Something grounded on nothing can occupy a useful space within society for a time. But what lends that something its legitimacy, is the collective buy-in and trust from the public. As soon as that trust is eroded, useful fictions lose their usefulness and plummet in … Continue readingCollective Buy-In
The easy life, if you choose to live it after having amassed the resources required to do so, can quickly turn a wolf into a poodle. Of course it’s nice to have the choices that money provides. Or so it seems. The easy life is … Continue readingThe Easy Life
The world is the best that it has ever been, but the average person wouldn’t know it. This is partly due to us all getting fed a steady diet of fear and negativity from almost all of our media outlets. Regardless of political affiliation, your … Continue readingPathological Scarcity of Gratitude
Controlling, structuring, organizing. We spend a great deal of time and energy trying to convert the world into a predictable and reliable machine. But in the end, chaos is the driving force for most events; the innumerable variables that work tirelessly outside of our conscious … Continue readingCHAOS
Elon Musk, at the peak of his wealth, was worth approximately $360 Billion ($360,000,000,000). Most people don’t really understand how much money that is. So to put it in perspective, let’s equate dollars to days. If $1 million ($1,000,000) equaled 1 day, $360 Billion ($360,000,000,000) … Continue readingCompounding Unequal Distribution
Efficiency is building one road from place A to place B. Why spend extra money to build two or three roads to the same destination? Building one road saves money and time (in the short term). This is the logic of short-sighted individuals: politicians, bureaucrats, … Continue readingEfficiency
Even in a fully deterministic dynamic system, if you have enough variables that are irreducible, you will be unable to predict future states of the system because the rate of change of the system will outpace the rate of computation/modeling of that system. Therefore, you … Continue readingComputational Irreducibility
Anyone can buy things. All you need is some money. But you can’t buy a skill. You have to develop skills over time through hard work. One might say, “but you need skills to make money in the first place.” That’s often true but doesn’t … Continue readingTrue Wealth
Just because your opinion or view is in the minority, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In fact, most people have no opinions or views of their own. They simply regurgitate what their respective authorities have indoctrinated into them. They have outsourced the process of thinking to … Continue readingMinority Opinion
The reason that many wealthy people become miserable over time is because their money allows them to access scarce resources at a high frequency. Special occasions become frequent occasions, and what was once novel and exciting, becomes regular and average. What’s worse, what was once … Continue readingHedonic Adaptation