The Worldly Philosophers

The Worldly Philosophers

The Great Economic Thinkers

Robert L. Heilbroner

Legibility Tax

Standardization enables scale but destroys local knowledge.

For one salient fact struck Adam Smith as he looked at the English scene. This was the tremendous gain in productivity which sprang from the minute division and specialization of labor.
Kronos Cycle

Open systems consolidate into monopoly, then repeat.

The worries of other economists about the sclerosis of spreading monopolization are similarly sent flying with a description of capitalist innovation as a “perennial gale of creative destruction” in which the agents for innovatory change are the “monopolies” themselves. The stage is thus set for what appears to be a direct refutation of Marx. Plausible capitalism is a reasoned model of an economic system that is caught up in a process of continuous self-renewing growth.