How Crypto Will End Slavery
Liberate Debt Slaves with Free Market Finances
Hi, I’m Michael. And this is Crypto Creatives. The best newsletter about the Crypto Creator Economy. If you’re new here, consider subscribing. 1-2 free emails a week.
In early elementary school, my best friend’s name was David. We were tight. But one day, things went South.
Scholastic books were being featured in school. Interesting stories and reading material. It all looked so good.
David’s family was poor. They sent him with money. But not enough to buy a single book. After getting my book, I had 5 dollars left over.
He asked to borrow it and promised to pay me back as soon as possible. I was skeptical. My family wasn’t exactly rich either.
But after going back and forth, I said yes. Fatal mistake.
Days went by. Didn’t pay up. Said his mom was having a hard time. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.
I harassed him every day for it. “Where’s my money?” I casually roasted him in front of all our classmates. It was fucked up. I tortured him every day for months.
I would never get that money. But worst of all, I lost a friend.
I had just a little bit of power over him. And made his life a living hell. And it was all out of his control. It’s not like children can get jobs.
It wasn’t his fault his mom had no money. To this day, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done to another human being.
Debt = Power
There’s a lot of power in being owed something. It colors every interaction between you and the other person.
It’s why some common advice is to never lend money to friends and family. It can ruin things. As I learned the hard way.
But more often than not, we’re not borrowing money from individuals. We borrow it from banks. Institutions.
David could get away with it by simply not giving me money. There wasn’t any way I could enforce that. But it’s different with banks. They’ve got guys with guns. We know them as the police.
Faced with no good options, deeply indebted people find themselves forcefully paying a high percentage of their monthly income.
They know they’ll never pay off that debt. And the worst part is that they feel like it’s their fault.
As anthropologist David Graeber puts it, “Debt is the most effective way to take a relation of violent subordination and make the victims feel that it’s their fault.”
Debt Slavery
Debt isn’t inherently bad. In fact, it can enable economic growth. Imagine you had to make every purchase in cash. Your house. Your car. College tuition. Start a business.
No one would be able to do anything.
The real problem is that doing any of these things is extremely expensive. One trip to the hospital can cost you an annual salary. Sometimes more.
Drown in debt or die.
And the entirety of the financial system is built to profit from & encourage this.
Interest rates that increase the total amount of debt even when the indebted makes regular payments
Overdraft fees that target poor people and make billions for bank shareholders
The complete lack of any financial literacy classes in public school
Accredited investor laws that “protect” regular people from the most lucrative investments
The ability to lobby politicians to create favorable laws that protect big business & banks
Wanna hear some statistics that will shock you? 80% of Americans have consumer debt and the average amount is roughly $90,000.
Think about it. Do you even know someone who isn’t in debt? Basically, we’re all slaves to the banks. If the system was designed to make you a debt slave, that’s exactly what you’ll become.
Why is this?
Banks & financial institutions face no real competition. People don’t just “start banks.” These financial systems have no competition.
They’re free to make predatory loans to people who won’t be able to pay it back. To charge poor people $35 every time they overdraw their checking account. To encourage people to have a savings account where nearly all the interest goes to the shareholders.
None of this would happen if there were real competitors.
Thanks to blockchains, we might have a solution to the rigged economic system.
Free At Last
The power of crypto isn’t the ability to have decentralized money. Don’t get me wrong, that’s nice. But the real power is the ability to replace broken financial systems.
Crypto is a free market if nothing else. If everyone needs a financial service (for example, taking out a loan) they can shop around for the best option. They can compare interest rates & amounts at Celsius, Crypto.com, or any of the other companies that offer loans.
These businesses are there to make money. Yes. But if they compromise on the value they provide, competitors will eat their lunch. This is how things should have worked all along.
Crypto offers the ability to create entirely new financial systems from scratch.
Asset-backed reserve currencies like OHM
Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap
Bank replacements like Celsius
Final Thoughts
Building systems is the most important work you can do. If you’re a bad guy, you can easily rig it in your favor. Which is exactly what legacy finance has done. But now, their broken bullshit has to compete with systems that aren’t parasitic in nature.
And hot damn, are they about to lose this fight.
Crypto creates an opportunity to end debt slavery. At the very least, to greatly reduce its existence.