Essays that have ended up on the frontpage of HackerNews, MetaFilter, or popular subreddits have been tagged below with “★ Popular”. Where applicable, I include links to relevant external social media discussion/comments at the bottom of said essays.

Much of my writing builds on consistent themes and references my early essays — so if you’re interested in my views, starting at the bottom of this page and working upwards will likely make more sense!

Essay Archive

Escalation Theory: Compliance, Violence, and Overachievement in Society — How Elites Cause Crime By Acing Marshmallow Tests. Some people think crime is caused by poverty. Some think crime is caused by criminals. Some even think crime is caused by the climate. Don’t swallow these easy-to-digest popular narratives — society is shaped by its elite, always has been, always will be. It all comes back to the marshmallows.

Inside My First Bank Run: Zombie Banks and Magic Money — why banks always explode, and what to do about it. A two-parter: half-retrospective and half-critical analysis of modern banking, this essay explores what it was like to be a part of a bank run (contrary to most perspectives shared in the media), what we were thinking while it was happening, why there’s a banking crisis right now, how central bankers have been tackling crises like this for hundreds of years, and why mortgages are fake.

Japan’s Housing Crisis: What The YIMBYs Don’t Understand — what, on the surface, looks like a slam dunk win for the YIMBY cause in Tokyo’s housing price data over the last 30 years is simply an output of a sustained economic disaster.

Book Review: Discourses On Livy, Part I: Rehabilitating Machiavelli — the first of 2 parts in my review of Machiavelli’s oft-overlooked study on how to build a successful self-governing republic. Part I covers the internals of the state, with many observations and rules that have immediate relevance today, 500 years later. Part II is readable here, with a focus on the external elements of how to grow and defend a republic.

American Zaibatsu: Macroeconomics for Tech Employees — you cannot build a massively successful nation without building at least one massively successful company.

The thread of this essay then follows that observation from successful Tech strategies through to Apple, China’s Big Banks, Japanese wartime industry, and Saudi Oil, then on to thinking holistically about an economy, pains of German reunification, and all the way through to the role of Interest Rates, Blitzscaling, and the Federal Reserve in today’s economy. A celebration of building enormous value.

Video Games & Professional Society: What Older Generations Don’t Understand About Gaming — Why you should really play games to excess: power and responsibility move together, and neither have been given very freely to the newer generations. Gaming offers an arena to learn the skills & wisdom necessary to succeed in the real world. Don’t just dip your toes in!

Elite Underproduction: Why We Can’t Solve Hard Problems Anymore — the public is torn between New York vs. San Francisco Schools of Fundamental Causation: does Finance drive the world or does the world drive Finance? Our analytic, academic, journalistic, and governmental advisory classes are primarily composed of New York Schoolers, causing us to over-index on Financial causation for most phenomena. Meanwhile, San Francisco Schoolers find their efforts to reform systems continually frustrated by factors beyond their control. Tech & Media war in headlines and Twitter feeds, but we come no closer to solving any serious problems…

Ouroboros Theory: Describing The Nature of Right vs. Left — existential terror leads to Right-Wing worldviews, injustice leads to Left-Wing worldviews, and what happens when the two grow, intersect, & breakdown. Energy vs. Entropy. External vs. Internal. Feudalism vs. Injustice. Existential Terror vs. Existential Apathy. Future vs. Past. Right vs. Left.

Unequal Growth: The Zero-Sum Games You Don’t See — the pie of Global Economic Growth grows unequally, with most of the growth captured by a handful of nations. Globalization means the societal reference frame for many prices is now [the Most Productive Society on Earth], so if you don’t grow prices can increase to consume more of your Wealth than before. Moloch meets The Currency Problem meets The Bermuda Triangle of International Wealth.

China’s Trillion-Dollar Tech War: When To Defend A Monopoly — 2010 marks the year Silicon Valley lost the war in China. It took another 5-6 years for Uber & Facebook to realize they’d already lost. Most of the commentariat still don’t understand the Tillion-dollar nation-defining stakes that were in play. There’s a reason Europe doesn’t have a meaningful Tech industry…

★ Popular The Germany Shock: The Largest Economy Nobody Understands — The Euro keeps German exports cheap for non-EU buyers by diluting the German Mark — and it lets Germany’s less-productive EU neighbours actually afford their goods. The Single Market then encourages geographic consolidation and -bam!- you get Germany, Master of the Industrial Arts.

Steelmanning Free Speech: An Argument for Unfettered Content — Free Speech, adopted as a principle across all institutions and social groups, i) helps us make better choices ii) maximizes the value of individual identity, and iii) actually improves social cohesion & strengthens our shared Institutions over the long-run.

Steelmanning Censorship: An Argument for the Removal of Content — Censorship exists at the intersection of two noble ideas: (i) Tabula Rasa and (ii) the Supreme Value of each human life. Put those two together and no argument can stand against the regrettable-but-justified virtue of Censorship.

So Can You Make A Whole Society Wealthier? — While every layer of the “Stack” can operate at the same time & in the same place, not all nations are equipped to run the Full Stack. Singapore is not Qatar is not Ireland is not the United States is not Switzerland is not Germany. But they’re all in the top 20 for GDP-per-capita, and the leaders & citizens of each must choose different strategies to build Wealth. You cannot compare nations in aggregate without understanding the context behind each and every one. And you cannot choose the right Wealth-creation strategy for yourself without a proper appraisal of the Stacks available to you.

Financialism: You Don’t Need Surpluses If You Can Trade With The Future — Financiers are Wizards, Magical Money tends to replace Productivity Surpluses, American Consumption is greater than its Production, and the inevitable increase of Wealth-inequality

Globalism: Export Industrialism Itself & Share In The Wealth — Once you’ve found a repeatable process for domestic Wealth-building the only thing holding you back from more growth is the relative poverty of your customers. Solution: Export the process of Wealth-building itself and everyone gets richer!

Industrialism: Mercantilism, But With Production Brought In-House — China has more billionaires than the US & lifted 500M people from poverty, Orwellian data-snooping serves double-duty as Tech-Protectionism, alongside tariffs, currency pegs, domestic industrial tax breaks, & special regulations for foreigners - and all of it is copying an old US playbook for Wealth written by Alexander Hamilton

Mercantilism: A New Path To Wealth Through Imperfect Competition — Mercantilism, Global Trade, Columbus & Spanish Independence, Black Ships in Japan, US Interventions in the Middle East, Russian Excursions to Georgia, Oil, Eric Weinstein on Free Trade, & Alaskan "Socialism"!

Feudalism: The Bottom of the Stack, Political Solutions to Economic Problems — Zero Sum Growth Strategies play out painfully for some: How society's warrior class historically built Wealth -- and why Silicon Valley likes Universal Basic Income

★ Popular The Full Stack of Society: Can You Make A Whole Society Wealthier? — My ~30,000ft framework on radically different — yet successful — strategies for Building Wealth. Touches on Universal Basic Income in Silicon Valley, Interventions in the Middle East, More Billionaires in China than USA, Tech Companies Headquartered in Ireland, Economic Tensions in the EU, and College/Healthcare/Housing that used to be affordable

The Panopticon Prism: All Facts Serve A Narrative — Technology unleashed Existential Competition on the (Social) Media, surfacing stories that penetrate Lowest Common Denominator lenses. Smart people rail against this...and forget to articulate their own compelling Narratives, paralyzing younger generations...

★ Popular The Uncharity of College: The Big Business Nobody Understands — Investment Returns are the real prize: if Colleges want to keep them Tax-Free, Tuition MUST remain unaffordable for at least 50% of undergrads. Thus: Cost Disease, Fixed Supply, & Financial “aid”, with Moloch forcing everyone to play the game…

Moloch is Our God: AI, Mankind, and Moloch Walk Into A Bar — Only Two May Leave — Existential Competition radically changes your payoff matrix, and anyone unwilling to sacrifice what they care most about to achieve victory will lose to everyone who does. From Roman Generals, to Anime, to conflict between Humanity and A.I….

★ Popular The Bermuda Triangle of Wealth — how the average American’s savings disappear without any apparent cause. Cost Disease meets Wealth vs. Income meets Inflation, where the individual solution reinforces the systemic problem. Get Rich or Die Tryin’!

To be continued…