History reveals that hyperinflation has destructive effects on the economy and political order. Under the current geopolitical environment an alternative perspective on hyperinflation is proposed. Namely, the effects of excessive ‒hyper‒ concentration of money in the hands of few billionaires and fund managers. And how it is closely related to a god complex of individuals who become alienated from the people and reality they are trying to control.
In 1999 there were ~49 billionaires in the USA, the number increased to ~727 currently. Whereas there were ~298 billionaires in the world back then, currently there are approximately ~2500. It is estimated that the total number of billionaires went from owning 1% of the world’s wealth in 1995, to 3.5% by last year.
Most of the wealth of these individuals has been accumulated by investing in the equity markets. The great portion of which is sustained by pensions and retirement accounts of government and corporate workers. The concentration of wealth contributed to a hyper lobbying power of billionaires including some fund managers who have billions under their management.
Hyperinflation is defined as an uncontrollable rise in prices that typically exceed 50% that is not matched with an equal increase in wages of workers in the labor market. The more insidious consequences of hyperinflation is the collapse in the confidence in government to manage the economy and the resulting social chaos as experienced in countries like Sri Lanka.
A popular example used to explain hyperinflation is Wiemar Germany depicting people with a wheelbarrows full of money to pay for things. Once hyperinflation takes hold, as it did in Germany in the nineteen twenties and thirties, it signals a collapse of a political and an economic order and eventually leads to war.
The current meaning of inflation is a shift from the original sense of the word that meant being puffed up with air or gas; filled with vanity, including pride; or being filled with false notions. The original significance was introduced in early 17th century. While the current economic use took hold in late nineteen century during the Industrial Revolution during the era of the Robber Barons.
The original and the current sense of the word are both applied to billionaires, specifically to public figures who claim they have a self-anointed right to use their money to rule over the future of the world. Especially billionaires who have control over companies they own and the power they have over NGOs and institutions they support with donation made with their tax exempt charitable foundations. Control that yields political lobbying power over politicians, the media and institutions, most of it at the expense of the majority of citizens.
The issue here is not about the majority of billionaires, or about the nature of wealth or money, but about individuals who are afflicted with a god complex. Whereby the excessive amount of money is alienating these billionaires from an unpredictable reality they are attempting to control. Money in itself is not detrimental. It only becomes so when it feeds a delusion of misplaced power that disrupts an unfathomable dynamic of reality.
On the flip side, money is beneficial to defend one’s individual sovereignty against the tyranny of greedy people, or the overreaching intrusion of governments. As exemplified by Elon Musk using his billions to restore freedom of speech and uphold entrepreneurial spirit of individuals.
In his defense, Musk’s identity is purportedly generated by his drive to create and build things. Whereas a billionaire with a god complex identity’s is propped up by money accumulated either by inheritance, or by market speculation, or by privileged family contacts. This type of identity defines an individual’s identity on what one owns and controls. It is strictly material. Without money this type of person is devoid of personal identity and power.
Love of money is defined by the Church in Rome as capital sin. The term capital here relates to its original significance of the word head, meaning a sin that is the highest form of moral transgression and spiritual degeneration. Saint Thomas Aquinas used the expression capital vice rather than capital sin to reflect wrongdoing that destroys faith in God’s presence and that interferes with Jesus’ commandment to love of your neighbor like yourself.
Capital vices: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and laziness
The evil effects of greed is showcased by delusion that stems from the distortion of God’s unfathomable reality embodied by the divine sovereignty of every individual human being, regardless of wealth or status; a delusion that is oblivious to the spiritual dynamic of the sacredness of life embodied by the people.
The dynamic is akin to players acting separately as individuals but connected to a wholly other inscrutable design. Similar to the mysterious workings of the invisible hand of buyers and sellers in the market place. Where each individuals has no control over the direction of the market, yet collectively act as an aggregate dynamic of the many that determines the cyclical path of the economy.
Billionaires who are afflicted with a god complex are a visible embodiment of the evil effects of greed has on society and politics. What is more egregious is the immunity and impunity that their wealth grants them from any criminal prosecution and conviction for their war against the divine course of humanity. Fortunately one can rely on divine justice: Greed unleashes a destructive delusion that makes god complex afflicted individuals prisoners of their own paranoia.
The paradox is that greedy billionaires are disposable fools used to fulfill God’s ultimate design. Similar to the Robber Barons who left to posterity the rail road system yet as individuals are cast in the eternal annals of history as scoundrels.
