The following is a guest post from Kadan Stadelmann, the CTO of Komodo Blockchain.
The US has undergone a massive consolidation of wealth and power in recent years. Americans everywhere are suffering as modern robber barons grow fat from a 21st century Gilded Age or Roaring Twenties.
However, unlike the Gilded Age and the 1920s, the 1920s offer a reprieve. Bitcoin serves as a timely solution for individuals and families to ensure they can enjoy their piece of the American Dream.
Americans live in silent depression
In the US that is millions of people living in a ‘silent depression’. For example, 35% of people in the US no longer are earn enough money to pay for basic needs. Some put down the number is closer to 50% of households.
In addition, America has credit card debt hit a new record as credit card rates are skyrocketing. For the first time in history, credit card debt is on the rise exceeded $1 trillion. And people are too pay an average interest of almost 28%.
The situation is even worse for Black and Hispanic families, more than 50% of whom cannot to afford the base. And more than two-thirds of full-time, low-income workers with children fail to earn enough to make ends meet. And serious financial problems strain parents’ health, increasing the likelihood that children’s needs will not be met.
Land owned by Kleptocracy
In the meantime, house prices have risen doubled and tripled interest rates have risen significantly over the past decade. First-time home buyers are being pushed out, stuck in high rents and unable to build up equity in the form of homes. Meanwhile, eighty percent of rented agricultural land is not property by farmers, but instead by investors.
America’s land base is owned by a corporate kleptocracy that uses their control to strip the public of wealth. If Americans can’t own equity in the form of homes, they can’t get liquidity from a second mortgage to start a business, for example. And when that happens, the American dream is dead.
Robber barons exercise undue influence as shareholders
BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard have played a meaningful role in consolidating the extraordinary wealth in the US. The so-called “Big Three” have become the largest shareholder at 88% of S&P 500 companies, exercising “hidden power” through private agreements with management and possibly in other ways.
How to undo the damage?
The US was once the land of jeans, cars and transistor radios, because its founders favored minimal government and the power of millions of individuals free to participate in social and economic life. In short, they believed in decentralization.
Unfortunately, that vision did not last forever, and we see the consequences of its failure all around us today. Not only domestically on the streets of the US, but also abroad due to the policy of perpetual war. Instead of the decentralized model put forward by the founders, the US is moving toward a feudal model, with countries like the Big Three buying up all the land they own.
Bitcoin offers a hedge against consolidation by these superpowers and allows ordinary people to build equity – not through a house, but through the only finite asset in the world. Bitcoin retains financial freedom, as demonstrated during the truck protests in Ottawa, Canada, where organizers’ bank accounts were closed without due process at the government’s request.
Bitcoin poses a threat to central bankers and offers hope to the people. It is a beacon of human freedom and personal freedom. It is the logical competition for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The US should support the US dollar with a basket of assets, including Bitcoin (and possibly gold, silver and platinum), rather than insisting on a fiat Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
For these reasons, Bitcoin is under fire. Regulators are looking for ways to neutralize the technology, and the mining complex has long since turned into an environmental man.
It won’t be easy to implement Bitcoin-friendly policies in a divided house.
What needs to be done? For starters, Bitcoiners need to be politically organized worldwide and show up at local, state, and national meetings to preserve people’s right to transact in an increasingly consolidated world. Moreover, it must be an all-hands-on-deck effort. No matter how much or how little you can spare, it will take the entire Bitcoin community to stave off the modern robber barons.