THE ECONOMIST MANIFESTO
The natural state of the human economy is infinite prosperity for all. As technology and productivity advance, people gain access to more resources, and their purchasing power improves. This is the vertical axis.
For this to work, the economy needs a reference good, a measure of value, with a fixed supply — just like the immutable standards used in physics or engineering. At the same time, this reference must function as a medium of exchange: it must be portable, tradable, divisible, durable, and a secure form of property that can be saved and used in the future. That is why humanity has always sought scarce goods to fulfill this role, from shell necklaces in prehistory to precious metals. However, none of these were perfect. All could be counterfeited, usually by inflating their supply, undermining their scarcity.
The group that manages to bypass the scarcity of the reference good and medium of exchange, by creating it artificially and appropriating the surplus, acquires more resources from society and raises its own standard of living. The majority, from whom those goods are extracted, is left to deal with rising prices, since more money now circulates and each unit is worth less against products and services. It is a double theft. Those who can create money, and those tied to them, gain purchasing power and prosper, while the majority grows poorer and remains trapped in poverty.
Yet this privilege held by elites is an illusion. The widespread poverty, stagnation, and lack of access to assets among the population lead to dissatisfaction, physical and mental illness, social unrest, conflict, and political polarization — with repeated failures to solve poverty without addressing its root cause. This culminates in chaos and even war, as blame is projected onto foreigners or external forces. In other words, while the impoverished suffer more directly, the governing and financial elites, the rich within the system, end up living in a world full of risks, problems, and decay. There is no wall high enough to keep it all out.
Worse still, ignorance of the root problem leads to the belief that even more money creation is needed to fix the chaos caused by the money creation itself — feeding a vicious cycle. Humanity never reaches its natural prosperity, and poverty and its consequences are never eliminated.
Only the use of a good with perfect scarcity, along with all the essential properties of money like portability, divisibility, durability, and secure ownership, can lead humanity back to its natural state of abundance. A form of money whose scarcity cannot be violated.
Humanity has sought such a money since prehistory. And those in power have found ways to bypass every imperfect version — right up to the present, where this violation happens on a massive scale by governments and central banks.
Until, in 2009, something unprecedented happened...
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