Sublime

She said much of the finance industry has too narrow a view of its strategy and goals. It often becomes a short-term, almost zero-sum game with many investors focused only on small relative gains won against each other.

But it can also go the other way. What economics has missed is that adding an incentive—a fine or a bonus—may be subtracting something else, the individual’s sense of responsibility, or obligation, or intrinsic pleasure.

It was unsustainable on two levels. The first level of “normal” is the debt pyramid, the exponential growth of money that inevitably outstrips the real economy. The solution at this level is what liberal economists (usually identifying themselves as Keynesians) propose: wealth redistribution, fiscal stimulus, debt write-downs, and so forth. Through

the nonrival character of knowledge creates disincentives for private economic actors—individuals and firms—to produce it.

Reading to Learn,

These are all highly contestable statements.

Given that, Ostrom argued, collective ownership was actually better for everyone than private property. Dividing the land into small parcels, each owned by a separate person, increases risk, since there is always the possibility of some disease hitting the grass in any given small area.

“three I’s” problem: ideology, ignorance, inertia.