This idea is based on a paper by Domar (1970) arguing that serfdom can be explained as a response to a high land-labor ratio. Labor scarcity created severe competition among employers (landlords) for laborers (peasants) to work their land. Moreover, the abundance of land meant that ...
were indeed perceived as tools. Their legal status can be described as slavery. They became kholops either by being captured as war prisoners, or sold themselves into slavery for fear of dying from starvation, large debts, to save one’s family etc. Kholops didn’t pay taxes...
"are the very view which I held as a young man and which have led me to make the study of economics my profession."Yet what had happened and what was happening in Europe around him gradually and inevitably changed his opinion. As Milton wrote in the introduction, " by moving from one ...
Perhaps the weakness would have been elsewhere as it always is, but we can only observe the observable, not what is unknown as the weak will always attract the “wolves”. Insane leverage ratios was and still is, encouraged and protected by government and the wolves will always be hungry wh...
How can we make sense of the diary entry (an apologia, if equivocal, for human bondage?) alongside a text that represents this same system of bondage as an insurmountable barrier to living a good life? It may be that the best way to approach the profound contradiction apparent here is to...
Human beings, the economist replies, will not be replaced, but complemented. Automated systems, whether or not in robot form, will enhance, not destroy, the value of human work, just as a human plus a good computer can still beat the best computer at chess. Of course, humans will have ...