Went for a coffee this morning and chatted with a store owner about his life in Egypt, and started to think about how one of the most pernicious aspects of the fiat system is how it causes the degeneration of culture.
Every couple of years they've had major currency devaluations by their central bank (due to taking on big loans from the IMF). This makes life more and more expensive for the locals there. It has become very difficult to buy a home. Think about a family living in a home for hundreds of years, past down through the generations, how much life has been lived in that. How much wisdom has been absorbed into the walls. And then all the sudden they're forced to sell so they can buy groceries. Much more is lost in that transaction than just the physical home. It contributes to the slow death of the story of the people.
Since there is a hollowing out of economic opportunity, the best and brightest decide to leave the country for greener pastures. While they bring aspects of their culture to wherever they emigrate to, parts of them inevitably fall away as their cultural identity slowly dissolves into the melting pots of the largely secular, developed world. So you have both an exodus and a thinning out of culture.
I find that quite sad because a place like Egypt has been around for such a long period of human history. Culture evolves alongside the demands of history, tuned to the challenges of earthly patterns of change. It is a loss that cannot be quantified.
