All is Money

Entropia Universe, a massively multiplayer online game set in a science fiction universe full of spaceships and fantastic curiosities. It is a game where players can choose from a wide variety of professions to occupy themselves with which in turn builds a diverse and functioning economy.

Entropia universe is worth discussing because of one very small aspect that makes a very big difference. The currency in the Entropia universe can be traded back and forth for real-world money, meaning it is effectively a video game that you play using real-world currency. And it was also an entirely exchangeable digital currency that existed 7 whole years before bitcoin came onto the scene.

The Soviet Union is one of the most historically significant economies to understand, not only because it was the home to some of the most controversial economic practices ever, not only because it was a nation that altered world politics for the latter half of the entire twentieth century, or because it was home to one of the largest and most rapid economic declines in modern history, no no, all of that stuff is important and we will explore it, but more important than all of that is that even today, almost 30 years after the fall of the soviet union, the lessons of the nation and its economy are having lasting implications on the world today.

South Africa is an economy that is really important to understand as a kind of potential outcome case study of inequality gone bad. The nation itself, on paper at least is not so terrible, it is actually one of if not the wealthiest nation in all of Africa, trading back and forth quite frequently with Nigeria.

This is Iran, a highly controversial nation that has of course made headlines in recent months for hostilities back and forth between the united states. Hostility towards the united states is really nothing new in and of itself but these particular hostilities have gained so much attention in part because Iran is a very very powerful military nation in its own right. Now a lot of that power comes down to its economy which gives it the ability to be a force that people actually fear to engage with.

Even outside of hostilities and fear-mongering the economy of Iran is a really interesting case study because it is one of the largest modern economies that draws policy not only from economic and political theory but also directly from the teachings of Islam, which gives it some really interesting characteristics.

Sweden is a beautiful Scandinavian country famed for its beautiful people, flat-packed furniture, PewDiePie and meatballs. Now of course if you hadn’t guessed by the channels title we are only here to look Sweden's economy, and it is a remarkable one at that. Sweden is home to one of the highest standards of living in the world and is often held in extremely high regard when it comes to workers rights and general quality of life indicators such as working hours, happiness rates and life expectancy. It is also a nation with a rich history of setting the trend for other economies to follow, Sweden is home to the Riksbank founded in 1668 it is the oldest central bank in the world, blazing the path for monetary policy that dictates every major economy in the world today.

So how did it get here. We have explored rich nations with strong welfare systems that seem to do everything right on the channel before…  most notably Norway, Sweden's little brother the to west… But Sweden is slightly different in the sense that it was not blessed with the Norwegian sea and its abundance of oil and gas, so it was not able to build up a sovereign wealth fund with oil profits like Norway was and so on paper it is citizens are poorer than Norway's but their quality of life seems exactly the same.

China was once the wealthiest in the world and now it was struggling to feed itself, it was these kinds of conditions that gave rise to the political system that would go on to define china in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The nation boasted this wealth for a majority of the last millennia only ever trading places with India, another nation that flies under the radar in recorded history. It even achieved and maintained a level of wealth beyond the typical colonial powers like England, France, and the Netherlands that we typically associate with world domination in this period and it did it through good old fashioned grunt.

In this episode, we'll explore how it all went wrong in the 20th century.

This is Germany, the largest economy in all of Europe by a significant margin and the fourth largest in the world falling just behind Japan. The economy of Germany is so interesting not just because of its size though but more because it’s a tenuous and surprisingly short history.

Germany is a hugely influential economy in the world today and even more so amongst other European economies, it has been a stabilizing force in the euro-zone and its prosperity has overflowed into regions that have been less stable.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away. The star wars universe centered in this galaxy has of course been the center of many stories filled with action intrigue and mindless cash grabs for toy licensing, but it is also home to an amazingly developed economy.

No fictional universe that I know of has the level of depth that the star wars universe has garnered, from the movies, the games, the books, and even the fan fiction it has all built a surprisingly tangible reality in this fictional universe.

A large part of that reality is the surprisingly realistic economy that has been fleshed out in the narrative of the star wars universe. The economics of galactic trade and military spending is a long way from the center of the stories but it is still a foundation that whether intended or not gives an added layer of realism to a science-fiction franchise about space wizards.

It's hard to imagine a better time to reflect! For this episode, we'll refer to the mistakes that were made in the conveyance of information discussed on this podcast in the videos we produce for our audience.

... Enjoy as we reflect!

The Christmas Crash of 2018 was a really important case study that up until now has been pretty much forgotten and even when it was happening probably didn’t get the attention it should.

What was the Christmas crash? What caused it? And why did everything pretty much go straight back to normal immediately after the new year?