(A full list of the contents of this blog series is available here.) For decades — centuries in fact — science got people wrong. Blame Galileo if you like. For the purposes of his work, Galileo carefully divided the world into two: ‘primary qualities — shape and size, number, position…

Last week we completed our submission to the UK Government’s consultation on its proposed new Digital Markets Unit. It was an interesting exercise. What is competition policy for? Competition policy is the area where the belief system called free market economics gets its purest expression. Under this belief system, there is an invisible, mystical, magical…

This is an annotated contents list to a blog explaining the challenge of real wealth creation — how to sustainably improve and enrich human beings’ lives. Part 1 — Money Focuses on the role of money in our society. The Money Mirage shows how the vast majority live in a universe dominated by the…

Is there such a thing as ‘human nature’? You might think this question is best left avoided, given the bizarre claims that are often made about human nature, and the sometimes horrendous policies that have sometimes been advanced under its banner. But given we humans are the product of a…

The Lion Man is an exquisite 31 cm mammoth ivory carving, depicting the head of a (now extinct) cave lion on the body of a man. He has a slender, cat-like body with the hips and thighs of a lion. His head gazes alertly and directly. …

When printing was first invented in the 1450s, its impact on society was surprisingly small. Because printing text was so complex and difficult (see my previous blog), printed material was nearly as expensive as hand-written manuscripts. It wasn’t until a hundred years later, when the printed word had been made…

In my last blog I talked about ‘recipes’ (applied modules of knowhow) and ‘webs of givens’ as engines of wealth creation. I gave the example of the classic cookery recipe which rests on taken-for-granted ‘givens’ such as access to an oven, an energy source, cooking utensils, ingredients and the recipe…

Before I was rudely interrupted by the Covid pandemic I was exploring three unsung heroes of wealth creation. They are: waste reduction Wherever there is waste a free economic lunch beckons, and believe you me, there are enormous amounts of waste everywhere. organisation To get things done, you need to…

A reader comments on a previous blog on money as an instrument of power saying it “supports my view — that money is vital and that to have it stolen, plundered, misused, squandered is the problem”. This goes to the heart of it. So let’s dig deeper. At one level…