The Market Is Fiat-Forced

A Capitalist’s Lament for a Generation Lost

The Illusion of Capitalism

Misnamed. Misunderstood. Manipulated.

Capitalism didn’t save the airlines, the banks, or the carmakers. That was socialism. They were playing with worries and words. But all dressed up in pinstripes, whispering “market stability” while the rest of us would be who footed the bill. We blame greed, when fear is often way worse.

Like a magician shouting “security” and “freedom” while swapping our wallet. Even after we noticed it, we returned our life and the illusion continued. A system built to reward production and punish waste now runs on printing presses and political proximity. Each party undoes the “progress” of the predecessor. Both sides spending labors that was not theirs, nor had it even been worked.

What we call capitalism today is an impostor.

Interventionism in a free-market mask.

Millennials blame capitalism for the consequences of selective socialism. We were told to innovate while the scoreboard keeps changing mid-game. Compliance to culture outpays competence too often.

Creativity bows to conformity.

Where Capitalism Ends and Cronyism Begins

The Subsidy Syndicate

From EV tax credits to Big Ag bailouts, the hand of the state moves constantly and quietly.

Innovation isn’t rewarded, it’s requisitioned. Industries thrive not because they deliver value, but because they flatter the right narrative that cycle.

Unit economics once revealed truth.

Now they’re buried beneath a Keynesian fog that rewards scale over sense.

Today, “Profit” no longer means you built something people wanted. Maybe you just knew how to pitch the right regulator. Or ripped off retail.

The Bailout Generation

We came of age watching the corrupt be rescued. They still are.

2008: Banks leveraged recklessly and got bonus checks.
2020: Helicopter money rained while politicians picked winners behind closed doors.
Always: Asset bubbles ballooned on QE, enriching the well-connected.

When failure strikes a small business, it dies.

When it strikes a conglomerate, it’s “too big to fail.” Or it just IPOs preferably before anyone knows. The wealthiest names in tech, energy, and transport are often lionized as capitalist savants.

In truth, they are the state’s most cherished investments. Propped up by policy, protected by subsidy at our children’s expense. They are praised as pioneers while operating within a safety net woven by future taxpayers.

So, we grew up watching the unfit survive. Not because they adapted, but because they were bailed out!

Success or Failure now a feature of timing and positioning, not the results or quality of idea. So survival has always favored the already favored. But our rules began bending for the powerful long before they broke for us. There was a progression, while the population slept in safety. And we all bare the burden of fault.

“The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

Executive Spectacle vs. Entrepreneurial Soul

The Cult of Optics

Capital no longer seeks the builder. It seeks the performer. Valuations ride stories, not spreadsheets. Founders chase viral impression over integrity. The spreadsheet has became a stage. The forecast, a fable.

In chasing artificial omniscience, we’ve traded foresight for techno-nihilistic moonshots. AI promises liberation, but scale devours its soul.

Growth is kind of new gospel. Humanity kneels before algorithms that no longer answer to it.

When power eclipses purpose, even intelligence becomes idiotic.

The Boardroom as Beneficiary

Here we are, while producers burn out below, the board members collect stock like trophies.

Layoffs become bonuses. Each silent builder who departs is written off as an unfortunate casualty.

The closer you are to beginning of creation, the less you’re valued.

Capitalism is supposed to honor the builder. Now it seems to glorify the briefer.

Those fluent in the game of numbers and narratives, not the warrior-monks or pioneers who once shaped the frontier.

“Capitalism is not simply mass production, but mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses.”

— Ludwig von Mises

Rewarding the Mediocre: The Cultural Consequence

This isn’t just economic distortion, it’s moral decay.

Merit becomes mimicry. Success travels through slogans, not substance.

Creators are taxed. Risk-takers sidelined. Builders replaced.
Taxed. Sidelined. Replaced.

We built systems where mediocrity thrives, so long as it echoes the right script. The algorithm rewards the echo, not true excellence.

A generation of producers has been left watching spectators count the spoils.

Capitalism Remembered: My Personal Compass

I believe in capitalism.

Not in today’s Fed-fueled, state-steered safety net, but in the dangerous, dignifying engine of free exchange. Where value is a vehicle for survival, safety, sustainability.

Today we have a government-controlled perverted version that we’ve inherited, but it is not the true spirit of capitalism. That is a system built on voluntary exchange that gives people dignity and opportunity. Not forcing outcomes and reinventing measurements.

Capitalism doesn’t need reinvention. It needs to be remembered.

It rewards service. It punishes waste. It allows bad ideas to fail, sometimes painfully. Without consequence, how else do we deter bad actors or bad businesses?

It is allocated not by identity or ideology, but by utility.

Brutal? Sometimes.

Fair? Far more than anything else we’ve ever tried.

What we’ve built now is neither fair nor sustainable.

“Government is the only institution that can take a valuable commodity like paper and make it worthless by applying ink.”

— Ludwig von Mises

Today Risk is socialized while the rewards are privatized.

Value is subsidized and meaning, well, it’s mostly staged.

The Soul That the System Forgot

This is deeper than economics. It’s spiritual.

Freedom used to mean opportunity.
Merit used to lead to advancement.
Capitalism used to be fair.

Now we are surveilled, coerced, and inflated. Freedom exists in name only. Every lever is locked.

He who builds infinite models forgets the finite soul.

The dream of the New World was never about wealth or riches.
From the beginning, it was about liberty, dignity, and consequence.
Because only in risk can true meaning be forged and tested by time.

But the soul of the capitalist no longer finds sanctuary here.

America’s market is fiat-forced. Her rhetoric rings hollow. Her rewards feel rigged.

I am a millennial. I am not anti-market. I am not anti-enterprise.
But I am done pretending this is capitalism.