Government is Just Versailles Without the Wigs

Marie Antoinette. 2006

You know you love a good power play. And no one plays the game better than the ones who pretend they aren’t playing at all. But don’t be fooled, dear reader your city council meeting is just a masquerade ball with worse outfits and fewer chandeliers. The etiquette? As rigid as a corset. The power dynamics? As delicate as a powdered wig in a rainstorm. And the irony? Absolutely decadent.

From Mirrored Halls to Conference Calls
Back in the days of Versailles, everything was a performance. Who walked in first? Who sat closest to the king? Who got the honor of holding his candle at bedtime? Status wasn’t just implied, it was choreographed, rehearsed, and executed like the most elaborate play. And in your local government?

We all know this meeting isn’t about ‘public engagement.’ It’s about making it look like public engagement happened. Smile for the minutes. It’s protocol, darling. And just like in Louis XIV’s court, knowing your place is the difference between influence and irrelevance.

The Crown, But Business Casual
Versailles ran on flattery. One perfectly timed compliment could elevate a nobleman’s career, while a single misstep (like, say, wearing the wrong color) could send them into exile. Fast-forward to now, and city officials are still masters of the art. Except instead of lace cuffs, they wear Golden Goose sneakers, because nothing says 'I understand working class struggles' like pre-scuffed $500 footwear.

Political endorsements? Love letters disguised as policy talk. Even the routine “great leadership” emails between staffers are just 18th-century court poetry in Arial font. The flattery may be subtle, but make no mistake-it's still a game, and the key to winning is knowing when to say just enough.

"Let Them Cut Ribbons"
Ah, the grandeur of Versailles. The silk. The gold. The feasts. And what was it all hiding? A crumbling economic system and a very angry, very hungry working class. But why acknowledge problems when you can just… throw another extravagant event?

Your local government is no different. Ribbon-cutting ceremonies, grand economic forecasts, sleek PowerPoint presentations, these are the modern versions of Versailles' masked balls. Your city might be drowning in budget deficits, but as long as there’s a well-lit groundbreaking photo op, the illusion of prosperity remains intact. Until, of course, the bill comes due.

Local Government, But Make it Gossip Girl
The nobility of Versailles was so lost in its own rituals that it failed to see the revolution knocking at the gates. Sound familiar?

City leaders dismiss discontent as “misinformation” until it turns into a full-blown crisis-all while your handpicked leadership quietly reinforces the status quo. And much like the courtiers of old, they don’t realize they’ve lost control until the metaphorical guillotine is being wheeled out.

No Crown, No Throne, Just Vested Interests
And just like in Versailles, the players who think they secured their dynasty always forget the one thing they can't control: the audience is watching. And when the illusion shatters, the downfall isn’t just inevitable, it’s colorful.

So sit back, grab some popcorn (or a croissant), and enjoy the show. Because if history has proven anything, it’s that no court, royal or municipal-outlasts its own delusions. 

XOXO… you know who.

*this is satire. any resemblance to bureaucratic nonsense is purely coincidental 

Forbes 500 of Disappearing Texas Ecosystems

For the past year, I’ve been wrestling with an equation to identify the true worth of ecosystems one stripped of artificial inflation from extractive industries, government subsidies, and short-term exploitation.

Why Focus on the Blackland Prairie?

Texas has no shortage of endangered ecosystems, but this one is personal. I grew up on this land. George Strait wrote country songs about it. It's a vanishing relic paved over for another concrete dream.

But this isn't a eulogy it's a calculation.

This isn’t for the visualizers, the ones who see the world in color and geometry. This is for the non-visualizers: the ones who think in equations, balance sheets, and ROI. The ones who prefer money over trees.

Once stretching across 12 million acres, less than 1% of the Blackland Prairie remains, roughly 5,000 of its original 12 million acres statewide (Texas Parks & Wildlife, 2023). In San Antonio, historical coverage was approximately 175,000 acres, around 56% of the city's total land area (ESRI GIS, rough estimate)(2024 satellite data), and the EPA ecoregion shapefiles for Texas Blackland Prairie boundaries. No official citywide inventory exists.

This prairie sits directly in the path of urban expansion, yet no policy or pricing model reflects its ecological worth. That’s what makes it the perfect test case, to rethink how we value land especially rare, irreplaceable ecosystems hiding in plain sight.

ArcGIS. Pink blob signifies the Blackland Prairie in San Antonio. 2025.

Addressing Missing Data

San Antonio’s land valuation data is incomplete or missing from building permits, making it nearly impossible to track how much prairie-rich land is worth or how it's being priced.

Why it matters:

• Taxpayers can’t see how land is valued or what revenue is being missed.

• It hides the real cost of development.

• It enables underpricing of ecologically vital land.

Because of these gaps, I used secondary sources, environmental research, and economic models to estimate the true(er) value of the Blackland Prairie.

 1. The Extinction Forecast
Using a logistic decay model, the forecasted remaining Blackland Prairie within San Antonio will be at functional loss in ~75 years. If development rates accelerate this timeline shrinks dramatically, potentially within a few decades. This forecast aligns with habitat-loss models from Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute’s Texas Land Trends (2022), which estimate annual working-land conversion rates between 2-5% in high growth regions. 

Trends in Large-Scale Developments City of San Antonio Open Data. 2022

One of the most striking findings from this San Antonio development permit analysis is that the trend shows a steady, year over year increase in both permit approvals and applications. This linear growth suggests a consistent demand for large scale development.

2. A True(er) Market Valuation E³VF Formula 

I'll call it, the Exponential Ecological Economic Valuation. The E³VF model is a correction. It prices in what the market leaves out: mental health, carbon sinks, and extinction risk.

Current land pricing completely ignores ecological value, so to correct for that:

True Ecological Value (E³VF) = (Sn +HR) x (I X S) / (r + EV)

Where:

• Sₙ (Sustainable Net Worth): $5,000 per acre per year (carbon sequestration, flood control, soil health)
• HR (Health ROI): $2,000 per acre per year (mental, physical, and psychological health benefits)
• EV (Extinction Volatility): 0.05% (5% annual risk of ecosystem collapse)
• I (Intrinsic Factor): 1.5 multiplier (cultural, historical, and ecological significance)
• S (Scarcity Factor): 1.2 (to reflect the extreme rarity)
• R capitalization/discount rate = 0.05% (standard for ecosystem asset valuation)

Calculation Example:

1. Combine annual ecological benefits: 5,000 + 2,000 = 7,000
   
   

2. Apply multipliers: 7,000 × 1.5 × 1.2 = 12,600
   
   

3. Divide by total rate (r + EV = 0.10): 12,600 ÷ 0.10 = 126,000
   

Final E3VF Value ≈ $126,000 per acre

3. Comparing Market Price vs. True(er) Value
Final Estimate of Blackland Prairie in San Antonio:

Total Estimated Remaining Prairie: 14,399 acres
Protected Prairie (Conservation Easements): ~2,880 acres
Unprotected Prairie with High-Quality Soil: ~6,912 acres
Total Prairie Loss from Historical Extent: ~91%
Percentage of All Remaining Blackland Prairie in Texas Located in San Antonio: ~12%
Percentage of the Original Blackland Prairie That Still Exists in San Antonio: ~8.23%

4. What Would Buyers Pay for This Land?

• Current market price for suburban development: $132,300 per acre ($3.04 per sq ft) (2024 BCAD)

• Current market price for multi-use development: $198,450 per acre ($4.55 per sq ft) (BCAD 2024)

Using the E³VF model , the true ecological and economic value of the Blackland Prairie is approximately $126,000 per acre - a conservative, grounded estimate based on annual ecosystem services and a 5% capitalization rate.

That means the prairie’s ecological worth alone equals nearly the full market value of developable land. When both are combined, a more accurate total valuation for high-quality could approach $250,000-$300,000 per acre. 

If the remaining 14,399 acres of prairie were properly valued at this range, the total would exceed $3.6 billion, more than double what current development pricing captures. 

SOOO To Conclude

While San Antonio's Blackland Prairie holds a true economic value of about $6-7 per square foot, it’s still being sold off for pennies. If scarcity were properly priced, these last remnants would be nearly untouchable.

Here’s an underutilized opportunity: use true scarcity as the price gauge not speculation, not infrastructure, and definitely not what the land lacks.

I get being on sale every once in a while but San Antonio’s been on clearance its whole life. Y’all never priced nature like the irreplaceable asset it is. And now, the very thing that makes you proud to be from Texas is almost gone.

There’s an ironic market failure at play: the more self-sufficient and ecologically valuable the land, the less it’s worth on paper. That’s because today’s valuation system rewards the absence of nature. Concrete, not clean air; sprawl, not soil.

We don’t reward land that provides flood control, mental health, and biodiversity, we discount it. And in doing so, we turn economic scarcity into ecological collapse.

 

Invisible Capital: A Story of Wages, Trust, and Etiquette

Invisible Capital: A Story of Wages, Trust, and Etiquette

in·vis·i·ble cap·i·tal (noun)

1. Definition:
   The hidden currency of trust, respect, and social norms that sustains economies, societies, and relationships. It includes the unspoken agreements that systems will operate with fairness, dignity, and mutual benefit, often reflected through equitable wages, transparent policies, and empathy-driven leadership.

2. Usage in Context:
   "When Invisible Capital erodes-through inequality, distrust, and stagnating wages, systems crumble, just as they did in Marie Antoinette's France."

If Invisible Capital were cake, we’d all still be starving. 🍰

It begins, as these things often do, with a city full of potential. San Antonio a place blessed with skilled workers, abundant resources, and an economy brimming with possibility. On paper, it’s a dream. The numbers tell us this city should be thriving. Instead, wages trickle down like crumbs from a table set for kings, and the basic etiquette of economic fairness is long forgotten.

Imagine a worker, let’s call her Sofia. She wakes up before dawn in her small home on the edge of the city. She’s good at her job really good. She builds, fixes, welds, or maybe she staffs a busy floor, answering phones with the kind of patience that takes years to master. She doesn’t complain, but when the paycheck comes, it barely covers rent. Groceries? Maybe if she skips eating out… again. Savings? Forget it.

San Antonio’s GDP is $182.1 billion (Federal Reserve, 2023). Split evenly, each household would earn $335,500 annually and, per capita, $125,990. But Sofia doesn’t see that. What she sees is her paycheck: $59,593 if she’s lucky. Sofia’s productivity is high, her contributions immense, but the system, the people deciding who gets paid and how much treat her Invisible Capital as worthless.

She trusts her employer, the economy, the system… until she doesn’t. And when trust collapses, things unravel quickly.

Act I: The Wages That Build Cities—and the Etiquette That Sustains Them

Once upon a time, there was another place where trust eroded. It had palaces, gowns embroidered with gold, and bread… or at least bread for the privileged few. The workers, the people who made the city run, found themselves staring into bakery windows, asking: Why are we starving when we built the oven?

Marie Antoinette’s court had visible capital, the gold, the jewels, the opulence but it lacked Invisible Capital. She misunderstood the basic etiquette of leadership: respect for the people who sustain your system. Her failure wasn’t just ignoring bread prices; it was ignoring the fundamental courtesy of listening, empathizing, and acting in good faith. Invisible Capital is etiquette in action, a social contract that keeps the economy humane.

Math Moment: Bread, Wages, and the Fragility of Trust

In 1788, a loaf of bread cost nearly 50% of a French worker’s daily wage. Bread wasn’t just food; it was survival. As prices soared and wages stagnated, the invisible contract between the monarchy and the people collapsed. Henry George described this fracture as “an immense wedge driven through society” (Progress and Poverty). That wedge, inequality, soon split the system in two.

Historical Breakdown:

• Daily Wage (1788): ~30 sous

• Price of Bread: ~15 sous

Modern Parallels:

Era	Key Statistic
1788 France	Bread = 50% of daily wage
2024 U.S.	Bottom 50% = 2% of total wealth
2024 U.S. Top 1%	Control 40% of total wealth

Bayesian Model: Predicting Wage Redistribution Outcomes

To move from inequity to equity, we can model wage redistribution using Bayesian probability:

Let P(W|GDP) represent the probability of fair wages (W) given total GDP.

Bayesian Formula:

                            P(W|GDP)= P(GDP|W)P(W) / P(GDP)​

Where:

• P(W|GDP) = probability of fair wages given the total GDP

• P(W) = prior probability of wage fairness (current wage distribution data)

• P(GDP|W) = likelihood of redistributing GDP equitably based on productivity

• P(GDP) = total GDP as observed (e.g., $182.1 billion in San Antonio)

This formula highlights that if wealth is equitably redistributed based on workers' productivity, the probability of wage fairness (P(W|GDP)) significantly increases, a future where Sofia’s pay reflects her labor.

Act II: What Happens When Trust and Etiquette Break?

San Antonio isn’t Versailles, but the warning signs are there. Workers like Sofia contribute more than ever, but their wages don’t reflect it. Confidence, the foundation of trust, is fraying.

As Akerlof and Shiller argue in Animal Spirits, human emotion particularly confidence drives economies. When workers lose trust that hard work leads to fair pay, they stop investing in the system.

Trust, much like bread in 1788, becomes too costly to sustain. Systems become brittle. Invisible Capital collapses.

Act III: The San Antonio That Could Be

Picture this: Sofia’s wages reflect her productivity. She’s not just surviving; she’s thriving. She buys local, invests in her future, and her kids get a chance to dream bigger. Multiply Sofia by thousands, and the city transforms.

Modern Math Moment:

Worker productivity in the U.S. has increased by 250% since 1970, yet wages have grown by only 44%. The gap between what workers produce and what they are paid continues to widen, and this is not a coincidence- it's by design. If wages had grown in line with productivity, the economic picture for families like Sofia's would look drastically different. 

If wages were tied to productivity:

Wage Growth Formula:

Where:

• W_{current} = current wage

• P_{growth} = productivity growth (e.g., 250%)

• W_{growth} = wage stagnation rate (e.g, 44%)

If applied in San Antonio, median wages could quadruple, moving from $59,593 to levels that align with economic growth and respect workers' contributions. The wealth exists it simply isn't shared.

Act IV: Etiquette for the Modern Economy—Rebuilding Trust

Emily Post said it best: “True etiquette is about creating environments where everyone feels valued.” The economy works when people all people are respected. Invisible Capital grows when:

1. Wages Reflect Productivity: Workers’ efforts must tie directly to economic outcomes.

2. Policies Redistribute Wealth: Incentives for wage fairness ensure Invisible Capital flows, not stagnates.

3. Transparent Systems: Open pay scales build trust.

EF Schumacher’s Wisdom: Systems must serve people, not the other way around. Fairness is efficiency.

Conclusion: Redistribute Trust, Not Just Wealth

Marie Antoinette ignored the fragility of trust, and we all know how that turned out. Today, inequality threatens the same collapse. Piketty warns us that extreme inequality destabilizes systems, eroding the trust economies rely upon.

But here’s the opportunity: Trust and respect are not finite. Like Invisible Capital, they grow when shared through fair wages, empathy driven policies, and systems designed for people.

Trust is earned. Wages reflect respect. Invisible Capital grows when shared.

The math is simple. The etiquette is clear. The question isn’t whether San Antonio can afford this. The question is whether it will.

My Dear Boy, Nuggy

Life without you has been brutal, but your whole love is what you gave and what I'll keep. My handsome boy, you taught me that forever is composed of nows. May you have the unlimited organic Texas raised chicken and crocodile squicky toys you deserve. 

Nugz, my Buddy, I love you, and thank you.

 

Garden of Love

 

Poem by William Blake 1974.

Kill Your Darlings.

 

 Poem by Allen Ginsberg.