The function of city centers

The first area travelers find themselves in in a typical western city is a pedestrian area full with shops, department stores (now dying) and other commercial enterprise. Here’s the question: why is that? This question stuck me sitting in that park: why do city centers look the way they do? Why do they offer the functions they offer?

Postcapitalism defined

What is the most important thing you need to drive change? – People’s minds of course. Now this blog is unfortunately written by a totally unimportant and uninfluential student, but still: grab people’s attention, and change is possible. To do that, you need a cool word and a headline: postcapitalism.

Word in the street: postcapitalism

A new suggestion for a field not yet emerged: studies in postcapitalism. Welcome to a better place!

(4) A final remark on market mechanisms

Some literature from both econophysics as well as quantitative sociology suggests that resources in limited supply on random free markets end up in an equilibrium exponential distribution. The theories fit real world data extraordinarily well and provide a minimum set of microfoundations. The rules provided seem to be the governing rules in many societies – and the statistical outcomes seem to be reliably predictable.

(3) On the failure of markets and allocation mechanisms

Many desirable things have one thing in common: they lack funding. Those who would like to have certain services are unwilling or unable to pay for them, and those supposed to work for the offered wage do not want to, because they could not afford their own services or even the necessities of life. Consequently we invented the welfare state off which one can make a living as well.

(2) On opportunity costs for jobs and hourly wages

The argument that studying law involves high opportunity costs and therefore justifies high salaries does not stand scrutiny.

(1) On the notion of productivity and the contribution to society

In none of my contributions my notion of productivity was as primitive as the criticism suggested. What I meant was not physical output; rather I was talking about the contribution to the community, productivity in terms of welfare improvement for all.

On the social construction of markets

In a recent discussion on an online board I took the position that an entry salary for a lawyer of 70k€ was questionable. I didn’t even specify in what sense I found this questionable: whether it was morally, economically (rationally) or in any other sense. In a number of entries I will hack down my thoughts, without order, and with little justification in some respects. It will be lengthy and not always refer to the original debate. I’m sorry, but this is thinking in progress.

Liu Yuxi: Frühlingsgedicht – Spring poem

It’s a blue sky out there today, a frosty day still, but winter is clearly in retreat. Looking out the window I remembered being once absorbed by a poem from the Tang dynasty, “Spring poem” by 刘禹锡 (Liu Yuxi). It is extraordinarily hard to translate I think, but here is my try at it.

Reading J.S. Mill’s Political economy

“If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Communism with all
its chances, and the present state of society [1848] with all its
sufferings and injustices; if the institution of private property necessarily
carried with it as a consequence, that the produce of labour should
be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the
labour- the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the
next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a
descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows
harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting
bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even
the necessaries of life; if this, or Communism, were the alternative, all
the difficulties, great or small, of Communism, would be but as dust in
the balance.”