Ever heard of "Professor Jiang?" Well, I'm about to introduce you to him, and all I can say about that is "I'm sorry."
Xueqin Jiang is a Harvard researcher and YouTuber out of Beijing. He's a man known for laying down some interesting thoughts that he'll then couch with stupidity and conspiracy theories to the point where you can take nothing he says seriously. For instance, in the clip you're about to watch, you'll conclude that this man is just another ridiculous Marxist, but he is, in fact, highly critical of Marxism and consistently points out the flaws and shortcomings of communism.
He might just be crazy, but he's still popular, so he appears on my feeds randomly. Today, he was going viral for saying that we should just print money to stop people from being poor, because scarcity is something "they" use to fool people into working. The illusion of money being valuable means you'll work hard to obtain it.
WATCH: "Professor Jiang" explains that we could fix poverty by printing infinite money but we don't because we want people to be poor.
— Max 📟 (@MaxNordau) March 20, 2026
I am not joking. pic.twitter.com/VYlilLlcH7
Look, I understand part of his logic if I'm being honest. An unspoken but very apparent thing about cash is that we put value on it, though it has no inherent value on its own. If civilization collapsed tomorrow, all the dollars in the world would be useless. A loaf of bread would be worth infinitely more than an entire briefcase of $100 bills.
This could be said for pretty much anything. Even gold is worth something because we have collectively agreed that we say it is. It has practical uses, but for those who use it practically, it's worth far more to them than to someone who doesn't need it to do their job.
But that said, we have placed value on paper money as a currency, and like anything of value, its value is directly attached to how much of it there is. Scarcity has always created value. That's not something we arbitrarily decided. That's been a rule since we were in caves. We fought wars over resources because of the scarcity rule.
Thus, when you have too much of something, it's not as valuable. In fact, you can have so much of something that it can effectively become garbage.
Consider this: Here on Earth, trees are one of the most plentiful resources we have. We use them to make so much, including paper, which is something we toss into the garbage bin once we're done with it. We use it to help rid ourselves of bodily waste. That's how plentiful tree products are. However, in the void of space, very few planets have vegetation. For all we know, we're the only planet in the universe with trees on it. If you're a space-faring alien species, then elements like gold and platinum are so common that Fort Knox is a hilarious concept, but the fact that we're just haphazardly putting processed tree sap on our pancakes would have them screaming. For them, a roll of toilet paper would be worth a fortune.
In fact, toilet paper is one of the paper products that would be considered top tier in value. Know how I know?
Venezuela rewarded its soldiers who went above and beyond with toilet paper, not cash bonuses.
Only in #Venezuela soldiers are rewarded for the loyal service to the regime with toilet paper rolls pic.twitter.com/to1ncoFOC5
— Thomas van Linge (@ThomasVLinge) July 24, 2017
Venezuela did exactly as "Professor Jiang" suggested and printed money until the cows came home, and well after that, too. Its currency is so worthless now that it could easily become the most used waste paper product in Venezuela. In fact, the bolivar became so useless that an online video game's currency became worth more in real life.
This is called inflation. It's not a new concept, yet Jiang seems not to have heard about it or grasped the concept. Odd thing too, because they were teaching children about this back in 1967.
Ladies and gentlemen, Scrooge McDuck.
