If you want to understand how the modern economy works, forget supply and demand. Forget competition, efficiency, or the invisible hand. The real engine of capitalism—the thing that keeps profits high and the wealthy wealthier—is something far simpler: withholding. Manufactured scarcity is the defining strategy of corporate power. It is…

We are a species with a peculiar gift for dreaming. For centuries, we have imagined utopias, built castles in the air, and scribbled blueprints for worlds where fairness reigns supreme. Yet, the world has a way of humbling dreamers. The stark machinery of greed and power grinds down idealism into…

Few economists have wielded prose as deftly as John Kenneth Galbraith, whose writing—sharp, erudite, and tinged with dry wit—made macroeconomics palatable for the lay reader. In The New Industrial State (1967), Galbraith turns his attention to the machinery of modern capitalism, arguing that America’s economy is not, as classical economists…

The concept of time banking should, in theory, be a lifeline for the economically disadvantaged. It provides a way for people to exchange skills and services without the constraints of money, effectively creating a parallel system where effort is the only currency. And yet, the very people who would benefit…

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and prolific economist, has been vocal about the emergence of a new ruling class he terms “Cloudalists,” who preside over what he describes as a techno-feudal order. In his lecture titled “Cloudalists: The New Ruling Class & how can we confront its techno-feudal…

In parts of the world where every meal must be earned through ingenuity, where a broken appliance isn’t replaced but repurposed, and where money is scarce but resourcefulness is abundant, necessity does what it always has—it forces invention. In countries with struggling economies, people do not have the luxury of…