I have a new paper out in the Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review . It’s called ‘Economic Development and the Death of the Free Market’. The paper explores a question that has long fascinated me: how do human societies change as they consume more energy? As you probably guessed, the paper’s title gives away the conclusion. Consuming more energy seems to involve less free market and more hierarchy.

Download: PDF | EPUB … the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it … — Karl Marx In the 1860s, Karl Marx declared that all value stemmed from labor. A century-long firestorm ensued. On its own, Marx’s claim seems innocent enough. But what made it incendiary was how he used it. Starting from the idea that labor creates value, Marx built a seductive critique of capitalism.

Over the last year, I’ve watched with horror and amusement as health agencies around the world flip-flopped their advice on how to deal with COVID. My horror comes from knowing this flip-flopping breeds mistrust in science. But I am (morbidly) amused because I know that uncertainty is a basic part of real research. For the public, ‘science’ tends to mean authoritative knowledge.

The game I play is a very interesting one. It’s imagination in a tight straitjacket. — Richard Feynman Like Richard Feynman’s game of science, evolution is stuck in a straitjacket. It is driven by chance. But evolution is not free to explore every path. Take, as an example, the evolution of organism size.

Last week I ran a Twitter survey to see what software my fellow researchers use. It turns out they like R: As an avid R user myself, this result didn’t surprise me. But it did make me think about my own approach to coding. In this post I’m going to share the tools that I use for my research. To get a sense for my coding habits, I wrote a script to scan all of my code and break it down by language.

According to behavioral economics, most human decisions are mired in ‘bias’. It muddles our actions from the mundane to the monumental. Human behavior, it seems, is hopelessly subpar. ¹ Or is it? You see, the way that behavioral economists define ‘bias’ is rather peculiar.

Ryan Kyger ¹ and Blair Fix Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. — attributed to Richard Feynman ² Most scientists don’t worry much about philosophy; they just get on with doing ‘science’. They run experiments, analyze data, and report results. And by so doing, they fall repeatedly into known philosophical pitfalls.

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. — Hunter S. Thompson meme ¹ Browse the internet long enough and you’ll eventually run across Hunter S. Thompson’s meme about the music industry. The meme is actually a misquote, but it’s still a fair representation of what the music business is like.

Around the world, rich countries are celebrating as their COVID numbers fall. Their success is no mystery — it’s because of a massive rollout of COVID vaccines. While we should celebrate the development of these vaccines, their deployment highlights the tyrannies of capitalism. Most of the basic research for COVID vaccines was funded by the public. Yet their manufacture is controlled by Big Pharma.

There’s something mysterious about finance. The symbols are arcane. The math is complex. The practitioners are impressively educated. And the stakes are high. All of this gives finance the veneer of higher truth — as if quants are uncovering a reality not accessible to the rest of us. In a sense they are. But the ‘reality’ is not what you think. When you look at stock-market numbers, they do point to a truth about the world.

Greetings readers. It’s been an interesting month for me, what with Toronto dealing with an explosive 3rd wave of COVID, and me trying to get work done while my 5-year-old daughter does ‘school’ from home. Life has been, shall we say, interesting. Then, two weeks ago my appendix decided it was time to rupture. That put me in the hospital for a few days, and then home in bed for a few more. I’m now almost fully recovered.