A few weeks ago I took a dive into the empirics of life expectancy. How can we live longer, I asked, without consuming more energy? In the past, we’ve used fossil fuels as a crutch. To increase life expectancy, we’ve consumed loads more energy. Figure 1 shows the trend across all countries. Although using more energy does increase life expectancy, it’s not a sustainable option for the future.

Prices are caused by supply and demand, right? So say neoclassical economists. If you’ve bought their fairy tale, I recommend you watch the video below. In it, Jonathan Nitzan demolishes the neoclassical theory of prices. It’s a master lesson in how to deconstruct a theory. An error occurred. Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser. Here’s the 100-word summary.

In the early 1970s, Geert Hofstede discovered something interesting. While analyzing a work-attitude survey that had been given to thousands of IBM employees around the world, Hofstede found that responses clustered by country. In some countries, for instance, employees tended to prefer an autocratic style of leadership. But in other countries, employees preferred a democratic approach.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. In science, the corollary is that a good chart is worth a whole article. Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration … but only slightly. Millions of words are spilled each day communicating science. Yet people have finite time to read. The consequence is that most people skim articles, looking for things that interest them. What’s going to catch their eye as they skim?

How can we live the ‘good life’ without killing the planet? My last post on energy and empire got me thinking about this question. We know that human welfare improves as we use more resources. But it’s suicidal for all of humanity to pursue this path.

They called him the ‘Little Emperor’ . Romulus Augustus — better known as Romulus ‘Augustulus’ (‘Little Augustus’) — was the last Western Roman Emperor. He assumed the throne at the age of 16 during a period of unprecedented strife. There had been 8 emperors in the previous 20 years. Like his predecessors, the Little Emperor’s reign was short. It lasted less than a year.

I’ve always been baffled why ‘modern monetary theory’ is called a theory . I don’t mean this in a disparaging way. As far as theories of money go, I think modern monetary theory (MMT for short) is the correct one. But having a correct theory of money is a bit like having a correct theory of traffic lights. Traffic lights (like money) are a social convention.

Today I’m sharing a list of blogs that I read frequently. Although I’m ostensibly a political economist, only two of the five blogs below are about economics. The other three are about physics. These physics blogs, however, are interesting because of the sociological aspects of science that they explore. So even if you’re not interested in cosmology or particle physics, it’s worth checking out what these physicists have to say.

This week was a first for me. I participated in an academic conference that was entirely online. The conference — called Thermodynamics 2.0 — was designed to connect the natural and social sciences. It was a fitting place to discuss my research, and there were many interesting (virtual) talks.

If it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then there is in principle no “problem”. The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources. — Robert Solow, 1974 In the distant future, aliens come to Earth. They find a planet devoid of life. Looking closer, the aliens see that life on Earth was once abundant, but was wiped out by a mass extinction.

I’ve written a lot on this blog about the absurdity of marginal productivity theory. But I haven’t said much about the other pillar of mainstream economics: neoclassical growth theory. Today I’ll break that silence. Neoclassical growth theory is a textbook example of Murphy’s law. Everything that could go wrong with the theory did go wrong.