Dead Broke
The Mathematical Certainty of Our Financial Destruction
“Men simply don’t think.” — Albert Schweitzer
It is so easy to miss the forest for the trees. It is so easy to be blind to the most obvious errors when one is not looking for them.
Some things just need to be simplified to really see the mistake.
A Simple Story of Money
So let’s simplify the economy down to just three people, Zach, his brother Tristan, and Roth, the banker.
Before money is introduced into the equation, Zach and Tristan are sharing among each other what they can both produce. Each man contributes in his own way to the needs of both. Thus, they both receive what they need to live. Whether they barter for these things or whether it is Gift, it matters not.
Roth comes along one day and offers a way to exchange goods using coins. In this way, any barter system they previously employed is greatly simplified. The only catch is that Roth requires a 2% fee (in coins) at the end of the year to reward him for making and distributing the coins.
Roth gives Zach and Tristan 100 coins each. The original plan is just to try out the system for a year and see how it works for them. Then Roth can collect the 100 coins from each, or they can keep using the coins if they like the “program.” No problem, right?
After almost a year of trading the coins and the products back and forth, Roth is due to return. Let’s just say that, since Zach and Tristan are pretty evenly matched in their work ethic (and luck), they still have 100 coins each.
They decide that, although the coins worked well, they don’t really need to use them. In fact, the coins did not actually add any production; they only (purposely?) complicated the system. So, the brothers are just going to give the 200 coins back to Roth and return to their old way of doing things.
But there is a problem….
They each owe Roth 102 coins, the original amount plus the 2 coin “fee” that Roth will charge them.
The question is: Where will they each get the 2 extra coins?
…
…
… I’m waiting…
The answer is obvious; they have to get the coins from each other.
And that’s where the competition and separation between Zach and Tristan begins. They realize they are immediately short 2 coins each. Therefore, each brother begins competing, stealing, scamming, whatever they need to do to get the total 102 coins, his original 100 coins plus the 2 coin fee he owes to Roth.
And finally, after a few years, it ends when one of the brothers is completely out of coins.
And what is not so obvious is that it actually ends when both brothers are out of everything they ever owned or ever will own.
That is the endgame for the system.
What endgame? What purpose? So that…
Roth owns everything.
And he never really cared about the coins at all.
The coins were just a distraction.
Do you understand the illusion now?
When we simplify it this way, It becomes easy to see the problem with the current economic system.
Some might argue that, “it is no problem at all”, Roth can simply issue them an additional 4 coins to cover the debt they owe. Then they can continue on.
The difficulty with this “solution” is that those 4 coins are also issued with interest owed. Therefore the next year, the shortfall is four coins for the year they didn’t pay, an additional 4 coins for the current year, PLUS interest on those 4 coins.
The deficit never ends.
Stop and Think!
The current economic system is unsustainable.
It is a mathematical certainty.
“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”
— James Allen
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