Of Two Minds

Stocks don’t vanish when sold; somebody owns the shares all the way to the bottom. These owners who refuse to sell because they have convinced themselves the next dip will be the hoped-for resumption of the bullish trend are called “bagholders.” Trends are tricky.

The solutions will come not from those profiting from inequality and scarcity but from relocalizing “money” and production to create degrowth community economies. We think we understand “money”–we don’t. We think the current versions of “money” are the final versions–they aren’t. Understanding “money” requires some heavy-lifting, but it’s important, so let’s dig in.

Our control is what’s irreplaceable. Wealth, status and the illusory security of dependency chains cannot replace control. What’s our personal strategy for navigating tumultuous times? I’ve long advocated controlling as much as you can. We don’t control the availability of fuel and food from far away, or the government’s policies.

This desire for compliance and consensus dooms the autocracy to failure and collapse because dissent is the essence of evolutionary churn and adaptation..The various flavors of autocracy (theocracy, kleptocracy, dictatorship, etc.) look remarkably successful at first blush but they all share a fatal flaw. To understand the flaw we must start with the dominant dynamic of all organisms, natural selection.

The financialization of healthcare started two generations ago and is now in a run-to-fail feedback loop of insolvency. Long-time readers know I have been critical of U.S. healthcare for over a decade.When I use the term sickcare this is not a reflection on the hard work of frontline caregivers–it is a reflection of the financialization incentives that have distorted the system’s priorities and put it on a path to insolvency.

All this decay is so incremental that nobody thinks it possible that it could ever accumulate into a risk that threatens the entire system.The funny thing about risk is the risk that everyone sees isn’t the risk that blows up the system.