It's endlessly fascinating how economic datapoints get interpreted.

When I was in charge of a P&L, the guy who ran Finance for us and I had what we called the 'shelf plan.'

There were maybe 3-4 of us who knew it existed.

What's a shelf plan?
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@evan_lorenz Exactly this.

Plus in a gold-based system, smaller entities (SMBs or sole proprietors) could presumably even self-custody to reduce the carrying cost of gold to zero.

This is not possible with bitcoin, in which one owns a share of a collective and equally distributed liability.

The hilarity of all this, to me, is that Bitcoin makes the most sense if viewed as a Marxist worker’s rebellion.

The central promise is UBI: buy tokens that increase in value forever, granting you wealth for doing nothing.

And the cost is the future.

Why do we like blowing bubbles?

(This is not a bitcoin thread, go away)
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So I'm not a “neurotypical” (a fact discovered late in life) and while we won't go into the details here, the net output of that fact appears to be that I'm wired to take a more… ‘zoological’ approach to understanding humanity.

Hence the quirky Animal Planet threads.
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The distance afforded by non-participation in certain things (the weakness) also occasionally lends itself to a bit more subtlety with pattern detection (the strength).

And so I started painting a picture about bubbles.
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And in my mind’s eye there formed a cluster of ladybugs. They were happy, far from from eating aphids, and content on their beautiful tree.

And then one started flapping.
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At first the other ladybugs ignored it, but after a time its persistence was intoxicating.

And so a few more flapped.

And as is the way with exercise, certain endorphins were released

And it felt good to flap.
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What are prices?

A layperson’s guide to understanding charts and volatility.
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It’s an observable fact that price has nothing to do with value. Perhaps over the long term these two converge, but in the short term it makes no sense that the price of, say, soybeans would change 3-4% from day to day.

So what’s happening?
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You’ve probably heard people say “markets are forward looking” and that’s sorta true, I guess.

But that doesn’t mean they’re any good at it.

It might be better to say “markets consistently attempt to look forward” because that would be more illustrative of what’s happening.
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When a day-over-day price makes a 3% move this is not a 3% shift in value, it’s a 3% shift in *aggregate expectations about future value.*

And that makes sense, right? Expectations are pretty ephemeral so they can move fast.
4/

Consider volatility through this same lens. When a market is highly volatile, this means that expectations about forward value are evolving rapidly.

This happened in March when everyone got scared about Covid - it broke people’s forward expectations, and thus broke markets.
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QE, Liquidity Removal, and the Alchemy of Money

I’ve been watching @MetreSteven say stuff like “QE removes liquidity” on here for a while after which people sort of stare blankly or roll their eyes.

Let’s give it one more go, via a traditionally quirky explainer.
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At the heart of every monetary system is an act of alchemy.

Let us start by describing this act: the act of monetary creation.

At the center of alchemy lies the Philosopher's Stone - the prime reagent for money creation.

For a long time this was gold.
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For if you had gold, you could lend against it.

From the Philosopher's stone of gold, we could spawn two things:

1. Circulating money
2. Debt

Money and debt are twins, both born of the philosopher's stone and their fates forever linked.
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For you see, there are rules which govern alchemy.

An alchemist is only allowed to create a certain amount of money for each philosopher's stone.

And the Debt was greater than the Money (due to interest), making the system inherently deflationary.
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And this deflationary nature drove the people to want more money in circulation.

So the rules of alchemy were evolved to allow each stone to create more money (fractional reserve banking).
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Let’s talk about money and the State (Sovereign).

Since everyone constantly gets this wrong.
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So look: there never was a barter-centric state of nature.

That’s a nice story but when we look at the historical record, it’s just flat out false.

In point of fact:

- Debt predates money.
- Money predates barter.
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The way the Sovereign first got involved with debt was something like this:

King: “If you don’t give me 3 goats during harvest season, my soldiers will come burn your fucking house down.”

And in this way, the King originated a debt.

By fiat.
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But moving goats around sucks (horrible creatures) and is just sort of logistically annoying, so a new plan was devised, like this:

King: “Same deal with the soldiers and the burning and the profanity, but now it’s 50 pieces of silver instead of goats.”

Presto! Money!
4/

Money is a token that settles debts - always has been. The reason it’s useful is because it allows society to function like an abacus with N players.

In lieu of just the sovereign playing debt, these tokens are ‘debt settlement bearer assets’ which allow…well... the economy
5/

I spoke to 5 global enterprises about remote work last week

Here’s what they told me about their plans for the future

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌎

💰 Office space: All of them have $Billion real estate portfolios

All of them plan to cut it by atleast 50% and as much as 70%

📍 Talent Access: The thing they are most interested in is access to talent

Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they’ll hire the best person on the planet

📈 Efficiency: Their concern about remote work post-pandemic was that productivity would slip

It’s increased. They now know remote work works

🤔 Remote Dilemma: A big concern is losing their best people through not giving their teams what they want

Each company plans to let people work from home 60-100% of the time

🇺🇸#TreasonAgainstAmerica 1/12

🇺🇸#TreasonAgainstAmerica 2/12

🇺🇸#TreasonAgainstAmerica 3/12

🇺🇸#TreasonAgainstAmerica 4/12

🇺🇸#TreasonAgainstAmerica 5/12

Piper Alpha was an originally designed as an oil producing rig in the North Sea approximately 120 miles North East of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was a fixed leg platform in water depth of 475 Feet of water. The installation sat close to 275 Feet above water to the top of the derrick.

2) It started production in December 1976 for OPCAL joint venture. OPCAL being Occidental Petroleum Caledonia, Texaco Britain, Thomson PLC, and Texas Petroleum LTD. Occidental was the majority stakeholder at 36.5%

3) Occidental being majority stakeholder took control of technical and operational duties with running and operating the rig. When oil production started in 1976 it started with a flow of 250,000 BBL/day and eventually increasing this amount to 300,000 BBL/day.

4) 300,000 BBL/day would account for approximately 10% of the UK’s oil production at the time, so needless to say it was one of the most important rigs in the area. Any gas that was flowing would be flared or consumed by gas turbine generators

5) Around 1980 there was a decision to convert the rig to also process gas along with the oil. This was a major conversion, and if it would have been scoped in from the beginning, most likely construction of the rig would have been more accommodating for gas.