The System Fails You? Take the Tools and Build Your Own

South Africa, like many African countries, is facing interconnected system failures: power cuts, water shortages, rampant corruption, and massive inequality.

One reason that gets overlooked: the monetary system itself strips wealth from small savers and funnels it to those who already have capital. Debt-based currencies like the Rand, USD, and Euro give cheap credit to people with assets while locking out everyone else. You own nothing? Then you're a liability. No credit to build a business, educate your children, create wealth. The system runs on growth, spending, and debt - an exclusive club based on permissions. Too poor for a bank account? Sorry.

This makes the rich richer and lets them control infrastructure, buy influence, shape policy through lobbying. Crony capitalism is an illness of those who can't get enough. No technology can end this.

But there is technology that is neutral. Technology anyone can use. Technology from the fringes that enables people on the sidelines to regain agency over their lives - to opt out of a crooked system and rebuild their economic power.

In places where banking has failed people entirely, they're already doing it. Using tools that don't ask for permission. Building parallel systems that work.

Only when people have agency and security they can be resilient in the face of change.

Individuals and civil society are building these tools right now. Change is possible, as you'll see.

It's on us to grab these opportunities and rebuild our systems from the ground up.

#Dailyish