What does this say about us?
"If you want to know what any society really believes in, just look at how they design their sewers."
Life in 2025 is a double edged sword. Most humans, at least those of us with an internet connection, have access to a wealth of knowledge that our ancestors could have never comprehended.
Thinking about cooking a specific dish you've never prepared? Type the name of the dish into Google or your preferred LLM and BAM!, you'll have a slew of tips, links and videos to choose from to learn how to cook the dish properly.
Headed on a trip to the West Coast from Philadelphia as the Autumn winds begin to shuffle cool air into your neck of the woods and you're not quite sure what the weather is going to be like when you land? "Hey Siri, what's the weather in Monterey looking like this weekend?"
Trying to settle an argument with a friend about who won the NBA Finals MVP in 2007? "Hey Siri,..."
Finding the solutions to our problems has become more convenient than ever. This relative convenience makes us feel elite. It gives us a false sense of proximity to omniscience. We don't really know any of these things off the top our heads, but they're readily accessible with simple queries. As a result we've become hubristic and complacent, which has conditioned us to accept a slow, but constant degradation of quality in the things that our ancestors worked hard to make interesting and inspiring.
Most noticeably, in the urban landscapes through which we wander when we step back from our desks and lift our heads away from the dull, yet addictive beam of blue light that emanates from our phones. Our dependence on this convenience has created a lapse in attention to detail that has made a lot of our physical and digital landscape incredibly uninteresting and completely lacking of character.
It manifests in the stale design of buildings, bridges, landing pages, and user interfaces. All have become somewhat uniform. With their only differences being in subtle tweaks in colorways, button positions, height and width, and different variations of minimalism, among other things.
What does this say about us?
If you watch the short film above from Sheehan Quirke, you'll come to find that he believes it says a lot about what we believe in as a society. If we're unwilling to spend the extra time, effort and de minimis amount of money to make our world a bit more interesting, do we really hold ourselves in a high regard? Is what we're doing with this allotted portion of time on this planet really worth anything? Will we hand anything other than some instructions on how to do certain things that are necessary to simply subsist in the hopes that our progeny continue subsisting? Or will we aim to inspire?
Not only that, but inspire in a way that is impossible to ignore for generations to come. Will we leave anything behind that people will be able to point at in one hundred years and find interesting, inspiring, and, most importantly, proud to be descendants of the society and culture that built it?
If I'm being honest, there aren't many things I can think of that have been built in my lifetime that would fit this mold. I've seen many from centuries past torn down. Penn Station as it was originally built in 1910, Whitemarsh Hall outside of Philadelphia, the Old Cincinnati Public Library, and countless other buildings, monuments, bridges and simple decorative details on seemingly inconsequential everyday parts of our lives like doors, archways, gardens and driveways.
Will the sprawling subdivisions, cookie cutter multi-family units, soulless libraries, plastic playgrounds, bionic light posts and bland strip malls that litter this country leave our grandchildren with a sense of awe and inspiration?
No, of course they won't.
What does it say that the continued development of these uninspiring high velocity trash fiat economy manifestations have become a key focus of our economy?
Real estate is too expensive and interest rates are too high. "Build more cheap shit boxes!"
My CRE firm is on it's fourth fund and needs to continue spitting out a portfolio of 5-cap multi-use properties in gentrified neighborhoods located in second-tier cities with populations on the rise. "Funnel the money in from the pension funds looking to under perform the real rate of inflation and call the contractor who has a great deal on the plastic siding, fake wood and cheap doors from China."
It's all shit.
And as I was watching Sheehan's incredible short film that really cuts to the core of why building beautiful things is worthwhile, fulfilling, dignified and inspirational, I couldn't help but think, "Fiat ruins everything."
Fix the money, fix the world.
Jeremiah Albright laid out a compelling case that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have been systematically cornered by their own manipulated data and failed policies. He pointed to bond market correlations breaking down across historical norms, with Fed rate cuts and increases now producing the opposite bond market reactions than they should. The government's shift of bond duration from the long-end to the front-end signals acute stress in the system. Albright referenced Luke Gromen's warning of a potential bond revolt within six to nine months, emphasizing that correlations that held for decades are simply no longer functional.
"The Fed has essentially been, in my opinion, neutralized. It's not functional anymore to the way that it historically should be." - Jeremiah Albright
I highlighted Porter Stansberry's analysis showing how distorted the situation has become. Using the Taylor Rule with official CPI, the Fed funds rate should be 4.75%. However, using actual inflation around 15%, that rate should be 17.5%. This massive mispricing of risk and money has made it impossible for the Fed to implement effective policy. Traditional economics is breaking down before our eyes.
Check out the full podcast here for more on BitBonds, stablecoins as yield curve control, and the coming AI economic transition.
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Final thought...
Many deep dives tonight.
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