Times are tough.. but.. Merry Christmas!

Thank you very much. A Merry Christmas to you too! :0)

Hey there,

In many countries, it has been the providence in the face of economic collapse. All this is well documented.

Merry Christmas!

To some extent I wrote about that in a long ago post, or the possibility of it. In my country 3 cents here and 3 cents there doesn't do much if anything at all. But in Venezuela? In India? In Pakistan? In the Philippines?

It makes a world of difference.

And with a site like this, not only did the two people who mainly funded it get the opportunity to make the difference. We ALL did.

I think we all still do have that opportunity. If we choose to accept it and run with it.

I agree with you! Depending where in the world, even some cents make the difference. I think we all here already made the choice. :0)

There are enough people in the world who have a smartphone but no bank account. With Bitcoin Cash, the problem would be solved. We still have the problem of volatility, unfortunately. The FlexUSD solution has turned out to be a dead end.

I am still a bit confused how any currency solves a money problem. If one has no money, it is because a) their economy sucks with little opportunity for well paying jobs and b) they are not making sufficient income c) are not properly saving or investing or have poor money management skills d) they are spending above their means, and there is probably an "e" and an "f" and so on so forth there.

Or I have missed something. lol

Put a dollar bill in someone's hand or a BCH token. It's tit for tat. If I do not have the means to earn the dollar, what makes it possible for me to somehow earn the BCH through some other mechanism?

I am sure you may have an answer. lol

Some people have chosen to stop relying on the system. To free themselves from it.

I think the problem is the monetary system, it's the interest. The fiat money, is debt money. A 100 dollar note that you hold in your hand is no different than an IOU https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOU .

Somone has borrowed 100 USD from the bank and has to pay back 104 or 105 after a year. This 100 USD, another man's debt is in your hand. This system results in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. With interest-free money like BCH, this problem would not exist.

At the same time, I am not sure I agree 100%. I think the problem is "lack of participation" in the monetary system. Especially when it comes to capitalism.

I have never made a lot of money working. But I have made a fortune participating.

The key for me was to understand how money works. I work hard, I make a paycheck. I am frugal with my money and save and invest and live below my means.

If I only relied on a paycheck, how would I ever expect to survive? How would I ever expect to get ahead?

If I see a guy like Jeff Bezos start a company and become a billionaire, why would I get mad at him? Why would I choose only to work for him? Why would I not own a piece of what he has so long as it is offered and get in the exact same game he is in?

It is not the monetary system that is broken. It's again, broken by people who fail to participate in it. It is broken by people expecting someone else will take care of them. It is broken by someone thinking someone else is supposed to. That someone else has the obligation to.

In my country, for example, people are offered an opportunity to participate in a 401k plan. Yet many people don't. And then they get to retirement, broke, and expect to rely on social security to take care of them. It won't. It was not designed to. It was never intended to. And so they retire broke not because the system failed them. But because they failed to understand how money works. They failed to participate.

How can I work a 9-5 job and become rich, and another person can work the same job and be poor?

Because I participated and they did not. Because I understood how money works and the other person did not. Because I took the time to learn and the other person failed to know.

Making money is all about understanding how it works, and participating in the system. Not simply expecting to not have to do the work and expecting that somehow they system will reward bad behavior or poor money management decisions.

Those who have, have it because they did something to have it. And those who do not have, do not have because they did nothing to earn it.

If I see a guy like Jeff Bezos start a company and become a billionaire, why would I get mad at him?

At no point did I write that it was bad and that you should get mad at him. On the contrary. The world and the economy need companies. There is nothing wrong with buying shares and participating in the success of the company. The problem, in my view, lies elsewhere. It's not the economic system, it's the monetary system. It is because money is debt money and because interest redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich.

Money should serve to enable the exchange of goods and not to make the rich richer. Or perhaps put another way, interest is the flip side of demonetization (inflation) and it makes the poor even poorer.

I was speaking in general terms, but even there I disagree a bit because the monetary system also makes the poor richer...if they participate. Participation is the key. The wealth trickles down in the form of the jobs it provides and the opportunity to participate in wealth creation, which in turn provides for wealth creation.

Which is exactly how I went from poor to rich. By participating. Another great discussion though.

Which is exactly how I went from poor to rich

It is not impossible to rise from poor to rich even in this monetary system, but it makes things considerably more difficult.

Some succeed, especially people in rich countries. I have also succeeded. I am pretty sure I am much richer than 99% of RC users, but the poorer the country, the harder it is.

On that we agree, and most of the time when I talk about the opportunity, I am usually referring to countries, such as my own, where the opportunity is actually real.

You must not forget that most rich countries have become rich through the oppression and exploitation of poor countries. Colonies, slavery and so on. The advantage was created at the expense of the poor. We still live off that today. Among other things, this gives us the opportunity that they do not have.

That I completely disagree with. Take a country like India. It has all the opportunity, but is oppresses its own people and refuses to become anything more than the third world country that it is.

Same goes for Cuba. Venezuela wasn't always like that, but it used to be one of the richest countries in its region until it adopted socialism.

Many poor countries are poor because like in my previous example, they do not participate.

Cuba and Venezuela operate a socialist economic model, which is inefficient and demonstrably doomed to failure. India was exploited by the British Empire for a long time and then also socialist-oriented for a long time, which probably harmed the country even more than the colonial period. But it is clear that the beneficiary of the colonial period was not India but the British Empire. The British got rich from India, the rest was India's own fault.

Hey man, Thank you so much! :0) Merry Christmas to you and all yours. Wishing you fantastic end year fests!

Thank you