Rethinking the Economy

If you want to buy a car, you can choose it yourself. Sure, you can get advice from your uncle, who’s like your own personal Car Talk (only without an off button). Or you can watch TV ads that teach you how buying the right ride will bring fun into your life and [...]

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Say you’re running a small business and you want to do right by your employees. You want to pay a good wage, offer good health care benefits, support worklife balance. But you’re swimming in an ecological niche where most of your competitors pay crappy wages and no benefits. Treating your employees better would give you [...]

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Once upon a time there was a character named Smokey the Bear. Smokey would tell children, only you can prevent forest fires. Be careful with matches and campfires, and the forest will be safe.
Turns out Smokey was wrong — you can’t prevent forest fires. You can avoid tossing a lit cigarette into a [...]

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I’ve been trying to come up with a better metaphor for the economy. To be useful, the metaphor’s got to get us out of the brain-dead government vs. market trap. My first try: the economy as an ecosystem.
Here’s how it might be useful. Say a conservative and a liberal are arguing about the market. The [...]

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Last Fall, free market worshipers were dealt a devastating blow. Even Alan Greenspan admitted the free market model had failed us.
What should replace this failed model? Whatever Works, says Businessweek.
Call it industrial policy, or use the euphemism of “public-private partnership.” But as America emerges from the rubble of the credit bubble [...]

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