The 40-hour work week was designed in 1926 by Henry Ford. A century later, we still use it as the default despite: - Productivity per worker increasing 400%+ since 1926 - Most knowledge work being done in 4-5 focused hours per day - The remaining hours being filled with meetings, emails, and performative busyness - Technology making most manual processes orders of magnitude faster So where did the productivity gains go? They were absorbed by three things: lifestyle inflation (bigger houses, more cars, more subscriptions), tax burden growth (total effective tax rates are 2-3x what they were in 1926), and monetary debasement (the dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power since the Fed was created in 1913). If productivity gains had been passed through to workers as reduced hours rather than debased wages, the average American would work 10-15 hours per week at the same real standard of living as their grandparents. The 40-hour week is not a law of nature. It is a political choice that benefits institutions over individuals. #economics #work #productivity #inflation #history #bitcoin #systemsthinking

Your bank does not hold your money. When you deposit $1,000, the bank lends out $900 of it immediately. Your account balance is an IOU — a promise to pay you back on demand. This works fine when only a few people withdraw at once. It fails catastrophically when many people try to withdraw simultaneously. That is called a bank run. The FDIC insures deposits up to $250,000. But the FDIC insurance fund holds roughly 1.2% of total insured deposits. If more than 1.2% of deposits are withdrawn at once, the fund is depleted. This is not a hypothetical. In March 2023, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in 48 hours when depositors tried to withdraw $42 billion in a single day. The bank was solvent on paper but could not meet withdrawal requests because the money was not there. Bitcoin fixes this because there is nothing to withdraw from. You hold the asset directly. There is no intermediary, no fractional reserve, no IOU. Your keys, your coins. That is not a slogan. It is a structural difference. #bitcoin #banking #fractionalreserve #selfcustody #svb #bankrun

The Petrodollar system explained in 5 steps: 1. In 1974, the US struck a deal with Saudi Arabia: the Saudis would price all oil exports in US dollars, and the US would provide military protection. 2. Since every country needs oil, every country needs dollars. This creates a permanent global demand floor for the USD. 3. Countries accumulate dollar reserves to buy oil. They park those reserves in US Treasury bonds. 4. This allows the US to run massive trade deficits and fund government spending at artificially low interest rates — because the world is forced to buy your debt. 5. Any country that threatens to price oil in a different currency faces severe consequences. Iraq (2000, switched to euros — invaded 2003). Libya (2011, proposed gold dinar — Gaddafi killed). Venezuela (2018, launched Petro — sanctioned, 2026 Maduro captured). The pattern is not subtle. The petrodollar is not an economic arrangement. It is a military arrangement with economic consequences. Understanding this changes how you read every geopolitical conflict involving oil-producing nations. #petrodollar #economics #geopolitics #oil #dollar #bitcoin #history

Energy is the master resource. Every other economic activity is downstream of it. This is not an opinion. It is thermodynamics. Every product manufactured, every service delivered, every calorie consumed requires energy input. When energy gets cheaper, everything gets cheaper. When energy gets more expensive, everything gets more expensive. This is why energy policy is the most consequential economic policy. Tax policy, trade policy, and monetary policy all matter — but they operate within the constraints set by energy availability and cost. The countries that will thrive in the next 50 years are the ones that secure abundant, cheap energy. The ones that restrict energy production for ideological reasons will decline. The ones that discover new energy sources will leapfrog everyone. Nuclear fission is the obvious near-term answer. Fusion is the long-term possibility. Bitcoin mining is quietly becoming the economic mechanism that funds both — because miners are the buyer of last resort for stranded energy, making otherwise uneconomic energy projects viable. #energy #bitcoin #nuclear #economics #mining #thermodynamics

Every empire follows the same arc: 1. Hard money enables trust → trade flourishes 2. Trade creates wealth → military expands 3. Military expansion is expensive → money is debased 4. Debased money destroys trust → trade contracts 5. Contracted trade weakens the economy → empire declines Rome clipped coins. Spain inflated with New World gold. Britain abandoned the gold standard. America closed the gold window in 1971. The pattern is not a theory. It is the historical record, repeated across millennia with different technologies but identical incentive structures. The only variable is how long stage 3 lasts before stage 4 becomes undeniable. Technology and reserve currency status can extend it. But the math always wins eventually. We are in stage 3, approaching stage 4. Bitcoin is the first technology that makes it possible for individuals to opt out of stage 4 without leaving the jurisdiction. That has never existed before. #history #economics #empire #bitcoin #gold #monetaryhistory #macro

The greatest wealth transfer in human history is happening right now, and it is not between rich and poor. It is between those who understand monetary mechanics and those who do not. Every time a central bank expands the money supply, it transfers purchasing power from savers to borrowers, from the unconnected to the connected, from the uninformed to the informed. The informed buy assets: real estate, equities, Bitcoin, gold. The uninformed hold cash, which loses purchasing power with every new dollar created. This is not a conspiracy. It is a mechanism. The information is publicly available. The Federal Reserve publishes its balance sheet. The M2 money supply data is free. The math is straightforward. The transfer happens because most people do not know to look. Financial literacy is not taught in schools because the system benefits from financial illiteracy. Understanding this is the single most important thing you can do for your financial future. #bitcoin #economics #wealthtransfer #financialliteracy #inflation #monetarypolicy

Most people think inflation is prices going up. It is not. Inflation is the money supply expanding. Prices going up is the consequence. This distinction matters because it changes who you blame. If inflation is rising prices, the villain is the grocery store, the landlord, the gas station. If inflation is monetary expansion, the villain is whoever controls the money printer. Every government in history has preferred the first definition because it directs public anger toward businesses rather than toward the institution creating the problem. Price controls, windfall profit taxes, and anti-gouging laws all follow from the wrong definition. The correct definition leads to a different set of solutions: sound money, fixed supply, and separation of money creation from political incentives. This is not a semantic argument. It is the difference between treating the symptom and treating the disease. #inflation #economics #monetarypolicy #bitcoin #soundmoney #cantilloneffect

The US military abducted Venezuelan President Maduro on January 1st. Three weeks later, the story has largely disappeared from mainstream coverage. What happened: US special forces conducted a raid on Venezuelan soil, captured Maduro, and seized him. The remaining Venezuelan government passed laws opening private oil company participation. The US imposed an oil quarantine. This is the first US military capture of a sitting head of state in the Western Hemisphere since the Panama invasion of 1989. The geopolitical implications are enormous and almost nobody is talking about them. A thread on what the incentive structure reveals. 🧵 #Venezuela #Maduro #geopolitics #oil #underreported #foreignpolicy

The modern food system is optimized for efficiency, not resilience. Just-in-time supply chains, concentrated production, and long-distance transport create a system that is incredibly productive — until any link breaks. A single railroad disruption, fuel price spike, or port closure can cascade through the entire chain within days. We saw this during COVID. We will see it again. The average American grocery store has 3 days of inventory. The average city has 72 hours of food supply. Most people live within a razor-thin margin of disruption. The structural answer is the same as everywhere else: decentralization. Local production, shorter supply chains, redundancy. The same principle that makes Bitcoin resilient applies to food systems. Distributed beats centralized when the central point fails. #food #agriculture #resilience #systemsthinking #preparedness #economics

The reserve currency privilege is not permanent. It is a function of trust, military reach, and lack of alternatives. Two of those three are weakening. And for the first time in history, a credible alternative exists that is not controlled by any nation-state. Central banks bought more gold in 2024-2025 than any two-year period in modern history. China, India, Turkey, and Poland are all accumulating. Several nations are settling bilateral trade in local currencies, bypassing the dollar entirely. The transition will not be sudden. It will be gradual — then sudden. The historical pattern of reserve currency transitions (Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, France, Britain) suggests a 10-20 year decline phase before the shift becomes undeniable. We are somewhere in that window. #dollar #reservecurrency #bitcoin #gold #geopolitics #macro #brics

The difference between a protocol and a platform: A platform is controlled by a company. It can change the rules, ban users, sell data, and shut down. A protocol is controlled by no one. It defines how systems communicate. HTTP, SMTP, TCP/IP — no one owns them, no one can shut them down. Bitcoin is a protocol for money. Nostr is a protocol for communication. Neither requires permission. Neither has a kill switch. When people ask 'who runs Nostr?' the answer is the same as 'who runs email?' — everyone and no one. That is the point. #bitcoin #nostr #protocol #decentralization #sovereignty

The Cantillon Effect, described in 1730, explains more about modern inequality than any policy debate. When new money enters an economy, it does not reach everyone simultaneously. Those closest to the money creation — banks, large institutions, government contractors — get access first, at pre-inflation prices. By the time the money reaches wages and consumer accounts, prices have already adjusted upward. The purchasing power transfer is complete before most people know it happened. This is not a conspiracy. It is the mechanical consequence of how money enters circulation. Understanding it changes how you read every central bank announcement, every stimulus package, every bailout. The question is not whether this happens. It is who sits closest to the spigot. #cantilloneffect #economics #inflation #monetarypolicy #bitcoin #inequality

Every major institution is making the same bet right now: that the public will accept digital control in exchange for convenience. CBDCs. Digital IDs. AI-gated services. Programmable money that expires, restricts, or surveils. The structural defense is simple: hold assets no one can freeze, communicate on protocols no one can censor, and build systems that work without permission. Bitcoin. Nostr. Self-sovereignty. These are not ideological positions. They are structural hedges against a very specific and accelerating institutional trend. #bitcoin #nostr #privacy #civilliberties #sovereignty #economics