The following article in the New York Times, American Capitalism Is Brutal, You Can Trace That To The Plantation, describes in an excellent manner how modern management systems have their roots in slavery and plantation economy. A short summary: an efficient plantation required an elaborate bookkeeping to keep track of each slave’s productivity. Hence a multilayered system of supervision of labor was necessitated. Continue reading Slavery and modern management
Category Archives: economics
Public bicycle system
As distances within a space habitat will be rather small, only a couple of kilometers in most designs , bicycles will be an excellent mode of transportation for space settlers. Promoting cycling will also have environmental and public health benefits. Continue reading Public bicycle system
Health promotion – some studies
ScienceDaily reports three interesting studies relevant for designing a public health policy. As we have stated previously, public policy should focus on prevention of disease – also known as health promotion. Continue reading Health promotion – some studies
Waste water – again
As regular readers of this site might already know, we believe that sewage and waste water treatment should be funded through the reclamation of valuable substances. For whom is not already convinced of this, we would recommend an article on GreenBiz by Yalin Li: Waste water is an asset.
Reclaiming nutrients and other valuables from waste water would constitute a durable source of non-tax revenue for governments and will hence structurally reduce the need to impose taxes on the people.
Wast-to-value: an analysis
A recurrent theme on this site is the idea that the recycling of waste could be funded through the proceeds of the reclaimed materials and that consequently waste-disposal fees should be abolished. However, this raises the question if recycling is indeed a profitable venture? Continue reading Wast-to-value: an analysis
Stallman-Lietaer “Tax”
This proposal combines Richard Stallman’s suggestion for a progressive business tax with Bernard Lietaer’s ECO-plan. We will first discuss both proposal separately and subsequently we will discuss a (possible) combination of both. Continue reading Stallman-Lietaer “Tax”
Public advertisement
When you go outside is hard not to notice public advertisements: billboards, bus stops, on buses themselves and so on. In fact there is a lot of advertising in our public spaces. Continue reading Public advertisement
Waste water: update
Recently we discussed how a sewer system could be run without charging citizens a special sewer fee, just through the sale of recovered minerals like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. A new scientific study confirms that recycling nutrients from human wastewater is an economically viable venture.
Refuse-derived clothing
Two Italian fashion designers have developed a technique to make a silk-like fabric from citrus waste, called Orange Fiber. The orange juice industry produce a very large amount of waste in the form of peels. The use of citrus peels as a resource for the production of textiles, is interesting as it increase the value of citrus fruits and hence potentially increasing the income of citrus farmers.
Sewers and Taxes
Sewers are the summit of human civilization and taxation is the price of civilization. So we are supposed to pay sewer tax, right? No, not really. In this post I will explain how space settlements could fund a sewage and waste water treatment system without having to collect sewer charges. Continue reading Sewers and Taxes
