Microeconomics

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1. tuatoruAug 2022
   The abstract and introduction read like this is the "assume a spherical cow on a frictionless plane" level of theorising.

   A better use of time might be reading a chapter or two of Bowles's Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution[1], which at least tries to engage with the real world.

   Edit: Or learning about Hotelling's Rule[2], given recent rises in the price of fossil fuel.

   1. https://www.amazon.com/Microeconomics-Institutions-Evolution...

   2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling's_rule

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2. ThrustVectoringMar 2016
   Impro by Keith Johnstone

   The Inner Game of Tennis

   A Guide to Better Movement: The Science and Practice of Moving with More Skill and Less Pain

   Punished by Rewards

   Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution by Bowles

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3. chrismealySep 2010
   A lot of econ books are really just political screeds dressed up as social science. You have to watch out for that. But to answer your question, the best by far is Bowles's "Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution." Here's an excellent summary:

   http://stevereads.com/weblog/2007/05/21/nearly-done-bowless-...

   And here's an tiny excerpt:

   Like the overnight train that left me in an empty field some distance from the settlement, the process of economic development has for the most part bypassed the two hundred or so families that make up the village of Palanpur. They have remained poor, even by Indian standards: less than a third of the adults are literate, and most have endured the loss of a child to malnutrition or to illnesses that are long forgotten in other parts of the world. But for the occasional wristwatch, bicycle, or irrigation pump, Palanpur appears to be a timeless backwater, untouched by India’s cutting edge software industry and booming agricultural regions.

   Seeking to understand why, I approached a sharecropper and his three daughters weeding a small plot. The conversation eventually turned to the fact that Palanpur farmers sow their winter crops several weeks after the date at which yields would be maximized. The farmers do not doubt that earlier planting would give them larger harvests, but no one the farmer explained, is willing to be the first to plant, as the seeds on any lone plot would be quickly eaten by birds. I asked if a large group of farmers, perhaps relatives, had ever agreed to sow earlier, all planting on the same day to minimize losses. “If we knew how to do that,” he said, looking up from his hoe at me, “we would not be poor.”

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4. chrismealyJun 2017
   This reminds me of something from Sam Bowles's "Microeconomics":

   Like the overnight train that left me in an empty field some distance from the settlement, the process of economic development has for the most part bypassed the two hundred or so families that make up the village of Palanpur. They have remained poor, even by Indian standards: less than a third of the adults are literate, and most have endured the loss of a child to malnutrition or to illnesses that are long forgotten in other parts of the world. But for the occasional wristwatch, bicycle, or irrigation pump, Palanpur appears to be a timeless backwater, untouched by India’s cutting edge software industry and booming agricultural regions. Seeking to understand why, I approached a sharecropper and his three daughters weeding a small plot. The conversation eventually turned to the fact that Palanpur farmers sow their winter crops several weeks after the date at which yields would be maximized. The farmers do not doubt that earlier planting would give them larger harvests, but no one the farmer explained, is willing to be the first to plant, as the seeds on any lone plot would be quickly eaten by birds. I asked if a large group of farmers, perhaps relatives, had ever agreed to sow earlier, all planting on the same day to minimize losses. “If we knew how to do that,” he said, looking up from his hoe at me, “we would not be poor.”

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5. chrismealyJun 2010
   In "Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution" Sam Bowles notes that the customs and economics of open source software have more in common with small-scale societies (99% of human history) than capitalism:

   The project that began with the "Fable of the Bees may be of even less practical relevance in the future. The reason is that the technologies and social interactions of the modern economy increasingly depart from these canonical assumptions. Direct noncontractual interactions with positive feedbacks arise increasingly in modern economies, as information-intensive team production replaces assembly lines and other technologies more readily handled by contract, and as difficult to measure services usurp the preeminent role -- as both outputs and inputs --- once played by measurable quantities like kilowatts of power and tons of steel. Danny Quah (1996) calls the modern system of production “the weightless economy.” The key characteristics of the information-intensive economy are generalized increasing returns, with near zero marginal costs in many cases, along with the fact that most information is either not subject to complete and enforceable contracts, or will be inefficiently allocated if it is. ...

   The information-intensive economy of the future may more closely resemble the economy of the mobile foraging band in human prehistory, rather than the economy of grain and steel that displaced it. Pursuing good ideas with practical applications is a costly and uncertain project, much like hunting large game. Success is rare, but its fruits are immensely valuable. The private appropriation of the prize is both difficult to accomplish and socially wasteful, for the foregone benefits to the those excluded from access to the prize far outweigh the gains to the individual appropriator to be had by excluding others. A new drug or a new software application is not so different in this respect from an antelope. Thus it is not surprising that the system of prestige and norms of sharing in some parts of the modern information-intensive economy -- those involved in open source software, for example -- in many ways parallel the culture of the foraging band. (page 500)

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