Hollow Men, Hollow Markets, Hollow World
Over the past 25 years, our leaders have intentionally constructed an Apocalypse Now world of proclamation and fiat, where our wealth has grown much f…
Tag: ET on Tape
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 i…
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 …
The Long Now, Pt. 2 – Make, Protect, Teach
It's time to start a fire. To burn, yes, but also to illuminate.
My advice? Abandon the political party as your vehicle for political participation. …
The Long Now, Pt. 1 – Tick-Tock
The Long Now is everything we pull into the present from our future selves and our children.
We are told that the economic stimulus and the political…
A Song of Ice and Fire
We are the human animal.
We are non-linear.
We ARE a song of ice and fire.
It’s a song that has built cathedrals and fed billions and taken us to…
Things Fall Apart (Part 4)
Take back your vote.
Take back your distance.
Take back your data.
How to make our way as citizens in a fallen world, with Clear Eyes and Full Hearts…
Things Fall Apart (Part 3)
The Fed, China and Italy are the Three Horsemen of the Investment Semi-Apocalypse. They're major market risks, but you'll survive.
There's a Fourth …
Things Fall Apart (Part 2)
Part 2 of a three-part series on what it means to have a polarized electorate and a monolithic market. Today’s note: How do things fall apart in a m…
Things Fall Apart (Part 1)
Part 1 of a three-part series on what it means to have a polarized electorate and a monolithic market. Today's note: the Age of Ridiculousness and the…
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
Part 13 of the Notes from the Field series discusses the Narrative Machine, which can help us see the invisible memes that drive our political behavio…
Good Job!
This is Part 11 of Ben's Notes from the Field series. I don’t need to calculate a Sortino ratio to know if my dogs are doing a Good Job. Same with a…
Too Clever By Half
The inevitable result of financial innovation gone awry, which it ALWAYS does, is that it ALWAYS ends up empowering the State. When too clever by half…
The Three-Body Problem
What if I told you that the dominant strategies for human investing are, without exception, algorithms and derivatives? I don't mean computer-driven i…
Pecking Order
The pecking order is a social system designed to preserve economic inequality: inequality of food for chickens, inequality of wealth for humans. We ar…
Clever Hans
Part 7 of Ben's Notes from the Field series reminds us that you don’t break a wild horse by crushing its spirit. You nudge it into willingly surrend…
Sheep Logic
In Part 6 of the Notes from the Field Series, Ben observes that we think we are wolves, living by the logic of the pack. In truth we are sheep, living…
Always Go To the Funeral
There’s a pose that very sick farm animals sometimes take when they’re near death, where they lie down and twist their head way back into their sh…
The Arborist
In Part 4 of the Notes from the Field Series, Ben identifies how the natural lines of a tree and shaping the tree to follow those lines over time is a…
Horsepower
There is no animal more important to the ascendancy of Western Civilization than the horse, and no invention more important than the horse collar. Aft…