That Sinking Feeling In Your Gut
Another inflation lie: Why constant growth is fake
(Listen to audio version of me reading👆)
There is an old saying that if you aren’t growing, you are dying.
While this is true in a sense or maybe more accurately stated that life is constant change.
Growth is not needed in business 24/7.
This is only true in an inflationary world.
You MUST keep growing your mind though.
Inflation raises your time preference and doesn’t allow you to think long term and makes you do irrational things.
As Warren Buffett says, “rule number one, don’t lose money.”
He didn’t say “make money and grow at all costs.”
Even if I just stay even I can take learning lessons and failures as wins and move forward growing and getting better.
We have no idea what life will throw at us and it is that fiat currency system we are on backed by nothing but confidence, taxes, and the barrel of a gun do nothing but prompt quarterly earnings calls that people expect growth they continually go up up and away.
Hence why more debt and more stimulus are required to be pumped into the system so that the rich get richer and the average Joe and Jane can feel like they are making out and don’t storm the town square…
They look at their pension and 401(k) and perceive things are doing well as the nominal values of their retirements continually go up.
However, when their retirement account is juxtaposed with real assets the realities of inflation rears it’s ugly head and living standards continually drop.
Yet, very few can see the damaging affects money printing and debasement have until it’s too late.
For a long time I got flustered
I would see people doing ridiculous things in business and skating by somehow and even seeming like they were growing and getting ahead.
I’m all for merit and people getting what they deserve but that has to work in both directions.
People should get what they deserve in a positive way and they should also get what they deserve in a negatively if they are bad actors.
For years I was caught up in a system where I thought everything had to be growing otherwise it meant you were dying and that number had to continually rises.
This could not be further from the truth.
Your brain and your skills must keep growing.
Personally, your brain must keep developing new neurological pathways, because I would make the argument that if those things aren’t happening upstairs then yes you truly are going backwards and dying.
But, businesses can’t continually expand and grow every single year, that’s damn near impossible.
This is one man’s opinion, but it just dawned on me the last few years.
In a system where our money doesn’t leak value
People will be able to put in honest work and their capital would grow instead of having to take on three jobs or work overtime.
Allocation of resources/capital would be much more efficient and it would flow to only the most productive businesses and entrepreneurs instead of being lost in a sea of unworthy and unscrupulous investors or entrepreneurs or those that can “suck the power teet” best.
Deflation has a way of making everyone’s standard of living higher and bringing prices down.
We have been taught for 100 years that inflation is the only way to live life.
What we weren’t told was the flip side of that same coin, that the elite and government are the ones that benefit from that way of life.
The average person only falls further and further behind and can’t pinpoint exactly why.
When you believe the lie that you must be growing at unsustainable rates every quarter it makes you do irrational things.
It makes you have higher time preference and sacrifice the future in order to gain in the present as price signals are distorted through currency printing/debasement.
When we have low time preference and a deflationary money we can take a breath and invest in the long term knowing that there will be ups and downs and that overtime we will be fine.
This causes much less angst and stress.
Society can take a collective sigh of relief and maybe lay off the anti-depressants, coffee, pills, and narcotic use might just come down as well.
This might seem outlandish but outlandish thinking is what we need at a time like this in order to reverse the crumbling system.
We need big ideas and people with courage to step up and change the culture and the paradigm that we’ve all been living with with the last 100 years.
I pray that we can take a breath, relax, and find our calling.
This is hard to do in an inflationary “growth only” world.
Bitcoin gives the protection we need as it’s the only finite asset, like our time, where we can be outside the system and grow wealthier over time while not having to be on the hamster wheel 24/7.
Bitcoin gives us back time with our family, the ability to think clearer, and the long term is brought in to perspective.
To responsible long term thinking and growth.
Stay strong,