Month: December 2017

The Bear’s Lair: A Crypto Christmas Carol

I wrote an “E-Christmas Carol” in 2001, set two years earlier, in December 1999. As prophesy, it was only so-so, but it captured the zeitgeist of the dot-com bubble quite well. This week, since we are in a new version of 1999’s gigantic bubble, I thought I would have another go….

The Bear’s Lair: Britain must detach bits from the USE

Germany’s SPD leader Martin Schulz wants a “United States of Europe” by 2025. While his potential coalition partner Angela Merkel quickly disowned this monstrous idea, it is very probably a genuine ambition that just slipped out. For Britain, the few historically educated citizens of which remember the times when Hitler, the Kaiser, Napoleon and Louis […]

The Bear’s Lair: Gross Imaginary Product

In the era of crypto-currencies, I propose a new economic statistic: Gross Imaginary Product. This can be defined as the total output at market prices of all products and services which do not actually exist. Contrary to popular superstition, not all the $350 billion value of crypto-currencies is imaginary; there are some real values there. […]

The Bear’s Lair: Triumph of the bureaucrats

The typical form of human government moved from absolute monarchy, to oligarchy, to democracy, but it did not stop there. As government grew, popular control over it declined, while its own bureaucracy became the principal factor determining its direction. We have now reached the stage where to term the result a “democracy” is laughably in […]