Joakim Book
Research Fellow
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The Will to Power and the Specter of Hubris
“Every intellectual and moral superior, from the Catholic Church half a millennium ago to the New York Times army of woke, preferred-pronoun-revealing editorial writers have thought themselves arrived at the final state of affairs. If you dare deviate, if you dare question the intellectually supreme class, if you dare utter those revealing words (‘hang on…
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The Times May Be A-Changing, But Which Times Changed the Most?
“Ultimately, Mortimer opts for the twentieth century as the century when the West saw the greatest change. This is a defensible conclusion, but it doesn’t matter much: the value of his intellectual exercise isn’t his closing note, but the meandering path he takes to get there.” ~ Joakim Book
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We Pretend to Work and You Pretend to Pay Us
“Maybe we don’t need a highly organized, top-down revolution of government buildings and institutions in the shape that we historically recognize. Maybe a silent revolution is already on its way: collectively and individually we simply ignore the rules and ignore the rulers.” ~ Joakim Book
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The Bubble That Never Was: Finance’s Definition Problem
“That is not to say that the Teslas and the GameStops and the Bitcoins of today aren’t bubbles; they may be, due for corrections of bubble-like implosions rivaling those of our financial past. The point is, we won’t know until after – long after.” ~ Joakim Book
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Fighting Invisible Enemies
“The point of waging war against invisible enemies is that the struggle never ends. There is no armistice, no unconditional victory. No overview of the battlefield and no assessment over what more is to come. So, the war keeps going, on and on and on, with no end in sight – and indeed, nobody desires…
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Doomed by Politics
“How we prepare and what we do with the worldly events that face us matter: even catastrophes that stem from pathogens or poor harvests are man-made, a message for which Ferguson’s fidgitive book only narrowly succeeds.” ~ Joakim Book
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Why British House Prices Went Up When They Should Have Gone Down
“Two other developments undermine the idea that houses got more expensive in the last year: real interest rates and plenty of household savings. Those two trends mean that even though the sticker prices of many British homes are higher than they were before the pandemic, the ease with which the typical household could acquire them…
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Stinky Stuff Happens, but How Do We Prepare?
“The problem is that we don’t know what disasters are lurking on the horizon, and preparing for all the possible ones we can reasonably foresee is impossible and excessively costly. Even if we somehow managed to, individually or as a society, it still doesn’t guarantee protection against the truly black swans, i.e. the disasters of…
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When Crowds Go Mad
“Much like his role model’s chief literary achievement, all is not well in this otherwise highly enjoyable book. Bernstein often resorts to simplified and unproved evolutionary just-so stories to account for the lunacy he colorfully describes.” ~ Joakim Book
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You Cannot Eat Bitcoin
“You cannot eat bitcoin, or dollars, or bank balances, which means that whatever vehicle you use to move value across time has an exchange rate risk. Many bitcoiners’ mistake is to think that their preferred asset avoids this; Taleb’s mistake is to think that others can have a different view of government than him.” ~…
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•
The Will to Power and the Specter of Hubris
“Every intellectual and moral superior, from the Catholic Church half a millennium ago to the New York Times army of woke, preferred-pronoun-revealing editorial writers have thought themselves arrived at the final state of affairs. If you dare deviate, if you dare question the intellectually supreme class, if you dare utter those revealing words (‘hang on…
-
•
The Times May Be A-Changing, But Which Times Changed the Most?
“Ultimately, Mortimer opts for the twentieth century as the century when the West saw the greatest change. This is a defensible conclusion, but it doesn’t matter much: the value of his intellectual exercise isn’t his closing note, but the meandering path he takes to get there.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
We Pretend to Work and You Pretend to Pay Us
“Maybe we don’t need a highly organized, top-down revolution of government buildings and institutions in the shape that we historically recognize. Maybe a silent revolution is already on its way: collectively and individually we simply ignore the rules and ignore the rulers.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
The Bubble That Never Was: Finance’s Definition Problem
“That is not to say that the Teslas and the GameStops and the Bitcoins of today aren’t bubbles; they may be, due for corrections of bubble-like implosions rivaling those of our financial past. The point is, we won’t know until after – long after.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
Fighting Invisible Enemies
“The point of waging war against invisible enemies is that the struggle never ends. There is no armistice, no unconditional victory. No overview of the battlefield and no assessment over what more is to come. So, the war keeps going, on and on and on, with no end in sight – and indeed, nobody desires…
-
•
Doomed by Politics
“How we prepare and what we do with the worldly events that face us matter: even catastrophes that stem from pathogens or poor harvests are man-made, a message for which Ferguson’s fidgitive book only narrowly succeeds.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
Why British House Prices Went Up When They Should Have Gone Down
“Two other developments undermine the idea that houses got more expensive in the last year: real interest rates and plenty of household savings. Those two trends mean that even though the sticker prices of many British homes are higher than they were before the pandemic, the ease with which the typical household could acquire them…
-
•
Stinky Stuff Happens, but How Do We Prepare?
“The problem is that we don’t know what disasters are lurking on the horizon, and preparing for all the possible ones we can reasonably foresee is impossible and excessively costly. Even if we somehow managed to, individually or as a society, it still doesn’t guarantee protection against the truly black swans, i.e. the disasters of…
-
•
When Crowds Go Mad
“Much like his role model’s chief literary achievement, all is not well in this otherwise highly enjoyable book. Bernstein often resorts to simplified and unproved evolutionary just-so stories to account for the lunacy he colorfully describes.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
You Cannot Eat Bitcoin
“You cannot eat bitcoin, or dollars, or bank balances, which means that whatever vehicle you use to move value across time has an exchange rate risk. Many bitcoiners’ mistake is to think that their preferred asset avoids this; Taleb’s mistake is to think that others can have a different view of government than him.” ~…