Tag Archives: belief economics

The Bustard’s Third Rule – kids v nukes

The Bustard’s Third Rule on climate policy is that it takes less time to raise a child than to build a nuclear power plant. Here is some good evidence: http://qz.com/681753/the-united-states-newest-nuclear-power-plant-has-taken-43-years-to-build/ The implication of this is that if we want to … Continue reading

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Diversity – everywhere except in the most important place

Resilience needs diversity: diversity means that if one bit of a system goes wrong, other bits, unaffected, can carry on and make up for local failure. Creativity needs diversity, too: as in the case of evolution, you need to try … Continue reading

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Can curry change the world?

This morning about 4am I was lying in bed awake from a curry-induced nightmare about missing the train from Gillingham station (Dorset, not Kent).  I had wandered away from my suitcase which I had left at the very end of … Continue reading

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Drought and saving water: we should value cultural dispositions.

A cultural predisposition has economic value.  We should try and calculate it in order to be able to assess the benefits of investing in cultural change. Reflecting on the Californian drought, I imagined a people which is thrifty with water … Continue reading

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Gold-plated gardening tools? How the energy revolution could affect the elite

The elite of a society likes to gather wealth and symbols of that wealth.  In order to accrue significantly more wealth than other people and thereby join or stay in the elite, someone has to have some particular advantage and … Continue reading

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