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An Introduction to Capital Flow
Capital flow, the moving and swelling and shifting of value, is an emergent property of the interaction between humans and money. Wherever we find money, we find dynamics and properties of capital flow, or rather, how money moves. Where the concept of money is absent (as in historical pure-trade economies) there is no fundamental object of money to move, measure or analyze. So, while capital … Continue reading An Introduction to Capital Flow
The Future Smells of Inevitability and Question Marks
Whether or not we are here to experience it, and whether or not you care, the future is inevitably going to happen, and every single moment of that unfolding future will be at least slightly unlike the moment before it, if even in the most minuscule of ways, as nothing in the universe is ever actually still. Thus, from our own vantage point, this inevitable … Continue reading The Future Smells of Inevitability and Question Marks
Antifragility
Herein on “antifragility”: an attempt to integrate within intelligent business design the concept of antifragility with future uncertainty, randomness and other related phenomena probed to humbling depths by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, a volume from an equally compelling collection of his work entitled The Incerto. All of the ideation in this chapter ought to be rightly credited … Continue reading Antifragility
Positive Feedback Loops
Feedback loops are systems where some or all of the system’s output is used again as input. Positive feedback loops are versions of such systems where the process increases, or amplifies, over time. Positive feedback loops are highly destabilizing and they can occur all over the universe at almost every scale of existence. They can be short-term or long-term, but none are ever permanent due … Continue reading Positive Feedback Loops
Capital’s Gravity
Capital, like our too-tricky-to-prove-but-too-critical-to-ignore-quantum-physics-friend the graviton, exhibits certain qualities that have gravitational effects on external parties. Specifically, the more capital that aggregates together, the greater the attractive gravity it has on other external capital (mediated through human decision making). Likewise, the faster capital moves through the channels of a business operation, the more gravity the operation exerts on other capital, so the velocity of capital … Continue reading Capital’s Gravity
Bad Faith
In daily life, of course, there is no avoiding some version of the principal-agent problem: in every instance, who is really acting in whose best interest? Capitalism-as-usual has crafted a vast and complex network of competitive agents fighting for that almighty dollar. In such a system, participants are routinely faced with economic choices wherein it may not be clear whose best interest is being represented. … Continue reading Bad Faith
Patrimonial Capitalism
Patrimonial capitalism is an unfortunately common state of affairs throughout most of capitalism-as-usual’s history. Due to the laws and regulations in the United States, particularly those regarding inheritance, the amount of familial wealth that gets passed down from generation to generation contributes asymmetrically to those who already have it—the haves. In today’s global economy, the haves will always have more since their more will grow … Continue reading Patrimonial Capitalism
Ain’t Nobody Misbehaving
It’s not very contentious to say that the economy is populated largely with humans. If economics is the science and study of how people interact with value, and all people behave irrationally to some extent, or at least on some occasions, then the equations that actually express human behavior must be nonlinear; or, human behavior can only be modeled with equations that are unsolvable. If … Continue reading Ain’t Nobody Misbehaving
The “Purity” of Pure Capitalism
It is important to remember that when capitalism is expressed as “pure” it is to remind that its influence on the system which employs it is unencumbered and unrestricted; its effects (like wealth stratification and environmental degradation-for-profit) are actively realized by participating agents who engage in their own varying degrees of misbehavior. Oftentimes, the idea of capitalism that is used by economists and others is … Continue reading The “Purity” of Pure Capitalism
Phishing for Phools
Phishing—as defined by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller in their book Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception —happens when one economic participant, Party A, knowingly takes economic advantage of another participant, Party B, in a voluntary free market transaction that is specifically harmful to Party B’s financial best interest. Example: Party A sells cheap knockoffs at inflated prices online. Who … Continue reading Phishing for Phools
LOPSIII 