My essay, Institutions Cannot Be Transplanted, examines why Western institutions cannot simply be transplanted into societies that lack the moral and cultural substrate that gave rise to them.
Constitutions, courts, procedures, elections, and bureaucracies are not self-animating machines. They depend on the habits, expectations, restraints, and inner discipline of the people who operate them. When those habits are absent, the imported structures survive only in appearance. The forms remain, but the substance is hollowed out.
What follows is not civilization, but mimicry: procedure without conscience, legality without justice, and modernity without civilization.
On Investments
European Lithium (EUR; A$0.49) on the ASX is being acquired by Critical Metals Corp. (CRML) on NASDAQ. Under the proposed transaction, EUR shareholders are to receive 0.035 CRML shares for each EUR share held. Based on CRML’s recent price of about US$11.20 and the current AUD/USD exchange rate, this implies a value of roughly A$0.545 per EUR share, or about an 11% arbitrage spread from EUR’s last traded price of A$0.49.
There is also an options angle. If one buys EUR and sells a commensurate number of CRML November 20, 2026, US$10 calls at around US$4, the economics become more interesting. If the deal closes and CRML remains above US$10, the total proceeds would be US$14 per CRML share—the US$10 strike plus the US$4 option premium. On the current numbers, that works out to roughly a 39% capped return from EUR’s recent A$0.49 price.
The attraction is that the call premium returns a large part of the capital upfront. The complication is that the trade is not risk-free. Until the EUR shares are converted into CRML shares, the calls are not truly covered. Your broker will also hold margin, and if the deal is delayed, fails, or CRML moves sharply, the short-call position can create real risk. EUR itself is volatile, so I would prefer to look for weakness—ideally A$0.45 or less—rather than chase it.
In the past, I mostly did simple arbitrage trades in such situations. Thanks to my friend Jason Nutter, I now understand options better. Jason writes at Optional Adventures and is the founder of DaysToExpiry.com, an options-trading app he developed with a good friend.
Jayant Bhandari
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