The GDP illusion.
Ideas to take with you.
- 01
GDP measures money flowing, not value created, so technology that makes things cheaper subtracts from the number even when it raises real living standards.
- 02
A debt-based monetary system structurally requires GDP to grow, which means the collision with deflationary technology is a built-in feature, not an accident.
- 03
Optimistic AI forecasts that promise both triple-digit growth and falling prices are stating two incompatible things, because in a free market with universal tools margin gets competed away.
- 04
UBI, UHI, and universal basic services do not escape the Cantillon mechanism, the new money enters at the top of the system before any of it reaches the people it claims to help.
- 05
Treated through this frame, Bitcoin is not a price prediction but the only money where the gains from technology flow to the people using it, through prices falling rather than wages chasing inflation.
