G A N Z E E R . T O D A Y

“In 1717 the Mississippi Company, chartered in France, set out to colonize the lower Mississippi Valley, establishing the city of New Orleans in the process. To finance its ambitious plans, the company which had good connections at the court of King Louis XV, sold shares on the Paris stock exchange. John Law, the company's director, was also the governor of the central bank of France. Furthermore, the king had appointed him controller-general of finances, an office roughly equivalent to that of a modern finance minister. In 1717 the lower Mississippi valley offered few attractions besides swamps and alligators, yet the Mississippi Company spread tales of fabulous riches and boundless opportunities. French aristocrats, businessmen and the stolid members of urban bourgeoisie fell for these fantasies, and Mississippi share prices skyrockets. Initially, shares were offered at 500 livres apiece. On 1 August 1719, shares traded at 2,750 livres. By 30 August, they were worth 4,100 livres, and on 4 September, they reached 5,000 livres. On 2 December the price of a Mississippi share crossed the threshold of 10,000 livres. Euphoria swept the streets of Paris. People sold all their possessions and took huge loans in order to buy Mississippi shares. Everybody believed they'd discovered the easy way to riches.”

From Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS

“A few days later, the panic began. Some speculators realized that share prices were totally unrealistic and unsustainable. They figured that they had better sell while stock prices were at their peak. As the supply of shares available rose, their price declined. When other investors saw the price going down, they also wanted to get out quick. The stock price plummeted further, setting off an avalanche. In order to stabilize prices, the central bank of France — at the direction of its governor, John Law (also the Mississippi Company's director) — bought up Mississippi shares, but it could not do so forever. Eventually, it ran out of money. When this happened, the controller-general of finances, the same John Law, authorized the printing of more money in order to buy additional shares. This placed the entire French financial system inside the bubble. And not even this financial wizardry could save the day. The price of Mississippi shares dropped from 10,000 livres back to 1,000 livres, and then collapsed completely. By now, the central bank and the royal treasury owned a huge amount of worthless stock and had no money. The big speculators emerged largely unscathed — they had sold in time. Small investors lost everything, and many committed suicide.”

Parallels can certainly be drawn in the appointment of Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson as head of U.S. Treasury in 2006, barely a couple years before the crash of 2008-09, or even now appointing the “former” CEO/CIO of a major hedge fund as secretary of U.S. Treasury.

“The Mississippi Bubble was one of history's most spectacular financial crashes. The royal French financial system never recuperated fully from the blow. The way in which the Mississippi Company used its political clout to manipulate share prices and fuel the buying frenzy caused the public to lose faith in the French banking system and in the financial wisdom of the French king. Louis XV found it more and more difficult to raise credit. This became one of the chief reasons that the overseas French Empire fell into British hands. While the British could borrow money easily and at low interest rates, France had difficulties securing loans, and had to pay high interest on them. In order to finance his growing debts, the king of France borrowed more and more money at higher and higher interest rates. Eventually, in 1780, Louise XVI, who had ascended to the thrown on his grandfather's death, realised that half his annual budget was tied to servicing the interest on his loans and that he was heading towards bankruptcy. Reluctantly, in 1789, Louise XVI convened the Estates General, the French parliament that had not met for a century and a half, in order to find a solution to the crisis. Thus began the French Revolution.”

They don't mention that backstory when teaching the French Revolution, now do they?

Harari is kind of a contrarian, because he uses the example of the Mississippi Bubble to illuminate why autocracy-based Capitalism doesn't quite work compared to the kind of Capitalism that is bound to fair laws and regulations, the kind of Capitalism that allowed the Dutch to prosper, at least around the time their joint-stock companies established New Amsterdam in what is now lower Manhattan. Yet he will also make a statement like this:

“When kings fail to do their jobs and regulate the markets properly, it leads to loss of trust, dwindling credit and economic depression. That was the lesson taught by the Mississippi Bubble of 1719, and anyone who forgot it was reminded by the US housing bubble of 2007, and the ensuing credit crunch and recession.”

Unless he means to say the facets of US capitalism are de facto autocratic without wanting to say it out loud.

#reads

“Samuel Greedy, a shrewd financier, founds a bank in El Dorado, California. A.A. Stone, an up-and-coming contractor in El Dorado, finishes his first big job, recieving payment in cash to the tune of $1 million. He deposites his sum in Mr Greedy's bank. The bank now has $1 million in capital. In the meantime, Jane McDoughnut, an experienced buy impecunious El Dorado chef, thinks she sees a business opportunity — there's no really good bakery in her part of town. But she doesn't have enough money of her own to buy a proper facility complete with industrial ovens, sinks, knives, and pots. She goes to the bank, presents her business plan to Greedy, and persuades him that it's a worthwhile investment. He issues her a $1 million loan, by crediting her account in the bank with that sum.”

Still slow-reading Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS

“McDoughnut now hires Stone, the contractor, to build and furnish her bakery. His price is $1,000,000. When she pays him, with a cheque drawn on her account, Stone deposits it in his account in the Greedy bank. So how much money does stone have in his bank account? Right, $2 million.

“How much money, cash, is actually located in the bank's safe? Yes, $1 million.”

And about a page later:

“What enables banks — and the entire economy — to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world.”

In a way yes, I agree with Harari, but also no, I don't, because most capitalists lack imagination and tend to only trust proven track records. So their trust in the future tends to be tied to something's proven success in the recent past. It is trust in the future as long as that future is tethered to the past, in most cases anyway.

Another interesting bit a few more pages in:

“Over the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big, before the bubble bursts. Everything depends on the people in the labs. New discoveries in fields such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence could create entire new industries, whose profits could back the trillions of make-believe money that the banks and governments have created since 2008. If the labs do not fulfil these expectations before the bubble bursts, we are heading towards very rough times.”

This checks, and explains the tendency of a particular echelon of Western capitalists to always chase the next new shiny innovation to pump their money into. But it also fails to acknowledge that the problem today isn't the lack of tangible wealth as much as it's a problem of adequate distribution. What investing in new innovations in the past did was allow for the creation of new jobs that relied on that innovation, thus creating just enough “wealth” for those new employees to delay the inevitable market collapse. Presently, all indications are pointing towards new innovations that eliminate jobs rather than create them, creating more even more wealth disparity, with most of the pie going into the mouths of those who have no need for it.

Capitalism is a dead-end system, its very demise being the doing of capitalists (and their science labs) themselves.

This is something Harari unfortunately seems very unwilling to see or acknowledge, despite it being spelled out even in his own description of it. But he seems fascinated by it, more than critical, and given his evident smarts, has a way of convincing you that everything he says must be true. But much of it simply isn't.   #reads #journal

For as long as I can remember, I'd come across an interesting Japanese tradition or philosophy of some kind that can be summed up in one word; things like Wabi-Sabi: finding beauty in imperfection and transience, Ikigai: the intersection of passion, mission, vocation, and profession that culminates in the reason for being, or Kaizen: continuous improvement through small, incremental changes. Fascinated, I often wondered if other cultures also had their share of single-word philosophies, ignored for one reason or another by the international gaze (if we can call it that). Over the course of the past few months though, I have come to realize that Egypt almost certainly boasts at least one such tradition: Karwata.

Read more in the latest RESTRICTED FREQUENCY, #222: Karwata.

#rf

It almost looked like I wouldn't be able to pencil a page of TSG the other day, but I managed to squeeze it in later in the evening, so you'll notice I readded it to my daily to-list after taking it out.

I used to use a whiteboard for this sort of thing back in Houston, but with much work being done at the Cairo studio over the past three months—work that involved tearing into walls—I had to do without a wall-mounted whiteboard and opted to try a block-pad instead, starting each day with a fresh sheet of paper. It is evidently impossible for me to function without some form of daily checklist.

I typically throw away a day's sheet as soon as the day is over, but I've been keeping them for the last few days now, realizing that it's something you can't do with the whiteboard and can only do with this, and so, perhaps there can be some kind of use for them; glued onto canvas to use as the backdrop for an artwork, folded and sewn into some kind of artist book, etc.

My artist brain doesn't always get along with my anti-hoarder brain.

Inbox 33, RSS at 1836(!).

#journal

Kitchen is now in the hands of a dear friend, who designs and manufactures this sort of thing. Passed a preliminary design his way and the rest is up to him. Despite the kitchen's small size, I do not anticipate speediness; probably 2-3 months if I were to guess. Time moves very differently in Egypt.

Few days of existence without handymen around. Have all but forgotten what my routine used to look like and feel like I need to retrain myself all over again. The idea was that Cairo would allow for the space and time to do all things creative, but it hasn't quite turned out that way, not yet.

(Photo above taken in downtown Cairo.)

#journal

“The imperial civilization may well have absorbed numerous contributions from various conquered peoples, but the hybrid result was still alien to the vast majority. The process of assimilation was often painful and traumatic. It is not easy to give up a familiar and beloved local tradition, just as it is difficult and stressful to understand and adopt a new culture.”

From Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS.

“Worse still, even when subject peoples were successful in adopting the imperial culture, it could take decades, if not centuries, until the imperial elite accepted them as part of 'us'. The generations between conquest and acceptance were left out in the cold. They had already lost their beloved local culture, but they were not allowed to take an equal part in the imperial world. On the contrary, their adopted culture continued to view them as barbarians.”

Still the case today thousands of years since the first empires. Take Rishi Sunak for instance, a man of Indian ethnicity who ascended to the seat of British Prime Minister 167 years after the British conquest of India, and who still faced questions about the authenticity of his Britishness despite having practically nothing Indian about him other than his features. If instead a white British PM who'd developed a soft spot for Indian Culture had went on and on about his love for Indian food, music, history, cinema, and textiles, no one would've batted an eye. We still, as a species, seem to be hardwired to be optically xenophobic more than anything. Some of us more than others anyway.

To be expected though, given that the doctrine of equality and human rights is still so very young when considered in the context of human history. But then again, we've kind of been through all this before:

“During the second century AD, Rome was ruled by a line of emporers born in Iberia, in whose veins probably flowed at least a few drops of local Iberian blood. The reigns of Iberian emperors—from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius—are often seen as the empire's golden age. After that, all the ethnic dams were let down. Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211) was the scion of a Punic family from Libya. Elagabalus (218-22) was a Syrian. Emperor Philip (244-9) was known colloquially as 'Philip the Arab'. The empire's new citizens adopted Roman imperial culture with such zest that, for centuries and even millenia after the empire itself collapsed, they continued to speak the empire's language, to live by the empire's laws, and to believe in the Christian God that the empire had adopted from one of its Levantine provinces.”

#reads

A most suffocating heatwave swept through the country last week, but it broke over the last couple days and a most pleasant breeze—cool and minty—is making its way through the studio this morning.

Plumbing and electric work are finally done, as is all the wall and floor fixups they necessitated (although, a couple more wall touchups would be ideal but I'm just way too drained to deal with them). Next up: the actual fucking kitchen.

#journal

“An empire that cannot sustain a blow and remain standing is not really an empire. Yet even the Romans found it hard to stomach the news arriving from northern Iberia in the middle of the second century BC. A small, insignificant mountain town called Numantia, inhabited by the peninsula's native Celts, had dared to throw off the Roman yoke. Rome at the time was the unquestioned master of the entire Mediterranean basin, having vanquished the Macedonian and Seleucid empires, subjugated the proud people of Greece, and turned Carthage into a smouldering ruin. The Numantians had nothing on their side but their fierce love of freedom and their inhospitable terrain. Yet they forced legion after legion to surrender or retreat in shame.”

From Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS.

“Eventually, in 134 BC, Roman patience snapped. The Senate decided to send Scipio Aemilianus, Rome's foremost general and the man who had levelled Carthage, to take care of the Numantians. He was given a massive army of more than 30,000 soldiers. Scipio, who respected the fighting spirit and martial skill of the Numantians, preferred not to waste his soldiers in unnecessary combat. Instead, he encircled Numantia with a line of fortifications, blocking the town's contact with the outside world. Hunger did his work for him. After more than a year, the food supply ran out. When the Numantians realized that all hope was lost, they burned down their home; according to Roman accounts, most of them killed themselves so as not to become Roman slaves.”

Can we say hardcore?

History helps us see our present in new light, and perhaps make considerations for our future. We might therefore regard our modern day Numantians to be the people of Cuba and Palestine, both having endured blockades not for a mere year, but for decades.

#reads

• Live TV Wall: Live TV from across the globe, all on one screen.

• Marginalia Search: Discover surprising, content-rich websites from the less commercial, obscure corners of the internet.

• Ya Old Blogroll: Curated list of active blogs (where I just discovered Ganzeer.Today just so happens to be listed).

#radar

Public talk at Medrar in Cairo tomorrow.

Hopefully dentist doesn't fuck me up today. But whatever he does it'll surely be better than the don't-put-anything-in-mouth stage of gum-pain I'm currently in.

#event #Cairo