The Juggernaut in a nutshell
Before talking about economics, I want to say something about democracy. In July, I was in Spain, talking to the “indignados” there, the protesters. There, I could use a bullhorn….
- Closed System
- Competition
- Complexity
- Culture Divide
- Current Events
- Debt Ceiling
- Economic Policy
- Economic Theory
- Federal Budget
- Game Theory
- Inflation
- Interdependency
- Keynesianism
- Legal Theory
- Marxism
- Motivation
- National Debt
- Notable Quotables
- Perpetuity
- Political Theory
- Poverty
- Systems Theory
- Wealth
- Zero-sum
Occupy Wall Street demands are vaguely familiar
The protestors on Wall Street known as ‘Occupy Wall Street’ have recently been identified by a list of demands evidently posted by one of their followers. Though there are no…
Do the poor get poorer?
People often say that “the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.” Economics professor Steve Horwitz explains why in the United States, this characterization is largely a…
21st century Chinatown?
Those who remember the 1974 classic film Chinatown will find this story eerily familiar. (ReasonTV) The Antelope Valley is a vast patch of desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles…
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…
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…
Life and times in the rentership society
(Bloomberg) The U.S. homeownership rate has fallen below 60 percent when delinquent borrowers are excluded, a sign of the country’s move toward a “rentership society,” Morgan Stanley said in a…
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…
An ethical case for ‘Loser Pays’
In a recent article, Gozmodo reports of an independent artist that was charged with copyright infringement, and was forced to settle for tens of thousands of dollars, even though he…
New charter city in the works
(TED) Back in 2009, Paul Romer unveiled the idea for a “charter city” — a new kind of city with rules that favor democracy and trade. This year, at TED2011,…
Let’s diversify the states!
In a recent study, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University examined the laws and regulations that each of the 50 American states impose on their citizens and produced a…
Does regulation have to come from the state?
In recent years, the great debate has focused on the role of regulation, how much of it there should be, and whether it does what it should in the economic…
New rules, new system?
In Bill Maher’s New Rules segment, the comedian/political maven shuffles through several new rules he has come up with that he suggests would solve some of our problems. Examples range…
Is Distributism the answer?
In John C. Médaille’s book, Toward a Truly Free Market, the argument is made that the modern system is a self-perpetuating cycle that can only lead to more regulation and…
How to choose a winner
Thanks to another week of volatility in the markets, we are again face-to-face with the fact that there is absolutely no sensible reason for the movement of stock and derivatives…
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…
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…