Fuller outlines an alternate history in Critical Path that will be very appealing to anyone who enjoys conspiracy theories or alternate histories.

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.

nostr:note1zx050vhq9cxxzz5a8583redeqhl42afkv666jwldnfe2gukf5skqcjrmdc