The Society of Honor by Joe America

By Karl Garcia

Money is not neutral. Debt is not technical. And complexity is rarely accidental.

Across history, monetary systems have always reflected political choices: who holds power, who bears risk, and who is expected to trust whom. When systems grow opaque, when explanations become convoluted, and when citizens are told that only experts can understand how money really works, it is usually because power is being shielded from accountability.

Today’s Philippine debate over digital money, public debt, and the Maharlika Investment Fund is not new. It echoes older global arguments about monetary sovereignty, institutional credibility, and the dangers of mistaking financial engineering for economic strength.

The Seduction of Complexity

From Bitcoin evangelism to deficit panic, modern monetary debates are often framed as technical puzzles. But complexity itself has become a political tool.

Bitcoin was marketed as neutral money — trustless, automatic, free from state abuse. In reality, it evolved into an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine: energy‑intensive, governance‑light, volatile, and increasingly controlled by informal elites. Far from eliminating trust, crypto merely displaced it — from public institutions to opaque code, exchanges, and private platforms.

Public debt discussions suffer from the same illusion. When the U.S. national debt crossed $18 trillion, it was framed as either an existential crisis or a harmless accounting artifact. In truth, it was neither. As Joe America once argued, modern sovereign debt operates through constant rollover — a system designed less to repay than to perpetuate confidence. The machinery is complex not because it must be, but because complexity obscures responsibility.

Debt Is a Governance Test

National debt is not inherently good or bad. What matters is why it exists and what backs it.

A useful contrast comes from what might be called a “tale of two cities.” In Singapore, government debt exists primarily to support domestic capital markets. It is fully backed by state assets managed through institutions like Temasek and GIC. The debt signals strength because it rests on accumulated value and disciplined governance.

The U.S. model is different. Its debt finances ongoing deficits and relies on the dollar’s global dominance and institutional credibility. It works — not because debt doesn’t matter — but because trust, scale, and enforcement mechanisms remain intact.

The lesson is simple: monetary sovereignty is not magic. It functions only when institutions are credible, transparent, and insulated from short‑term politics.

The Philippine Reality: Partial Sovereignty, Full Exposure

The Philippines sits in an uncomfortable middle.

We issue our own currency, yet remain deeply exposed to dollar dynamics through energy imports, trade, and remittances. We borrow without crisis, but without the institutional buffers that make borrowing productive rather than political.

Our problem is not excessive debt. It is insufficient governance capacity.

This weakness explains why digital wallets have raced ahead of public monetary institutions. GCash, Maya, and similar platforms have delivered real convenience and inclusion — but they have also privatized access to money. Financial participation increasingly depends on compliance with corporate platforms, algorithms, and risk models.

That is not financial empowerment. It is financial reliance.

Infrastructure Beats Ideology

The quiet success of InstaPay and PESONet reveals a different path.

These systems worked not because they were revolutionary, but because they focused on plumbing rather than ideology. They scaled trust through interoperability, public oversight, and boring reliability. Payment gateways extended this trust into commerce, allowing small entrepreneurs to participate in the digital economy without surrendering monetary control to speculative systems.

This is what real monetary progress looks like: institution‑first, technology‑second.

Maharlika: A Stress Test, Not a Shortcut

The Maharlika Investment Fund exposes the central contradiction of Philippine economic thinking.

Sovereign funds succeed only where governance is stronger than politics. Norway built institutions first, then pooled capital. Weak states that attempt the reverse transform sovereign funds into patronage machines.

Maharlika risks becoming a substitute for reform — a symbol of ambition without the discipline to sustain it. The Philippines does not lack capital. It lacks credible commitment mechanisms.

The Real Question

Every monetary system — from the New Deal to Reaganomics, from crypto to sovereign wealth funds — converges on one truth:

Money follows power.

The question facing the Philippines is not whether to embrace digital currency, tolerate higher debt, or experiment with state investment. The question is whether we are willing to build institutions capable of managing power responsibly.

Without that foundation, innovation becomes extraction, debt becomes dependency, and complexity becomes camouflage.

The future of money in the Philippines is not technological. It is political.

And until we confront that honestly, no amount of clever financial engineering will save us from the consequences of weak governance.