One system, four vantage points: the ideas that built it, the plumbing that runs it, the failure mode wired into it, and the rails being built outside it. The same question runs through all four: what happens when the unit of account stops being scarce.
Hover a station or year · click a station to enter
The route runs left to right. Hover the years on the upper path (1971 → 2008) to see how the same monetary pattern repeats. Every station stands on its own — yet the same constraint runs underneath all of them.
The ideas shaped the machine. The machine hides the trap. The trap explains the exit. The exit is still being built — outside the old rails.
First visit? Follow I → IV — the timeline gives you the vocabulary, the flow model gives you the mechanics, and the last two are the payoff.
One quiet thread runs through every chamber: whether the unit of account is scarce by nature or elastic by policy. That single distinction rewrites incentives, risk, and time preference. Returning readers can jump straight in; each chapter keeps its state while this page stays open.
You’ve heard these lines your whole life. They sound like common sense. Once you see that money itself can be created at will — and that the first people to get the new money gain at everyone else’s expense — the same lines start looking different. That’s the pattern underneath all of them.