Christian Baaki

Every breakthrough — every invention, every industry, every new frontier — began with a handful of extraordinary individuals free to take extraordinary risks. Washington led men into battle at 22. Carnegie was building his steel empire by 30. Meriwether Lewis charted the American West in his twenties. Sam Colt patented the revolver at 22. Palmer

Very powerful self-reinforcing elite networks across politics, civil service, academia, and legacy media telling themselves that the answers to everything are essentially: higher taxes, more state control, ‘trust and support the civil service’, and all alternatives to SW1 consensus are ‘extremist’.

As our ability to concentrate has collapsed, I’ve become more and more convinced that it is the superpower we should long for. Sustained focus is the engine that connects dots and builds things. To concentrate with the intensity of a chess grandmaster on the object of your choosing is to find out what you are capable of—what you are capable of

Your flashlight is already bright enough to achieve your most ambitious goals, and to my knowledge there aren’t many things you can do to actually increase the intensity of your flashlight’s beam much. This is why most of our energy should be directed towards improving our environment to ensure that our flashlight simply remains fixed on the right

It is true that an increase in gold production can and does generate fluctuations in the price and production structure. However, contrary to the artificial expansion of paper or digital money, an increase of gold is based on production and will not result in an exchange of nothing for something. It will not produce the diversion of wealth from

In Europe, governments account for 40–50% of GDP (higher in France particularly if you include education). In the U.S., it’s higher than reported when you include local government and recent interventions. A century ago, governments were under 15% of GDP, often less than 5%.

Countries –like people– tend to borrow more when they are rich than when they are poor, that is, when they don’t need to borrow, then get into trouble with spiraling financial obligations

What precipitates business cycles is not monetary growth beyond a fixed rate, but inflationary increases of money and credit. Monetary and credit inflation provides a platform for non-productive activities, which consume and add nothing to economic growth. In fact, inflation diverts savings and production toward non-wealth-generating activities,

US Debt level is a national security risk. Columbia Business School’s Pierre Yared’s reveals in a new paper: “A key insight of our model is that financial market factors such as greater debt capacity and a higher war premium can facilitate a hegemon’s rise to power because of the complementarity between military and financial dominance. It