Bitcoiners will get a kick out of his views on history in general and the history of money in particular.
Whether hes completely right or not, the fact he focussed on this topic shows he understood how important money as a technology was to humanity.
Early on in this book, for me as someone who hadn’t been exposed to Fuller’s ideas other than some supposed quotes, he seems like a bit of a pinko.
But then he takes a road somewhere between the Austrian school and Nick Szabo when discussing the development of money and credit, discussing:
1) how the Phoenecians circumnavigated and mapped the world two millenia before we think it happened
2) a ramble on how we later shifted from cattle to metals as the dominant money but how it was primarily used as collateral rather than MoE
3) how based on ship building and associated technology evolutions how he thinks humans evolved and spread out of Austronesian peoples from SE Asia
The first third of this book is the kind of thing you would have heard on the Joe Rogan Experience 10 years ago before he went mainstream when he was still super interested in fringe ideas.
Again, I’ve got rabbitholes to dive here so am not claiming hes right on everything, but the fact he points to Thailand as the historical source of modern man rather than Africa, and the fact Thailand was one of the few countries never colonised is something I found really interesting - nobody today would dare challenge the consensus of the origins of humanity but Bucky just goes for it and explains why and even if he’s wrong it’s worth considering how he arrived at his positions.
quoting25 books in 2025 was my goal for #bookstr. I had a fully planned and oversubscribed list coming into the new year but something in the aether told me to put this one to the top and all I can say is it was the best decision.
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Critical Path was Buckminster Fuller’s magnum opus, written when he was 85, it’s seemingly the writings of a time-travelling Bitcoiner and the most important thing I’ve read in more than a decade.
A compilation of his ideas and concepts spanning 50 years of work, his completely unique philosophy, an optimism our world today sorely lacks, and a full outline of his view for progressing humanity by doing more with less based on material science.
@Gigi recently mentioned we were promised flying cars and I noted millenials and younger weren’t promised shit.
Well Fuller in his day promised much more, designed it, prototyped it, built what he could and told fantastic tales which could align people to progress along his futuristic way - we need Buckminster Fuller in 2025!
A few Bitcoiners have posted clips of him discussing energy and a single global accounting system (see images) going back to 1967 but I’ve not seen any review this book.
It’s simply phenomenal. I can’t attest to the veracity of all of it, I will have to dig some rabbitholes and definitely re-read it again in a year but if even 30% holds up then every Bitcoiner ought read it for that alone.
Fuller articulates a worldview where humanity stops fucking around, stops letting parasites control things, focusses on sharing the most important information to build the best technologies to do more with less and raise QoL standards for all.
@ODELL managed to meme Mandibles to the fore for Bitcoiners - if ever there was a book all Bitcoiners should read; THIS IS IT.
You won’t agree with all of it, the terminology may be a bit dated, but you will be interested throughout and amazed at his foresight 45 years ago, and hopefully motivated as I am that you too can just do things like Bucky the OG did and the world can change for the better.
