It is crazy to think that an inflation hedge doesn't exist and cannot exist as the system is designed.
By hedging inflation, I don't mean hedging CPI in the official narrative sense, but hedging something closer to:
True Cost-of-Living inflation (TCLI):
- Housing (owner-equivalent or rent),
- Food/energy,
- Health/education,
- Tax drag & bracket creep,
- Plus "mandatory" subscription/rail rents (connectivity, ID, cloud, payments).
A universal clean hedge would be a widely available, legally favored asset that:
- earns TCLI-tracked return + spread,
- can't be haircut or taxed ad hoc,
- is safe from FX/capital controls,
- is open to the median saver.
If that existed:
- They couldn't use financial repression to shrink real debt.
- Every crisis would require overt default, explicit austerity, or explicit wealth taxes.
- Political and legitimacy cost would explode.
Therefore, any candidate that approaches this holy grail will:
- be taxed,
- regulated,
- capped in size,
- or confined to insiders.
That's why:
- Real estate gets property tax, zoning, and mortgage dependence.
- Gold gets paperization, FX/capital controls and demonization in crises.
- Bitcoin gets paperization, KYC moats, surveillance, and MoE friction.
Outrunning real inflation is supposed to require speculation, timing and path risk. The system's design enforces it.
In other words, inflation hedge is "to what extent does this asset":
- participate in inflated nominal flows,
- resist being harvested by repression,
- survive the policy responses,
- and stay convertible into real resources?
So a clean, zero-risk, everyone-can-use-it hedge is structurally impossible. As soon as something approaches that, it gets co-opted, taxed, capped, paperized, or regulated into compliance.
