“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
– Mark Twain –
As most economists, I have been thoroughly educated to believe that people maximize utility (well-being). Sometimes people do not appear to do so (at all!), but if you correctly take into account all benefits and costs, and the information set available, a good economist can explain almost every decision as being rational and utility maximizing.
“The brain end the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to
believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.”
Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University
Which would you prefer: 1) Winning 100 million dollars in the lottery, or 2) Becoming a paraplegic, impotent and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life?
Everybody knows Aesop’s fable about the farmer with the goose laying golden eggs: Day after day, the lucky farmer awoke to rush to the nest and find another golden egg, growing richer by the day. But with his increasing wealth came increasing greed and impatience, and unable to wait, the farmer decided to kill the goose and get all the eggs at once. But when he opened the goose, he found it empty, with no eggs and no way to get any more. He killed the very asset that produced his wealth, while he should have nurtured and nourished it.
The historical “World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth” held in Cochabamba last month highlights the need for a new global development model that secures harmony with nature and among people. Such a new system would require a change of mindset away from the current consumerist practices of human beings, and their striving for ever greater accumulation of material goods.
According to Working Group 2, the construction of new paradigms such as Living Well in Harmony with Nature requires the examination of different forms of wisdom and experiences, and a collective evaluation of current realities using new indicators that allow us to measure the well being of humans as well as the wellbeing of the planet.
“We would like to believe that we are not in the business of surviving but in being good, and we do not like to admit to ourselves that we are good in order to survive.”
Dorothy Rowe
“But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for good-ness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.”
Robert Heinlein
“Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.”
Isaac Asimov
China is the fifth most forest rich country on the planet with more than 200 million hectares of forest. This is about 4 times more than Bolivia, which is the 15th country in the World in terms of forest extension (see Figure 1).
“Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterward”
St. Francis Xavier
“Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.”
Michael Levine
Bolivia spends at least ten times as much on each senior citizen as it does on pre-school children. This seems odd to me as the children are our future, and every dollar spent on them represents an investment, whereas spending on old people is just that…spending.
I have been awfully quiet about climate change issues since the “Climate Gate” scandal broke on November 17th 2009. But by now there are several associated issues, such as “Glacier Gate” (1) and “Amazon Gate” (2), and it is time to figure out what it all means.
Climate Gate was the release (by a hacker or an insider) of thousands of e-mails and commented source codes from the Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU). There is enough fascinating material to write books about it (3), but one of the e-mails that have attracted most attention is one from November 1999 where Phil Jones of CRU wrote to Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes (the authors of the famous “hockey stick” graph that Read More »
Back in 2006, I published a newsletter postulating that “Social Mobility in Bolivia is Finally Improving!” The article was based on casual observations (mostly Evo Morales becoming the President of Bolivia and a former maid becoming the Minister of Justice). Recently, however, I have made a formal, quantitative estimation of the changes in social mobility in all of Bolivia between 1997 and 2007, and the results are nothing short of spectacular! (1).
Social Mobility is an elusive concept that is difficult to estimate quantitatively, but a convenient methodology has been developed to estimate a Social Mobility Index based on information commonly available in standard household surveys. The methodology is based on the simple idea that social mobility is low if family background is important for a child’s future, while social mobility is high if all children have equal opportunities despite different family backgrounds (1).
The World is full of drugs, some of which are good and some of which are bad. What they all have in common is that they create addiction (a craving for more).
One of the first drugs you get exposed to in your life is the casomorphine in breast milk. This is a very useful drug that helps stimulate the mother-infant bond and helps secure that the infant gets all the nutrients it needs. It also exists in cow’s milk, and thus in all the dairy products we consume. It gets very concentrated in cheese, which helps explain why cheese is one of my favorite foods.
Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting