Here is more than should be included into Choice and Constraint.
Jared Diamond discussed why societies make Disastrous Decisions. Diamond looks at four kinds of failure:
I ask whether
Moreover, I ask whether
Because the townspeople have different goals, they hear the noise differently.
As far as I can figure out, before the Industrial Revolution, governments took over activities with a high initial cost and a low incremental cost, like war and law enforcement.
After the Industrial Revolution, steel production, flour milling, oil refining, railroad transport, radio broadcasting, and automobile building all turned into high initial cost and a low incremental cost activities.
In Three Aids to Judgement, I suggest that in 1700 AD, school children could have learned three aspects of or aids to judgement: `certainty factors', frequency-based probability judgements, and estimates of the likelihood of one-time-only events (the latter two use the same language, but one-time-only events are best understood by considering `other indicators').
In Law, Property, and Legitimacy, I summarize Hernando de Soto's argument that without the ability to borrow from strangers, you will never be able to build a firm that competes with existing, large `Western' companies. Strangers will not lend to you unless they can seize your assets if you default. But without a reliable, quick, and honest legal system, your assets stand for nothing. So `extralegal' assets, such as houses, must be converted into legal assets. The only way to do this successfully is to give the legal system legitimacy by adapting to existing, actual social contracts.
On the other hand, Business Dispute Resolution in China suggests why de Soto's scheme fails: his solution only goes part way. It solves one necessary aspect, which is to bring formal law into line with existing practice. But when people do not think of courts, when existing social contracts exclude courts in general, then de Soto's solution fails.
An early high death rate means that the people who die have no children. The gene pool ends up containing only those genes that belonged to those who did not die.
A late high death rate means that the people who die have already brought children into the world. In this case, there is no change in the composition of the gene pool and no genetic impact.
I have already incorporated Accounting in the Middle Ages into Choice and Constraint. On re-reading, I found it an interesting reminder.
Also, I have incorporated Developing and Extralegal, A Three Chamber Government, Order, Law, Justice, Democracy, and Tax, Borrow, or Scrimp. I found them very moving when I re-read them.
The essay, Calc Embedded mode does not fit inside of Choice and Constraint at all. I mention it here because the tool is so useful. Unfortunately, nothing like this existed when I could have used it.
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