John Law RPG S01E01 Edinburgh 420p GRAHMATIC

INTRO

S01E01

It’s a tangent.

By this point I’ve introduced the Mississippi Boom, and I’ve provided some context to the notion of speculative bubbles. The historical context.

On the previous page I’ve been talking about the incidences documented by Charles McKay in his 1830 book … which is called …

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Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I’ll get to it. The funniest one was the guy who went hey I’ve got this amazing opportunity but it’s so good I can’t tell you what it is. Who’s up for investing? And a bunch of people were and he took their money and fucked off to the continent. By the end of the day. Like, the very same day.

Here I take a tangent from then to now. To what’s being termed crypto.

Imagine a casino. A vast carpeted area. Carpets far thicker than your average pub. A high ceiling. Roulette wheels, blackjack tables. Croupiers. A bar area. Walls of gambling machines. We call them puggies. Free tea and coffee and sandwiches, but don’t take the piss. Bustle and excitement and anxiety. Music, I don’t know. Maybe some background music.

And there’s a power cut.

And folk are like, what the fuck? I mean, perhaps a few are saying gosh blimey what’s going on, but I mean people swear, don’t they? Has this happened before? Excuse me, has this happened before?

And it hasn’t. The staff are confused too. But let’s say one of them delivers the appropriate line on such occasions and says that he’s sure the back up generator will kick in soon.

And let’s say it does, but it’s only for essential things like lighting and heating. So there’s still a level of … consternation. Pissedoffness. Croupier, will we be continuing with this hand? Are we playing on. I can see my cards. You can see yours, can’t you? Let’s just keep going. But the croupier says no, I’m sorry, we need the automated card shufflers to be operable before we can recommence.

So I should just cash out my chips? How long we talking about? And another guy interrupts. Hello excuse me what about my money in the machine. I had over a hundred quid in it when the power went off. Will it pay out when it goes back on again or will it reset? Has this happened before?

I’m sorry sir, I’ll let you know the situation as soon as I know, the croupier says. Sir, I don’t appreciate you throwing your corned beef sandwich to the floor. My colleague will have to clean that up. And he indicates to a guy with chunky headphones who’s carefully inspecting the power outlet of a vacuum cleaner.

The information the casino staff are not privy to is that the machines were emptied before their shift began. By the extra security put on that day. They’ve been paid. There’s a reason they’re there. This power cut was no accident.

The casino owner’s in a taxi to the airport. He’s chatting away to the taxi driver, and when the taxi driver asks him if he’s fine with the radio station that’s being played loudly, he shouts no problem, then sits back, interpreting this acceptance as an act of kindness on his behalf, and it partially clouds his memory of an hour previously – of shutting down the casino and leaving with all the money hitherto exchanged for plastic chips.

Back there, people are being told that no the machines won’t be getting switched back on, and that the chips in question are now worthless. They’re no longer valid. There’s nothing we can do, I’m sorry. The casino’s closed. Finish your drinks and move outside please, a security jacketed guy announces.

It’s not such a good analogy, to be honest. Too much detail. You’re probably wondering when and if the staff will be paid. Will any of the punters stand up to the security guys? Will the kitchen assistant spreading margarine onto white bread eventually decide to dress in a yellow jumpsuit and track down the owner for her tips?

That would make an interesting story.

For illustrative purposes, the point is only the money that’s been staked. Spent on the various games by those playing them, and now lost because the casino owner has pocketed it. Flicked a switch, closed the casino, and taken his cab.

And that’s crypto.

Is that so, you’re wondering. Yes, it is. Okay, so how does crypto work? What is crypto?

Crypto is the umbrella term for coins, or tokens, that are created and made available on online exchanges. Anyone can set up a crypto coin. Give it a bold name and a snazzy design. Pay for sponsored posts on social media and buy prominence with search engines. Check out this new coin!

Hype.

What’s important for these coins is hype, but also credibility. Well, imagined credibility. Popularly imagined credibility. The association of the coin with a person or institution of credibility.

Like what? Well, a prominent politician, or a former politician.

Or to think of it another way, this opportunity is known to people or institutions with questionable popularly imagined credibility. I mean you’ve probably heard of the coin launched by the USA president. And the one launched a few days later in the name of his wife. And the one issued by their billionaire spaceman friend. And, the other week, the former New York mayor - what’s his name? Some New York former mayor.

Here’s a sentence that sounds like wankiest thing anyone has every said. You’ll hate it.

They leverage their position.

It’s the kind of phrase you ignore or turn off to because the chances are whoever’s saying it is full of shit. Or they’re of a culture that is full of shit. And you’d be right.

Leverage is a financial word that means taking a shortcut to making money. Minimal effort for maximum result. Like I say, it’s a cultural phenomenon. Oh, have you heard about this new coin called whatever. It’s been created by these guys from Harvard. PhD guys from Harvard. You should check it out.

PhDs eh? From a building with pillars and furnished with leather upholstered chairs? Are you sure? Isn’t that just an association? They’re leveraging your association. They’re using it as a shortcut to making money. They scour for opportunities to do this, and their minds are becoming wired … wired for leverage. Extraction. Stealing you might say, but remember the heid politician’s doing it too, so it won’t be called stealing officially. Cue billions in societal propaganda to normalise it. Proper jobs. Proper jobs in banks. Sensible.

The dudes somewhere, and it’s gonna be dudes isn’t it? . . what they do is launch the coin via smart contracts and a blockchain. These are technical terms. Think automation. Predictability. But they’re in control. They make use of bots … they use algorithms to fake a demand for the coin. To engineer the coin so its price will rise as soon as it’s launched. Maybe they target a certain demographic, and a percentage of the targeted demographic says ooh, look at this graph - this seems like a good investment.

But no, it isn’t, because here comes the rug pull.

What’s a rug pull?

This is another metaphor. Or analogy. What happens when you’re rug pulled? Well you’re standing on a rug. It’s a nice rug, and you want to be standing there. It’s your position. Your financial position. You’ve chosen this financial position. You’ve chosen to buy a crypto coin.

I mean, in terms of the analogy, you’d have to be staring out the window to not notice the person arriving and whisking away the rug like they do with the table cloths – you know, trying to keep all the plates and cups in the same position. Or they could be whisking from another room, I guess. From behind a saloon door. You’d need to allow for the carpet waves. Even if it was done automatically. Did you ever see the film Cube?

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It’s one of these modern films with the rooms and the games. Turn of the century, low budget. People playing the games, moving between the rooms, and getting sliced up and so on.

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OK. You’ve been rug pulled. You’ve been rendered off balance - inconvenienced at the least, and perhaps injured. Per the analogy, financially injured. The bots have been told to sell their coins, and the price has crashed. You’re down to five per cent of your initial investment. The bot wallets are brimming, and of course they belong to the people running the coin. The casino owner listening to Michael Jackson in the taxi. Yeah, I was never convinced about the rumours, he says in reply to the driver. But he leaves it at that. He doesn’t want to broaden the conversation to the Epstein Files, so he asks the driver if he’s been busy that day.

I’ve got some more notes about crypto. A few lines about Bitcoin. Wait a sec …

Crypto coins are also termed shitcoins. Because shit rhymes with bit.

Whereas a shitcoin is a centralised token, Bitcoin is decentralised. No one controls it.

Bitcoin is open source, and shitcoins aren’t.

I think it was Juice News who coined the phrase shitfuckery. Shitcoin shitfuckery, I’ve written. I don’t know if they’ve done a video on that. A crypto coin not being open source means you can’t look at the code to see if there’s any shitfuckery going on. There will be. The shitfuckery within the code generates the leverage. It needs to be hidden.

The exchanges. Where the buying and selling goes on. They don’t make a distinction between bitcoin and crypto. And you have to consider this before leaving any bitcoin on an exchange. In other words, don’t. They’re of the leveraging culture. Their interest in Bitcoin is nominal, whereas many people believe Bitcoin is something new. Of a decentralisation paradigm. I think that. I mean I’m not going to give financial advice. That’s not what this is about. But I do think studying bitcoin is worth your time.

Okay, thank you mustard cheese intervention. I’m onto the first page.

A blurb which could go on the cover of the game … No, I don’t like that - I’ll write a better one later.

People download games now, don’t they? For consoles. It’s years since I played any console games.

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Are you asleep? Shake your head if you’re not.

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Good.

I’ve been playing Rainbow Islands again. On the Spectrum. I completed it when I was twelve, and then again a few years ago. I’m running through it again. It’s a platform game. Install an emulator and try to complete that. You’ll enjoy it. You have to get each of the seven jewels on each of the seven islands though.

It’s by the guy who made Bubble Bobble. Rainbow Islands is the sequel. I don’t think he made anything afterwards. He’s Japanese, so it’s possible that he’s Satoshi Nakamoto. I like to think so.

But yeah, no console games for years and no novels for … for months. It’s all been non-fiction for this, and for some reason my brain’s going no, you’re not getting to read any fiction until you’ve finished your non-fiction. Which is very annoying, but that’s just how it is.

I’ll probably just publish this transcript tomorrow. I’ve had enough.

OK. The Mississippi Boom. The Boom Bap.

It’s very Youtube-y. There are dozens of videos about it. I watched them after learning about Law via some other reading, and it sent me down the rabbit hole. I started searching for articles, and of them there’s … there’s a lot of them and they’re wide ranging … they range from journalistic feature articles to in-depth analytical analyses by economic historians of various, what’s the word … hues. Shades.

At some point I decided it would make a good game, so I thought about that for a while then I read on, and there are two books that I will definitely highlight one day when I get interviewed by a computer games magazine about it all.

Firstly of all the definitive biography, and it’s written by a guy called Antoine Murphy. It was ten years in the making, he said, and it’s comprehensive. Hugely impressive. Exhaustive maybe … but actually no - there are angles that can be taken that he doesn’t. That I’ve taken. Not on the economics so much, because his economic analysis is heavy. I mean, we won’t run out of it being a resource in that regard when we’re in pre-production. Everyone working on the game will have a copy for reference. But maybe only the pdf I found on a website - the physical copies are either unavailable or cost a hundred pounds. Literally. Online. A hundred pounds. I don’t understand why.

My second recommendation is The Amazing Life of John Law by Georges Oudard. It’s an imagining of Law’s time in France - an imagined dialogue between Law and a selection of his contemporaries. It’s light hearted - it’s a bit cartoony you might say. I liked it. The vibe is inspiring. The tone. I’ll it read again one day. Who were these people? I think he made some of them up, and that’s fine. We might do that too. We’ll have out own take, and Murphy’s book will be there to help convey things correctly. Succinctly. So it can be entertaining without being misleading.

The working title’s John Law RPG, but it’s not exclusively about him. It’s a tapestry of the times. A depiction of the various cities. With questions raised. Historical ideas illuminated.

Alright, here are some introductory facts.

John Law was born in 1671.

He grew up in the centre of Edinburgh. Just off the High Street.

I remember going through to Edinburgh a few times to celebrate New Year. People gathered on the High Street and it was mobbed and spontaneous and great fun, but, yeah, you usually became separated from your friends at some point, so it was important to have a plan on where to meet up if that happened. And okay now people have mobile phones, and in many respects things are easier, but then again big city events like that tend to be ticketed now, to benefit … ha, the predatory capitalists and the pliant politicians on their mobile phone’s contacts list. Which is true. I stand by that.

John Law’s father was called William. Jean Campbell, his mother, was William’s second wife. The family ran a goldsmith’s business. He had three brothers, I think.

What’s a goldsmith?

You know the adverts you used to see on daytime telly with … Actually, maybe you don’t. Well, over the years … and maybe they’re still on, I don’t know … If you happened to be watching television during the day, you got these adverts. Some retired newsreader or TV personality putting on his most newsready solemn voice to flog, inverted commas, special commemorative coins. A grandiose historical reference to generate pride, then a stressing that the coins were limited edition to hasten the viewer to pick up their phone and say yes, that’s for me, I don’t want to miss out, how do I buy that commemorative coin I’ve just learned about on my television.

It’s not a scam, but it’s very much done for profit, and they don’t say the reason they’re selling gold in the form of the commemorative coins is because the price of gold is falling, or is expected to fall.

And then when the price is rising or is expected to rise, they’ll have their other ad put on. Hey, TV viewers, you know those gold necklaces and rings you have in that drawer? We could pure do you a favour by taking them off your hands. We’ll give you good money, and what’s more, we’ll send you a special envelope to post them to us in. A free of charge envelope, and no postage either, so don’t worry about that. We’re putting on this service just for you. We care.

Well, until the price falls again. Then it’s a new commemorative coin. Ooh, to signify the battle of no it wasn’t colonialism, not at all how, could you think such a thing?

That’s pretty much what goldsmiths did back in the day, except they were artisans, and they made particular things with gold and silver. Requests. For jewellery and trinkets, and, in Scotland, engraved cups. Quaiches they’re called. From the Gaelic. Cuach. Two-handled gold drinking cups. Wait a second …

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Like this.

Yes. Very nice.

Yeah. Nice. A nice thing to have, but crafting them for a customer was also a way for that customer to save money. The gold would be reconstituted in a form that would encourage permanent ownership. Often for gifts. You know, instead of coins, which could be spent. The craftmanship of the goldsmith would add value to the weight of coins. Then, going the other way, they would accept objects to be melted down to create coins.

Did you know that gold and silver are collectively known as specie? Specie. It’s a mad word. It’s not so interesting. I’m just telling you in case I use the word later. I’ve never used it in a conversation till now. Specie. It sounds like the singular of species. It doesn’t sound right.

Double duty.

Double duty refers to the two purposes gold would fulfill. These being coins, as money. And in the form of quaiches, for example, to store value. There was an ebb and flow between these two purposes.

What else? They performed currency exchanges. And then, later on in the 17th century, they started issuing receipts for gold deposits - paper receipts that could be used as money. Here you go, Mr Goldsmith, please hold onto this gold for me. Okay, here’s a receipt, Mr Customer. Thanks. Hey, Mr Rowing Boat Salesman, check out this receipt. Give me one of your rowing boats please and you can have it. You just need to take it to William Law and he’ll give you gold for it. Is that so? Yes. Okay, sounds good. Cool.

A few more facts.

John’s grandfather had been minister in Eaglesham, which is a town south of Glasgow, and John was sent there to attend a small grammar school. He was very good with numbers apparently.

When he was twelve, his father died during an operation to remove a stone from his bladder.

As he got older, John decided he didn’t want to take responsibility for carrying on the family business.

When he was twenty, he took a boat with a friend from the Port of Leith to London.

I’ve decided to start the game there. There’s an introductory story on the boat, and then the first game. His earlier years feature later in a flashback. The workshop activity. The glow of the furnace. Financial abstraction. Numbers. Customers. Edinburgh’s High Street in the late 17th Century.