The Currency Lie 😑: Why a Human Life Is Still Worth Less Depending on Where You’re Born 🌎

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There is something deeply wrong with how we value human work in this world.

Not “wrong” in a technical or economic sense — economists will happily explain exchange rates, purchasing power parity, productivity curves, and global markets.

I mean wrong in a human sense.

Somewhere along the way, we quietly accepted an idea that should have been unacceptable from the start:
that the same human effort, the same intelligence, the same exhaustion, the same creativity is worth wildly different amounts of money depending purely on geography.

And we normalized it.

TL;DR

A human hour is worth the same everywhere — but the world doesn’t believe in it that way.
Currency exchange rates don’t reflect human effort; they reflect historical power, colonization, and control.
Globalization didn’t create fairness — it created efficiency by discounting labor from poorer countries.
People in non-Western countries often work more for less, while being told it’s “natural” or “market-driven.”
Cost-of-living arguments hide the truth: dignity, time, ambition, and stress aren’t cheaper anywhere.
The global financial system (post-WWII) locked many countries into permanent disadvantage.
This isn’t charity or ideology — it’s about fairness and equal human value, regardless of geography.
The system survives because it’s abstract, invisible, and rarely questioned.
Change starts with awareness: question currency, wages, and who benefits — and teach the next generation not to internalize the lie.

The 1:1 Illusion

Let’s start with a simple thought.

If one hour of my life equals one hour of your life —
if one human body gets tired the same way,
if one mind solves problems the same way,
if one parent misses their child the same way —

then why is one hour of labor not worth one hour of labor globally?

Why does a developer in India earn in a month what a developer in the U.S. earns in a day?
Why does a nurse in the Philippines save lives for a salary that wouldn’t cover rent in Europe?
Why does “global hiring” so often mean global discounting?

We pretend this is natural.
It isn’t.
It’s engineered.

Currency Is Not Value — It’s Power

We are told exchange rates are neutral.
They are not.

Currency is not just a unit of trade — it is a historical power structure.

Strong currencies didn’t become strong because their people worked harder or were more intelligent. They became strong because of:

colonial extraction
resource control
political dominance
financial systems written by winners

The dollar does not represent superior human effort.
It represents superior leverage.

And when we price human labor through that lens, we are not measuring value — we are reproducing inequality.

The Prosperity Myth

The idea that Western countries are “naturally prosperous” is itself engineered.

They do not work more than people in poorer countries. In many cases, they work less.

Over time, the world was structured so that one part of geography is favored, protected, stabilized — while another is left exposed, discounted, and volatile.

Imagine living in Iceland, contributing very little to global production, yet enjoying high wages, stability, and dignity.
Now ask: what is an economy really?

More often than not, it’s a tool — disguised as neutral science — to justify why these differences are allowed to exist.

What I See Living in Europe

I live in Europe, and I can see something many cannot — simply because traveling itself is a privilege.

Here, a barber does the same work as a barber in India — and earns ten times more.

In Europe:

a barber may cut 5–10 clients a day
one haircut can cost €20
total daily revenue: €200

In India:

a barber may cut 20–30 clients a day
total daily income might be €25–30

Same labor.
More effort, even.
Massively different outcome.

Economists will rush in with explanations: cost of living, rent, productivity.

But these explanations never answer the deeper question:
Why was the system built this way in the first place?

The Bretton Woods Moment We Never Talk About

After World War II, the Bretton Woods conference created something far more powerful — and far more dangerous for humanity than most people realize. And Nixon just used it again, but not with Gold but far more untangible yet even more Malleabile

A global financial system was designed.
And most poor, colonized countries were excluded from shaping it.

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From that point on:

trade fundamentals were handicapped
currencies were locked into disadvantage
capital flowed upward
labor value flowed downward

This wasn’t accidental.
And it isn’t discussed enough.

A World Built on Unequal Exchange of Life

The modern global economy quietly runs on one assumption:

Some people’s lives are allowed to be cheaper so others can live comfortably.

We don’t say it out loud.
We encode it into:

currency exchange
stock markets
global supply chains
“market rates”

Seven trillion dollars move through currency markets every day — deciding your fate — through systems you can’t access, documents you’ll never read, conversations never shown in mainstream media.

You’re not meant to think about it.

Neo-Colonialism, Rebranded

If you zoom out, the world is still divided into:

countries that consume goods (mostly Western)
countries that are exploited to produce them (India, China, Vietnam, others)

The shackles didn’t disappear.
They just changed form.

Welcome to neo-colonialism — cleaner, quieter, and harder to point at

Money as Invisible Power

Money controls lives today.

And control over money gives indirect power — which eventually turns into real power.

The kind of power that allows one country to:

sanction another
dictate economic suffering
even capture another country’s president

Now ask yourself honestly:
If roles were reversed — if Venezuela were powerful and the U.S. were not — would the same action be justified?

We already know the answer.

What This Does to Human Beings

This system doesn’t just affect GDP.
It shapes lives.

When you have less money, money becomes the center of life.
Survival replaces meaning. Western societies often don’t feel this pressure.
Psychological damage sets in.
Western things, people, and cultures gain unspoken superiority.
You grow up hearing your own world subtly demeaned — and carry that inferiority forward, even to your children.
Your access to life is limited.
Travel, choice, exploration — all restricted because of where you were born.
Your government appears weak — not because you don’t contribute, but because your contribution is globally discounted
Infrastructure, innovation, and quality of life lag — because money cycles where money already exists.
Corruption flourishes.
When money matters most, leaders exploit it.
Foreign powers participate.
The cycle tightens.
Some of the “lucky-unlucky” leave everything familiar behind — family, culture, language — to do the same job half a globe away, just to taste equality.

That isn’t opportunity.
That’s escape.

This Is Not About Charity. It’s About Fairness.

Equal wage dignity is not socialism.
It’s not idealism.
It’s not anti-business.

It’s simply saying:

A human is not cheaper because history treated their country worse.

We already believe this in theory.
We just don’t practice it in money.

So What Can You Do?

Maybe you can’t change the system alone.

But you can:

ask your government to raise this in global forums
push media to question currency and wage injustice
demand economists widen their lens beyond efficiency and explanation. Ask does one person’s work = another person’s ?
teach your children this truth, so they don’t grow up confused, internalizing blame

The privileged side will resist.
Loss feels more real than justice at first. You do not be afraid, even if it shifts current order in world. Let it be peaceful, and humane.

But silence guarantees nothing changes.

Final Thought

Currencies fluctuate.
Markets shift.
Empires fade.

But the lie that some lives are worth less because of geography —
that one survives only if we keep believing it.

And we don’t have to

Please comment your inputs, and I would like to respond to your thoughts.