The Birth of Integral Money The prior installments (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V) of this series traced the multi-millennial competition among monetary media, in which more integral monetary forms reliably defeated less integral ones with the impersonal regularity of water finding its level; examined how the gold standard was dismantled … Continue reading The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part VI
Category: Reflections
The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part IV
The Dam Gives Way The first three installments of this series (Part I, Part II, Part III) traced the multi-millennial competition among monetary media, in which more integral monetary forms reliably defeated less integral ones with the impersonal regularity of water finding its level; examined how the gold standard was dismantled by political force rather … Continue reading The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part IV
The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part III
Strange Bedfellows and the Return of Gravity Part I traced the long competition among monetary media, in which more integral monetary forms reliably defeated less integral ones across millennia of civilizational encounters, culminating in the gold standard of the nineteenth century. Part II examined how that standard was dismantled by political force rather than outcompeted … Continue reading The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part III
The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part II
Fingers in the Dam In Part I, we traced the multi-millennial competition among monetary media — cowrie shells, glass beads, salt, silver, and finally gold — and argued that the progressive victory of more integral over less integral monetary forms was not a series of historical accidents but something closer to a natural law: as … Continue reading The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part II
The Imperial Circle Returns: Are USD Stablecoins America’s Next Monetary Weapon?
This piece draws together ideas emerging from recent public conversations with some of the most compelling monetary thinkers around — most prominently Brent Johnson and Michael Every. What I find particularly striking is that the USD stablecoin thesis explored here isn't confined to one corner of the ideological map. Thinkers like Yanis Varoufakis, coming from … Continue reading The Imperial Circle Returns: Are USD Stablecoins America’s Next Monetary Weapon?
Copernicus, Wittgenstein, Gold, and The Dollar
In my previous post, I described how the Bretton Woods agreement placed the U.S. dollar at the center of the global financial system; how that embeddedness deepened over decades; and how the structural mechanics of that arrangement generated the imbalances we now experience as geopolitical strain, excessive financialization, and social fragmentation. Running quietly beneath that … Continue reading Copernicus, Wittgenstein, Gold, and The Dollar
The Axis Mundi; How an Ancient Symbol Still Reveals Integrity, Meaning, and What Endures
At the foundation of premodern symbolic thought lies a simple but profound intuition: reality is experienced as the meeting of heaven and earth. This claim is easily misunderstood by modern readers, who are accustomed to treating such language as a primitive attempt at cosmology. But symbolic language was never primarily an explanation of physical mechanisms. … Continue reading The Axis Mundi; How an Ancient Symbol Still Reveals Integrity, Meaning, and What Endures
13 Things I Simultaneously (and Provisionally) Believe to Be True
Reflections in the wake of the Alex Pretti shooting Because the sovereign person is the highest-resolution unit of society—and because the state possesses an inherently asymmetric capacity for coercion—the default posture should always favor empowering the person and restraining the state. I strongly affirm both First and Second Amendment rights of the sovereign person (citizen) … Continue reading 13 Things I Simultaneously (and Provisionally) Believe to Be True
The Accuser and the Embracer; Two deaths, two spirits, and the deepest story ever told
As the Orthodox Christian artist and thinker Jonathan Pageau is wont to say, “Symbolism happens!” Symbolism, he explains, “is not so much an arbitrary allegorical representation of something, but rather the very pattern by which we notice meaning.” Sitting by the fire in the predawn pall of this bitter Minnesota winter, I found myself gazing … Continue reading The Accuser and the Embracer; Two deaths, two spirits, and the deepest story ever told
Between Federal Scylla and Local Charybdis; State Coercion, Civic Abdication, and the Fragility of Freedom
UPDATE: 12:53 p.m., Sunday, January 25, 2026 I originally published this piece just before 8:00 p.m. on Friday, January 23, 2026. Barely thirteen hours later—just after 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, January 24—37-year-old U.S. citizen and ICU nurse, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was shot to death by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent near the intersection of … Continue reading Between Federal Scylla and Local Charybdis; State Coercion, Civic Abdication, and the Fragility of Freedom
Deliberative Dad 