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.
Everyone knows Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. It is the book that launched a thousand MBA programs and gave economists permission to talk about self interest without blushing. What most people do not know is that Smith wrote another book first. He considered it his better work. And it had nothing to do […]
Why Your Boss Should Read The Theory of Moral Sentiments (It’s Not About Profit) Read More »
There is a quiet war in economics that most people never hear about. It is not fought with data or equations, though both sides pretend it is. It is fought over a single question: who do you trust more, governments or people? On one side stands John Maynard Keynes, the elegant British aristocrat who believed
Why Keynes Is for the State and Jean-Baptiste Say Is for the People Read More »
There is a strange contradiction at the heart of modern policy. Governments will subsidize corn, solar panels, electric vehicles, and even beekeeping. But the one institution that arguably produces more social good than any of these – marriage – gets almost nothing. No quarterly check for staying together. No tax rebate for making it past
Why We Should Pay People to Stay Married: The Case for Relationship Subsidies Read More »
You probably think power is simple. Someone has it, someone does not. The boss tells you what to do. The government passes a law. The rich guy buys what he wants. End of story. Max Weber, the German sociologist who spent his career dissecting how societies actually work, would tell you that you are barely
The Three Faces of Power: Why Money, Prestige, and Law Run Your Life Read More »
There is a seductive idea floating around. It goes something like this: the reason central planning failed in the Soviet Union was not that central planning is inherently flawed. It failed because the planners were human. They were slow, biased, and working with pencils and telegrams. Give the job to a sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence,
Why an AI-Managed Economy Would Still Result in a Bread Line Read More »
There is a particular kind of intellectual surrender that disguises itself as wisdom. It sounds like this: “I am not an expert, so I will defer to those who are.” On the surface, this seems humble. Reasonable, even. But Friedrich Hayek would have recognized it for what it is. A quiet abdication of thought. A
Why “Trusting the Experts” Is a Soft Form of Nihilism Read More »
There is a phrase that floats around corporate retreats and LinkedIn posts like a benevolent ghost. Work life balance. Say it slowly and it almost sounds like wisdom. It suggests a scale, two neat sides, one labeled “work” and the other labeled “life,” and all you need to do is keep them even. Simple. Elegant.
In 1930, one of the most brilliant economists who ever lived made a prediction. John Maynard Keynes, writing during the Great Depression of all times, looked ahead to the year 2030 and saw something remarkable. He saw us, his grandchildren’s generation, working about 15 hours a week. He believed that by now, the economic problem
Why We Keep Working 40 Hours Just to Prove We Are Not Lazy Read More »
What Friedrich Hayek Actually Meant, and Why It Still Stings There is a particular kind of madness that looks perfectly reasonable on paper. It has org charts. It has procedures. It has committees that form subcommittees to investigate whether a third committee is necessary. It calls itself order. Friedrich Hayek called it something else entirely:
Gary Becker won a Nobel Prize for treating marriage like a business decision. Most people found that offensive. He turned out to be more right than even he probably imagined. Becker’s core idea was simple. People marry when the expected gains from marriage exceed the expected gains from staying single. Marriage is not just about