Category: Market and social evolution
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Explaining The Economy
Kyla Scanlon has a book explaining the economy. There are some nice parts, and some things I wasn’t too sure about. (At least one graph seemed really odd as did a couple of comments but, being a popular book, the references were a bit too limited to check properly). Mostly she does a good job…
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Lower Cost Is Not Always Better
One of the big challenges for sustainable business is that sometimes it costs more. Although higher costs driven by sustainable decision-making is not always the case, if you are providing higher quality, paying your workers or suppliers more, or reducing pollution from your products then sometimes this costs more. While it is beneficial to ensure…
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Leapfrogging Towards A Better World
One concern that people who care about the environment typically have is that developed nations tend to create massive harm to the planet and life on it. That concern is often hard to argue with. A valid concern has led some — let us call them the shitty wing of environmentalism represented by Paul Ehrlich…
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Being Fair To People You Don’t Agree With
Being fair to people you don’t agree with is a really challenging task. After all, from your viewpoint, they are wrong. It can be pretty easy to see the holes in their arguments. Indeed, we can be really great at that. Although we are generally not so talented at taking apart our own arguments. When…
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Working In the Doughnut
Kate Raworth has a popular book on sustainability and economics. In it, she argues that economics needs an overhaul. It is an admirably ambitious book with some flaws but with excellent parts to more than makeup for them. What does Raworth say about working in the doughnut? How To Understand Working In the Doughnut Raworth…
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Adaptive Market Hypothesis: Evolution And Financial Markets
Andrew Lo has a number of interesting works attempting to link evolutionary thinking and financial markets. See here for his 2006 piece in the Harvard Business Review, entitled Survival of the Richest. Lo shows how evolutionary thinking can be applied to financial markets and explains the idea of the Adaptive Market Hypothesis. Irrationality And Financial…
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Weird Versus Non-WEIRD
Joe Henrich’s book on the WEIRDest people in the world is ambitious and packed with ideas and data. To be honest it isn’t my sort of thing but you have to admire what he has done. He is looking at the psychology of weird versus non-weird people. Weird being western, educated, industrialized, rich & democratic.…
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Progress Exists And Is A Good Thing
Matt Ridley is an interesting writer. A popular science/ideas writer he gives you his thoughts on a wide variety of subjects. I do admire his willingness to adopt an overarching narrative. To be honest, at times it can seem a bit too much for my tastes. His libertarian-esque views tend to see him damning a…
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Frequency Dependence And Strategy
Here I’ll highlight an idea from evolutionary biology that has profond implications for strategy. This is the idea of frequency dependence. I think people overlook thais concept, a lot. Whenever you see, “10 tips for success”, or even stronger claims like “the five things you must do” remember whoever is saying this is either a)…
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Pareto Efficiency In Markets
A key idea when analyzing markets is Pareto efficiency. This is also called Pareto optimality. Despite the name it is a simple idea. We see Pareto efficiency in markets whenever you can’t make anyone better off without making someone else worse off. There is thus a number of optimal points. Each point involves a different…
