This is poverty, Jakarta edition
Here’s the point: even if your parents or caregivers had almost nothing, even if all they could give you was love and care, a bit… Read More »This is poverty, Jakarta edition
Sustainability and change
Thought experiment: Infinite inequality without injustice (1)
This may seem obvious, but it’s important. Jane and Frank work weekdays at a restaurant. One day, their boss offers them both an extra shift… Read More »Thought experiment: Infinite inequality without injustice (1)
Thought experiment: poverty and inequality without injustice
A small stone-age tribe lives undetected in a remote forest in your country. They live sustainably off the land by hunting and foraging. The forest… Read More »Thought experiment: poverty and inequality without injustice
The Good Old Days: Medieval London Murder Map (2019)
Sometimes progress takes the form of not getting killed with a poleaxe. Via HN. The population of London in the 14th century likely ranged between… Read More »The Good Old Days: Medieval London Murder Map (2019)
Nostalgia Revisited
Nostalgia: a kind of homesickness for the past. Another way of putting it: the longing you will have in future for the places and people… Read More »Nostalgia Revisited
Technology (26): Vaclav Smil on available energy per capita since 1800
… the 20th century saw a nearly 40-fold gain in useful energy [i.e. energy available for human use]; since 1800 the gain was about 3,500-fold.… Read More »Technology (26): Vaclav Smil on available energy per capita since 1800
Technology (25): Vaclav Smil on prime movers and extrasomatic energy
Extrasomatic: outside of the body About 10 millennia ago… the first patches of deliberately cultivated plants as a small share of the Earth’s total photosynthesis… Read More »Technology (25): Vaclav Smil on prime movers and extrasomatic energy
Slums, slot-machines and self-un-marginalisation
When a person from a remote village moves to the city and finds themselves living in a slum, they have not become poor and marginalised.… Read More »Slums, slot-machines and self-un-marginalisation
Three kinds of change
There are three kinds of change that we hope for or fear: We spend too much of our time, energy and attention worrying about the… Read More »Three kinds of change
Technology (24): Keynes on The Permanent Problem; or, The Dread of Abundance
Hattip: Brink Lindsey Let us, for the sake of argument, suppose that a hundred years hence we are all of us, on the average, eight… Read More »Technology (24): Keynes on The Permanent Problem; or, The Dread of Abundance