Agriculture uses government-sanctioned cartels to stabilize prices
βIn some agricultural sectors, like raisins, the US government has historically, you know, made an agreement with the raisin growers and said, okay, you are able to form a cartel or they often might use words like cooperative so you can collaborate as an industry.β
Inequality determines how broadly economic gains are shared
βif the sentiment that like things have just gotten worse and worse and worse is not quite true, it's absolutely true that like gains are no longer as broadly shared, and yeah, there's a lot to like that.β
Modern knowledge work blurs the definition of labor
βLike, does it really compared to what Cane's head in mind when he talked about work and labor and toil versus what so many people do in the knowledge? Does that even like count as work is? In other words, like a lot of people really like their jobs these days in a way that I suspect was not the case when Caines is writing.β
Branding helps agricultural products escape the commodity trap
βthis is one of those ways that like with QTS, they achieved brand reg recognition and pricing power. Like there are other times I get some other clementine and I don't like it as much, and then so the next time, like I look for the QTS and I buy the QTS and they probably charge a little bit more, and I'm okay with that because it's a dependable product that I like.β
Economic forces act as invisible guides to daily life
βone of the early ideas we had was to think of this book as a field guide. You can imagine like leaving your house in the morning and tucking it under your arm to help you as you experience the economic forces outside your door.β
Cost disease drives up prices for labor-intensive services
βthis kind of dynamic we've been talking about, it's commonly known as cost disease. It's kind of the name for it this way that like these parts of the economy that look very similar, they're very labor intensive. They look very similar to the way they did fifty years ago, maybe even one hundred years ago. They don't have those kind of crazy productivity gains of factories of software.β
Childcare represents a classic example of market failure
βAnd our brilliant colleagues Sericans always caused this like a baby's first market failure, right, because you have like everyone's like, I'm willing to pay so much money and yet their lines everywhere? Why are their lines? That's a market failure And it is the fact fact that there's this kind of cap on the price.β
Economic progress is often masked by modern anxieties
βI feel in my head it's like, oh, I'm so blessed. I could turn on a light switch and I get light and I can afford reasons and all this stuff and always and you hear people say like, oh, well, you know you can like get penicillin, and like, you know, the king of England two hundred years ago would have died from this infection. Whatever. I understand that my head. It does nothing for me.β