Category Archives: History
Norman Borlaug
A few people can be happy that they have saved a life. Fewer people can boast having saved more than one. Very few indeed can say they saved not millions, but hundreds of millions of lives. With the rubbish that have become household names these days, it is truly a shame that the name Norman [...]
The Importance of History
We at Dumbagent tend to deal primarily with Economics, but we have never ceased to believe in the importance of History. While Science and Math are in vogue, and languages are popular these days, history seems to have been neglected at every turn: the Economist reports that only 47% of American students scored “basic” on [...]
Most Wars have been fought over Economics
The common argument is that more wars have been fought over religion than anything else. There are some other contenders for the main causes (clash of cultures and civilizations, etc.) but if we analyze the causes, it looks like more wars have been fought over economics than anything else. Is this true? Let’s look at [...]
Creative Destruction + Trade = Renaissance
The crusades were a series of raids by Western European kingdoms in and around Jerusalem against the Muslim rulers of the land. The 4th crusade didn’t even make it to the ‘Holy Land’, with the western troops ransacking Byzantium and leaving it in ruins. This destroyed the Byzantine empire, while the wars were devastating to [...]
Culturomics?
Few things annoy economists more than anecdotal evidence. Just think of “mockumentaries” and various news headlines that don’t document “how many” or “how much”, but rather “what happened to a certain person”. It is easy to capture people emotionally with one, drawn out story, but this also goes against an economist’s training in statistics and [...]
