Money and Slavery

Photo by Didier Weemaels on Unsplash

Introduction

Money is a tool for not only purchasing resources but buying time and once time can be bought then life itself is purchased because time is the instrument for which life is measured. Africa probably suffered the grunts of humanities in-humanity to his fellow man. In recent times modern man has not had to contend with beasts and harsh climatic conditions as much as we have had to war against the system we have created over time, especially our monetary system.

It is no joke when we say that everything runs on the fuel of finance or our monetary system. Money has evolved beyond being just a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account to becoming the centre of the life of the average person. With the above-stated points, it becomes pertinent to ask if, in today’s modern world, we have actual control over our money and consequently our time and life? What ideologies govern money and are we really in control or puppets being controlled and bought over. What is freedom and are we free or just slaves to the monetary system?

Money and Institutions

The Exchange of goods and services is as old as man. Mankind has always found ways to give what it has to get what it does not have. A prime example is the barter system. But with the evolution of societies into more complex ones. Scarcity and difficulty of creating certain kinds of assets created a new form of instruments whose value could be measured and used as a medium of exchange. These instruments took different forms and names based on location and defined the local currency of that particular locality.

In contemporary articles, the evolution of money is usually shown to have evolved from commodity-based like barter, to metallic (e.g coins), paper to plastic. This in itself is a big revelation that money is nothing but anything we decide to accept as a collaterizable medium for tangible assets or consumable service. We accept it, hence it is simple!!!

Slavery is hidden in the System

Money is a tool for trading human time (as a result if you are working for a company for 8hrs daily they are simply buying your time for pay). Central banks, the modern-era masters of money, wield this tool as a weapon to steal time and inflict wealth inequality. History shows us that the corruption of monetary systems leads to moral decay, social collapse, and slavery. As the temptation to manipulate money has always proven to be too strong for mankind to resist, the only antidote for this poison is an incorruptible money — Bitcoin & cryptocurrencies as a whole.

On the African continent, in terms of its monetary system similar evolution took place. Popular among the forms of money used on the continent were the manilla and the aggry beads. The aggry beads were believed to have been used earlier to trade with the Phoenicians. Some of these beads gained popularity because they were made of glass and since the technology required to make glass was almost impossible to find in the western parts of the continent, the aggry beads flourished for a while as a currency. Remember how we talked about the fact that scarcity and difficulty in producing a particular kind of item made it easily acceptable as a medium exchange or money.

In the case of the aggry beads, they were capitalized on by slave traders from America and parts of Europe who needed to buy slaves and other resources from people on the continent. The beads were scarce on the continent but very abundant in Europe where the glass making system was more developed. Now we see how something that was valuable in one geography was worthless in another. Europe leveraged on this naivety to buy slaves across the continent at a very cheap rate because they were able to literally mint a replica of the local money in their home country where glassmaking was more developed. This is one of the first biggest counterfeiting ventures known. aggry beads would later become known as “slave beads”. The name changed, but the concept of how money operates today hasn’t changed much.

What is freedom, or are we still living that classic instance of Africa and Europe over and over again in our lives. The truth is that today, slavery has changed forms and is very much different from what it used to be. Today the average person battles to pay bills, student loans and other forms of loans with an extremely high-interest rate growing per annum. Uneven wealth distribution is more apparent today than it’s ever been before. Even attempts to eradicate poverty is just a business meant to create wealth and at the end of the day, no single poverty is eradicated.

Slavery 200yrs ago was very apparent. With millions of slaves being shipped to the Caribbeans and other parts of the world. Today, slavery, as we know it, has morphed into an unrecognizable form now driven by greed and the fact that wealth is in the hands of a few. Modern societies support these structures that allow a single individual to gather more wealth while the other over 60% live at or below the poverty line. This is an evil system. Slavery has changed form but its nature though subtle can still be noticed in how our system works today.

In the early days, the major conversation was the need for exchange and hence since no attention was given to the instruments of exchange there was no need for 3rd parties. As our financial system went through the journey, it has reached a point where the central bank has become the sole minter of money while allowing the powerful few to build a behemoth of assets. In this new economy where a few have more than they need they have become critical decision-makers over how things happen and who it affects. Events strikingly similar to aggry beads and how they were mass-produced still happens today across the nations of the world: the US dollar or any other fiat in your pocket, the one you sacrificed so much to obtain, can be mass-produced by the central bank of your country US government with a (near-effortless) keystroke.

You have often heard people say that cryptocurrencies are printed from nowhere and hence have no worth. The question is, the mass-printed currency notes printed by the central bank, what are they worth? They are all one and the same thing. Whether fiat or crypto. Today, central banks have an exclusive privilege to produce money at near-zero cost, enabling them to confiscate wealth from all users of their currency(e.g the dollar) at will. Although less visible and overtly violent, central banks today carry out operations using the same weaponized methods of theft as those wielded by wily Europeans against unsuspecting Africans.

Modern Slavemasters

When free market forces are manipulated, producers gain an asymmetric ability to set prices without regard to customer preferences, thereby converting economic democracies into dictatorships and freedom into tyranny. For the money, this means that these tyrants as we call them can acquire/buy human time (i.e labour) in the marketplace at an unfair price (an example is what is happening in Chinese factories).

A Language of Value

Money is a language of value. Arbitrary numbers are often used to represent the cost of commodities whether it’s a piece of real estate, clothing, car etc. We only describe their worth in terms of digits that currency can represent. So when we say one commodity is $50,000 and another one is worth $5,000 we simply mean that the first item is more valuable. Money speaks a language and acts as an instrument for measuring value.

Cutting people off from access to the global pot of wealth in simple terms means that they are not allowed to freely communicate the language of money (value) and as a result, they lack access to the best offering to make their lives better. In a centralized ecosystem, the slavery caused by control/power in the hands of a few would always be apparent. Decentralization would change a lot about the way things work and like the right to free speech, movement, life etc money being accessible and under the control of the holder would mean giving people the right to access and communicate the language of value and the power to communicate the language that offers them value in the amount they need as at when needed.

A Case against Fiat

Fiat money is a currency that lacks intrinsic value and is established as a legal tender by government regulation. Traditionally, currencies were backed by physical commodities such as silver and gold, but fiat money is based on the creditworthiness of the issuing government.

Money, in reality, is a social construct designed to allow people to sacrifice time now in order to enjoy it later. Debt is established when someone enjoys something today at the expense of eventual sacrifice. The last extinguisher of debt is real money. Because it is created by borrowing, fiat currency is an oxymoron to the notion of money. Accordingly, fiat-currency-fueled-economies have spent over a century gorging on debt, and the day of reckoning is at hand: economic reality demands its later sacrifices paid — explaining why governments are on the edge of bankruptcy (morally and financially) today.

When people say that cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value the question is do fiat also have intrinsic value? Of course not. In essence the central banks print money out of thin air and that is what our current society is built on. People work painful hours just to accumulate these papers who’s value depreciate overtime when federal debts and inflation is taken into account. There is need to revamp this system instead of allowing people to work painful hours like slaves, they should be free to invest assets and gain from an ecosystem that incentivizes their participation. On centralized platforms for instance you create contents and all the gains that should be accrued goes to the controlling entity. But in a decentralized blockchain powered world, our time is going to count.

Too Much For too Few

Competition is a normal part of life and in fact, we are often subconsciously compelled to compete. Everybody somehow wants to be at the top of the food chain and get access to the best possible type of living. Well in a system like ours it makes it quite difficult. Why?

• Our system favours centralization, where a single entity or business is controlled by a few while employing many.
• The principles of governance in our current society makes it necessary for a single entity or group to govern simultaneously. Everybody cannot be part of the process.

Currently, conversations about inclusion are among the highest. With everyone talking about how they are not given adequate attention based on their race, religion, color etc. We have to understand that the issue is systemic. A famous principle is the Pareto principle, where 20% control 80% of the system and the other 80% are left to compete for the remaining 20% of resources. Systemic in that it has gained a character of its own over time. There would always be that divide across different strata of constructs: The rich vs the poor, the haves and haves not, the strong and the weak, races etc

Personal Sovereignty

Self-ownership, also known as sovereignty of the individual or individual sovereignty, is the concept of property in one’s own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity and be the exclusive controller of one’s own body and life.

In this current system is personal sovereignty even possible? Mind you we are in a society where slavery has changed context. Very few have access to so much while the little resource that is left must be fiercely competed for by the 80% like in the Pareto principle. A lot of people work 8 hours everyday for little change. Constantly working everyday, helping someone achieve their dreams.

Personal sovereignty is the notion that people can become their own banks and have sole control over their finances without the need for a regulating intermediary like the bank. And just so you know, even though the bank has taken total control over the minting process, is it still possible to revolutionize this system to redefine centralization, ownership and distribute wealth without bias of race, color and religion.

The redefinition of ownership at all levels. A society where every digital asset, product etc can be fully owned by any entity without a barrier to entry. NFTs for instance have started making ownership and personalization very possible with use cases in real estate, healthcare, arts, music etc there has been a distribution of wealth like never before.

What true freedom would mean

True freedom would mean our society having the characteristic of the last section. Where finance and access to finance is available, inclusive and open for participation without censorship. The disruption that would occur by creating this kind of economy is going to be very massive and the current systems are going to react to it and find ways to stop it.

Welcome to the era of blockchain technology. An era where technology is redefining ownership, personal control, power, finance etc. The way to break out of this money-driven economy is to leave the centralized system driven for gains by a few people enslaving many with jobs and stripping them of their time. True freedom has come. Never before have we seen the possibility of financial inclusion, transparency in governance, inclusive governance etc and all these have been made possible by the blockchain. Society as we previously said would always react to a change. But it is inevitable.

Finding Freedom a case for Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies send chills down the spines of some people. But one must understand that it is a technology that is aimed at taking us back to the age where money could be held by people and used by people and traded without having to pass through a third party. Here’s why cryptocurrencies are a big deal:

1. It is decentralized and exists in a system that is void of control.
2. It evens out the odds and removes the gradient in participation.
3. Every participant in the network is part of the process that enables the blockchain to generate tokens or coins just like the central bank mints coins.
4. Regardless of your level of participation in the ecosystem, the system rewards you based on that participation and hence it is not subject to human biases like tribe, race, religion because it deals with addresses, not direct human identities.

Look at this statistic:

According to WEF Africa has done more P2P transactions in the last year alone than the rest of the world. This is not because we love new technology but because blockchain and cryptocurrency has opened up a window of wealth and is very inclusive. Aside from that it solves actua; problems faced on the continent. Example access to DeFi powered services like lending, funding etc which banks make difficult is easier to access. Banks are more excited about loaning money to the rich rather than the poor.

The New Era

On a blockchain like Cardano, there are stakepools and its native currency is Ada. In a decentralized network like this one, anybody anywhere can participate in the network regardless of geography. Your assets are yours and you can decide exactly how you want to spend it and which stakepool to stake. Aside from cryptocurrencies perhaps, DeFi and RealFi are now even bigger defining constructs especially for making financial freedom possible for the developing wealth. On average more than 1000 millionaires have emerged on the African continent in the last 1yr alone made possible by the DeFi space.

Access to loans have been increased and more than ever we have money work for people instead of people working for money without a break like slaves. On Cardano the staking process allows Ada holders to earn between 4% — 6% ROA per annum passively while their asset still remains secure. We are in a new era, where access to finance will liberate the average person and give us freedom in owning our assets and participating in the global pot wealth. The future is decentralized and blockchain is making it happen.

Thanks for reading.

Otobong Peter