Extraordinary Popular Delusions
by Charles Mackay · first published 1989
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I think the tulip bubble was the Dutch, not the Ottomans. Either way, great book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madnes...
on “Famous Disasters In Market Speculation - Tulips Anyone?” ↗This is a good read. https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Charl.... Market participants often do know there's a bubble. However, if your neighbor keeps making more and more money selling tulips (that was a thing), then you will be tempted to buy some tulips…
on “This Bubble's Got Legs” ↗I'd start from the other direction. The newness of this stuff is overrated. The bitcoin phenomenon isn't ultimately different from phenomena described by Mackey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions... As we know, each new version of speculative excess has the slogan "it's different this time". And each one is different, in some way. And you can extract various interesting particular lessons from…
on “Coinbase (YC S12) seeks to bring Bitcoin to the masses” ↗…being serious or if this is the most deliciously ironic riposte that I have ever had the pleasure to read. Either way, I'm grateful. Yes, thank goodness for our increased rationality since the days of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. If not for all the rational thinkers we have today, we might have had to endure one or even two completely irrational economic bubbles in the last decade alone. Man, wouldn't that have sucked? Anyway,…
on “Alan Kay: "An oral culture of assertions held around an electronic campfire?"” ↗Oh, that seems interesting - like a companion book to the more flamboyant one, Extraordinary Popular Delusions; sounds like it is more statements of facts and unbiased accounts, as opposed to entertainment?
on “The Scotsman and his stories brought France much prosperity, for a time” ↗