Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey West. Geoffrey West is Distinguished Professor and the former President of the Santa Fe Institute. He is a theoretical physicist of note, but the book reveals his broad curiosity in many subjects. His […]
Coffee With Doc: Glocalization (Video 3.75 minutes). “Glocalization” is a hybrid word: global + local; implying global awareness and learning, but action at a local level. This term is uncommon, but not new. It describes many movements quietly trying to make a difference in world ecology by transforming what they do, where they are. One […]
The Symphony of Profound Knowledge by Edward Martin Baker Baker, now retired, was a staff executive with Ford Motor Company who orchestrated Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s interactions with that company, and he was close enough to Deming in other settings that he came to know Deming’s teachings very well. This book is a long-awaited reflection […]
Coffee With Doc: E Corp (Video 4 minutes) E-Corps – A Framework for Thought? An E-Corp is an Earth Corporation, an Eco Corporation, or an Environmental Corporation, however you wish to interpret the E. The idea is the brainchild of Mark Donovan of Bali, Indonesia. Mark is the founder of EWABI, a company that makes […]
The Vanishing American Corporation: Navigating the Hazards of a New Economy by Gerald F. Davis Gerry Davis is a professor of sociology in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He has long studied the effects of finance on society, and he carefully researched this book. He posits that business – and […]
Conferencing With Doc (Video 7 minutes). In prior posts, we have proposed that the purpose of a society and its economy is “to preserve life – all life – indefinitely.” Making money is not that objective, and obsession with money confuses us. Fortunately, a lot of people are working to un-confuse us. If the present […]
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth If you follow economic news and have not heard of Kate Raworth, chances are you will. Doughnut Economics is more than a book; it’s a budding one-woman movement. Kate is a British writer with articles in UK newspapers, interviews on BBC (and […]
Quality of Life (Video 7 minutes) Our problems with business, government, and the environment should provoke rarely asked questions. For example, should the purpose of a business be to make money, to please customers, or much, much more? Should most business legal structures now be obsolete? Should unpaid work have value? What is work anyway? […]
By Mike Hall. Compression advocates a social challenge for humans to seek and learn a lifestyle of “Doing Better With Less”. The concept seems easy to acknowledge given our current observed decline of nature and limited resources. But intelligence (mental and emotional acceptance) of what is necessary for action must first overcome our learned dependency […]
Ours to Hack and to Hold: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet, Edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider. This book is unusual. First, it’s not to be released officially until August, but poke around and you can download a pdf. Second, the new […]
Healthcare and the Quality of All Life Human health depends on all human systems, plus nature’s systems. But we seldom think of health care that way. We define it as intervention when things go wrong – as curative care to restore health. And its costs seem to be rising out of sight. That’s what concerns […]
An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal, MD Why does curative care cost so much? Rosenthal explains many of the reasons by muckraking American healthcare in gory detail. Not only an experienced MD, she has written on medical topics extensively for the New York […]
Doc Hall: Wicked Problems (Video 6 minutes) We will be doing more about wicked problems on this blog. A comment about the video: at the end, Jose the owner of the restaurant said that his wicked problem at the time was disposing of grease from his restaurant. The problem becomes much more extensive because it […]
Coffee With Doc: EDUCE. Educe: Education that Learns By Jack Ring Whether children or adults, most of us love to learn; we don’t like to be taught – told by an authority. Great “teachers” know this. They guide each learner’s self-discovery. Anything you discover may be old knowledge, but when you see it […]
The Econocracy: The Perils of Leaving Economics to the Experts by Joe Earle, Cahal Moran, and Zach Ward-Perkins This book attracted interest because it is associated with Rethinking Economics, a gestating global movement of renegade graduate students in economics bent on reforming economic thinking. They are revolting against the models and doctrines they are being […]
Coffee With Doc: Stalking Dinner (Video 4 minutes) Whether called “free market,” globalization,” neo-liberalism, or something else, the West’s prevailing business and economic system is sputtering. A totally new social contract will have to displace it because the present system appears incapable of meeting our needs in the 21st century. The old system featured conflict […]
Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason Mason is an experienced British writer and TV news editor covering economics and public policy. His future vision fuses artificial intelligence, automation, environmental problems, and wonky strategies to cure our global economic mess. Having seen policy made in central government sausage grinders, he pulls few punches. […]
Coffee With Doc: Re-Balancing Ourselves Previous posts referred to a broad swath of environmental degradation undermining our consumptive way of life. Issues are global, but vary by location. Some of us don’t want to accept that this is happening; others are engaged in so many little initiatives that no one can know of them all. […]
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Harari Yuval Noah Harari is a professor of history in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a secular Jew. That’s important because he spends part of the book on the rift between science and religions, and he’s a neutral observer. Along the way he dribbles in […]
Even economists are beginning to see that the current economic system is flawed. Most want to fix it, like Jared Bernstein who advocates re-priming growth, but distributing it more equally, which he calls “reconnection.” Arguments about fairness captivate us more than ecological crises that seem more abstract, so they dominate attention. They want to overhaul […]
Three short reviews of fairly dense books. Surviving the Future by David Fleming and Shaun Chamberlin David Fleming worked on the basis for this book for 30 years. Hardly known in the U.S., in the UK Fleming obtained a PhD in economics, was an environmental activist; at one time secretary for the Green Party, the founder of […]
Coffee With Doc: Adopting Compression Thinking (video and blog) Last Saturday, we went to Maria Morgan’s coffee shop. Maria asked about Compression and Compression Thinking. She had not heard of it before. I asked about her coffee shop business. I knew nothing about it except that her coffee was exceptionally good. So we took Compression […]
NOW – The Physics of Time by Richard A. Muller Muller is professor of physics at Berkeley, best known recently as a skeptic investigating global warming, reluctantly concluding that the evidence points to it – with reservations, of course. However, his book, Now, is a review of physics leading to Muller’s hypothesis that since time […]
One indicator that we need a very different concept of what we call business is Eroom’s Law, a buzzword from the world of pharmaceutical drug development. Erooms’s Law is that the increasing complexity of a system inexorably keeps driving costs up. It’s Moore’s Law backwards, and Moore’s Law is that computing speed of an integrated […]
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