School of thought

So can you, before we get into some of the specific things that you propose, Do you want to talk a little bit about antitrust and also regulatory capture that comes out of antitrust and how much of a role that plays in people looking for or getting desperate for answers and going to these sorts of fringes?

In the antitrust world, we've had this Chicago turn in the 70s and 80s, right? Where basically...

consumer welfare became the standard on which you decided whether there was an issue with corporate concentration or not, which really narrowed down the question to the issue of stable and low prices, which impoverished antitrust in ways that now made us blind for this broader power question.

So I'm very much arguing for bringing this broader power question back in.

We have some custom mechanics that we've developed for the game and they fit very neatly onto the 5e system.

If you wouldn't mind explaining a couple of those for us, because you have your omen deck and your omens, as well as also your schools of thought, which are kind of on top of the systems that we're used to.

But if you want to go into a little bit detail of the things you've added that really make it into your own setting.

Sure.

We should understand what these things are.

And among others, such as like engineering, mathematics, linguistics, etc.

And each of these schools of thought, they give you an additional boon.

The thing that excited me the most about this project is because as a GM, I've always been in scenarios where my players wanted to do something that I couldn't conceive of in the moment.

Rational expectations tradition.

Chicago.

Yeah, Chicago basically.

We said the best thing for government to do is nothing.

The restoration of fiscal policy again came recently, which was because the work of Woodford, told governments what to do when interest rates reach zero because when interest rates are at zero monetary policy interest rate policy by definition becomes very very limited in terms of what it can achieve and so that's why governments spent in the way that they did back then because interest rates were zero they did the right thing arguably no government did enough And we're learning today, of course, the great regret that everybody expresses in monetary and fiscal policy circles is, why in the name of God didn't we borrow more money when interest rates were zero? And I think that, you know, particularly in the UK, where when interest rates were approaching next to nothing and negative in real terms, by Cameron and Osborne, we were given austerity.

Corbyn would talk about austerity being the problem and austerity kind of started after the global clash in 2008.

But even Jeremy Corbyn wouldn't go back 40 years to 1979, Thatcher, Reagan, and the march of the Chicago school and, you know, Hayek, you know, and the road to serfdom and all of that.

So I think what Andy's done by talking about 40 years, he's included the new Labour period in office in that time.

And I think he's absolutely right to do that.

It's called The Politics of ADHD.

Subtitled, There Are Two Opposing Schools of Thought Regarding ADHD.

And Esme, would you mind reading the intro paragraph there?

Sure.

We need to get organized, and we need to start changing the law." And he laid out a bunch of really discrete, "Here are things we can specifically do to change the law to favor our interests," for-profit corporate interests.

And so then when he's on the court, he writes the first Chicago school opinion.

He writes the GTE Sylvania opinion.

And in his notes, it wasn't like he said, "Oh, I've read the works, and they've persuaded me." He was basically casting around for some ex post justification, found Chicago school ideas laying around, picked them up and used them.

Yeah, and one of them, one of those Chicago ideas is right here.

I'm holding up the-

Yeah

So, uh, Reagan starts just-- or Reagan's people, really-

And this is the problem with the U.S. We are cannibalizing our own system and our people.

Even our ideology in America used to be the land of free markets, right? Chicago school.

Trickle-down economics under Reagan.

We defended this for years.

That's right where I wanted...

You went right where I wanted to go, which is almost from Chicago or Price Theory Foundation or a microeconomic foundation.

Martijn, if the price spikes up and sustains here, doesn't the problem solve itself because we adjust to permanently high oil prices, and then out there somewhere oil comes back down?

Uh, yes.