Our recent trip to Melbourne reminded me of the evils of the minimum wage in particular and progressivism in general.

Australia's minimum wage stands at nearly 20AUD/hour, that's more than 13 USD or 11 EUR. The streets of this otherwise gorgeous and prosperous city are full of homeless people of all ages, races, and genders. Many if not most of them would certainly be gracious for work, which would pay half of the mandated minimum.

Progressive thinking is, that they deserve better than 10, or 15 dollars, but that thinking disregards disadvantages they have on the labor market - they're often uneducated, mentally challenged, addicted to drugs, or have criminal records. Their marginal productivity with a potential employer would not be sufficient to warrant the minimum wage or they would pose risk for their potential employers, which needs to be discounted in their salary.

As a result, they cannot gain new skills, learn how to work in a team, and build work habits. Their position weakens further with every day they are outside of work.

What makes their situation even worse given how many of them are addicted smokers is the policy of tobacco tax, which drives prices of cigarettes packages to 27 dollars and beyond even though it's been proven to have no effect on smoking.

It's heartbreaking to witness and it's disgusting to think about the well-paid bureaucrats coming up with such policies and the suffering they cause. They think legislation is a magic wand, which makes laws of economics and the nature of humans disappear. Instead, they introduce a whole lot of unintended consequences for those well below their supposedly omniscient radar.

I hope and believe crypto will improve the situation for these people too. I hope one of these days they will be earning a cryptocurrency on a distributed, anonymous, censorship-resistant marketplace, which will not be subject to evil and stupid progressive policies of their current masters.