A Democracy Bat Sone Democracies

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A democrat bat sone democratically apryit to a pri to the market transections taking place, right? A. Good a so. But one of the things that henry talked about is democracy as a problem solving measure, a problem solving mechanism. And he compared it, contrasted it with markets. So talk a little bit about this conception of how we can think of a market as a way of solving a puzzle, or doing a calculation,. As the physicist might sayi yes, si. The market really says, let's take as given a bunch of rules, including who owns what, and who can who can trade and sell and then ask the question, what should

The idea of an “interest rate” might seem mundane and practical, in comparison to our usual topics around here, but there is a profound philosophical idea lurking in the background: if you lend me money now against the promise of me paying you back more in the future, I am relating the different values that a certain sum has to me at different moments in time. Traditionally, the interest rates set by the government have been a major tool for influencing the economy, but in recent decades they have increasingly fallen near zero. John Quiggin relates this change to the shift from manufacturing to an information economy, and we talk about what that means for the public interest in having information be reliable and widely available. And yes, there is a bit about crypto.

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John Quiggin received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of New England. He is currently a VC Senior Fellow in Economics at the University of Queensland. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Among his books are Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us and Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well, and Why They Can Fail So Badly.

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