Neo, Call the Architect

Another history of "civilization" in one paragraph...

Where I’m going with this: I wonder if money itself must undergo an inevitable cycle of decay just like a well-written constitution. Money organically comes into being through indirect trade. Self-interest eventually leads to some cabal of diabolical fruitcakes turning the medium of exchange into a mechanism of burdening the trusting and naïve with debt, warfare, and servitude. The system grows like a cancer until the ghost of Murray Rothbard flushes the big economic toilet, fire and brimstone falls from the sky, dogs and cats live together, and back to the barter system we go for those able to sit the whole thing out. A system of slavery, controlled collapse, some other ugly unmentionable stuff, and then back to square one. Neo, call the Architect. I think he’s about to press the reset button.

Read that paragraph again. I think it's worth it.



Full essay.