Scarcity Amidst Abundance

We live in the midst of a grand contradiction. The earth is brimming with everything the human race needs. Yet those who have too much of everything think they don’t have enough. We live in a culture that takes abundance and turns it into scarcity. Look at the abundance. In the “developed” world, GDP rose……

A Vertically Radical Manifesto

The economy works relentlessly to ensure that nobody pursues a meaningful life. The central mission of a capitalist market economy is to persuade each and every one of us to suck in as much material pleasure (called “utility”) as we possibly can — and to serve others in the process as little as we possibly……

The Minimum Wage Scam

My how the rich get touchy when the poor want a bigger share. Just watch the knee-jerk reaction when the minimum wage goes up. “No, no, no — you’re going to screw yourselves out of a job if you insist on feeding your kids. If you extort a living wage out of us, we’ll cut……

Corporate Libertarian Socialism

We live in a bizarre world where we believe in libertarian free-market ideology, while we let the corporate sector practice socialism. Yet we don’t admit to either of them. “Wait”, you say. “I’m no libertarian. I believe in public parklands, and city street cleaning, and municipal firefighters and all kinds of other public services. The……

The Wendigo Economy

Indigenous mythology is usually dismissed as pagan, even though the wiser among us know that our own deepest wisdom is steeped in mythological roots. It’s just considered legitimate to discount indigenous narratives as naive, and glorify even our own dumbest mythologies as profound. But it’s even dumber when a culture fails to develop a crucial……

Economics vs Justice

Economists reduce human relationships to mathematics — most egregiously so when it comes to justice. Now they do have a point. There’s something called commutative justice. I pay you $10, and in return you give me something worth $10. Equal exchange. Mathematical justice. Important. Nobody wants to be cheated. But not everyone distinguishes that from……

Cursed by Growth

Almost all spiritual traditions view consumerism — the preoccupation with acquiring more goodies and pleasures over time — as profane and beneath human dignity. Buddhism views our unconstrained appetites as the very source of human unhappiness. Islam and Christianity both emphasize the need to follow your calling in life, where excessive consumption is an impediment……

Nobel Economics Winner — Kept on Sidelines

The latest winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (oddly named because it was not on the original list of Nobel Prizes) is the American, Richard Thaler. He did good pioneering work on Behavioral Economics. But despite the accolade, every effort will be made — successfully — to keep him on the sidelines.……

Bitcoin — Not As Advertised

Sometimes it seems like everything is the exact opposite of what it claims to be. Take capitalism. It claims to be a decentralized Invisible Hand of free competition — ensuring that all economic abuses are reined in by the discipline of competition so that nobody is able to exploit anyone else. In practice, it is……

Economics vs Weather

Imagine if you will, you’re planning an ocean cruise, and you want to know whether you might face rough seas. Will you hire a weather scientist or an economist? The answer’s obvious, but the reasons are illuminating. The weather scientists will measure temperature patterns, air pressure patterns and how they’re spinning, ocean currents and how……