The Empire's New Clothes

The end of an era is here! Last episode before we take a break to produce a podcast mini-series where we can take a deep dive into the core pillars of an empire and as, “What the heck is going on?” and “What’s going to happen to America?”

Aaron Samsonoff has been interested in business since he was a boy, working several paper routes at the same time. This passion and drive matched with his keen eye for trends has allowed him to take off in a number of different spaces such as marketing, investing, and computer science.

The real class war, as proposed by Julius Krein, is one in which the upper elites are in a struggle for power as the rest of us look on. Julius breaks down his argument while also touching on other power dynamics in the US.

The economist Bruce Sacerdote was locked down like the rest of us with nothing but a constant news stream on his TV. He became frustrated by what seemed to be only negative news, like any good economist he set out to study if this was true.

Anna Lembke walks us through her research and understanding of dopamine. How might this relate to the US empire you might ask? Turns out Anna believes too many of us are driven by an out of whack dopamine cycle. This causes us to seek dopamine responses more often than we might otherwise.

Anat Admati has spent years disentangling the myths, confusions and outright lies that we perpetuate about the highly financialized capitalist system we live in.

Michael Munger takes us into his book “Is Capitalism Sustainable” and argues… it is not. However, from his perspective that does not mean we should give up on capitalism and look elsewhere.

Economism is using 101 economic understandings for big policy choices and decisions. James Kwak presents the argument that it endangers our politics and that the center left is especially guilty.

Robin Hanson brings his macro focus to the rise and fall of civilizations. He sees our globe as one mega civilization and has some unique concerns about such a situation. With terms like “rot” and “mob” he breaks down the rise and fall of civilizations and helps introduce new ways of conceptualizing our world.

What does 1990’s Albania have to do with Blockchain technology? Plenty if you ask Stephen Diehl. He joins us to explain his views on crypto and why he believes it’s all one big speculative mania.