What is Bitcoin? According to many in governments around the world, in central banking, in law enforcement, it’s a nuisance. It allows pseudonymous actors to transfer supposed value from one side of the planet to the other, across borders, with no 3rd party involvement and without permission of the authorities. […]
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Chpt 37: Break Even
Seigniorage. A word with a long past and an even more sinister present. It originates from the Old French seigneuriage, the ‘right of the lord (seigneur) to mint money’. The seigneurial system was a semi-feudal system of land ownership that originated in France in the 1600’s. Allotted by the king, […]
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Chpt 36: Sober Counsel
Can you imagine a society without lawyers? Not a lawless world, a world with justice and punishment, but without a vampiric class profiting from accident and incident. In Chpt 32: It’s Character Forming I discussed briefly the pillars of ancient Greek moral philosophy (Excellence, Justice, Temperance, Hubris, Reverence and Xenia). […]
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Chpt 35: Full Refund
Usury, never heard of it. Perhaps you’ve heard of Riba, or Neshekh? No? They mean roughly the same. The concept is simple, although interpretation and circumstance vary. Usury refers to the charging of excessive interest on loans. Something that used to be considered exploitative and immoral. Within each of the […]
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Chpt 34: Charitable View
I am the flawed protagonist in my own story. Perhaps I would like to think I am on a redemption arc. That common storytelling trope where a flawed or morally questionable character undergoes a transformation, ultimately becoming a better person. I don’t mean this as an admission of any sort […]
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Chpt 33: Unacceptable Behaviour
March 27th, 1980. Known amongst commodity traders as ‘Silver Thursday‘. It was described in Harpers Magazine as “the first great panic since October 1929.” In the words of then Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chief James Stone, it had threatened to punch a hole in the “financial fabric of the […]
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Chpt 32: It’s Character Forming
Excellence, Justice, Temperance, Hubris, Reverence and Xenia. The pillars of ancient Greek moral philosophy. The combination of which is often referred to as Kalos kagathos or Kalokagathos (Ancient Greek: καλὸς κἀγαθός). Kalokagathia is the derived noun often used by ancient Greek philosophers to describe an ideal of gentlemanly personal conduct; […]
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Chpt 31: Now Look What You’ve Made Me Do
There is an ironic correlation between Gross Domestic Product (think of it as the total ‘size’ of a country’s economy) and obesity rates. Studies have found that a 1% increase in GDP per capita was linked to a 1.23% and 1.01% increase in obesity prevalence amongst men and women, respectively. […]
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Chpt 30: No Fixed Abode
As someone who spent a lot of my school years outside of Scotland, I will freely admit my understanding of Scottish history is sparse at best. The subject of the Darien Scheme came up in relation to one of my other articles (Chpt 24.1: Profit Margin) and the discussion around […]
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Chpt 29: Grey Area
Infinite divisibility or the lack thereof. A concept that appears in philosophy, physics, economics, order theory and probability theory. As early as the 5th century BCE philosophers, Leucippus and Democritus, were theorizing a world of divisible matter beyond our human senses. The Indian philosopher Maharshi Kanada proposed the concept of […]
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Chpt 28: The Precise Nature Of The Catastrophe
Dense urban environments are a black hole of chaos slowly consuming our societies. For most of human history, we have lived in low-density, rural environments. Before 1600, only 5% of the world’s population lived in an urban environment, by 1900 this was 16% and current estimates have urban densities as […]
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Chpt 27: Kiss the Blade
Word spreads fast when there’s easy money to be made. Something that was apparent in the taverns and public houses of London in the 1700’s. News filtering down from Exchange Alley, through newsletters and pamphlets, gossip, rumors, tales of supposed riches and opportunity. Whispered stories of ordinary people becoming overnight […]