Local currencies could reshape Brazilian economy
The Wall Street Journal recently featured a story on a currency called the capivari, a local currency emblazoned with the face of a giant rodent. The capivari is one of…
Desktop manufacturing gaining steam
In the fourth section of Juggernaut, I proposed something called a ‘Materializer’ or what is called a ‘Replicator’ in science fiction as a tool that can provide independent individuals with…
The virtues of competition
Orson Welles as Harry Lime in the film adaptation of Graham Greene’s Third Man. Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy…
A theory about the poor’s aversion to welfare
(The Economist) Instead of opposing redistribution because people expect to make it to the top of the economic ladder, the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like…
Are sovereign islands the new frontier?
(Details) [Peter] Thiel spends a lot of time thinking about frontiers. “Way more than is healthy,” he admits. Not just financial frontiers, though that’s his day job: He cofounded PayPal,…
The plight of the middle class
Robert Reich connects the dots on the economy, in less than 2 minutes and 15 seconds. A number of questions arise, not the least important of which has to do…
The math behind economies of scale
(TED) Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities — that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can…
It’s every person in the world, connected to every other person in the world, and no one fully understands how to make best use of this new reality because no one has seen anything like it before.
Designer and entrepreneur Ben Pieratt on the Internet.
The virtues of self-sufficiency
One of the central concepts of Juggernaut rests in the virtues of self-sufficiency. A summary can be found in the first part of the book: It can be assumed that…
Economist soundtracks–Smith
In our economist soundtracks series, we now turn to the man who might well be described as the father of modern economics, Adam Smith. Adam Smith (baptized 16 June 1723 –…
The remedy for Fox and CNN
Beck Bennett charges America’s Youth with the challenge of dissecting the big issues and news and politics.
Open-sourced blueprints for civilization
(TED) Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch….
Radically rethinking the way we fight poverty
The authors of Poor Economics have a point: Ideology drives a lot of policies, and even the most well-intentioned ideas can get bogged down by ignorance of ground-level realities and…
Inventing a frontier
On his Cafe Hayek blog, esteemed economist Don Boudreaux has recently ignited a fascinating conversation on the concept of limited land, inspired by the FLOWidealism listserve. In it, the idea…
Is BitCoin the currency of the future?
In this podcast from EconTalk and the Library of Economics and Liberty, Gavin Andresen, Principal of the BitCoin Virtual Currency Project, talks with host Russ Roberts about BitCoin, an innovative…
How does adding debt prevent us from default?
Geithner’s suggestion is to raise the amount of debt the borrower can take in. But that only allows the borrower to get further in the hole, and end up owing more every year. If the borrower can’t pay off the debt as it stands, what is to say that he will be able to do so when the debt is more than his income?
A kindred spirit in effort to slay the Juggernaut
Released in 2009, Chris Martenson’s video seminar ‘Crash Course’ provides an excellent analysis of our predicament. Expanding the talk into what he calls “the Three ‘E’s”, this seminar is comprehensive…
The unrecognizable future
With a predicted population of 9 billion, food production and competition for resources could change the face of our planet. http://news.discovery.com/earth/earth-unrecognizable-2050-resources-110220.html While there can be no doubt that the future…
Is the pursuit of wealth a zero-sum game?
Allow me to pose three questions to the inquisitive: 1. Is the pursuit of wealth a zero-sum game? 2. Is the pursuit of money a zero-sum game?