What mainstream macroeconomics told you about money is a lie. They overwhelm you with complex equations and statistical jargon to distract you from asking the most important question: where does money come from, and where does it go?
Money
Money is credit. Full stop. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t let central bankers confuse you with their fictional monetary aggregates. Banks create money through the act of lending. When a bank issues a loan of $100,000, it creates an asset (the loan) and a matching liability (the deposit) on its balance sheet:
“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.” — John Kenneth Galbraith
In the cities of 17th-century Europe, gold served as the primary form of wealth. It was a practical way to trade goods and services in the market, but it came with a significant drawback: carrying it posed serious risks. The threat of theft and violence made transporting large amounts of gold perilous, much like walking through a modern city with piles of cash.
What once was a bold, curious attempt to understand how the world works has become an over-mathematized echo chamber obsessed with fantasies instead of truth. It didn’t have to be this way. But somewhere along the way, economics turned its back on the real world—and the consequences are obvious.
The economists.
Many of the greatest economic thinkers in history weren’t economists by training. Adam Smith and Karl Marx were philosophers. David Ricardo was a politician. John Maynard Keynes and John Nash were mathematicians, despite Keynes’ General Theory barely containing any mathematics. These thinkers weren’t just solving equations—they were observing, questioning, and challenging the systems around them.
This essay revisits the concept of startups—how they operate, why they are problematic, and what a better path forward might look like. Think of this as a subjective rant rather than a formal empirical analysis, drawn from my personal experiences as a software developer for almost six years and a student majoring in economics. Don’t expect rigorous data or academic citations; this is simply a reflection on what I’ve seen and learned over the past few years.