In January of 2026, just like every January since 1986, a basketball Brigadoon will rise on Duke’s campus. This village, locally known as “Krzyzewskiville,” exists for just a few short weeks every year, and then disappears. But while it lives, it is a beehive of activity, with surprisingly specific and aggressively enforced rules. K-Ville is not just a place, but a student-organized system of governance with its own rules, enforcement, and dispute resolution mechanisms. Elinor Ostrom herself couldn’t have come up with a better example of an emergent institution to create and enforce property rights to a common pool resource.

K-Ville was created as an orderly way to ration access to “free” student basketball tickets to “The UNC Game.” This Manichean struggle of “good” (Duke) versus the “living embodiment of evil on earth” (UNC) is the hottest ticket on campus most years. (The game is always scheduled for late February or early March, and so the January tradition works backward from the game date.) The StubHub price of the non-student tickets is a good measure of the value of what is being given away: buying tickets costs at least $2,000, and can cost $5,000 each or more, depending on the teams’ records and the quality of the seats.

Of course, the student seats are directly courtside, so what economists call the “shadow price” — the cost of the ticket if it could be sold — is at least several thousand dollars. Yet Duke gives these tickets to students on a first-come, first-served basis, for free. Why?

Duke (though nominally a “non-profit”) makes every effort to maximize revenue. Students are required to buy the meal plan, and to pay for a dorm room, at least for the first three years. So why would Duke turn generous and pass up well over two million dollars in revenue — 1,200 student seats in the prime “Student Section” (Section 17), at $2,000 each, conservatively — just to give the seats away?

The answer is interesting. But to get to the answer, we’ll need to review some history.

Origins

Duke basketball tickets are free to enrolled students with current, valid IDs who line up. But the number of seats is limited, so the line can get long. In 1986, a Duke senior and fourteen friends extended the usual “line up overnight” ritual by showing up two nights in advance.

According to The Duke Chronicle:

‘It was common for people to line up hours before a game,’ said Kimberly Reed, Trinity ’86, who was one of the first tenters. ‘We were playing quarters one night at Mirecourt and joking about how early we were going to line up for the ’86 [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] game. Finally, someone said, ‘Why don’t we just pitch a tent?’ After a few rounds of quarters, it began to sound like a good idea.’

Reed and about 15 of her friends, many of whom were members of the Air Force ROTC, rented a tent from U-Haul and set up camp in front of Cameron in March 1986.

‘We were going to ask permission…, but then we just decided to ask forgiveness later,’ she said. The adventurous fans set up four tents in front of Cameron on Thursday for the Saturday game against UNC, and word began to spread around campus. By Friday, other tents began to pop up.

‘Someone took a cardboard box and wrote Krzyzewskiville on it,’ Reed said. And so the tent city was named.

The timing was no accident: Between 1986 and 1994, Duke made seven Final Fours in nine years. More students wanted tickets than there were tickets available, by quite a bit, at least at a zero price. Of course, Duke could have charged for tickets, or used a lottery, but queuing was already the custom, and it stuck. But after 1986 the swelling demand to see the UNC game meant that kids had to line up for days, and (before long) weeks.

January in North Carolina’s Piedmont is not polar, but daytime highs average in the 40°s F, nighttime lows can dip well below freezing, and it rains a lot. Still, Cameron Indoor Stadium — roughly 9,300 seats, with about 2,500 reserved for students overall (with most of those in the more uncool, sedate Sections 18, and 19 not the most desirable Section 17) — was small enough to create a predictable, iterated problem that had to be solved every year: far more students wanted seats in Section 17 than were available. Early attempts at informal queuing were chaotic. Students camped without rules, disputes broke out about order, and many felt that the system rewarded only those who were willing to engage in opportunism or outright disruption.

In response, students themselves worked out, through trial and error each year, a more orderly process. They still lined up, but they formalized their place in line and rules of minimum occupancy, all overseen by “Line Monitors.”  A tent by itself doesn’t hold your place in line;  “tent checks” are performed randomly by Line Monitors. You get one “miss,” but if a student misses a Tent Check twice, they are out. Alternatively, if a tent as a whole has too few occupants present then that tent is removed and its fans disqualified. Students can also be disqualified for “excessive” drinking or obvious drunkenness (passing out, vomiting), but this rule has been enforced selectively.

By the 1990s, the system included tiers of participation — black tenting, blue tenting, and white tenting — each corresponding to different levels of commitment and different rewards in line order.  It’s worth looking at the details.

Inside the Queuing System Itself

At its heart, K-Ville is a queuing system built around time and commitment rather than money. Groups of students (twelve per tent, at the start) register to camp out in K-Ville, with place in line determined by performance on a written test, as described below. Once tent order is determined, each tent unit must maintain a certain number of occupants, twenty-four hours a day. Line monitors, drawn from the student body in a “hyper-competitive” process designed by students themselves, enforce compliance by conducting random checks, sometimes in the middle of the night. DSG has legislated an explicit constitution for K-Ville, a set of rules that make the process (mostly) clear.  

• Black tenting, the most rigorous, begins in early January and requires nearly continuous presence until the day before the game.
• Blue tenting begins later, with somewhat less stringent occupancy requirements.
• White tenting, beginning still later, requires the least commitment but comes with correspondingly lower priority in line.

On game day, students are admitted in the order and then color of their tents, until the available seats are exhausted. While all the seats in the student section are “good seats,” only the Black Tent denizens will be able to get in the front rows at the center of the court, which are the most desirable seats. This creates a clear correspondence between cost and reward: the more time students are willing to spend in line, the better their seats, fostering a meritocracy of endurance. Again, tickets could be auctioned, but the goal is not to select based on wealth, but on a fierce zealotry for the team. By using time as the currency rather than money, Duke students reinforce the principle that participation in fandom requires actual fanaticism.

The Problem of Fairness

Fairness is central to the design of K-Ville, and the rules are published. Line Monitors ensure compliance, though of course there are some complaints of excessive zeal in enforcement (few Duke students use “fascist” as a political description, but it is a common description of Line Monitors). The tier system allows for self-selection: those who are most dedicated (or most willing to endure discomfort) can camp longest, while others can choose a lighter commitment and still secure some chance of entry. The result is a system perceived as legitimate because it balances effort, transparency, and equal opportunity.

What makes K-Ville interesting is its emergent, student-governed nature: a community facing a scarcity problem managed to develop rules, enforcement mechanisms, and sanctions, all without any plan or formal intention. But there is one formal, designed or “laid on” rule: Place in line among Black Tent residents is determined by an examination. This innovation is quite interesting for two reasons.

First, queuing is economically inefficient. Students “pay” for seats with time and discomfort, which could otherwise be devoted to study, work, or leisure. An auction would be efficient, but such a system privileges the ability to pay over devotion. K-Ville’s governors wanted to limit the inefficiency of an open-ended “rent-seeking” contest, while preserving queuing’s signal about depth of fan loyalty.

Second, many organizations have independently stumbled across the value of initiation and elite membership rights. Creating difficulty of acquisition, even if that difficulty is artificial, can enhance the value of the thing acquired, especially if possession of that thing is highly public.

In light of these two influences, DSG has formally limited the amount of time that someone can wait in line, reducing the inefficiency implied by the first principle. And it has created an initiation right that sorts applicants by informed fanaticism, and by depth of knowledge. They use a lengthy and challenging examination: the Duke Basketball “Black Tenting Entry Test”.

The test differs each year, but it generically tests for whether the student/applicants can write down (from memory!) the names, position, and hometown of the Duke players. They also have to name the opponents played in all the Duke games so far that season, the scores of those games, and Duke’s overall won-lost record. Then the test moves to aggressively specific and truly “trivial” questions. Just one example, from the actual 2023 test:

Which team did Duke play against in a “secret scrimmage” before the season began? In what city did they play? What was the final score? (2 pts each; 6 pts total).

The answers (I had to look it up) were University of Houston, in Houston, and Duke lost 61-50.

These questions are not circulated in advance; they are not multiple choice, and there is no partial credit. The cutoff in recent years has been a score of 75 out of 100 possible points, meaning that at least two thirds of the applicants fail, and are not allowed a Black Tent.  There are only 70 Black Tents allowed, and each tent has 12 occupants, though some of those may be disqualified even if the tent itself makes it through to the end. K-Ville starts with 100 tents total, and 12 students in each tent. 

That’s 1,200 people who start the “tenting” experience each year, though by the end 300 or more of those folks may have been disqualified or moved to “Flex” or “Waitlist” tents with no guarantee of being seated.

K-Ville as an Emergent Order

F.A. Hayek would have called K-Ville an “emergent order.” Rules are not imposed from the outside; they evolve as individuals interact over time. Participants in a process learn from past successes and failures, and generate working rules that are known, followed, and enforced by participants themselves.

As Elinor Ostrom pointed out, “Working rules are the set of rules to which participants would make reference if asked to explain and justify their actions.” That’s interesting, because it means that the rules evolve from practice and trial and error, but then are written down after newcomers ask for an explanation.

The problem facing Duke students had three aspects: First, more people wanted tickets (after 1986, at least) than could get seats. Queuing for multiple days was chaotic, and there were incidents that led to frustration.

Second, the tribal experience of showing commitment by face-painting, elaborate coordinated chants and signs, and other rituals was collectively more enjoyable if all the participants are “real fans.” This “public good” aspect was intuitively understood by the students, even those who could never have defined a public good in technical economic terms. Using price or auctions would not have resulted in the same fan sorting.

Third, the first two considerations tended to lead to very inefficient “rent-seeking” contests, where it would be necessary to wait in line for more and more time, making the chances of unpleasantness, line-jumping, and perhaps even violence even greater. So some lottery or contest was necessary to limit the dead-weight losses of queueing (since auctions were off the table).

The solution the students have devised involves explicit and publicly recognized, an enforceable property right to “place in line,” based on tent number. But the extent of rent-seeking to obtain initial tent number is limited by having an “entry test,” an objective measure that is at least correlated with knowledge of the history and folkways of Duke basketball. 

There are other benefits, as well. “Tenting” is a rite of passage for Duke students; many do it at least once, just for the experience. There is folk wisdom (though I could find no definitive source) that students who “tent” at least once are more likely later to attend reunions for alumni, and to make large donations to the Duke Endowment or other campus causes. As a whole, then, it is clear why Duke “gives students tickets for free” rather than by auction, even though an auction would generate immediate revenue.  The shared identity of “Cameron Crazies”, both while enrolled and later, is an important part of a Duke student’s identity, and their commitment as alumni.

Kville has risen again. Black tenting started January 18; blue tenting starts January 28. The tents are full, and anticipation is growing. 

Landlords are amazing. 

That’s perhaps a perverse, controversial statement in these Mamdani-ish times, where “free” socialist housing is all the rage. In popular imagination, landlords are rent-seeking middlemen, extracting value from shelter they did not “create,” skimming from tenants who have no alternative, riding the fiat money printer and dysfunctional zoning regulations all the way to the bank (read: overvalued housing market). 

It is a tidy morality tale. It is also mostly wrong.

Since most of us regular consumers have to live somewhere, we’re sooner or later asking ourselves whether we should own or rent our dwellings. And at dining tables with friends and extended family, the owning-vs-renting conversation often comes up. 

Most people think of paying rent as “wasted” money. It’s money straight into a landlord’s pocket that you’ll never recoup, and it’s a pure expense. At least paying down a mortgage gets you (partial, gradual) ownership of your home, a real asset. Since the (often tax-deductible) interest you’re charged is lower than the rent you’d otherwise have paid, mortgaging one’s finances to the hilt is a good idea, right?

First of all, renting vs owning is a silly dichotomy: it’s all renting. The only question is whether you’re renting money from a bank or the actual home from a landlord. Essentially, it’s all just a balance sheet question in your own personal finances. 

You either rent the dwelling, or you rent the out-of-thin-air money that the bank created to buy the house on your behalf. You’re either on the hook for paying rent to a landlord or on the hook for paying a bank money rent, i.e., “interest.” (With the 50-year mortgages that President Trump recently floated, there’s some sense in which you’re renting from the government, too.)

The question isn’t to rent or not to rent, but how much financial leverage you’re hungry for or willing to stomach, and how tied down you want or need to be. In a healthy housing market, it’s about specifying the exact properties (pun intended) of your living arrangements.

Dead Money and Offloaded Financial Responsibility

When you’re “buying a home,” you aren’t just forking over dough for a dwelling like any other market transaction. You are underwriting a leveraged real estate business on your own personal balance sheet! You have suppliers of physical material (builders, plumbers, maintenance, electricians) as well as financial capital (banks). You’ve got to appease the government via (often hefty) taxes, and usually a mandatory insurance company with regular premiums. In most Western housing markets, too, the money-banks-regulation-real estate industrial complex is so dysfunctional that the very expensive and tedious transaction itself might take months or years. If the market tanks, or there’s some “unpredictable” event like COVID or the 2008 Financial Crisis, you’re stuck rolling payments for years.

From the renter’s perspective, the pesky funds I hand over every month are far from “dead”; they are premiums paid to avoid large, lumpy expenses and risks to my balance sheet. I’m buying options, geographic mobility, freedom from regulatory and tax uncertainty. When the roof leaks or the boiler fails, it is not my bank balances that take a hit. When interest rates rise or property values fall, it is not my equity on the line. 

The landlord is the residual claimant: He takes all the financial risks involved in the arrangement. And while many economic risks remain hidden and invisible to a consumer unless they happen, like an insurance company, the service they provide is valuable. (Nobody would say that car insurance premiums were “wasted” just because you didn’t crash your car.)

Speaking of insurance, the landlord likely has some insurance arrangement that goes well above yours — more expensive, more coverage, more widely ranging.

Next, taxes. Most jurisdictions impose a property tax for the privilege of owning a home. While economists find them efficient (in the sense, “nondistortionary”), most people hate them. Fine, economically speaking, property taxes translate into the rent I’m paying, but a property tax is yet another thing you’d be on the hook for if you owned the home instead of just renting it. 

Last, and this is the biggest one: opportunity cost. If you own your home, you can’t really leave — unless the market, a suitable buyer, five sets of bureaucrats, a few realtors and financing requirements happen to align. I can cancel my lease with a few months’ notice, and I’m out, no questions asked. 

Financial opportunity cost is a real thing as well. You’re stuck paying into a financial product that returns you approximately the low-ish single-digit interest on your mortgage. That’s not a great savings vehicle; I’d much rather keep my surplus funds regularly dollar-cost-averaging into the stock market’s long-run return of 9.7 percent, the fantastic decade the S&P 500 just had (15 percent), gold’s steady 9 percent, or bitcoin’s 25-90 percent (adjust depending on timeframe and repeat-probability going forward). 

For thirty (or fifty) years, you’ve committed yourself to saving in a financial product that returns you only about the interest you’ve already paid on your mortgage, plus whatever few percentage points your house may appreciate going forward. True, you get the ability to cheaply go 7x long on a hard asset, but there’s hidden risk in there: everything from interest-rate sensitivity to housing market collapse. And to be frank, I’d much rather watch my unencumbered bitcoin fall 30 percent in value — which it has done many times in the past, and recovered — than try to fall asleep in my overleveraged house, suddenly underwater because the housing market fell. 

Historically, house price appreciation was quite respectable, depending on the monetary regime and timeframe, somewhere between six and eight percent annually, which reimburses you somewhat for your maintenance troubles. With demographic declines, uncertain economic outlooks, and plenty of threats to real estate’s outsized monetary premium on the horizon, there’s no guarantee you’ll see that sort of return again. Whereas when I’m renting a home, I can invest in whatever I please — and much more easily achieve a decent diversification should I wish to do so. (Most American households’ net wealth is locked up in illiquid housing assets.) 

Importantly, I offload all of these practical and financial troubles to someone else. They are on the financial hook for hijacking their personal balance sheet to a physical domain, nestled between a profit-hungry bank and a rapacious government. They are financially liable for maintenance, for repairs, for keeping the house in working order. 

The upside is that the owner gets to decide what, like, the bathroom redecoration looks like. Maybe build a new porch.

From the consumer’s point of view, landlords exist to absorb risks that households should be wary of carrying themselves. They borrow so I don’t have to; they lever themselves up so I can stay liquid; they hold the legacy asset while I keep the options.

Landlords of the world, I salute you for your service!

Friedrich Nietzsche? Claudia Crawford? Walter Kaufmann Karl Jaspers? Roland Barthes? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: In Greek mythology, the Cretan princess Ariadne helped the hero Theseus slay the Minotaur and escape from the labyrinth. Ariadne gave Daedalus a ball of thread so he could successfully navigate through the deadly maze. While contemplating this myth, the famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche reportedly wrote the following:

 A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadne— whatever he may tell us.

I have never seen a solid citation for this remark; hence, I have become skeptical of this attribution. Would you please help me to trace this statement?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Friedrich Nietzsche recorded some of his ideas and impressions in a group of notebooks which were not published while he was alive. The Musarion edition of the “Gesammelte Werke” (“Collected Works”) of Nietzsche included material from these notebooks. The fourteenth volume included a pertinent remark written by Nietzsche while he was working on the important opus “Also sprach Zarathustra” (“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”). This note did not appear directly in “Also sprach Zarathustra”. It was published posthumously. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Ein labyrinthischer Mensch sucht niemals die Wahrheit, sondern immer nur seine Ariadne, — was er uns auch sagen möge.

Here is one possible translation into English:

A labyrinthine person never seeks the truth, but always only his Ariadne – whatever he may tell us.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Cosima Wagner was the wife of German composer Richard Wagner. The relationship between the couple and Nietzsche was complicated and fraught shifting from admiration to condemnation. In 1930 “The Living Age” journal of New York printed a piece about Nietzsche which included the following:²

His feeling for Cosima Wagner appears in a number of cryptic notes written after he had lost his mind. In Zarathustra he had said, ‘A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth but only and always his Ariadne.’ This statement provides the key to such later confessions as: ‘Everything that remains is for Frau Cosima … Ariadne’; and the object of his affection herself received a scribbled note from his asylum reading: ‘Ariadne, I love you. Dionysus.’

The passage above incorrectly asserted that the statement under review appeared within “Also sprach Zarathustra”. This error has caused confusion in later years.

In 1948 Psychology Professor H. A. Reyburn published a biography of Nietzsche which included the following analysis:³

In the plot of a drama, Empedocles, drawn up in 1870 or 1871, Nietzsche introduced Theseus and Ariadne in the third act, and at the end of the fifth act, after the tragedy, he asked: “Does Dionysus flee before Ariadne?” It is only a question, but it shows a preoccupation with the legend and a readiness to tamper with it.

The development of the story, however, took place at first on reasonably orthodox lines. Wagner, we have seen, was the Minotaur; Nietzsche, his conqueror, must therefore be Theseus, although he boasts that he requires no thread of an Ariadne. But this detachment did not last. The figure of Ariadne grew on him, leading him to assert in a note written during the time of Zarathustra, “A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but always only his Ariadne. . . .”

In 1950 philosopher and translator Walter Kaufmann published a biography of Nietzsche which discussed the symbolic meaning of the figure of Ariadne:⁴

Thus Ariadne meant more to him than just the flesh and blood Cosima Wagner whom he does not seem to have in mind when he writes: “A labyrinthian man never seeks the truth but always only his Ariadne—whatever he may tell us.” His sister is not entirely wrong when she claims that he is speaking of the human soul, though today we have perhaps a somewhat more accurate term in C. G. Jung’s conception of the Anima: originally dependent on a “mother image,” it grows into the ideal which a man pursues through his adult life.

Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus kept a set of private notebooks. An entry from 1951 recorded a version of the Nietzsche’s saying with the name “Ariane” instead of “Ariadne”:⁵

“A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but always and only Ariane.”

In 1965 R. J. Hollingdale published “Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy” which discussed Nietzsche’s attitude toward women:⁶

Women are the ‘delight of every strong [male] soul’, he adds, and at one time or another he personifies Life, Wisdom and Truth as a woman. During the years in which he was personifying the ‘life-affirmation of the superman’ as Dionysus, he gave Dionysus a companion in Ariadne, and wrote: ‘The labyrinthine man never seeks the truth but always and only his Ariadne.’ Certainly he had some unkind things to say about women (‘Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip!’ an old woman advises Zarathustra—by far the best known sentence in his works, among women at least), but the total impression is very far from the dislike and fear of them with which he is popularly credited.

Psychiatrist Karl Jaspers published a book about Nietzsche’s ideas which was translated into English and released under the title “Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity” in 1965. Jaspers discussed the symbolic meaning of the labyrinth:⁷

“We have a peculiar curiosity about the Labyrinth, and we are taking pains to make the acquaintance of Mr. Minotaur.” The philosopher sits “in his cave, year in and year out, day and night, alone with his soul, in intimate dispute and dialogue. It can be a labyrinth, but it can also be a goldmine.”

Such is the truth; it leads us into the Labyrinth and into the power of the Minotaur. Consequently the knower has still another entirely different goal: “Whatever he may tell us, a labyrinthine man never seeks the truth but always only his Ariadne.” The search for the truth leads on to something other than the truth — something that resembles it but is not among those truths that can be grasped as truths. Nietzsche has never told us what Ariadne is; perhaps he could not.

French literary theorist Roland Barthes published “La Chambre Claire” which was translated into English and released under the title “Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography” in 1981. Barthes wrote about an idealized image artifact called the Winter Garden Photograph:⁸

All the world’s photographs formed a Labyrinth. I knew that at the center of this Labyrinth I would find nothing but this sole picture, fulfilling Nietzsche’s prophecy: “A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadne.” The Winter Garden Photograph was my Ariadne, not because it would help me discover a secret thing (monster or treasure), but because it would tell me what constituted that thread which drew me toward Photography.

In 1995 Claudia Crawford published “To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I love you! Ariadne”. Crawford presented an alternative title page with the following two interlocked statements:⁹

“A labyrinthian man never seeks for truth, rather always only his Ariadne—no matter what he says.” Nietzsche

“A labyrinthian woman never seeks for truth, rather always only her Dionysus—no matter what she says.” Ariadne

In conclusion, Friedrich Nietzsche deserves credit for the statement under examination which he wrote in German in a private notebook. The statement was published posthumously. Commentators have linked Ariadne to Cosima Wagner although this interpretation is overly simplistic.

Image Notes: Picture of a maze with a gazebo from Field Cottage at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.

Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Dave E. Lee whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.

1. 1925, Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works) by Friedrich Nietzsche, Musarionausgabe (Musarion edition), Vierzehnter Band (Fourteenth Volume), Aus der Zeit des Zarathustra (From the time of Zarathustra) 1882-1886, Section: Einzelbemerkungen (Individual remarks) 1881-1884, Quote Page 22, Musarion Verlag München. (Verified with scans) link ︎
2. 1930 April 15, The Living Age, Volume 338, Number 4360, Letters and the Arts, New Light on Nietzsche, Start Page 221, Quote Page 221, The Living Age Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ︎
3. 1948, Nietzsche: The Story of a Human Philosopher by H. A. Reyburn (Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town) in collaboration with H. E. Hinderks and J. G. Taylor, Chapter 31: Ecce Homo, Quote Page 477, Macmillan & Company, London. (Verified with scans) ︎
4. 1950, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist by Walter A. Kaufmann, Chapter 1: Nietzsche’s Life as Background of His Thought, Quote Page 30, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. (Verified with scans) ︎
5. 2008, Notebooks 1951-1959 by Albert Camus, Translated from the French by Ryan Bloom, Notebook 7, December 1951, Quote Page 27, Ivan R. Dee Inc., Chicago, Illinois. (Verified with scans) ︎
6. 1965, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy by R. J. Hollingdale, Chapter 12: The Solitary, Quote Page 210 and 211, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Verified with scans) ︎
7. 1966 (1965 Copyright), Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity by Karl Jaspers, Translated by Charles F. Wallraff and Frederick J. Schmitz, Book 2: The Basic Thoughts of Nietzsche, Chapter Two: Truth, Section: A Transcending Breakthrough to the Truth, Quote Page 226, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona. (Verified with scans) ︎
8. 1981 Copyright, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes, Translated by Richard Howard, (Originally published in French as La Chambre Claire in 1980), Chapter 30: Ariadne, Quote Page 73, Hill and Wang, New York. (Verified with scans) ︎
9. 1995, To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I love you! Ariadne by Claudia Crawford, Section: Alternative title page, Quote Page vii, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York. (Verified with scans) ︎

"Ninety-nine percent of boomer 'success' was just interest rates falling for [forty] years because they destroyed the real economy."

~ Darth Powell

"How can stock market valuations be at or near historical highs while the average [person] is about as pessimistic as they’ve ever been?

"This contradiction is a perfect illustration of the financial fun house — and the extreme distortions that relentless money printing has pumped into the system.

"If fiat currency is a dishonest measuring stick — and it is — then how do we accurately measure the stock market?

"The best option is to measure value in gold, honest money that no politician can arbitrarily debase.

"If measuring in fiat is like looking into a fun-house mirror, then gold is a mirror of truth. And when we measure the stock market in gold, that truth becomes clear. Below is a chart of the S&P 500 measured in gold going back to 1950.

"Viewed through the lens of gold, the stock market tells a very different story than it does in fiat terms — and this chart makes that unmistakably clear.

"The most striking feature of the chart is what isn’t there: a sustained upward trend. The S&P 500 today is worth the same amount of gold it was in 1995.

"Despite decades of nominal gains, the stock market has repeatedly given back those gains when measured against gold. In other words, the rising stock market was more a reflection of currency debasement than of real wealth creation.

"This helps explain the disconnection at the heart of today’s market. In fiat terms, stock prices appear to be at record highs. But in gold terms — a unit that cannot be printed — the market looks far less extraordinary."

~ Nick Giambruno from his post 'The Melt-Up Trap: Why Stocks Must Rise Until the Dollar Breaks' 

2026 is the 40th anniversary of this important publication on the foundations of epistemology. “This book is a highly original defense of realism. David Kelley argues that perception is the discrimination of objects as entities, that the awareness of these objects is direct, and that perception is a reliable foundation for empirical knowledge. Kelley’s argument […]



Download audio: https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/kelley-review.mp3