Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

News Briefs 11-05-2010

More mad nonsense for your derision.

  • Unconventional thinkers or recklessly dangerous minds?
  • War on drugs goes literal: biowarfare on poppies.
  • Startled by the power of placebos, doctors consider how to use them as real treatment.
  • Woman unable to recognise voices gives new insights into the human brain.
  • Indian man survives without food and water, baffles doctors.
  • Gravity lows mark sites of ancient tectonic plates.
  • Is Halley’s comet an alien interloper?
  • Hangover molecule in brain found.
  • Scientists find sunken islands in the Caribbean.
  • Spacecraft to test Einstein’s relativity.
  • Terminally ill man survives shark infested waters.
  • Impulse control.
  • Girl frozen in time may hold key to ageing.
  • The four-winged dinosaur.
  • The twilight of money.

Quote of the Day:

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

  1. Twilight o f money

    Finally, of course, bubbles always pop. When that happens, the speculative vehicle du jour comes crashing back to earth, losing the great majority of its assumed value, and the mass of amateur investors, having lost anything they made and usually a great deal more, trickle away from the market. This has not yet happened to the current money bubble. It might be a good idea to start thinking about what might happen if it does so.

    Assuming this essay is correct, there’s a hint (my bold) regarding how the aftermath may play out here:

    … The Roman economy achieved very high levels of complexity and an international reach; its moneylenders – we would call them financiers today – were a major economic force, and credit played a sizeable [sic] role in everyday economic life. In the decline and fall of the empire, all this went away. The farmers who pastured their sheep in the ruins of Rome’s forum during the Dark Ages lived in an economy of barter and feudal custom, in which coins were rare items more often used as jewelry than as a medium of exchange.

    Bottom line: after the fall, those who owned large tracts of arable land called the shots.

    Before you rush right out to buy yourself a plot of that arable land, keep in mind another history lesson from the aftermath of the US’s civil war and Great Depression: Just being able to grow enough food to feed yourself won’t work, because if you don’t have enough money to pay sky-high taxes on your land, you’ll quickly lose it.

    So… How much land would it take for you to support yourself, and how much would that land cost in your vicinity?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal