April 2007

Basic considerations and definitions

A society is a group of dependent and interdependent individuals, such that the decisions of one member have consequences for other members, whether immediately or through intermediary decisions. Each individual pursues his particular good, which can otherwise be termed as their “quest for happiness”.

The big headline across the new lately is the dramatic rise in global food prices. This issue touches me in a special way, because in college I once did a paper studying starvation economics, i.e. how "standard" economics changes when food availability reaches critical levels. It isn't pretty, and experience shows that one round of starvation economics is sufficient to create structures of social injustice that can last generations.