Every so often, things fall apart.
In the words of those who lived it, here are the vibes and the semantic signatures of the twentieth century’s most devastating social collapses.
From the meaning in their words, wisdom for our future emerges.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
The cure for the cancer of gun culture and police culture is not to be found in reform laws around guns and police, but in reform ideas around culture, ideas that create a new dimension of American society that rejects LARPing and LARPers alike.
Inflation
What made Bitcoin special is nearly lost, and what remains is a false and constructed Narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance.
The Bitcoin narrative must be renewed. And that will change everything.
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Crypto
Recent Notes
Mailbag: By Our Own Petard
We’ve gotten a lot of responses and thoughts on By Our Own Petard, so we thought we would talk about some of them in another Mailbag feature.
Presented Without Comment
Regardless of your personal views pro or con, if you don’t see that a powerful narrative backlash is forming against corporate management enrichment, you’re just not paying attention.
Hyakujos Fox
ET contributor Demonetized creates his own koan in this very personal note.
Is morality socially constructed through a process where biological systems are socially conditioned to respond in particular ways to particular stimuli, or is morality an innate moral compass manifested in Kantian ethics?
Yes.
Our Dumb World
Sometimes you really have to wonder how on earth an article makes its way into the Zeitgeist. Sometimes it’s best not to know.
A Cycle of Addiction
Negative rates create a cycle of addiction to even more negative rates in the future.
Why? Because captive buyers like pension funds require capital appreciation to make up for negative yield, so central banks must guarantee a commitment to still more negative yields.
New from ET contributor Pete Cecchini!
The Rent Is Too Damn Low
It’s so weird that everyone who would throw an unholy temper tantrum at – gasp! – rent-controlled apartments is just fine with rent-controlled money.
“Yay, crumbs!”
By Our Own Petard
Fiduciary standards, prudent man rules and client sensibilities compel us toward fervent pursuit of “alignment.” There’s just one little problem: we can never be aligned with our agents.
Office Hours – 11.19.2019
It’s the November 19th, 2019 edition of Office Hours! Be sure to join Ben and Rusty for a discussion of all things narrative in the world of politics and markets.
Sneak Preview
A sneak preview of the FT Markets piece to be published later this week, with my original language and the math on Microsoft’s 10-K.
We’re never going to eliminate the agency problem, and the dealer deserves a proper rake. But we better start making this casino fairer to shareholders and less of a wealth transfer engine to the managerial 1%. Or someone is going to burn the casino down.
OK, Boomer
I’m a fan of FedEx the company and Fred Smith the founder. I think they are both crown jewels of Western capitalism.
But if I hear another lecture from Fred Smith and his fellow billionaires on trickle-down tax cuts and the “benefits to the United States economy, especially lower and middle class wage earners”, I’m going to lose it.
The Rake
Jamie Dimon is the rake.
Bye, Alexa…
To receive a free full-text email of The Zeitgeist whenever we publish to the website, please sign up here. You’ll get two or three of these emails every…
The Age of the High-Functioning Sociopath
I’m old enough to remember when Donald Trump, the President-elect of the United States, and Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank, had an impromptu press conference in the Trump Tower lobby to trumpet the FIFTY THOUSAND JOBS and FIFTY BILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT that Softbank would be bringing to the US.
All based on a powerpoint deck.
When Was I Radicalized? (Boeing edition)
I think it’s impossible to separate management self-enrichment through stock-based comp from the practice of stock buybacks.
The Return of the Rotation Missionaries
The missionaries are out, and guess what? They want you to do a lot of trading and portfolio repositioning. How thoughtful!
The Road to Reykjavík
Today’s Zeitgeist brought back a blast from the past, an early encounter with the distinction between narrative and other, more common, measures of what the crowd thinks.
Yeah, It’s Still Water
One day we will recognize the defining Zeitgeist of the Obama/Trump years as an unparalleled transfer of wealth to the managerial class.
Guest Post – A Conservative’s Take on The Pack
Every now and then we come across an article or blog post that’s directly relevant to what we’re trying to say on Epsilon Theory, but is too big and thoughtful to be carved up for a Mailbag note or Zeitgeist post.
Make / Protect / Teach is a Big Tent.
Office Hours – 10.22.2019
In which Ben and Rusty discuss the three Ps of the narrative of a functioning government – and why their cartoons are being stretched to the limit.
The Stereogram
The NBA, Blizzard and others are in hot water after kowtowing to the Chinese government. America will have forgotten about both within weeks. But the awareness of just how long the CCP’s reach has become? That can’t be unseen.