This Article IsEdited at 2025-11-18Referenced as b99

Economic outage

Preface

If you search for “economy [country name]” today, you will see many articles from economist-owned websites fearmongering about the decline in GDP. We will not get into why CPI and PPI are better indicators for the livehood of people in this article, but rather talk about the basics of economics and what is to come.

This article would not be possible without the economic philosophy of 孫驍驥, the author of Manchild Capitalism1. You may view his YouTube channel in zh-Hant.

Fiat currency

The fiat currency has no intrinsic value. Its use value comes from the fact that some people are being forced to use it and trade in this currency.

One stores currency in a financial institution (the bank) in exchange for a promise that it will be paid back. Such an IOU is not currency.

A national debt can be separated into two kinds: internal and external, defined by if the residency of the debtor is inside or outside the nation’s area of control (not necessaily its jurisdiction). In reality the separation is more like a gradient, due to how much a nation has control over a given area is varied in depending on where it is. However, it is safe to say that an internal debtor is easier to dissolve than an external debtor.

What happens when a nation fails to pay back its debt? Then the debtor has their debt dissolved. No other outcome is guaranteed. The popular conception about fiat currency is more myth than observation, and I won’t attempt to rationalize the myriad ways people behave when in fear.

A currency holder may see their currency being taken away for any reason. We usually call this robbery. It is a political act and an economic act. In a sense, every currency holder is an option with dozens of years of maturity.

I don’t think it is possible to bankrupt a currency issuer that is not stupid. If it can guarantee the IOUs that savers receive from the bank, it can guarantee itself not to be bankrupt. We are living in a world where debt itself is traded as assets (whatever the word may mean), so I advise the reader to have at least this level of belief in human ingenuity.

Is making up a currency from no physical matter worth it? Maybe.

Prepare for percuniary outage

Every economy has a floor to land on in a world where every desire has a ceiling to reach.

In case of a shutdown of the monetary system that encompasses where you live, you may prepare as follows.

Our present era’s economic system, according to my understanding, has 4 pillars. Please excuse my savagery in classification.

In the order of importance and the order of emergence in history:

  1. Agriculture: production and sale of food.
  2. Manufacturing: production and sale of artificial goods.
  3. Service: production and sale of peer to peer work.
  4. Hedonism: production and sale of art, games, gaming experience, an approximation of gaming experience as video, etc. It turtles all the way down.

There are other work like advertisement and running digital penhouses that does not seem to be production in any sense, but rater piggybacked on production.

If the monetary system collapse, or you choose to exit early:

  1. Agriculture: you need to convince farmers to share their produce with you.
  2. Manufacturing: there are enough manufactured goods already produced. use them.
  3. Service:: do more of it yourself or ask a friend.
  4. Hedonism: do whatever you like. although, play itself

Note that deciding where to live seem to have a larger influence on one’s life expectancy than deciding what work to take. As long as there is need for something, even if it’s only yourself needing it, producing it will not be in vain.

Declining birth rate · aging population

Decline in birth rate has happened many times throughout human history. This time, it seems to be “voluntary”.

Before the concept of “social contract” or “s*****ism” has been appeared, communities exist where different age groups take care of one another with no regard to biological lineage. The fathers and mothers in that community would take care of their children collectively.

The social contribution system (tax system) of the modern state is kind of an extension to that, except it’s ever broader.

Here is a question that you may want to think about. How do you feel about 28%2 of your percuniary gain being used to support the senior population? Welcome to the National Tribe, which very much fit the definition of national s*****ism, despite its negative connotations based on history. To some, this might seem like a success of the democratic institution. To some, this is an opportunity to blame the youth for not working hard enough. Other arguments that put the diversity of the human mind on full display will not be listed here.

2 I did not make this number up. Any worker that works in a registered, privately-owned incorporated in Germany pays about this share or higher.

To translate the words I heard from a certain Chinese nationalist:

You may participate in this [political] system and fulfill the expectation of the previous generation had on you. You may also absent. But to break it, is to disrupt the lives of all who depend on it as collateral- [redacted: swearing]

From a computational perspective, cause come before effect, responsibility come after choice. This sentence is intentionally left blank.

  1. 《巨嬰資本主義：當代政治經濟困境的歷史辨析》——孫驍驥。 A philosophical treatise. Translation of the title is mine. The term “Manchild” is gender-neutral.↩︎

  2. ↩︎