Sublime

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature that interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

It traditionally assumed that firms were independent, and so changes would be independent, and so their sizes and aggregate effects would be distributed normally.

The economist Richard Thaler, in his 1985 “Beer on the Beach” study, showed that a thirsty sunbather would pay $2.65 for a beer delivered from a resort hotel but only $1.50 for the same beer if it came from a shabby grocery store.

Adam Smith, the founder of classical economics, was first and foremost a philosopher.

For now, consider the strange outcome of compounding: in each domain of life, the greatest advantages accrue to those who need them the least. This phenomenon is known as the Matthew Effect of cumulative advantage, after the conclusion to the parable of the talents in the Gospel of Matthew: “For to every one who has, more will be given, and he will

As a new point of view we turn to bounded rationality, a departure from the mainstream tradition. We no longer can assume that every agent is a perfect calculator. This point of view is given a great deal of emphasis by Herbert Simon. Simon argued that people do not maximize. When they’re forecasting the future, they do not perform the task of rati

After $100 million, each additional dollar will likely not add in any way to your life but may well create a burden (if you buy assets that need to be maintained and supervised).

the productivity of an average article (and of each contributor) increases superlinearly, at least in terms of audience reach.

in the real world, there is no such thing as an externality.