Historically, mass poverty is the normal human condition. This has naturally led to attempt to explain those historically rare instances of sustained economic growth leading to mass prosperity as being somehow special. Not merely in being, before 1900, rare but also involving some very particular human motivations, institutions or discoveries. A ( Read more... )

What is the greatest achievement of human history? How about the achievement in particular societies of sufficient levels of per head economic growth that death by hunger was no longer a significant threat ( Read more... )

Even in academia, the most heart-on-sleeve progressivist milieu of all, we now have some hard evidence that gender still seriously affects peer review results. Via meleah who is understandably somewhat disheartened by the results ( Read more... )

The Internet is an odd sort of network. A common problem of networks is under-provision. For example, building a railway raises the value of land around the railway. The railroad does not capture any of that extra value. So, left to itself, private provision will under-provide railways - since the society would benefit from a higher level of ( Read more... )

In a recent post, entrippy noted that the number of comments were down on his LiveJournal, and those of his friends. I am new at this, so there maybe LiveJournal specific reasons for this I haven’t cottoned onto yet ( Read more... )