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Insights from the Lotka-Volterra Model Open
Your browser does not support the audio tag. Download: PDF | EPUB | MP3 | WATCH VIDEO All models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful. — George Box In science, there's an inherent trade off bet…
Partisan Politics and the Road to Plutocracy Open
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From Commodity to Asset: The Truth Behind Rising House Prices Open
Your browser does not support the audio tag. Download: PDF | EPUB | MP3 | WATCH VIDEO Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. — John Maynard…
A Tour of the Jevons Paradox: How Energy Efficiency Backfires Open
Your browser does not support the audio tag. Download: PDF | EPUB | MP3 | WATCH VIDEO [R]esource productivity can — and should — grow fourfold. … Thus we can live twice as well — yet use half as much. — Factor Four , 1997 When it comes to …
Is Bitcoin More Energy Intensive Than Mainstream Finance? Open
Download: PDF | EPUB When it comes to Bitcoin, there's one thing that almost everyone agrees on: the network sucks up a tremendous amount of energy. But from there, disagreement is the rule. For critics, Bitcoin's thirst for energy is self…
Stocking Up on Wealth … Concentration Open
Download: PDF | EPUB There's an old joke that economics is too important to be left to economists. In the same vein, I think rich people are too important to be left to the self-help industry. Yes, the popular appeal of you-can-get-rich-to…
The Great Gatsby Curve Among America's Über Rich Open
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No, AI Does Not Pose an Existential Risk to Humanity Open
Download: PDF | EPUB In the last few months, there have been a string of open letters from tech leaders warning that artificial intelligence could lead to a 'profound change in the history of life on Earth'. According to some insiders, AI …
Red Team Blues: Cory Doctorow's Anti-Finance Thriller Open
Download: PDF | EPUB I still remember when I first encountered Cory Doctorow's writing. After an internet rabbit hole, I landed on his post 'Ford patents plutocratic lane-changes'. Man, it made me laugh. Here was a sci-fi writer describing…
Unemployment and the Maturity of Capitalism Open
Download: PDF | EPUB In my last post, I discussed the underwhelming relation between interest rates and unemployment. In this post, I'll look at a better way to connect unemployment to interest income. It turns out that if you take US net …
Interest Rates and Unemployment: An Underwhelming Relation Open
Download: PDF | EPUB For the last few months, I've been studying the distributional effects of interest-rate hikes. There's been no shortage of surprising results. In this post, I'll discuss an effect that is surprising because it's underw…
Inflation! The Battle Between Creditors and Workers Open
Download: PDF | EPUB I've been writing about inflation for the better part of three months. It's been exhausting. Most of my time has been spent debunking misconceptions promoted by mainstream economists. Fortunately, I'm ready to move on.…
The Key to Managing Inflation? Higher Wages Open
Download: PDF | EPUB To manage inflation, governments have a simple tool at their disposal: raise wages as fast as possible. — Milton Fryman For the last few months, I've been diving into the economics of inflation. In this post, I'm excit…
Interest Rates and Inflation: Knives Out Open
Download: PDF | EPUB If you're just tuning in, I've spent the last few months debunking some common misconceptions about inflation: Is inflation a uniform increase in prices? No. Inflation is wildly differential. Is inflation driven by an …
Do High Interest Rates Reduce Inflation? A Test of Monetary Faith Open
Download: PDF | EPUB They did not mind stating apparently opposed truths; they knew that they could give to men a higher truth, in which the contradictories became two sides of the same truth. — Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, 1872 Whenever infla…
The Cause of Stagflation Open
Download: PDF | EPUB In my last post, I looked at the relation between economic growth and inflation. As per usual, the evidence didn't sit well with mainstream economics. According to standard theory, there is a trade off between low infl…
Is Stagflation the Norm? Open
Download: PDF | EPUB [I]nflation in the midst of stagnation is not an anomaly. If anything, it is the general rule. — Nitzan and Bichler, 2009 As much of the world grapples with post-Covid price gouging, it seems like a good time to revisi…
Inflation: Everywhere and Always Differential Open
Download: PDF | EPUB In November 2021, I wrote a post called 'The Truth About Inflation'. At the time, inflation fears were heating up. And as usual, mainstream economists were missing the bus. Sure, economists pointed to the consumer pric…
Firming Up Hierarchy Open
Download: PDF | EPUB If an unmarked package arrived at your door, how would you figure out what was inside? The catch is that you cannot open it. As a social scientist, I deal with this 'black-box' problem all the time. I (metaphorically) …
How to Make the Oil Industry Go Bust Open
Download: PDF | EPUB Environmentalists often argue that if we accounted for the 'true' costs of the fossil-fuel business, the industry would go bankrupt. While I understand this sentiment, I think the idea of 'true' costs is dubious. Costs…
Dualism in Science, Theology, and Economics Open
I've spent a lot of time on this blog debunking economists' claims about productivity. Usually, I come at the problem from a fairly technical angle, meaning I break down the contradictions involved in economists' methods. Today, I want to …
Have We Passed Peak Capitalism? Open
Download: PDF | EPUB Among leftists, predicting the end of capitalism is a favorite parlor game. For example, as a graduate student in the 2010s, I remember discovering the 1976 edition of Marx's Capital and being struck by the introductio…
The Voldemort Index Open
A few days ago, I received the attached essay, sent to me in error by a Dr. Tom Riddle. It offers a fascinating glimpse into the elite worldview. (Cover image: Elodie Tihange, altered) There is no good and evil. There is only power and tho…
A Case Study of Fossil-Fuel Depletion Open
A few months ago I received an intriguing email from researcher and activist Regan Boychuk. For the past 15 years, Boychuk has been studying the oil-and-gas industry in Alberta (Canada) and he wanted to know if I would join his project. I …
Hierarchy, Zoom Bombed Open
An artist's enemy is obscurity … — Cory Doctorow Like art, the dirty secret of science is that much of it remains painfully obscure. A scientist might spend years collecting and analyzing data, only to have their paper read by a handful of…
The Truth About Inflation Open
Download: PDF | EPUB Inflation is always and everywhere a phenomenon of structural change . — Jonathan Nitzan, 1992 Milton Friedman has been dead for more than a decade, but his ghost still haunts us. In the 1960s, Friedman declared that i…
Redistributing Income Through Hierarchy Open
Download PDF Abstract Although the determinants of income are complex, the results are surprisingly uniform. To a first approximation, top incomes follow a power-law distribution, and the redistribution of income corresponds to a change in…
Talking Hierarchy With Rachel Donald Open
Last week I had the pleasure to chat with Rachel Donald on her podcast 'Platform'. The show features people who are 'pissed off with capitalism'. Its goal is to give a platform for under-reported topics that deserve traction and attention.…
Redistributing Income Through Hierarchy Open
Although the determinants of income are complex, the results are surprisingly uniform. To a first approximation, top incomes follow a power-law distribution, and the redistribution of income corresponds to a change in the power-law exponen…
Institution Size as a Window into Cultural Evolution Open
One of the challenges of studying the past is that time has a maddening way of erasing evidence. Take the origin of life — the ultimate cold case. Had the first organisms been wise enough to fossilize themselves, we would know exactly how …