I wrote this for anyone who wants to understand the broad conceptual underpinnings of Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT, a paradigm of monetary thinking that conservatives (and, for that matter, that many left-wingers) love to hate
Enjoy! www.asomo.co/p/modern-mon...
Bob Marley once said, “some people are so poor, all they have is money”
What did he mean by this? In a system that requires you to lose your soul in order to win, those who win do not lead lives that we should aspire to
In my latest video, I dive deeper into this
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfeV...
In this 20 min video @brettscott.bsky.social explains clearly and in non-technical terms what is at stake as monetary systems go digital, the role of cash, private and state digital money and stablecoins. Convenience vs resilience, surveillance and power and a great casino chip analogy.
I see a lot of people fixating on how inflation robs them of purchasing power. That’s reasonable, but never let it distract you from the far bigger robber of purchasing power, which is bosses who constantly try reduce your wages so that shareholders and billionaires can get a bigger slice of the pie
Kudos to the bouncer turning Elon Musk away from the Berlin nightclub.
Influence, relationships & power 👇
What do the Epstein files tell us about elite loneliness? In my latest essay I explore the fragility of the powerful www.asomo.co/p/the-green-...
The Big Tech business model: steal the world’s data to build machines to replace the world’s jobs while flooding the internet with slop to make the world doubt reality, and then hope like hell you can escape to outer space before the world’s anger towards you catches fire
Does Trump fit the historical archetype of the 'Stranger King'?
In my new video I explore what anthropology can teach us about the new American colonialism and the MAGA movement
youtu.be/UQGRWSq0TL0
If there’s one thing that I'd like to thank Trump for, it’s in destroying that old 1980s idea that capitalism and state power are somehow separate and incompatible. RIP the old 'state vs market' debate
In this essay I introduce you to the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’ work on kings, and how it can help us to understand not only the relationship of Venezuelans to Trump, but also the relationship between US Americans and Trump www.asomo.co/p/the-strang...
After many years of resisting, I've decided to finally start an Instagram account. Please do connect with me on there www.instagram.com/brett.scott....
Just in case anyone has become confused by the rhetoric, Trump isn't ‘cutting government’. He's *centralizing government* by cutting any section of it that distributes power away from his inner clique
It’s not a dismantling of government. It’s a dismantling of the balance of powers within it
Who profits from a world without cash? Hot tip - it isn’t you
In this interview with the Dutch channel VPRO, I explain the dynamics of cashless society (aka - the bank dominated society), and how this relates to stablecoins, CBDC and Bitcoin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNZp...
A message to anyone campaigning for the four-day week
Just call it the three-day weekend
People across the political spectrum can agree that payments censorship is a form of economic strangulation. Protecting cash, then, is something we can all work together on
www.youtube.com/shorts/uXcIE...
Just uploaded! 2025 was the year of the Trump-AI-Crypto Nexus, but it's an unstable cocktail
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHnJ...
Tech isn't a relaxant. It's an accelerant.
For the full video, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTfO...
Every day we're told that being enslaved to Big Tech is progress. In this video I show you how to break free from that ideology www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTfO...
Thoughtful observations from @brettscott.bsky.social on the yawning gap between the hierarchy and the "under-archy" (and the fact we all rely on life's foundations at ground level, whether or not we trade millions in our skyscrapers) open.substack.com/pub/brettsco...
Thanks for the support
As someone who works in an elite professional services setting, I fully endorse @brettscott.bsky.social‘s essay on the reality distorting effects of life atop the pyramid of financialized capitalism, and can attest to how little thought is given by those who inhabit such spaces to what lies beneath.
My latest essay paints a picture of life on top of the economic pyramid - in the finance and tech sector - and shows how that position distorts not only pay, but also the mentality of those with their heads in the cloud
www.asomo.co/p/scraping-t...
To anyone who thinks AI will somehow save us time in the long term www.youtube.com/shorts/jg6x3...
Given the world’s biggest industry right now is digital crack dealing, we should just start calling Big Tech by their true name - Big Dopamine
Politicians spend a lot of time talking about how to promote economic growth, but they spend almost no time figuring out how to make that economic growth actually improve your life
The true shortage in our world is not growth in stuff or technology. It’s growth in things that really matter
Joe Lonsdale - co-founder of surveillance corporation Palantir, Trump donor and libertarian sea-steader - argues that limiting campaign donations is an attack on free speech, given that you spend to get heard.
His message: the more money you have, the more free speech you get
Just uploaded! How the dark wizards of marketing conjured Black Friday www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie4-...
