OK I don't really have a theory, or even much of a hypothesis. But it occurred to me today while going about my business that it might be possible to combine and synthesize two ideas: Dr. Louis Slotin's fascinating analogy of nuclear criticality thresholds to money, and the notion that money can be said to have a physical phase.

Let's start with that—the easier concept to understand. Already we're used to the idea of liquidity with money. To be "liquid", in a monetary sense, means roughly "easy to transfer". You're financially "liquid" if you can immediately produce funds for a purchase or a fee or whatnot. This implies the existence of solid money, and it's pretty easy to guess what that might be: physical, salable commodities which may be converted into liquid money. Metals, precious substances, parcels of property, etc. can be thought of as money in solid form.

That leaves a form of money whose existence seems pretty obvious to me, even though it seems to have escaped the notice of the people who chatter about economies: there's gaseous money, money that exists in some speculative or promissory form. One can even see the phase analogy at work in the implications of money that exists in the form of promises or agreements, i.e. as talk. Talk can be construed as literally air, hot air indeed, and that's apt to the gaseous nature of money in the form of loans, investments, rent payments, and other promissory forms of money. If the promise dissolves—if one loses the social agreements that give value to the monetary promise—then gaseous money effectively dissipates. Gaseous money is, like liquid money, a fluid thing. It may be passed around easily and hoarded, which perhaps gives it the illusion of being like liquid money, which has a much more certain value per unit volume. Liquid money is not easily compressible (i.e. it tends to retain its value when moved around), but gaseous money is easy to compress.

The hilarious thing (to me) is that obviously gaseous forms of money are treated, in the modern economy, as though they were solid. Consider a share in a company, for example, a form of gaseous or promissory money. That's basically a gamble, because the company could fold any moment; there's no true guarantee that the share will hold value. Sure, if it's a share in a company with long-term stability, there's a higher probability of getting money from the share than (say) a share in $GME or $TSLA or $DOGE. But all the same it's still speculation. Cashing in on the share is like condensing the gaseous money into liquid form, and that's an operation which may fail; in addition, condensing some of that gaseous value affects the value of the entire market. It's a bit like trying to extract work from a tank of compressed air; the total pressure, and thus the amount of available work that can be extracted, drops with every use.

Now, combine that with Dr. Slotin's observation that money acts like a fissile substance. Put enough of it in one place, with enough "neutron flux" (i.e. a continuous stream of transactions) to attain some critical threshold, and money explodes! Fissile systems may be constructed with solid, liquid, and gaseous fissile materials. Solid systems tend to be the easiest to deal with, because it's relatively difficult to add or subtract reactivity to solid masses. Liquids tend to be far more treacherous, and most of the serious criticality accidents that have ever occurred involved transferring liquids. (The "Demon Core" accident which killed Dr. Slotin was exceptional.) Gaseous criticality accidents are extremely rare because it's hard to get enough mass into one place; the one example I know involves UF₆ vapor that was unknowingly dissolving and accumulating in a reservoir of diffusion-pump oil, and so that's really a mixed-phase accident that was dangerous because of its liquid component.

Gaseous money, however, is very easily accumulated in one place, unlike gaseous UF₆.

I invite the reader to draw appropriate conclusions.

~Chara of Pnictogen

My political memories of the United States go back to the early 1980s, by which time the Republicans were already attuned to the right-wing enforcers of "Christian values". Already by that time the GOP and conservatives were making "family" into one of their buzzwords. One of my earlier memories of San Diego is listening to the car radio, tuned to some local AM news station, and hearing these syndicated radio spots featuring Dr. James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, a right-wing Christian political group founded in 1977. I should stress that in these radio spots, Dobson made no overt references to Christianity. His broadcasts of parenting advice were scrupulously secular and presented as advice from "the foremost expert on the American family" or something of that sort, and it was all quietly authoritarian. Dobson's advice, like all right-wing Christian parenting advice, calls for obedience and order and hierarchy within the nuclear family. I couldn't find a sample radio spot but here's a sample of the man in a TV talkshow format. https://youtu.be/4l_NO_wVsas

I'll just tackle this head on. Let's see if I can write my way out of this one.

This image (and others like it) from the anime Fate/Zero are what rekindled a love of Arthuriana in me that I'd once considered dead. I looked at the King of Knights and saw Arthur shining through her, and believed again. I believe still.

But I do not wish merely to be dazzled by belief—and, believe me when I say that I do feel dazzled right now. In my mind's eye, that image shines almost too bright for me to endure. And that's a problem, because I'd like Arturia to be a friend and not an idol. Hence I try to apply what analytical skills I can.

The central question: how has the Fate/ franchise managed so effectively to tap into the power of the ancient "Matter of Britain"? There's been numerous cash-ins on Arthuriana, including one of the biggest Vegas casino complexes, but Fate/ manages to find a believable and powerful emotional center. Oh of course it's "problematical", but if I started listing my problems with the "Fate/" franchise we'd be here all night. The point is: for me anyway it's worked spectacularly, to the point that I regard Arturia Pendragon as more or less equivalent to King Arthur in my head. It's like I regard this particular fictional depiction of Arthur as the prevailing one for this era of entertainment, much as Nigel Terry's or Richard Harris's depictions of Arthur were once regarded as definitive for some years.

So. What's actually going on here? Let's break it down.

"The Matter of Britain" can be said to be "historical" in a very loose sense. At least we're reasonably certain about a few of the battles that are mentioned in Arthuriana, such as the Battle of Badon and the Battle of Camlann, which are thought to have occurred in the late 5th or early 6th century C.E. Various historical figures have been proposed as models for Arthur, and various "Camelots" have been proposed. But the legend of Arthur has grown too gigantic and multitudinous for any plausible era of known history. Much of the best lore has come from French and Italian romances written many centuries after the time of the historical Arthur, if any such person ever existed.

If they did, they must have seemed like an unusually powerful and forcible warlord in the chaotic landscape of post-Roman Britain, before the Saxons et alii completely overran her. Even a decade or two of unexpected peace and stability would have seemed a golden age at a time when everything certain had crumbled. But it seems unlikely that the historical Arthur, or indeed the historical Arturia Pendragon (if I may make so bold), could have ruled over a court of miracles and magic, as Camelot has come to be depicted in the more fanciful romances about the Knights of the Round Table.

But we may perhaps imagine, running parallel to the heroic but unglamorous story of the historical Arthur (or Arturia Pendragon), the "real life" timeline, another thread: the idealized timeline, in which all the legends had miraculously been given a chance to come true, and Arturia really was the undefeated King, an eternal symbol of ideally humble monarchy. There is power in this alternate Past, this Past that never was but which could have been if the Creator had been able to realize Their vision fully (I hope you'll forgive the theism). And I suggest that this is the power we perceive in an image of King Arthur, if we're inclined to regard Arthur as a powerful symbol.

And then there's the counterbalancing alternate timeline, the negative ideal: Arthur as tyrant. But I've run out of time to write.

~Chara of Pnictogen