Topic Tag Archive

Economics & Value

Collection of philosophical dialogues, essays, and analysis focusing on Economics & Value.

24 Essays in Topic

Bureaucratic Overreach and Minimum Wage Laws

By Tae-Sik June 18, 2020 ~5 min read

A free society respects the individual. A free society allows for a frictionless exchange of products, services and labor. Laws are designed to be universal and add clarity and boundries in the interaction of sovereign individuals. Wages are paid to those who provide their time and services. Labor and time is paid in exchange for […]

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Bureaucrats and Bureaucracies

By Tae-Sik July 3, 2020 ~8 min read

We associate a bureaucracy with words like stodgy, slow, formal, inefficient, procedural, wasteful, and expensive. Where do we find bureaucracies? Usually in large companies and organizations. In government offices on a local, city, county, state and federal level. There may be less obtrusive bureaucracies in smaller establishments. What do bureaucrats and bureaucracies do? They have […]

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Financial Instability, Sovereign Debt, Inflation, Fiscal Spending – Q&A Session

By Tae-Sik May 22, 2024 ~12 min read

Question: Excessive money printing and fiscal spending are often cited as causes of financial instability. However, if a government issues bonds and the central bank buys them (essentially monetizing the debt), wouldn't this just lead to inflation without necessarily creating other problems? Answer: Excessive money printing and fiscal spending can indeed lead to financial instability, […]

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From Blood and Soil to Contracts and Code

By Milan Ji December 4, 2025 ~9 min read

From Blood and Soil to Contracts and Code: The Great Substitution For almost the entirety of human existence, the primary social glue was biological and territorial. Societies cohered through extended kinship networks; clans, villages, tribes, and the literal soil that contained the bones of their ancestors. In traditional societies across Asia, Europe, the Americas and […]

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Introduction to the Theory of Money Part 1

By Tae-Sik July 27, 2020 ~7 min read

Money and currency is our medium for the exchange of goods and services. In the US, we use dollars. It is printed and regulated by the US Government. It is divisible, scarce, durable, portable, difficult to counterfeit, universally accepted, and stable. The value of a nation’s currency is correlated to its scarcity and wide acceptability. […]

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Modern Zombie Economic System Can't Be Killed

By Tae-Sik December 25, 2023 ~5 min read

Is a major recession or an unspeakable depression akin to 1929 possible in our modern age? Central banks stand ready, modern banking systems with derivative assets locked and loaded, fiat currencies ready to print and the cost of money digitally available to be distributed to anyone and anywhere in seconds. Our modern economy is global, […]

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Story of the Bitcoin Wallet

By Tae-Sik June 12, 2025 ~12 min read

This is my impressionistic explanation of how the Bitcoin Wallet works and how it fits within the larger Bitcoin ecosystem. There are 3 components to the Bitcoin core. The Bitcoin core is the software or programmatic implementation of the Bitcoin software system. 1. Bitcoin Mining 2. Bitcoin Node 3. Bitcoin Wallet Bitcoin miners compete for […]

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Old Rich People Run the World during the Covid19 Crisis

By Tae-Sik April 5, 2020 ~2 min read

Old Rich People Run the World during the Covid19 Crisis Nations are often pushed into international wars and conflict, in a struggle for geopolitical power, for the acquisition of prized resources and commodities, trade advantages, financial and political leverage. We send our young men to war, thousands die and we spend millions to acquire and […]

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Walled Garden Economics

By Tae-Sik May 19, 2024 ~3 min read

Our economy is a Walled Garden, with a lone security guard who has a gun, sets the rules, and issues vouchers that can be traded for fruits and vegetables. Security is the only entity in the Walled Garden with the power and authority to print and issue these vouchers. In the Walled Garden, agents produce […]

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Pillar 01: Time and Youth

By Milan Ji June 23, 2026 ~7 min read

The Irreplaceable Currency and the Vanishing Light of Youth King or slave, the tax is paid. Time, in its indomitable nature, underlies all of life. It is the invisible backdrop upon which every event unfolds, the medium through which consciousness is experienced and existence becomes real. Every thought, every decision, every achievement, every regret, every […]

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Precept #1 – Learn to Lose

By Tae-Sik June 23, 2020 ~3 min read

We are taught to be winners. We are told that we can overcome anything. Set your mind to it, and you can do it. Losing feels tragic. The truth is that most of us are losers. We just don't want to acknowledge it. Life is hard. Life is, as they say, suffering. Losing is the […]

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Q&A, Mom, Dad and the Financial Manager, Fiscal Spending, The Treasury, The Federal Reserve

By Tae-Sik May 28, 2024 ~5 min read

Question: When it comes to the U.S. Treasury selling bonds, whether short-term or long-term, such as bills, do they have to coordinate at all with the Federal Reserve or are they acting completely independently and selling bonds only when and if the federal government needs money for their fiscal spending? Answer: The U.S. Treasury and […]

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Seven Pillars of Life – Introduction

By Tae-Sik August 4, 2023 ~5 min read

The 7 Pillars of Life Seven Pillars represent the structural foundations of a substantive and meaningful human life. A careful reflection into these seven domains which support and substantiate a mindful human existence, in harmony with our nature and knowing self awareness. This is a meditation and exploration. These seven domains are foundational to a […]

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Money Creation, Fractional Reserve Banking & Central Banks

By Tae-Sik June 29, 2023 ~23 min read

Sovereign governments have the power to print their own currency. Governments authorize their Central Banks to manage their fiat currency. Central Banks have the authority to create money. Central Banks can create money that increase the money supply and money available for financial transactions. More money in the system is inflationary in nature. Inflation is […]

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The Common Short Squeeze in Markets

By Milan Ji December 4, 2025 ~15 min read

S&P 500 and the Microstructure of Modern Short Squeezes The E-mini S&P 500 futures contract (ES) is the undisputed primary global price-discovery vehicle for U.S. large-cap equities. On active days it routinely trades $600-900 billion notional (occasionally exceeding $1 trillion), on effective intraday leverage of 15-25X, and consistently leads both the cash S&P 500 index […]

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The Respectable Older Man

By Milan Ji December 2, 2025 ~6 min read

A young man’s value is self-evident and largely unearned. He walks into a room trailing decades of future productivity, like an invisible credit line, like a shadow ready to emerge. Society reads him the way venture capitalists read a Series A deck: high upside, tolerable risk, and, above all, a gloriously long runway. His mind […]

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The Value of Life Maps

By Tae-Sik February 4, 2024 ~6 min read

Ancient explorers bravely ventured into uncharted territories with rudimentary tools and an adventurous spirit. Some were fortunate to have primitive maps inherited from previous explorers, perhaps even an indigenous guide who knew the land by heart and sight. The expedition was fraught with danger and the unknown. As the journey progressed, charts were updated, redrawn, […]

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The Wages of Life: Navigating the Neurochemical Economy

By Milan Ji April 23, 2026 ~7 min read

Humans tell stories of empire, power, and destiny. We frame our ambitions as a search for love, security, or the service of God and nation. Yet beneath these lofty ideals lies a more practical transaction: we are biological traders, relentlessly negotiating for our next payout of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Every goal we set […]

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Trading Marginal Value, Sovereignty, and Automatons

By Tae-Sik June 23, 2023 ~12 min read

Human beings have birthrights and entitlements, unlike any other living creature. In democratic and free market nations, we have private property rights, the right to vote, the right to life, the freedom of speech, the freedom of movement, the freedom to work and pursue happiness. We have freedoms and liberties given to us by "default". […]

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We Live in a Virtual World

By Tae-Sik December 10, 2020 ~3 min read

We live in a virtual world today. What we need physically are provided for by machines and a few humans. All basic human needs are fairly inexpensive and easy to acquire. We spend most of our day in front of computers, glued to our phones, talking to dots & colors on computer screens and phone […]

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Youth, Age, Energy & Serendipity

By Milan Ji November 4, 2025 ~7 min read

In the theater of a single life, where the curtains rise on boundless vitality and fall on quiet acceptance, there unfolds a profound arc shaped by the interplay of energy, time, and fortune. Youth arrives as a lavish subsidy from the universe, a non-renewable gift of effortless abundance, where every sensation is amplified, every risk […]

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