The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Ecology Matters More Than Economy An evolutionary perspective on modern economics. Written by Martin Štěpán. My interest as of late has been in the dubious assumptions of mainstream economics. As far as I can tell, the entire job of economists is to figure out ways to maximise some measure that is supposedly good in itself, while ignoring more fundamental human needs. It’s not that I see nothing valid in the field; it’s that practically all economists carry some ideological premises with them—almost invariably liberal, universalist and utilitarian. Even Marxism is basically just a liberal heresy that never disagreed with those premises. Here I want to address specifically how economics runs afoul of evolutionary biology. The first issue is: what is the economy actually for? Most economists believe it’s ultimately for satisfying people’s preferences. But they often treat preferences in a naïve or frankly bizarre way. Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy devised a theory of “rational add...

  How Pokémon Go players unwittingly trained military drones: "I was just playing" For years, Pokémon Go players have been scanning their surroundings to earn extra points. Thanks to those billions of scans, an extremely accurate navigation system has now been developed. Ismaele Today I am providing my English translation of an article by Gerben Beutick, originally in Dutch and first published on trouw.nl on Friday 5th June 2026 and then translated into Italian on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Monday 22nd June 2026. (All emphasis and footnotes mine). Floris De Hingh (aged 34) downloaded the Pokémon Go game on the very day it was released. It was the summer of 2016, and before long the whole of the Netherlands found itself wandering the streets with a smartphone until late in the evening, searching for Pokémon. Even years after the craze had died down, superfan De Hingh continued to search for the virtual creatures. However, he could never have imagined that the images he took wh...