Economics (and associated categories)

In recent decades we have multiplied our reliance on the combustion of fossil fuels, resulting in a dependence that will not be severed easily, or inexpensively. How rapidly we can change this remains unclear. Add to this all other environmental worries, and you must conclude that the key existential question — can humanity realize its aspirations within the safe boundaries of our biosphere? — has no easy answers. But it is imperative that we understand the facts of the matter. Only then can we tackle the problem effectively.

Excerpt: The point here is that if we want a truly zero carbon world we don’t just have to replace power stations. We have to re-imagine how to do all of those processes above that comprise centuries of innovation. We have to re-do the industrial revolution all over again. And, as you can see above, that means far more than just working out a way of making green steel. I wonder if this has quite dawned on most people yet - the scale of the task at hand, the depth of scientific challenge that faces us. And this is before you consider the fact that we will eventually have to do all of this while relying ever more on sources of energy which are less dense and more intermittent than the fossil fuels we built the industrial revolution on. It is certainly the biggest economic challenge of any of our lifetimes.

Putin has touched off the climate wars, a series of conflicts that experts have been predicting for a solid decade now. Ukraine is just the beginning. The societies that control the natural resources will enjoy the most power. The ones that rely on imports will lose their power. Without a sustainable energy plan, the biggest loser is the planet, and our future.

Cryptocurrencies' roots lie deep in the libertarian culture of Silicon Valley and the cypherpunks. Libertarianism's attraction is based on ignoring externalities, and cryptocurrencies are no exception.

One of the more pernicious mistruths surrounding the debate about TikTok is that this will potentially lead to the splintering of the Internet; this completely erases the history of China’s Great Firewall, started 23 years ago, which effectively cut China off from most Western services. That the U.S. may finally respond in kind is a reflection of reality, not the creation of a new one. What is new is the increased splintering in the non-China Internet: the U.S. model is still the default for most of the world, but the European Union and India are increasingly pursuing their own paths.

The lede: "The worldwide shipping crisis is bad. Here are some reasons: ..."

These systems still rely on humans to insure and maintain good governance. So I am not sure what problems are being solved.

"... the most oft-forgotten fact about property rights is that they do not exist in nature; they are constructs of human minds and soci­e­ties. The assets to which they apply may exist in nature, but the rights of humans to do things with them, or prevent others from doing them, do not. Their design and allocation are entirely up to us."

This is both about understanding the problem as well as describing a solution.

"This is a moral case for a guaranteed income: we should secure for each person the means necessary to live a modern life of dignity, and no one should be asked to take on an inordinate risk to enjoy such a life. I call this a moral argument and a moral case specifically because I am not making an economic argument for any specific economic policy or any specific form of guaranteed income. I am, instead, asserting that we should first commit to securing a level of human dignity and then figure out which specific policies get us there. If we think this is impossible or too costly, we should remember that we do impossible, costly things all the time by changing our grasp of what is worthwhile. Before we put a human on Mars, before a car drives itself across the country, we ought to figure out how to guarantee each person access to a dignified life."

How is it possible to own land? I find it remarkable that this basic question is so seldom asked. The current pattern of ownership and control of land lies at the heart of many of our biggest dysfunctions: the collapse of wildlife and ecosystems, the exclusion and marginalization of so many people, the lack of housing in many cities—indeed, in many parts of the world—the lack of public space in cities, our exclusion from the countryside. The pattern of land ownership underlies all of these massive issues, and indeed of many more. Yet we rarely question it.

Excerpt: "What does not and will not change is the nature and intentions of our opponents: those who reject freedom, democracy, and equality are the same as they have ever been. They seek to prevent the opportunities and benefits of this country expanding to lift up our most marginalized; they reject institutions of democracy and the arts of republican government if they fail to yield permanent victory, and that victory, as ever, must be the complete and utter supremacy of whiteness over everyone and everything upon this land. It is only the strategy that has something new to offer, because rather than trying to merely maintain oppression, our opponents are trying to rebuild it."

The future -- will we know it when we see it?