Dear Felipe

Thank you for your candour, much appreciated.  You raise many profound problems, I will try to be brief

FS > I fail to see how "trust" in the sense that I've used departs from that of Locke and Womack.

As a UK citizen I use GBP because there is no alternative. Trust does not enter the matter, and in fact my personal trust in both our commercial banks and central bank is low and falling.

FS > Everything that I've argued, I've done so with capitalism in mind. I can't comment on ancient civilizations.

I have to guess what you mean by “capitalism” but in so far as it could be argued there are very specific genuine problems associated with “capitalism” I judge they were present and indeed worse within Roman banking regulations.  Thus this comment just does not make sense to me

FS > Of course, the domain of reality and that of observation and explanation are interrelated, but I don't think they can be reduced from one to the other.

The correct relationship of reality to observations has been very actively debated since the days of Democritus and Plato, and many eminent commentators have congratulated Democritus on keeping the two close, and noticed that his position tends to coincide with democratic instincts. You are not the first to argue that parting the domains of observation and explanation gives grounds to ignore history altogether, but I do not recall seeing it done quite so briskly before.

I quote the opening paragraph of “The Thousand and One Nights” (Burton edition)

“Verily the works and words of those gone before us have become instances and examples to men of our modern day, that folk may view what admonishing chances befel other folk and may therefrom take warning; and that they may peruse the annals of antique peoples and all that hath betided them, and be thereby ruled and restrained”

Perhaps the medieval writers of Islamic fairy tales give valuable epistemological advice to modern economic thought?

Regards

Robert Tye, York, UK (no affiliation)