Public schools cost more than you think
(CATO) Although public schools are usually the biggest item in state and local budgets, spending figures provided by public school officials and reported in the media often leave out major…
Brand preference underscores culture divide
(LA Times) Democrats and Republicans can’t even agree on brands, preferring different restaurants, television channels and even gaming systems across the aisle, according to a new report. While Democrats say they most…
Sociality and coolness in modern times
One of the great motifs of modern times is coolness. In the early part of the 20th century, it began as a term of insouciance or what might be characterized…
- Bureaucracy
- Capitalism
- Closed System
- Competition
- Complexity
- Consumerism
- Current Events
- Economic Policy
- Economic Theory
- Federal Budget
- Free Market
- Health Care
- Inflation
- Interdependency
- Keynesianism
- Marxism
- Motivation
- National Debt
- Notable Quotables
- Perpetuity
- Political Theory
- Poverty
- Systems Theory
- Trade
- Welfare Statism
- Zero-sum
Juggernaut cometh
Jurist Richard Posner sums things up pretty well: (Becker-Posner) The institutional structure of the United States is under stress. We might be in dangerous economic straits if the dollar were…
Artistry, specialism, and the division of labor
The Art of Making, Alma Flamenca from Dimitris Ladopoulos on Vimeo.
Space for the free market
(Space.com) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private space capsule called Dragon soared into the predawn sky Tuesday, riding a pillar of flame like its beastly namesake on a history-making trip…
Forward to an Orwellian future
‘The Life of Julia’ is a slideshow produced and presented by the Obama administration to show the course of a woman’s life under Obama’s policies and contrasted by those proposed…
- 2007-08 Crisis
- Autarchy
- Capitalism
- Competition
- Complexity
- Consumerism
- Culture Divide
- Division of Labor
- Economic Policy
- Economic Theory
- Free Market
- Inflation
- Interdependency
- Keynesianism
- Motivation
- Perpetuity
- Political Theory
- Poverty
- Self-Reliance
- Self-Sufficiency
- Specialism
- Systems Theory
- Trade
- Wealth
- Welfare Statism
What labor statistics say about our economy
Most attuned to the mumbo jumbo disseminated from Washington will recognize the patent unreliability of statistics. And most will not take at face value reports on inflation, employment, or other…
The future of education
TED-Ed’s mission is to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world. We do this by pairing extraordinary educators with talented animators to produce a new library…
Consumerism and consolidation
Recently, this image has been presented by a Facebook group called Exposing the Truth with the title “The Illusion of Choice”. The assumption is that these companies have conspired to…
The Prisoner’s Dilemma redux
(Freakonomics) Several years ago, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Joel Waldfogel and Matthew W. White, published a fascinating empirical article about the prisoner’s dilemma game embedded in the short-lived U.S. game show “Friend…
The world is big, but the imagination is bigger
Our first launch of Space Balloon 1 on April 15, 2012 reached 90,000 feet in altitude. https://www.facebook.com/ProjectDontHitAJet
Author interview with Jeff Cunningham of Directorship Magazine
This spring, the author of Juggernaut was interviewed by one of the leading figures in high-level business communications today, Jeff Cunningham, founder and editor of Directorship Magazine. The introduction from…
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
On this day in 1775, Patrick Henry is said to have proclaimed “Give me liberty, or give me death!” while delivering an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention calling for…
Pushing things forward
(Paul Graham) One of the more surprising things I’ve noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. In this essay I’m going to…
Man’s imperfection and government
There is current in modern political science that sees the concept of perfection as central to social structures. The idea is that man is imperfect and is incapable of perfecting…
Is the modern political economy a zero-sum game?
In Part III of Juggernaut, I show how the use of government as a wealth-transferring system necessarily exasperates competition in the economy and creates what can best be described as…
Are law and order possible without government?
Part One of a series of films exploring a society where there is law and order, but no government. This part introduces the definitions of law and government, illustrating the…
Government-first health care a risk to well-being
(Reason) For the past several years, the medical profession has been undergoing a disturbing transformation. The process was begun by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in an…