Sublime

But these paradigms of sound management are useless—even counterproductive, in many instances—when dealing with disruptive technology.

The challenge is how to get the state to do the job when avoiding the free market outcome is precisely the goal.

It is extraordinary what havoc a few concentric circles can unleash.

The more productive we are, the richer we are.

It drives the point home that for the ultimate consumer, time is money, as is reliability, and it’s money we will never recover. It is not like Amazon will pay Abhijit his hourly wage for his two trips to the grocery store or the two hours spent trying to fix the machine.

One last point: economists tend to be skeptical of any attempt to change people’s behavior that doesn’t change their incentives. For example, a plan that calls on manufacturers to reduce pollution voluntarily probably won’t be effective because it hasn’t changed manufacturers’ incentives.

The final unit of input before the change has a disproportionate impact.

This idea of sustainable change is central to personal finance.

This chapter reveals the cast of characters, the script, and the playwrights behind the economic story that came to dominate the twentieth century – the one that has pushed us to the brink of collapse. But it also sets the stage for a twenty-first-century economic play – one whose characters and script can help bring us back, and into a thriving ba