By the time steam engines hissed and factory chimneys began their long exhale over 19th-century Europe, something profound was shifting in the world’s balance of power. The old aristocracy—those with family crests and ancestral lands—was slowly giving way to a new class of power brokers: the capitalists. But this wasn’t…
Category: Finance and Economy
Exploring everything financial and alternative finance
The Mythology of the Economy and the Enslavement of the Soul
There is a strange piety that governs the modern world, a religion that no one names but that commands greater obedience than any god ever known to antiquity. It is the mythology of the economy. Its rituals are daily performed, not in temples, but in offices, factories, fields, and screens….
Mammon in the Modern Age: Who (or What) Do We Really Serve?
In today’s world, Mammon – once the symbol of wealth and material obsession – has taken on new and less obvious forms. It’s no longer just about chasing money. It’s about chasing more: the dream of success, the pull of consumer culture, the ever-present siren’s call of comfort and distraction….
The End of Passive Economics: Building a Stakeholder Society
In today’s economy, most people are locked into one role: consumer. We buy what’s offered, work in jobs where decisions are made elsewhere, and live in a world shaped by forces beyond our control. The people who make the rules—the ones who decide what gets built, who benefits, and who…
The Addiction to Consumption: What Are We Really Trying to Buy?
Walk into any shopping mall, fast-food restaurant, or social media platform, and you’ll see the same expression on people’s faces—a vacant, almost trance-like engagement with whatever they’re consuming. They scroll, they chew, they swipe their credit cards, all in a loop that feels automatic. It’s not hunger, not necessity, and…
“The Well-Connected Community” by Alison Gilchrist: Why Networks Matter More Than Plans
If you’ve ever been involved in community work—whether organizing a neighborhood event, running a local nonprofit, or just trying to get people to care about something beyond their own front doors—you’ve probably noticed a hard truth: good intentions aren’t enough. Some communities flourish, while others, despite funding and well-meaning policies,…
“Manufacturing Consent: by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: A Propaganda Model for the Modern Age
In the nearly four decades since its publication, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media has solidified itself as one of the most incisive critiques of American journalism. Noam Chomsky, the linguist turned political dissident, and Edward S. Herman, the late economist and media analyst, do not merely…
The Democratic Market: Balancing Freedom, Fairness, and Power
A truly democratic free-market society would not be a contradiction in terms but a balance of forces—economic power held in check by democratic accountability, individual liberty safeguarded by collective responsibility. It would be a society where markets serve people, not the other way around, and where democracy is not merely…
“The World Until Yesterday” by Jared Diamond – a review
There once was a world where disputes are settled with bows and arrows, not courtrooms. Where a child roamed freely, unburdened by the paranoia of “stranger danger.” Where food was neither purchased nor grown but hunted with patience and eaten with gratitude. This isn’t some utopian fantasy—it’s the way humanity…
Labor Aristocracy: Servitude Disguised as Prosperity?
Perhaps the illusion of the middle class was never an accident at all. Maybe it was a calculation, precise and cold, a grand maneuver in the service of a deeper order. That one might wake in a house they call their own – or the mortgage company’s, drive a car…