The Big Crunch
Imagine you become like God Almighty for one minute, simultaneously seeing past, present, and future. You could see anything you wanted: ancient Egypt, the death of Christ, the American Revolution, World War I, or even the future.
While you’re tempted to look at everything as quickly as possible, your gaze is drawn to a period just a few years from now. Odd, because it’s a world almost identical to our own. And yet the world has changed radically.
The Big Crunch has happened, and civilization will never be the same.
— -
The Big Crunch (no, not the cosmological one; our universe remains blissfully uncrunched) will be a catastrophic, global financial event paralleled by few in history. It’s when Peter finally comes to collect from us what we’ve been paying Paul.
In your brief state of omniscience, you realize that the Big Crunch killed the era of “easy money.” Your memory is a bit fuzzy since your college economics class, but you remember something about a British economist named John Maynard Keynes creating the whole easy money economic system in the 20th century (Keynesian economics). Credit, loans, and debt are no longer the engine of the world’s economy.
You realize the causes of the Big Crunch are complicated and multi-factorial, a perfect storm of bad conditions: a massive economic recession coupled with another war or two, a massive natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a food and oil shortage…it would almost be comical if it weren’t true. The Great Depression looks like child’s play in comparison.
“Welp, the world’s screwed,” you think to yourself. “Society is done, over, dead. There is no coming back from this…”
And yet, there is a silver lining to this story.
A little thing called “bitcoin” saves the day.
— -
“Wait, you mean that nerdy, magic internet money that my best friend wouldn’t shut up about in 2017?”
Yes, THAT bitcoin.
You see, when the world’s economy collapsed in the Big Crunch, government-backed fiat currencies collapsed with them. Dollar bills became so worthless that people used them as fire starters. It would take a stack of dollars bigger than your toddler to buy a roast chicken.
So what happens when your dollar becomes worthless? You find a better money, fast.
Enter bitcoin. Weird as it may sound, that magic internet money actually works very well as…real money (shocking, I know.) Imagine gold but better: scarce, secure, durable, highly divisible (up to eight decimal places; you can send someone as little as .00000001 bitcoin, currently worth about $0.00007.) Oh yeah, and no one can control it. A force of nature like gravity endowed with monetary properties.
Bitcoin became the money of the world almost overnight, filling the vacuum left by the collapse of fiat currencies. This phenomenon is called “hyperbitcoinization.”
Oddly enough, things stabilized pretty quickly post-hyperbitcoinization. The economy bounced back, domestic production ramped up, and trade continued.
But the world had changed. You quickly notice that the culture isn’t so consumeristic anymore. Walmart and Amazon don’t sell half of the cheap garbage that they used to. Nobody wants to buy stuff that breaks in a year or two anymore. Thus, manufacturers can’t afford to produce goods that nobody will buy. The quality of goods becomes better, and the quantity of goods becomes more limited.
Some other weird things happened too. There wasn’t as much pollution anymore since manufacturers weren’t producing as much cheap garbage. Culture and the arts roared back. And the world became more peaceful overall since governments couldn’t afford to fund expensive wars by printing unlimited amounts of money.
It still isn’t utopia and it definitely ain’t Paradise. The world still has its problems. Sound money hasn’t fixed the tiny problem called “human nature.” It’s merely an improvement over the easy money economy we have today.
Your one-minute God session is almost over. In your last five seconds, you quickly look at the tombstone of John Maynard Keynes in this post-hyperbitcoinization world. You hear thumping. Perplexed, you peer into his coffin. Much to your delight, the last sight you see is of him rolling over in his grave.
