Imagine sending the IRS after a bank robber. You file the paperwork. You request his quarterly earnings statement. You ask, politely, for him to declare his stolen income on line 21 under “other earnings.” You remind him about self employment tax. The absurdity is the point. We do not tax criminals because criminals do not […]
Why Taxes Do Not Work on Criminals (But Fines Might) Read More »
Here is a thought experiment. Imagine two people apply for the same job. One spent four years at a prestigious university, studying economics, pulling all nighters before exams, and graduating with honors. The other spent those same four years reading every economics textbook ever written, taking free online courses from MIT and Stanford, attending public
There is a strange thing that happens when a billionaire walks into a room. Half the people there will privately resent him. The other half will privately want to be him. And quite often, those two halves live inside the same person. We have been told that the rich are villains, that wealth corrupts, that
Why We Hate the Rich (But Want Their Human Capital): The Logic of Class Envy Read More »
Most economists treat their field like physics. They draw curves that intersect at neat little points, write equations that pretend humans are billiard balls, and speak of equilibrium as if markets were calm ponds waiting to settle. They want economics to behave. They want it to sit still long enough to be measured. Joseph Schumpeter
Capitalism as Darwinism: Why Schumpeter is the Biologist of Economics Read More »
There is a strange thing that happens the moment you say something out loud. The idea leaves your head, lands in the open air, and suddenly it is not just an idea anymore. It is yours. It has your name stitched into it. And from that second on, anyone who questions it is not questioning
Stop Defending Your Ideas and Start Attacking Them Read More »
In 1960, an economist at Columbia University did something that horrified polite society. He sat down and applied the same mathematical framework used to analyze refrigerator purchases to the question of why people have babies. His name was Gary Becker, and his paper “An Economic Analysis of Fertility” treated children as what he politely called
Children as “Consumer Durables”: The Cold Logic Behind the Global Birth Rate Collapse Read More »
Every few decades, an economic idea arrives dressed in new clothes and convinces us it has never been seen before. We greet it like a stranger at the door, marvel at its novelty, and forget that we invited its grandfather to dinner ninety years ago. Universal Basic Income is having its moment now. Politicians flirt
How Universal Basic Income (UBI) is Just Keynesianism for the 21st Century Read More »
There is a small, quiet moment that happens to almost everyone at least once a week. You are trying to do something ordinary. Maybe you are looking for a charger that fits a specific port. Maybe you are trying to cancel a subscription that has buried its cancel button somewhere between three menus and a
Why Your Best Business Idea is Hidden in Your Daily Frustrations Read More »
There was a moment, somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the launch of the first iPhone, when educated people in the West convinced themselves that humanity had finally outgrown its tribal phase. Borders were becoming quaint. Cultures were converging. A young person in Stockholm, Seoul, and São Paulo would soon share the
There is a particular kind of dread that arrives when you watch a machine do your job in three seconds. It is not anger exactly. It is something closer to embarrassment, the way you might feel watching someone fold a fitted sheet correctly for the first time in your life. You realize you have been
Don’t Compete with Robots on Speed; Compete with Them on Awareness Read More »