Bitcoin Forum

Today's real tyranny is in the realm of money, where it can hide and surround itself with a benevolent, free-market and free-trade loving facade.

But we don't have to go into financial minutiae to really understand the problem.  It's actually quite simple, when properly viewed.

In order to grow, the economy must take risks, that is, make investments.  But who is to say which investments are worth risking for?  If the financial markets were free, each success or failure would be borne by the person investing their savings.  These incentives would tend to encourage good investing, for simple self-interest.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, these decisions are not free.  Financial markets are fundamentally manipulated by the control of money and core financial assets by governments and central banks.  The political and financial elites have the incentives to prop up optimism, because optimism raises the values of the money and debt they issue, thus giving them wealth and power.

This optimism is supported by all the tricks in the bag, and the mirage is bound to be exposed eventually, because of an entire scaffolding of perverse incentives within.

But the elites don't seem to worry: when the day comes, the deception can be supported with more application of state power, the top elites can be bailed out, the problem can be blamed solely on the current occupants of power, and/or the unpayable debts can be inflated away.  In the mean time, rake it in!

Most likely, not much of these drastic medicines will even be needed.  The average person won't really understand why they just can't seem to sell or find a job.  That is, most of the weight of the pain can be put on deflation, as happened during the Great Depression and the Great Recession.

In the final analysis, our world is not really different from a socialist control-economy, where the commissars proclaimed their undying commitment to do the best for the people, but enjoyed special access to the luxuries of life.  The exercise of power and the confiscation of economic freedom just occurs at a deeper level of the system.