The Axis Mundi and the Fate of Gold The prior installments of this series traced the long competition among monetary media, in which more integral monetary forms reliably defeated less integral ones across millennia; examined how the gold standard was dismantled by political force and at what compounding cost; showed that the deepest ideological debates … Continue reading The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part V
Tag: Economics
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 Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part I
The Natural Selection of Money There is a familiar way of narrating history. It features oppressors and victims, conquerors and the conquered, and it assigns moral valence to deeds and outcomes. This framework is not wrong — power has been wielded cruelly, and the suffering caused has been real. But it is incomplete in a … Continue reading The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part I
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
Triffin’s Dilemma: A Fundamental Frame for Understanding and Navigating Our Time
One of the bedrock principles in my sensemaking toolbox is simple: Always determine the role of mechanical, deterministic causality before imputing human motivation or making moral judgments. In practical terms, this means asking a prior question before doing any moral or political analysis: What would happen here even if no one were trying to make … Continue reading Triffin’s Dilemma: A Fundamental Frame for Understanding and Navigating Our Time
Deliberative Dad 