Economic Quote of the Day

Thomas Schelling in Micromotives and Macrobehavior:

The fact that there is never a taxi when you need one in the rain, or that you can fly 3,000 miles more comfortably than you can fly 300 and flights are occasionally overbooked, reminds us how spoiled we are. We expect this fantastically complex system to be even better coordinated than it sometimes is.

Tens of millions of people making billions of decisions every week about what to buy and what to sell and where to work and how much to save and how much to borrow and what orders to fill and what stocks to accumulate and where to move and what schools to go to and what jobs to take and where to build the supermarkets and movie theatres and electric power stations, when to invest in buildings above ground and mine shafts underground and fleets of trucks and ships and aircraft--if you are in a mood to be amazed, it can amaze you that the system works at all.

I had to read part of this book for my class on agent-based models. Highly recommended!

(via The Anti-Candlemakers' League)