Lifting each other up

I grew up in Canberra, a very privileged part of Australia. For those of you who don't know, it's Australia's national capital (chosen because the former British colonies and now states of NSW and Victoria couldn't agree to either Sydney or Melbourne being the capital).

Canberra was therefore an aberration - planned from the start to be the nation's capital, not growing organically or chaotically, like other Australian cities. They got some stuff right. They got a lot of stuff wrong. But it's Canberra.

One thing Canberra got, though, was investment from the federal government. The kind of money other cities could only dream of. And I felt this keenly when our cousins visited and complaints were often made about the amount of money being spent on us and our city.

And I felt the injustice - but my take was different to my aunties and uncles. Why, I thought, don't all Australians have access to the same level of services, schools, hospitals, roads and jobs that we in Canberra do?

And that perspective has stayed with me through life.

Why push people down, when we can lift everybody up instead?

And as I learned about national economies in my professional life, I discovered that this was indeed a better way to run an economy. For with money, and economies, the more it goes around, the more it comes around. When money flows in an economy, everybody benefits. When it stays locked up - especially by governments, corporations and the uber-rich - then wages fall, people stop spending, and people can't afford the essential services that should be provided free (think education and healthcare etc).

I hope that this lesson is learned by those in the #crypto and #blockchain communities as we embark on a brand new way of integrating business and communities on local, national and international levels.