The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

In his book Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, Matt Ridley argues that Homo sapiens overtook the stronger Neanderthals and, indeed, the rest of the animal kingdom, to become the dominant species on earth, by doing something no other animal does – by exchanging things. “There was a point in human pre-history,” he says, when “people for the first time began to exchange things with each other, and that once they started doing so, culture suddenly became cumulative, and the great headlong experiment of human economic “progress” began. Exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is to biological evolution.”This applies not just to the exchange of objects, but the exchange of ideas, knowledge and information, of skills and services – just about anything. “If I catch the food, you cook it” means that I could specialize in catching – and become better at it – while you specialize in cooking and become better at that. With my superior catching and your superior cooking we both now enjoy considerably better lifestyles. Mankind also progresses through the subsequent improvement of catching and cooking techniques, which are then passed on to t he next generation. There is an exchange taking place right now. You are reading my material. I benefit from your eyeballs and the increased awareness of my work that every writer so desperately craves. You are benefitting from my words in that you might find entertainment, interest or wisdom in them. We are only able to do what we do today because of what was done in the past. It is only because of the cumulative work of millions of people – from Steve Jobs to Alan Turing to Shakespeare to millions of people who I’ll never know or even hear of – that I am able to write this essay on this Mac. I don’t know how to build a Mac, I don’t know how to extract the oil necessary to manufacture its component parts; I can’t make paper or ink or printing presses, yet, because of the cumulative effects of the exchanges of millions of people, I’m now able to exchange my work – itself the product of studying the work of many others – with you.The collective intelligence of mankind is far, far greater than what can be held in the mind of even the brightest individual that ever lived. That collective intelligence keeps on growing. There is no limit to it. ‘The extraordinary thing about exchange,’ says Ridley, ‘is that it breeds: the more of it you do, the more of it you can do. And it calls forth innovation.’ The more we exchange, the more we progress. This accumulation of intelligence over generations has led to a situation where, even a hundred years ago, to quote the French philosopher Ernest Renan, ‘The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life’.But the reverse applies as well. The less we exchange, the less we progress. Exchange is limited under oppressive, totalitarian or bureaucratic regimes, which is why they are overtaken by freer neighbours. When we stop exchanging altogether, there is regression.10,000 years ago, as Ridley argues, rising seas cut off Tasmania from mainland Australia. Isolated, the possibilities for exchange diminished. Technologically, the Tasmanian people actually regressed.It follows, therefore, that for individuals, families, communities, nations – indeed mankind – to prosper and progress, conditions need to be as conducive as possible for trade and exchange. It really is that simple. That should be the primary agenda of every policy-maker and leader in the world: to create an environment conducive to exchange. This means a marketplace where, from tax to tariff to bureaucracy, there are as few barriers to exchange as possible. It means a marketplace where there is trust and confidence. It means a market in which ownership of property is secure. It means a marketplace where participants can operate without coercion or crime; where good practice is rewarded with success and bad practice meets with failure. It also means a marketplace whose medium of exchange – money – is dependable.I’m talking, of course, about a free market.Until next time,Don’t forget to check out Wednesday’s piece, if you missed it: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

I’ve had it beaten into me from an early age how important it is to write clearly and simply. My father, himself a writer, drilled it into me. In my teenage years and into my 20s, we used to work together like mad on things I had written, trimming them down, rephrasing, editing, and he would always talk about the importance of clarity, as he taught me the craft of writing. “Make it easy for the reader,” he would say.As I’ve said many times, the discipline of comedy also forces clarity. If the audience doesn’t understand, they don’t laugh and you die.But in academia and across the financial world, and probably elsewhere, no such discipline applies. In fact, it often pays not to be clear. In the case of finance, if you can obfuscate a little, you are less likely to be caught out or have things thrown back at you. Former Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, who could speak in total gobbledygook if he needed, called what he did “purposeful obfuscation”. How right was George Orwell, another clear speech advocate, when he said “the great enemy of clear language is insincerity”.In the case of academia, unreadable sentences and long words can make you look cleverer than you actually are.There are so many books that have become wildly popular, which I’ve tried to read, and found unreadable. Thomas Pickety’s Capital In The 21st Century, for example. In the past I’ve tried and failed with James Joyce, Umberto Eco (except for The Name of the Rose), Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Melville, Salman Rushdie, Joseph Heller, Stephen Hawking, Ayn Rand, Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust and more. Let’s be honest I’ve tried and failed to complete Homer, Dante and the Bible (King James version), as well. Maybe I lack persistence, but a large part of me thinks, “if you haven’t made the effort, why should I?”Picketty’s book sold millions of copies, but the stats from Amazon showed that hardly anyone actually finished it. It became one of those books that was cool to talk about having read, without anyone actually heaving read it. I settled for the Wikipedia entry - and I’m not even sure I finished that.Subscribe to this amazing publication and all your ailments will be cured.I’m currently working on a new book about gold and so I find myself reading a lot more than usual, as I research. Here is something, I’ve observed. Often you will stumble across a website where the writer has put some history or science or economics in beautifully clear and simple language. To do that takes effort. Such websites can become the most fantastic reference points. But sometimes because something is so simply written, I somehow think that by citing it - as I should - it doesn’t reflect very well on me. But cite some unreadable academic trove and that makes me look clever - even if I haven’t actually read it.As people who have read my books will know, I am pretty scrupulous about my citations. But if I find myself drawn to the temptation, for sure others will be too. People will cite the stuff they haven’t actually read, and not cite the stuff they have read. The unclear, pompous, badly written stuff with long words and endless sentences ends up getting the recognition, while the better, simpler stuff, where the writer has worked harder to make it easier for the reader, gets overlooked and even plagiarised. It’s the opposite of a virtuous circle. It’s another symptom of the midwit-dominated society in which we live, I suppose. The flannel gets the acclaim, the clear and simple stuff at either end of the bell curve not so much.We all think that we are not getting the credit we deserve. But I do sometimes wonder if perhaps I had worked less hard to make my stuff readable, I would have got more recognition - especially from the establishment (whatever that is). I’ve had so much stuff plagiarised over the years: books and articles, jokes and stand-up routines, even a film I helped write. It leaves a very sour taste in the mouth. But I don’t think I’ll ever bring myself to deliberately write unreadable stuff. I’m too programmed to try and keep things clear. Ah, the crosses we have to bear.On reading this, my girlfriend said I need to read the book The Four Agreements. Those agreements are: "Be impeccable with your word", "Do not take anything personally", "Do not make assumptions" and "Always do your best". She may have a point. It had better be clearly written …Tell your mates about this amazing article.Live shows coming upIf you have not seen my lecture with funny bits about gold, we have two more dates in London lined up for Feb 14 and 15.And I am taking my musical comedy show, An Evening of Curious Songs, on a mini tour in the spring with dates in London, Somerset, Hampshire, Surrey and Essex. This is a really fun show.Here are the dates and places.* London, Crazy Coqs, W1. Wednesday March 20th. On sale now.* Bordon, Hampshire. Saturday March 23. On sale now.* Guildford, Surrey. Friday April 5. On sale now.  * Bath, Somerset. Saturday April 6. On sale now.* Southend, Essex . Sunday April 14. On sale now.Buying gold?Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. I use The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, you can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deal with them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

I have been in California - Riverside, LA and Palm Springs - for the last month, helping out with a family issue over there. I wanted to share a couple of thoughts I had about the golden state, where, as wealth and poverty collide, there are two very different realities.My first wake up call was in the supermarket - Stater Bros. Just how expensive has the US has become, especially for a European with weak currency. I used to think America was cheap. You think food prices in the UK are bad. I’d say they are twice as expensive in California, if not more. $4.99 for four large onions and they weren’t even organic onions. Fruit, veg, fish, meat. Name your staple. The US ain’t cheap any more. Obviously, exchange rates are a factor and the pound, at $1.27, is not exactly strong, if one thinks back to the heady days north o f two bucks. But currency aside, ordinary living is getting very expensive for our transatlantic cousins. (Houses are no longer cheap either, for what it’s worth).Fuel, on the other hand, is around $4.80/gallon, which works out around £1/litre, compared to £1.45-50/litre over here. Americans are still complaining about it though. For them that’s expensive. Guess it is when you factor in how big their cars are.(Gosh, I enjoyed living under US weights and measures, or as they call them English weights and measures. They are so much more intuitive than metric. More on that here, if you want to see my lecture on the subject). Second hand cars also seemed cheap, by the way, though my finger is not really on the pulse. I was just strolling round the classic car shops in Palm Springs, where you can pick up a Rolls Royce Corniche in attractive beige (I didn’t realise there was such a thing) for $50k. That felt to me like less than you would pay here. Also, in Palm Springs people will tell you how nice your car is. Here they’ll just nick it.The roads, by the way, are very crowded indeed, and boy are freeways manic. Palm Springs was like a dreamland. Sheltered from the cruel realities that are inflicting the rest of the world, the news feels a long way away. But there was a very different story in LA, 90 minutes up the road. My kids wanted to see Skid Row (where many drug addicts and homeless have taken root), so we drove around there for a bit. Even in a car with the locks on, I did not feel comfortable at all halted at traffic lights. I once had a run-in with a group of homeless people on a freezing winter’s day in Hillbrow, Johannesburg - an experience I will never forget, and a story for another day. This reminded me of that. (Later, a Lyft driver told us Skid Row is by no means as bad as it gets. Places like Watts and Compton are too dangerous to even drive through). Skid Row borders on Downtown LA and, at the turn of a corner, you suddenly see all kempt streets and offices. The juxtaposition is stark. From there we went to the Walk of Fame for a stroll, where, within a few minutes of getting out of the car, we were almost knocked over by a huge (and I mean heavy weight world champion, 6 foot 8 basketball player huge) homeless black man with a very loud voice, running down the street, screaming platitudes at a much smaller, richly dressed and armed black man, who was chasing him, yelling at him to never be seen round here again. This was all in the first hour. My younger daughter (aged 19) turned to me and said she had never felt so unsafe in any city ever. She had a point. The drug addicted homeless seemed to be everywhere. Surely the sheer weight of numbers means something. In Venice, we watched a Latino man with a t-shirt stolen from TJ Max spend 10 minutes attempting to scan the bar code from the label of the stolen shirt onto the button at a pedestrian crossing, while the machine repeatedly told him to “wait”. Finally, exasperated, he threw his hands in the air and walked straight into the road to be hit by a passing car (fortunately not injured). The following day we visited Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. It is so wealthy, clean and curated, it is verging on the make believe. There, you are abnormal if you haven’t had cosmetic surgery of some kind. Was ever there such a fairy land of a place. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such extreme poverty and wealth so immediately juxtaposed as in LA. Something ain’t right, as the saying goes, and, I dare say, something’s going to give. It was probably my imagination, projecting fears and biases, but at times it felt like we were just a couple of short steps away from breakdown: a city on the brink. My general theory, or rather Alex McCarron’s theory which I’ve adopted, of the South Africanisation of everything applies here too.The following day we hung out in West Hollywood and Silvertown, where, I should say, things felt more normal, whatever that means. I really liked the vibe. Best of all, I liked the canals around Venice. They are just glorious. Almost as nice as the River Thames upstream.As for LA’s future, well… The city was built on the movie industry. Who watches movies any more? I have been to the cinema once since Covid. I used to go all the time. My kids don’t go either. Most of their viewing time is on their phones, and of that the moving picture allocation goes on YouTube and Tictoc. (I know, I know). Films are for boomers, but even my mum hardly watches any now. Perhaps, then, LA goes the way of another city that lost its main industry: Detroit. It’s not impossible, I suppose. On the other hand, there is so much capital in LA, it seems unlikely. South Africanisation, as I say, is the most likely.In any case, LA is a city that is not working for a lot of people, even if it is for a few.I would not be in a rush to invest capital there - unless it’s in some kind of security company.On a happier note, here for your entertainment is a photo of the kids and me on a hike in the mountains around Palm Springs. I don’t normally post pics of the fam, but I liked this one. (Those wind turbines in the background, by the way, are a blot of the landscape and, in the three weeks I was there, barely turned).Until next time,DominicLive shows coming upIf you have not seen my lecture with funny bits about gold, we have two more dates in London lined up for Feb 14 and 15. And I am taking my musical comedy show, An Evening of Curious Songs, on a mini tour in the spring with dates in London, Somerset, Hampshire, Surrey and Essex. This is a really fun show.Here are the dates and places.* London, Crazy Coqs, W1. Wednesday March 20th. On sale now.* Bordon, Hampshire. Saturday March 23. On sale now.* Guildford, Surrey. Friday April 5. On sale now.  * Bath, Somerset. Saturday April 6. On sale now.* Southend, Essex . Sunday April 14. On sale now.Buying gold?Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. I use The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, you can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deal with them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

(If you prefer, you can watch this article in video form here)The youngster setting out on life in the west has a major problem. We live in a society that penalises hard work. Punitively and relentlessly.As Daylight Robbery readers will know, over the course of a life, half of everything a typical worker earns will be taken from him by the government. More if you factor in inflation. People think a house is the most expensive purchase you will ever make. It isn’t. It is, by far and away, your government. And it’s a forced purchase as well.Not only is the produce of your labour confiscated, it is spent on things on which you may often be philosophically opposed: wars, waste, masks, rainbow road crossings, corruption, human rights lawyers, Stonewall. I could go on.But that is the bind in which the western citizen finds himself. It is the price he must pay for a civilised society.So the typical worker finds himself working hour upon hour merely to stay afloat, his produce confiscated, week in week out. We can’t all be Elon Musk, much as we would like to be. Unless you have a very well paid job indeed, this is your reality. It is very hard to get on. You are trapped.To make it worse, the money you are paid in also loses its value. Relentlessly. Thus what you got to keep is taken from you too.This will remain your reality, unless you change it.One solution, as I outline here, is to convert as much of your pay as possible into strong currency, but with 50% of your earnings constantly confiscated it is still a rough deal. (And don’t say income taxes are lower than that, I know they are. There are many other taxes we must pay too.)So what to do?The answer is leave. Go somewhere where taxes are lower and the currency is stronger. Then you will be rewarded for your labour. And through your labour, you might actually be able to save and improve your lot.I have never been crazy about Dubai. I’ve always found the place a bit false. It lacks culture. I prefer places that are a bit more organic. I’d rather be in a quaint English village with an old pub and a beautiful church, wandering through the City with its mysterious, historical back alleys or lounging in some terracotta Mediterranean villa. What’s more, the thought of the slave labour on which Dubai was built makes me feel very uncomfortable. In my stand-up act I sometimes do a joke: “as a stand-up you need some ready-made put-downs in case you have problem people in the audience, so I have been working on my put-downs, and the best I’ve been able to come up with is … You look like the sort of person that likes Dubai.” (Some audiences - usually cultured ones - love that joke, others are baffled by it)But all that said, every time I have been to Dubai I have had a good time. A very good time in fact. And I have always been well looked after.But here’s the thing. There is no Income Tax in Dubai. VAT is just 5%. There is no Stamp Duty. There is no TV tax. There is no Council Tax. Petrol is cheap. Corporation tax is much lower. Booze, fags and sugary drinks face 50% excise duties. But who cares? You drink too much anyway.As for the money you are paid in, UAE dirham, well, that’s pegged to the US dollar. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the pound. So go the UAE, work, keep what you earn and, even in a relatively low-ranking job, in five years you will suddenly you’ll find yourself in a very different, much stronger position than if you had stayed in UK, Europe or any high tax jurisdiction.Look at how crap our governments are. Why enable them? Live shows coming upIf you have not seen my lecture with funny bits about gold, we have two more dates in London lined up for Feb 14 and 15. Please come.And I am taking my musical comedy show, An Evening of Curious Songs, on a mini tour in the spring with dates in London, Somerset, Hampshire, Surrey and Essex. This is a really fun show.Here are the dates and places.* London, Crazy Coqs, W1. Wednesday March 20th. On sale now.* Bordon, Hampshire. Saturday March 23. On sale now.* Guildford, Surrey. Friday April 5. On sale now.  * Bath, Somerset. Saturday April 6. On sale now.* Southend, Essex . Sunday April 14. On sale now.Buying gold?Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. I use The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, you can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deal with them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

If you prefer to read this piece, you can do that here. Live shows coming upIf you have not seen my lecture with funny bits about gold, we have two more dates in London lined up for Feb 14 and 15. Please come.And I am taking my musical comedy show, An Evening of Curious Songs, on a mini tour in the spring with dates in London, Somerset, Hampshire, Surrey and Essex. This is a really fun show.Here are the dates and places.* London, Crazy Coqs, W1. Wednesday March 20th. On sale now.* Bordon, Hampshire. Saturday March 23. On sale now.* Guildford, Surrey. Friday April 5. On sale now.  * Bath, Somerset. Saturday April 6. On sale now.* Southend, Essex . Sunday April 14. On sale now.Buying gold?Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. I use The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, you can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deal with them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

If you prefer, you can read or listen to this piece here.Live shows coming upIf you have not seen my lecture with funny bits about gold, we have two more dates in London lined up for Feb 14 and 15. Please come.And I am taking my musical comedy show, An Evening of Curious Songs, on a mini tour in the spring with dates in London, Somerset, Hampshire, Surrey and Essex. This is a really fun show.Here are the dates and places.* London, Crazy Coqs, W1. Wednesday March 20th. On sale now.* Bordon, Hampshire. Saturday March 23. On sale now.* Guildford, Surrey. Friday April 5. On sale now.  * Bath, Somerset. Saturday April 6. On sale now.* Southend, Essex . Sunday April 14. On sale now.Buying gold?Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. I use The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, you can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deal with them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

It’s that time of year again. Time to get out the crystal ball and tell you precisely what is going to happen in the next 12 months. Here are 15 predictions for 2024.Remember the rules of the game: I score 2 points for a direct hit, 1 for a good call, zero for a miss and minus one for a “David Lammy on Mastermind” fail. As I do every year, I shall come back and mark my homework next December.New years are fairly arbitrary things. January 1st rarely marks an actual turning point. Trends that were trends in the autumn and winter tend to continue into January, February and beyond, until they dissipate and run out of steam. There are occasional dramatic events, but life is mostly a gradual process. It’s only when you jump back or forward 12 months that things look so different. This time last year the S&P500 was struggling to the point that many saw a meltdown coming. We got no such thing - in fact, quite the opposite. The stock market rose 25% in one of its best years ever. 20 years ago, if you could step forward and see, I don’t know, the state of our institutions, or the demographics of your capital city, you’d risk having some kind of cerebral haemorrhage. Change is gradual, it is the incremental effects of tiny change compounded over time that are so formidable. We’ll start, however, with an ongoing gradual process that I don’t see reversing in 2024.1. The Great Decline goes on. It may not feel like it in this Great Decline, but life generally, believe it or not, is getting steadily better, at least from a technological point of view.But technology is subject to the improving forces of competition and free markets, our systems of government are not. They are from a different era and should be obsolete, but they persist. They are not improving but stultifying.The prediction: everywhere the state’s tentacles reach remains a drain on productivity. Our once great institutions continue to fall apart, like zombie meth addicts, stumbling towards dysfunction. (I’m going to write a song called Nothing Works Anymore). The New Woke Religions of Climate Change, the NHS and White=Bad endure, exhausting resources and minds. The ordinary worker desperately trying to improve his lot is bled dry by taxes, inflation, housing costs and the voracious state monster. Fiat loses yet more of its purchasing power. The South Africanisation of everything continues. 2. Gold to new highs. $2,400 here we come.It’s not all bad, however. This is a good year for the anti-fiat trades. Gold breaks out. Finally.3. Bitcoin goes to new highs as well. The barrier that is the all-time high at $69,000 falls. The ETF, the halving, the money printers and the tech itself all play their part. If there is one thing bitcoin has taught me, it is never to underestimate how high it can go.4. But ethereum, for reasons that escape me, outperforms bitcoin. I wrote what is generally agreed to be one of the first books about crypto. But the industry has moved so fast, I am mostly baffled by it. What are most of these coins actually for? But one observation I have made is that ethereum always seems to move later in the cycle, and by more. Why should this time be different?5. The US dollar trends sideways. The US dollar has been trending sideways for over a year now, frustrating bull and bear alike. It should be lower. I’m in the US at the moment and it feels very expensive: food is almost twice as expensive as in the UK, I’d say. But the dollar is the best house in a bad fiat neighbourhood. Prediction: it continues to range-trade.6. Sterling has problems. According to my eight year cycle of the pound - something in which I am steadily losing confidence - this should be the year the pound hits rock bottom. What is the catalyst? Gilt issues, perhaps. Unsustainable deficits. Something political is another likely answer, given this is an election year. On which note …7. The Tories are eviscerated.They had their chance and they blew it. Come the General Election this year, the voters are unforgiving. Few vote Tory. But voters also know that Labour is just as bad, so Labour does not win by anything as much as it should. There are lots of protest votes and no votes. The SNP is similarly annihilated. The shortcomings of our political system are there for all to see. But nothing that needs to changes. (See prediction one)8. Uranium keeps on going up. There’s a supply squeeze. We have been warning about it. Regime change in Russia could fix it. Don’t see that happening. Taking out the old highs at $140/lb is not so impossible. But let’s aim low to avoid disappointment. Uranium hits $125/lb in 2024.9. Fast and processed food companies have problemsThe food industry has got two problems on its hands. One is the weight loss drugs, the most famous example of which is Ozempic. A lot of people are taking it and that means a lot of people are eating a lot less. Two is the rise of anti-seed-oil narratives. More and more studies are showing the link between seed oils and obesity, cancer and other modern illnesses. This narrative is spreading. At some point the mainstream will start regurgitating it. There could be legal suits.West-centric fast and processed food companies have a problem on their hands. Those that market into developing markets less so, as they will continue to have that outlet. Timing the short will be everything.Tell your mates.10. A good year for the Japanese yen.It’s as cheap as it’s been for a very long time. That’s something that reverses in 2024. My pick of the forex trades, for reasons of Frisby’s Flux, is long the yen against the pound, but there are opportunities against the dollar too.11. The S&P500 has an decent yearBut nothing like the year it had in 2023. We see gains somewhere close to 10%, perhaps a little bit below.12. Smallcaps make a welcome returnAfter several years of underperformance, small caps start to outperform large again.13. House pricesThe UK housing market is caught between a rock and a hard place. It stays there. Atrophy and stagnation, many sellers refusing to reduce prices, buyers reluctant to pay up, lots of gazundering. But no meltdown yet.14. Tears of the moon keep on crying. Can silver stage a meaningful rally above $30 in 2024? Nope. It’s silver. You really should subscribe to this amazing publication.15. Liverpool win the league.Finally your Bruce-y Bonus sports prediction. Liverpool win the league, Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton all go down. That’s it. Thanks very much for reading and supporting the Flying Frisby. Have a wonderful 2024!Live shows coming upIf you have not seen my lecture with funny bits about gold, we have two more dates in London lined up for Feb 14 and 15. Please come.And I am taking my musical comedy show, An Evening of Curious Songs, on a mini tour in the spring with dates in London, Somerset, Hampshire, Surrey and Essex. This is a really fun show.Here are the dates and places.* London, Crazy Coqs, W1. Wednesday March 20th. On sale now.* Bordon, Hampshire. Saturday March 23. On sale now.* Guildford, Surrey. Friday April 5. On sale now.  * Bath, Somerset. Saturday April 6. On sale now.* Southend, Essex . Sunday April 14. On sale now.Buying gold?Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. I use The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, you can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deal with them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Shortly after my father died, I remember saying to my eldest daughter: where do thoughts go? What happens to them?My father was a writer, so many of the thoughts he had he wrote down and preserved in some way. But what happened to all the ones he didn’t record over the course of his life? Is that it - they are just gone?Studies suggest a typical person has 7,000 thoughts a day. Others put that number ten times higher at 70-80,000. That seems a lot to me. (Some people, from what I can see, don’t even reach double figures). 80,000 thoughts/day would work out at close to one thought per second. It depends how you define what a thought is, I guess. Many thoughts are repetitive: we have the same thought over, often because we forget we have had it. But whether 7,000 or 70,000, we have a lot of thoughts. So …Of those many thoughts you have each day, how many do you actually recognise or acknowledge? A tiny percentage. Of those thoughts you do recognise, how many do you then articulate or speak aloud in some way? Again a tiny percentage. We are at a tiny percentage of a tiny percentage.Of those thoughts that you articulate, how many do you actually record - perhaps write down? Of those you record, how many do you act on and and turn into something? An even tinier percentage.So, of all the thoughts we have, a tiny percentage of a tiny percentage of a tiny percentage get recorded, and an even tinier percentage actually become something. Now let’s extrapolate that over a life. A typical lifespan is 27,000 days. That makes 189 million or 1.89 billion thoughts over the course of your life (depending on whether you are a 7,000 or 70,000/day person). Now let’s extrapolate this across human history - all the thoughts that every human being has had ever. 117 billion lives have been lived, google tells me. 117 billion multiplied by 189 million or 1.89 billion is a lot of thoughts.  What happened to them all? Where did they go? Where are they now? Is there some ethereal warehouse up the street where they are all stored?If those thoughts are now gone - unrecorded, unacted upon - what, then, was the point of having them?Recording my thoughts has always been something that’s obsessed me rather. Even as a child, I used to keep a diary and try to record as many of the things that I thought (the interesting ones, at least) as possible, especially as I worried I might never have that thought again. I’ve got piles of notebooks, not to mention the notes and voice files in my phone and on my computer. But I never go back through them and I doubt anyone else ever will, so I may as well have not bothered. Those thoughts are going to disappear, even though I wrote them down and attempted to preserve them. What was the point of having them?Park that thought for a moment, while I ask you a question. Why Christianity and Judaism succeeded where other religions failedOf the plethora of religions that existed around the Middle East three or four thousand years ago, why did Judaism survive, but none of the others? Is it because the Jews are God’s chosen people (as my Jewish friends constantly like to remind me every time I bring this question up)?Or is it because the Jews wrote theirs down? Other religions were passed on orally. Even better: the Jews inscribed their Ten Commandments in stone.Why did Christianity supersede all the pagan religions of Northern Europe during the Dark Ages? The Northmen were the superior force militarily, surely their pagan religions should have conquered too. With the likes of Odin, Thor and Loki, or the druidic religions of the Celts, many of those pagan religions were much cooler than Christianity. Why did Christianity conquer? Because the bible was written down. Pagan religions and traditions were passed on orally. It’s a much less reliable way of transferring thought.So you can see then both the power of preserving thought and the influence it can have on history. Please subscribe to this amazing publication.Do thoughts exist?Do thoughts have matter? This is a question that occupies the minds of philosophers far more profound than me. Thoughts must have some kind of matter, runs the argument, because it takes energy to have them. If we do a lot of thinking, we get tired. The brain uses at least 20% of the body’s energy, even though it makes up 2% of the body’s mass. Perhaps a thought is just a little parcel of energy.But, I ask again, what happens to thoughts after we have them? If we don’t record or articulate them in some way, are they just gone? Or is there some kind of ethereal depository where all thoughts get stored? Some kind of collective human consciousness warehouse that we haven’t discovered yet.I’m one of these people that thinks most invention is discovery. Just as Alexander Fleming did not invent penicillin, he discovered it, so did, say, Thomas Edison (and many others) not so much invent the lightbulb as discover the technology that makes lightbulbs work. Did man invent the wheel or did he discover it? My friend Low Status Opinions, who, as well as his brilliant Substack, writes jokes for famous comedians, says the act of writing a joke is not invention, rather it is pulling back the sand to see what’s there. The veteran commodities speculator Peter Brandt says something similar: a trade is a process of discovery. You place numerous trades, you manage your risk, and you discover which work.Today, with digital technology, our lives are taken out of the material world and into cyberspace. Of course, there are huge data centres that make it all function, but in a way this ethereal, digital world of the Internet, with all its social media, better represents our thoughts and the preservation of them than the paper and material world that preceded  it.So is there some depository or warehouse of thoughts that we have not yet invented/discovered yet?The idea that we only use 10% of our brain’s capacity has been largely dismissed, but we definitely have latent brain power than we don’t use. Taking psychedelic drugs perhaps unleashes latent potential. There is “acquired savant syndrome”, when you can acquire often extraordinary scholarly capacity after a traumatic head injury. The most famous example of this is Jason Pladgett who was mugged and badly beaten up, then woke up to find he now had an ability to understand complex maths and physics that did not previously exist; he developed an astonishing ability to draw complex geometric shapes he had no previous understanding of. So there is for sure some untapped potential in our minds. I wish I knew how to tap into it without risking long-term damage. There are a gazillion ideas I have had for stories, shows, businesses, products, that I would love to realise in some way. Then again genius is 99% perspiration. Having the idea is the easy bit. But a Scottish audio producer friend had this to say when I bemoaned how ideas disappear. “Nature wastes nothing,” he said with the power only a Scottish accent with its articulated consonants can have. (It’s why they make such good football managers). “Nature wastes absolutely nothing. Everything gets used in some way.” He’s right. Nature is not like governments or corporations which can be incredibly wasteful. Nothing in nature gets thrown away. Everything gets used (it’s why I am so pro free markets and so anti-regulation and government. The free market is the closest economic rendition of the natural world that we have).Yes, nature wastes nothing. The process of thinking and having ideas, even if those ideas appear to disappear if we do not record or act on them - there is a purpose to it, even if we have not yet discovered what it is. What though?I guess if there’s a moral to today’s piece, it’s this: don’t keep your thoughts to yourself.What do you think? Where do thoughts go? If they disappear, what is the point of having them? Just for the few we do act on? Let’s discuss.Happy New Year! Thank you so much for reading and supporting this Substack.Until next time, Live shows coming upIf you have not seen my lecture with funny bits about gold, we have two more dates in London lined up for Feb 14 and 15. Please come.And I am taking my musical comedy show, An Evening of Curious Songs, on a mini tour in the spring with dates in London, Somerset, Hampshire, Surrey and Essex. This is a really fun show.Here are the dates and places. * London, Crazy Coqs, W1. Wednesday March 20th. On sale now.* Bordon, Hampshire. Saturday March 23. On sale now.* Guildford, Surrey. Friday April 5. On sale now.  * Bath, Somerset. Saturday April 6. On sale now.* Southend, Essex . Sunday April 14. On sale now.Buying gold?Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. I use The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, you can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deal with them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

I am very happily surprised by the success this Substack, the Flying Frisby, is having, and by the way it is growing.I’d like to say it’s all down to you. A lot of it really is: for reading and supporting this letter. Thank you.A lot of it is down to me too for writing it. Aren’t I wonderful?But a lot of it is down to the platform itself. I think Substack is great. I have encountered some of the most brilliant writing on here, stuff I don’t think I ever would found otherwise - either because it would have been in too remote a corner of the internet for me to have ever come across it, or because, without this platform, it might never have got written in the first place. In a virtuous loop, this centre of good writing is leading to more good writing. Free thought is leading to more free thought. Everywhere blossoms. It has become the most fertile platform for philosophy, commentary and the arts. It has created a virtuous circle. Hobbies are becoming livelihoods. Isn’t that great? With free everything, the internet devalued content. Substack reverses that. It’s OnlyFans for highbrow people.I used to think I was a brilliant forecaster of trends. I now realise it’s just that if I am thinking it, a lot of other people are thinking it too. But I’ve found I am putting more and more time and effort into Substack, both as a creator of content and a consumer of it. If I am, others are too. The platform will grow as a result, while both creator and consumer, buyer and seller, will benefit. On the other hand, I only have so much time. With more of it expended here, I find less time available for my other endeavours (and there are lots of them). I’m supposed to be writing a new book for example. How often when I sit down to write do I find myself knocking out a Substack instead. Creating content is addictive. When readers like it all sorts of dopamines go offMy career, if you could call it that, has taken a surprise turn as a result of this Substack, which I only started it as a result of a chance conversation in the pub.This is all a lot of pre-amble to say how much I am enjoying writing this letter, how surprised I have been by its success and how grateful I am to you for both reading and supporting it.Thank you very much.I wish you all a wonderful 2024.DominicPS If you missed my piece, How To Change Your Social Status, I made a video verson of it here:PPS And if you fancy a festive LOL, here’s me entertaining the masses at the Free Speech Union Christmas Bash. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Here are all the links mentioned in the vid:* An Evening of Curious Songs on Tour* Show about gold in London Feb 14/15* Buy gold - Pure Gold Co* Bitcoin guide. If you prefer to read this article, you can do that here: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe