markets – Warp and Woof

What Are They Afraid Of?

We can’t all be righteously cosmopolitan, but at least we should temper our discomfort with alien cultures by tossing aside the feeling that our culture is “superior” to theirs …

Bureaucracy Is (or Should Be) Your Friend

Hobbes to Weber to Trotsky … and Beyond? Over the last few decades in America, and perhaps elsewhere, “bureaucracy” and “bureaucrat” have taken on a pejorative connotation. Why is that? The basic idea of the word (from the French for, literally, a desk) is to describe organizational structures which serve the interests of a leader.Continue reading “Bureaucracy Is (or Should Be) Your Friend”

Labor Productivity

People oversimplify the idea of productivity, and the basic concept is pretty simple (Productivity = Output/Input). But the modern world economy, due to technology, social forces, etc. makes the definition of “productivity” a bit more interesting …

Coming Cold War with China: Good or Bad?

What is at the root of the new cold war with China? Looking at different forms of imperialism …

Link from Vox

This one fits both “The Future” and “The Past” … good piece from Vox.com, in their “The Big Idea” series. Neoliberalism defined and explained. In short: it’s the economic/political philosophy which replaced the New Deal-to-Great Society philosophy that many of us oldsters associate with the “traditional” Democratic Party. It values free markets and capitalism farContinue reading “Link from Vox”