The Mandibles

BY: LIONEL SHRIVER

In one line: Recommended by my brother a couple years ago, one of the best takes on the possible implications of the Modern Monetary Policy (MMT) of the Central Bank (of the last 2 decades) & policies of the Federal Government…don’t think this is a far stretch.

In one more line: Strongly recommend checking out for anyone trying to think deeply about the potential medium & long-term dynamics of our society.

In one last line: A favorite line: Plots that are in the future are about what people fear in the present. The future is the ultimate monster in the closet, the great unknown.

• The one thing NYC was certain to never run out of was homeless people
• If the stone age taught us anything, its that the world can go to hell in a snap. In the little gaps between disasters, might as well try to have fun
• I read newspapers front to back for years. My knowing any of that hasn’t made the slightest difference. I wish I had the time back to be frank.
• People are package deals—you cant separate out who they are and what they are.
• There was nothing astonishing about things not working, things falling apart. Failure & decay were the worlds natural state. What was astonishing was anything that worked for any period of time.
• Shortages & price spikes are caused by destructive National Food Security policies, not by agricultural shortages.
• The Dow has the equivalent of high blood pressure
• Old people…They’re afraid their 401ks will turn into pumpkins. In truth, they’re afraid of dying. Because when you die, the world dies too, at least for you. They assume it will die for everybody. Its a failure of imagination in an inability to conceive the universe without you in it. That’s why they get apocalyptic, because they’re facing apocalypse. The private apocalypse is real. So, the closer their personal oblivion gets, the more certain geriatrics projects impending doom on their surroundings.
• In other words, because she’d made intelligent decisions and prospered as a consequence, she deserved to be punished? That was the lesson the “progressive” American tax system should have taught her long ago.
• Notice how everything seems to go wrong at once? It makes it seem like the failures are connected but they’re not. Its just some sort of “karmic pumping”
• You know gold? Its always ping ponging all over the place. Unless you’re really canny about playing the highs and lows, its a ludicrous investment…hanging on to a decorative metal as an answer to all our prayers is mid-evil. The gold standard was antiquated, sentimental, and superstitious.
• The people forecasting the end of the world, never seem concerned by it, rather delight. Do they think an actual collapse is like a kids birthday party w everyone singing ashes ashes we all fall down?
• Money is emotional because all value is subjective. Money is worth what people feel its worth.
• Economics is closer to religion than science
• To be dutiful without fail, is like taking out emotional insurance
• They’re afraid of more bank runs. When they try to hard to prevent them what they’ll get is more bank runs. Should they ever be so imprudent to let you have your own money again
• Anyone in a position of authority telling you something unpalatable is temporary is a red flag. The quick fix of capital controls can seem so alluring. Look at Cypress, that was supposed to be 4 days and became 2 years
• Who wants to keep funds in a country that confuses a bank account w a bear trap? Once you remove the constraints, the system is broke.
• Since the 70s, the G30 have all been churning out monopoly money as if drawing from a board game
• Federal Reserve established in 1913
• The Dollar sliding to the penny hasn’t been that noticeable bc every other country has been busy doing the same thing, running the printing press on the justification that a junk currency advantages exports. The world is drowning in worthless paper, but America in particular has been getting away w murder playing on the heartbreaking international belief as Treasury bonds as the ultimate safe haven. The blind trust has all the rational hallmarks of theology
• There’s a difference between something bad happening and the system thru which things happen going bad
• Plots that are in the future are about what people fear in the present. The future is the ultimate monster in the closet, the great unknown.
• People who follow the rules are almost always punished.
• Merely needing to be right or wanting to be right doesn’t affect actually being right
• Wealth always pulls people to the right because they can’t help but wanting to keep it.
• Complexity theory — as systems become more complex, the system becomes increasingly unstable (think the straw that breaks the camels back).
• Simply because you see a train coming doesn’t mean it cant broad side your car.
• Governments always rob their people, except usually they do it a little at a time. Maybe its better if they do it all at once, at least then you know where you stand.
• Book burning is the end of civilization.
• They both lived in a world that was forever provisional, the ground soft beneath them.
• Rumors are free, they spread themselves, policing by propaganda is a money saver.
• “Continentals” – the original currency of the colonial states, backed by nothing.
• I-80 was made to run along the Oregon Trail & the TransContinental.
• People are drawn to what they’re not
• Don’t you remember what the government does? They take your money and give it to someone old
• Eventually, all social democracies end up at the same tipping point, half the country depends on the other half
• The government becomes a pricey clumsy inefficient mechanism for transferring wealth from the people who do things to those who dont, and from the young to the old, which is the wrong direction
• Freedom is a feeling, not just a list of things you’re allowed to do.