The drive to own stuff - and then rent out that stuff to those who will actually it to produce something of value - is the foundation of Capitalism. If you happen to be the State - then it becomes the foundation of Communism. In either case, the owner and utilizer tend to be different people or, entities.
The "stuff" depends on the nature of the civilization you live in.
For eons "stuff" was Land. Then it leaned more towards was Gold. In the 70's that "stuff" was basically - oil. Or, rather - oil producing fields. You could make stuff up with oil. Lots of stuff - and it was cheap too. Sadly, we never made any of it very biodegradable. So we still have plastics from the 60's in some whale's stomach out there.
But oil had other uses too. For instance it was cheaper than alcohol to burn. So, that's exactly what most humans started doing. Inadvertently, this led to a new Royal lineage - one founded in the New World. But I digress. I'll write of the Rockefellers in later articles.
Technology has allowed us to increase the range of stuff we pay rent for. We rent our lodging, the ambient temperature, the lighting and we pay for electromagnetic waves that deliver zeros and ones - globally, at near the speed of light.
We even rent our own currency - and pay for the privillage.
Outright ownership is becoming a rarity. You don't even technically own the life of your own children, apparently. The list of things you do not own (and by that I mean, to with as you please) grown longer every day. A time will come when you will have to pay for sunlight and the rain.
Oh wait, is that why they want to tax you for "Climate Change"?
Or, was that "Global Warming"?
Chemtrails, anyone?
How did things get so bad?
Let us take a step back and look at that list of ownable things - say, 10,000 years ago.
Before human populations began settling into villages - they moved along with their animals. They may have considered their animals "owned" by them. However, such nomads seldom considered the land on which their flock grazed - property.
The very idea would have been ludicrous. There was a lot of land. And tribes were small - very roughly seven people on average.
The chances of coming across another tribe while moving from one grassy patch to another - must have been fairly remote. And I doubt anyone really considered trade seriously in such a decentralized, self-sustaining culture.
If skirmishes were to happen, they have been concentrated to certain geographic locations only - say, an oasis, river bank or, maybe a lake.
City States changed that by concentrating - and more importantly - differentiating the population. Increased numbers meant there would be overlaps in several areas - most significantly, claim to title over property. The Sumerian (and later Babylonian) clay tablets with cuneform script clearly show a well developed concept of legal ownership. Trade became possible.
Trade led to the creation of money and then to other fun stuff like stocks, bonds, derivatives... etc.
At some point money itself overtook land as a prime source of rental income. Banks were formed.
Then all hell broke lose in 1971 when President Nixon nuked money and replaced it with currency.
Currency - backed by promise and not much else (well, maybe perhaps by the US Military and Poppy, too.)
Suddenly, the world is an open grazing field again. Fiat currency allowed certain countries the freedom to roam the planet and blow up whomever they wished. The idea was that once they blew up those things - banks would lend out more currency. And the loans would come with a lein.
It's a helluva scam.
But it worked until 2008. Then it all just fell apart.
For a brief shinning moment - the planet realized that all that printed currency - could potentially not be worth a penny's worth of copper.
Or, if you lived in Zimbabwe - three eggs.
Enter Bitcoin.
Bitcoin was like that moment Queen Semiramis decided it was good idea to Build a Wall around her city of Babylon to prevent invaders from looting it. Real estate prices within those walls must have soared overnight.
Having a clear, finite limit seemed to have a positive effect on the populace as the city withstood countless invasions until the time of Cyrus the Great of Persia.
Babylon may have stood up until this day had the last King NOT left the front gate open as he went out to meet the Persian armies in battle.
It does seem like the lessons from 2008 have fallen by the wayside.
The flood of centralized (and by this I mean, cryptos created by companies ) coins have washed into the market. Then came the tokens and ICOs.
Suddenly, there is a plethora of "stuff" again. Stuff which isn't limited.
Bitcoin was an Accident of History. Too few people in power paid too little attention to it until it became too big to stop. Had the bankers recognized this early - they would have sent assassins to every Bitcoin programmers' home and you would have heard of these mysterious rush of "suicides".
Bitcoin is the ONLY asset other than Gold (Silver too) capable of existing WITHOUT A BANK and WITHOUT GOVERNING LAWS.
It does not require PERMISSION to exist. No other coin or, token can claim this. Therefore, Bitcoin - resides ABOVE ALL NATIONAL LAWS.
At the same time, unlike Gold and Silver - Bitcoin does require continuos human interaction to continue to exist. Gold can happily remain in box burried underground for centuries and still remain a yellow metal. You can lose all the Silver you have in a boating accident and still recover it a century later after drainning the swamp.
Bitcoin requires a hive of activity to keep it functional as money. And THIS is not a trivial attack surface!
While Bitcoin does have defences against such attacks as the shutdown of exchanges and maybe even the ban on mining - unless actual economic activity increases - using Bitcoin itself - there is a danger of it falling into insignificance.
This is something I will try to address in later posts.
