Rethinking the Economy

A great article in the New York Times about the burgeoning world of DIY manufacturing. Because prices of machines that let you build things have been dropping steadily, we’re getting to a point that feels a lot like the early days of PC hobbyists. And eventually it could have an equally powerful impact on the [...]

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Now that it’s vacation time, I’m finally digging through piles of articles I saved to read later. Found a great tibit from Steven Johnson about innovation. He writes that on his recent book tour for his new book, Where Good Ideas Come From, someone jokingly asked him, “Are you a Communist?” It’s because [...]

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Some great news from one of my fav groups, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. After years of fighting, a victory:
We have some great news to announce: The coal-burning power plant proposed by the East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) has been canceled by the utility.
EKPC has entered into an agreement with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, [...]

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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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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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Commenting on a dustup between conservatives over AEI president Arthur Brooks book, The Battle, Economist correspondent W. W. writes:
I strongly favour the culture of dynamism and innovation that thrives when markets are left relatively unfettered, but it is a straightforward mistake to confuse questions of economic freedom and entrepreneurial dynamism [...]

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[Part 2 of Values-based vs. Market-based Approaches to the Economy]
Last week, I argued that a values-based framework has two big advantages over a market-based framework in setting the agenda. We’re more likely to debate what really matters to us. And we’re more likely to debate who should get to decide — and in [...]

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