The slave manifesto

Oh! I haven't published any blog posts or site updates for a long time. I think it's because I was focusing on different things or just because I lost motivation. As I wrote in a blog post from almost 4 months ago, the rack I have since the end of June 2025 (over half a year) is still unfinished and my homelab is unplugged, collecting dust and going to waste. I bought a new grinder for my V60 pour over coffee setup (Kingrinder P2) a month ago.

End of life updates. Now I will try to write about the actual topic of the post and why it is titled like this. It's about the modern, Brave New World, and about my apathy.

The background

We talked about the fact that my family member's six-year-old phone is now working too slowly and freezing up. And that he needs to buy a new phone. I was supposed to find something for up to PLN 1500. I recommended one of the Google Pixel models for PLN 1900, because it will last longer than other phones. I was told that it was much more expensive and that I, or young people in general, have no respect for money because I haven't worked hard enough.

My reflections

I thought about respect for money, and why I may not have it. I remembered Klaus Schwab's slogan,

"You will own nothing and you will be happy."

and how these things are connected. I realized that I may not "respect money" because money quickly loses its value due to inflation, making it difficult for the average person to save. This is deliberately designed so that people spend money on an ongoing basis and, according to Keynes' theory, drive the economy. The powerful of this world shape the law and the market in such a way that it is more difficult for ordinary people to save and get rich. So they cannot, for example, own their own homes. The "American dream" is currently impossible.

I also thought about Milton Friedman's famous quote:

"Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."

Some people are spreading theories that governments want to introduce so-called 15-minute cities so that people will need a pass to leave them. Or they scare people by saying that banks are enslaving us, but they talk about it in the context of electronic systems or CBDC, not simply in the context of loans. They call physical money freedom because transactions are not recorded anywhere and, in theory, the government cannot take your money away. But they forget that loans themselves are a tool of slavery, and that the government doesn't need to introduce digital money in order to have an expiration date and take it away from time to time. The current tools, i.e., taxes and inflation, are enough. And paper fiat money is also meaningless. Some of them say that young people are not patriotic. But why should they be, when they possess nothing in "their" country? Why would they want to die in wars for "their" country?

Young people don't save money for their own apartment or an expensive car because they know they will most likely never be able to afford them. Buying some fancy third-wave coffee is a small purchase. Anyone can save up for such small things. Money is like tokens that you collect for your work, and you have to spend it on fixed expenses such as taxes, rent, loan installments, leases, and once you've paid for all that, you have to buy food, and then you can spend what's left on other things.

I know that I'm a slave and I do not really care about it. That's what American Psycho was about. Its main character, Patrick Bateman, admits that he has no personality of his own, no thoughts of his own, he wants to be a cog in the machine, only status symbols are important to him. In fact, he doesn't exist outside of this empty form. I don't know why some people treat him as a role model, although it's probably just kids on TikTok who haven't even seen the movie or read the book. But American Psycho is a pretty nice representation of what I mean.

I apologize for this overly pretentious article.