It’s the End of the (First) World.

It is no revelation thatthe random luck of where someone is born and what family they are born into is a key determining factor of how likely they are to thrive and succeed. Even if a person is born with an innate intelligence and curiosity as well as a strong work ethic, there is no denying they need to nurture those qualities and have actual opportunities to grow their talents and interests. In my opinion, we are all at a disadvantage when circumstances needed to accomplish and succeed are so uneven. The person who might discover the cure for cancer could have the random luck of the draw to be born in a poverty-stricken village in Somalia with no thoughts of ever attending school. Or they could be a woman born in Tehran who is not permitted to study. To put it bluntly — people born in certain countries have to overcome significantly fewer obstacles than others to accomplish the exact same thing.

Now along comes Blockchain which now seems poised to be the next big equalizer, lessening the gap even further.

One of the main divides that give people who are born in one country over another a huge advantage is currency. The dollar and euro are significantly more powerful than the Somali Shilling or the Rupee. Nothing has tackled this issue more than cryptocurrency. While we have a long way to go before Bitcoin, Ethereum or any of the other currencies become the norm,

Having a currency not dependent on the serendipity of birth and local political turmoil will not only equalize day to day life, it would equalize self-development. If one day Harvard medical school tuition is say 5BTC a year or Oxford Undergrad is 3BTC a year, those paying in earned BTC do not have the advantage that those paying in GBP or USD currently have over those paying in Rupees. While the very wealthy would be able to afford the tuitions, either way, someone who is earning a comfortable middle-class income in Rupees would be far from middle-class in New York. However, if both are earning Bitcoin, or whatever Cryptos become widely and globally accepted, middle-class in India would be middle class in New York.

Since travel is such an important aspect of personal growth and outside of the classroom education, with crypto it would be equally affordable regardless of where you were traveling to or from. Often it is cost prohibitive for people living in countries with struggling currencies to travel to countries with “powerful currencies.”

A middle class or working class teenager in the US can fairly easily afford to spend a few months backpacking in the developing world. The lessons learned and the personal benefits of the experience — seeing other cultures and mingling with locals and other backpackers from around the world is transformative. Arguably, only a small portion of education happens within a classroom, and the level of education one gets through travel is huge. For a teenager living a middle-class life in a village in Thailand, if they took their parent’s monthly salary, that amount could very likely cover no more than an airline ticket and a night or two in the US or Australia — if even.

Another problem of the “advantage” of the discrepancies among FIAT currencies — many of those from the developing world who get educated, end up leaving their current country because there are not enough jobs, plus they want to earn a more powerful currency. That often means those who could change local circumstances and create jobs often leave. Others who did not get educated may move to live under what can only be described as slave labor conditions because the currency of the country they move to goes so much further when sent home to the family, often including children, that they left behind.

With a crypto-based global economy with many competing cryptocurrencies that anyone could have access to regardless of location, the “advantage” of getting cheap labor by hiring someone from overseas” would eventually diminish. No one would be forced with such a heart-wrenching choice between feeding and housing their families versus living with their families.

Transparency has, luckily I might add, become a trend among those in the developed world who have some of the most buying power. We pay a premium to know our strawberries came from a small no spray family-owned farm in Northern California or to know our fabrics are woven by an ethically owned eco-friendly factory in Peru with happy and well-treated employees. We are becoming aware of the damages of fast fashion, the mistreatment of workers and animals and how our products are impacting the environment. This mentality and how it is being applied is still in its infancy, however, it is a step in the right direction. The massive abuse of human beings in say a sweatshop in Bangladesh, is drawing public awareness. Eco, ethical, slow fashion, organic all are luxe buzzwords. But they are also crucial to the start of humanizing the people of the supply chain. The more the customers with the most buying power hold the companies with employing power accountable for how their workers — a huge majority from the developing world, are paid and treated, the more those local cultures will thrive. One of the key functions that Blockchain seems to be taking is verifying the supply chain. This function will help remind those on the buying side of the humanity of those on the production side and will help ensure that claims the companies make about sources and manufacturing are true.

The random accident of what country you happen to be born into having little to no advantage or disadvantage will probably not happen in our lifetimes, but we seem to be moving more and more in that direction. The internet so far has been the most significant push in that equalizing and Blockchain seems as if it will have just as powerful an impact. There is a strong possibility that we are moving towards a world where there will be a variety of competing currencies the way we have now with country currency, but no longer tied to a country and all based on Crypto. What currency you can earn will have nothing to do with where you live. Hopefully country will just be about identity and an appreciation of culture and nothing to do with how much easier it is for someone to thrive over another and the vast unfair power that gives one person over another, as well as all of us as humans missing out on getting to enjoy or utilize every person’s best abilities.