From Neighbors to Corporations: How We Lost the Directness of Living
I sometimes think we’ve all ended up working for a sort of ghost. Not the rattling-chains, moaning-through-the-wall kind, but something maybe worse: a superior who doesn’t even…
Finance and Economy
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Could Your Neighborhood Survive on Social Capital Alone? Some Do.
I sometimes imagine what it would be like to live in one of those tiny Alaskan bush towns. Not the postcard version with moose sauntering down Main…
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Marcel Mauss’ “The Gift” – A Summary
Marcel Mauss’ The Gift manages to be both deeply academic and strangely intimate. Initially, it seems like an anthropologist’s survey of exotic rituals in far-off places; potlatches…
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The Rise of Abstract Money: From Coins to Invisible Ledgers
There was a time when money had weight. It clinked when dropped on a table and carried the cold glint of metal or the soft polish of…
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A Look at Lyn Alden’s Book; Broken Money
Reading Lyn Alden’s Broken Money feels a bit like having a long, eye-opening conversation with that one friend who somehow makes complicated topics make sense. She digs…
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Why Great Leaders Don’t Walk Too Far Ahead
another rumination from a conversation with friends. When leading, one must carry both the vision of the horizon and the weight of those who walk beside. The…
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Solidarity, Not Charity
To give is not always to love. Too often, charity disguises itself as compassion while secretly nourishing the vanity of the giver. The poor, the hungry, the…
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Guide the Fire but Never Dim the Flame
Leadership is guiding the fire of others without ever dimming their flame – River Stephens In my experience, leadership is a delicate art of balance. On one…
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The Medici: How a Renaissance Banking Dynasty Built the Blueprint for Modern Financial Power
Paul Strathern’s The Medici is one of those history books that reads more like a story than a lecture. He traces the family’s rise from shrewd moneylenders…
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From Birds to Banks: What Nature Can Teach Us About True Wealth
It has always seemed to me that nature, in her quiet dignity, never once conceived of interest rates or compound debt, and yet she manages her affairs…