Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
This century will reconcile individuality with community. We will find the vision and the means to achieve kinds of community that becomes possible only after complete liberation of the individual from any but self-imposed obligation. Post-individuation communities will be dynamic networks of voyagers bound to one another by sovereign commitment to shared images of good. … Read more
I notice that Prof. Macfarlane has several “experiments” with new media. I was going to send him my thoughts, but decided I’d post them here instead. Two of his experiments are blogs. One called How the World Works is a restatement of parts of his book Letters to Lily, which is a book written in … Read more
A nice short summary touching on the main points about what does and does not provide a sufficient basis for a modern civilization. And here he is on Venice and the riddle of modern wealth and liberty. If you go to this page you will find that Macfarlane has put an enormous number of videos … Read more
[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings] Macfarlane, Alan and Iris, The Empire of Tea: The Remarkable History of the Plant that took over the World, 2003. (also published as Green Gold: The Empire of Tea). 308 pp. in small format. In past blog posts, I’ve reviewed several books that help us understand the dynamics of international trade … Read more
John Jay’s post, below, entitled Terms and Models discusses the mental models people develop to understand the world in a non-mathematical way which is based generally on the weight to be given to various variables in a partial differential equation, and it reminded me of something I had read by Alan Macfarlane. The best discussion … Read more