Tee Yaps

politics, money, educaiton, technology, media

Im going to talk about all the ways power is centralized, starting with Money. Each aspect is listed above Each one will have its own post so its digestible, as opposed to just having one really long post.

Money

we cant talk about power without talking about money. Money is Power, after all.

A currency has 4 traits, according to seifudeen ammous( author of the bitcoin standard.) These are

• transferability– ability to switch hands with ease
• durability -to withstand repeated use
• Scarcity – difficult to counterfiet and supply remains relatively constant so its value is trusted.
• divisibility – ability to be divided into smaller units to use for smaller transactions.

The currency that the whole world uses as their standard lacks in scarcity. Actually its scarce to the majority of the population. but its governement can just literally print more money. Which is illegal for anyone else to do.

In actuality this currency’s supply is near infinite. If our countries supply of money is low, we just print more. if the economy is doing bad, you literally just print more money.

This leads to inflation. And the result is that a country’s currency is diluted into oblivion. Making it worthless. A currency that sporadically gets printed money will not have a relatively constant supply, thus devaluing it.

war and money

If we needed to finance a war, the government would print money in great quantities to do so.

It would pay for all the resources it needs.. All factories would be incentivized to switch their operations to help the war effort, because they would get money from the government. the governemnt would print free money and give it to contractors.

Its a win win, no?

In the short term maybe. But the effects of it would be realized shortly after. There would be way more money circulating in the economy, making it less valuable. thus leading to inflation (higher costs).

Additionally, since the government has seemingly unlimited resources, support from its citizens is not as necessary. This would be different if a currency was actually scarce and constant in supply.

If the currency was gold, a nation would have a finite supply. It would have to spend wisely to finance a war. it would have to allocate funds strategically, otherwise it would run out of resources and the enemy would win.

If they needed money, it would rely on its citizens to help the effort. by asking them not just to serve but also contribute financially to the effort. If citizens did not think a war is worth fighting, the government would be inclined to listen to them. or may have to.

Thus, a nation would get more support for defending themselves from an enemy than if they were to go out and attack one because failing to defend themselves affects their citizens’ survival. Instinctually it makes sense to fight and do whatever to survive.

If a nation were to attack an enemy, its more expensive. and not as threatening. so citizens would be able to protest it because of its financial burden.

Today, a nation that attacks another nation, the financial impact is not really processed by the citizens. For example, in the US our military, is one of the largest spending areas and we are constantly sending money to nations with no benefit to its citizens and it is not questioned.

The governments can attack whatever nation they want, and their citizens disapproval of it has less of an effect on them than if it operated of an actaul currency.