The best economic thinking was never just about money. It was about incentives, power, human nature, and the invisible rules that make some people rich and others stuck. At Intellectual Prestige, we publish original essays that connect foundational economic theory – from Ricardo’s trade models to Becker’s analysis of everything – to the financial decisions, career strategies, and policy debates that shape your daily life.
In 1600, merchants convinced Queen Elizabeth I to grant them a monopoly on trade with the East Indies. The pitch: we’ll bring back exotic goods, expand English influence, and share profits with the Crown. In 2015, technologists convinced Silicon Valley that AI should be developed as a nonprofit for humanity’s benefit. The pitch: we’ll build […]
Why OpenAI is the New East India Company (A David Ricardo Reading) Read More »
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes made a bold prediction. By now, he said, we’d all be working about 15 hours a week. Three hour workdays. A perpetual long weekend. Technology would make us so productive that we’d meet all our needs in a fraction of the time, leaving us to wrestle with the
The ‘Bullshit Job’ Economy: Why Keynes Predicted We’d Invent Fake Work Read More »
You can’t put Gregorian chant on your resume. Knowing the difference between Doric and Ionic columns won’t get you promoted. Being able to name all the moons of Jupiter doesn’t increase your earning potential. Yet people spend enormous amounts of time acquiring exactly this kind of knowledge. Why? The economist Thorstein Veblen had an answer,
Everyone who’s ever sold something on Etsy or posted a “CEO of myself” caption on LinkedIn thinks they’re an entrepreneur. We live in a time when the word has been stretched so thin it barely means anything anymore. Side hustles, passion projects, freelance gigs—we call all of it entrepreneurship. But if we transported a French
Three words. That’s all it took for Murray Rothbard to ignite a philosophical war that still rages today. When the economist and political theorist declared that taxation is theft, he wasn’t making a throwaway comment at a cocktail party. He was lobbing a grenade into the foundation of modern civilization. The phrase seems absurd at
Picture two economists standing at opposite ends of a bridge, both claiming they want to help poor people cross to the other side. One wants to give everyone a ticket, rich and poor alike. The other wants to pay only for those who cannot afford the crossing. They’re both talking about cash transfers, but Milton
UBI vs. Negative Income Tax: Through the Lens of Milton Friedman Read More »
Your landlord just raised your rent again. Your savings account yields 0.5% while inflation runs at 3%. Meanwhile, someone’s trust fund baby Instagram account shows them sipping cocktails in Bali, captioned “passive income life.” And somewhere in your chest, something tightens—a feeling that’s part envy, part moral indignation, and entirely confused about whether it should
Business schools teach optimization. They teach market analysis, financial modeling, supply chain efficiency, and strategic planning. They train students to break problems into manageable pieces, to quantify everything that can be quantified, and to make decisions based on measurable outcomes. This approach has built empires and created enormous wealth. It has also, increasingly, created enormous
Why Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World Must Be Required Reading for MBAs Read More »
Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism, articulated most comprehensively in Das Kapital, remains one of the most influential economic theories in history. At its heart lies a powerful indictment: profit represents exploitation. According to Marx, capitalists extract surplus value from workers by paying them less than the value they create, pocketing the difference as profit. This
The Problem of Profit: Why Karl Marx Misunderstood Entrepreneurship Read More »
On October 13, 2025, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the recipients of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt were honored for their groundbreaking work in explaining the role of innovation in driving economic growth. This Nobel Prize recognition celebrates the
Nobel Prize Economics 2025: Mokyr, Aghion, Howitt — The Innovation Trilogy Read More »