Right off the bat, the problem with financial (il)literacy is that a dysfunctional money system forces everyone to become a part-time money manager.
We can't just provide our value, earn our payday and go happily about our lives. We must actively invest it, max the tax deductions, find high-yield accounts, leverage our meagre equity into real estate holding, invest in XYZ product to beat inflation. Michael Saylor isn't the most popular character in bitcoin maxi land right now, but this presentation at BTC Prague last year -- excellent! You can't outwork inflation, can't outearn the forces stacked against you:
Financial literacy is thus an extra step, a crucial skill in a broken money world. Those who don't master it, get fucked -- slowly or not-so-slowly.
Also, actual financial literacy tests -- like that from Finra -- are stupidly easy. And I doubt acing them correlates to making prudent investments/managing one's affairs properly. https://www.finra.org/financial_literacy_quiz
Recently had a long convo about money and banks and the financial system with a couple in my village. They follow what Nassim Taleb might have called your grandma's rules: spend less than you earn, have no debt, save relentlessly for retirement (our country's pension system is a widespread 401(k)-type thing, so not the shittiest of versions). They don't do this with any form of financial plan in mind, but follow what the incentives tell them and what their morals/handed-down behavioral traits suggest.
It's the right thing to do in a world of sound money. But we live in a broken fiat money world, where up is down and down is sideways and everyone suffers from money illusion and money blindness (https://aier.org/article/money-blindness-and-money-clarity/). So they end up screwing themselves over.
"But what are we supposed to do with our surplus?" they ask. They don't have a house, don't wanna take on the debt for one. And the numbers in their bank account, while impressive, on a good year break even with inflation (#737272). The guy is deep into art, so he asked me "Should I just invest in art?" "Should we just go travel and blow all the money?"
He gets the problem, at some basic non-financial-literacy level. But what to do?
Bitcoin is the obvious answer, of course, but it takes some enormous modicum of hours to be comfortable with it -- let alone overcoming this couple's specific anti-tech/anti-bro biases.
They don't know anything about my life in bitcoin -- I don't throw that shit around too much: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/how-i-talk-about-bitcoin-at-thanksgiving -- so I didn't bring that up.
But over time, I imagine it will come up.
All roads lead to bitcoin.
Oh, and financial literacy is bullshit. https://x.com/matt_levine/status/775042013876158464
That's today's little money lesson. Peace, J
Great read. I love how you connect your thoughts and references from all over the place
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that is pretty much the idea, my friend
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Most people do not understand the fiat monetary system. It is only when you do, that Bitcoin makes sense.
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ooh yees, I wonder if someone has made this argument/written up an article for it!
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Yes that covers the censorship resistance aspect of Bitcoin well vs the sanction prone nature of fiat and shitcoins but just as important is the way in which fiat issuance is today over 90% via private bank issuance of bank deposit fiat (ie IOUs for central bank issued fiat) putting huge power in the hands of private banks and giving them huge incentive to create as much debt as possible because it is via debt that they can issue almost unlimited new fiat money into circulation. This also gives them huge privilege in what fiat debt sourced capital is allocated toward, and since the neoliberal 'reforms' which removed all constraints upon commercial banks they can issue it toward non productive purposes which delivers next to zero dividend to the wider economy and citizens but instead pumps up asset prices creating a false sense of wealth while also making fiat debt a parasitic mechanism. Many fiat critics forget that at the beginning (1930s-1970s) Keyesian monetary theory strictly and deliberately limited non productive fiat debt issuance and limits its use to mutual banks. The neoliberal removal of these restrictions upon private for profit banks has been the main driver of house price inflation with commercial banks pouring a steadily increasing quantity of fiat debt capital into housing ever since they were allowed to in the 1980s. It is easier and safer for them to do this then to finance productive enterprises where there is usually less security and more risk- but in providing housing finance you are not contributing toward developing the productive output of the economy and with a profit motivated bank you actually become a parasitic and destructive force. Keynesian monetary theory in its original form is not as bad as it is now operated in a mongrel hybrid with neoliberal deregulation.
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I wouldn't really say that financial literacy is a joke. It's hard to understand the need for bitcoin if you don't even understand the time value of money, which too many people don't understand.
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Since I can remember, no one ever spoke to me about inflation and its consequences until my country, Venezuela, fell into hyperinflation, which caused purchasing power to disappear and our currency to become worthless.
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The vast majority of people have never been introduced to business, economic and mathematical concepts required to understand finance. I don’t think they would use credit cards and debit cards if they had any idea what interest is. I also don’t think a lot of state financing would go the way it does if people only used a little financial sense. But you have to have financial sense in the first place. Why do you think they don’t teach financial subjects in school? Why do THEY want everyone to be financial idiots?
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WE HAVE LASER EYES BECAUSE WE’re FOCUSED ON ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY.
bitcoin
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