The Wile E. Coyote Recession
We all know there’s a time lag between the moment Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff at full speed and the moment he…
What’s “Normal” in a Hyper-Normalized World?
Humans are quick to habituate to current conditions, i.e. consider them normal. This rapid normalization has advantages and disadvantages. Normalization is an adaptive strategy,…
How Things Break: Hyper-Optimization
Tangible things break for a variety of reasons, but in most cases the causes are easy to understand: 1) a part wore out; 2)…
The Family Home: From Shelter to Asset to Liability
With the rise of financialized asset bubbles as the source of our “growth,” family home went from shelter to speculative asset. This transition accelerated…
This Nails It: The Doom Loop of Housing Construction Quality
Sorry for the punnish-ment, but this nails it: How Contracting Work Became a Race to the Bottom The reality of being a contractor includes…
Trade, Tariffs, Currencies, Colonialism, the Gold Watch and Everything
The title of today’s essay pays homage to the inimitable John D. MacDonald’s novel The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything in which the…
Change Our Minds, Change Our Lives?
Let’s start with an extraordinary assumption: that each of us will have to change consequential parts of our lives in the next seven years…
Last Gasp of the Landfill Economy
Globalization’s great gift wasn’t low prices–it was the collapse of durability, transforming the global economy into a Landfill Economy of shoddy products made of…