altogether, keeping that invisible hand out of both our pockets?
An article I just read about airports seizing cash caught my eye. Apparently anything over 10k in your possession makes you some kind of a gangster, with your undeclared cash being confiscatable by authorities in the USA and difficult if not impossible to recover, this even upon exiting your home country!! For this purpose i’m going to suggest bitcoin might be a better choice, with the password hidden inside your head, rather than cash in a sock or shiny rocks in your pocket. Apparently, bitcoin is becoming more and more useful online and has even attracted some credit card companies, although I am personally skeptical of the value of using them for transacting bitcoin. They are too well connected to the club for my liking.
Bitcoin does appear to offer a non-confiscatable store of value, simple to travel with and convertible into most local currencies upon arrival in a foreign country. Yes it is volatile, the value constantly changing. But how is that a disadvantage over fiat, which is guaranteed to lose buying power over time as govern mens and central banks willfully print it into total valueless digital crap? If I would only have saved those 13 dollars in a mattress which I worked so hard to possess in my school days… right? Just imagine what I could buy with that 13 canuck-bucks today!
Actually, it would have bought about half an ounce of gold at the time, which would have been a much better choice than hiding it in my selfmade leather wallet, both of which were stolen anyway. Oh well, 20/20 hindsight…
Skulltripper 