Category: Erudition

Influential reading

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Thomas Piketty (2014)

PikettyCapital Capital in the Twenty-First Century has rapidly become famous, not least through sparking controversial responses from the likes of The Financial Times and The Economist (the latter, believe it or not, actually in response to the FT’s attack on Piketty’s book). Continue reading Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Stone Age Economics

Marshall Sahlins (1974)

MarshallSahlins StoneAgeEconomics “The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely unparalleled and to a degree nowhere else approximated.” – Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics.

One quickly comes to suspect a double entendre underlies Marshall Sahlins’ title, ‘Stone Age Economics’. Yes, his collection of six essays tackle fascinating aspects of Economic Systems in Stone Age (and other ‘primitive’) societies. But more deeply, Sahlins’ title belies a criticism of modern-day economics as a discipline. He holds that Economics, as practised by today’s card-carrying academic economists, is unable to adequately account for material flow of goods outside of the domain of Western Culture. Economics is primitive and underdeveloped – it is ‘still in the Stone Age’. Continue reading Stone Age Economics

The Energy of Nations

Jeremy Leggett (2013)

JeremyLeggett 2013 EnergyOfNations Lots of people believe that climate change is real. Many still believe that peak oil is real, even with today’s obfuscating fanfare around the extraction of unconventional oil and -gas. Jeremy Leggett takes a ‘risk approach’ to these twin threats. Most of all, though, his book provides an insightful look into what’s happening behind the scenes in climate- and energy lobbying. Highly recommended.