It's even worse than that. By saving inside the system, you are feeding the machine that ends up enslaving you.

Picture a small shop owner with a 401k. Instead of reinvesting profits to grow the family business and pass it to his children, he diverts a portion into a retirement fund. That fund buys shares in giant corporations building supermarkets. Those supermarkets are not bound by the same rules as the shop owner. They can run at a loss for years because the fiat system gives them near-endless credit. Cheap loans create new money, which fuels inflation and lets them undercut local competitors until the family shop cannot survive.

The cycle is brutal. The shop owner retires comfortably on his 401k, but only because he helped fund the corporations that destroyed his own business. His children inherit no enterprise, only the chance to work for wages at the supermarket he indirectly financed.

This is how fiat money quietly transfers wealth. New money created through debt flows first to large institutions and asset markets, inflating prices and concentrating power. Ordinary savers and small businesses are left with rising costs and shrinking opportunities. What looks like prudent retirement planning is in fact participation in a system designed to extract value from the many for the benefit of the few.