Authentic communities, ones that are responsive to the "true needs" of all community members, reflect the appropriate balance of order and autonomy. The traditional contradiction between order and autonomy can be minimized by responsiveness that considers the community's historical position....

The author outlines a radically different decision-making model form the one widely used in Economics and in Psychology. Accordingly, most choices are made on the basis of emotional involvements and value commitments. Information processing is often excluded. In other areas of choices, emotions...

The often-used goal model for measuring effectiveness is criticized. A system model is suggested and its advantages over the goal model specified. Mainly, the system model is theoretically more powerful and avoids certain value judgments. Two system models are compared: an often-used survival...

This Article takes for granted that the great amount of campaign contributions donated to individuals who are seeking election or reelection to Congress has reached a level that seriously undermines the democratic system. Many suggestions have been made on ways to limit the contributions donors...

This work is organized in seven sections around major themes of socio-economics. The first section outlines socio-economics in an historical perspective, drawing on the "Methodenstreit" in the German school of economics at the turn of the century. Four additional essays view economic behaviour...

Broadly defined, the gig economy in the United States is large and growing, and many of its workers lack benefits. This article argues that all workers—whether they are working in the gig economy or traditional full-time employment—should receive benefits. It discusses the impact workers...

There are abundant examples of relatively small lobbying expenditures yielding very high returns. At the same time, lobbying is not very widespread. This article considers lobbying as a form of rent seeking and addresses the question raised previously by economists as to why more rent seeking...

Policy researchers — and think tanks — are rarely evaluated in terms of the results of their endeavors. This is the case despite the fact that American society tends to rank most everything from the reputation of physicians to the number of books an author sells, from football players to the...

How are we to ensure that autonomous machines act ethically? Teaching machines ethics, or getting them to follow whatever the community favors, may not work. Instead, one can use AI to find out what the ethical preferences of its human users are, in a way similar to how we learn about consumer...

A variety of strategies have been suggested for how the U.S. should respond to China as a rising power. The publication analyses the underlying assumptions of these strategies. The strategies are grouped into three categories: 1) Strategies that call for China to be integrated into the liberal...