Most people spend their entire lives chasing money without once stopping to ask what it actually is. This is a bit like spending forty years driving a car without ever wondering what an engine does. It works, so why question it? But here is the thing. Money is not what you think it is. It […]
Money is one of those things everyone uses and almost nobody thinks about. Not what to spend it on. What it actually is. We treat it like water from a tap. It flows, we use it, we want more of it. But we rarely ask what the tap is connected to. Now the tap is
Most people think money is a thing. A dollar bill. A number on a screen. Something you earn, spend, save, or lose. But money is not a thing. Money is a verb disguised as a noun. It is an action pretending to be an object. And once you see it that way, everything about finance,
Most people think of debt as a problem. A mistake. Something that happens when you spend more than you have. But here is a thought that might ruin your afternoon: without debt, money itself would not exist. Not a single dollar, euro, or yen. The entire global economy runs not despite debt, but because of
The Debt Paradox: Why Money Cannot Exist Without Someone Being in the Red Read More »
There is a particular kind of person who has a lot of money and very little of anything else. You have met them. They sit across from you at dinner and talk about their portfolio like it is a living thing that needs feeding. They have optimized their entire existence around a number on a
Why You Should Be “Rich” in Everything Except Money Read More »
You can walk into any country on earth, speak none of the language, understand nothing about the local customs, offend every cultural norm within the first five minutes, and still buy a coffee. Think about that. There is no prayer, no greeting, no handshake, no shared story that works as universally as handing someone money.
The God Protocol: How Money Became Our Last Remaining Universal Religion Read More »
Here is a question nobody asks at finance conferences: what if money was not invented to make trade easier? What if it was invented to prevent murder? The standard story goes like this. Once upon a time, people bartered. Bartering was inefficient. So someone invented coins, and commerce was born. It is a clean narrative.
What If Humans Invented Money to Stop Killing Each Other Read More »
There is a certain kind of financial thinker who believes that if you just get the money right, everything else follows. Hard currency. Gold backing. No funny business with the printing press. Get the money “sound” and prosperity becomes inevitable. The Spanish Empire would like a word. For nearly two centuries, Spain controlled the largest
Why Gold Did Not Save the Spanish Empire (And Why It Will Not Save You) Read More »
There is something strange about a country that invented the credit card and then made it a moral failing to not use one. In America, calling someone cheap is roughly equivalent to calling them boring, ungenerous, or worst of all, poor. It is a word that carries weight. Not the weight of financial wisdom, but
Why “Cheap” Is an Insult in America but a Virtue in the Netherlands Read More »
The Same Instinct, Two Different Vehicles Here is something that will bother you once you see it. A software engineer in Stockholm and a software engineer in Austin both do the exact same thing with their money. They take a portion of their income and place it into a system they believe will return more
Why Scandinavians Pay Taxes Like Americans Invest in the S&P 500 Read More »