Civilization Collapse Under Liquidity Bubble

Currently, we are at the extreme end of a financialization cycle. The severe volatility in the cryptocurrency market is a clear testament to this: certain tokens can increase tenfold in value within a month, yet may plummet by 20% in a single day. This phenomenon is astonishing, but it actually reflects the fact that we are in a bubble market. However, the bubble is just the surface; the deeper issues lie in Liquidity, market distortions, and a civilizational system that is gradually collapsing under its own contradictions.

The S&P 500 index has repeatedly hit new highs, sparking widespread cheers. However, upon closer examination, these so-called historical highs are merely a liquidity illusion, measured by a currency that lacks substantial support and is driven by inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the index has made no substantial progress since the turn of the 21st century. This is not true "growth," but merely a reflection of the expansion of the money supply.

The recent direction of the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy remains uncertain. Even if rates are eventually cut, it will be difficult to resolve the fundamental issues we currently face. We are experiencing a structural crisis, with three key factors being particularly important:

1. The Collapse of the Debt System

The modern monetary order is on the verge of collapse. It is built on an ever-expanding base of debt and now faces irreconcilable internal contradictions. Traditional economic stimulus measures and bailout policies are based on a false assumption: the more debt there is, the higher the level of economic prosperity.

However, this assumption is being shattered by reality. Productivity growth is stagnating, and changes in the population structure are contradicting this system. The proportion of the working-age population is declining, while the dependency ratio is rising, and consumption is increasingly relying on credit rather than actual income. This economic machine is aging and has lost its ability to self-repair.

The 2008 financial crisis should have shattered this myth, but it did not. It was not until the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that the fragility of this system was truly exposed. During the pandemic, the response measures of many governments indicated that they could not protect citizens at the most basic biological level, even suggesting that the right to survival is not equal for everyone.

This has led to a decline in government legitimacy. Many institutions today resemble mere shells supported by surveillance, subsidies, and manipulation of public opinion. Recent high-level scandals are not isolated incidents but reveal a corrupt system deeply intertwined with crime, governance, and capital.

2. The Closure of Artificial Intelligence

The discussion about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) remains overly optimistic. Many people believe that AI will become as widespread as office software or cloud services, turning into a subscription-based productivity tool. This idea is overly simplistic.

If machines truly gain the ability for self-improvement, to simulate complex systems, and to design new types of weapons, they will never become open-source technology. Like nuclear technology or gene editing technology, any powerful technology will ultimately become a tool for state control, and superintelligence is no exception.

The future hinted at by certain tech giants is not about enhancing consumer productivity, but about controlling the trajectory of post-human development. Future cutting-edge products will not be sold in regular stores.

The public is likely unable to directly access true AGI. They can only interact with stripped-down fragments of AI, which are encapsulated within user interfaces. The real systems will be hidden, restricted, and trained for specific strategic purposes.

3. Time Becomes the New Currency

Traditionally, money can buy comfort, safety, and social status, but it cannot buy time. This situation is changing. With the rapid development of AI decoding genomes and synthetic biology, longevity is becoming an engineered advantage.

However, this is not a public health revolution that benefits everyone. True lifespan extension, cognitive enhancement, and embryonic optimization technologies will be extremely expensive, heavily regulated, and politically controversial. Governments around the world are already burdened by an aging population and are unlikely to encourage universal longevity.

Therefore, the rich will not only widen the gap in wealth but also distinguish themselves biologically from ordinary people. The ability to alter the human genetic blueprint will create a new economic class: those who can escape the natural death curve through biotechnology patents.

Such a future is difficult to promote on a large scale and will become the exclusive domain of a privileged few. Longevity will become the ultimate luxury, with its pricing model serving only a very small number of people. This explains why most "longevity funds" perform poorly—the true return is survival itself, which cannot be achieved at scale.

The Three Civilizational Orbits of the Future

The current society is differentiating into different development tracks, each with its unique political and economic model:

1. Numb Masses: Paralyzed by AI-generated dopamine loops, social media, virtual reality, and other technologies. This group is overstimulated, malnourished, and politically irrelevant; it is the survival state of the majority.

2. Cognitive elites: A minority group enhanced biologically and intellectually. They do not pursue traditional economic returns, but seek control over biology and death. This group is smaller, wealthier, and increasingly difficult to access.

3. New hermits: a group that chooses to actively disengage. They disconnect from mainstream society, seeking meaning in life outside of machines, trying to preserve human experiences in an increasingly dehumanized world. They may be more spiritually affluent, but strategically they may be doomed to fail.

The first type of people provides financial support to the second type. The third type attempts to resist the first two. Most people go with the flow, barely surviving, unaware that they have become products of the system rather than participants. For the few who can foresee the future, choosing to exit is no longer a neutral act, but a form of resistance.

Wise Strategies in a Fragmented World

The market is filled with noise. Cryptocurrencies, stocks, various yield games, these are merely optional tools, not a path to salvation. The real challenge lies in how to survive in a system collapse, and under what conditions to survive.

• The current design of the monetary system is continuously deteriorating.
• Super intelligence will not become a productivity assistant for ordinary people.
• Biotechnology will make time itself a scarce resource.
• Recent social events have revealed the unaccountability of power.

After understanding these trends, the key is not how to "beat the market", but how to prepare for an asymmetric situation in a system that no longer serves the majority of participants.

Insight does not come from focusing on price trends, but from systematic thinking. Most people do not look up until it is too late to realize the truth. Because dying in ignorance is more terrifying than dying broke.

In this challenging era, maintaining a clear awareness, cultivating independent thinking abilities, and preparing for possible dramatic changes will become a necessary course for every visionary.