Sublime

Economists describe the Tragedy of the Commons like this: cattle herders sharing a pasture will inevitably place the needs of their cows above the needs of others’, adding cow after cow and taking more than their share of the common grass. The “free rider” takes advantage of the commons, and consumes it until it’s gone. This, the argument goes, is

As the nineteenth century progressed, agricultural scientists got a better sense of why land fertility lagged behind human fertility. Arable land contains nutrients, without which plants will not grow. The most important by far is nitrogen, one of the four building blocks of life

The problem wasn’t natural gas. It was excessive regulation. Every time Clark had to give a pig an antibiotic shot, the law now required that he have a veterinarian write a prescription. That was fifty dollars per farm call, plus the cost of the medication. What really burned Clark up, however, wasn’t just the cost of the vet; it was the fact that

The debate over the commercialization of human biological materials always comes back to one fundamental point: like it or not, we live in a market-driven society, and science is part of that market.