Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts pioneer. (RT/Fav/Follow does not imply endorsement). Blog: https://t.co/zZ7lTyOrtS
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Apr 5, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Per fatality, the number of life-years lost is far lower for covid-19 than it was for the 2009 H1N1. In terms of life-years the latter may have been as severe in the U.S. as the 1968 Hong Kong flu.
statnews.com/2019/06/11/h1n…
Older people have weaker immune systems & more comorbidities, so tend to succumb disproportionately to pandemics. Covid-19 is an extreme example because 97-99% of the time it kills only people with comorbidities.
Aug 17, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
What do Brexit and Hong Kong separatism have in common? They are the latest manifestations of the deep, centuries-long separation between common law and Roman (civil) law.
swarajyamag.com/world/how-brex…
The EU and the Chinese Communist government operate under the civil law tradition, which included Prussian Law and the Code Napoleon. It originates in Roman imperial law, which included the maxim "the emperor's will is law."
Aug 17, 2019 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Shallow safety vs. deep safety:
Shallow: estimated from volatility, assumes nothing goes wrong at lower layers of the protocol stack
Deep: what happens to your assets upon underlying failures? e.g. how would your digitally centralized assets fare against sanctions or cyberwar?
Digitally centralized assets have poor deep safety. They were designed in & only work in a legally stable environment.
Real estate & gold have deeper safety, assuming strong local security.
Trust-minimized Bitcoin uses computer science to achieve unprecedentedly deep safety.
Aug 11, 2019 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
The exploration explosion took European navigation from the stay-on-known-routes affair common since ancient times to discovering new routes across the world's oceans & recording them for posterity. unenumerated.blogspot.com/2012/10/dead-r…
It gave them access to almost every culture on earth.
Europe's advanced metallurgy, glass-making, and precision techniques allowed them to mass produce things that in most other cultures were far more scarce. Their tools and techniques would become even more advanced during the subsequent centuries of the industrial revolutions.
Mar 14, 2019 • 13 tweets • 8 min read
The two main kinds of agriculture were grain-dominated stationary & nomadic pastoral. Over several centuries preceding & during the industrial revolution, some regions of northwestern Europe developed a third kind of ag that combined the best of each: stationary pastoralism. /1
This thread shows some of the results. By the 19th and early 20th centuries, city traffic in northwestern Europe was uniquely dominated by horses supplied by hay and grain fodder from stationary pastoral hinterlands:
/2
Mar 10, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Principles of biological scalability, especially the principle of the minimum en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27…
along with principles of social scalability unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/07/hampto… unenumerated.blogspot.com/2017/02/money-…
explain some of the most important patterns of history. /1
Applying the Sprengel/Liebig principle of the minimum to human food production & nutrition, a society can be protein-rich, and thus limited by its carbohydrate & fat intake (i.e. calorie-limited), or it can be rich in carbohydrates or fats, thus limited by its protein intake. /2
Mar 6, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Economic history has been dominated by basics: growing food & fuel, mating & child rearing, fighting wars, clothing & shelter, worrying about afterlife. Occasionally there have been major agricultural surpluses, which have been spent in a bizarre variety of ways (thread) /1
Agricultural surpluses have been spent on military parades, crown jewels, tall cathedrals, vast priesthoods, gigantic tombs, arrays of monoliths, treasure fleets, moon shots, & a dizzying variety of other things. /2
Jul 24, 2018 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
George is a fellow OG but this is wrong. Bitcoin is seamlessly global, it does not and need not conform to the ideological speculations ("macroeconomic theories") of particular polities.
Dr. Selgin was on the mailing list with Wei Dai and myself where in 1998 cryptocurrency (bit gold, and a bit later b-money) was invented. His description of free banking was very inspirational and informative.
Jun 26, 2018 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
Biological scalability is the ability to support a larger, denser, and/or wealthier population in a given ecosystem.
Farming was the big breakthrough in biological scalability. Less obvious but still very important were advances in hygiene, such as the use of boiled water (as herbal or proper tea) or alcohol to avoid drinking disease-carrying village water.
Mar 8, 2018 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
U.S. Federal Reserve to teachers and students (there will be a quiz!): “Traditionally, currency is produced by a nation's government.“ files.stlouisfed.org/research/publi…
Education or propaganda? At the very least it is quite incomplete. The following thread fills in some of the gaps:
2/ Many banks besides central banks issued bank notes that circulated as currency. See work of @lawrencehwhite1 & @GeorgeSelgin
• Charted Bank of India, Australia, and China, 1954
• Mechanic’s Bank, U.S.,1856
• North of Scotland bank, 1945
• Ipswich bank in England,1820s
Jun 26, 2017 • 9 tweets • 1 min read
1/ Successful Internet companies can usually be characterized by the phases of a deal (economist’s “contract”) they improve the most
2/ Phases of a deal (1) search: buyers & sellers finding each other, (2) negotiations, (3) performance, (4) post-performance incentivization
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