Rafael’s Commentary

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When will academics stop claiming that China and Europe "diverged"?
This popular idea is based on a false thesis of ancient convergence.
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Rafael R. Guthmann
3

November 2023

Fertility and the Life Cycle of Civilizations
An "inverted Malthusian model" can provide a simple general theory of why civilizations rise and fall.
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Rafael R. Guthmann
3

September 2023

August 2023

The world is multipolar now and this is a good thing
Unipolarity for extended periods means the worst kind of monopoly: institutional monopoly
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Rafael R. Guthmann
1

July 2023

3400 years of macroeconomic performance in one graph
Modern economic growth does not look as impressive as in other such graphs
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Rafael R. Guthmann
There is a need for the Malthusian Model?
Perhaps not really.
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Rafael R. Guthmann
4

February 2023

The Great Waves in Economic History
In western economic history, living standards appear to have had three "supercycles" of rise and fall of economic activity over the past 4,000 years.
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Rafael R. Guthmann
1
Democracy and development
It appears to be the case that the foremost causal factor in social and economy development is democracy
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Rafael R. Guthmann

January 2023

Should intellectual property be enforced?
Should patents exist? It appears that they do, although, granting a monopoly of 20 years to new technologies might be too much.
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Rafael R. Guthmann
3

November 2022

The Democratic Stationary Bandit
The modern welfare state is what happens when you mix Ghenghis-Khan with Classical Athens
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Rafael R. Guthmann
1
Virtual public goods and Musk's purchase of Twitter
Musk's purchase of Twitter suggests that society might need virtual public squares besides private social media sites
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Rafael R. Guthmann
Why do billions speak languages with large Latin heritage while less than 14 million speak languages derived from Ancient Greek?
Answer: historical contingency that Latin's influence could be preserved in Western Europe while most Greek speaking regions of antiquity the local…
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Rafael R. Guthmann
1
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