How the World Lost Its Mind

How did a simple human desire to exchange things create the monster that rules our modern reality? An eighteen-year-old hunter Kichi finds himself on a mysterious island where a neighboring tribe is stuck in primitive barter crises and daily arguments. To get permission to marry, the young man must fulfill the condition of a strict elder — to find a universal formula for a "fair exchange." This search turns into a global pilgrimage through centuries of human progress: from the gold coins of the desert and paper checks of the first banks to the reinforced concrete cynicism of factory assembly lines and fiat money backed only by the "word of honor" of the state. Step by step, Kichi discovers the laws of macroeconomics, inflation traps, and credit manipulations that his tribe could not even imagine. Having gone from a savage to a university professor, he untangles the knot of human greed and comes to a shocking conclusion: civilization did not invent a tool of justice, but a new, elusive form of debt slavery. This gripping anthropological parable in the style of "Robinson Crusoe" will surprise you with its subtle philosophical humor and make you look at the structure of our world in a new way, where "tomorrow's money is always cheaper than today's."