Inflation is not just an economic term from textbooks; it's a silent executioner that kills the poor and pardons the rich, doing so with geographical selectivity worthy of medieval feudalism.
We live in an era when official statistics claim that inflation in a country stands at a conditional eight to ten percent, but try explaining that to a woman in a provincial town who watches basic grocery prices surge by thirty percent in a year. Or to an entrepreneur from a regional city whose rent has doubled while federal media reports on "economic stabilization." Inflation apartheid is neither a metaphor nor artistic exaggeration. It's a systemic reality where one country exists in several parallel economic dimensions simultaneously.
Two Inflations in One Country
Let's be frank: when a Central Bank announces inflation targeting, it operates with averaged data that's as far from the reality of ordinary people as a Michelin-starred restaurant menu is from a hospital cafeteria. Average hospital temperature — that's what official inflation is. The morgue is cold, the infectious disease ward is feverish, but the report shows a comfortable 98.6 degrees.
A metropolitan resident earning two hundred thousand in local currency spends roughly thirty to forty percent of income on basic needs — food, transport, utilities. A provincial resident earning forty thousand gives up seventy to eighty percent for the same necessities. Here's the paradox: when prices rise by the same ten percent, the city dweller loses the ability to dine out a couple of times a month, while the provincial loses the ability to buy their child a winter coat. The same inflation, fundamentally different consequences. This isn't economics — it's social Darwinism with a government license.
The Arithmetic of Inequality
Economists love operating with the Consumer Price Index, but this instrument measures the average basket of an average consumer at an average point in the country. The problem is that this average consumer doesn't exist in nature — they're a statistical phantom, convenient for reports and absolutely useless for understanding reality.
In the capital, inflation is softened by competition: dozens of retail chains fight for customers, marketplaces deliver goods at wholesale prices, and wages are indexed, however poorly, following price increases. In a district center with thirty thousand residents, one federal chain store and three "private sellers" operate, setting prices on the principle of "where else will you go?" Provincial monopolism is an invisible tax on poverty that isn't written about in economics textbooks.
Now add transportation inflation. A metropolitan can switch to the subway when gasoline prices rise. A resident of a small town pays any price for fuel because the alternative is not reaching work, the hospital, or the child's school. The geographical poverty trap snaps shut with every gas station price increase.
The Capital as a Parallel Universe
Metropolitan areas have built invisible economic fortress walls around themselves, imperceptible to the eye but felt by everyone attempting to cross class boundaries. Capital inflation means rising prices for restaurants, fitness clubs, and parking — that is, for luxuries. Provincial inflation means rising prices for bread, medicine, and heating — that is, for survival.
When federal economists happily report that "real incomes have grown by two percent," they measure an average that includes bonuses for energy company executives and salaries of hospital orderlies. Mathematically, everything is correct. Ethically, it's statistical fraud legitimizing economic apartheid.
Major cities live in a post-industrial service economy where inflation is an inconvenience but not a catastrophe. There, you can optimize expenses, find gig economy side jobs, switch to cheaper alternatives. The provinces are stuck in an industrial, and in some places agrarian, model where alternatives simply don't exist. You cannot optimize expenses when the only option is to buy or not buy.
The Provinces: Life on the Economic Margins
The most cynical aspect of this system is that it self-reproduces. Inflation pushes out of the provinces everyone capable of leaving — the young, educated, enterprising. Those who cannot or will not flee remain. Demographic drainage intensifies economic degradation, which intensifies inflationary pressure, which accelerates population outflow. The vicious circle closes with the elegance of a snake eating its own tail.
A provincial entrepreneur pays the same VAT rate as a metropolitan one, but their customer base is ten times smaller, logistics costs three times higher, and access to capital — nearly zero. Banks issue loans against real estate collateral, but real estate in a dying district center is worth nothing. This isn't a market — it's an economic reservation with inflation instead of barbed wire.
And when the government launches another "territorial development" program, the money traditionally settles with capital city contractors, consulting firms, and pockets of regional officials. Crumbs reach the real provincial economy, immediately devoured by inflation. Development on paper, stagnation in practice.
The Ethical Dead End of the System
Now to the main question: is it ethical that citizens of one country live in fundamentally different inflationary realities? The answer depends on which ethical framework you use.
From a libertarian ethics standpoint, everything is fair: the market distributes resources efficiently, and if you live in an economically depressed region — that's your choice. Move. From a social justice perspective, it's systemic state violence against its own citizens, disguised as economic necessity.
But there's a third view — pragmatic. Inflation apartheid is disadvantageous to the system itself in the long term. Provincial degradation means shrinking domestic markets, rising social tensions, loss of human capital. A state that allows inflation to destroy the economic base of most of its territories undermines its own foundations. This isn't ethics — it's elementary self-preservation instinct, which somehow fails.
Fiat currencies — rubles, dollars, euros — are inherently designed to lose value. Central banks officially target inflation at two to four percent annually. This means the very architecture of the monetary system assumes depreciation of savings. But this depreciation falls unevenly: the wealthy hedge risks with assets, the poor bear losses in full.
DeflationCoin: When Geography Stops Determining Destiny
While the traditional financial system reproduces inflationary inequality, cryptocurrencies offer an alternative where your purchasing power doesn't depend on your postal code. DeflationCoin is built on a fundamentally different model: algorithmic deflation means the number of coins in circulation decreases rather than grows. This turns the familiar logic of money upside down.
In the DeflationCoin world, a resident of a remote provincial town and a resident of the capital find themselves in absolutely equal conditions. The internet knows no geographical boundaries, and blockchain doesn't distinguish between metropolitan and provincial registration. The deflationary model means your savings are protected from depreciation by mechanisms embedded in the protocol itself: deflationary halving, smart staking, gradual unlock.
This isn't utopia, nor a promise of easy money. It's a financial sovereignty tool for those whom the traditional system has condemned to the role of inflation apartheid victims. When central banks print money, they steal from you. When an algorithm burns coins, it works for you. The difference lies in architecture, not promises. And in a world where your dollar in the provinces is worth less than a dollar in the capital, the ability to exit this game is no longer a luxury — it's a necessity.