On the previous blog I installed the free-as-in-beer version of the ClustrMaps gadget. They recently enhanced the quality of the data provided to the users of the free version of the product. Before, the “Current Country Totals” table listed the countries from which the site had been visited, and the number of hits for each…

What I refer to as “thick voluntarism,” it appears, is closely related to what economist Mike Munger refers to as “euvoluntary” transactions (h/t Arnold Kling). Munger is, among other things, a former Libertarian candidate for NC governor, so not surprisingly, the framing of euvoluntary is deferential to the rightist ideals of markets and property, and…

In The big lie about capitalism… at The Ⓐ Word: If everyone were a millionaire, who would empty the trash or repair the sewers? An important point, but the trouble with that logic is that one could similarly argue: If everyone were economically secure, who would… The idea that humyn nature is so constituted that…

Or is the distinction between free market and unfree economy one of kind rather than degree? For example, between the set of economic norms prevailing in the United States before about 1980 or so, and the set of norms prevailing since that time, which is a more serious violation of free-market principles? The conventional (and…

The basic equation was laid out in an episode of Nature on PBS. The domestication of the dog entailed (among other things) genetically selecting out one or more of the abilities in the sequence of actions comprising successful predation in the wild. An article from the Discovery News website informs us that domestication has been…

Let’s explore whether such an entity is possible. What are the limits of transparent accounting? For an idea of what is meant by transparent accounting, let’s consider the Transparency Extremist blog. Here are some key criteria: “all ledgers are world-readable in real time (other than those from which it is possible to infer sensitive personal…

Agorist Wally Conger brings to our attention a common pitfall of the going-into-business-for-yourself routine; the need to be stingy with information. It’s basically a matter of being assertive, which Conger says is “really a simple mental adjustment.” Of course it’s simple. Probably for some of us it’s even easy. Sooner or later I will probably…

Eli Gothill explores the limitations to scalability of gift economies, and also explains how introduction of practically any kind of incentive ends up devolving gifts into priced commodities. I don’t think the gift economy is necessarily an extrapolation of the existing consumerist phenomenon of birthday presents and the like. For one thing, the first question,…

Here we have a more or less standard explanation of the fact that sometimes employers run credit checks on prospective employees. I second what Chicagosmith said in the second comment; that the practice amounts to social exclusion, no more, no less. And commenter John Laster, apparently in the “no credit” category, is probably at a…

A market basket is a bundle of economic goods. Since our aim here is to escape from market phenomena if possible, in this essay we’ll call it an inventory. Let’s use the term survivable inventory to refer to an inventory which is sufficient to the survival of a person. Ideally, we can individualize this, not…