This is a great episode of Econtalk. Bertaud uses labour markets as a lens for thinking about cities. Helpful examples of emergent order and the… Read More »Podcast Recommendation: Econtalk with Alain Bertaud on Cities, Planning, and Order Without Design
Problems gain (or lose) interestingness as their context and scale changes. Take teaching a kids to read as an example. It’s almost inevitable that a… Read More »The Onion (3): exemplar interesting problem – learning to read
This is a great introduction (or reminder) about emergent order in the complex adaptive system that is the economy.
If you haven’t thought much about economics, this series from the BBC is a first-rate introduction to a lot of key ideas about how markets… Read More »Resource: Tim Harford on 50 Things that Made the Modern Economy
A few days ago I watched a schoolboy kicking a can down the road. He kicked it a couple of times and then miskicked, sending… Read More »Kicking cans: job descriptions versus culture
A ‘system’ is an interconnected set of elements coherently organized in a way that achieves something. It is more than the sum of its parts:… Read More »Machine. Ecosystem. (5) – Duncan Green on systems thinking and development
Honest love is born from the struggle / it’s lived in the valley as much as the hill Mark Stone I saw a young man… Read More »Struggle
If you want to talk about our debt to society – the question of what we owe the other people who share our culture, and… Read More »Debt to society
I broke the glass on our cafetiere / coffee press this morning. You’re rich when you react to the breaking of the glass by saying,… Read More »Riches: second best coffee press
I love Tim Harford‘s stuff, and I’m surprised he hasn’t featured here before. 50 Things that Made the Modern Economy is a delightful romp through… Read More »Tim Harford: slow-motion multitasking