Skip to main content

The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047 by Lionel Shriver

A disturbing and sobering book about a hyperinflation in the USA, and the effects it has on an extended family. I consider this book a necessary read right now, especially now, as some of what this book foretells seems increasingly likely to happen--although hopefully to a much lesser degree.  

A few themes really stood out to me: 
1) On how some people are NGMI and there's nothing you can do to help them, even if you literally tell them exactly what will happen. They will reject it, and worse: they'll reject you for telling them. Hence the awful yet true quote from Thomas Sowell: "People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right—especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong."

2) On how people waste enormous amounts of energy arguing about who's right, or trying to "be" right about some unexpected problem, rather than dealing with the actual problem. And then, once something unexpected has happened, people will burn tremendous emotional energy to show how "unsurprised" they were by this clearly, obviously unexpected thing. This is fascinating from an ego standpoint, because if they were really being truthful with themselves, they'd openly admit that what happened actually surprised the absolute shit out of them. And of course in some people, this ego-protection device goes into hyperdrive: their brains resolve experiences like this by claiming that they predicted it all along. Nassim Taleb coined the word "postdicting" to describe this hilariously prevalent phenomenon among business and political pundits whose incomes depend on them appearing both unsurprised and right all the time. 

3) Notable also was the fact that those characters who wasted all their energy trying to appear "right" or "unsurprised" were usually the softest and least adaptable to both the hyperinflationary era and the post-hyperinflation era that followed. Their egos, however, were nicely protected.

Finally, I credit the author for creating a subtle, well-done disturbing ambiance: a blanket of tension and fear that envelops everything, reader included, in the face of all of the economic and social disruption that accompanies a severe inflation. It's a fear not just of economic uncertainty, but also a fear of the truth: reality is changing and the things you thought were true (that your savings would hold value, that the economy would function, that the society built around these things would remain stable) are no longer true, and the ramifications are too awful to think about. Of course, if you fear the ramifications of a truth, you will always be at least one large step away from accepting and dealing with that truth. Thus the author indirectly offers readers yet another truth: do not fear. Do what you can, do the best you can, but do not be fearful. That fear clouds your judgment, slows you down, and it will kill you.

They say if you see a trend one year ahead of everyone else you become rich--but if you see a trend ten years ahead of everybody else you go insane. I wonder about this book and how predictive it is, and I can't tell if getting ready for it will make me insane, rich, both... or neither. 
[Links will take you to my reviews of each of these books]

Note to Self: Buy more Bitcoin.

More Posts

Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle: A Money Manager’s Reports 2002-15 [Edward Chancellor, Editor]

A collection of essays, culled from Marathon Asset Management's letters to clients, unified into what turns out to be an uneven book: useful in places, nearly useless in others. However, it offers readers good insights on how to think long term about investing in stocks, and the "capital cycle" (which I'll explain in the next paragraph) is an extraordinarily useful paradigm for investors. So what is the "capital cycle," and how do you invest "through" it? Essentially, all companies have capacity decisions to make, all the time. They have to expand capacity to meet market demand (or contract if there's a decline in demand), and they also have to game theory out what their competitors are thinking about their capacity. Every industry has its own dynamics, of course, but when an industry is in oversupply (in other words it has too much capacity), business quickly becomes terrible, earnings drop, and stock prices go down. And when the reverse is t...
Read more

Athanasius: the Life of Antony (Vita Antonii) and the Letter to Marcellinus

The first few centuries of Christianity offer an opportunity to learn about another period of great upheaval, an era when political, philosophical--and in this particular case, religious doctrinal differences--pulled society apart. As always, the past gives us guidance for navigating the upheaval of today. Athanasius' biography (actually hagiography) of Antony is on one level an extended Holy Desert Fathers reading. Antony was a desert OG, and there are wonderful discussions here on the beautiful early Christian ideals of prudence, justice, hospitality, temperance, courage, asceticism, on concern for the poor, on developing freedom from anger. In today's increasingly irreligious era, as the State becomes our "deity," these ideals are in steady decline. On another level, this work is also a piece of propaganda, using the life of a saint to make a doctrinal argument. Athanasius uses Antony as a mouthpiece to defend the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, and attack the het...
Read more

The Day of the Barbarians by Alessandro Barbero

Excellent, readable short history of the battle of Adrianople, setting it in context of the final decades of the Western Roman Empire. Worth reading in particular for valuable historical context for the various fiscal, monetary and immigration policies the USA has embraced over the past few generations. At a certain point in Rome's historical arc, its leaders discovered that it could use barbarians as low cost labor and low cost military manpower. Further, both immigration and a type of what we might call "loose fiscal policy" could be powerful tools Roman elites could use to retain power and maintain the status quo that so enriched them at the expense of the peasantry. As the saying goes, history never repeats, but it sure rhymes. And it is incredibly disturbing to see policy decisions in 300-400 AD Rome--right before its collapse--that "rhyme" so well with various fiscal, monetary and immigration policies in place here and now in the USA. Striking.  Finally, o...
Read more