What If the System We Depend On Changes?

muhshrooms(57)

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The Part I Actually Care About Is Autonomy

I've been watching some of the stuff happening with gold, silver, copper, China, the United States, Iran, Taiwan and the general movement of resources around the world, and there's an interesting theory making the rounds about what may actually be happening underneath all of it.

I'm taking the theory with a ton of grains of salt.

But I don't dismiss things just because they sound conspiratorial either. I'm more interested in looking at the actual movements and asking whether the pieces fit together.

That's usually how I look at politics in general. I don't really follow politics. I don't like politics. To me, most of it is just distraction.

I care much more about what people and governments actually do than what they say they're doing, and when you start looking at the movements instead of the speeches, some interesting things start showing up.

Gold, silver and copper are all at extraordinary levels. At the same time, we're seeing enormous movements of physical gold. A lot of that gold goes through Switzerland, which is one of the world's major refining and trading hubs, and then a significant amount ends up going into China.

So technically you can say the gold is going from the United States to Switzerland, but if Switzerland is the middleman and it goes from Switzerland to China, then I'm not particularly interested in pretending the Swiss leg somehow makes the larger movement disappear.

China is accumulating gold. China is also trying to secure energy, manufacturing capacity, technological independence and access to advanced semiconductors.

Then you have Taiwan sitting in the middle of the semiconductor situation. Taiwan isn't important simply because it makes electronics. Advanced semiconductors are becoming increasingly important to AI, communications, military systems, autonomous technology and basically every piece of advanced infrastructure we're building.

Then there's Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. The argument that Iran needs nuclear weapons in order to become a serious strategic threat doesn't really make sense to me. Iran already has something extremely valuable geographically.

Hormuz.

You don't necessarily need to destroy an enemy's military to cause enormous economic damage. You can interfere with the movement of energy and let the consequences work their way through the market. And then you have Russia sitting there with energy and raw materials, China with its manufacturing base and growing financial and physical reserves, Taiwan with advanced semiconductor production, and the United States trying to maintain its position while also rebuilding industrial capacity and dealing with enormous debt.

Maybe all of these things are completely unrelated. Maybe there is some larger coordinated strategy. Maybe there isn't. That's the part where I'm perfectly comfortable saying **I don't know. **I'm not interested in pretending I know what was said behind closed doors, but I do think it's worth asking questions.

What happens if gold is being deliberately repriced?

What happens if that repricing eventually makes Western reserves enormously more valuable?

What happens if governments eventually decide to sell some of those reserves?

What happens if the same people who bought gold at the top end up being the exit liquidity?

What happens if the dollar gradually loses some of its dominance?

What happens if China continues accumulating physical assets while the United States continues exporting them?

What happens if the current geopolitical arrangement starts changing faster than people expect?

And that's where I started thinking about something much more important to me than whether gold goes to $10,000 or crashes back down afterward.

What the hell am I supposed to do about any of it?

That's where my answer is pretty simple. I don't collect precious metals. I collect skills, knowledge and wisdom, because if the theory is correct and the monetary system changes, I don't really care what the next top-tier exchange currency is.

If tomorrow everyone is using something other than dollars, I'll charge whatever people are actually using. If the dollar remains dominant, if gold gets repriced, if gold eventually crashes, if some other monetary system takes its place, that's okay.

The medium of exchange isn't the part I'm trying to make myself dependent upon. I want to be able to do things. I want to know how things work. I want to be able to repair things. Build things. Make things. Understand things. Grow some of my own food. Keep some food stored. Learn enough about money and markets that I don't have to blindly trust whatever story I'm being handed, and I'm not talking about becoming some fucking hermit living in a bunker. I'm talking about reducing dependency wherever I reasonably can, because that's what autonomy actually means to me.

It's not predicting the future or knowing whether China will win, whether America will collapse, whether gold will skyrocket, whether the dollar will survive, or whether some grand monetary restructuring is actually happening. I can't know those things. Neither can anyone else.

What I can do is make myself more capable of dealing with whatever happens. If the monetary system changes, I adapt. If prices go insane, I have some things already in place. If supply chains get fucked, I have some ability to provide for myself. If a particular skill becomes more valuable, I have that skill. If the world changes in a way nobody predicted, I can learn. That's why autonomy has become such a big deal to me.

The more dependent you are on a system remaining exactly the way it is, the more power that system has over you, and the funny thing is that you don't even have to be interested in geopolitics to understand this. You don't need to know whether some gold theory is true. You don't need to know what China is planning. You don't need to know what the United States is planning. You don't need to know what happens with Taiwan or Iran or Russia. You can simply look at the world and realize:

Shit changes.

Currencies change.

Governments change.

Markets change.

Technology changes.

Supply chains change.

Borders change.

Empires change.

The things people thought were permanent turn out not to be permanent at all. So why would I build my entire life around the assumption that the current arrangement is going to stay exactly as it is?

I'd rather spend that time becoming harder to destabilize. A little more capable than I was last year. A little more knowledgeable, skilled, prepared, less reliant on somebody else deciding what happens to me, and honestly, I don't know why I care so much about other people doing this too. Humanity already pisses me off about 99.99% of the time, but apparently I still care enough to sit here and write all this shit down.

So if you're reading this, I'm not telling you to believe my theories about gold or China or the United States or any of this geopolitical stuff.

Maybe I'm wrong. I could be.

What I am saying is that you don't have to know what's coming to start becoming more autonomous.

Learn something useful. Make something. Repair something instead of replacing it. Grow something. Store something. Understand something you previously took for granted. Develop a skill that somebody can actually use. Question the things you've been told are simply "the way things are." Start small, because if I'm wrong about all of this, I've still gained skills, knowledge and wisdom, and if I'm right? I'll still have them.

That's a pretty good fucking hedge either way.