Sound Money is a More Empowering UBI

Sound money is more empowering than UBI and bitcoin is the soundest money we can conceive. From a world saturated in fiat it can be hard to picture what a sound money world looks like.  A UBI can seem like something that would give you power in the short term, but in the long term it washes out.  Sound money provided by bitcoin builds over TIME which is what you have if you are young and without assets.

One way to picture a sound money world is to change two main figures in your value calculation. These are the most directly impacted by fiat. one is the interest rate, the second value is time. It seems so boring and inocuos, but people obsess over the interest rate for a reason. The interest rate is a way of measuring the value of time. A thing that strangely relates directly to your life, the value of time also by extension translates to the average wage. The interest rate is suppressed in a fiat world through government manipulation. That means the government is discounting the debt for its own spending at the cost of your wage and if they should create a UBI they will probably have to take on more debt.  The future which is discounted by the interest rate x the amount of time to pass is further discounted. It leads to more and more discounting of the future. With more time the interest rate compounds and has exponential impact. 

In a sound money world the interest rate is naturally floating. It would be on average higher and the average wage is also on average higher. We have seen this historically, the average wage being higher in a general sense for supporting a family and owning a home. Remember the wage must be compared to assets and resources people need of the time, we doe have increases in productivity, but these should be expected and removed from the assessment. For example imagine an average wage three times as high as it currently is, kets say $300k and the interest rate the same say 15% at the moment. 

To put numbers for a young person on it let's say the average income (something often achieved by young people leaving school) is $180k and the interest rate is 30% (with lower deposits and/or longer lock in periods available for deposits the variability of interest rates available in a sound money economy is wider). You are able to save as a single person and when you do that savings compounds much more. You are encouraged to work hard and live humbly and effectively. It means as a young person your time is much more empowering. If you spend your time wisely as a young person your future is much brighter. 

Fundamentally, young people have time and old people don't have time. The possession of available time to use in important, it is a strong form of power. Sound money rebalances the scales from asset holders to time holders and lets it float naturally. We could say money x time = power. Old people can have assets but they always have ever reducing time (forget about your longevity scams friends).  Fiat money favours those with assets at the cost of those with time (the young).  It also devalues children this way, but thats another story all together. You would have thought that Elon Musk would have understood this, but maybe he has been exposed to too much fiat money. 

So when Elon suggest UBI you have to take it in context of a fiat world,  but I think that a bitcoin world is much better. UBI in a bitcoin world just discourages people from working, UBI does that in a fiat world also, but in a fiat world everyone is so paranoid about going broke that they might slave away regardless and waist like everything is going out of fashion (because it is). In a bitcoin world people can focus on what they like and if they are reasonable their future is secure. This is what I think most people find attractive about UBI, a sense of security, but it is false. A gift from your government and your future governments comes with UBI comes with a catch. UBI can never be truly universal comes with particular hazards in democracy because it buys votes and people vote for their flavor of UBI. If AI creates abundance and then the government is responsible for distributing that I am pretty sure that we end up in a dystopian nightmare. If you don't keep them in power you wont get UBI. 

Bitcoin gives a sense of security that is just, natural and I think in the end kind. Everyone has an equal opportunity to save in bitcoin and everyone gets the same return. We are encouraged to live in the present with good foresight and not to steal from the future. Clarity and transparency are valued well and the scales of time and assets are optimised. If AI creates abundance it is distributed to savers, time holders and asset holders according to their chosen weighted contribution. This means young people can feel secure as productivity flows into the value of their time more than to the value of other peoples assets. They can retire all the same and vote whichever way they like.  

A small amount of bitcoin savings held over a decent period of time give a sustaining reward to everyone. You just have to get through the to the other side and ignore the price charts and empower yourself. Your choices are much more empowerment than something that is given to you can ever be.

Bitcoin to Fiat Interest Rate Convergence

Bitcoin interest rates in decentralised markets are coming down. Rates on hodl hodl are sub 11% down from 16% and higher. Rates on KYC lending platforms like Lava are as low as 9% including setup fees.

Fiat interest rates are different across the world and 18 countries have interest rates that are higher than bitcoins. So if your in these countries your definitely going to want to keep you capital in bitcoin.

Venezuela: ~59.4%

Turkey: 37% - 50%

Argentina: 29% - 40%

Zimbabwe: ~35%

Russia: 15.5% - 19%

Brazil: ~15%

Ukraine: ~13% 

Egypt: ~27.25%

Nigeria: ~16.5% - 18.75%

Angola: ~19.5%

Malawi: ~18% - 24%

Moldova: ~20%

Sierra Leone: ~17% - 22.25%

Kazakhstan: ~15.25% - 16.75%

Haiti: ~17%

Mozambique: ~17.25%

Sudan: ~28.3%

Congo (Dem. Rep.): ~25%

Rates are not the only factor. Bitcoin loans are cirtainly easier to get than traditional loan. Quick sign up easy flexible repayments etc. One major factor, the loan to value (LTV) ratio is even improving. With LTV in advanced economies on real-estates ranging from 95-70% whats available on bitcoin has increased from 50% to up to 70%. When you can get more or the same leverage on bitcoin as you can get on your house then the portability of bitcoin starts to seem very atte=ractive.

I suspect that when bitcoin reaches interest rate parity with the USA then we will hit escape velocity.

Digital Alzheimer's

How's your mind going? Easy to remember peoples names?

Remember how we used to remember all of our friends phone numbers, now if you haven't put it into your phone there's only a flicker of a hope that you will remember it. 7 digit phone numbers now struggling with 6 digit OTP.

It call it digital alzheimers and I think there are a lot of people getting it. Take off your shoes, time to touch grass, go for a run or draw something. 

Currupt Capital Gains Tax (CGT)

As modern economies develop and become more financialised, I say zombified, increasing amounts of wealth come from capital gains. Logically governments want to tap in to these gains and it seems to make sense as it can act as a damper for rampant speculation, wealth inequality and capital valuations gone mad.

The thing is practically all this capital gain is caused by government policies which print money. Capital gains tax (cgt) ends up collecting more if the government inflates more. Which is a moral hazard and brings the whole nation into a ponzi. CGT encourages a cycle of business and government that moves more and more money into unproductive activities, capital speculation, government stimulation programs and fiscal irresponsibility. If you have CGT and it forms a significant part of your countries tax take, it is a sign something is wrong, its not healthy for an economy. Its an economy feeding on its own financialisation and it can't last on that alone, it needs more and more leverage to survive.

We see this in many developed countries. The intent of policy here often contradicts the actual effects. You get people doing nothing and just holding assets and governments destroying the value of currency (which destroys the value of employment contracts). You get more speculation and wealth inequality, not less.

Often the reason that CGT have been instigated is because the governments tax take from other methods has fallen and they need to fund things. The capital base of the country is high, but the economies are failing to grow and so pumping fake money into the system and collecting the overflow is attractive. Using this mechanism they can extract as much wealth from society as they like and as the countries capital base, built up over centuries is very deep a lot of money can come out without it being immediately noticed. This sly roundabout tax is very corrupt and only limited is our resistance. Resistance is also minimal becuase this on face value appears to impact the minority wealthy. The wealthy however employ debt and other mechanism to avoid this and what it really does is suck capital investment out of the economy which harms everyone.

Put plainly the government can use CGT to extract value from the public by making their house prices go up so much that their wages pail in comparison. House ownership becomes a persons main economic activity by the numbers. When the house is sold the government collect their percentage, the more its gone up the more they collect. The person still needs to live, and if they don't buy a house they don't participate in the inflating asset and this keeps them poor. So tpeople are forced to o buy houses and pay CGT. The government can control the house prices making sure they always go up so they always collect, more and more as they get greedier and their is little resistance if people think the tax is intended to reduce wealth gap and don't realise the hazard that it is funnelling money to the government both through the tax and through the money printing.

I feel like this deserves more all caps but I am going to hold back because even though CGT allone it a terrible wrought, it gets worse! Now we have talk in Australia of unrealised capital gains taxes. We are heading further into the dark and I will save that for a future post.

Quantifying the Value of Motherhood

The value of fostering children has been long undervalued in western governments. I attribute this to many factors including short time preference. A child is a long term investment and it take upfront pain and sacrifice. To me it's clear that it is valueble without analysis, but I want to do the math so the math people can understand, it's more than a feeling.

For this we assume that the society has balanced books, that the average person is productive for 50 years and that 30% of their production is surplus to their own requirements for sustenance. You could also construe this 30% as tax intake as it is also about the average tax rate. The added value of the child is represented as that child whole life and it is not just for the parents, or for the family name, but for the whole of society.

Motherhood

Per child calculations.

Average wage x 50 x 30% = Ave.Wage x 15 

We use the average income and not the median income because the child has an even chance of being average. With good parenting, from stay at home parents, you would hope they would be better, but lets ignore that from this calc. In New Zealand the average wage is around $69k and in Australia it is $102k. 

102kAUD x 50 x 0.3 = 1,530kAUD = 1.5 million AUD

For a mother of 3 that is $4.5 million dollars!

The value of children can be projected out far into the future. Those children themselves have children and if they can all do this at higher than replacement rate, eg; having 3 children and whilst still on average maintaining 50 average working years, then the calculation can be projected out. If we project this out over 100 years with average generation interval of 25 years, ie;  the average child is birthed when the mother is 25, then the calculation for a mother of 3 is higher. 3 children, 9 grandchildren, 27 great grandchildren and 81 great great grandchildren.

$1.5 million x (3 + 9 + 27 + 81) = 1.5 million x 120 = $180 million

Wowowoh! Yes! it is so high the power of compounding numbers. If we project it out forever then the value will go to infinity! 

We should note that doing this, providing this value is relies on more than just creating the child, it also requires an intergenerational effort to sustain these conditions. So now we have established the huge potential financial impact, lets bring it back down to earth and attribute the funds directly to how we spend our time.

The stay at home mum.

So if we consider that the years taken off work to raise the children are a valuable part of sustaining the intergenerational conditions. If we say that it takes 5 years per child to bring them up well enough to meet our conditions and that the rest of the upbringing is excluded, because during that time the parent can also be working without compromising the intergenerational culture then here are the calculations.

Per year calculations.

Staying with the 1.5 million per child (life time) number

1.5 million / 5 = $300,000 per year per child

Using the 121 million per child number attributing the value generated for the century. 

121 million / 15 years =  $8,066,000 per year per child

Yes thats crazy, it's disregarding the child raising time of the children. in this we should include the time of the children and grandchildren taken to raise their kids. This will assume that the whole family ends at the end of the century and that all work has been completed. The total years spent in the century raise the children of this averagely productive growing family.

3 x 5 + 9 x 5 + 27 x 5 + 81 x 5 = 120 x 5 = 600 years

$180 million / 600 = $3 million per year

Big Tech AI and Captive Voters

Big tech controls old people and people who are susceptible to their AI and algorithms. They control media and can polarise people first and let them be left and right without need for interference, but when it comes to issue that effect them they can sway both sides to what they need. This gives them a lot of control on the issues that matter to them gaining power. Through this the big tech companies start to control the democracy. The susceptible is the majority of the population.

Then the government enforces policies on behalf of big tech monopolies. I case you need reminding I'm talking about Meta, Alphabet from the USA with insurgence from OpenAI and X and with Tencent, Bytedance from China. The  policies prevent decentralised AI use like self hosting and cpu friendly algorythms, we have seen this already with the response to DeepSeek an open source, cpu friendly self host able model. It's already happening and as the AI gets better and the monopolies get stronger it gets worse. It could be the end of well functioning democracy.

Comprehending Big Numbers

It is easy to loose track of things when the zeros start stacking up. TV presenters and politicians find themselves doing it all to often a million here a billion there "did I say a  billion I meant a trillion". After a while it just starts to sound like "a lot of money", but you can't really feel it, for what it's worth in dollars. 

As a simple human, if you don't really grasp the numbers than you are at a disadvantage and so I did some calculations to make the numbers relatable, For simplicities sake I'll ignore inflation or appreciation and compare these big numbers to $100 a number I think everyone can comprehend. At the moment at least $100 is enough to buy food for a day, to eat out and do normal things that you might want, for one person, maybe even buy something. It supports a lifestyle spending  $36,500 year, which seems decent, excluding rent in most places. $100 lets you live for a day without too many worries.

So lets do the math in our head on the $100 a day standard.

$1,000 = 10 days

Thats not to good!

$100,000 = 1000 days = 3 years

Getting better, starting to feel like the money can provide decent security for one person. For a three person family this is one year. 

$1,000,000 = 10,000 days = 30 years

No we are talking, millionaire status gives us a sense of security if we past half way through an average lifespan, or a sense of freedom if we are in our 20's. You can do what your want and not run out of money for a "long time", it's not a lifetime though, and if you have a family of 5, it's 6 years. With a fully family you might want $6,000,000 to get the same feeling of freedom and security. 

$10,000,000 = 100,000 days = 300 years

With 10 million the family is covered for 60 years. At the moment this is the retirement figure for many people. For one person it is more than enough to have a good life and not run out of money. The 8 figure fantasy.

$100,000,000 = 1,000,000 days = 3000 years

No we are getting incomprehensive. It's ingrokable, actually you could ask Grok, but thats an extra step, at first sight 100 million just seems like a lot of money. 3000 years is just a long time! For a family of 5 it would be it's 600 years, that's generational wealth. You need to be serious about it or you don't need to worry about spending amounts, we can upgade the daily spend of the family to $1,000 and thats 60 years of continuous splashing out for the family.

$1,000,000,000 = 10,000 days = 30,000 years = 600 upgraded family years

Now with 1 billion dollars everyone in the family has generational wealth.

$1,000,000,000,000 = 10,000,000 days = 30,000,000 years = 600,000 upgraded family years

With 1 trillion dollars it's getting crazy, how do we comprehend even spending such money. That will feed Australia for a year. $1000 a day just doesn't cut it either, 600,000 people can splash out every day for a year. We need to upgrade the lifestyle again to put this in perspective for one family, lets first go to a "spend spree" per day calculation at $10,000. Now we have 1 million of them or 60,000 spend spree family years so lets expand the family to 50, we now have 6,000 "extended family" spend spree years. Thats a lot of money!