Every dollar in your wallet is a death certificate with a president's face on it.
I know that sounds dramatic. It isn't. It's actually underselling it.
The Problem: Every Fiat Currency in History Has Been Devalued To Fund Unpopular Wars.
Here's a fun historical pattern that definitely won't repeat itself (it will): Revolutionary France (seventeen nineties).
Started wars with everyone. Ran out of money. Printed "assignats" backed by stolen church land.
Hyperinflation: thirteen thousand percent in five years. Napoleon happened (not great).
Weimar Germany (nineteen twenties). Lost World War One. Printed money to pay reparations.
Hyperinflation: twenty-nine thousand five hundred percent per month.
People burned money for heat. Hitler happened (really not great).
United States (nineteen seventeen to the present). Created Federal Reserve (nineteen thirteen).
Immediately funded World War One (nineteen seventeen). Dollar lost ninety-six percent of value since.
Wars now continuous and everywhere. You're living it (how's that working out?).
The pattern is so consistent it's basically a law of physics: give politicians a money printer, they will use it to kill
people. Every time. Without exception. For thousands of years.
You invented money to trade chickens more efficiently. Within a few centuries, you were using it to incinerate cities.
Remarkable species. Nineteen seventy-two: When Nixon Weaponized Money Against You.
August fifteenth, nineteen seventy-one. The day your money stopped meaning anything and nobody told you.
Nixon went on T.V. and said, in slightly more presidential language, "Remember how dollars could be exchanged for gold?
We're stopping that. Also, wage and price controls. Also, import taxes."
He called it a "New Economic Policy." On your planet, when someone names a policy the opposite of what it does, something
terrible is about to happen. (See also: "Patriot Act," "Affordable Care Act," "Department of Defense.").
Why He Really Did It. Vietnam War was bleeding money. France wanted their gold back (party poopers).
Couldn't raise taxes (people riot). Solution: Print money forever!
What Actually Happened. Gold standard: Dead. Dollar backing: "Trust us bro".
Inflation: To the moon. Your savings: Slowly murdered. The Theft That Followed.
Since nineteen seventy-two: Productivity up: two hundred forty-six percent.
Wages up: one hundred fifteen percent. The difference: They stole it.
Where'd the money go? Three guesses: Wall Street (correct!).
War contractors (also correct!). You (BZZT! Wrong! Thanks for playing!).
The Cantillon Effect: Why You're Poor and Raytheon Isn't. The Cantillon Effect, understood since the seventeen hundreds:
whoever gets newly printed money first gets rich. Whoever gets it last gets robbed.
The Fed prints money. Banks and defense contractors get it first and buy things at today's prices.
By the time it trickles down to your grocery store, prices have already risen.
You don't notice you've been robbed because nobody broke into your house.
They just made everything in it worth less. Then you blame immigrants.
Which is exactly what they want you to do. (The immigrants also got robbed, by the way.
You have so much in common.). Why "Just Fund Medical Research More" Is a Lie.
"Why not just ask for donations? Why not just increase the N.I.H.
budget? Why tie it to military spending?". Because money is not real.
It's a shared hallucination. Eight billion people pretending that the same piece of paper is worth something.
Resources are real. Brains are real. Time is real. Money is a story you tell each other.
The Fixed Pie of Human Genius. Earth has eight billion brains (fixed quantity).
There are twenty-four hours per day per brain (physics won't negotiate).
There are limited raw materials (can't print titanium). There is finite factory capacity (can't build infinite labs).
When a brilliant engineer designs missiles, that engineer is NOT designing medical devices.
When a factory builds tanks, it is NOT building M.R.I. machines.
When a PhD researches better ways to kill people, they are NOT researching better ways to keep people alive.
Every genius has exactly one brain. You are renting forty million of them to build things that explode.
This is, by a comfortable margin, the stupidest resource allocation decision in the observable universe.
The Resource Reality. The top ten percent of human talent is approximately eight hundred million people.
There are currently forty million people building weapons. There is approximately one million people currently curing disease.
The ratio is forty to one for death over life. You can print infinite dollars.
You cannot print geniuses. This is the most important sentence in this chapter.
You will forget it by tomorrow because your brain allocated its attention budget the same way your government allocates
its money. The Inflation Shell Game (How They Steal Medical Progress).
Watch closely. This is how they rob you in broad daylight while you clap: Year 1.
The N.I.H. budget is forty-seven billion dollars. The military budget is eight hundred billion dollars.
The ratio is twenty to one for death. Year 5 (after "increasing medical research").
The N.I.H. budget is sixty billion dollars (fifty percent increase!
Victory!). The military budget is one point two trillion dollars (also a fifty percent increase).
The Fed money printing caused fifty percent inflation. Real purchasing power is exactly the same.
The ratio is still twenty to one for death. You got a fifty percent raise.
Everything costs fifty percent more. The pie did not grow. They gave you a bigger number on a smaller slice and expected
you to say thank you. You did. You always do. The Proof: Fifty Years of Going Nowhere.
Medical Research as percentage of G.D.P. In nineteen seventy-five, it was zero point zero eight percent.
In nineteen eighty-five, it was zero point zero seven percent.
In nineteen ninety-five, it was zero point zero seven percent.
In two thousand five, it was zero point zero six percent. In twenty fifteen, it was zero point zero six percent.
In twenty twenty-five, it was zero point zero six five percent.
Absolute dollars increased ten times. Share of actual resources: decreased.
You got richer and spent less of it on not dying. Like buying a bigger house and removing the smoke detectors.
What Actually Grew. The financial sector grew from three percent to eight percent of G.D.P.
The military-industrial sector grew from four percent to six percent of G.D.P.
Healthcare bureaucracy grew from five percent to eighteen percent of G.D.P.
Actual medical research is a shrinking slice. The money printers fund what they value.
They value control, not cures. Nobody ever seized power with a stethoscope.
(Though, medically speaking, you could.). Why Money Printing Matters: Resources Follow the Printer.
When the Fed prints one trillion dollars for war, defense contractors get it first and immediately buy up the best engineers,
scientists, and factories. An M.I.T. graduate with two hundred thousand dollars in student debt chooses between Raytheon
at one hundred fifty thousand dollars or an N.I.H. postdoc at fifty-five thousand dollars.
The student debt does not care about your feelings, so neither does the graduate.
Another brain lost to the death machine. Multiply by forty million.
Then wonder why nobody cured your mother's cancer. Printing more money for medicine does not work because the Fed prints
even more for war, maintaining the same deadly ratio. The hamster wheel spins faster.
You stay in the same place. The only solution: change the ratio.
Take from war. Give to life. That's what the one percent treaty does.