certainty

market vibes

“Debate freely, decide swiftly and commit.” Goldman Sachs

And so we have always done.

In the middle of the 18th century, James Watt’s steam engine replaced waterwheels and animal labor as the primary power source for factories, mines, and railways, causing an irreversible shift from essentially free, renewable, but limited low-density energy to high-density coal. For thousands of years, various lamp oils and candles lit the civilized world. Abraham Gesner developed kerosene from petroleum in the 1840s. By the early 1850s, kerosene’s affordability and accessibility made it the preferred luminous fuel world wide.

Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879. Within three years, electric power was operational in cities. Electric light was better, brighter, and safer. Trolly cars had been electified since the mid 1890s and Henry Ford began mass producing the Model T in 1908. Gasoline and distillates became the fuel of economy and mobility, powering cars, ships, aircraft, and industrial growth; another irreversible shift in energy use became an indisputable certainty for over 100 years. It still is.

Unfolding today, a concise essay on certainty in an uncertain world where, frankly, irreversible certainty is biting you in ass.