Can Technology Save the World From ‘Paying’ the Price in Times of Wars and Natural Crises?
“Will we get a lot to eat?” (in a free city)
— Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone
The laws of economics tell us that there are four factors of production — land, labor, entrepreneurship, and capital. While labor and entrepreneurship are counted as active factors, land and capital find categorization as passive ones.
The clear difference between them is the presence or absence of the human element. It is the humans that lead an economy, either to prosperity or to collapse. This human force is a controlling one among the many factors contributing to an economy. However, does this really stand true in our times? Perhaps, not.
Who is the Master and Who is the Slave?
“Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal — that there is no human relation between master and slave.”
— Leo Tolstoy
What is it that human beings need to survive? Food, clothing, and shelter — these count among our basic needs. Basic healthcare facilities can be added to this list. These constitute the first tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. To put it simply, without the availability of these, man cannot live.
There is a present, and there is history. Our history tells us about our evolution, not just in changes that occurred within us, but how we evolved as communities and civilizations as well. In the beginning, everything was very simple; we led the lives of nomads, feeding on fruits and roots and killing only when we needed to.
We slowly made our way further, and then clothing and shelter were added to our immediate needs. A step further, we began to trade things that led to the beginning and subsequent evolution of the barter system. However, that did not solve all our problems. New forms of currencies evolved and took us where we are now. Indeed, and the irony isn’t lost upon him, in order to make his life more comfortable, man made it even more complex.
Today, the world is divided into nations, and every nation has its own currency. These currencies are neither stable in their values, nor are they an answer to every problem faced by the modern man. Their worth depends on several factors and, eventually, wholly affect the buying power of basic human needs. What are the implications of this point? It means nothing less than an assertion enough to threaten humankind — money is becoming the new master of man.
When War Brings In Hunger
War is not new to humanity. While there were wars between tribes and kingdoms in antiquity, the present days stand witness to war among nations. What must be understood is the fact that there are more losses incurred during war than plain bloodshed, which is most often, the only crisis remembered.
In times like ours, when everything, from a loaf of bread to a box of matchsticks, can only be procured through such currencies, events like war, which shake the economies of nations to dust, destabilizing the values of their currencies, deprive people of their buying powers of everyday human commodities. This leads to hunger, starvation, and death.
Two classic examples of hyperinflation worth mentioning are Hungary’s hyperinflation of 1945–46 and Germany’s hyperinflation after the First World War. In the first case, the Second World War led to a loose monetary policy which further led to a depreciation of Hungary’s national currency, Pengő. The government printed more and more money; prices of goods doubled in a single day, and the lives of civilians were steeped in difficulty and distress.
The second case, that of Germany, happened shortly after the First World War. To pay the heavy penalties imposed on the country, Germany began printing more and more German Paper Marks in order to buy foreign currency. Hyperinflation set in, in August 1921, and the prices of goods doubled in less than 4 days.
To bring a conclusion to the points made above and also to highlight the consequences of war and economic crisis on the buying power of basic human needs, only one story needs to be mentioned: a man who had left his wheelbarrow full of German currencies later returned to find that the stacks of paper currencies remained, but the wheelbarrow was stolen!
How Well Are we Prepared to Face the Current Health Crisis?
The COVID-19 global pandemic is no less than a war. This generation (apart from a handful of individuals living today) has seen nothing like this ever before. We are living in unprecedented times.
The global coronavirus pandemic has exposed us as human beings and as a civilization. It has exposed our systems and our priorities. It has brought many a great nation to its virtual knees. It has created an atmosphere of despondency. And scientists say that the disease is not even as deadly as the SARS epidemic that threatened the world some ten years ago. So what went wrong?
Our priorities went wrong. Awfully. The pandemic literally caught the world with its pants down. We were left flabbergasted like the deer in headlights. Our manufacturing industry — with its once-celebrated just-in-time manufacturing systems — failed miserably. And it also exposed the worth of our fiat currencies.
Today, many nations are looking at a grim economic scenario. We shall prevail in the pandemic, but how will we revive the economy? With most of the world locked down, the fiat-powered global economy is looking at a downward spiral.
Today, we are seeing an upsurge in demand by the general population — not for fancy products, but for the bare basic necessities of life. Food, basic medical products and hygiene products. We have seen people hoarding necessary items. We have seen breaks in the supply chain of these items and we have also seen that many places selling these items ran out of them.
The Solution: Item Banc — A Currency Backed by Basic Human Needs
The times are changing, and these dynamic times also demand a new kind of currency, a currency backed by basic human needs. Here is where Item Banc steps in, bringing about a wave of change by creating a cryptocurrency backed by the very basic human needs. The other brilliant innovation would be the creation of a Global Parity Valuation Engine, which would determine the value of currencies based on information regarding the value of basic human needs.
Item Banc categorizes these basic human needs as Food, Shelter, Clothing, Basic Healthcare, and Paper Goods. Retail warehouses or BHN’s would serve as platforms for the exchange of one necessary human need item for another. The other option open would be that of credit or cryptocurrency which can be used in several ways from being redeemed at a BHN for the purchase of a good, to a peer-to-peer transfer.
Can We Save People from ‘Paying’ the Price of Wars?
The idea which forms the foundation of Item Banc is that it is the basic human need goods which provide value to fiat currencies and not the other way round. The worth of the present world currencies are linked to several forces which, during times of crisis like wars, prove to be fatal, with starvation, homelessness, and death as possible consequences. Such jeopardization of human life calls for attention and reform.
What we need today is a Google, if you may, of basic human goods from around the world — a ticker — that gives us real time information on the availability and values of these goods from around the world. That is the one information we need, this information has immense value — so much so that we can actually devise a currency around this information — the Information Currency.
Item Banc’s vision of the creation of a cryptocurrency whose value is solely based on basic human need goods is the need of the time. It could bring an end to an age of fear of shortage of ration and deprivation a war creates. To put it in a few words, only a cryptocurrency backed in value by basic human need goods can save the common people from ‘paying’ for the wars.
By Jitendra Rathod
Jitendra “Jay” Rathod is a writer. He writes content, mostly for companies in the blockchain/crypto space. Is passionate about blockchain tech and supporter of the Item Banc project.
