**Mutually Reinforced Delusion**

Three sectors of American life consistently receive almost universal criticism: finance (Wall St.), education (ivy league and state universities), and technology (Silicon Valley). All of these three sectors mutually reinforce each other through a shared underlying ideology. They all function effectively by borrowing good will, ignorance, and lack of alternatives, and by pushing off the responsibility onto someone else. In this article, I show how the underlying ideology is shared by these industries, how it is mutually reinforcing, and how it inevitably will end and be replaced by something better.

**How the Shared Delusion is Central to Three Main Industries**

In finance, the US dollar money in circulation can be increased at will by the [central bank](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/understanding-how-federal-reserve-creates-money.asp) or by the [Treasury Department](https://fortune.com/2025/03/19/elon-musk-doge-magic-money-computers/). Major banks are already quasi-federalized after [$498B](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/heres-how-much-2008-bailouts-really-cost) bailout in 2008 housing crisis: , the 2019 repo market failure officially a bailout of [$75B](https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr918.pdf), but other reports put it around [$4T](https://wolfstreet.com/2019/11/06/whats-behind-the-feds-bailout-of-the-repo-market/) , and then the 2020 Covid pandemic relief bill [estimated at $2.2T](https://time.com/5845116/coronavirus-bailout-rich-richer/), and in between 2008 and 2017 a period of zero-interest rate policy. This pushes responsibility for repayment onto taxpayers, small business, and future generations. 

In education, the most important credential is the PhD, or the doctorate of philosophy, but the credential has nothing to do with the [Western tradition of philosophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorate#Middle_Ages), except in name. This is significant because this means that academia essentially borrows the credibility of the Western philosophical tradition, which is demonstrably [at the root of every field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosophy).

And in technology, the cloud computing paradigm means that four companies, [AWS, Azure, Alibaba, Google](https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-of-leading-cloud-infrastructure-service-providers/), control around 67% of the market for storage of public data and have [questionable rights to its contents](https://truthout.org/articles/why-amazons-collaboration-with-the-cia-is-so-ominous-and-vulnerable/), as well as [relationships with military intelligence agencies](https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e). The tech monopolies essentially borrow against the public's ignorance, good will, and perceived lack of alternatives, since they have little ownership or privacy as regards their own information. The public is essentially [disproportionately paying these companies with data](https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2Fe5f97563.txt) and not being fairley compensated.

Each industry is based on a delusion of borrowing without consequence, or pushing off responsibility to those "outside the system," the poor, or to future generations.  

**How the Shared Delusion Is Mutually Reinforced and Mutually Beneficial**

The delusion of borrowing without consequence is mutually beneficial for each industry to maintain in relationship with one another. The incentives in each industry form an in-group preference for those who shared the ideology of *"borrowing without consequence"*. 

This is intended to approach a comprehensive, coherent explanation of the state-of-affairs of the ideology of American institutions, albeit in a rough sketch:

The fiat generated money from the banks and Treasury is beneficial to funding [venture capital and technology companies](https://wallstreettimes.com/why-impact-investing-is-reshaping-venture-capital/), and [student loans](https://revealnews.org/article/who-got-rich-off-the-student-debt-crisis/) which pushes the burden to student loan debtors, as well as tax payers and future generations who are responsible for its repayment. The PhDs benefit from loose lending as their credibility is reinforced by [inflated value](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelsandler/2024/02/07/higher-eds-public-opinion-struggles-are-tied-to-the-cost-of-college/) of university education. And they benefit from [inflated technology valuations](https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/01/most-startups-were-overvalued-before-2021-and-now-its-causing-problems/), as they go into prestigious research positions in technology, biotech, or high frequency trading on Wall St. Or they go back into academia and reinforce the [ideology of the university](https://www.independent.org/tir/2022-23-winter/the-hyperpoliticization-of-higher-ed/) that draws more unwitting students to take out student loans. This pushes off the burden of intellectual honesty further onto future generations. And it reinforces a narrowing ideology and narrowing intellectual horizons through [fear of getting cancelled](https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/tracking-cancel-culture-in-higher-education). And then the technology companies benefit from acquiring users and free data, reinforced by the perceived hopelessness of the economy and education. Since people have to rely on technology to find jobs and to learn skills that are not taught in the university. By software companies owning the data through the private, centralized cloud computing paradigm, they can [manipulate prices](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/sec-charges-investment-app-robinhood-misleading-customers-rcna205) and also [public health](https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/12/investigative-series/palantirs-tiberius-race-and-the-public-health-panopticon/) and control behavior with [pre-crime strategies](https://startup.google.com/alumni/stories/bfore-ai/). These companies also benefit from [national defense interests](https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/mar-zuckerbergs-meta-is-a-defence-contractor-now-partners-with-anduril-for-ai-powered-products-8552571). And platform influencers, who are essentially marketing broadcasters for those platforms, can manipulate their followers with [meme-coin style pump and dumps](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-15/finance-influencers-charged-in-100-million-stock-manipulation-scheme) with crypto or Wall St. stocks.

This is the broad strokes, not indicating any kind of intentional conspiracy, but only capturing the state of affairs as it exists. It captures the very real dynamic of in-group ideology, distributed self-interest, and mutual incentives that exists between these industries. They can all be summarized in the ideology of *borrowing without consequence or responsibility*. Because of the mutually interlocking set of incentives, it usually seems that there is [no way out](https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-economics-051520-015607). And so many resort to some kind of political or ideological nihilism. Or try to get along as best they can within the degenerating system. But since all of this ideology, borrows from somewhere - ignorance, diminishing public good will, lack of alternatives - it will inevitably hit a dead end and replaced by a better way.


**How It Ends**

There is a solution that potentially addresses all three of these issues with a single stroke. And it is only a matter of time until the public sees clearly the interconnection, and finds [the alternative](https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2Fe5f97563.txt) that is hiding in plain sight. The phrase "bitcoin solves this" is a bit (yes pun) cliche, but in this case, it actually could actually work. Bitcoin's ["store-of-value thesis"](https://hashdex.com/en-US/insights/knowing-what-we-don-t-know-understanding-bitcoin-s-store-of-value-thesis-in-an-uncertain-macro-environment-1) has already found validation in the area of finance. You probably have heard of bitcoin, but you might not have heard of bitcoin inscriptions. I won't explain bitcoin in this article, if you want to learn, you can [start here](https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/whitepaper/). 

[Bitcoin Inscriptions](https://decrypt.co/resources/what-are-ordinals-a-beginners-guide-to-bitcoin-nfts) are essentially privately owned data assets, often either text or images, that are *inscribed* immutably onto the bitcoin distributed ledger, which is publicly accessible. And that means inscriptions are both privately owned (scarce assets) and publicly available or open source (copiable at no cost). This is something, which [has not been possible](https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2F44c56502.txt) in the history of economics, before the internet. And really it hasn't been possible in a formal way, since the invention of bitcoin.

**The Way that Inscriptions Address It**

The Bitcoin architecture is uniquely capable of offering a comprehensive alternative to the ideology of borrowing without consequence. 

In finance: In its most obvious use case, Bitcoin has already found its [financial store-of-value thesis validated](https://www.ccn.com/top-10-biggest-bitcoin-holders/) by Strategy, Blackrock, the government of El Salvador, and many other [corporate bitcoin treasuries](https://bitcointreasuries.net/). Since Bitcoin is a form of "hard money" it is scarce in its supply and by the design of the protocol is limited to 21 million total bitcoins. There can be forks and derivatives, but only 21M actual Bitcoins. There are derivatives like ETFs and credit-based funding as there are with gold, but they are derivatives of a hard underlying asset rather than borrowing from a more risky and intangible resource like the future or from other people's ignorance.

In technology: Cloud computing based data storage is an industry that is approaching [$1T market cap](https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/cloud-computing-market-102697), which is almost as much as bitcoin's market cap right now. But the cloud computing infrastructure is plagued by [security risks](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1084804520301168#preview-section-snippets) and data breaches of inestimable costs, opening not only companies but nation-states, to cyber security attacks. In addition, we already mentioned the risks to individual software users from surveillance state actors. And the fact that software users both overpay, and are completely uncompensated for their private data. By contrast, the Bitcoin [architecture](https://www.osl.com/hk-en/academy/article/what-is-bitcoins-architecture) is distributed and immutable by design. Though it doesn't necessarily address private data storage for individuals or companies, it addresses private ownership of money which protects individual purchasing power against [runaway inflation and national debt](https://www.lynalden.com/full-steam-ahead-all-aboard-fiscal-dominance/). And it supports open source data architecture designed toward the common good and shared knowledge, superior even to a digital Library of Alexandria like [archive.org](archive.org) because of its distributed data architecture. It cannot be emphasized enough that Inscriptions make possible [privately owned, and publicly accessible goods](https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html), which uniquely foster the common good, both economically and aesthetically.

In education: This is the main use case for Bitcoin Inscriptions that I think is unacknowledged. Since it offers a concise [alternative](https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2Faae3d87a.txt) not only to existing higher education, but also to the persistent, endemic [disease](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11594359/) of social media, and [spam newsletter](substack) "alt-journalism"(okay fine, not all newsletters are horrendous) as well as to [crowdfunding](www.patreon.com). Since we can inscribe and store data directly onto bitcoin, that data is either less valuable than Bitcoin, or *more valuable* than Bitcoin. It can only be one of the two. What would make the data stored on Bitcoin *more valuable* than Bitcoin itself? The entire private academic publishing industry is estimated around [$30B in 2019](https://publishingstate.com/the-global-academic-publishing-market-a-multi-billion-dollar-industry-in-transition/2025/) and is an incredibly important resource of [prestige intellectual capital](https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8480&context=atg) that is in the public interest and is entirely closed source. Meanwhile incredible libraries like Archive.org or z-library are constantly attacked or suffer down time. The government funds academia to the tune of [$60B annually](https://usafacts.org/articles/what-do-universities-do-with-the-billions-they-receive-from-the-government/) not including financial aid. And, as mentioned the cloud computing industry is fast approaching $1T market cap. But even more importantly than monetary valuations, social media, at [an estimated $2.1T total market cap](https://stockanalysis.com/list/social-media-stocks/) is almost entirely made up of broadcast influencers, viral videos, marketing, and political propaganda. None of it is designed to support the most culturally valuable pursuit, of truth, goodness, and beauty of reality. And the entire design of search engines incentivized [spam marketing pages for SEO](https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-optimize-website-for-seo/). Therefore, it is obvious there is a lack of clear digital space for long-term oriented economy of knowledge. Substack or Patreon is the best we have done. With Bitcoin inscriptions on [ark.page](ark.page): instead of algorithms, we can have human judgment through markets and boosted posts. Instead of short-term pleasure-oriented marketing propaganda, we can have long-term oriented, immutably stored knowledge in pursuit of truth. Instead of sophistry, we can have a digital environment of social science, philosophy, & theology supported in an [economically sustainable](https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2F44c56502.txt) architecture.

If we attempt to add all of that together, we have an inestimable worth. Out of the current situation, an increasing number of small institutes have formed, both in-person and digital, to offer an alternative to the existing regime. Inscriptions may be the concise solution space that makes it not only possible, but a sector of incredible importance. As the [immutable medium](https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2Faae3d87a.txt) of inscriptions allow the truth to form [its own incorruptible economy](https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2Fcee55bdf.txt) above the [material or monetary A.I. economy](https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2Ff638523a.txt).