Too Long; Didn't Read
Understanding the intangible economy requires new economic methods. We need to get away from the standard neoclassical approach of treating a firm as a machine that takes resources as inputs and turns them into outputs. In this long essay, I cite four books that provide insights into the intangible economy. Instead of trying to imitate physics by looking for insights in equations, these economists are trying to imitate botanists or biologists or anthropologists by starting with what they find in the real world, figuring out what functions are served by observed behavior, and seeking out commonalities and differences. I call this approach “classification systems.”