Christmas, Debt-Money, and a “Biome Economy”: why retail CBDC could reduce social anxiety (and shift spending toward services)

I’m finishing this trilogy with the part that most Christmas conversations avoid in the Global South: the money system itself.

In everyday capitalism, a big share of “new money” enters circulation through private credit—bank lending that creates deposits and locks people into future payment obligations. Modern monetary literature keeps reinforcing that bank credit creation is central to the system (even when the exact framing differs across schools). (Taylor & Francis Online)
So December is not just “a cultural season.” It is also a financial stress season: more pressure, more short-term coping, more debt, more comparison.

I’m going to stay inside my Triple Aspect:

• Politics (Biome): what keeps life stable in the territory (sleep, food, safety, basic economic security).

• Spirituality (Yãy hã mĩy, Maxakali; extended use): I imitate to belong; scripts become habits; habits become beliefs; beliefs become “faith as a support for action.”

• Neuroscience (Damasian mind + my definition): consciousness is movement that perceives itself as being, inside a continuously produced metabolism; repeated symbols become reference-points in my mental hyperspace.

And I keep my staircase: CELL → BODY → RELATION → COMMUNITY → STATE.

CELL — debt pressure becomes metabolic pressure

When money arrives as debt, a lot of people live under chronic payment obligations. My body treats that like a continuous threat: sleep gets worse, patience gets shorter, impulsivity increases.

If I’m honest, this is why Christmas “scripts” get stronger: my metabolism is already loaded, so I search for quick relief—scrolling, sugar, buying, proving belonging.

(Here, I’m not romanticizing poverty; I’m pointing at a biome fact: chronic economic insecurity reshapes daily regulation.)

BODY — the “Christmas reference-pack” drives my movement

When my internal regulation is unstable, external cues dominate: songs, slogans, promotions, “must be happy,” “must give,” “must post.”
In my language: those cues become reference points in my mental hyperspace and guide my movement (my consciousness) on rails.

A retail CBDC enters here as a design possibility because it changes the infrastructure of “what money is” for households. BIS describes retail CBDC as a digital form of central bank money—a direct claim on the central bank, closer to “digital cash” in nature. (Bank for International Settlements)
So, at least in principle, it can support public transfers with less friction than many legacy systems, depending on governance and architecture. (IMF)

RELATION — imitation (Yãy hã mĩy extended) becomes expensive belonging

In Brazil and much of the South, Christmas is relational: family, neighbors, workplace, community. But when basic security is fragile, belonging often becomes performance:

• “I need to show I’m okay.”

• “I need to buy something, or I’ll be judged.”

• “I need to match the script.”

That’s my Yãy hã mĩy extended mechanism in the wild: I imitate the dominant ritual to stay inside the group.

So the question becomes political/biome-real:
Can we protect belonging without forcing people into debt-driven performance?

COMMUNITY — why “services” matter in a biome economy

When households have more basic security, spending can shift away from pure status objects and toward life-supporting services: food quality, repair, mobility, health, education, local culture, leisure that actually regulates the body.

This is not a fantasy claim; it’s a plausible direction supported by the broader cash-transfer literature showing improvements in well-being and reductions in self-reported stress/worry in several contexts—though results can be mixed by population and design. (ScienceDirect)

So I keep it scientifically honest:

• Often helps: less stress/worry, sometimes better mental-health indicators. (ScienceDirect)

• Not guaranteed: some rigorous trials find null effects on some health outcomes. ( PMC)

Still, even partial reductions in stress can be a big biome gain: less conflict, less impulsive coping, more room for real co-presence.

STATE — the proposal: “money without citizen-debt” (DREX Cidadão as a retail-CBDC policy layer)

Here is my key idea:

If the current system can inject spending power largely through private debt-money, it’s reasonable to ask whether part of baseline life-support could be provided through public credit to citizens that is not a loan (no repayment obligation for the household).

In academic language this overlaps with “direct transfers” / “helicopter”-type channels; modern work explicitly discusses CBDC as an enabling technology for direct monetary transfers in certain models and scenarios. (ScienceDirect)

In Brazil, the Drex pilot is real and ongoing as an infrastructure experiment. The Central Bank describes the pilot goals and scope, and the Phase 1 report details a design using “Drex de Varejo” operations within the pilot architecture. (Banco Central do Brasil)
My DREX Cidadão is a policy proposal layered on top: use a retail-CBDC-like rail (or equivalent public digital money rail) to guarantee a minimum biome floor—so the population spends less time in survival-mode physiology.

My claim (careful and testable):
A baseline, non-debt citizen credit could reduce social anxiety and increase demand for services that stabilize life—if governance, privacy, and macro constraints are well designed. (IMF eLibrary)

Limits I do not hide

• Privacy and surveillance risks are real if design is wrong (CBDC governance matters). (IMF eLibrary)

• Financial stability and banking intermediation must be modeled (CBDC design choices matter). (European Central Bank)

• Inflation/real-capacity constraints are a biome constraint too: injecting purchasing power without expanding real supply can backfire.

So I’m not selling magic. I’m proposing a biome-oriented design question.

Brain Bee research question (what I would actually test)

If a municipality or country implements a non-debt citizen transfer using a robust digital money rail, do we observe (1) better sleep/stress markers, (2) less impulsive spending, and (3) a shift toward local services—and under which governance/privacy conditions? (ScienceDirect)