Chastised By A Bursting Bubble

No, the burned hand teaches best.  After that,

advice about fire goes to the heart.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Ours is an age in which there is frequently a great deal of confusion about what constitutes true wealth.  This is especially true in the United States, and has been historically true of this country for at least a century.  Therefore, when I learned about the recent collapse of much of the cryptocurrency "industry", I was not surprised.  A long time ago I started expecting something like this to happen.  (For more information on the collapse, see the Washington Post article "Crypto 'Winter' has come.  Will it become an ice age?" and the European Central Bank essay titled, Crypto dominos: the bursting crypto bubbles and the destiny of digital finance" also.) 

I was slow to hear about cryptocurrencies when they first made waves, and I never really developed any interest in them.  A big turnoff was that they seemed to me to be simply a vastly more complicated way of doing what regular money was supposed to do - namely to act as a medium of commercial exchange.  And the schemes for making money from investing in cryptocurrencies (or as those who were 'hip' and 'with it' called them, "crypto") seemed to me after a while to be more complicated than even fluid mechanics calculations like the Navier-Stokes equation.  I swiftly came to the following conclusions regarding crypto:

• It was a means of promising early "investors" the chance to get something for nothing.
• It therefore had no intrinsic value or essential use in the world.
• It was therefore the perfect material for blowing financial bubbles.
• One day the bubbles would pop.

The recent pop of these bubbles (along with the accompanying pictures of people being led away to jail) has confirmed all of my conclusions.  It has also confirmed my belief and assertion that we live in a moral universe, and that those who violate the moral standard of that universe sooner or later must face the outworkings of their own damnation.  You really do reap what you've sown.  This has been true of the crypto schemers who set up the schemes by which they sought to defraud others.  But it is also true of many of those who were defrauded, for they were hooked by the promise of easy money - that is, by the promise of obtaining something for nothing.  Had they themselves not been led astray by their own evil desire, they would not have fallen prey to those who were more clever in doing evil.  The fact that bubbles like these continue to be blown speaks volumes about our present society - both about its perpetrators and about its victims.  The fact that an entire industry has arisen out of the desire to use mathematics as a tool of swindling speaks volumes about our misplaced collective values.  Bubbles like crypto are an inescapable feature of a society whose economy is built on usury.

So for those of us who seek to build true and lasting wealth in the midst of uncertain times, what should be our strategy?  As I have said before on this blog, our strategy should consist of the following elements:

• Do not desire to get rich.
• Learn essential skills.  Or, to put it another way, learn to engage in beautifully good work to meet necessary needs, that you may not be unfruitful.
• Live simply.  Focus on the essentials.

Do these things and you will go a long way toward bubble-proofing yourself.  You will also save yourself from the ravages of late-stage capitalism.