Labor Day travails…

Posted on September 1, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

As another Labor Day comes and goes, it seems appropriate to stop and recognize just how badly labor has been treated over the past 54 years by the Federal Government. Almost exactly 54 years ago, on August 15, 1971, President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods System and the era of the gold standard.

With the ending of the ability of the dollar to be converted into gold, the US began a reckless and foolish experiment, an experiment destined to end in disaster, by moving the global reserve currency onto a fiat money standard with the stroke of a pen. Countless times in history, countries have implemented fiat standards on their own currencies, always with the same disastrous results. However, this time, this experiment would be implemented on a global scale with global repercussions.

But don’t take my word for it, listen to what Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve said about gold and it’s importance in a free society. Most people are unaware, but before Greenspan became “The Maestro” and was widely lauded by all of the cronies surrounding the Fed and Wall Street, he was a hard money advocate. In 1966, well before he became intellectually and ethically compromised by the tantalizing lure of money and power oozing from the swamp in DC, Greenspan wrote an essay titled “Gold & Economic Freedom” in which he strongly extolled the virtues of gold and it’s importance in a free society.

In rather prophetic terms, he said:

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation
through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make
its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his
bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as
payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank
credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that
there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.


This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a
scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a
protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’
antagonism toward the gold standard.”

Of course Greenspan himself later sold out to power and became one of the largest destroyers of the purchasing power of Americans by repeatedly rationalizing the massive credit bubbles that he enabled while in charge of the Fed. He will go down in history as a disgrace for his central role in debasing the currency and enabling the massive expansion of government in this country. He was the precursor to Bernanke, Yellin, and now Jay Powell, leading the way on an orgy of debasement unlike anything ever seen in history on the global stage.

Unfortunately, the chickens are coming home to roost. Anyone paying any attention at all can see it. 54 years after the removal of the discipline of gold, the price of an ounce of gold hovers around $3,500 and is gaining momentum. To any student of history, what is likely to happen next couldn’t be more obvious. It will happen in fits and starts, but the road we’re on, the road leading to the end of the dollar fiat standard is becoming increasingly clear. The path we’re on leads to destruction. Social destruction, political destruction, economic destruction, and human destruction. There is still time to stop this madness, but unfortunately, there is no political will to do so and the population at large has absolutely no idea what is happening or why they should care.

99.9% of the population has absolutely no idea of where this is all heading and is totally unprepared to take steps to protect their families from the fallout. If you’re one of the less than .1% who does understand, you’re both blessed and cursed with that knowledge. You’re cursed in the sense that you feel with a growing sense of uneasiness the destruction that is headed our way. But you’re blessed in the sense that at least you understand the malevolent forces that are building and you still have at least some ability to try and move you and your loved ones out of the direct path of the gathering storm.

It’s important to have perspective about what is happening. While I fully expect it to be THE topic that will be front and center for years to come, it’s also important to recognize that life will go on and this too shall pass. Many, many empires have come and gone in history, and ours will do the same. It is from the ruins of empire that new ideas and new opportunities arise. In some ways I suppose it could be viewed as a positive thing, although for those caught up in it without taking precautions, it will hardly seem positive.

After having these discussions with people in-person, it often leads to a kind of stunned and disbelieving “what should we do about it” or a dismissive shrug of the shoulders and a “you’re out of your mind” kind of response. I get it. It all seems so negative and depressing. But personally I don’t see it as such. I see it as fascinating and inevitable. Now keep in mind that inevitable does not mean imminent. It will take years for this to play out. But to anyone paying attention, the pace is accelerating and the outcome is becoming more and more inevitable. No one is going to tell you about this or teach you about this topic. If you’re interested in trying to avoid becoming a victim of the process, you need to educate yourself. It’s not that difficult to do.

Here is a discussion on the topic from a number of years ago. Although it’s already a few years old, the lessons are timeless. Give it a listen and see if it resonates with you like it did for me. And if it does, study the topic some more. You’ll thank yourself in the future as the things they discuss play out in our lifetimes.

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The times call for courage…

Posted on August 4, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

Henry Hazlitt wrote this over 60 years ago. But he could have written it yesterday. Nothing has changed, except that we’re even further down the path towards a centrally planned society. And his message is more important than ever…

“A minority is in a very awkward position. The individuals in it can’t afford to be just as good as the individuals in the majority. If they hope to convert the majority they have to be much better; and the smaller the minority, the better they have to be.

They have to think better. They have to know more. They have to write better. They have to have better controversial manners. Above all, they have to have far more courage. And they have to be infinitely patient.”


 – Henry Hazitt, “The Times Call for Courage”

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Secrecy…

Posted on July 7, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

“I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy … censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

-Robert A. Heinlein

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The Fourth Turning…

Posted on June 3, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

The book, The Fourth Turning, has been coming up in a lot of podcasts that I’ve been listening to during the past several years, and more recently has come up in some personal conversations that I’ve had.

In the book, William Strauss and Neil Howe propose that Anglo-American history follows a recurring cycle of four “turnings,” each lasting about 20–25 years and corresponding to generational archetypes and societal moods. A full cycle, or saeculum, spans roughly 80–100 years — the length of a long human life. They argue that:

  • Each generation plays a role in shaping and responding to the turning they come of age in.
  • A new Fourth Turning would begin in the mid-2000s and climax sometime in the 2020s, potentially involving a major political or economic crisis.
  • While crisis is inevitable, the outcome is not — societies can emerge stronger or fall apart, depending on leadership and choices.

In essence, the book combines history, sociology, and generational theory to suggest that we’re in a predictable historical rhythm — and that a major societal transformation is due.

That all sounds interesting and reasonable, but overall, I found the book to be very unsatisfying and unconvincing.  There are a lot of things that sound very sophisticated and scientific about their theory, but I couldn’t help but feel like they vastly overstate its merits.  My own thinking has been greatly influenced by the great thinkers in Austrian economics, and I found the fourth turning framework to be completely incompatible with many of the key insights that were developed by thinkers such as Ludwig Von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray Rothbard.  In this post I’m hoping to contrast the ideas of the Austrians and how they clash not only with The Fourth Turning (TFT) theory, but also many other popular ideas taken for granted by mainstream sociologists and historians.

I’d like to begin with the underlying premise from TFT.  The underlying premise is that human action is somewhat deterministic, meaning that beginning with certain known facts, the outcome can be predetermined or at least accurately forecasted.  Otherwise, it would be impossible to make sweeping predictions about entire generational behavior. This is epistemologically completely contrary to Austrian economics, which is rooted in methodological individualism and the axiom of human action — that individuals act purposefully to achieve chosen ends. From this standpoint, The Fourth Turning’s core assumption — that history unfolds in predictable, cyclical patterns tied to generational archetypes — represents a form of historical determinism that Austrians strongly reject.

Strauss and Howe’s theory suggests that large, impersonal forces drive history forward in semi-mechanical cycles, reducing individual agency. In contrast, Mises emphasizes that history is the result of individual choices, not external inevitabilities. To Austrians, history is contingent, not cyclically predetermined.

As Mises writes in Theory and History, historical events “do not follow fixed patterns,” and any attempt to discern scientific laws or cycles in history is a misapplication of natural science methods to the social sciences — a form of scientism, which Hayek criticized heavily in The Counter-Revolution of Science.

At its core, this is the same mistaken idea that collectivists and central planners all assume; the idea that society is somehow mechanistic, and that they have the knowledge to tweak society and somehow improve it.

Strauss and Howe’s methodology is also flawed, in that it relies on broad historical narratives, generational labeling (e.g., “Prophets,” “Nomads,” “Heroes,” “Artists”), and post hoc pattern recognition. Many of their assertions are so vague and general that it is more reminiscent of astrology or palm reading than a scientific theory. This stands in opposition to Austrian methodology, which insists on:

  • A priori theory derived from logical reasoning about human action (praxeology),
  • Deep respect for subjective value and radical uncertainty, and
  • Rejection of aggregate historical patterns as predictive tools.

To Austrians, attempting to make empirical, cyclical forecasts of social change — such as predicting a major societal upheaval every 80–100 years — lacks scientific rigor and ignores the complexity and unpredictability of human decision-making.

Just as Keynesians attempt to predict market outcomes using flawed empirical models, Strauss and Howe attempt to predict societal outcomes using broad, data-deficient generational patterns. This is one of the core disagreements that Austrians have had with mainstream Keynesian economists for decades.  Keynesians have tried to use mathematical models and empirical data, thinking that somehow this will lead to predictable outcomes. This is why they’re so obsessed with using government data on everything from the unemployment rate to inflation statistics, to things like the “Phillips Curve, etc., etc.  This methodology is completely flawed. They have what Austrians have called “science envy” and are trying to apply the same methods that scientists in the hard sciences of physics and chemistry have used successfully, but which fail miserably when used in the study of human action.

Hayek’s concept of the knowledge problem — the idea that knowledge is dispersed among individuals and cannot be centrally aggregated or predicted — undermines the confidence Strauss and Howe have in macro-historical forecasting. If it is impossible for central planners to anticipate market outcomes, it is equally impossible for historians to scientifically forecast social upheavals decades in advance based on generational patterns.

This critique extends to the authors’ implicit suggestion that we can “prepare” for a Fourth Turning once it is identified — an idea reminiscent of the top-down planning mindset Austrians argue against.

Austrians also caution against psychologizing economic and historical behavior without rigorous theory. Assigning fixed personality traits to entire generations and claiming they “shape history” smacks of collectivism and essentialism, which Austrians reject. Individuals may share experiences, but how they interpret and respond to them varies greatly.

From an Austrian economics perspective, The Fourth Turning is an intriguing narrative, but ultimately methodologically flawed. Its deterministic, cyclical view of history conflicts with the Austrian emphasis on individual agency, subjectivity, and the unpredictability of human action. Austrians would view its forecasts as speculative storytelling rather than science — a modern mythology masquerading as social theory.

It’s understandable why many find the Fourth Turning framework compelling — it offers clarity and coherence about something that everyone senses to be true. But it’s precisely that seductive simplicity that makes it dangerous from an Austrian point of view. Central planning always sounds seductive. That’s why the masses clamor for government to fix every problem that comes along. While TFT doesn’t argue for some government program to avoid the fourth turning, the theory implies that maybe that would be possible.

There are other gaping holes in their theory.  Does this fourth turning theory only pertain to Anglo-Americans? If so, why?  If not, why not?  The cycles that they describe seem very arbitrary. They seem to cherry-pick things from history and ignore other equally important things. For example, if you were alive during the Cuban missile crisis, or the Kennedy assassination, or Watergate, or the abandonment of the gold standard, or the Vietnam war…why are those considered less relevant to a fourth turning than anything that we’re facing now? It all seems completely arbitrary.  Plus, it’s unfalsifiable.

My suspicion is that Mises and Hayek would both be extremely skeptical and critical of the ideas in TFT.  But don’t take my word for it. Here are some quotes that I found that seem like they would be relevant to the claims made in TFT:

“There is no such thing as a ‘law of history’ which would enable us to predict the future course of events.”
— Ludwig Von Mises – Theory and History

“The fundamental deficiency implied in all attempts to construct a science of history is that they disregard the fact that history deals with human action.”
— Ludwig Von Mises – Theory and History

“It is largely because the naive mind can conceive of social processes only in terms of conscious direction that the belief in inevitable historical development has proved so attractive.”
—F. A. Hayek – The Counter-Revolution of Science

“There are no constants in human behavior… and you cannot interpret social phenomena as you do natural ones.”
— Paraphrased from Hayek’s Nobel Prize Lecture

Finally, Austrians are wary of any theory that reifies collectives—be they classes, races, or generations—and assigns them essential characteristics. TFT is guilty of this essentialism in its treatment of generational cohorts as fixed entities with consistent behavioral traits. Austrians reject this as both ethically dubious and intellectually lazy.

From an Austrian perspective, The Fourth Turning may offer a compelling narrative, but it is methodologically unsound and epistemologically dangerous. It denies individual agency, embraces deterministic cycles, and applies the flawed logic of the physical sciences to the domain of human action. While its appeal is understandable in times of uncertainty, Austrians would urge caution: true understanding comes not from grand narratives, but from rigorous attention to individual choices, subjective values, and institutional incentives—one action at a time.

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The Dunning-Kruger effect…

Posted on March 23, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

Some of the things that I find most interesting in life: politics and economics, science and religion, business and investing, all seem to share one thing in common: controversy and massive disagreement.

I find it really fascinating how each of these areas have huge groups of people with such radically opposing viewpoints. For example:

In politics; Democrats think Republicans are idiots and vice-versa.

In economics; Keynesians, Austrians, and Monetarists each think that the other two schools of thought don’t understand “real” economics.

In religion; literally billions of people believe in the world’s five major religions. Many of them think that the other four major religions are completely misled, and in many cases believe that this will lead to eternal damnation for everyone outside of “their” religion. Even more interesting is that even within each of the major religions, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different sects with their own specific belief systems, and these groups often have more animosity and contempt for the beliefs of others within their broad religion that don’t share their specific group’s beliefs than they do of people in completely different religions.

I could go on and on, but I think you probably get my point. So it begs the question of how and why do people come to these radically different opinions on things that are very important to them, especially in an age where information on each of these topics is so readily available?

Another interesting thing I’ve noticed is that often times I’ll see that the more completely convinced a person is that their views on any of these topics is correct, the more uneducated they tend to be in the area they have the most certainty about. People that are completely convinced that their take on whatever economic policy happens to be in the news during a given news cycle, can’t even tell you the difference between monetary policy and fiscal policy. People who are Democrats or Republicans, will flip-flop their positions on basic policy depending on who controls Congress at any given time. People who are 100% certain that their religious beliefs are the only true beliefs, have never read a single book that is charitable to another religion, and can’t even explain how their own religion has progressed and changed historically with any kind of accuracy.

I find it all rather amazing.

The other thing that I’ve consistently found is that the most well-educated people I know also have the most humility about what they actually know. Anyone who has actually studied any of these topics in-depth, knows that they are incredibly complex, and that they aren’t even close to knowing everything there is to know about a given topic. Many of the most well educated people I know are autodidacts as well, but that is another story.

Bertrand Russell has a famous quote that sums this all up: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” 

There is a name for this phenomenon called the “Dunning-Kruger Effect.”

There are a lot of interesting aspects to it, but the one I’m most interested in is that I believe it is just one more reason, among many others, that freedom is inherently good, while coercion is inherently evil. It is one of the reasons that Hayek’s description of the importance of “The Use of Knowledge in Society” is such a breakthrough insight. It is why the “Non-Aggression Principle” is so foundational to progress. It is why the “Golden Rule” is so foundational to all of the world’s religions.

Combining ignorance and self-confidence with coercion leads to really destructive outcomes. And since we know that we’re all ignorant to different degrees about everything in life, one would think we would be a little more humble and a little less willing to use coercion to impose our beliefs on other people. Unfortunately, these are lessons that the Church and the State have struggled to comprehend historically, and this had lead to immense human suffering throughout history.

People have an incredibly difficult time determining between cause and effect, understanding tradeoffs and the seen versus the unseen, understanding even the basics about human action. But somehow society still seems to have this ridiculous belief that if we just use a little more coercion, (usually government coercion, but sometimes religious coercion as well) we could somehow fix these problems and improve society. It is an incredibly naïve belief, but extremely widespread.

This seems to be one of many problems with government and government employees. Their jobs only exist as a result of coercion, and therefore there is no feedback mechanism that can pop the cognitive bubble that they find themselves in. My personal experience has been that these people are often completely sure that the public has no idea how difficult and important their jobs are and it leads to arrogance, stagnation, and horrific customer service. Since they have a monopoly on force, they tend to be completely delusional about their own importance and competence. They toss around terms like “market failure” to justify every intervention without even considering that maybe it’s not market failure that is the problem, but rather the fact that markets and society disagree with what they think the correct outcome should be.

There is lots more that could be said about this topic, but what brought it to my mind today was this YouTube video describing the Dunning-Kruger effect that I thought was interesting. It’s pretty basic stuff to anyone that has studied Austrian Economics, but I think the population as a whole has a very poor understanding of it. This video does a good job of explaining the Dunning-Kruger effect in a way that makes it more accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, it includes a few references to things like Covid-19 and the education system that I believe are misguided, but the overall points are made pretty well.

If more people understood the Dunning-Kruger effect, perhaps we’d approach controversial topics with a little more civility and a lot more humility. It’s almost like we have a learning problem here…;)

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The destruction of inflation…

Posted on March 8, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens…The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” John Maynard Keynes

As we continue to see the inflation being caused by an out-of-control, money-printing federal government, I’m fascinated by other historical examples of what inflation has led too. It rarely ends well.

Rudy Havenstein was a German lawyer and President of the Reichsbank (the German central bank) during the hyperinflation of 1921-1923. Someone on Twitter has adopted his name and has become a widely followed account on fintwit. He recently wrote a three part series on his substack reviewing a book called “Before the Deluge” by Otto Friedrich.

I found the series a fascinating perspective on what happened in Europe, and Germany in particular, during the years following World War I, during the great German hyperinflation, and in the years leading up to World War II. This era is typically presented to us in very simple, broad terms, with simplistic causes leading to simplistic outcomes and simplistic lessons learned. The more nuanced reality is far more interesting, much more human, and somewhat terrifying.

I could do a lot of commentary with my own thoughts on what happened, but Rudy does a great job of carving out pieces of the book to paint his own picture of the reality as it unfolded. While I’m not in any way suggesting the same thing will happen as a result of our own insane money printing, it’s difficult not to see the parallels with our own society and ponder what may happen in the future as a result.

I am completely convinced that inflation, debt, and political turmoil will be THE primary stories that will grip our entire population over the next decade, or until there is some major reset event. We live in historical times. We would be wise to study and learn from history.

Here are the three parts:

Before the Deluge, Part 1 – by Rudy Havenstein

Before the Deluge, Part 2 – by Rudy Havenstein

Before the Deluge, Part 3 – by Rudy Havenstein

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More Federico Faggin…

Posted on March 3, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

As I’ve read more about Fedrico Faggin’s theories about human consciousness, I’ve reached one, undeniable conclusion: he is either crazy or he’s an absolute genius. I tend to believe it’s the latter. His theories resonate with me at a deep level. For me, his ideas need to be heard and pondered multiple times to even begin to piece together what he’s saying.

Here is another interview, one where he lays out as clearly as I’ve heard him describe it anywhere, what his theory is. If he hadn’t already made the kind of indisputably amazing breakthroughs in the material and physical world, I would probably be less open to his theories on quantum physics and human consciousness. His accomplishments in the fields of technology are indisputable, and I believe he has earned the right, based on his track record, to have his ideas regarding human consciousness taken seriously. Plus, my admittedly laymen’s study of modern day physicists and their conventional views regarding human consciousness seem completely insufficient to explain what each of us feel on a religious and spiritual level. The idea that we live in a materialistic, deterministic universe, one without any meaning beyond the material world, fall far short of what each of us who are even slightly open-minded believe about what we are and our purpose in life.

As with all scientific theories, his have a very significant chance of being falsified and seeming laughably wrong by people in the future who have the benefit of more time and information than we have access to now. So his theory is obviously a long-shot. But, every great breakthrough in science and religion started somewhere with someone making seemingly incredible claims. I’d be hard pressed to think of any single person right now who has a better argument for a theory that, if validated, would have massive, paradigm-shattering effect on every aspect of human life, and everything that we believe about our universe. Just coming up with the theory he’s discussing is amazing, and shows an incredible mind and incredible creativity, even if it ultimately ends up being incorrect.

As human beings, we’re often afraid to open our minds up to new, revolutionary ideas like this. It is totally understandable why. Paradigm shifting ideas like this are scary. But his ideas remind me of some of the biggest scientific theories and breakthroughs of all time. Theories like General Relativity, the Germ Theory of Disease, Quantum Mechanics, Heliocentric Theory, and the Theory of Evolution would all take a back seat to his theory of human consciousness if it were proven to be true. That, I find truly mind-blowing.

One last thing I’ll say; I didn’t just stumble onto his theory and think that is sounded legitimate out or the blue. His theory fits into so many other books and ideas that I’ve already believed that align with what he’s saying. Many religious and scientific ideas that I already believe are linked together with his theory. Call me a heretic if you will, but I find his courage, creativity, and originality amazing and credible. After all, he already had a spotless reputation before he came up with this theory. He risks having his reputation tarnished tremendously if it all ends up being completely wrong.

Despite all this, he chose to dedicate the rest of his life to this theory, and if it ends up being true, it will make the invention of the first microprocessor and the touchscreen seem completely irrelevant in comparison. How can one not admire the courage he’s displaying by tackling the biggest question that all thinking men have wrestled with at one time or another throughout human history? The one question that science and religion have been trying to understand for all of recorded human history.

In any case, I find the topic completely fascinating. And I’ll paraphrase a line that I’ve heard before: “I’d rather keep company with men who ask questions that can’t be answered than with men who’s answers can’t be questioned.”

Here is the video:

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Information overload…

Posted on February 24, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

One of the problems with trying to write just about anything today, and sharing it with anyone, is the fact that it feels like a waste of time since the same thing has probably been said a hundred times before…and probably been said better and more clearly. We live in an age of information overload. It’s difficult to believe that just 150 years ago a personal library of over 100 books would have been considered a luxury.

Today, we live in a world where there is a metaphorical fire hose of information pouring into our consciousness from every direction. Books, magazines, social media, and especially the internet have deluged us with information of every conceivable kind. And yet, we don’t seem to be any more educated in many ways than the average person from several hundred years ago.

As a side note, I read an interesting post on twitter here, that makes the point about how all of the breakthroughs surrounding AI are essentially simply a synthesizing of all of the information that has been created by human beings, and put out onto the internet. It’s not really creating anything new, and without all of the information created by human beings, it would be completely worthless. It’s basically curating all this information, reassembling it into new forms, and making it accessible in a simple, easy to use way. He says “The real genius behind AI is not the machine itself, but the centuries of intellectual free exchange that made its intelligence possible.”

But that’s another topic for another day. Back to my main point. The point is that there are massive amounts of amazing information available to virtually everyone alive today that has access to an internet connection. But somehow, as a society, we seem to be more ignorant than ever in many ways. So the obvious question is why, with all the information that is available to us, are we still so ignorant? I won’t even try to answer that question, because there are obviously dozens of reasons that could be given, and it’s probably a combination of lots of them.

I have found, however, that there seems to be a cheat code that a lot of people haven’t really figured out yet, but is really obvious after you recognize it. And that cheat code is creating a shortcut to wisdom by tapping into the minds of people you respect and admire. Instead of reinventing the wheel, why not tap into all of the work that has already been done by people you admire? Why not ask them what books they read that had the biggest influence on their thinking and their world views. After all, they didn’t come up with their worldview, their habits, their knowledge on their own. They got it from other people and their ideas as well. So, by reading the top 5-10 books that have influenced them the most, you’re very likely to understand them a whole lot better and begin to develop the same pattern recognition that they’ve developed over time.

If this is true, then another obvious question becomes “what type of person do I admire and would I want to emulate?” This is another area where our society seems to have gone off the rails. Our society admires lots of people and traits that seem far from admirable. Our society is saturated with the idea that success is measured by wealth, status, power, popularity, etc., etc. What you virtually never hear about in our society is admiration for people who value truth, integrity, and character. I’ve asked quite a few people over the years to name the top 5 people who they most admire from throughout history, not including anyone they know personally. It usually results in some blank stares and a lot of “hmmm…I’ve never really thought about that.” Which is kind of amazing if you think about it. After all, without a goal, how on earth does one create strategies and tactics to achieve anything worthwhile? Try it sometime and see what the response is.

Another way of thinking about this topic, which is a little easier, is to break life down into different aspects and then find a person or persons who are really excellent at each aspect and try to emulate them. People are good at different things, and rarely are they good at everything. So you might want to emulate different people at different points in life or when facing different challenges in life. So whether it’s financial, spiritual, physical, relational, etc., areas you’re trying to work on, maybe different people and ideas are appropriate at different times in your life.

But I also think that, in some ways, this evades the more important, original question, of who do you really admire. Because, after all, a huge part of building a successful life is being able to balance all of these different aspects of life in a way that leads to the life that you really admire.

One statement I’ve heard repeatedly is “don’t ever take advice from an unhappy person.” It seems really simple, and maybe it’s not entirely true, but there is definitely something to the idea. You could express the same concept in many other ways. For example:

  • Don’t ever take professional advice from someone who isn’t respected.
    • Don’t ever take relationship advice from someone who isn’t loved.
      • Don’t ever take financial advice from someone who is broke.
        • Etc., etc.

All of this leads back to another, even more important question. And that is “what is man’s earthly purpose in life?”

That is way too complicated a question to address in this post, but it begs the question of if you can’t answer that question, how could you possibly decide what strategies or tactics to pursue in living life? I think if individuals in our society would take this question seriously, we would make a whole lot more progress than we’ve been making.

So, what is the point of this entire post? I guess it’s just an apology to the reader for most of my posts. The reality is that virtually all of my posts will just be pointing out one tiny little idea, either through a video link, a podcast, an article, or some other tidbit of information, that I find fascinating. You may or may not find it interesting and/or helpful because of where you’re at in life and the experiences you’ve had.

Life is complicated. If there is anything that I’ve learned from studying Austrian Economics, religion, history, politics, and science, it’s that life is incredibly complex and as human beings we’re way more confident than we ought to be in assuming that we understand complex concepts. Just one example is that we’re REALLY bad at separating causation from correlation. Another example is Hayek’s knowledge in society problem.

But with the information overload that we’re all facing day to day, I think it can really be helpful to step back and think less in terms of “what are the right answers?” and more along the lines of “what are the right questions?”.

“What is my ultimate purpose in life” and “who are the five people I most admire” can be helpful to anyone. And after you’ve given them some thought, a great life hack is to find our how those people who you admire got to where they are now. Wherever their ideas came from, you would probably do well to pursue those same sources of information.

Anyway, it’s just a thought. Like I said at the beginning, it’s an idea that probably has already been described much better and clearer somewhere else. But maybe it can be helpful to someone, somewhere, sometime. And if not, hey, at least I’ve tried to provide more information for the AI to sort thru, digest, and spit out in another form…;)

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Freedom and progress…

Posted on February 17, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

“However little it may often appear to be true, the social world is governed in the long run by certain moral principles on which the people at large believe. The only moral principle which has ever made the growth of an advanced civilization possible was the principle of individual freedom, which means that the individual is guided in his decisions by rules of just conduct and not by specific commands.”

“No principle of collective conduct which bind the individual can exist in a society of free men. What we have achieved we owe to securing to the individuals the chance of creating for themselves a protected domain (their property) within which they can use their abilities for their own purposes.”

 – Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty Vol. 3 [1979]

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Financial nihilism…

Posted on February 6, 2025 by It's a Learning Problem

Because things happen so gradually in politics and finance, sometimes one needs to step back and look at the big picture. Having followed financial markets for over 30 years, I’d like to think I’ve learned a few things and have gotten somewhat better at pattern recognition in markets.  I find myself increasingly amazed at the amount of madness that I’m seeing in markets, and at the acceleration in the pace of the madness.

I remember the dot-com bubble in the late nineties, the subsequent Nasdaq collapse, with the tech-laden Nasdaq down over 80% from peak to trough.  I remember 9/11 and the dip in markets as the world got used to the idea of a GWOT.  I remember very clearly the housing market dip in 2008-2009, and the large drawdown in global stock markets.  And then of course, we had the big panic drawdown and immediate bounce back up during Covid.

Each of these episodes were met with massive amounts of money printing.  Each episode saw the Fed pump money back into a system that badly needed a market-clearing liquidation of malinvestments.  And each episode led to even more delusional expectations by market participants.

But what I’m realizing more and more clearly, is that we’re in a period of what I’ve heard several commentators describe as “Financial Nihilism.” When I look around, I see a kind of nihilism regarding the economy that I’ve never seen before in my lifetime. There are lots of different things that lead me to that description, and it’s hard to tell where they begin and end at. The most obvious symptom of the disease is the absolute madness of cryptocurrencies. Now, to be clear, cryptocurrencies are not the disease itself, but rather just the most obvious manifestation of the disease. The roots of the disease are much, much deeper. I believe it could be tracked all the way back to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, and it has clearly accelerated since delinking the dollar from gold in 1971. This is the most obvious precursor to the madness of financial nihilism that we’re seeing now, but it doesn’t begin to explain the entire problem.

Demitri Kofinas and Grant Williams did an excellent podcast on the topic recently. Normally, Grant’s podcasts are behind a paywall, but this episode is available without a subscription. Their discussion, and virtually all the points that they made completely resonated with me. I was already thinking of doing a post on financial nihilism before I heard it, but listening to their conversation crystalized in my mind that financial nihilism is a real thing.

One of the things they discussed is how there have been absolutely no consequences for bad behavior for anyone in government or financial markets since at least the Gulf War II.  America has been essentially lawless on the global stage ever since, bullying the world through foreign policy blunders and financial intervention without any introspection whatsoever. George W. Bush’s idiotic invasion of Iraq after the September 11th attacks, and his childish economic policies incentivizing Americans to spend money and save the economy after the attacks were one symptom among many. The Fed’s completely irresponsible money printing and enabling ridiculous government spending was much closer to the core of the problem.

Bailing out all the banks and markets during the 2008 financial crisis was an absolute crime against the American people. Anyone even slightly familiar with basic economics should have been absolutely outraged at how the biggest gamblers on Wall Street were bailed out with taxpayer money, all the while continuing with paying bonuses and claiming that they were saving the “little guy.” It was all such a travesty and a farce; and yet they did it with an air of total arrogance and contempt for anyone who questioned the fairness of their farcical behavior.

I personally believe that was a tipping point which led to a realization by many people that the system was rigged and to the realization that the system was completely lawless. No consequences would face those whose reckless, greedy behavior almost brought the entire system down. The total lack of accountability opened the floodgates of egregiously reckless behavior that we’ve seen ever since in markets.

The rise of cryptocurrencies has taken this nihilism to an entirely new level. What was initially viewed by some as a way to seperate money from the control of corrupt and reckless government money-printing, an admirable goal, and one I completely support, quickly devolved into the absolute opposite of everything it was supposed to represent. What was once a totally decentralized payment system, free from any government intervention, and intended to be used as a currency, has devolved into an industry that is in bed with government lobbyists, kissing up to Wall Street, printing massive amounts of pure garbage coins, and nothing but get-rich-quick gambling tokens.

The fact that the entire cryptocurrency “space” is a total fraud, and how incredibly obvious it is that it is fraud, is mind-blowing. People who should know better have either completely abandoned their moral compass as they participate in these schemes, or they simply never really understood the most basic concepts of finance. I’m not entirely sure which it is. As the saying goes, they are either knaves or fools. I’m honestly not sure which is worse.

The effect on the younger generation of “investors” has been incredibly destructive. It has promoted every negative impulse that inexperienced investors are prone to and will end disastrously for most. Cryptocurrencies are the most flagrant example of money-for-nothing, reckless gambling, greater-fool Ponzi promotions that the world has ever seen. Even worse than the fact that it is literally a negative-sum gambling technology, is the fact that its effect on young people morally and ethically is perverse and destructive. The entire culture of YOLO and FOMO are the antithesis of what capitalism is supposed to stand for. The “get-rich-quick without any productive effort” mentality of crypto makes a mockery of the vital concept of time preference and delayed gratification that is essential to the development of character in young people.  When it all crashes and burns, capitalism will be blamed for the carnage and the demands for more regulation and more socialism will ring out across the land.

Private Equity is another perversity of the easy money Fed money printing era. The amount of damage being done by private equity to the soundness of the economy is disgusting. Buying up companies, strip-selling assets, loading up the balance sheets with unpayable debts, while paying out massive bonuses to the rapacious PE denizens is a disgrace, and weakens capitalism as well.

Stock markets, bond markets, and real estate markets being fueled by easy money are also symptoms of the disease.

There’s a reason it’s being called the “everything bubble”.  By any kind of historic measurement, we’re living in the granddaddy of bubbles.  Reading financial history informs us of what bubbles have looked like in the past.  Nothing that I’ve read even comes close to the kind of universal delusion that I’m seeing in markets right now. The amount of prosperity caused by the past century of capital markets is incredible.  So, it’s difficult to have a sound perspective about what is real and what isn’t real in this economy. Periods of history, in hindsight, seem to pass swiftly, and the bubbles look so obvious in hindsight, but when you’re living in the midst of one, time seems to stand still.

It is all going to end really, really, badly. The worst part is that our culture has descended into a lawless, money-is-all-that-matters kind of nihilism. Easy money has led to a kind of apathy regarding community and personal responsibility. This has led to an explosion in the  size and scope of government which is growing rapaciously in every area of our lives. From education to medicine, from the military to retirement savings, and from the media to technology, government has exploded in size and has taken on an increasingly overbearing role in every part of our lives.

I think the thing that sums it all up for me is that even Donald Trump, the man who half the country is hoping will “drain the swamp” is so obviously in on the grift. Less than 24 hours before being inaugurated into the Presidency, he issues his own meme coin, a meme coin where anyone can essentially bribe his administration by funneling funds into it and benefiting the Donald. What an absolute farce of complete corruption. Any thinking person should be able to see by this one action alone, Trump has absolutely no intention of cleaning up the swamp. It is sickening to watch the Republic implode, but I truly believe that is what is going to happen. We’re headed to a very dark place with the path that we’re on. Any sense of civic duty seems to have been virtually abandoned by the populace, and they view even Trump’s blatant corruption with his meme-coin as humorous. I don’t find it humorous at all. I find it disgusting, contemptible, and quite frankly, frightening.

I don’t know if our society lost its morals first, which then led to this money printing and financial nihilism, or if the money printing led to our loss of morals. But one thing is for certain: this is not going to end well.

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the financial delusion is that young people, kids who are struggling already, are “investing” what little valuable capital that they have into ephemeral mirages of wealth like crypto. It is difficult to understand how, at a time when all of history screams to get into hard assets that can survive chaos, the public is most enamored with the biggest Ponzi in all of history. Gold, on the other hand, is derided by most of the “crypto bros” as a pet rock. The one asset that has outlasted every financial panic and collapse in history is considered a dinosaur by the “in” crowd. This is hubris on a grand scale.

But, enough bloviating by me. Grant and Demitri do a much better job of describing the financial nihilism here…

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-grant-williams-podcast-ep-90-demetri-kofinas-full/id1508585135?i=1000688999784

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