The Curious Engineer

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377 from 1 Jun 2014 to 29 Dec 2024
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2024 23

  1. To be young, perchance to dream
  2. Devant la guerre: On E. H. Carr's "The twenty years' crisis 1919-39"
  3. Would Lenin have approved of the IMF?
  4. The ideology of Donald J. Trump
  5. Russia’s apocalyptic messianism
  6. Cultural revolution in the land of Kafka and Borges
  7. Freedom by North-West
  8. The third framing: Can an international economic system exist in the world of nationalisms?
  9. The end of the great order under the Heaven
  10. Living through another great transformation…
  11. The end and the beginning of history
  12. Marx Truncated
  13. The life of Maynard K.
  14. Universities as factories
  15. The world according to Garegnani
  16. Abundance, capitalism and climate change
  17. Why not Keynes? Keynes’ uneasy relationship with income distribution
  18. The order of inequality
  19. Should poor countries remain poor?
  20. Before the police arrives: Bookstores on Saturdays
  21. Freedom to be “wrong”: the only real advantage of democracy
  22. To all the newspapers I loved
  23. The politics of physiocracy: Quesnay and China

2023 26

  1. The three German fears
  2. There is no exit for dictators
  3. On general futility of political discussions with people
  4. Why is the Serbia-Kosovo situation globally serious?
  5. The red bourgeoisie
  6. Thinkin’ ‘bout a revolution
  7. BRICS and non-alignment today
  8. Why slave-owners never willingly emancipated their slaves?
  9. On global inequality, China's rise, the war in Ukraine: My conversation with "Atlantico"
  10. Equality based on exclusion
  11. The new colonialism, or how some countries have lost self-respect
  12. Athenian dialogues on global income inequality
  13. State capitalism one hundred years ago and today
  14. America’s Adam Smith: A review of Glory M. Liu’s “Adam Smith’s America”
  15. “Succession” and the end of the illusion of ethical capitalism
  16. Capitalism unchained
  17. The chronicle of the revolutions foretold?
  18. On charisma and greyness under communism
  19. Capitalists, the state and globalization
  20. The comprador intelligentsia
  21. Statistics as a philosophy and art
  22. Why I think that Argentina 1985 is not a very good movie
  23. The Madoff enigma
  24. Distinguishing incomes from capital and labor
  25. Not a new Xi
  26. The book of the dead: Victor Serge's Notebooks 1936-47

2022 37

  1. Four historico-ideological theories about the origin of the current war in Ukraine (Part II)
  2. Four historico-ideological theories about the origin of the current war in Ukraine (part I)
  3. A boy’s obsession with football in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia
  4. Capital as a historic concept
  5. Die Karl Marx Frage
  6. Disciplining workers in a workers’ state
  7. Western money and Eastern promises
  8. Let’s go back to mercantilism and trade blocs!
  9. Is liberal democracy part of human development?
  10. Reading David Ricardo’s letters
  11. A century ago: From Brest-Litovsk to Rapallo
  12. What is a paleo-left agenda?
  13. A politician who did not want to rule
  14. Why was the Soviet Union created?
  15. Socialism with Chinese characteristics for the young person
  16. Interpreting or misinterpreting China’s success
  17. On import substitution, Fukuyama, eternal growth and more
  18. Hopelessness?
  19. The rule of nihilists
  20. China’s household incomes and inequality in the Year I of covid
  21. A short essay on the differences between Marx and Keynes
  22. What if Putin’s true goals are different?
  23. From dilettantism to war: a review of Andrei Kozyrev’s political memoir
  24. The many in one: A review of Amartya Sen’s “Home in the world: A memoir”
  25. The novelty of technologically regressive import substitution
  26. The lessons and implications of seizing Russian oligarchs’ assets
  27. The evolution of Karl Marx: a review of Kevin B. Anderson’s “Marx at the Margins”
  28. Long term: Difficulties of import substitution and delocalization
  29. Russia’s economic prospects: the short-run
  30. The end of the end of history: what have we learned so far?
  31. How modern bombings look: The bombing of Belgrade in 1999
  32. Putin’s Century of Betrayal speech
  33. Counterrevolution or the long NEP?
  34. Marx on income inequality under capitalism
  35. Deaths vs. the economy: an unexpected reversal
  36. Trotsky on the class structure of Soviet socialism
  37. What I read in the Year III of covid: an annotated summary

2021 36

  1. How I did not celebrate Christmas
  2. The Summit of Democracies is a wrong idea (for the world)
  3. How to share vaccines between the poor and the rich
  4. Through the glass, darkly: trying to figure out Adam Smith, the person
  5. Socialist enterprise power structure and the soft-budget constraint
  6. On the role of economics and global inequality
  7. Pro-equality turn in China and the United States?
  8. Can globalization be “improved”?
  9. Nobody’s war
  10. Trotsky after Kolakowski
  11. The long NEP, China and Xi
  12. On Eurocentrism in economics
  13. Is Norway the new East India Company?
  14. On luxury
  15. Towards global progressiveness
  16. NEP after Deng
  17. How China escaped, and Eastern Europe was felled by, the Volcker shock
  18. Notes on global income inequality: A non-technical summary
  19. A global ideology that was neither
  20. Capital gains: My reply to Alyssa Battistoni
  21. When Tocqueville and Marx agreed
  22. Marx in Amerika
  23. From a people’s game to a game fit for the rich only
  24. License to kill: “The World Turned Upside Down”—a laudatory review
  25. "The World Turned Upside Down"—a critical review
  26. “The Byzantine Republic” and the Chinese Empire: Some similarities?
  27. The influence of the Soviet economic model and the lessons for China
  28. Distinguishing post-communist privatizations from the Big Bang
  29. Climate change, covid and global inequality
  30. Degrowth: solving the impasse by magical thinking
  31. Limits to autocracy. Review of Charles Hucker’s “The Censorial System of Ming China”
  32. The problems of authenticity under capitalism
  33. Beware of mashup indexes: how epidemic predictors got it all wrong
  34. On "Capitalism, Alone": On the occasion of Greek-language publication
  35. L’éducation idéologique
  36. The Excellent Empire or the Prison of the Peoples? A review of Pieter Judson's “The Habsburg Empire: A New History”

2020 36

  1. On "Capitalism, Alone": A conversation
  2. Impatience: a deep cause of Western failure in handling the pandemic?
  3. Portrait of the philosopher as a young man: the first volume of Michael Heinrich’s biography of Marx
  4. Basic difference between wage inequality and income inequality studies
  5. Florian Lavit: Critical comments about the concept of citizenship rent in "Capitalism, Alone"
  6. Marriage and society in the ante-bellum Japan
  7. Willing meaningful deaths and unwilling meaningless deaths
  8. The history of global inequality studies
  9. What we owe to Donald J Trump
  10. The mistake of using the Kantian criterion in ordinary economic life
  11. What's at stake? A short text on US elections
  12. Ban this book! A review of Daniel Markovits’s “The Meritocracy Trap”
  13. Milton Friedman and labor-managed enterprises
  14. On several Marxist themes in “Capitalism, Alone”: My reply to Romaric Godin’s review
  15. Was novel born and died with the bourgeois society?
  16. Inequalities and Covid-19
  17. My interview for "Marianne" as "C,A" is published in French
  18. Du passé faisons table rase
  19. Darkness that illuminated the world: Italy by Braudel
  20. Is citizenship just a rent?
  21. Can corruption be good for growth?
  22. Living in own ideology
  23. The last colonial war?
  24. Why making economic predictions now is useless
  25. How the war was won; review of Vincent Bevins’ “The Jakarta Method”
  26. Inheritance, marriage and swindle: the three ways to the top
  27. Literature and inequality
  28. Ricardo, Marx, and interpersonal inequality
  29. Communist party in a turbulent time and difficult country
  30. Trump as the ultimate triumph of neoliberalism
  31. The world after corona
  32. Four types of labor and the epidemic
  33. The most insidious enemy
  34. Historical wealth: How to compare Croesus and Bezos
  35. What is wealth?
  36. Transcending capitalism: three different ways?

2019 37

  1. Kleptocracy and kakistocracy in the 1990s Russia
  2. Learning history
  3. Who are we?
  4. Hollywood meets Asia: a review of McGregor’s Asia’s Reckoning
  5. Political Decay in Our Time. A review of Fukuyama’s vol. 2.
  6. Revolution Number 9. Why the world is in uproar right now
  7. The plight of late industrializers: what if peasants do not want to move to cities?
  8. Chile: The poster boy of neoliberalism who fell from grace
  9. Why it is not the crisis of capitalism
  10. Dining with Stalin
  11. Capitalism, Alone: Four important--but somewhat hidden--themes
  12. Greatest happiness for the greatest number. Or not?
  13. Argentina’s infernal cycle
  14. Production and then distribution, or distribution and production together
  15. How to create an ethical country, if not the world: Part 2 review of Paul Collier’s “The future of capitalism”
  16. Nostalgia for a past that never was; Part 1 review of Paul Collier’s “The future of capitalism”
  17. History without ideology. A review of Robert Bickers’ “Out of China”
  18. From welfare in one country to global poverty alleviation...and now where?
  19. One multiethnic state on the ruins of another: Why was Yugoslavia created?
  20. Oligarchs and oligarchs
  21. What’s with population density? Economic history speculations
  22. Non-exemplary lives
  23. “We had everything before us, we had nothing before us”.
  24. The social and geopolitical origins of China’s rise
  25. Democracy or dictatorship: which works better?
  26. Shadows and lights of globalization
  27. And if growth in the North by itself makes Africa poorer?
  28. Francis Fukuyama against mainstream economics
  29. A Grand Fresco: The Origins of Political Order
  30. Formal and actual similarities between climate change and global inequality, and suboptimality of the nation-state
  31. A reflection on two dictators
  32. Poverty of vision of “liberal interventionists”
  33. Global poverty over the long-term: legitimate issues
  34. Marxism as religion: a personal recollection
  35. Governments of limited vice
  36. Russia’s circular economic history?
  37. What is the just pay? Capitalists, John Roemer and the Cultural Revolution

2018 36

  1. Marx for me (and hopefully for others too)
  2. First reflections on the French ““événements de décembre”
  3. Why inequality matters?
  4. In the footsteps of Mr. Nye-Powell: inequity and creativity*
  5. How Adam Smith proposed to have his cake and eat it too
  6. What is happening with global inequality?
  7. Stan wojenny: My memories of the (post) Martial Law
  8. Globalists: Neoliberals in search of terrestrial empire
  9. What is to be done? Fifteen authors in search of a solution.
  10. “The most important relationship”: Kissinger on China…and America
  11. Hayekian communism
  12. 1½ Adam Smiths
  13. The Americas, armed trade and cheap energy: review of Kenneth Pomeranz's “The Great Divergence”
  14. On the Threshold of the Third Globalization: why Liberal Capitalism might Fail?
  15. The last (effortless) rulers of the world: memoirs of Nevile Henderson, “Water under the bridges"
  16. A la recherche of the roots of US inequality “exceptionalism”
  17. Habermas and pimps: the world of the day and the world of the night
  18. On growth and people: my reply to Kate Raworth's reply
  19. Memories of my World Cups
  20. Bob Allen's new "poverty machine" and its implications
  21. Kate Raworth’s economics of miracles
  22. Europe’s curse of wealth
  23. Why were the Balkans underdeveloped? A geographical hypothesis
  24. The influence of Karl Marx—a counterfactual
  25. When autarky becomes the only solution
  26. Chinese income distribution in 2002-3 and 2013
  27. India at the time of the Globalization Raj. A review of Rana Dasgupta, “Capital: The eruption of Delhi”
  28. Will bourgeoisie ever rule the Chinese state?
  29. How is the world ruled?
  30. “Fake news”: reaction to the end of the monopoly on the narrative
  31. “I won’t go to Moscow until the revolution triumphs”, a review of Wang fan-hsi’s 'Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary'
  32. The bitterness of Adam Smith
  33. The importance of Taleb’s system: from the Fourth Quadrant to the Skin in the Game
  34. Dutiful dirges of Davos
  35. The aloofness of Pax Sinica
  36. Schumpeter’s two theories of imperialism

2017 42

  1. Will there be postcapitalism? Review of Paul Mason’s “Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future”
  2. Democracy of convenience, not of choice: why is Eastern Europe different
  3. The ABC of globalization (text for Le Monde)
  4. Adam Smith: is democracy always better for the poor?
  5. The illusion of degrowth: Part II
  6. The illusion of “degrowth” in a poor and unequal world
  7. The background of my discussion with Adam Tooze re. the origin of World War I
  8. Dining alone…in a hyper-competitive world
  9. Can mass mobilization wars increase income inequality?
  10. Figuring out various income inequalities: what can they tell us?
  11. Trade and migration: substitutes or complements?
  12. The perverse seductiveness of Fernando Pessoa
  13. How I lost my past
  14. How China became a market economy--Review of Julian Gewirtz’s “Unlikely Partners”
  15. “Nothing is true and everything is possible”. Indeed. A review of Peter Pomerantsev’s book
  16. Ibn Khaldoun and Nikolay Trubetskoy: nomads vs. sedentary populations
  17. English language and American solipsism
  18. Colonialism applied to Europe: review of Mazower’s “Hitler’s Empire”
  19. Multi-party kleptocracies rather than illiberal democracies
  20. Inevitability of the need for economic growth—the nth time.
  21. Why foreign aid cannot be regressive?
  22. The simplicity of views regarding civil conflicts
  23. The war for democracy and peace: a review of Adam Tooze’s “The deluge: The Great War, America and the remaking of the world order”
  24. My response to DeLong and Pseudoerasmus
  25. The hidden dangers of Fukuyama-like triumphalism
  26. Lenin in his time: Review of Tariq Ali’s “The dilemmas of Lenin”
  27. Is “neo-imperialism” the only path to development?
  28. The unknown Tocqueville in America
  29. The “deep state” as a tool for redistribution of income in favor of the rich. Review of Mike Lofgren’s “The deep state”
  30. El super clasico: trade and technology duke it out at CUNY
  31. A theory of the rise and fall of economic leadership: review of Bas van Bavel’s “The Invisible Hand?”
  32. The welfare state in the age of globalization
  33. Why 20th century tools cannot be used to address 21st century income inequality?
  34. How I “met” Samuelson and Friedman
  35. Pontius Pilate: the first Christian? Review of Aldo Schiavone’s "Pontius Pilate: Deciphering a Memory"
  36. Machiavelli as an economist
  37. Did post-Marxist theories destroy Communist regimes?
  38. Tony Judt’s “Reappraisals”: The shipwrecks of the 20th century
  39. Is liberalism to blame?
  40. My interview for a Korean paper "Hankyoreh"
  41. Trump and Gorbachev
  42. Pareto, Taleb and the tails of income distributions

2016 38

  1. Preface to the Russian edition of "Global inequality"
  2. A short note on Skidelsky’s interpretation of Schumpeter
  3. Liberation from the shackles of space
  4. Full text of my New Republic interview
  5. Should some countries cease to exist?
  6. Was the 20th century long or short?
  7. A secular religion that lasted one century
  8. Labor theory of value: a primer
  9. The Ancient World and our world: review of Mary Beard’s “Confronting the classics”
  10. The long shadow of 1989
  11. Will social democracy return? A review of Offer and Söderberg
  12. Nothing comes for free
  13. Bright prospects for global recovery
  14. Reframing the world
  15. The downside of upward mobility
  16. Robotics or fascination with anthropomorphism
  17. “Can we love?” More on commodification
  18. The two insurgencies
  19. Commodification again—a response to Diane Coyle
  20. Commodification
  21. Time to ditch Rawls?
  22. The forthcoming changes in capitalism?
  23. In defense of equality (without welfare economics)
  24. The three middle classes and populism
  25. The origins of the Great Divergence
  26. On unproductive labor
  27. Economic reflections on the Fall of Constantinople
  28. Why “Make America Denmark Again” will not happen
  29. The question of India’s inequality
  30. Should we reconsider how we collect income distribution data?
  31. The Schumpeter hotel: income inequality and social mobility
  32. Bias and ill-will: the poverty of today’s historians
  33. The Ricardian windfall: David Ricardo and the absence of the equity-efficiency trade-off
  34. Free trade and war: a review of Avner Offer’s “The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation”
  35. Are US taxes progressive all the way to the top 1%?
  36. Inequality: the structural aspects
  37. Migration’s economic positives and negatives
  38. Schadenfreude squared: why I am against economic sanctions

2015 40

  1. Responding to the challenge of modernization
  2. A note on “maximum” US inequality
  3. The ambivalent role of China in global income distribution
  4. A reassessment of socialism: many questions
  5. Does a shift toward more capital income guarantee rising income inequality? No.
  6. Steven Hill’s (author of “Raw Deal”) replies to my blog
  7. No one would be unemployed and no one would hold a job
  8. Disarticulation goes North
  9. Imperialism and World War I
  10. 99 percent Utopia and money
  11. All our needs are social
  12. Did socialism keep capitalism equal?
  13. Chateaubriand and inequality: two centuries later
  14. Welfare economics and the Greek crisis
  15. Former Finance Minister of Cyprus on the Greek crisis
  16. The two trilemmas today
  17. Migration into Europe: A problem with no solution
  18. Why I am still not excited by the Palma index
  19. The age of open financial imperialism
  20. The real stakes behind the FIFA scandal
  21. Henry and Kant: outsourcing morality
  22. Was everybody under socialism a millionaire?
  23. Bob Solow on rents and decoupling of productivity and wages
  24. The rule of robots in Stiglitz and Marx
  25. Notes on Frantz Fanon
  26. Adam Smith, income inequality and the rich
  27. Three inequality tales
  28. Where is convergence?
  29. Pareto on Pareto optimum
  30. The trade-off between mean income and Gini in a welfarist framework
  31. What remains of Pareto?
  32. Trends in global income inequality and their political implications
  33. How US income distribution changed between 2007 and 2013
  34. On "human capital" one more time
  35. The misleading terminology of "human capital"
  36. Between the two chimeras and a world war
  37. My wealth and the lives of others
  38. Repeat after me: Wealth is not income and income is not consumption
  39. Can Black Death explain the Industrial Revolution?
  40. Stiglitz: Theories of just deserts and of exploitation

2014 26

  1. The second age of imperialism
  2. National vices, global virtue: Is the world becoming more equal?
  3. Intelligentsia in power
  4. The Coase theorem and methodological nationalism
  5. Some prefer land: Stiglitz on income and wealth inequality
  6. Does inequality today hurt future growth of the poor?
  7. Should Germany pay?
  8. Why individualism does not necessarily imply preference for a minimalist state?
  9. On Mark Thoma: marginalism, Marx etc
  10. One year later: a few reflections on Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st century”
  11. Can populist parties ever win?
  12. Four tricks used by Shleifer and Treisman to convince you that the transition was a success
  13. For Whom the Wall Fell? A balance-sheet of transition to capitalism
  14. Ahistoricism in Acemoglu-Robinson
  15. My interview with Goldman Sachs magazine Fortnighly Thoughts: Populism or plutocracy?
  16. The world of the weird: r is greater than g and inequality is not increasing? Can it happen?
  17. Why focus on horizontal inequality undermines efforts to reduce overall inequality
  18. The economics of Niall Ferguson in “The Pity of War”: Unwittingly back to Marx?
  19. My take on the Acemoglu-Robinson critique of Piketty
  20. Mr. Piketty and the classics
  21. The origins of the Second Cold War: an essay in interpretation
  22. Nit-Piketting continued
  23. Where I disagree and agree with Debraj Ray’s critique of Piketty’s Capital in the 21s Century.
  24. Limits of neoclassical economics
  25. Why ft comment on pikettys weighting
  26. My view of FT critique of Piketty