Culture has always been the antagonist of conscience. Once we see ourselves as part of a larger entity – once we identify with it – we feel a necessity to conform to it. If we don’t, we begin to lose the existential crutch that larger entities offer us. And…

A few years ago I wrote an article on status, to rather mixed reviews among the online commenters. Today I’m going back to status, “doubling down,” as people like to say these days. The proximate cause of this return to status is a set of studies I’ve been…

I believe that women are inherently as valuable as men. But I don’t believe this because of politics, I believe it because of experience. Young people are taught  that women before 1970 or so were suppressed, deprived of education and legally raped by their…

Millions of decent and hard-working people are presently coming to grips what has been happening to them, and so we’ll cover a crucial piece of the puzzle, but one that is very little known.  Regardless that the US Constitution opens with “We the people,”…

We’ve been watching the Enlightenment collapse before us in real time. This is something that adults need to understand. What remains of the Enlightenment is collapsing for structural reasons. This discourse doesn’t reat upon political or academic theories…

You can’t write about this till I’m gone,” he said, “but that won’t be long.” I hadn’t been to Jay’s Bar since the events I recorded in The Rise of The Superfluous Class, and I hadn’t intended on returning any time soon, as much as I love the place. But I…

Martin continued talking for a while, but mainly about his childhood and early career. Then he moved back to the problem that America posed to rulers. “In America, at least in the early days, people believed they were the primary factors; that they created…

File this under “needs to be said.” Ah well. The lords of Hollywood, the political elite, the educational elite… these are not uniformly stupid people. Some of them, in fact, are fairly bright. Observing them, however, might lead you to the conclusion that…

Anyone Who Goes To Work For A Central Bank Coin Is A Traitor There’s a time and place for just about everything, and this is a time to be blunt: Anyone who takes a job for a central bank or any similar entity, building a cryptocurrency, quasi-cryptocurrency…

I rather hate to do this, but these first two paragraphs seem the best way to make this very important point. Apologies. Imagine that some combination of circumstances end with you walking into a so-so bar, then accidentally causing some gigantic brute to…

Years ago I engaged in a long usenet discussion with another gentleman on immigration, life in the third world, etc. After some back-and-forths, the gentleman proposed a scenario: What would happen if the two of us were dropped, naked and with absolutely…

At one time I lived close to the Field Museum of Chicago; I had a membership and spent a good deal of time there. One evening, about ten minutes before closing, I noticed that workers had begun preparing the first floor for an evening event. I had a panoramic…

When people think of luxuries, they think of things that rich people can afford but they can’t. And as it happens, the luxury I’m talking about today fits into that category. I’m hearing reports of very rich people enjoying this luxury, while people of lesser…

When writing historical things, I try to include perspective from people who actually lived through the events. And for money issues in the US, I’m able to do that back to about 1905. So, do you think life was nasty, brutish, and short in 1905? That there…

I spent a a good deal of my young adulthood searching for business advantages. Ultimately I found mine by reading: While the other guys were talking about nonsense and chugging back brews, I was reading the literature of my business… and it worked. Things…

Sure, we’ve all seen this in practice and people have developed catchy terms for it, like echo chamber, but the polarization effect of social media has been demonstrated scientifically

The good news about ignorance? Yes, and emphatically yes. The good news about ignorance is that it sets us free from mental chains. Now, to be clear, what I’m talking about here is accepting and admitting our ignorance. This is essential if we want to actually…

I opened Stack Wallet for screenshots for an upcoming tutorial a five-minute task. Instead, I spent three hours troubleshooting a frozen interface on a test wallet I’d created that morning and tried…

Humans are not naturally stupid. Fear, however, distorts them, weakens them, and makes them far less effective than they’d naturally be. Fear, in its many guises, is the great enemy of mankind, and it’s time that we addressed it head on. Fear may be useful…

Lord Acton wrote that power tends to corrupt, but I’m going to say flat out that it does corrupt. I’ll go further and say that it’s an addiction (probably every bit as bad as cocaine), and that the lust for control is one of its primary drivers. Right now…