The following is a guest post by Kadan Stadelmann, the CTO of Komodo Blockchain.
The US has undergone an immense consolidation of wealth and power in recent years. Americans everywhere are suffering while modern-day robber barons get fat off a 21st-century Gilded Age or roaring Twenties.
Unlike the Gilded Age and 1920s, however, the 2020s offer a reprieve. Bitcoin serves as a timely solution for individuals and families to ensure they enjoy their piece of the American Dream.
Americans Living In Silent Depression
In the US, millions of people are living in a “silent depression.” For example, 35% of people in the US are no longer making enough money to pay for basic needs. Some put the number closer to 50% of households.
In addition, American credit card debt has hit a new record as credit card rates are skyrocketing. For the first time in history, credit card debt has exceeded $1 trillion. And people are paying an average of nearly 28% interest.
The situation is worse for Black and Hispanic families, of whom more than 50% cannot afford the basics. And more than two-thirds of full-time, low-income workers with children fail to earn enough to make ends meet. And dire financial straits stress parents’ health, increasing the likelihood that children’s needs won’t be met.
Land Owned By Kleptocracy
Meanwhile, home prices have doubled and tripled over the past ten years, and interest rates have increased significantly. First-time home buyers are getting squeezed out, stuck in high rents, and cannot build equity in the form of homes. Meanwhile, eighty percent of rented farmland is not owned by farmers but instead by investors.
The US land base is owned by a corporate kleptocracy using their control to strip the wealth from the public. If Americans can’t own equity in the form of homes, they can’t get liquidity from a second mortgage to, say, start a business. And when that happens, the American dream is dead.
Robber Barons Wield Undue Influence As Shareholders
BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard have played a meaningful role in consolidating extraordinary wealth in the US. The so-called “Big Three” has become the largest shareholder in 88% of the companies on the S&P 500, exerting a “hidden power” through private engagements with management and potentially other means.
How To Undo The Damage?
The US was once the land of blue jeans, automobiles, and transistor radios because the founders championed minimal government and the power of millions of individuals free to engage in social and economic life. In short, they believed in decentralization.
Unfortunately, that vision did not last forever, and we see the fallout of its failure today all around us. Not only domestically on the streets of the US but also abroad due to its policies of forever war. Rather than the decentralized model put forth by the founders, the US is moving towards a feudal model with the likes of the Big Three buying up all the ownable land.
Bitcoin offers a hedge against the consolidation by these great powers and allows everyday people to build equity–not through a home but through the world’s only finite asset. Bitcoin preserves financial freedom, as demonstrated during the Ottawa trucker protests in Canada, where organizers’ bank accounts were shuttered at government demand sans due process.
Bitcoin poses a threat to central bankers and offers hope to the people. It is a beacon of human liberty and personal freedom. It’s the logical competition to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). The US should back the US dollar with a basket of assets, including Bitcoin (and possibly gold, silver, and platinum), rather than push for a fiat Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
For these reasons, Bitcoin is under attack. Regulators are looking at ways to neuter the technology, and its mining complex has long been turned into an environmental boogie man.
Passing Bitcoin-friendly policies in a divided house won’t be easy.
What must be done? For starters, Bitcoiners worldwide must be politically organized and show up at local, state, and national meetings to preserve peoples’ right to transact in an ever more consolidated world. What’s more, it must be an all-hands-on-deck endeavor. Regardless of how much or how little you can spare, it will take the entirety of the Bitcoin Community to stave off the modern-day robber barons.
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