Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Economist Jon Elster notes, “Nothing is so unimpressive as behavior designed to impress.”
W. David Marx • Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change
In the eighth chapter of its first volume, Smith made the following novel argument: when a landlord, a weaver, or a shoemaker has greater profits than he needs to maintain his own family, he uses the surplus to employ more assistants, in order to further increase his profits. The more profits he has, the more assistants he can employ. It follows th
... See moreYuval Noah Harari • Sapiens
The labour theory of value—i.e., the doctrine that the value of a product depends upon the labour expended upon it—which some attribute to Karl Marx and others to Ricardo, is to be found in Locke, and was suggested to him by a line of predecessors stretching back to Aquinas.
Bertrand Russell • History of Western Philosophy
From the standpoint of Ely and the new generation economists, economic analysis and its application made up an inherently ethical task whose basic unit of analysis was the social whole. In this sense, their pronouncements were not socialist in a Marxist sense—that is, implying public ownership of capital and the ultimate displacement of capitalism—
... See moreGlory M. Liu • Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
Eugene Wei • Status Games: Engineering Scarcity in a World of Abundance
“What will happen if we give away free money? Won’t people just sit on the couch all day?” Underpinning these kinds of questions are two essential assumptions: (1) that money, a vehicle we use to exchange value, is intrinsically linked to labor, and to separate the two would be like reversing gravity, and (2) that leisure is something lacking in va
... See moreSeth Goldenberg • Radical Curiosity: Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures
have to deal,—What is the proper mode of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few?
Anand Giridharadas • Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
Prosperity itself can corrode community, by undermining our need for one another.
Juliet B. Schor • True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich,Ecologically Light,Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy
But there’s only one way to stay wealthy: some combination of frugality and paranoia.