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 our sustainability problems, striving for greater resource efficiency seems like an obvious solution.

My how time flies. As of April 11th, 2024, I’ve been blogging for five years. To celebrate, I thought I’d engage in some obligatory navel gazing. Why blog? I started this blog on a whim. In the spring of 2019, I was one year post PhD and busy publishing pieces of my dissertation. It was about as much fun as licking sandpaper. The problem, I now realize, is that I hate academic writing.

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-evidently bad — the equivalent of pouring gasoline in a hole and setting it on fire. But for Bitcoin advocates, the network’s energy gluttony is the necessary price of having a secure digital currency.

Download: PDF | EPUB Tech development is often portrayed as an open road — a smooth freeway of continuous progress. But the truth is that the road of technology is more like a suburban street, paved with numerous unmarked dead ends. To see one of these dead end, look at roads themselves. As a method for moving people, roads work well … until you fill them with millions of cars.

Well, another year of blogging is over. For me, it was a year of research themes. I spent the first half of 2023 debunking interest-rate orthodoxy. Then I spent the second half of the year studying the world’s billionaires. Here were the top 5 posts: Do High Interest Rates Reduce Inflation?

Download: PDF | EPUB In their book Manufacturing Consent , Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky argue that the mainstream media functions largely as a propaganda arm for the state. When the war drum beats, the corporate media tows the government’s line, censoring facts that don’t fit the official narrative. Outside of war, media bias is typically less overt. But to the careful observer, it can still be discerned.

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-too books is obvious. But what’s not obvious is why so few social scientists study wealth. ¹ Clearly, the public thirsts for serious inquiries about the rich.

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