After discovering Bitcoin, an elementary school music teacher may see that the trust system encourages some bad parenting habits.
This is an opinion editorial by Tim Niemeyer, co-host of the Lincolnland Bitcoin Meetup and elementary school teacher.
I’m a teacher by day and a rabid Bitcoiner by night. I currently teach elementary school music and really love my job. It’s similar to co-hosting Lincolnland Bitcoin in the sense that I get to share my passions (music and Bitcoin) while potentially helping others develop a deeper appreciation and understanding of each other. Although I don’t take orange pills at school; I feel it is necessary to separate church and state, so to speak. Still, being able to experience both simultaneously has helped me develop a greater understanding of each.
But appreciating Bitcoin has also given me a unique perspective on my work as a teacher, and I wanted to share some of the observations I’ve made in nearly two decades as an educator about how our coercive fiat money system it encourages sub-optimal decision-making and poor relational habits… and maybe a bit about how Bitcoin fixes this.
The purpose of this article is not to badmouth any specific group or subset of the population (although maybe fiat politicians lol). Almost everyone has justifications for their actions, and who am I to tell them otherwise? For what it’s worth, I think most parents are good, hard-working people who do the best they can with what they have to provide. It is not their fault that they are forced to be in a monetary system that steals their time and effort through inflation, forcing them to take time preference measures. Many do not see the benefits that we Bitcoiners see in sound money that is not controlled by the whims of those in power with their own agendas and incentives. Furthermore, very few see that choosing red or blue or right or left does not really provide long-term systemic change due to the fact that each side is beholden to its inherent system.
Must?
Helicopter Parents
One observation I have noticed in recent decades is the emergence of helicopter parents. WebMD Lists the following signs of helicopter parenthood: they fight their kids’ battles, do their homework, train their coaches, keep their kids in line, are a servant in their own home, play it too safe, and can’t let their kids fail.
I think most of these are a byproduct of living in a trust system. When you have a system that allows humans to be in control of the money supply, it leads them to impose their morals on that money supply. Regardless of their intentions, the resulting social byproduct is a system of tug of war with each side offering to solve more and more problems for their constituents. This leads to a paternal dynamic between the powerful classes and the powerless classes.
Politicians who try to gain more control do so by “fighting their children’s battles” or the battles of the powerless. They “train their trainers” by demanding more requirements in the workplace. They “keep their children on a short leash” by continually trying to restrict freedoms. They don’t “let their kids fail” by offering them too many safety nets, which leads to a decrease in healthy risk-taking and an increase in complacency. This helicopter modeling by Big Daddy becomes a learned behavior for the humble masses, who in turn model for their children, creating a vicious cycle of dependency.
snowflake kids
Helicopter parenthood drives snowflake kids. Tifa Ong describes Snowflake children are overly emotional, sensitive and entitled. My take on overly emotional and sensitive children is simply that they seem not to have had enough opportunities to fight their own battles and at worst get used to the process and at best learn from it.
In my class, I (as well as many of my peers) teach “fail forward” where students are encouraged to take risks in order to learn from them and establish the good habit of being a lifelong learner. It’s like when we prepare for a musical performance… many students open up about nerves or stage fright. My standard answer is that the only way to get over it is to do it over and over again until that feeling becomes familiar; the unfamiliarity of the feeling is the source of the anxiety.
Unfortunately, students spend only a fraction of their time practicing failing forward. It is quite easy to see which students have had the opportunity to take risks and which have not. I think those who don’t yet have that skill set are the children of helicopter parents, the parents who have been most affected by systemic fiat externalities. When too many protective measures are implemented, children are not only unwilling but unable to take risks. They feel that they should be given all that life has to offer without having to work for it. I think this sense of entitlement is the trickle-down effect of the unintended consequences of fiat.
Fiduciary systems allow for a top-down system of control, which incentivizes adults to suck on the nipple of the powerful, diminishing their own authority and agency, leading to a hierarchy in which the top is expected to top of the structure supplies the bottom. end, leading to children with rights without adequate role models to show them how to stand up for themselves. The end result is a pattern of learned helplessness, which stems from our outsourcing our autonomy over our monetary system to equally fallible humans.
I wish there was a monetary system that acts like a globally connected permissionless ledger, a ledger that no one controls and everyone can access. One that does not force moralistic hierarchies but encourages voluntary cooperation. If only…
The proof is in the pudding
In my short five years in Bitcoin, I have noticed a complete change in the way I parent. Street of truth: I was a helicopter parent during my children’s formative years. While it may not have been as far off the spectrum as some, it was susceptible to many of the features discussed above. I rushed to fight their battles, keep them at bay, go too safe and not let them fail.
But that all changed when I started studying Bitcoin (note that I didn’t say “buy bitcoin”). Developing a lower time preference led me to see the benefit of allowing my children to learn from their mistakes; it wasn’t so much how they felt here and now, but how they would be able to deal with future struggles after having had a chance to experience the conflict…provided there was the right support. I developed a better sense of control over my own autonomy, which gave my children a role model to become the best versions of themselves. This is decidedly better than receiving dictated instructions, thus developing dependency on a disconnected democracy.
The more we subdue our decision making and willpower, the less of each other we will have to lead future generations. Bitcoin allows all voluntary participants to opt out of the nonsense to which we have grown accustomed. Bitcoin incentivizes us to work hard to achieve long-term goals, respect the sovereignty of others, take calculated risks, and normalize effort in the face of possible failure. Bitcoin encourages rationality and logical thinking and discourages excessive emotionality and hypersensitivity. By choosing to live in a system that respects value over time and value for value, Bitcoin eliminates the concept of entitlement. Of course, there are many other factors that contribute to all of this, but money touches every aspect of society. The lifestyle associated with Bitcoin is superior to develop throughout Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs towards self-actualization. The fiat mindset, by comparison, is just elementary.
This is a guest post by Tim Niemeyer. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
