• Technology Wants Abundance - The System Resists It
• Why Reform from Within Is So Difficult
• The Incentive Trap
• Bitcoin as an External System
• My Conclusion: Opting Out, Brick by Brick
• References

I keep coming back to the same uncomfortable question: can we really reform the current economic and political system from the inside, or are we trying to repair something that is structurally designed not to be repaired?

After revisiting Jeff Booth’s thinking, especially in this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhHKljqRa-M

I am more convinced than ever that meaningful change does not come from tweaking policies, electing slightly better politicians, or adjusting interest rates. The issue runs deeper. It is structural.

§Technology Wants Abundance - The System Resists It

Jeff Booth’s core thesis, also outlined in his book The Price of Tomorrow (https://www.jeffbooth.ca), is simple but radical: the natural state of a free market driven by technology is deflation. In plain language, when innovation increases productivity, things should become cheaper over time. We produce more with less effort. Competition pushes prices down. Society becomes more abundant. You can see this in software, in digital tools, in computing power. What once cost thousands is now free or nearly free. If technology keeps improving at an exponential rate, then logically, goods and services should become cheaper and more accessible.

But that is not what we experience.

Instead, housing becomes more expensive. Education becomes more expensive. Healthcare becomes more expensive. Everyday life feels heavier, not lighter. Booth argues that the reason is the monetary system itself. Our modern system is debt-based and requires continuous expansion. Money is created as debt and must grow to prevent collapse. If broad deflation were allowed, debts would become harder to service, and the structure would crack. So the system resists deflation, even if technology naturally drives it.

If you look at public data, the expansion is visible. The St. Louis Federal Reserve tracks the M2 money supply here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

Whether you agree with every interpretation or not, the structural direction is clear: the money supply expands over time. The political debate, however, rarely questions the monetary foundation. It focuses on distribution, on tax policy, on social programs, on austerity versus stimulus. These debates matter, but they operate within the same underlying framework. We argue about who gets what, while rarely questioning the measuring stick itself.

§Why Reform from Within Is So Difficult

This is where my professional experience reinforces the theory. As an external consultant, I am often brought into organisation that are struggling. Leadership usually believes the problem is a department, a team, or a specific process. But very often, the issue is structural. Incentives are misaligned. Reporting lines block accountability. KPIs/OKRs reward the wrong behaviour.

And here is the uncomfortable truth: it is extremely hard to optimise a system from within that system. The people inside it are shaped by its incentives. They built their careers within it. They are rewarded by it. Even if they see the problem, changing it can threaten their own position. That is why external consultants are hired. Not because they are smarter, but because they are not embedded in the incentive structure. They can question assumptions that insiders take for granted.

Now translate that logic to the monetary and political system.

If the system depends on debt expansion, if political survival depends on growth and short-term stability, if financial markets are built around perpetual expansion, then how realistic is it to expect deep reform from actors whose careers and power depend on maintaining that structure?

In Brick by Brick, I describe it bluntly:

“You cannot reform it. You cannot patch it… You can only see what it is: a system of illusion and decay.”

That sentence is not meant to provoke. It reflects the same logic I see in corporate transformation projects. Structural problems rarely solve themselves from within.

§The Incentive Trap

We often believe that electing the “right” person will fix things. But if that person operates within the same debt-based architecture, how much can they actually change? They can influence the speed and direction of policy. They can shift priorities. But they cannot easily rewrite the monetary base without destabilising the entire structure.

This is not a new concern. Friedrich Hayek warned about the dangers of centralised control over money and knowledge in The Road to Serfdom. More recently, Lyn Alden has explored the structural weaknesses of the current system in Broken Money (https://www.lynalden.com/broken-money/), arguing that monetary systems shape incentives across society in ways that are often invisible until stress reveals them.

Jeff Booth adds another dimension: artificial intelligence and exponential technology accelerate the tension. AI increases productivity dramatically. If productivity explodes, prices should fall. But if the monetary system depends on expansion and inflationary pressure, then the gains from productivity do not flow evenly. They concentrate, often into financial assets and institutional power.

This creates the strange paradox we are living through: technological abundance alongside financial stress and political polarisation. On the surface, we are richer than any generation before us in terms of tools and capabilities. Yet many people feel economically squeezed and politically disillusioned.

Booth poses a powerful question: if you have a vote in a democracy, but you do not have a vote in the rules of money, and that money continually loses purchasing power, how much does your vote truly change? You are, in effect, choosing who manages the same machine.

§Bitcoin as an External System

This is where Bitcoin enters the conversation, not as a political party or a protest movement, but as an external system. Bitcoin does not promise perfection. It does not eliminate economic cycles or human conflict. But it changes the foundation. Its monetary policy is transparent and programmatic. It does not expand based on political expediency.

From my perspective as a Bitcoiner, this is not about ideology. It is about architecture. When a system is structurally misaligned, you can either fight it endlessly from within, or you can begin building outside of it.

In Brick by Brick, I describe this shift not as rebellion, but as construction:

“Freedom isn’t won. It’s built. One sovereign brick at a time.”

Bitcoin represents a parallel monetary infrastructure. It allows individuals to store value outside the traditional debt-based system. It allows communities to transact without relying entirely on centralised institutions. It introduces competition at the base layer of money itself.

§My Conclusion: Opting Out, Brick by Brick

I am not advocating chaos. I am not calling for collapse. I am not arguing that everything inside the current system is evil or useless. But I am convinced that structural problems require structural alternatives.

In my consulting work, I have seen that true transformation rarely comes from incremental adjustments within broken incentive systems. It comes when a new framework is introduced, one that changes the rules and forces different behaviour. On a societal level, I believe we are at a similar crossroads.

Technology is accelerating. AI will increase productivity dramatically. The tension between abundance and monetary expansion will intensify. Political polarisation will likely grow as long as the underlying architecture remains unchanged. My response is not despair. It is responsibility.

We can build resilience. We can educate ourselves about money. We can reduce dependency on fragile institutions. We can allocate savings differently. We can support parallel networks. We can choose long-term thinking over short-term comfort. We do not need to overthrow the system. We can simply begin to opt out of its weakest parts.

Brick by brick. https://amzn.to/4mW2pK4

That is my personal way forward: not anger, not protest, but construction. A steady, disciplined shift toward sovereignty, transparency, and responsibility. And that, in my view, is far more powerful than trying to repair a machine that was never designed to serve us in the first place.

§References

Below are the sources referenced in the article. All URLs are direct links to official pages and publicly accessible at the time of writing:

1. Jeff Booth – Interview discussed in this article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhHKljqRa-M

2. Jeff Booth – The Price of Tomorrow Official book page: https://www.jeffbooth.ca/the-price-of-tomorrow

3. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) – M2 Money Supply (M2SL) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

4. Friedrich A. Hayek – The Road to Serfdom Hayek Society UK book page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

5. Lyn Alden – Broken Money Official book page: https://www.lynalden.com/broken-money/

6. Helmut Schindlwick - Brick by Brick - https://amzn.to/4mW2pK4