Reference

Sources

Where the ideas and pictures on this site come from.

The ideas

The ideas on this site come from handwritten notebook pages (photographed here, with their dates where known), from conversations in which they were developed further, and from earlier notes and summaries of spoken recordings. Where a statement came only from a summary of a recording, it is second-hand and still to be checked against the original.

Earlier notebook photos from 7 and 9 September 2024 show first versions of the same pages; the photos of 28 September 2024 are used here.

The pictures

The network pictures are redrawn from the notebook pages. All charts come from small computer models written for this project: the society and market story, the binding of money, missed potential in a crisis, care supply over thirty years, and two models of a punitive system. Each model states its assumptions next to its results. None is calibrated to a real country.

Earlier versions

An earlier attempt turned this material into papers and a slide deck. We stopped, because we were not ready to build them yet: they were too much to verify and fix, and it was hard to articulate what was wrong with them. This site replaces them for now.

Works mentioned along the way

These were mentioned while developing the ideas, as related research or as starting points for real data. They have not been checked in detail for this site.

  • Becker (1968), on crime and punishment as a rational choice; Stigler (1970), on making a small offence as costly as a large one; Nagin (2013), on certainty versus severity of punishment.
  • Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999), on rewards crowding out motivation.
  • Aiken and others (2014, The Lancet), on nurse workload and patient deaths.
  • List and Gallet (2001), on the gap between hypothetical and real choices.
  • Gelman, Silver and Edlin (2012), on the chance that a single vote decides an election.
  • Andre and others (2024, Nature Climate Change), on how people misjudge what others want.
  • Olson (1965), on collective action; Unruh (2000), on carbon lock-in.
  • Input–output tables (for example Destatis, OECD, FIGARO) and household budget surveys, as possible real data on where money flows.