Think for a moment about the “speed of life.” Two centuries ago, it took months to cross the Atlantic on a wooden ship. Today, it takes five hours by plane. The Pony Express once needed weeks to deliver a message. The telegraph shrank that to seconds.
Human ingenuity has always accelerated life, but it was still bound by reality — the limits of earth’s raw materials.
On August 15, 1971, America traded reality for illusion.
Technology built from those natural parts is real, sustainable, and grounded. But when systems detach from the real world, they become artificial. They may run for a time, but they cannot endure.
Now consider money as a form of energy. Once, it was tangible: gold coins, silver dollars, bills you could hold in your hand. Even when transactions became electronic, they