The proponents of this unrealistic scenario [of reduction in global demand for goods] allow merely a factor-of-two increase across all modes of mobility during the… Read More »Not long ago; or, Little by little (9): Car ownership in China 1999-2019
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
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)
This is a really interesting and well produced article (as are other pages on The Pudding), and I highly recommend it. There’s a version you… Read More »Recommendation: The Pudding on the Yard-Sale Model and Wealth Tax
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 less-obvious side of supply and demand in a nutshell: People pay different prices for (the same) pizza because for all sorts of reasons they… Read More »What does it cost? What is it worth? (2)
Cost and Worth are the two essential components – value judgements – of every single transaction. This is the law of supply and demand: for… Read More »What does it cost? What is it worth?
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
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
… the capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably means also production for the masses, whereas, climbing upward in… Read More »Schumpeter on who gains from mass production