end world poverty

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The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, clean water, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Edward Glaeser, end world poverty, European colonialism, failed state, farmers can use mobile phones to check market prices, George Akerlof, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, intentional community, invisible hand, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land reform, land tenure, Live Aid, microcredit, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, publication bias, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, structural adjustment programs, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, TSMC, War on Poverty, Xiaogang Anhui farmers

A Searcher believes only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions, and that most solutions must be homegrown. Columbia University professor and director of the United Nations Millennium Project Jeffrey Sachs is an eloquent and compassionate man. I am always moved when I listen to him speak. Unfortunately, his intellectual solutions are less convincing. Professor Sachs offers a Big Plan to end world poverty, with solutions ranging from nitrogen-fixing leguminous trees to replenish soil fertility, to antiretroviral therapy for AIDS, to specially programmed cell phones to provide real-time data to health planners, to rainwater harvesting, to battery-charging stations, to twelve-cent medicines for children with malaria—for a total of 449 interventions.

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A cow can nicely feed a family with a steady supply of milk, butter, cheese, and (unfortunately for the cow) beef. Of course, you could win the Kentucky Derby if you had a championship-caliber horse, but this book will review the decades of experience that show aid agencies to be cows, not racehorses. Likewise, we will see in this book that aid agencies cannot end world poverty, but they can do many useful things to meet the desperate needs of the poor and give them new opportunities. For example, instead of trying to “develop” Ethiopia, aid agencies could devise a program to give cash subsidies to parents to keep their children in school. Such a program has worked in other places, so it could take children like Amaretch out of the brutal firewood brigade and give her hope for the future.

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Social engineering showed up in Africa and Latin America in the eighties and nineties as IMF/World Bank–sponsored comprehensive reforms called “structural adjustment.” Military intervention to overthrow evil dictators and remake other societies into some reflection of Western democratic capitalism is the extreme of contemporary utopian social engineering. The plan to end world poverty shows all the pretensions of utopian social engineering. Democratic politics is about searching for piecemeal solutions: a local group engages in political action to campaign for a missing public service, such as trash collection; and a politician recognizes an opportunity for political gain from meeting these needs and winning over this particular group.

Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better by Rob Reich

bread and circuses, effective altruism, end world poverty, Home mortgage interest deduction, Jim Simons, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, mortgage tax deduction, Nick Bostrom, Pareto efficiency, Peter Singer: altruism, plutocrats, profit maximization, supervolcano, time value of money, William MacAskill

Singer introduced his basic argument in 1972 in his “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229–243, and to the extent philosophers have written about philanthropy or charity, Singer’s argument has dominated discussion. In recent years Singer has made efforts to popularize his view, e.g., The 202 N OTE S Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty (New York: Random House, 2010); The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). For another philosopher’s defense of effective altruism, see William MacAskill, Doing Good Better (New York: Gotham Books, 2015). 13.

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Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31 (2011): 557–568. ———. “Soup and Sadaqa: Charity in Islamic Societies.” Historical Research 79 (2006): 306–324. Singer, Peter. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229–243. ———. The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty. New York: Random House, 2010. ———. The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Skocpol, Theda. Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alvin Toffler, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, call centre, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, company town, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, drone strike, end world poverty, falling living standards, fiat currency, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Food sovereignty, Frank Gehry, future of work, gentrification, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, informal economy, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Murray Bookchin, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, peak oil, phenotype, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wages for housework, Wall-E, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

Everywhere, the rich are getting richer by the minute. The top 100 billionaires in the world (from China, Russia, India, Mexico and Indonesia as well as from the traditional centres of wealth in North America and Europe) added $240 billion to their coffers in 2012 alone (enough, calculates Oxfam, to end world poverty overnight). By contrast, the well-being of the masses at best stagnates or more likely undergoes an accelerating if not catastrophic (as in Greece and Spain) degradation. The one big institutional difference this time around seems to be the role of the central banks, with the Federal Reserve of the United States playing a leading if not domineering role on the world stage.

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Even in many of the poorest countries, inequality has grown rapidly. Globally the incomes of the top 1% have increased 60% in twenty years. The growth in income for the top 0.01% has been even greater. The crisis of 2007–9 onwards made matters worse: ‘The top 100 billionaires added $240 billion to their wealth in 2012 – enough to end world poverty four times over.’2 Billionaires have erupted all over the place, with large numbers now recorded in Russia, India, China, Brazil and Mexico, as well as in the more traditionally wealthy countries in North America, Europe and Japan. One of the more significant shifts is that the ambitious no longer have to migrate to the affluent countries to become billionaires – they can simply stay at home in India (where the number of billionaires has more than doubled over the last few years), Indonesia or wherever.

Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn by Chris Hughes

"World Economic Forum" Davos, basic income, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, end world poverty, full employment, future of journalism, gig economy, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, new economy, oil rush, payday loans, Peter Singer: altruism, Potemkin village, precariat, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game

The Atlantic, July 14, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240/. Shultz, David. “A Bit of Cash Can Keep Someone Off the Streets for 2 Years or More.” Science, August 11, 2016. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/bit-cash-can-keep-someone-streets-2-years-or-more. Singer, Peter. The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. Random House (Kindle Edition), 2009. Soergel, Andrew. “Mnuchin ‘Not At All’ Worried About Automation Displacing Jobs.” U.S. News, March 24, 2017. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-03-24/steven-mnuchin-not-at-all-worried-about-automation-displacing-jobs. Sommeiller, Estelle, Mark Price, and Ellis Wazeter.

Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by Peter Singer

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Bear Stearns, Branko Milanovic, Cass Sunstein, clean water, do well by doing good, end world poverty, experimental economics, Garrett Hardin, illegal immigration, Larry Ellison, Martin Wolf, microcredit, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, Peter Singer: altruism, pre–internet, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, Silicon Valley, subprime mortgage crisis, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, ultimatum game, union organizing

His recreations, apart from reading and writing, include hiking and surfing. Copyright © 2009 by Peter Singer All rights reserved. RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Singer, Peter The life you can save : acting now to end world poverty / Peter Singer p. cm. Includes index. eISBN: 978-1-58836-779-2 1. Charity. 2. Humanitarianism. 3. Economic assistance. 4. Poverty. I. Title. HV48.S56 2009 362.5—dc22 2008036279 www.atrandom.com v3.0_r1

Divided: Why We're Living in an Age of Walls by Tim Marshall

affirmative action, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, cryptocurrency, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Donald Trump, end world poverty, facts on the ground, gentrification, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, it's over 9,000, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, open borders, openstreetmap, profit motive, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, the built environment, trade route, unpaid internship, urban planning

The more efficient allocation of labor would result in global increases in productivity, leading the world economy to nearly double in size. This increased economic activity would, moreover, disproportionately benefit the world’s poorest people. Smith argues that by opening borders we could end world poverty, and therefore that it is, in a way, a moral duty for those of us in the West to do so, especially in terms of righting historical wrongs. There is even a view that the practice of citizenship within a state is as violent and discriminatory as the slave trade, because it places citizens’ rights over human ones and thus legitimizes the idea that some people are more human than others.

Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference by William MacAskill

barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, Cal Newport, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, clean water, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, experimental subject, follow your passion, food miles, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job automation, job satisfaction, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nate Silver, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, randomized controlled trial, self-driving car, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, William MacAskill, women in the workforce

I helped to develop the idea of effective altruism: Toby and I were both heavily influenced by Peter Singer’s arguments for the moral importance of giving to fight poverty, made in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 1 (Spring 1972): 229–43 and The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (New York: Random House, 2009). On the basis of his arguments, we both made commitments to donate everything we earn above £20,000 per year—about £1 million pounds each over our careers, or 50 percent of our lifetime earnings. Because we were putting so much of our own money on the line, the importance of spending that money as effectively as possible seemed imperative.

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely

Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Burning Man, business process, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Demis Hassabis, end world poverty, endowment effect, Exxon Valdez, first-price auction, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, IKEA effect, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, loss aversion, name-letter effect, Peter Singer: altruism, placebo effect, Richard Thaler, Saturday Night Live, search costs, second-price auction, Skinner box, software as a service, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, ultimatum game, Upton Sinclair, young professional

Deborah Small, George Loewenstein, and Paul Slovic, “Sympathy and Callousness: The Impact of Deliberative Thought on Donations to Identifiable and Statistical Victims,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 102, no. 2 (2007): 143–153. Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 1 (1972): 229–243. Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (New York: Random House, 2009). Paul Slovic, “Can International Law Stop Genocide When Our Moral Institutions Fail Us?” Decision Research (2010; forthcoming). Paul Slovic, “ ‘If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act’: Psychic Numbing and Genocide,” Judgment and Decision Making 2, no. 2 (2007): 79–95.

Confessions of a Microfinance Heretic by Hugh Sinclair

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Bernie Madoff, colonial exploitation, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, high net worth, illegal immigration, impact investing, inventory management, low interest rates, microcredit, Northern Rock, peer-to-peer lending, pirate software, Ponzi scheme, principal–agent problem, profit motive, Vision Fund

It is essential reading for anyone involved in microcredit and for all who are committed to ending global poverty and injustice. For some twenty years we have heard the story that microcredit is the cure for global poverty: An amazing visionary economist in Bangladesh named Mohammed Yunus founded the Grameen Bank and demonstrated a simple, effective way to end world poverty. Small, low-cost loans to the poor unleash their entrepreneurial potential and allow them to start profitable businesses that bring prosperity to themselves, their children, and their communities. It is a win–win solution that doesn’t require charity, redistribution, rethinking economic policy, or restructuring existing economic institutions and relationships.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris

Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, cognitive bias, cognitive load, end world poverty, endowment effect, energy security, experimental subject, framing effect, higher-order functions, hindsight bias, impulse control, John Nash: game theory, language acquisition, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Monty Hall problem, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, peak-end rule, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, public intellectual, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, scientific worldview, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, ultimatum game, World Values Survey

Simons, D. J., Chabris, C. F., Schnur, T., & Levin, D. T. (2002). Evidence for preserved representations in change blindness. Conscious Cogn, 11 (1), 78–97. Simonton, D. K. (1994). Greatness: Who makes history and why. New York: Guilford. Singer, P. (2009). The life you can save: Acting now to end world poverty. New York: Random House. Singer, T., Seymour, B., O’Doherty, J., Kaube, H., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2004). Empathy for pain involves the affective but not sensory components of pain. Science, 303 (5661), 1157–1162. Singer, W. (1999). Striving for coherence. Nature, 397 (4 February), 391–393.

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality by Angus Deaton

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, carbon tax, clean water, colonial exploitation, Columbian Exchange, compensation consultant, creative destruction, declining real wages, Downton Abbey, Easter island, Edward Jenner, end world poverty, financial engineering, financial innovation, Ford Model T, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, John Snow's cholera map, knowledge economy, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, new economy, off-the-grid, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, very high income, War on Poverty, zoonotic diseases

David Hume, 1912 [1777], An enquiry concerning the principles of morals, Project Gutenberg edition, part I (originally published in 1751). 7. Peter Singer, 1972, “Famine, affluence, and mortality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1(1): 229–43; quote on p. 242. 8. Peter Singer, 2009, The life you can save: Acting now to end world poverty, Random House. 9. The data on aid in this chapter, unless otherwise noted explicitly, come from Development Assistance Committee, OECD, http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/, or from World Bank, World Development Indicators, http://databank.worldbank.org/data/home.aspx. 10. The term comes from Jonathan Temple, 2010, “Aid and conditionality,” Handbook of development economics, Elsevier, Chapter 67, p. 4420. 11.

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology by Kentaro Toyama

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, blood diamond, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, computer vision, conceptual framework, delayed gratification, digital divide, do well by doing good, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gamification, germ theory of disease, global village, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Khan Academy, Kibera, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microcredit, mobile money, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, North Sea oil, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, Powell Memorandum, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, RFID, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, school vouchers, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the long tail, Twitter Arab Spring, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, World Values Survey, Y2K

Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions. Developmental Psychology 26(6):978–986, http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1991-06927-001. Sinclair, Upton. (1934 [1994]). I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked. University of California Press. Singer, Peter. (2009). The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. Picador. ———. (2011). The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress. Princeton University Press. 60 Minutes. (2011). Extra: Revolution 2.0. CBS News, Feb. 14, 2011, www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7349173n. Small, Mario Luis, David J. Harding, and Michèle Lamont. (2010). Reconsidering culture and poverty.

The Enlightened Capitalists by James O'Toole

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bletchley Park, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, business process, California gold rush, carbon footprint, City Beautiful movement, collective bargaining, company town, compensation consultant, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, desegregation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, end world poverty, equal pay for equal work, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, garden city movement, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, God and Mammon, greed is good, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, inventory management, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Benioff, means of production, Menlo Park, North Sea oil, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Vanguard fund, white flight, women in the workforce, young professional

Yet during the century separating their efforts—an era when more wealth was created than at any other time in history—few other business leaders followed their examples, a paradox that puzzled such observers as George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish playwright and social critic. Shaw was a bit of a contrarian on the subject of enlightened capitalists. In his controversial 1905 play Major Barbara, Shaw’s protagonist is a greedy munitions manufacturer who also happens to be a model employer with a mission to end world poverty. We recognize this character, Andrew Undershaft, as possibly a composite distant cousin of many of the business leaders profiled in these pages, most particularly Lever. Although Shaw’s intent in the play was not to offer a critique of enlightened business leadership, the issues he raised illuminate the complexity and paradoxes involved in objectively evaluating the practices of those who use profit-making enterprises to achieve social good.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

The signal and the noise: Why so many predictions fail—but some don’t. New York: Penguin. Simon, J. 1981. The ultimate resource. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Singer, P. 1981/2010. The expanding circle: Ethics and sociobiology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Singer, P. 2010. The life you can save: How to do your part to end world poverty. New York: Random House. Singh, J. P., Grann, M., & Fazel, S. 2011. A comparative study of violence risk assessment tools: A systematic review and metaregression analysis of 68 studies involving 25,980 participants. Clinical Psychology Review, 31, 499–513. Slingerland, E. 2008. What science offers the humanities: Integrating body and culture.

The Irrational Bundle by Dan Ariely

accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Albert Einstein, Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, business process, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, compensation consultant, computer vision, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, Donald Trump, end world poverty, endowment effect, Exxon Valdez, fake it until you make it, financial engineering, first-price auction, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fudge factor, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, IKEA effect, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, late fees, loss aversion, Murray Gell-Mann, name-letter effect, new economy, operational security, Pepsi Challenge, Peter Singer: altruism, placebo effect, price anchoring, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Saturday Night Live, Schrödinger's Cat, search costs, second-price auction, Shai Danziger, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Skype, social contagion, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, young professional

Deborah Small, George Loewenstein, and Paul Slovic, “Sympathy and Callousness: The Impact of Deliberative Thought on Donations to Identifiable and Statistical Victims,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 102, no. 2 (2007): 143–153. Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 1 (1972): 229–243. Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (New York: Random House, 2009). Paul Slovic, “Can International Law Stop Genocide When Our Moral Institutions Fail Us?” Decision Research (2010; forthcoming). Paul Slovic, “ ‘If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act’: Psychic Numbing and Genocide,” Judgment and Decision Making 2, no. 2 (2007): 79–95.