Things to move into this area:
1. Chaos, fractals, reflexivity. Cycles and markets
- “Markets” are systems with feedback loops. “Market psychology” is mostly about them.
- Science largely ignored reflexive systems for a long time (Bill Bryson writes of how scientists ignored dinosaur bones for a long time).
2. The importance of good referees. Without them markets don’t work.
- The question is not how much regulation, but good vs. bad regulation.
- A comparison to sports leagues makes this incredibly obvious.
3. It’s 1890 again: the disruptive affect of technology on labor markets. Including deflation.
- 1914 vs. 2014: How labor disruption will play out differently this cycle.
- Deflation and inflation and why they matter.
- Value and its creation: sources of growth and wealth.
- Why agricultural revolution must precede industrial revolution, but not necessarily information revolution?
4. The dis-articulated economy (related to 3 above but worth its own topic, especially W. Arthur Lewis).
- The modern “two-speed” economy
- Dis-articulation in the American South, and the urban North.
- “North” and “South” in the global economy.
5. The Information Revolution: from illuminated manuscripts to algorithms.
6. Einstein, Hume, and Pfeffer. Empiricism and descriptive vs. normative.
- Empiricism as a cure for cognitive and emotional bias
- This links to turning towards what is.
- Our discomfort with Pfeffer and Cialdini’s descriptive work on power and influence.
Elephants and Economics 