The Zeitgeist
Letter From a Birmingham Museum
The goal of most Narratives is to convince you to sit down and shut up. But every once in great while, their goal is to fight fire with fire – to make you start thinking when others are telling you to stop.
ET In Full
The Long Now, Pt. 4 – Snip!
The Long Now has severed the tether between taxation and spending – the most important macroeconomic policy relationship in our social lives as both investors and citizens.
Here’s what that means.
And here’s what we’re going to do about it.
Epsilon Theory: A 2019 Retrospective
It is our second time now to turn the lens we apply to other news sources to our own creative output. Here is a Very Epsilon Theory retrospective on 2019.
By Our Own Petard
Fiduciary standards, prudent man rules and client sensibilities compel us toward fervent pursuit of “alignment.” There’s just one little problem: we can never be aligned with our agents.
Yeah, It’s Still Water
You know, everyone is all in a tizzy about Softbank paying Adam Neumann $1.7 billion just to go away.
My unpopular opinion: the Adam Neumann story is repeated in a non-infuriating and non-obvious way every day in every S&P 500 company. And it’s been going on for a DECADE.
One day we will recognize the defining Zeitgeist of the Obama/Trump years as an unparalleled transfer of wealth to the managerial class.
The Long Now, Pt. 3 – Wink
I believe that we are on the cusp of the Long Now becoming irreversible. Or at least irreversible without a cataclysmic Fall.
Why? Because they have mastered the art of stealing our tells. At scale.
Here’s how we start to confound the stolen tells. At scale.
It won’t be noticeable at first. And then it will. And then it becomes a self-sustaining narrative. And then the world starts to change.
Rust and Blight
In an orchard, it isn’t always easy to tell the difference between rust and blight. The same goes for our cultural institutions.
Some should be pruned.
Some should be ripped up root and stem.
It’s not always easy to know which. But if we want our sons and daughters to sit in the shade of our trees, we must learn.
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ET Live!
ET Live! – 11.19.2019
It’s the November 19th, 2019 edition of Epsilon Theory Live! Be sure to join Ben and Rusty for a discussion of all things narrative in the world of politics and markets.
ET Live! – 10.22.2019
In which Ben and Rusty discuss the three Ps of the narrative of a functioning government – and why their cartoons are being stretched to the limit.
ET Live! – 8.27.2019
It’s the August 27th edition of Epsilon Theory Live! In which political, economic and markets nihilism are the order of the day.