You ever notice a weird pattern: the more you achieve, the more you feel like you’re running on empty? It’s not just a modern hustle trap. It’s an 800-year-old paradox that haunted the Tang and Song dynasties—when the economy boomed, the money disappeared.
Let me take you back to a morning in 1111. Just before dawn, imperial horsemen burst out of Kaifeng’s East Gate, shouting that the “ten-cash coin” was now worth only three. Overnight, rich families saw their wealth vaporize. Even the emperor’s own stash took a hit. The move was suicidal for the government—but they had no choice. The mastermind behind this chaos? Cai Jing, the notorious chancellor. He wasn’t crazy. He knew each time he pushed this policy, he handed his enemies a bullet. But he kept pulling the trigger.
Why? Because the Song dynasty was bleeding money—not poor, but chronically short of cash in circulation. The empire minted over 5 million strings of copper coins a year, more than ten times the Tang peak. Total output exceeded 200 million strings. Still not enough. And here’s the kicker: the more prosperous the era, the tighter the squeeze. This wasn’t a bug—it was a feature of how growth works.
Think of it like your own life. When you level up your skills, your goals expand even faster. The gap between what you have and what you need widens. The Tang and Song faced the same trap: the economy grew faster than the metal money supply. Copper coins had intrinsic value, so people melted them down for profit when copper prices rose, shrinking the money pool further. Every fix—like Cai Jing’s overvalued coins—created perverse incentives, fueling private counterfeiting and more shortages. It was a loop they couldn’t break.
So what can you do? The answer from history wasn’t more metal—it was paper money and credit, instruments that separate value from substance. For you, the equivalent is building a “second brain” or using “inside-outside balancing”—creating internal resources (habits, mental models) that don’t deplete when you use them. The first step is to recognize the loop: prosperity without new tools only tightens the scarcity. Don’t just run faster. Change the engine.