Do you spend a lot of time thinking about your money? Your investments? Your coins, your metals, your guns?
Do you think about how to get more? Do you think about how to keep it secure?
Do you ever think about what you would do if it was worthless?
Hive is abuzz with people offering advice on how to accumulate, invest, and manage your cash, crypto, and stocks. A few of them even offer good advice, and they seem to do pretty well on Hive. This entire blockchain seems to have been built by people who are tech savvy and like talking about money.
I'm not going to do that. Plenty of other people are doing it already, and they're better at it than I am. I want to talk to you about building wealth that won't disappear with your bank, or the power grid, or the stroke of a pen. I want to get you thinking about real wealth that can provide for you when you have no money, or supply chains fail.
Most Americans spend their lives trying to accumulate good old fashioned US Dollars. US Dollars aren't bad, as far as currencies go. They're accepted in most places globally, and their relative value is usually pretty easy to determine. In terms of survival, though, dollars don't really have a lot of value. They aren't edible, though every family seems to have at least one child determined to test that theory. It's a poor shelter material, a poor fuel. The only reason we can use dollars to survive is because people are willing to accept them as a payment in return for the things we need.
This arrangement has always seemed bizarre to me. I understand how currency is useful and helps move society forward, but to casually stake your life on such a fragile system... it seems insane. We're currently seeing global effects from a very slight squeeze on the supply chains that drive our commerce. That is just ONE of SEVERAL weak links in the supply chains that provide people with the most basic essentials they need for life. Imagine if the electronic banking system broke down. What do you really know about where you get your drinking water, or your food?
What was I writing this post about?
Is it weird that I asked?
What I'm talking about isn't really a different take on wealth, in that it's not new. I'm not espousing any novel philosophy, and I'm not trying to redefine any words. I'd like to redefine how most of you see the world. While you work, and create, and nest, and hoard, I want you to really think about the value of the things you're accumulating. Do the things you have help you live your life? Can you use them if 'the system' were to break down? Do they add to your abundance, or cost you to maintain?
A lot of us, once our immediate needs are met, give very little thought to what we acquire afterwards. People collect things that they find entertaining (there is value in entertainment) then store or discard them. People buy recreational vehicles that they barely use, or even know how to use. Americans fill their garages with unexplored hobbies, then still need to call for help to fix a leaky pipe under their sink.
At an early age, I measured my wealth in knowledge. I recognized that by learning to build and repair things, I could get a lot of the things I needed and wanted for free. As my skills grew, I was able to actually trade repairs for goods and services. Now that I have skills and my own tools, automotive and electrical repairs are a pretty healthy side business that I don't even have to leave my home for. If I lost my regular employment, I could earn enough doing repairs to pay my bills.
Now I measure wealth in self reliance. Knowing that I don't need to keep my job to cover my expenses makes me feel wealthy. I have job security because I know that I can always find other work to do. Come hell or high water, I can continue living comfortably in my home until some greater force wrestles it away from me. Knowledge and experience led me to self-reliance. Learning to feed myself with wild foods that already grow in abundance in my area has given me more freedom than most people will ever know.
Of course, my idea of wealth won't work for everybody. Mine is not a universal aesthetic. I'm not so self inflated that I believe I'll actually change anyone's mind, but if I create a little voice in your head that asks "What is the value of this?" then I've been successful beyond my dreams.
There are a lot of stories about people who have made their fortunes by investing in crypto, or quit their jobs to blog full time. I applaud anyone with a hustle, but I urge everyone to recognize that crypto itself has absolutely no practical, or even philosophical value. Crypto requires that we spend energy for it to even exist. Without electricity, and processing power, and massive digital storage, crypto disappears. Even with it running on a stable system, the only way (some bartering aside) for it to manifest any physical value is to exchange it for another currency. The ability to legally make these exchanges can be taken away instantly with the passing of a law, as we've seen in New York State and at least a couple countries. I'm not telling anyone not to chase their fortunes in crypto, but I beg people not to stake their lives on it. Crypto currencies are all just more fragile versions of fiat currency.
The only value that any crypto (and most fiat currency) has is faith based. The volatility in crypto prices is a very loud example of just how shaky that faith is. The same is true of many national currencies, and if America doesn't get its debt under control, the good old US Dollar will soon cease to be an exception.
Will it keep me alive? Will it keep me comfortable?
Anything with tangible value will answer YES to at least one of these questions. The systems that most of us live in are illusions. We're taught that these fabrications are put in place to make our lives better, and often they do, in some lazy and comfortable ways. What I think we need to realize is that we trade independence for this ease and comfort. In just three generations, the ability for most humans to provide for their own survival has been erased. We depend on other people to build and maintain our shelters, to grow and deliver our food, to gather and distribute our water. We work to build wealth for already wealthy people, and increasingly depend on services controlled by wealthy people for our survival.
We're not being forced into this arrangement, we're being tricked into it. We digest lies fed to us by our own institutions, and happily hop on a train to a 'normal life', where the product of our work produces more value for others than it does for ourselves. We're conditioned to desire a life of voluntary slavery, and most of us happily do. I'm not saying the system is bad, but it does make us individually weaker.
I'm not trying to get people to opt out of the system. It ain't all bad, and it's more stable than it's ever been, despite what the news looks like these days. I myself work both inside and outside of the system, so I can reap the benefits of both. You don't have to pick a side, and anyone who says you do is trying to control you. Of course you can pick a side if you choose, or ride the fence, or start your own faction. Life is individual.
Whatever you do, I just urge you to do it with a clear head. Know what you need, and what you want, and think about how the things you do help you get what you need and want.
