Fables of the Bees (Video 5 minutes) Fables from the Bees by Doc Hall We can learn a lot from bees. Complex and intriguing, the little critters have inspired many human analogies to their habits of life. However, fables about bees may also be highly biased. Bee fables, like the bees themselves, need to be […]
An old adage is that if all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. General managers experience this as a “silo problem.” Each functional specialist has a different perspective, but few comprehensively grasp the situation, and personal experience shapes our thinking (worked for me). Not inquiring more broadly and deeply confines […]
More Than a Structural Economic Problem Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen Patrick Deneen is Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame with a record of public service before academic life. His writing references ancient religion and classical studies, roundly debated by other liberal arts academics. Politically, Deneen is an all-around offender, excoriating both […]
Lost Skills = Lost Hope by Michael Hall America in 1790 was a nation where most people were able to learn productive life skills by observation, mentorship, apprenticeship and human curiosity to seek and self-learn when rudimentary education was not available. Small communities developed as self-supporting with the skills of almost everyone involved. Most people […]
A New Normal (Video 5 Minutes) A Purpose in Common Our present economic system is not only driving nature to the brink, it appears to be driving us nuts. Instead of bending nature to keep our economy growing, we need to upend our economic thinking to regenerate nature. To do this, no top-down mandate will […]
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, by Mark Fisher The initial promise of this book was a unique critique of economics. It is that. It is not a structural, fix-the-problems proposal, but an artful expression of anguish from a guy descending into depression because of “the system.” In 2017 at age 48 he took his […]
The Conquest of Bread, by Peter Kropotkin First written in 1892, this book was probably revised for 20 years or so afterward. It baldly asserts issues yet unresolved, not only why history evolved as it did then, but how it might evolve now, in the context of environmental dangers unknown at that time. Born to […]
Wealth (Video 5 minutes) Fake Wealth Peek into Snopes, the fact-checking service, and some entries imply that a fake claim is so incoherent that its own illogic clearly refutes it. But people believe it anyway. Snopes is swamped by fake news from sites that spread outlandish tales, often unwittingly paid for by advertising. Perpetrators claim […]
Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt: The Solution of the Economic Paradox by Frederick Soddy (1933) Frederick Soddy was a noted scientist of the early 20th century who won a Nobel Prize in 1921 for developing radioisotopes. By 1933, he was well aware, with Einstein and others, of the potential in nuclear energy. But after 1921, […]
Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials by Malcolm Harris Malcolm Harris is a 29-year old millennial and a good writer explaining Millennial malaise. The Millennial generation is the first to be pinched in large numbers in the bind of the American economic system. Our economy is supposed to be the greatest, […]
Deep Reflection and Omnilog (Video 6 minutes) “Omnilog” and Deep Reflection Regular readers of this page know that the Compression Institute advocates radical change toward regenerating ecology. Progress toward that is evident, but slow. To speed it up, we need a radical change in us, faster than human societies have ever changed before. Is that […]
The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene This book is 18 years off the press, but it was recommended by Lonnie Wilson as being highly popular with business readers, so I read it, or most of it. Robert Greene, the author, has made a career of writing power-oriented books about the arts of deception. […]
A Plan for a New Economy? Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi, by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya This book drew interest because of rumors that Jackson, MS was a rapidly rising experiment in localized economies dedicated to restoring ecology. The authors are editors of a collage of […]
Preparing for the Unthinkable (Video 5 minutes) Can Compression Thinking help navigate a future limited by resource shortages and ecological degradation? Such foreboding seems unthinkable. How can we defy our human instincts and learn to think about the unthinkable – and prepare for it? We react better to “unthinkable” disasters if we think about preparing […]
The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why by Amanda Ripley All the way through, Amanda Ripley’s book reminded this reviewer of the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared. And for what? For anything, of course. The expanded explanation is, “you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do […]
Ethical Asset Valuation and the Good Society (Kenneth J. Arrow Lecture Series) by Christian Gollier Christian Gollier is Vice President of the Toulouse School of Economics in France. He is a recognized scholar on the economics of climate change, having participated in a number of cross-disciplinary studies on that subject, and is regarded as an expert […]
Cycles of Evolution (Video 9 minutes) Cycles of Evolution Do human societies evolve in cycles similar to Punctuated Equilibrium in the biological theory of evolution? Or are they different? Here “punctuated” means “puncture,” a huge change, a new epoch greatly different from the old one. Punctuated Equilibrium holds that evolution of species was not a […]
J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception by Michael Hudson Michael Hudson was a Wall Street analyst for years before turning academic – and turning against Wall Street. He’s lived in the dens of Wall Street and delved into economic history and philosophy. That gives him both Street […]
Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History, by Peter Turchin Peter Turchin is Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, and a founder of “Cliodynamics,” mathematical modeling of long-term social processes. You could call it mathematical anthropology. He analyzes social changes going back millennia to compare them with social trends he […]
Building a Railroad: What is Progress? (Video 5 minutes) What Shall We Call Progress? Anthropologists have long noted that indigenous tribes live much more in the now than moderns. Consequently, their sense of time is much less acute, and their concepts of progress are minimal. On the other hand, they are acutely tuned to surrounding […]
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet by Raj Patel and Jason Moore A three-minute video blaring the theme of this book is the first video scrolling down Raj Patel’s home page. On the faculty of the University of Texas, Patel’s passion […]
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari Johann Hari’s book interested me for four reasons; the first is that the author is a very talented, but tarnished young British writer. He won a number of writing awards in his first job, political writing for the Independent […]
Coffee With Doc: Revolutionary Philosophy (Video 6 minutes) Constant Disruption: Continuous Adaptation Big environmental problems from every direction are hemming in high consumption economies and societies. We tend to nod in agreement before going on with the activities that consume our lives: messages to answer and mortgages to pay. But the flip side of economic […]
The Origins of Creativity by Edward O. Wilson E. O. Wilson is professor emeritus from Harvard, originally renowned as the world’s foremost expert on ants. He’s an entomologist, beyond that a naturalist, and beyond that a student of the human condition, still vibrant at the age of 88. We previously reviewed one of his recent […]
