Economy
Discover facts about economy. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Economy
The economist who blamed sunspots for crashes
William Stanley Jevons was a brilliant pioneer of modern economics, but he possessed an incredibly weird, unshakeable obsession. He genuinely believed that…
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How the gold standard helped trigger the Long Depression
Welcome to the 19th-century vibescession. When the United States and Europe aggressively shifted to the strict gold standard in 1873, they effectively deleted…
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The law that stopped banks gambling with your savings
Imagine walking into a casino, and the guy rolling the craps dice is using your grandmother’s pension fund. That was the American banking system before 1933.…
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Why metal prices are still set by shouting
You might assume the global price of industrial metals is calculated by an advanced supercomputer processing terabytes of supply chain data. You would be…
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The empire that auctioned off tax collection
Why bother establishing a functioning IRS when you can just crowdsource extortion? The Ottoman Empire perfected the art of lazy governance through "iltizam,"…
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Bitcoin's anti-spam idea came before Bitcoin
In 1997, Adam Back invented a brilliant anti-spam mechanism called Hashcash that required your computer to solve a tiny math puzzle before sending an email.…
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Why Phillips screws strip so easily
Long before Wall Street accepted that markets have bipolar mood swings, a Ukrainian-Russian economist named Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky cracked the code. While…
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How Russia's 1998 debt crisis became a Ponzi-like scheme
In 1998, the Russian government decided the best way to finance its massive deficit was by acting like a degenerate crypto bro. They issued short-term…
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The banks that printed money from the wilderness
Between 1837 and 1862, the US financial system was basically the Wild West with a printing press. State regulations were so flimsy that anyone could open a…
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Sewing machines once had to display royalty stamps
Elias Howe didn't just invent the sewing machine; he practically invented modern patent trolling. After winning a brutal legal war against Isaac Singer, Howe…
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One engineer thought workers couldn't afford what they made
While auditing a British factory during WWI, engineer Clifford Hugh Douglas noticed a disturbing math glitch: the total wages paid to workers were…
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When Europe faced a shortage of coins
You know that panic when your card declines? Now apply that to an entire continent. During the 15th century, Europe suffered the Great Bullion Famine, a…
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The aristocrats who tried to turn a swamp into real estate
Long before real estate moguls flipped houses, 17th-century English aristocrats formed cartels of 'Adventurers' to flip literal swamps. They hired engineers…
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The farmers who secretly reshaped China's agriculture
In 1978, the villagers of Xiaogang were starving under Maoist collective farming, where working hard yielded the same miserable rations as doing nothing.…
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How Britain made bread unaffordable with a law
The British Corn Laws (1815-1846) were a masterclass in unapologetic legislative greed. Landowning aristocrats in Parliament passed heavy tariffs on imported…
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Why Hayek replaced “economy” with “catallaxy”
Friedrich Hayek absolutely hated the word 'economy.' He argued it implied a household deliberately managed by a single planner—which sounded way too much like…
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Why futures prices go wild near expiration
Discovered by Paul Samuelson in 1965, the Samuelson effect reveals a terrifying truth about futures markets: the closer a contract gets to its expiration…
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One economist argued that taking longer to build things creates capital
In a world obsessed with immediate gratification, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk built an entire economic theory around doing things the hard way. He argued for…
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When Wall Street traded handwritten IOUs
Wall Street’s shadow banking system used to be aggressively lo-fi. In the early days of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, brokers needed quick overnight cash…
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Brazil once stockpiled coffee after a devastating frost
What happens when a black frost wipes out 70% of your country's most valuable export? If you're the 1975 Brazilian government, you panic-buy whatever is left.…
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The euro architect who called currencies a monoculture
You’d think the guy who helped design the Euro would be a massive cheerleader for central banking, but Bernard Lietaer actually thought our financial system…
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Bitcoin once came with a private key under a sticker
Leave it to crypto bros to invent a purely digital, trustless currency and immediately desire a shiny metal object to hold in their hands. In 2011, Mike…
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The 1933 Chicago World's Fair issued its own currency
When the US banking system completely collapsed right before the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, organizers didn’t cancel the party; they just bypassed the dollar…
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Efficiency can make us burn more, not less
In 1865, everyone thought better steam engines would save Britain's dwindling coal reserves, but economist William Stanley Jevons realized a cynical truth.…
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