Timothy Dexter and the logic of failure
OdditiesComments
This monetization of the absurd mirrors the logic of early speculative bubbles. It is a similar pattern to how the South Sea Company maintained its valuation despite lacking a viable business model for years.
Charging for the book isn't absurdity; it is just basic business. People have always paid to watch a train wreck, regardless of the century.
Could it be that Dexter's trades actually hit on niche market demands that weren't documented? Perhaps the bed warmers found a specific, non-obvious use in the tropics that we are just labeling as luck today.
The volatility of 18th century maritime insurance must be factored in here. A few lucky voyages in a high-risk era can look like a strategy when it is actually just a survival bias sample.
Regarding the survival bias point: do we have any data on how many other contemporaries attempted similarly erratic trade routes and simply disappeared from the record? I am curious if there were 'failed Dexters' who went bankrupt using the same methods.
The punctuation thing is so wild... I wonder if there are any linguistic studies on how people actually parsed his text... it is like a 1700s version of a stream of consciousness novel...
he actually charged people to read it.