Sublime

Money is the minimal information that captures the social truth of the value of time and energy.

Choice architects (such as Carolyn the cafeteria director) have many opportunities to choose defaults, and they can do so in ways that are self-serving or welfare enhancing.

(This kind of scheme is currently being pioneered in Scandinavia, where governments follow the motto “Protect workers, not jobs.”)

Throughout history, violence has been a dagger pointed at the heart of the economy. As Thomas Schelling shrewdly put it, “The power to hurt—to destroy things that somebody treasures, to inflict pain and grief—is a kind of bargaining power, not easy to use but used often.

Joaquin Aguirre

Malthusians, modern and classical, the reason we’re headed to hell in a handbasket is that people are rapacious and untamable, creatures of passion and impulse. Those drives will lead us inexorably to consume endlessly, but we’ve seen that people aren’t always like that, while corporations are always like that—the profit motive makes them so—which

Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.

Adam Appich, master of science, is there with several studies that show how legacy cognitive blindness will forever prevent people from acting in their own best interests.