Rethinking the Economy

From the New York Times’ Frank Rich:
Asked in “ Inside Job” why there’s been no systematic investigation of the 2008 crash, [economist Nouriel] Roubini answers: “Because then you’d find the culprits.”

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I’d planned out a whole series on innovation and the economy. But after the first few posts, I’m running out of steam. Why? Because what I really want to do right now is bang my head against the places in my framework where I’m blocked. Even though I’ve been spending a lot of time [...]

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San Francisco’s innovative project to radically reduce unrecycled waste hasn’t just figured out how to recycle 79% of the city’s garbage. Courtesy of Recology, their waste hauler, it’s also an innovative way of supporting the arts!
Since 1990, Recology has its own artist in residence program, where artists receive a monthly stipend, a [...]

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San Francisco has a plan to try to get the amount of unrecycled garbage the city has to haul off down to zero. That sounds crazy, but they are already impressively close:
In 2008, the last year for which the city has data, the diversion rate was 72 percent, up from 69 percent in 2007 and [...]

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As we saw Monday, parklets could be an interesting model for thinking about encouraging innovation even in areas where we have lots of government rules. Not even rabid anti-”big government” types want to go back to the days of virtually no rules, when anyone was free to dump whatever they wanted into city streets. But [...]

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Once upon a time, people living in cities had a remarkable amount of freedom to do what they wanted. If they wanted to butcher pigs in your apartment and drop the unused remains out the window onto the sidewalk, they could. If they owned a horse they used to get around, the horse could poop [...]

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Grrrrr. I start taking care of my hands, they get better, then I get sloppy. So, another week I won’t be posting to give them time to rest.

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Before we dive in, I think there’s one thing we ought to be clear about: not all innovation is good.
You wouldn’t know that from reading the lit on innovation and the economy. As far as they’re concerned, innovation is like chocolate — more is better.
But sometimes, innovation isn’t like chocolate. Take the flu. We keep [...]

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