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[...] the publication in 1973 of Fischer Black and Myron Scholes's algorithm for the pricing of options.

Before Black and Scholes's work, derivatives had been a small fraction of all investments, essentially the contracts known as 'futures,' [...] Black and Scholes's algorithm allowed almost eve…

Positionality is a valuable concept for anyone who is interested in making society more fair, because it highlights the fact that the system is not composed entirely of people who believe in it and want it, but perhaps very largely of people who have been dragooned into it and would love to be free…

[...] unequal societies have a short-term competitive edge over more egalitarian ones because those who take the decisions do not have to suffer their consequences. Rogers writes: 'unequal societies are better able to survive resource shortages by sequestering mortality in the lower classes'. In th…

[...] Demand for large, luxury cars fell abruptly; labor historian Rob Rooke records that demand fell steadily from 150,000 sold in 1929 to only 10,000 a year by 1937. Perhaps this was because it no longer felt right to drive in luxury when people were starving, and perhaps, following rumored or ac…

A key part of any Utopian project should be to discuss widely and think deeply about the human natures we want to have and the ones we do not want to have, and to devise the kinds of social arrangements that will support and reward those characteristics.