It’s often said that a formal education only teaches you how to think, not what to think. Yet, sometimes I feel my initial lessons in economics did both. I find my mind often circles back to two monumental, contradictory thinkers from high school and my deeper studies in college: Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Their theories were presented as historical relics, but they feel more alive today than ever before... especially when I try to make sense of the strange, unanchored economy we live in.
I look around me and I feel like I’m witnessing a disconnect. On one hand, I see people working grueling hours in physical labor. On the other, I see massive "easy" spending on things that have absolutely zero inherent value. And then, at the same time, I see our political representatives arguing about statistics that seem entirely removed from the reality I’m witnessing on the street.
I have spent my adult life trying to reconcile what I was taught about the "natural value" of things with the current monetary chaos. And what I have found is that we are not just living through an era of "inflation." We are witnessing the cultural death of the Store of Value. We have traded the hard-won equity of difficult human labor for the shallow, rapid velocity of "monetary narcissism."
The Foundations of Exchange (The Education of My Youth)
"In the beginning of economics," there were two distinct ways to look at an exchange...
In high school, it was Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." We were taught that the economy runs on thousands of individuals acting in their own self-interest. A baker doesn't bake bread because he loves you... he bakes it because he wants to make a profit. In this view, the "value" of a good is determined by the market. If two people are willing to make an exchange, it has value. I believed this was rational. It presented the world and the economy as an elegant, efficient machine.
Then came college, and I met Karl Marx. Marx offered a lens into the fundamental structure of society itself. He defined the world not as individual actors making efficient choices, but as two conflicting classes: the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat.
The Bourgeoisie... which I often misspelled, yet always remembered... are the class that owns the "means of production"... the factories, the land, the tech, the political system. They accumulate wealth not through labor, but through the "surplus value" they extract from others.
The Proletariat, conversely, are the working class. They own nothing but their own labor power, which they must sell to survive.
Marx's central argument was the Labor Theory of Value: that the true value of a good is the direct result of the hours and effort required to produce it. A pound of steel isn't valuable because some buyer wants it... it is valuable because of the grueling energy expended to mine the ore and operate the furnace. Marx, as I recall, moved away from the Invisible Hand,
This made intuitive sense to me. It felt grounded in a fundamental, "natural" justice: you should get what you put in. If you expend 12 hours of life-force, your currency should represent that 12 hour battery.
The Stored Battery of Human Effort (The Proletariat Core)
Today, when I walk through a job site and see a man with a 120lb jackhammer, I see the Proletariat in its purest form.
I want you to really visualize this for a moment. This isn't just "work." This is a man whose body is receiving hundreds of violent, percussive blows every minute. He is exerting extreme physical force for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, often 84 hours a week or more. This work represents a significant physical depreciation of his actual biological being. His joints are wearing, his back is breaking, his energy is being extracted and transferred directly into the concrete he is shattering or the infrastructure he is building.
This is the very essence of Marx's "socially necessary labor time."
In my view, money... in its true, "natural" form... exists to be a perfect storage device for that excruciating effort. When that man gets his paycheck, those dollars should act as a high density battery. They should represent the exact amount of "life force" he spent that week, held indefinitely for the future.
When he spends that money on groceries, or a mortgage, or saving for his retirement, he is simply releasing that stored battery. He is saying, “I already felt the pain. Now, I want to release that energy into something that secures my future.”
This is what a Store of Value is supposed to be. It is the repository for human sacrifice. It is the guarantee that 12 hours of grueling pain today will be worth something tangible and equivalent tomorrow.
But I look at our modern society, and I believe we have severed that connection. Our economy has moved away from difficult, labor intensive earnings as its fundamental anchor. And when that anchor is gone, the "Store of Value" begins to leak.
The Stagnation of the "Easy" Exchange (How Social Aid Diminishes Natural Value)
This brings me to a realization that is difficult, but necessary, to address. If we accept that the "natural value" of money is derived from arduous, physical exertion, then we must look at how modern society distributes that currency without that exertion.
We must look at "modern charity" and our massive system of social aid, such as SNAP (welfare).
Please understand: I am not arguing against the basic human impulse to help the suffering. But I am an observer of economic incentives and historical structure. And from my perspective, the current system of administrative charity is a powerful, corrupting "distraction" to the natural value of labor.
What happens when we create a societal "floor" where a person can receive sustenance and resources entirely through administrative status or eligibility, rather than physical sacrifice?
- It Devalues Physical Work: It narrows the "Sacrifice Gap." If a man running a jackhammer for 84 hours a week is only net a marginally better lifestyle than someone receiving assistance, the market has failed to "price" the bodily depreciation he is enduring. The system is telling him that his physical pain has no market utility.
- It Worsens the Value of Money: This creates a form of "monetary stagnation." This "easy" currency enters the market without the requisite "labor battery" behind it. It is money that represents no sacrifice. When too much of this "sacrificeless money" exists, it is competing for the same goods... like groceries... that the manual laborer is struggling to afford. This, in my view, directly fuels the inflation we are all witnessing.
We have created an alternative "currency" that isn't etched in human sweat, and in doing so, we have diluted the value of the true hard earned dollar. The man with the jackhammer is watching his buying power evaporate because the system is telling him his endurance is less valuable than administrative paperwork.
The Tattoo Barometer: The Ultimate Witness to Monetary Narcissism
This dilution is part of why I believe we’re seeing some of the most extreme and irrational exchanges in modern history. In my opinion, nothing reflects the erosion of the Store of Value more clearly than the rise of the expensive, professional tattoo. It has become a kind of barometric marker… a signal of how far we’ve drifted from the idea that value should be preserved rather than displayed. And the larger and more conspicuous the tattoo, the more it seems to mirror a broader cultural shift toward self‑presentation, attention‑seeking, and aesthetic inflation… a kind of performative narcissism that says more about the times we live in than the ink itself.
A Worthless Exchange, When Viewed Through Economic Utility
Think about the tattoo, and its growing demand, through the lens of economic utility:
- No Market Value: A tattoo cannot be resold. If I invest $1,000 in tools, or Stock, or a home improvement, that value is trapped. I can recover it, or it can produce more value. A tattoo has zero resale value.
- No Usage Value: It does not make you faster, smarter, more productive, or more protected. It cannot feed your family or keep you warm. It is not an asset of use.
- No Need: It is a non essential luxury. It solves zero fundamental human problems.
From any standard, rational economic model, a tattoo is an active, permanent consumption of capital with zero possibility of an economic return. It is an entirely "sterile" exchange.
The Narcissistic-Monetary Barometer
Yet, they are often incredibly expensive. People will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars... weeks of grueling "jackhammer hours"... on a single, personal skin etching. Their popularity has surged, even in the middle of a massive "affordability crisis."
Why? This is the core of my perspective. When a society stops believing in the future, when the Store of Value is broken, people stop trying to save for a future they can no longer afford.
If you work 84 grueling hours a week, and you realize that inflation is diluting that "stored battery" so fast that you will never own a home or afford a family, you will look for immediate, tangible "consumption of the self."
Spending hard won proletariat money on a tattoo is an act of economic despair dressed in narcissism. It is a decision to make your own body the asset, because you can no longer trust the currency to hold any future assets.
The tattoo is a "careless exchange" because it reflects a careless economy... one where the money feels temporary, fake, and disposable. If the dollar won't keep you secure tomorrow, you might as well spend it today on a marker of your identity that, at least, you will own forever.
This is a cultural, not a mathematical, witness. When you see expensive, worthless, sterile exchanges surging in popularity, you are witnessing a populace that has lost all faith that difficult labor has any connection to long term security.
The Velocity of Monetary Narcissism (What Inflation Truly Is)
This brings us to what I believe we are witnessing. Inflation is not just a mathematical formula... too much money chasing too few goods. It is a direct result of this massive psychological shift.
We are seeing a cultural explosion in the Velocity of Money.
When a population realizes their currency is no longer a Store of Value, the incentive to hold it disappears. In Adam Smith's model, a rational actor saves. But in our current distorted reality, the rational actor must "dump" that currency as fast as possible, converting it into immediate gratification... experiences, ego boosts, the "Self"... before its value evaporates.
This rapid, careless spending on "worthless" assets... like tattoos... is actually fueling the inflation that everyone is complaining about. We have lost respect for the effort required to earn that dollar, so we spend it with less respect, which forces the price of goods... like groceries... up further.
It is a vicious cycle of monetary narcissism. The future feels out of reach, so we retreat into the immediate present, using our hard won, "natural labor" to purchase symbols of an identity that, at least, cannot be inflated away.
What is Cause and What is Witness?
We are witnessing the Devaluation of Human Effort.
| Aspect | The "Natural" Standard | The Current Reality |
|---|---|---|
| The Laborer | 12 hours of grueling pain = High purchasing power / Long term security. | 12 hours of pain = Barely covers weekly expenses. |
| The Money | A perfect, long-term Store of Value. | A rapidly decaying commodity... A "leaking battery." |
| The Cultural Witness | Delayed gratification / Savings for the future. | Immediate gratification / Sterile exchanges (tattoos/ego). |
We are witnessing a "decreased view of the value of money," combined with an era where money has been obtained with "ease"... easy credit, social aid... that breaks the honest connection between endurance and earning.
Conclusion: The Staged Interrogation
I have explored these concepts deeply because I feel they are being ignored by the very people who are supposedly managing our economy. This brings me back to the start... the political and social chaos I feel when I see the news.
I look at the Washington "interrogations" that we are subjected to on our social media feeds. They often seem staged, designed for clips rather than actual understanding.
In this video, a high ranking political rep and an economic advisor are bickering. They are arguing over a "2.1% inflation rate," and whether grocery prices did, or did not, drop. One side claims prices are falling, the other cites "Bureau of Labor Statistics" data that grocery prices were 2.4% higher than they were a year prior.
I watch this, and I feel a profound disconnect. These numbers, these arguments, are treated as absolute truth by the representatives and people in charge of the economy.
But they have absolutely no relation to the proletariat experience I have outlined. They are treating the man with the 120lb jackhammer as a data point.
When the Treasury Secretary speaks of "buying power" and the Senator speaks of "grocery prices," they are both acting as, and are the modernized, Bourgeoisie... the administrative/political class. They are treating the economic reality as a statistical game. They avoid the only truth that matters: that for the person enduring an 84 hour work week, their "Stored Value" is gone.
These hearings feel "staged" because neither side will address the fundamental truth: we have broken the compact. We no longer honor difficult, intensive labor with a currency that lasts. We give it away without being earned...