Indeed, I've been that soldier working too much, not realising how much damage it does physically and mentally, more than once in life. I suspect you've probably been there too, to have mentioned it in the article. I too ride bikes, around those spats of working too hard, since aged about 8, sometimes to competition level. But back then 1000 was the most anyone could ever imagine for even the poshest of bikes. Now I've gone electric, putting a 1KW motor on my twenty year old 22kg fully suspended sit-up and beg commuter bike. Now it weighs more like 35kg, but goes like an olympic cyclist on an 8kg bike in permanent sprint mode. I have to admit I can't help smiling whizzing past the fittest of lycra clad folk on exotic carbon fibre bikes, grunting and sweating up the hills, I am absolutely cheating, and probably not doing much good for my cardio, but it is great fun :)

As for spending, I have been living on the bare minimum for about the past five years, since I started putting all of the tools, skills, and experience I have working for clients as a Systems Engineer, to the purpose of working on the energy problem, voluntarily, at my own expense. It was during working on a still unfinished metaverse oriented PhD, the energy problem, and its seriously negative effects on all business, and all of life, started to become apparent to me. I knew there was no point continuing on the research path I was on, working for clients who in the end were often just making things worse, since the effect on research, all research, is very negative, to the point of it actually stopping things happening, as we saw with the covid vaccine development, it went from being something publicly supported and funded, to being a cynical business making a few very rich folk even richer, at the expense of an awful lot of lives, and never did fix the virus.

To me, having done the systems analysis now for around five years, it is more obvious than ever there is only one fix for this problem, because there is only one actual energy source for all things, and until we realise that, and start to use it, the way nature requires that we use it, we will continue to burn, and see our money completely devalued.

No amount of saving now, can help anyone achieve long term security, with the source problem unfixed, I hate to say.

On the statement you highlighted as profound, I agree it is profound, but it misses the relationship with energy:

Money is a kind of energy, only generating actual power when it is spent, or transferred from point to point in the system, like a lighbulb only lights when current is flowing. If we likened our economic system to an electrical circuit, it has never really been switched on. Imagine a system powered from batteries, that has existed its entire life on one set of batteries, currents flowing in the system for only momentary switching, allowing a discrete number of joules to move through each lighbulb, emitting a brief pulse of glowing light, just at the point of each transaction.

That is the system we've practiced for thousands of years.

Every person is like one of those lightbulbs. If we had unlimited funds, we would continuously channel money towards the things we each believe are important, resulting in all bulbs burning bright. This would be how to get maximum value out of all people. It is the opposite of only rewarding for work done.

Earth is the battery, trickle charged by the mains source, which is the sun.

To fix it, enabling the circuit to finally be switched on, we have to break through the fascination of capital, and plug into the sun properly, by issuing money on it. This is the thing missing which is causing all of the problems, it seems to me.

It does actually stack up mathematically, that we can issue unlimited money on unlimited product.

And it also fully explains inflation, in fact is a kind of proof of inflation, unlike any we've seen from conventional economists.

When we undertand we realise this inflation will not stop, until the source problem is fixed, we will see all money devalue to nothing.

We have to move now from capitalism, to energyism.

I think the quickest route now to getting there is probably by starting here:

https://eric-bott.medium.com/demand-the-free-money-aab86f0e863d