/terminal corp evolution 2020 Q4

2020 Q4


Some mental models reviewed this quarter.


Inflation

  • Why do human rights advocates never care or comment on inflation?!

    "When Money Dies"
  • As one’s financial and social position slid away, patriotism, social obligations and morals slid away with it. The ethic cracked. Want and loss of status leads to the fall of ethical standards.
  • Whereas the lower classes with the further goad of unemployment might turn to theft and similar crimes or to prostitution, the middle and upper classes under a different kind of strain would resort to graft and fraud, both bribing and bribable. Once bribery was the norm, by definition normal people resorted to it, the more so in the months of abject scarcity.

    "Bitcoin is Hope"
  • Eliminating infla¬tion imparts more freedom and hope for humanity.
  • Artificial price infla¬tion is desta¬bi¬lizing. Natural price defla¬tion is civilizing.
  • Bitcoin is the truth of money disrupting the false¬hood of central banking.

  • Golden Age
  • Innovation in public companies is not priced in.

    "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages"
  • However similar or varied, the process of social assimilation of a technological revolution shapes and adapts the environment and the economy so that, when it is done, there is near complete coherence between all spheres of society. It becomes the reign of a particular paradigm to the point where it is believed to be universal common sense and becomes unconscious and invisible.
  • The full assimilation of a technological revolution and its techno-economic paradigm occurs when society has accepted its common sense, put in place the appropriate regulatory framework and other institutions, and learned to gear the new potential to its ends.

    "Debt is coming"
  • We could be around the corner from a technological golden age, where software and the internet can get massively deployed in a production-forward way. The world wants this so badly. And we’re almost there.
  • Furthermore, we’ve entered the “let a thousand flowers bloom” era of online companies. A new generation of small businesses has learned to take full advantage of software and the internet, understands their customers, and knows how to put capital to work serving them.

  • American Leadership
  • Still waiting for a younger (~40yrs olds) leader to rise to the occasion.

    "Annual Open Letter to the People of Purdue from Mitch Daniels" [MD=71yrs old]
  • History will judge, and may judge harshly, many of the choices various leaders made during 2020. It’s undeniable that fearsome prices have been paid for actions taken to address everyone’s first priority, the health of the public. Other harms to human health – increased opioid deaths, deaths from postponed medical care and screening, mental health damage including suicide, and many others – are already being clearly documented. The economic wreckage to countless lives will in many cases be irrecoverable. And the harm to young people from interrupted education also looks to be tragic.
  • We say only, as we did eight months ago, that it is right, in fact it is our duty, to try, so try we will.

    "President Biden Inaugural Address" [JB=78yrs old]
  • And we'll lead not merely by the example of our power but the power of our example.