The fiat standard
We live in a fiat world based on debt. Fiat is latin for "it shall be" or "let it be done" and fiat "money" is a government-issued currency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold. Fiat "money" is backed by government force as I heard analyst Lyn Alden phrase it.
"The path to financial success under the fiat standard lies in acquiring hard assets. Financing these acquisitions with debt is even more profitable. Not only is inflation likely to devalue the loan for the asset more than it devalues the asset, but as the lender and borrower are
partaking in fiat mining, there is enough benefit in the mining seigniorage to make the purchase cheaper for the borrower. The most profitable route, however, comes from being able to issue fiat and get others into debt. Among the most effective ways to issue debt is to build a business that pivots to providing banking services to its customers, which explains why so many businesses in so many fields offer credit products to their customers.
...
The consequence of fiat balances being negative is that everyone is constantly in debt. Your homeownership is contingent on you fulfilling your financial obligations for decades. Your future depends on you and many others fulfilling financial obligations in a timely manner. Your future uncertainty is higher than what it would be if you could place your wealth in a hard money, and that causes a rise in time preference. Everyone is less peaceful and more insecure.
In the fiat standard, money becomes a liability rather than future security. Rather than owning dollars that you can use to pay for your future needs, you owe large amounts of dollars, and you need to work for the rest of your life to pay them back. The age-old wisdom of every grandmother has been turned on its head. Instead of saving for the possibility of a rainy day, fiat makes you borrow against all of your future sunny days."
- "The Fiat Standard: The debt slavery alternative to human civilisation" by S. Ammous
"The road to serfdom is working exponentially harder for a currency growing exponentially weaker."
- Michael Saylor.
Or..
Is health and education wealth?
As discussed in my blog Blood money?
Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have.
This includes hard money - they just last longer. So what do you need money for? To buy things. The basic necessaties you can buy with money is food, water, a roof over your head and healthcare. Money saved is also money earned. Healthcare is really expensive.. I know first hand because I have old parents with tons of problems, and I also have patients who regularly tell me how much they have spend on their problems so far. If you know how to cheaply become and stay healthy you will save a lot of money. This is what I do:
And in the clinic I use this wonderful method:
If you grow your own food and get your own water the point is the same, but this is not my area of expertise, yet, so I do not have any content on this. If you learn things that have value to yourself and others you have more options to barter and/or earn money in the future. We are in extraordinay times because information is abundant - even overwhelming. Whatever your interest you can likely learn it almost for free. In the age of information ignorance is a choice.
I made a short brainstorm on health and wealth here:
For a deeper dive I recommend this:
Abundance, lack and the bigger picture
"One man's trash is another man's treasure" and "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" the saying goes. How can something both be trash and treasure? Because whatever it is does not have a label before someone labels it and how depends on the perspective, or the level of consciousness, of the observer.
We only really need very little to survive. The rest is a mental construct as Eckhart Tolle likes to say. The illusion of lack is driving by negative emotions and conditioned ways of thinking from my experience. Perception alters reality, and if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Simply being a human, alive and consciouss is a miracle in itself in the grand scheme of things.
