From Harmony to Greed: Humanity’s Fall and Potential Return to Sustainability
Before humans lived in vast cities and complex societies, we were simply another species in nature’s delicate balance. We roamed the plains of East Africa, coexisting with other organisms — plants, animals, ecosystems — all governed by nature’s ethical and impartial laws. These laws rewarded balance and punished excess. If a species consumed too much or overexploited its environment, it faced collapse or extinction.
For millennia, humans abided by these natural laws. However, at a critical point, a small but significant shift occurred in how we organised ourselves. This moment marked the beginning of humanity’s unsustainable path, a turning point where we deviated from nature’s harmony and unknowingly set ourselves on a trajectory towards overconsumption and imbalance that finds us here today.
Part I: Small Bands
Picture a small band of five humans living on the Serengeti plains. Life was straightforward — each person contributed to the group’s survival. Two members hunted for meat, two gathered water, and one picked vegetables. At the end of the day, they pooled their resources, ensuring everyone’s needs were met.
The natural world’s ethics guided their actions, and the group lived in harmony with nature’s laws.
In this early stage, formal money did not exist. Instead, the group operated on a barter system. A person who collected water might trade it for meat or vegetables. Though no written records were kept, a shared sense of responsibility ensured that everyone pulled their weight. If someone consistently failed to contribute, the others would likely protest, driven by a sense of fairness.
In this small community, balance was easily maintained. There was no overconsumption — each person took what they needed, and resources were shared. The natural world’s ethics guided their actions, and the group lived in harmony with nature’s laws.
Part II: Larger Groups and the Introduction of Money
As human bands grew into larger communities, it became harder to keep track of who contributed what. The direct bartering system that worked so well for small groups became inefficient for managing the needs of a larger population. Specialisation emerged — some people became better at hunting, while others focused on gathering or crafting. With more people came the need for a more efficient method of exchange.
This is where the concept of money came in. Early societies recognised the need for a ‘medium of exchange’ — an item that could be universally traded for goods and services. Gold stood out with its unique qualities. It was durable, divisible, portable, and rare. These characteristics, along with its resistance to reproduction and counterfeiting, established gold as a reliable store of value and medium of exchange — meeting the definition of money.
Those who lived within their means and saved prospered, while those who over-consumed and lived in excess struggled.
The introduction of money boosted specialisation, allowing individuals to pursue their natural inclinations. A writer, for instance, could focus solely on writing, knowing they could trade their books for gold and use that gold to purchase vegetables or water. This more sophisticated economic system didn’t disrupt nature’s balance; prices of goods and services still fluctuated according to supply and demand. A plentiful vegetable harvest would naturally lower prices, discouraging over-harvesting, much like nature’s own checks and balances.
The emergence of marketplaces, where people exchange goods and services, is as natural as bees pollinating flowers, suckerfish feeding on algae from sharks, or clownfish finding refuge in anemones while improving water circulation. A marketplace is simply the facilitation of value exchange among humans for mutual benefit. In a way, clownfish and anemones also found each other in a kind of marketplace, but one beneath the surface.
While the cynic might reduce the marketplace to a mere transactional exchange, emerging purely from egoistic motivations, the idealist understands it as a space born from the best of intentions — where the diverse value of each individual is recognised, with the potential to create something greater than the sum of its parts through collaboration.
For a time, the system with the introduction of money worked well. It allowed for saving and efficiency, mirroring the ethics of nature, where sustainability is key. Those who lived within their means, saved their wealth or carefully invested it into sustainable long-term endeavours prospered, while those who over-consumed and lived in excess found themselves struggling.
The balance of nature’s ethics was still preserved in this era. Unfortunately, it were to be short-lived.
Part III: The Rise of Banks and Corruption
Soon, people realised that carrying large amounts of gold was impractical, especially as societies grew larger and more complex. Gold was heavy, and storing it at home made it vulnerable to theft.
Enter the banks — institutions created to safely store gold for people. Banks also acted as intermediaries, facilitating loans between those who had surplus gold and those who needed it, with interest payments as a reward for lending.
At first, this system seemed like a logical extension of the use of money. Instead of carrying gold, people received ‘claims of gold’ from banks, representing a fixed amount of gold stored on their behalf. These claims (paper money) could be exchanged for gold at any time, providing the convenience of trade without the burden of physically transporting gold.
This observation gave birth to the “original sin” in terms of the sophisticated economy: what if the bank issued more claims of gold than it held in reserve?
However, this system was soon corrupted when a cunning banker noticed that people rarely withdrew their actual gold. Instead, they traded exclusively with the paper money, leaving the gold untouched in the vaults. This observation gave birth to what one might refer to as the “original sin” in terms of the sophisticated economy: what if the bank issued more claims of gold than it held in reserve? The banker could then lend out these extra claims, collecting interest, while hoping that not everyone would demand their gold at the same time.
This marked the birth of fractional reserve banking — a system where banks issue more money (in the form of paper claims) than they physically possess in gold reserves. While it initially appeared to solve the very liquidity problem it created — since new claims could always be printed — it triggered a vicious cycle: the more money printed, the greater the inflation, as purchasing power dwindled. To combat the inflation, even more money would be printed, further deepening the cycle.
Chronic inflation became the default, marking the critical turning point where society shifted from from sustainable living to one of borrowing from the future.
Fractional reserve banking didn’t just create a temporary imbalance — it fundamentally changed the rules of the game. Once this system was in place, banks had no choice but to keep printing more money to avoid default and sustain liquidity. Chronic inflation became the default state of the world economy, marking the critical turning point where society shifted from sustainable living to one of borrowing from the future.
Inflation erodes the purchasing power of money, reversing the incentives of the natural system. Instead of rewarding those who saved and consumed only what they needed, the new system ensured that those who spent as fast as possible got the most out of it.
The underlying logic is simple: whereas one unit of money once bought an apple in the first year and rewarded savers with two apples the next, the new reality meant that by year two, the same unit bought only half an apple, and by year three, just a quarter. This paradigm shift was the total opposite of how it worked previously — where those who saved saw their purchasing power gradually increase as human efficiency improved over time.
Without overstatement, the introduction of inflation hacked the source code of human organisation, smothering nature’s ethics like a heavy blanket.
Not only did the reversed incentive structures caused by this system promote immediate consumption over saving and investing into the future, but it also opened the door to a career in manipulation. Honest work, such as creating something of real value for others, moved from the center of the economy to the periphery. Instead, the manipulators — those with the most access to banks, financial institutions and political power — moved to the forefront, gaining wealth and power by exploiting their proximity to the money printing machine.
By positioning themselves near the source of newly created money, they secured unfair advantages, such as taking on low-interest loans and spending the borrowed money at old prices before inflation fully set in.
The biggest losers in this system were individuals who saved for the future and lived within their means, as they were no longer rewarded for their hard work and measured spending despite still being the true contributors to the economy’s success.
We can say without any overstatement whatsoever that the introduction of inflation — by expanding the money supply — hacked the source code of human organisation. It smothered nature’s ethics like a heavy blanket, replacing them with incentive structures in direct opposition to the natural order.
Illogical Economics: Forcing Spending at the Worst Possible Time
Before we continue, let’s take a quick detour to examine the belief system of those advocating for endless money printing as a tool that modern governments should embrace to manage the economy. In their view, when a bad harvest occurs due to natural causes and citizens respond by saving more to prepare for uncertain times, the government should step in and print money to “stimulate the economy.” By inflating the money supply, they devalue people’s savings, effectively forcing them to spend — or risk watching inflation eat away their savings anyway.
In essence, they arrogantly propose that when nature signals caution and saving, the government should override that instinct. This disrupts the natural flow of economic activity, punishing those who plan carefully while encouraging overconsumption at a time when resources are already scarce.
As a result, poor resource management follows, with people figuring they might as well spend their savings if they’re going to lose value anyway. They rush to buy goods or services they don’t need. As a result, resources that should have been conserved are wasted, leaving the community ill-prepared for the very future hardships they were saving for in the first place. It’s a complete departure from any logic or common sense — bordering on lunacy. Yet, the aggregate level of savings versus spending continues to be a key metric in shaping economic policies today, with higher savings seen as a sign of an unhealthy economy that must be “stimulated”. Imagine running into an old friend you haven’t seen in five years, and when you ask how they’ve been, they tell you they had a million in savings the last time you met, but they now have nothing left. In today’s dominant economic thinking, this would be considered a positive development. And this happens while we’re all running around like headless chickens trying to inject sustainability back into the system, while every economist from the South to the North Pole with an actual say cheers for us to burn through every last resource, as if that was the secret to achieving it. It’s an absurdity so profound, it lacks comparison.
Part IV: The Descent into Unsustainability
The introduction of fractional banking, likely occurring in its most primitive forms some 5,000 years ago, after humans transitioned from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones, marked the last time we lived truly in harmony with nature. What began as a practical solution to store and trade wealth became a corrupt system that was to incentivise unsustainable living practices to one degree or another for thousands of years.
However, the negative effects of these reversed incentive structures were likely not immediately apparent. As long as we could expand “westward” and conquer more land and resources, the system encountered little resistance. Initially, the burden fell on animals, who had no voice, followed by nature itself. It wasn’t until our reach extended across the globe, conflict among humans became inevitable, as resources dwindled and competition for dominance escalated — and the harsh reality of our dependence on a system that demands expansion at any cost became undeniable.
We find ourselves at a critical juncture where our unsustainable practices are revealing themselves through environmental crises.
Fast forward through history, and we see a recurring pattern: economic collapses, conflicts, and wars fought over the control of money, as societies repeatedly fall into the honey trap of the printing press. Expanding the money supply creates cycles of boom and bust, inflating economies and driving instability, all while exploiting every corner of our planet.
Today, this debt system has become highly sophisticated, deflecting blame onto every conceivable factor except the real cause. If it’s not immigrants or minority groups, it’s lazy citizens or greedy entrepreneurs being demonised — the list goes on.
However, this blame-game is hardly surprising once you understand the internal dynamics of the economy we all collectively uphold, as polarisation and scapegoating are embedded in the very DNA of the FIAT system. Sustainable growth simply can’t keep up with the pace that inflation dictates, which means that one group’s prosperity can only be secured by taking it from someone else.
When money is infinite, everything else becomes finite.
This is ultimately because when money is infinite — meaning the money supply constantly expands — everything else becomes finite, as inflation ensures no amount of resources is ever enough.
Chronic inflation has severed humanity’s connection to the ethics of nature and propelled a world fuelled by excess, growth at any cost and needless conflicts over resources. We now find ourselves at a critical juncture where our living practices are revealing themselves through societal instability and environmental degradation. Unless we restore the balance that once guided our early societies, we run the risk of pushing ourselves — and the planet — beyond a point of no return.
There is only one path forward to truly begin this process: embracing sound money whose supply cannot be diluted. While sound money won’t automatically fix everything wrong with the world, it will create an environment where profitability and sustainability become one and the same, rather than opposing forces. It will restore honesty and sustainable living to the center of the economy, where it belongs, and shift everything else to the periphery, as it was always meant to be.
However, since the inception of money, no form has been truly sound or immune to corruption and manipulation. While various forms of money, like gold, have been more or less effective in fulfilling this role, history shows that none have remained uncompromised.
This is only until now.
Part V: Satoshi’s Gift to the World
For the first time, we have sound money in the form of a digital, open protocol with a fixed supply that can never be expanded.
It is incorruptible, immutable, and permissionless. No matter how much resources anyone devotes to manipulating it for personal gain, doing so is impossible.
When money is finite, everything else becomes infinite.
This shift requires no permission from political leaders or governments; anyone with an internet connection can decide to take action now. The very moment they do, they stop fuelling the exploitative engine of our current global economy and instead begin actively supporting a future built on sustainability. This is ultimately because when money is finite, everything else becomes infinite.
The best part is that it draws in the beneficiaries of the old system by appealing to its greatest flaw: greed. Yet, the more it’s embraced, the more those same incentives are undermined by the ultimate sustainable order — nature’s own.
It’s a paradigm shift.
