These are the highest level episodes – the top vertex in a pyramid whose base is entrepreneurialism, technology and FS. Finance itself is a social construct whose form has varied widely over space and time but always defined by policy, regulation, and more broadly the societies they exist in. Equally however even if it is created by society it also has a great influence on that society. There is a complex feedback loop at play here.
Where The World (or simply the West?) Is Going
The recent evolution of “the West” in the direction of tyranny and Great Reset is very troubling and simply would h=not have been possible without modern technology. This has been covered in a number of special episodes on the LFP which are sans-guests episodes that dive into understanding the deep roots of current societal challenges.
This is monumental series of five episodes is expanded upon in How Technology Is Changing Us and Empowering Tyrants but comprises the following episodes:
- 2019 New Year Special “Is FS + Tech Ushering In Orwellian Tyranny Rather Than Freeing The People?” – super-prescient as that was a year before Covid
- 2021 New Year Special “The Elite’s Governance & Cultural Revolutions – Key Insights from Spengler, Nietzsche, Lasch” – a war on the people?
- LFP200 reverted to focusing on tech and dived into the true and little understood nature of technology per se. “The Philosophy of Technology & Technique & their Existential Impact on People, Society and Civilisation w/Oswald Spengler & Jacques Ellul”
- 2022’s “How The World Is Governed – An Exploration Of The Nature Of Globalism, The Ne Plus Ultra Issue Of Our Time” – the long-planned origins of globalism and its nature. Agenda 21 (in its current version Agenda 2030) and climate change as The Thing were all agreed by the UN and the Club of Rome respectively way back in the 1990s.
- 2023 New Year Special: Fleeing Plato’s Cave, Escaping the Matrix in Search of Love, Light and Healing – by far the most positive pointing to the decline of the old order and the rise of a new much more human way of being.
The response of governments to covid will change the economic landscape for decades – I covered the implications in LFP152
Technology’s Impact On Society Throughout The Ages
To briefly expand on the above LFP200 “The Philosophy of Technology & Technique & their Existential Impact on People, Society and Civilisation w/Oswald Spengler & Jacques Ellul”
Technology is not – as commonly portrayed value-neutral – you know the ‘a knife can kill but in the hands of a surgeon it can cure’ angle.
First technology, by its very nature, always ends up putting greater power in the hands of a few who inevitably throughout history have, until eventually somewhat restrained by society, used it for personal gain and greed and power over their fellow man.
Secondly technology has always moved power away from local communities to more distant folk – globalism is simply the reductio ad absurdum of this process.
Thirdly technology and its parent, technique, condition man to being, to existing, in a particularly diminished way. Put simply the more man is surrounded by technology and technique the more robotic he ends up behaving, being, thinking and feeling and the less (poetically put) he can be fully human and live in a world of values other than rational efficiency.
Technique and technology thus naturally lead us into a world well described by Max Weber as a polar night of icy darkness, an icy cage of disenchantment, bureaucratisation and control, a world ripe to be plucked by tyrants (aka the cultural and governance revolution of the elite which we are witnessing now). This archetypal motif was well portrayed in Star Wars I where the rule by bureaucrats was perfectly set-up to be controlled by Palpatine.
Questionable Constitutional Position of Regulators
In LFP113 “Regulators – Unelected Power & Uncertain Constitutional Position”, Sir Paul Tucker the former Deputy Governor Bank of England joins us to discuss the constitutional and democratic challenges around the proliferation of regulators – there are 90 in the UK.
Evolution of Regulation
Lord Turner the last chairman of the FSA joins us in LFP065 to discuss where Policy and Regulation come from and how they evolve.
In LFP055 Professor John Kay joins us to discuss how the fundamental problems with FS as it exists today provide an opportunity for Fintech to be far greater.
The Nature Of Money
FS is of course all about “F” – but what is money and what is its future? For sure it looks perilous right now. In LFP220 Mario Inecco joined us to discuss Has a Century Of The Federal Reserve and 50 Years Off The Gold Standard Directly Led To Monetary and Social Disaster for the West?
In the previous year in LFP197 Mario Inecco joins us to discuss Money in the 21stC: Ballooning Printing of Fiat/QE/”MMT”/Govt Debt, CBDCs, Crypto, Dedollarisation, Hyperinflation, Gold.
David Clarke of Positive Money joins us in LFP085 to explain how central bank created money would be far better for society and the economy than current money which is 97% created by private banks and always as debt and we dive into some of the stats about how money has lost its value. This, of course, was long before tyrants had ideas about using CBDCs to control the people even more.
Promoting the UK and Fintech
In 2020 the biggest issues for all segments of the economy is international ties and regional development. In LFP148 the Lord Mayor Of London joins us to talk about The City, Promoting US-UK Fintech Ties & Regional Fintech.
Innovation Economics and Shareholder Value
On the super-big-picture policy front Professor Bill Lazonick, winner of the HBR award for best article of the year on deconstructing shareholder value, joins us in LFP092 to give us a seminar on innovation economics, deconstructing shareholder value and equitable growth.