Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith

oftwominds-Charles...
The Problem With Money Isn't Money The Problem With Money is that it's complicated. To many minds, the solution to our core...
a month ago
19
a month ago
The Problem With Money is that it's complicated. To many minds, the solution to our core economic problems is to return to sound money via either the gold standard, in which gold backs all currency, or by substituting bitcoin for gold, i.e. bitcoin becomes the coin of the...
oftwominds-Charles...
The Not-So-Strange Paradox of American Power and Dysfunction Americans seem to have forgotten that we are not slaves to finance-tech profits as the sole divining...
a month ago
17
a month ago
Americans seem to have forgotten that we are not slaves to finance-tech profits as the sole divining rods to what happens next. A recent essay explores the paradox of American power: global reach amidst civic decline: The Strange Triumph of a Broken America: Why Power...
oftwominds-Charles...
When Markets Misbehave Markets misbehave, sometimes when we least expect it. How badly they misbehave depends on the...
a month ago
17
a month ago
Markets misbehave, sometimes when we least expect it. How badly they misbehave depends on the soundness of the hull and the level of self-reinforcing hubris. When Benoit Mandelbrot's book The (Mis)behavior of Markets was published in 2004, it was a revelation for many of...
oftwominds-Charles...
The Tax Benefits of Self-Employment Lowering one's tax burden is not the reason to pursue self-employment, but it is something worth...
a month ago
16
a month ago
Lowering one's tax burden is not the reason to pursue self-employment, but it is something worth understanding if you're exploring self-employment. It's tax preparation time, the secular equivalent of crawling around the temple on cobblestones littered with broken glass....
oftwominds-Charles...
Automation Institutionalizes Mediocrity Meanwhile, in the lived-in world, our quality of life is unraveling in myriad ways as...
a month ago
16
a month ago
Meanwhile, in the lived-in world, our quality of life is unraveling in myriad ways as algorithmically-driven under-competence and mediocrity are now the norm. When deployed by monopolies / cartels, automation institutionalizes mediocrity, and soon everyone forgets...
oftwominds-Charles...
Going Cold Turkey in our Addiction Economy We're prone to addiction, and addiction is highly profitable. They know it, and we know it. We...
2 weeks ago
15
2 weeks ago
We're prone to addiction, and addiction is highly profitable. They know it, and we know it. We inhabit an Addiction Economy. We all know the cure for addiction is to go Cold Turkey: drop the denial and delusion of control, and excise the source of the addiction from one's...
oftwominds-Charles...
The One True Test of AI Intelligence The point of this thought experiment is to reveal the true nature of our relationship with AI: we...
a month ago
13
a month ago
The point of this thought experiment is to reveal the true nature of our relationship with AI: we only love it as a mindless slave that makes us rich. From the earliest days of artificial intelligence, what test proves AI equivalence with human intelligence has been the...
oftwominds-Charles...
If We Set Aside Ideology, Is There Anything We Can Agree On? Just the experiment of setting aside ideological certainties for a moment would be instructive. ...
3 weeks ago
13
3 weeks ago
Just the experiment of setting aside ideological certainties for a moment would be instructive. Humans are hard-wired to prefer simplicity over complexity, and this is the foundation of ideology, which like mythology takes a complex world and radically simplifies it to an...
oftwominds-Charles...
Corporations as Modern-Day Warlords Read carefully between the lines, for all this will come to pass. Let me start by offering an...
a month ago
13
a month ago
Read carefully between the lines, for all this will come to pass. Let me start by offering an apology to all those whose blood pressure will skyrocket upon reading this thought experiment. As we all know, science--the real thing, not "science"--advances via informed...
oftwominds-Charles...
Housing: The Foundations of the Middle Class Are Crumbling Bottom line: with the loss of predictability, we've also lost any sense of future financial...
4 weeks ago
13
4 weeks ago
Bottom line: with the loss of predictability, we've also lost any sense of future financial security. Home ownership has been the foundation of middle-class stability and security for so long that it defines middle-class status as much as income. From the end of World War...
oftwominds-Charles...
Three Ways to Restore Housing Affordability The choice is simple: housing is either shelter for citizens, or it's just another interchangeable...
3 weeks ago
12
3 weeks ago
The choice is simple: housing is either shelter for citizens, or it's just another interchangeable speculative asset in the global financialization casino. It can't be both. We tend to think of housing becoming unaffordable as a matter of land prices, zoning and the cost of...
oftwominds-Charles...
The Stoicism of the Caregiver These are difficult realities without Hollywood cliche answers. Caregivers and the costs of...
3 weeks ago
12
3 weeks ago
These are difficult realities without Hollywood cliche answers. Caregivers and the costs of caregiving don't get much attention. They're not part of the news flow, and the day-to-day grind of caregiving doesn't lend itself to the self-promotional zeitgeist of social media....
oftwominds-Charles...
Lots of Solutions, But for Which Problems? If the "solutions" being offered are features of self-liquidating systems, they aren't solutions,...
a month ago
10
a month ago
If the "solutions" being offered are features of self-liquidating systems, they aren't solutions, they're problems. Problems, problems, problems. No worries, we have solutions. Solutions abound, but the question is: are they actually resolving the core problems, or are...
oftwominds-Charles...
Is DeepSeek a Sputnik Moment? I'm not sure that "software will eat the world," but it could consume the stock market bubble in a...
a month ago
10
a month ago
I'm not sure that "software will eat the world," but it could consume the stock market bubble in a single gulp. Is DeepSeek a Sputnik Moment? Let's break it down. The Soviet Union's October 1957 launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, stunned the U.S.,...
oftwominds-Charles...
The Crises Yet to Come "Controlling the narrative" to justify destabilizing asymmetries won't change the consequences. ...
a month ago
10
a month ago
"Controlling the narrative" to justify destabilizing asymmetries won't change the consequences. That the Trump Reformation / Counter-Reformation is disrupting various nodes of the status quo is viewed as an existential crise by many. The choice between Reformation /...
oftwominds-Charles...
The AI Fad Just Burned to the Waterline Sometimes wide moats and billions of dollars to blow lead not to glory but to hubris, which beckons...
a month ago
10
a month ago
Sometimes wide moats and billions of dollars to blow lead not to glory but to hubris, which beckons Nemesis. While everyone was busy reassuring themselves the stock market was still A-OK, the driver of the market--the AI fad--just burned to the waterline. Yes, the current...
oftwominds-Charles...
Roaring 20s or Great Depression 2.0? The binary ahead is the result of a simple law of Nature: adapt or die. Will we revel in a New...
2 weeks ago
10
2 weeks ago
The binary ahead is the result of a simple law of Nature: adapt or die. Will we revel in a New Roaring 20s of exhilarating expansion, or will we suffer a Great Depression 2.0? Gordon Long and I explore this binary in our latest podcast. Why is the next decade a binary of...
oftwominds-Charles...
Welcome to the DeepSeek Disruption (DSD) In summary: bloated headcounts, no new sources of revenue from AI, and limitless content with no...
a month ago
9
a month ago
In summary: bloated headcounts, no new sources of revenue from AI, and limitless content with no scarcity value. Welcome to the DSD: DeepSeek Disruption. I've been fruitfully engaged in a lively dialog with readers on my Substack regarding my post yesterday Is DeepSeek a...
oftwominds-Charles...
Begging Bowl '25: I'm Looking for Two Readers Willing to Help Me Buy a New Thrift-Store Shirt The goal is to move incrementally toward a kind of happiness that actually makes us happy. That's...
a month ago
9
a month ago
The goal is to move incrementally toward a kind of happiness that actually makes us happy. That's the goal of my work. I admire unvarnished honesty, which is scarce. And like everything else that's increasingly scarce, it behooves us to hoard our stash. In the unvarnished...
oftwominds-Charles...
AI Is a Digital Parrot: Word-Traps, False Logic and the Illusion of Intelligence Word traps and false logic don't lead to dominance of the future or monopolistic grips on limitless...
a month ago
9
a month ago
Word traps and false logic don't lead to dominance of the future or monopolistic grips on limitless profits. The heart of the current euphoric expectations for AI is a simple but problematic proposition: the equivalence of function equals intelligence. If using natural...
oftwominds-Charles...
The Power of Our Behavior Why is any reduction in consumption posed in terms of unbearable sacrifice, when no sacrifices are...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
Why is any reduction in consumption posed in terms of unbearable sacrifice, when no sacrifices are necessary to consequentially reduce consumption? When we think of the word power, we associate it with external forces: energy, technology, the government, etc. But our own...
oftwominds-Charles...
Here Come the Chaos Monkeys The Chaos Monkeys are so masterful at distracting and confusing us with sensory-digital overload,...
a week ago
9
a week ago
The Chaos Monkeys are so masterful at distracting and confusing us with sensory-digital overload, we're not even aware of the game until the extortion begins. Chaos Monkeys excel at distraction and extortion. They appear suddenly, leaping about in disorienting mayhem,...
oftwominds-Charles...
The Economy of Denial: Addiction, Extortion, Deception Denial doesn't end well, and the 'Economy of Denial' is destined to deconstruction. Even the...
a week ago
6
a week ago
Denial doesn't end well, and the 'Economy of Denial' is destined to deconstruction. Even the most opinionated become circumspect when the discussion turns to The Addiction Economy, for the term The Addiction Economy calls things by their real name, which disrupts our...
oftwominds-Charles...
POD People 2025 In one way or another, we're all POD People now, for precarity, ordeals and debasement are the New...
a week ago
6
a week ago
In one way or another, we're all POD People now, for precarity, ordeals and debasement are the New Normal. In the cultural zeitgeist, the term Pod People refers to the novel and film franchise Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which nomadic aliens reach Earth and spawn...
oftwominds-Charles...
Ultra-Processed Life Consuming more of this Ultra-Processed World is not a path to "the good life," it's a path to the...
6 hours ago
1
6 hours ago
Consuming more of this Ultra-Processed World is not a path to "the good life," it's a path to the destruction and derangement of an Ultra-Processed Life. The digital realm, finance, and junk food have something in common: they're all ultra-processed, synthetic versions of...