The Geometry of History
How High Finance Figures Into The Grand Course of Human History
Overview
With this essay, we begin concluding Volume II of the System Failure constellation of ideas. You can follow our progress on the Idea Map. This essay weaves together ideas introduced over the past summer in previous essays, such as the geometry of the human story, the history of economics, and the mechanics of modern banking.
Introduction
Over the grand course of human history, the trend has been for economic conditions to gradually improve, despite many setbacks. From the slave-driven economy of Rome, to the peasant-based economy of medieval Europe, to the employee-centered capitalism of today, each new system generates economic outcomes that more closely match widely-held moral and ethical intuitions.
But that progress has generally been opposed by the ruling classes over the centuries. By definition, the elites enjoy economic outcomes that violate the innate sense of justice of the rest of us. That’s led to mechanisms of control that are less and less obvious, as people become accustomed to better and better economic outcomes.
Economic History
Economic conditions tend to improve over the long haul of human history. This improvement has been like a stock market chart, with dizzying highs and terrifying collapses. But, generally speaking, economic conditions in 2024 AD are conspicuously superior to those of 1024 AD or 24 AD.
The Roman economy of 24 AD was a slave economy. And an ethical disaster. A tiny minority led sumptuous lives while millions were forced to labor under threat of violence. It was a brutal existence for most, and far from sustainable. The Roman Empire eventually collapsed and Europe settled into the Middle Ages.
The Medieval economy of 1024 AD was a peasant economy. The peasantry still owed half their productive output to a feudal lord, but at least they were afforded limited rights and protections under the manorial system. Their condition was generally a marked improvement over the outright slavery of Rome. But the Black Death destabilized the Medieval economy and paved the way for the Industrial Revolution.
In 2024 AD, our modern capitalist economy is an employee economy. Being an employee, of course, is vastly superior to being a peasant. But we should expect that this system will eventually reach the limits of its sustainability and pass into history. Just as its predecessors did. It’s a historical inevitability; the only question is when.
Over the course of human history, we’ve established many sets of rules to the timeless economic game that determines who works and who eats. There have been almost as many failures as successes. We’re trafficking in generalities here, but the overall trajectory has been a jagged saw-toothed pattern of gradual progress.
We should expect that trajectory to continue into the future, with new economic systems rising and falling, and economic conditions gradually improving on the whole.
Platonic Ideals
The Greek philosopher Plato famously advanced the notion of an ideal, which is a perfect, abstract form or idea that exists beyond the physical world. The pursuit of the ideal economy is the engine that drives economic improvement in the physical world.
When Michelangelo sculpted David, he glimpsed an ideal male form in his mind’s eye and copied it in the physical world—with a breathtakingly high degree of fidelity.
An ideal economy is one in which outcomes match human intuitions about ethics and morality; that’s what binds religion and economics together. People have strong ethical and moral intuitions about who ought to be working, and who ought to consume the resulting buffet of goods and services. We all agree that children and the elderly should be allowed to consume, for example, without being expected to produce.
Libertarians and socialists alike share similar ethical intuitions about the economy. Their disagreement is about which economic rules best achieve a common desired outcome. They are like sculptors debating which sculpting techniques best render the ideal male form in the physical world.
The economic ideal lies outside reality in our minds. Though we’ll never reach that ideal, it serves as a north star to navigate by. Like Michelangelo honing his craft, we’re creating a series of economic models that come ever-closer to that ideal with each attempt. That’s what lends the particular geometry to the human story.
Finance
The gradual improvement of economic conditions has often been opposed by the ruling classes in each epoch. Naturally, they seek to preserve a status quo in which they are advantaged, while resisting changes that lead to more equitable outcomes for all. Their allegiance is to their own egos—which are mere illusions created by our perception of time—and not to humanity as a whole.
Being a tiny minority, the ruling classes have become more and more subtle in their mechanisms of control. Over the grand course of human history, ever-increasing expectations of democracy meant that ever-more elaborate schemes were necessary for minority control.
In 24 AD, Caesars ran the known world. They did not know subtlety. Some demanded to be worshiped as gods. Others constructed massive statues of themselves so they could be recognized far and wide.
In 1024 AD, popes retained the regalia and insignia of the Caesars, but no longer claimed to be gods. They merely claimed to be God-adjacent. Europeans accepted the Vatican as their only way to access the divine, and the Church leveraged that perceived monopoly to extract wealth and exert political control over Europe.
In 2024 AD, bankers sit atop the global geopolitical hierarchy. They derive their power from another monopoly, one roughly analogous to the monopoly on access to God enjoyed by their predecessors: access to future money.
When you visit a bank to take out a loan, you are paying a toll—the interest on the loan—for access to your future money in the present. By dint of having all the money in the present, the banks get to sit in judgment of the rest of us. They decide who among us is worthy of receiving access to our future money and who is not. The banking and finance sectors centrally plan our modern economy, while euphemistically referring to the “free market”.
Conclusion
The arc of economic history has been a relentless quest for economic justice. Despite resistance from ruling classes, each successive era has generally been an improvement over its predecessor. While we may never achieve a perfect economy, the concept of an economic ideal continues to serve as a guiding star. We exist now in a lumpen, half-formed state. We expect improved economic outcomes, but we continue to be ruled by a tiny minority in finance and banking.