Understanding economics can help you make better decisions and lead a happier life.

The lesson about food is that the most predictable and the most orderly outcomes are always not the best. They are just easier to describe. Fads are orderly. Food carts and fires aren't. Feeding the world could be a delicious mess, full of diverse flavors and sometimes good old-fashioned smoke.

Marshall Jevons is the pioneer for integrating economics and detective fiction, and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand is another fine effort in this genre.

My view of the internet is that it is way overrated in what it’s done to date but considerably underrated in what it will do.

The more information that's out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn't what's scarce; it's the willingness to do something with it.

Social systems proceed by (usually) covering up the brutalities upon which they are based. The doctor doesn't let you get to his door and then turn you away, rather his home address is hard to find. The government handcuffs you so they don't have to shoot you trying to escape. And so on.

I'm not optimistic about reform in many, if any, policy areas at all. I think we'll make further progress by inventing new things that aren't much regulated yet and outracing bad policy. I look at so many policy areas - regulation, regulatory reform, health care reform - it's all failing, we're not making improvements, we're going backwards.