A left-leaning friend of mine who was big into economics and business (as it was, well, his business) once described our current financial system as having organically and piecemeal emerged bit by bit into a rat’s nest of tangled protocols. And that now it’s ended up as a Gordian knot strangling us to death, but that cutting will kill us.
The whole history of compound interest is quite fascinating. Early arguments for it are that seeds and livestock are capable of reproducing and multiplying themselves. If I lend you a handful of seeds and a year later you give back the exact same size handful, I have lost a whole year’s production I could have gotten out of those seeds.
Furthermore, assuming you actually planted the seeds instead of tucking them away in a drawer somewhere before giving them back later, those seeds produced a crop for you. This crop you could harvest and sell or feed yourself or your family or livestock. You could even save seeds from the harvest and pay me back the handful while keeping even more seeds for yourself. So by lending you seeds interest-free I’m essentially giving you a gift of harvest potential as well even more seeds in the future, at my own expense. Thus is the time value of money.
From this initial seed of an idea grows a huge amount of the financial system.
Was there a time in the past you would have preferred? I grew up in the 90s and I really miss that time period but I don’t think I’d prefer to live at any time before the 20th century over now. As complex and difficult as life is right now, other time periods tended to be much nastier for various reasons.
I admire your optimism! I could easily see us living in a Mad Max situation in 200 years.
One thing I never see people talking about with fossil fuels is that they were a one shot deal in earth’s history, never to be repeated. If global civilization completely collapses (particularly the industrial base) then attempting to start over without fossil fuels could leave us stuck in a 17th century type situation for an extremely long time.
The problem is that renewables just don’t bootstrap. They require huge amounts of minerals which we’ve only been able to mine and process using heavy equipment and manufacturing powered by fossil fuels. Trying to do all that from a minecart-horse-and-pickaxe level of technology isn’t going to work out.
The other major factor is of course all the really easy mineral sources are gone too. Instead of mining directly from the ground we’d be salvaging scrap materials from the mountains of disposable electronics we’re producing right now. That’s where things really start to look like Mad Max.
A left-leaning friend of mine who was big into economics and business (as it was, well, his business) once described our current financial system as having organically and piecemeal emerged bit by bit into a rat’s nest of tangled protocols. And that now it’s ended up as a Gordian knot strangling us to death, but that cutting will kill us.
The whole history of compound interest is quite fascinating. Early arguments for it are that seeds and livestock are capable of reproducing and multiplying themselves. If I lend you a handful of seeds and a year later you give back the exact same size handful, I have lost a whole year’s production I could have gotten out of those seeds.
Furthermore, assuming you actually planted the seeds instead of tucking them away in a drawer somewhere before giving them back later, those seeds produced a crop for you. This crop you could harvest and sell or feed yourself or your family or livestock. You could even save seeds from the harvest and pay me back the handful while keeping even more seeds for yourself. So by lending you seeds interest-free I’m essentially giving you a gift of harvest potential as well even more seeds in the future, at my own expense. Thus is the time value of money.
From this initial seed of an idea grows a huge amount of the financial system.
Yeah, very organic and reasonable growth into a gigantic and incomprehensible beast. Fascinating, but, kind of wish I didn’t have to live through it.
Was there a time in the past you would have preferred? I grew up in the 90s and I really miss that time period but I don’t think I’d prefer to live at any time before the 20th century over now. As complex and difficult as life is right now, other time periods tended to be much nastier for various reasons.
I could skip a good 200 years into the future when hopefully things have already fallen apart and been put back together.
I admire your optimism! I could easily see us living in a Mad Max situation in 200 years.
One thing I never see people talking about with fossil fuels is that they were a one shot deal in earth’s history, never to be repeated. If global civilization completely collapses (particularly the industrial base) then attempting to start over without fossil fuels could leave us stuck in a 17th century type situation for an extremely long time.
The problem is that renewables just don’t bootstrap. They require huge amounts of minerals which we’ve only been able to mine and process using heavy equipment and manufacturing powered by fossil fuels. Trying to do all that from a minecart-horse-and-pickaxe level of technology isn’t going to work out.
The other major factor is of course all the really easy mineral sources are gone too. Instead of mining directly from the ground we’d be salvaging scrap materials from the mountains of disposable electronics we’re producing right now. That’s where things really start to look like Mad Max.