A devastating critique of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and its impact on the world.
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By David Sloan Wilson In olden days, the death of one Monarch and coronation of the next was sometimes announced with the words “The King is Dead! Long Live the King!” In this spirit, I’m […]
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David Sloan Wilson interview Geoff Mulgan Say the word “mind” and most people immediately think about the workings of an individual brain. The idea that something larger than an individual might have a mind seems […]
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By David Sloan Wilson I recently took part in a workshop titled “Tensions in the Political Economy Project of F.A. Hayek”. The Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) is a libertarian God and the workshop was […]
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Por David Sloan Wilson e Daron Acemoglu Em uma comunicação que apresentei recentemente no Mercatus Center da Universidade George Mason, eu louvei Friedrich Hayek como um pioneiro por ter descrito os sistemas econômicos como produtos […]
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Editor’s Note: In an effort to center New Economic Thinking in the discussion of the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve curated a list of Evonomics articles relevant to this moment—including this one. Check out the full list here. […]
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By David Sloan Wilson It’s a pleasure to be critiqued by Noah Smith in his widely read blog Noahpinion. I have no cause to complain, since his critique is good natured and he agrees with […]
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By David Sloan Wilson and Eric Beinhocker This year marks the 10th anniversary of Eric Beinhocker’s influential book The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society. […]
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By David Sloan Wilson I hope that our economy recovers, but the time has come to declare its guiding metaphor dead. This is the metaphor of the invisible hand, which makes it seem as if […]
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By David Sloan Wilson Some experiments are like a good play, compressing profound truths into compact form. That’s how I felt when I read a 2010 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology […]
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By David Sloan Wilson Imagine that you live in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. A new person arrives who makes it absolutely clear that he places his own interest ahead of all […]
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By David Sloan Wilson and Joseph Henrich Paleontologists tell us that numerous Homo species once roamed the earth, although only Homo sapiens remains. Several Homo species still inhabit economic world, however — the world as […]
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By David Sloan Wilson In olden days, the death of a king and accession of his successor was announced by the proclamation “The King is Dead! Long Live the King!” I’m here to announce the […]
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By David Sloan Wilson and Lynn Stout A bedrock assumption of economics is that firms become well adapted by competing against each other. If so, then consider a study that I reported upon earlier, which […]
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Centralized planning won’t work. Totally unregulated markets won’t work. So what will work?
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By David Sloan Wilson I welcome the attention that Noah Smith has drawn to two “big think” pieces, one by Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu and the other by myself, which are both cut from […]
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By David Sloan Wilson The newest Wall Street bestseller by Michael Lewis, Flash Boys, chronicles the unlikely emergence of fairness in the corrupt world of high-frequency trading (HFT). It’s a gripping and enlightening read for anyone […]
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By David Sloan Wilson A groundbreaking new study1 suggests that companies need to offer a fair deal to their employees to survive. The study followed the fate of 136 companies over a five-year period, starting […]
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By David Sloan Wilson My Evonomics article titled The Road to Ideology: How Friedrich Hayek Became a Monster resulted in a barrage of criticism from those who hold Hayek near and dear. In my own […]
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By David Sloan Wilson One of the most influential articles published in the field of economics is Milton Friedman’s (1953) “The Methodology of Positive Economics”, in which he argues that people behave as if the […]
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Editor’s Note: In an effort to center New Economic Thinking in the discussion of the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve curated a list of Evonomics articles relevant to this moment—including this one. Check out the full list here. […]
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By David Sloan Wilson When it comes to my economics training, I’m a late bloomer. My primary training is in evolutionary theory, which I have used as a navigational guide to study many human-related topics, […]
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By David Sloan Wilson After complaining that economic soul searching taking place since 2008 ignores evolutionary theory, I was made aware of Paul Krugman’s 1996 address to the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. I […]
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By David Sloan Wilson Everyone seems to agree that the economics profession had a near death experience in 2008 and either needs to be or has been reborn in a different incarnation. The most optimistic […]
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By David Sloan Wilson Regulation is one of the most charged words in politics. If you’re a conservative, then you’re likely to think that regulation is a bad thing that erodes personal responsibility and prevents […]
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By David Sloan Wilson In George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984, a totalitarian state has created a language called Newspeak designed to limit freedom of thought, often by inverting customary meanings. How ironic that Ayn […]
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By David Sloan Wilson Evolutionists who take an interest in economics often fall along a political spectrum, just like other folks. Right-leaning evolutionists include Larry Arnhart (Darwinian Conservatism), Michael Shermer (The Mind of the Market), […]
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Editor’s Note: In an effort to center New Economic Thinking in the discussion of the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve curated a list of Evonomics articles relevant to this moment—including this one. Check out the full list here. […]
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By David Sloan Wilson In my last essay on Hayek I distinguished between the flesh and blood man and the ideological monster that was created in the 1940s and continues to lumber around uttering his […]
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By David Sloan Wilson Any serious student of economics can’t help but notice that the academic and popular versions are as different from each other as Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. Take Friedrich Hayek, for example. […]
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