Bookmarks (16) clear filters

How a flawed logic of economic scarcity and social climbing spurred witch hunts in early modern GermanyBy Johannes DillingerRead at Aeon

Jobs have become, for so many, a relentless, unsatisfying toil. Why then does the work ethic still hold so much sway?By Jamie McCallumRead at Aeon

Against the capitalist creeds of scarcity and self-interest, a plan for humanity’s shared flourishing is finally coming into viewBy Dirk PhilipsenRead at Aeon

Postwar prosperity depended on a truce between capitalist growth and democratic fairness. Is it possible to get it back?By Jonathan HopkinRead at Aeon

Philanthropy is vital – but its mechanisms are as intricate and troubling as the baroque structures of high financeBy Katharyne MitchellRead at Aeon

By rejecting sampling in favour of exhaustive enumeration, communist China’s dream of total information became a nightmareBy Arunabh GhoshRead at Aeon

The China tea trade was a paradox: a global, intensified industry without the usual spectacle of factories and technologyBy Andrew LiuRead at Aeon

It’s time to assert the obvious: sacrificing the public for the private is a failure of modern economic thinkingBy Dirk PhilipsenRead at Aeon

He was a patriot and a prisoner, a delegate and a drunk; circling the globe when few Englishmen ever left their home countiesBy Stephen TaylorRead at Aeon

Why do we work? Many of us might give a simple transactional answer to the question: we work in order to make money. For the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908-70), and the management thinkers inspired by his theory of motivation, people’s motives for working could not be reduced to a pay...By Kira LussierRead at Aeon

Antisemitism flourished in response to the unsettling, abstract growth of finance capitalism in the early modern worldBy Francesca TrivellatoRead at Aeon

The slaughterhouse ethic of Soviet and American whalers tells us we must look beyond communism and capitalism to surviveBy Bathsheba DemuthRead at Aeon

In 1930, a year into the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes sat down to write about the economic possibilities of his grandchildren. Despite widespread gloom as the global economic order fell to its knees, the British economist remained upbeat, saying that the ‘prevailing world depression … bl...By Toby PhillipsRead at Aeon

Far from representing rationality and logic, capitalism is modernity’s most beguiling and dangerous form of enchantmentBy Eugene McCarraherRead at Aeon

Market booms and busts might be irrational, but we can understand why they happen – and what to do to mitigate the damageBy Brent Goldfarb & David A KirschRead at Aeon

High in the Andes, Potosí supplied the world with silver, and in return reaped goods and peoples from Burma to BaghdadBy Kris LaneRead at Aeon