Even nowadays any gold coin has no useful value for day to day stuff. “functionally no one used gold in any amount in every-day transactions in the ancient or medieval Mediterranean (or most other places!), because a gold coin at… Read More »Collections: Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy ‘Gold’
Probably not how you think.
Even famous scientist can argue badly. “The idea that the Haber-Bosch process has “brought nothing like shared prosperity” is an absolutely wild claim. Nitrogen fertilizers are so important to human existence that by the most common estimates, about half of… Read More »Book review: “Power and Progress”
And is it really?
Central planning does not work.
Information rules. “The clergy was generally educated. They knew, among other things, the local vernacular, latin, and could read. Since the commoners didn’t speak Latin anymore, they couldn’t read the Bible directly, so the clergy became gatekeepers of the relationship… Read More »Internet and Blockchain Will Kill Nation-States
Search currents matter. “And this is why sushi is the most Japanese type of food. It’s where rice meets fish: the rice from the continent, migrating from south to north through the islands, and increasing the population through rice farming… Read More »Why Is Japan So Populated Despite So Little Land?
This is crazy. “Tokyo contains 30% of Japan’s population, yet it has been the capital of Japan for less than 200 years, and had just ~60k people around 1600! Yet by 1700, it might already have been the biggest city… Read More »How Earthquakes Made the Biggest City in the World
Why don’t we? “It would be much cheaper and healthier to drop iron in the ocean and harvest the fish than to have millions of square kilometers of pasture for animals like cows. This would allow us then to convert… Read More »Farm the Ocean
What we eat influences how our society works. “Crucially, this labor cannot be delayed—if you miss the planting window or harvest late, the crop is ruined. As a result, rice farmers developed reciprocal labor exchange: neighbors help each other transplant… Read More »How Bread vs Rice Molded History