Category Archives: Economy

A society’s well being is directly calibrated to its adherence to the brain standard.

The world is moving towards multipolarity. One axis, the West, is led by the U.S., the other—Eurasia and the global south—by Russia and China. Ukraine currently serves as a cauldron of the military conflict between the two axes. Taiwan may become a second such cauldron.

Through sanctions, the West has made economic and financial warfare a part of the conflict. The longest arrow in the U.S.’s quiver is the dollar’s reserve currency status. Western economies are based on credit. Central banks serve as the focal point of fiat debt issuance and monetization, interest rate manipulation, and currency debasement. Russia, China, and their cohorts are exploring alternatives to the dollar’s role and the West’s fiat currency, debt, and financialization, discussing arrangements based on gold and commodities, and economic activity centered on agriculture, mining, petroleum, manufacturing, and trade.

It’s a common sense conclusion that these are a more durable economic foundation than fiat debt, whose value is wholly dependent on the ever-shifting whims of politicians and monetary functionaries. Several commentators have hailed the shift away from the West’s fiat currencies and credit to that which is tangible and real. Currently, however, Russia and China’s currencies and credit are just as fiat as the West’s.

Oil was as tangible and real in 1600 as it is now. Why was it regarded as a useless nuisance back then and now it trades at around $76 (or about 1/24th of an ounce of real money, or gold) per barrel? What made oil valuable, the linchpin of the global economy, for which countries have been invaded and wars fought? Somebody figured out how to unlock and control oil’s energy and use it to generate light and power, and to distill it to derive chemicals now used in everything from fertilizers and plastics to pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

Direct barter is the means of exchange in primitive economies. Money is the intermediary agent that allows a producer to indirectly trade his or her production for someone else’s, to the benefit of both parties. Gold’s suitability as money has been recognized for millennia. Credit allows those who consume less than they produce to invest their surplus in economic activity that generates returns higher than the interest charged.

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There is no mystery what the best and brightest seek: freedom to think, express, and produce; protection of property and contract rights; security from crime and war. The conundrum is how few times those conditions have even come close to being fulfilled. They stand out like isolated lighthouses, beacons shining through history’s all-too-frequent darkness and tempest tossed seas. There are no such beacons today; the world shuns the brain standard.

It is the human mind and productive activity that imparts value to oil, gold, and credit. The mind is the fountainhead of human progress and wealth. The world has always run on the brain standard. A society’s well being is directly calibrated to its adherence to that standard. Its requirements are not conceptually complicated, but throughout history its sporadic implementation has proven problematic.