Category: Reading

Note: This was a fantastic read and I would highly recommend. It helped make sense of so many American cultural oddities. I would highly recommend, especially in conjunction with study of early American history or other mid-millennial study.

• “Piece rate” does not always improve performance because some people just want enough money to survive
• “The Calling” was introduced with Protestantism and pushes religion into daily life
  • Protestantism pushed for people to be confident in the “specialism” or it would be a lack of faith
• Judaism introduced “ethical prophesier” in which the leader needs to exemplify the teachings
  • (Christianity extended this with notion of the leader being in a pseudo-perfected or divine state)
• Eastern kinship helped reduce individual “excellence”
• Double-entry bookkeeping was invited in Europe, allowing Capitalism to have accounting
• (In many monarch-controlled, European countries, it was taboo for Christians to charge interest, but Jews were encouraged to fill this monetary gap; even to the point where the Crown would provide funds, assuming they got a cut of the earnings)
• Only Europe had chemistry
  • (Probably a progression of all the obsession over alchemy)
• Capitalism: “Expectation for profit by the utilization of opportunities for exchange”
• There has to be a comparison between operations and earnings; something more than “I walked in with 100 coins and walked out with 110”
• Separation of business from residence helped deepen roots business-centered roots
• The West has a rational contemplation that the East did not; there were very few patronized philosophers
• Western society had lots of unique layers (peasants, serfs, indentured servants, slaves) to make class changes a possibility
• Protestants replaced Catholic’s absolute rule with the looser rule of smaller, less organized churches
• “Either eat well or sleep well”
  • Catholics prefer to eat well (immediate reward) where protestants prefer to sleep well (delay reward)
• The Inquisition noted that the heretics strongly encouraged trade
  • (When you are small, you have to trade to stay alive. Also, the Catholic church help drive trade across the realms)
• Capitalism cannot make use the labor of those who practice arbitrary labor, it needs them to have direction and purpose
• “The people only work so long as they are poor”
  • (or at least feel poor)
• The notion of a calling (a life work) was new to language in general and so more strongly embraced by protestants
• The Old Testament enforces the notion of letting each live their own life
• An economic emphasis was in part a reality of the reformation
• Fore-ordination helped to enforce both the specialness of each person and the inevitability of success
  • ‘God made me special and has fore-ordained my success, so I might as well try’
• Social activity is commanded because God values it
  • “Brotherly love” can only be used for God’s will, not for pleasure
  • There is value is doing work that you do not love… enter “employment”
• One must hold fast to the notion that they are Called
• Salvation can either be through being a vessel of the Holy Spirit (mysticism; Luther) or the Tool of the Divine Will (ascetic action; Calvin)
  • “Works rid us of the fear of damnation” rather than “buy our way into heaven”
  • Labor is for the purpose of being known by its work
• Calvin believed it was the Members’ charge to bring all into compliance with the law
  • Works are not the cause but the evidence of conversion and blessing
• The Saints’ rest is in the next life, not this one (delayed gratification)
• Idleness is the most offensive sin
  • (This was particularly relevant in small communities that abandoned the Catholic church, think American colonies, where idleness could lead to the whole community dying)

• Defaults are a regular part of the cycle
• Over time, currency has been moving away from assets to fiat
• Those more likely to default also tend to borrow more
• Governments can choose how to restructure their debt where companies cannot
• Additionally, there is no real way to force a government to repay
• Serial defaults are common in every region
• A lost war is the surest indicator of a pending default
• Modern defaults are shorter and don’t usually involve challenges to sovereignty
• Internal defaults are nearly as common as external defaults
• Internal and external defaults are associated with very different recovery behaviors
• Banking crisis strikes all countries, including advanced ones
• The Great Recession was the epitome of “This time is different”
• Crisis debt is more related to lower revenue and higher interest payments than recapitalizing the system
• “The stock market has predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions.”

• DOJ lost credibility after Enron, with a run of failed cases
• Prosecution needs to happen quickly, before the trail goes cold
• Task forces can run fast but lack context and roots
• Arthur Anderson literally resulted in the notion of “Too Big To Fail”
• Non-criminal cases have to prove intent
• Sporken used consent decrees to force companies to do their own auditing and oversight
• Accountants can be duped, like anyone else
• “The company could not go to jail.”
• Grand juries stopped being used as an evidence gathering tool
• Gresham’s law: Copper coins drive out good gold ones

• Happy people don’t need to remind themselves they are happy
• The more you focus on what you lack, the more you feel bad for your lack
• You only have so much time and energy to care about things
• Not caring does not mean being indifferent
• Find stuff you want to deal with
• “Finding something meaningful might be the most important thing to do in your life”
• Sometimes, it is okay for things to not be okay
• Suffering is biologically necessary to drives us to change
• Happiness comes from solving problems
• Negative emotions are a reminder that something is wrong
• Question your emotions
• “What pain do you want to sustain?” (what are you willing to fight to get)
• “The true measure of self-worth is how a person feels about their failures.”
• “Measure yourself by more mundane identities”; this gives up your entitlements and the high bar
• Ask if you are wrong about your assumptions
  • “What would it mean if I were wrong?”
  • “Would being wrong create a better or worse problem for myself or others?”
  • It is more likely you are wrong rather than everyone else
• “VCR questions” because the answer is easy to everyone else
• “Learn to sustain the pain you’ve chosen”
• You don’t know anything, so what is there to lose
• When you don’t know what to do, just do something
• “Inspiration is a reward, not a prerequisite”
• Honesty builds trust
• Our character comes from what we choose to reject
• Entitled people take responsibility for others instead of themselves
• Ask how the relationship would change if you refused
  • If something bad would happen then there are issues in the relationship
• Conflict helps us to learn who we can trust
• Commitments frees you by limiting your options
• Greatness and success are different

• China focuses on an “Engineering state” while the US is a “Lawyer state”
• Lawyers have spread throughout the US economy, even pushing out economists
• Law focuses on procedures over outcome
• China provides very few social services
• Because planning is already done, funding can be deployed really quickly
• Smartphones create so many spare components that new things can be fashioned cheaply and easily
• China’s tech advances have surged
• It is difficult to maintain know-how without running people through the process
• Forced technology transfers actually hurt local firms because they don’t develop the experience of researching
• The US likes to claim invention but usually seeds manufacturing to others
• China took infrequent, imprecise census making it difficult to manage the population
• The shortages that led up the One Child Policy were caused by socialism, not population
• The rich are leaving China because of the government whiplash
• Engineering state is better at stockpiling
• China is trying to be more like Germany than the US
• DOGE should focus on reducing processes instead of personnel
• The US needs to re-embrace its engineering roots
• “Developing [nation]” is a term to embrace with pride