From Coal to Code

Growing up in Geordieland during the miners' strike, a strange tension simmered of which I dared not speak. Outwardly, an unthinking cultural loyalty to the miners - but inwardly a niggling sense something was off. A 10 year old's emerging realisation that there's more to the overarching cosmic order than just Mam, Dad, School and filling pages with football stickers. Got, got, need, got.

So what was the tension? Well, it was two modes of being in a tug of war, the emotional vs. the rational, though I was never able to articulate this at the time. The simple fact of the matter was the pits were operating at a loss and much like my inner world - there were outward tensions of subsidies vs. sustainability vs. the social consequences of pulling the plug. For how long could Thatcher (and by extension the tax payers) prop up a failing system of human enterprise? Pragmatism won out in the end, as it often does.

You can deny reality all you like but you can't deny the consequences of denying reality - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.

It was also around this time I'd point out glaring hypocrisies and Dad would simply shrug "Life ain't fair son." One example was school constantly reinforcing the idea that boys and girls are equal, yet our teacher (a gloomy Jock with a PhD in Chemistry who hated his job), would always let the girls go first at the end of each day - Ladies before Gentlemen. When I raised this dissonance with either Dr Doom or Dad - they'd hand-wave it away with the catch-all platitude "Life ain't fair son - get used to it".

So is life fair? We'll come back to that.

Loss

Fast forward three decades to 2014 and, just like the miners, I'd suffered total catastrophic loss. My life savings (£140,000) obliterated in a single email. Totally skint in Thailand. Dad's platitude ringing in my ears. Perhaps he was right? Striving for financial sovereignty was to be my Sisyphusean boulder.

So how does one recover from a devastating kick to the bollicks? You pick yourself up, dust yourself off and examine where you went wrong. How you failed to align with reality. Then ... try again - that's all life is - a perpetual struggle against the second law of thermodynamics - a conversion of energy to order in localized pockets of low(er)-entropy - at least temporarily.

A dead thing can go with the stream .... but only a living thing can go against it - G. K. Chesterton

So where did it all go wrong? Well, there were two main areas: Agency and Understanding.

Agency

I abdicated responsibility. I handed the car keys to a drunk. Why? Simple, I didn't want to do the work. I prioritized drinking/shagging in Phuket over studying capital management. I know, I know, quite the dilemma for a 36 year old:

Hedonistic debauchery or quiet nights of self-mastery Sir?

Err, I'll take the Bangla Road bar-girls over the Austrian Economics textbooks thanks.

And that turned out exactly as you'd expect - a wake of financial failure. Anyhow, I'd been taught a harsh lesson: Nobody will care about your wealth/future as much as you. In fact, counter-parties are incentivized to extract it - you're effectively their yield.

Understanding

To say I was ignorant of economics would be a gross understatement - I knew next to nowt - I thought capital management meant emptying London's bins. It turns out that the great unwashed are easily (and mercilessly) exploited as I'd discovered at great personal cost.

The inspiration for this post was an old work buddy reaching out for financial advice. Financial advice? Me? You're having a giraffe mate. However, he had watched me pull the early retirement trigger at 48 and figured I must have done something right. So, I suggested he also "do the work" before even thinking about investing a single penny. I provided the following reading list for his gratification and anyone else serious about securing their future. Even a surface level understanding would stand you in good stead.

Human Action – Ludwig von Mises

Man, Economy, and State – Murray Rothbard

The Creature from Jekyll Island – G. Edward Griffin

The Sovereign Individual – Rees-Mogg & Davidson

Antifragile – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Price of Tomorrow – Jeff Booth

The Fiat Standard – Saifedean Ammous

Saylor / Breedlove YouTube Series

Thus, my 40s were spent rebuilding from the ashes. Working hard, living in ascetic frugality, investing the difference ... and reading. Lots of reading ... to align with reality. The reason TPTB don't teach this material in schools is because we learn exactly that which serves TPTB best - namely conformity and obedience (think Nietzsche's Last Man) - and the last thing TPTB want is a bunch of critical-thinking sovereign individuals unshackling themselves from debt-slavery. They require compliant herds of cattle on their tax farms.

By Decree

Fiat is, in some ways, a modern replay of the miners' strike - but on a global monetary base-layer level.

Both resist Misesian truth: systems can’t ignore economic law forever.

Both fight Buddhist impermanence: clinging creates suffering.

Both deny Randian realism: consequences of denying reality.

Both thermodynamically unsound: only effort aligned with truth survives entropy.

Closing

So, to wrap up, is life fair?

On the one hand no it isn't. Dad was preparing me for a raw realism where:

Effort doesn’t always equal reward.

People are born into vastly different starting lines.

Bad luck and systemic failures strike without warning.

However, on the other hand, 

life can be fair in consequence if one does the work, aligns with reality and takes responsibility. Remember: No one is coming to save you and fortune favours the bold.

I once watched an industry die from denial. I now watch a monetary order collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. The response is pristine digital capital - coded forever in a time chain of truth. And therein lies not just wealth - but sovereignty and freedom.