I'm not really into crypto. At least, making money out of it isn't what motivates me. However, Steemit has shown that I can still benefit in other ways that may help me with what I'm trying to achieve.

I was living in Japan in 2011 when we had the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters. Long story short, I took 6 months off work to become an independent volunteer during the emergency and recovery phases. One of the things I looked into was ways of revitalising the local economy in a sustainable way (because most of the ideas floating around at the time were to simply recreate the same old recessionary model that they had before the disasters). This led me to do some online research on sustainability.

I came across materials that showed the interrelationships between economy, energy and environment. The energy part scared me, but the economy part really shocked me. I learned how money was created and saw that it was the root cause of so many of the major challenges facing society today.

I've spent the last 4 years learning what I can about the money system. I became head of an organisation called Fair Money Australia and part of my spare time is spent talking to economists who work for government, getting an understanding of where there are gaps in their knowledge and helping to fill them in. I have written correspondence from our central bank which proves that money is created every time the federal government spends and destroyed every time they collect taxes.

Last year, I spoke at the Long-Term Unemployment Conference in Brisbane and explained how to use the money system to end involuntary unemployment without having to increase taxes or make spending cuts elsewhere (I might make a video next week with the slides I used and post it on DTube).

Unemployment, poverty, unaffordable housing, diminishing access to education and healthcare... There are so many things that can easily be fixed once the mechanics of the money system are understood. A lot of the misunderstanding comes from a lack of knowledge about the difference between fixed and floating exchange rates (I'll make a post about that tomorrow).

I want to engage with people who care about these challenges. I want to empower people who are affected by them with knowledge, because then they can demand positive change.

The gamification of Steemit with cryptocurrency may provide me with the opportunity that I'm looking for. It rewards people for positive engagement and I'll reward them (when I have the SP) for being a part of my community and demonstrating that they've paid attention to the things that I think will help society.