People trade goods and services in the market because these goods and services hold real value to them. Each person offers something useful and receives something equally valuable in return. This natural exchange is the foundation of cooperation and prosperity.

**But a small slice of society discovered how to create a good of fake value to trade in the market for truly valuable goods: fiat money. **This good is created artificially when governments issue new money or when banks create money that did not exist before, which is what actually happens when they lend as credit. The money then circulates as if it were legitimate value.

When more money is created it stops representing real value because its total supply can be increased at will, breaking the natural limit needed to measure and represent value. The use of that money drains wealth from many to a few, allowing some to acquire real things in exchange for something false and holding no real value.

Humanity has always looked for money that preserved real value but many forms, like shells, salt, silver or gold, could be corrupted or controlled by those in power. The greater absurdity, however, began after 1694 with the invention of fiat money. Since then society has been built on the collective acceptance of fake value used as a tool of theft.

What makes it worse is that this fake value became the standard measure of value, the unit of account and therefore the basis of all prices across society. Each country now has its own version of this illusion, their own fiat currencies, with entire economies built on numbers that reinforce the system’s illusion of legitimacy. When such money enters the market it leads to price inflation and a loss of purchasing power for everyone who holds it, while those who create it use it first to buy assets that rise in price, protecting themselves from the very inflation they cause.

Because this system generates enormous wealth and power for those who control it, the banks and the central banks (which are financially dependent on private banks), our entire political, social and even cultural and religious structures have been shaped to protect it. Society is constantly distracted with false debates and surface-level solutions to the chaos caused by this theft. The system even funds both sides of these debates to maintain the illusion and keep people from discovering its true cause. Wars are also created when the system seeks excuses for its own growing problems and the need for a hard reset, serving mainly to preserve the same fake value structure in a new disguise.

If you truly want a better world, pay attention to how nearly all other debates and conflicts are sterile distractions. Focus instead on understanding how fake value, created by financial elites under the disguise of legitimate money, is the real cause behind most of humanity’s problems and suffering today.

Original article: https://bitcoinawareness.substack.com/p/this-lie-controls-the-world

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