On rationing, queues and the open-access quota that runs out every autumn On 2 October 2026 the university library at Leiden sent its researchers a short notice. The annual allowance of open-access articles under the Dutch national agreement with Springer Nature would, it said, probably be exhausted on 9 October, and any author who wanted…
Category: Economic institutions
Who Decides What a Good Is? Mazzucato’s Missing Question
Mariana Mazzucato has a new book. The Common Good Economy: A New Compass was published by Allen Lane earlier this month, and it is the culmination of a decade-long campaign against one of the quietest assumptions in economics: the idea that the properties of a good — whether it is rivalrous, whether it is excludable…
The Praetorian Electorate
A wonky parallel of Rome’s Third-Century Crisis and the Perma-Crisis of Western Democracy There is a question that haunts every serious observer of contemporary Western politics, though it is rarely asked with the directness it deserves: why does it not matter who wins? Leader after leader is elected on a platform of change, governs for…
Superpower Suicide: The Threat to Dollar Dominance
There’s a story economics textbooks have been telling for over two centuries. It goes like this: once upon a time, people bartered. A farmer traded wheat for shoes. A cobbler swapped boots for bread. But bartering was awkward — what if the shoemaker didn’t want wheat that day? So clever humans invented money. Gold coins….
Economic Mythology: What Money Is Not
A response to Paul Krugman’s column “The Dollar’s Special Status: Sources and Threats” April 2026 Paul Krugman’s recent column on the international role of the US dollar is an accomplished piece of applied economics. He marshals a great deal of evidence efficiently, his empirical command is not in question, and his conclusion — that dollar…
The Weight of Tomorrow: How Debt Was Born
The transformation of human trust and obligation from sacred bond to invisible chain Written with Origin Story Book by Claude In the time before time had weight, when promises were as light as morning mist and disappeared with the same ease, there lived a people who knew only the present moment. The great rivers of…