27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Measuring Progress by the Cost of Light
Time is not the only life-enriching resource granted to us by technology. Another is light. Light is so empowering that it serves as the metaphor of choice for a superior intellectual and spiritual state: enlightenment. In the natural world we are plunged into darkness for half of our existence, but human-made light allows us to take back the night for reading, moving about, seeing people’s faces, and otherwise engaging with our surroundings. The economist William Nordhaus has cited the plung...Folksonomies: human progress quantification
Folksonomies: human progress quantification
12 JUL 2012 by ideonexus
Neil deGrasse Tyson's Reading List
1.) The Bible (eBook) - “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.” 2.) The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.” 3.) On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.” 4.) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans...Eight books everyone should read to understand the forces at work in the world.
03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Cooperation VS Capitalism
Finding the right balance between cooperation and competition has been the goal and bane of Western politics for centuries. Adam Smith recognized that the economic needs of the individual are better met by unleashing the ambitions of all individuals than by planning to meet those needs in advance. But even Adam Smith could not claim that free markets produce Utopia. Even the most libertarian politician today believes in the need to regulate, oversee, and tax the efforts of ambitious individua...Human intelligence has yet to design a society where free competition among the members works for the good of the whole.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
Corporations are Antithetical to the Free Market
Corporations, whose leaders portray themselves as champions of the free market, were in fact created to circumvent that market. They were an answer to the challenge of organizing thousands of people in different places and with different skills to perform large and complex tasks, like building automobiles or providing nationwide telephone service. [...]Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by defin...Folksonomies: economics
Folksonomies: economics
Adam Smith argued for free markets, where a multitude of individual transactions amongst small groups of people or individuals would produce fair prices for goods and services. Corporations subvert this process by forming large bureaucracies that make money by maintaining the status quo and squashing innovation.