Ronan Lyons

Coolest underground station in the world? Rome has just opened the new Line C station “Colosseo”, under Fori Imperiali and Altare della Patria. It looks like a museum. 🇮🇹

Any story that incorporates some version of the phrase "suddenly and for no reason at all" is either a delusion or a lie. Spain didn't just fall asleep one day, suddenly and for no reason at all, because they were stupid. They imported gold, which was currency that represented value, instead of things that actually had value. Because they were on the gold standard, they had no concept of inflation, much less hyperinflation. But that's precisely what happens, even on the gold standard, if you suddenly find a whole lot of gold. The other British, by contrast, didn't find gold. They found potatoes. It may seem like a poor trade, but potatoes are wealth, and gold is not. Gold is only money. It only represents wealth that already exists elsewhere. Gold loses its power to purchase things as it becomes more common. Potatoes, on the other hand, cannot be inflated. They contain a definite caloric and nutritional value, no matter how many you have. If you have a potato, you can feed a man. If you have a million potatoes, you can feed a million. There are no diminishing returns until you run out of men. Gold only allows you to buy things that already exist. Potatoes allow you to feed more people. Potatoes allow you to enslave the Irish (the only people to whom Brits truly owe reparations), forcing them to live off of potatoes grown on the tiniest plots of the worst land, while they grow grain and raise cattle that they never eat, to be exported for the British people. The British army. The British navy. The more people you can feed, with the labor of less, the more you can spare to shoulder a musket, or hoist a sail. And suddenly Britannia, whose very existence had been threatened by the Spanish Armada several generations before, ruled the waves. And built an empire that spanned the globe, upon which the sun never set from approximately late February 1655 until May 22, 2025. Potatoes. Armies. Gold. Economics. Not an entire people, suddenly and for no reason at all, deciding to take a three hundred year nap. This is why you can't govern off vibes. However your nation is ruled, by kings or voters, they have to understand how things work, not just go grubbing after shiny objects.

Economists don't understand capitalism