Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
By the eighteenth century, a new ideology was taking form, especially in Britain, that “greed is good” (to use a recent summary formulation), because greed spurs a society’s efforts and inventiveness. By giving vent to greed, the logic goes, societies can best harness the insatiable ambitions, great energies and ingenuity of their citizens. While
... See moreJeffrey D. Sachs • The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions
Smith was trying to make a similar, Newtonian argument.3 God—or Divine Providence, as he put it—had arranged matters in such a way that our pursuit of self-interest would nonetheless, given an unfettered market, be guided “as if by an invisible hand” to promote the general welfare.
David Graeber • Debt: The First 5,000 Years,Updated and Expanded
basics. The economy, whether in Europe or the US, is an enormous collection of arrangements and institutions and technologies and human actions, buying and selling and investing and exploring and strategizing. It’s a huge hive of activity, where the individual behavior of agents—banks, consumers, producers, government departments—leads to aggregate
... See moreW. Brian Arthur • Complexity Economics: Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute's 2019 Fall Symposium


“Economic Consequences of Organized Violence,”
James Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg • The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

