It’s exciting times that we are on the brink of putting people on Mars. No doubt a technical feat for the history books! But history will also judge the extent to which this is a social success or disaster. It would be tragic to see societal failure take away from the sheer scientific achievement of
It’s hard to find anyone today that doesn’t think the political environment in the West is extremely polarized on ideological grounds. Healthy disagreement is a fundamental democratic freedom, but today there’s a big problem. With a proliferation of media, the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ sides of the political spectrum are usually talking to themselves in
By Andrew Horton, March 2022 In most economies, just as certain as death and taxes is the approach of collecting taxes every time certain economic activities occur such as earning or spending and or whenever assets such as property are held or bought and sold. These funds generally go into government coffers and governments allocate them
In the unprecedented environment of the COVID-19 pandemic the income and livelihood of many organizations has been decimated. As a result, there’s been a massive surge in support programs administered through the government. Within all of the chaos, the concept of Universal Basic Income has gained some traction on both the left and right sides
Most of us at times get caught up in heated debates about economic policies and their broader social context. We need to do this for sure. But., it’s key to keep in mind that economics is just a decision making model at the individual level and a coordination system at a macro level. Good policies
Nudging is all the rage. Many countries now even have their own nudging units. Nudging can potentially play a role in good policy toward desirable ends, given our innate irrationality. However it is vital that people still have the freedom to make irrational decisions. Unfortunately, amid all the buzz, nudging is out of the gate
The central idea behind Causal Economics is that optimal decision making happens when costs and resulting benefits are tied together. This is a simplification similar to that of boiling Behavioral Economics down to the idea of Nudging (a form of Libertarian Paternalism). Going a step further, Causal Economics asserts that people are rewarded for their
CE is a unifying theory of economics because the other major models of economics can be derived from it at both a micro and macro level. At a micro level, major decision models, such as BE and EU, can be derived from CE through particular restrictions. Specifically, cost and benefit, both deliberate and uncertain are
Nudge theory is powerful and top of mind with many of today’s government, academic and business leaders. It’s earned its place there. But, if one is to pick up on Phil Kotler’s comment that behavioral economics is a fancy new formalization of marketing, certainly it could be said that nudging is even more so directly
Many of the predictions of Causal Economics center on the impact of consolidated power, because that is one of the main conditions that allows for decoupling, driving up B/C ratios for those with power and driving down B/C ratios for those without power. Economic freedom and economic consolidation are at opposite ends of the spectrum.