The Supply And Demand Game

I played it in each class I taught. A former colleague taught it to me many years ago. As far as I know, I use the game invented by Edward Chamberlin and refined by Vernon Smith. Click here to see the Lessons From the Supply and Demand Game. Or just read it all here.

Part 1: How the Game Works

The class played a game to earn extra credit points called the “The Supply and Demand Game.” Please also note, as far as I can tell, this game was invented by EH Chamberlin and later modified by Vernon Smith. I think I use the modified version. Several rounds of the game were played. In each round a student was either a buyer or a seller. Each student got a card at the beginning of a round that told them if they were a buyer or a seller. The object of the game was for buyers and sellers to make transactions with each other and maximize their surplus value.

Each buyer card had a maximum bid price on it which told the buyer the highest price they could pay in a transaction. The surplus value was the difference between the transaction price and the maximum bid price. For example, if a buyer’s card had a maximum bid price of $10 and they made a deal with a seller for $7.50, they got $2.50 in surplus value.

Each seller card had a minimum offer price on it which told the seller the lowest price they could accept in a transaction. If a seller had a minimum offer price of $5.00 and they made a deal with a buyer for $7.50, they got $2.50 in surplus value.

The more surplus value a student got, the more extra credit they got. In general, the object of the game was for buyers to make a deal for the lowest possible price and for sellers to make a deal for the highest possible price. Buyers and sellers walked around the class room looking for someone to make a deal with. There was no actual product for sale. Just buyers looking for sellers. After each round of the game, the prices of all the transactions were recorded. When the game was over, an average price per round and an average quantity (or number of transactions) was computed. Why was this important? Because the average price and quantity came very close to the equilibrium.

All of the buyer cards combine to make a demand curve that can be graphed and all of the seller cards combine to make a supply curve that can be graphed. If there are 24 students in the class, there will be 12 buyer cards and 12 seller cards. There will be exactly one card with each of the following maximum bid prices: 

$    4
$    5
$    6
$    7
$    8
$    9
$   10
$   11
$   12
$   13
$   14
$   15

Since there is just one card with a maximum bid price of $15, only one buyer will be able to buy at that price (recall that the buyers have to buy at a price below their maximum bid price–I should say $14.99, but that is close enough to $15). So the quantity demanded (Q_d) at $15 is going to be one since only one person can buy that high. At a price of $14, the Q_d will be two because someone with a $15 card can buy at $14 and so can the person with the $14 card. Then the Q_d at $13 is three. Below is the complete demand schedule: 

Price	Qd
$    4	12
$    5	11
$    6	10
$    7	9
$    8	8
$    9	7
$   10	6
$   11	5
$   12	4
$   13	3
$   14	2
$   15	1

These numbers form the demand curve in the graph below.

We can do the same thing with supply. There will be exactly one card with each of the following  minimum offer prices:

$    1
$    2
$    3
$    4
$    5
$    6
$    7
$    8
$    9
$   10
$   11
$   12
$   13
$   14
$   15

Since there is just one card with a minimum offer price of $1, only one seller will be able to sell at that price (recall that the sellers have to sell at a price above their minimum offer price–I should say $1.01, but that is close enough to $1). So the quantity supplied (Q_s) at $1 is going to be one since only one person can sell that low. At a price of $2, the Q_s will be two because someone with a $1 card can sell at $2 and so can the person with the $2 card. Then the Q_s at $3 is three. Below is the complete supply schedule: 

Price	Qs
$    1	1
$    2	2
$    3	3
$    4	4
$    5	5
$    6	6
$    7	7
$    8	8
$    9	9
$   10	10
$   11	11
$   12	12

These numbers form the demand curve in the graph below.

The supply and demand lines intersect at a price of $7.50 and a quantity of 7.50. When the game is played in class, the average price for the whole game and the average quantity (number of transactions) per round is always very close to these numbers. Why is this good?

Part 2: What the Game Teaches Us

Moral of the Story

Selfish, rational maximizers, acting without government intervention or regulation, arrived at an efficient price. An efficient price is one that creates no shortages and no surpluses. It is, therefore, socially optimal.

In the game, everyone was acting in their own self-interest. There were no rules telling people who they could or could not trade with or what price they had to charge.

So this is a demonstration of Adam Smith’s concept of the Invisible Hand which says that selfishness serves society. The players in the game acted based on their self-interest and the price and quantity that resulted were the best that could exist. Why?

By having a quantity at equilibrium, there is no surplus or shortage. Getting the price right helps in this process.

A  surplus is wasteful and inefficient because too much of a product is produced. Scarce resources are used to make goods that no one wants. A  shortage is wasteful and inefficient because too little of a product is being produced.  All of society’s wants or needs would not be met.

Now another way to get just the right amount produced would be for the government to set the price of each good. But how would they know what price to set? They would have to know the supply and demand curves for every good. This is very unlikely since it is a very difficult statistical problem to determine the supply and demand curves for just one good. And we know that the curves move all the time.

So if a government bureaucrat tried to set the price, they might set it too high (surplus results) or too low (shortage results). They would just as easily make the same mistakes if they tried to set the quanity.

Part 3-Conditions Necessary For the Unregulated Market to Achieve Socially Optimal Results

In the game, the class was a mini society and so was a perfect laboratory setting. The real world is not always so ideal. To have the unregulated market achieve the optimal results, certain conditions must be met. Sometimes they are not met in the real world.

1. Equal access to information-When one side has more information that the other, too little of the good is produced or offered for sale or the price is not at equilibrium.

In the game, if the buyers were required to show their maximum bid price to the sellers (while the sellers were not required to show their minimum offer price to the buyers), the sellers would have been able to get a higher price since they would have had an advantage. But then the market would not achieve the optimal result since the price would have been above equilibrium.

In the real world, we have markets without equal access to information. The used car market is an example. The seller knows more about the product that the buyer. If a seller has a car that is truly worth $1,000, no one will be willing to pay that much because potential customers will be suspicious due to their lack of knowledge. Perhaps they would offer only $750. So some car owners pull their cars off the market, not wanting to take less than it is worth. So fewer cars are traded (a below equilibrium quantity and therefore not optimal). Also, there is a danger that the only cars left will be “lemons.” They will be worth less than the price you pay (Economist George Ackerlof developed the “theory of lemons”).

The insurance market has this problem, too. The custormers don’t always tell their insurance company their bad habits (like smoking, riding a motor cycle without a helmut, etc.). So they don’t know how risky you are and therefore don’t know what price to charge you.

2. No monopolies-Monopolies charge a higher price than competitive markets. With monopolies, too litte is produced. Q is less than it should be (a below equilibrium quantity and therefore not optimal).

If just one student had been given all of the seller cards, they would have been a monopoly and would have raised the price above the normal equilibrium. In the real world, there are monopolies, like Microsoft and CPS.

3. No Externalities-Pollution is an example of an externality. When we drive, we, as individuals, do not consder the cost to others. Too much driving is produced (an above equilibrium quantity and therefore not optimal). Q is greater than it should be.

In the game, there were no externalities. No one was harmed by any transaction done by others. But in the real world we do have externalities.

Toronto saw little economic gain during the first two weeks of the World Cup

See World Cup economic impact still hard to find, but at least we’ll always have the “togetherness” by Neil deMause. Excerpts:

"As Toronto’s official FIFA World Cup 2026 hosting duties come to an end, data shows that the city saw little economic gain during the first two weeks of the tournament…

Data from payment processing company Moneris between June 12 and 26 — the first two weeks of the World Cup in Toronto — showed that debit and credit card spending at restaurants and bars in the city rose by just three per cent compared with the same time last year.

A 3% increase isn’t actually terrible in a city the size of Toronto, which can swallow 40,000 or so soccer fans without much noticing. The bigger problem, notes the CBC, is that Toronto taxpayers spent about $380 million on hosting six World Cup matches"

"events like the World Cup generate little or no net economic benefit because FIFA keeps most event revenue while host cities absorb major expenses." 

If Toronto spent $380 million, then dividing that by 14 days means that the visitors would need to spend about $27 million or more per day to make that money back.

The article said it was 3% more than the year before. For that 3% increase to be at least $27 million per day there would have to have been about $900 million spent per day at restaurants and bars in the city during the same time last year. 

The population of Toronto is about 3.2 million. Dividing 900 by 3.2 gets us about 281. I doubt that the average person spent $281 per day at restaurants and bars in Toronto during the same time period last year. 

Wikipedia says Toronto gets 26 million visitors per year.  That works out to about 71,000 per day. That might get the population up to 3.3 million. That would then mean that last year people had to spend about $273 per day at restaurants and bars in the city for the 3% increase to generate the $27 million to cover the cost of hosting the World Cup.

If we divided $27 million by the 40,000 fans we get about $675 dollars. I doubt they were spending that much much per day in the city.  

Related posts: 

The economic impact of the Super Bowl is met with skepticism from economists (2024)

Economic benefits from mega-events like the Olympics are often overstated (2021) 

Striking out: estimating the economic impact of baseball's World Series  (2021)

As Covid-19 Closes Stadiums, Municipalities Struggle With Billions in Debt (2020) 

The San Antonio Spurs And Federal Subsidies (2016) (The Spurs received $41 million in federal subsidies to build the AT&T Center with little economic gain for the community-multiple studies show major private sports stadiums don’t ultimately produce substantial economic growth relative to the government incentives they receive)

Even If You Don't Like Sports, You Might Be Paying For Them (2011)

Does It Pay to Host the Olympics? (2009)

Sports, Economics and Politics Collide When Government Officials Get World Series Tickets (2009)

New York City Tax Payers To Pay $1 Billion To See Baseball (2008)

Did median wealth in the U.S. fall nearly 20% from 2020-2025?

See The U.S. Added 1,200 New Millionaires a Day Last Year by Miriam Gottfried of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"While average wealth per U.S. adult climbed by almost 10% between 2020 and 2025 net of inflation, median wealth fell by nearly 20%."

This was based on a report from UBS, A Swiss multinational investment bank and financial services firm (according to Wikipedia). 

But I am skeptical. I looked at some data from the Federal Reserve on the wealth of the bottom 50% over these years and even if we adjust for population growth and inflation, it is clear that per person wealth of the bottom 50% has gone up over these years (and it is possible that the numbers at the Fed site are adjusted for inflation but it just does not say).

The Fed site is Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989. (Hat Tip to Timothy Taylor for this link-his blog is The Conversable Economist).

This graph shows that wealth for the bottom 50% in the U.S. about doubled from $2 trillion in 2020 to $4 trillion in 2026

 

It might be hard to see but it does say "Bottom 50%." You can got to the link and select bottom 50% to see for yourself. They also have an option to see a table with these numbers. This link will take you directly to the table.

In the 2nd quarter of 2020, the bottom 50% had $2.21 trillion in wealth. In the 2nd quarter of 2025 it was $4.13 trillion. So it was up 87%. The U.S. was up just 3.3%. See US Population by Year.

So if the total is up 87% and the number of persons is up just 3.3%, the wealth per person must be way up. And this is for the bottom 50%. Median means that half are below a certain number and half are above. The article says the median wealth went down. But that seems unlikely if the per person wealth of the bottom 50% is up.

If we adjust for inflation (and the numbers might have already been adjusted, I just can't tell), let's use the CPI increase of 24% from 2020-25. See Consumer Price Index Data from 1913 to 2026. I got the % increase by using the yearly average for each year.

So let's reduce the $4.13 trillion wealth owned by the bottom 50% in the 2nd quarter of 2025 by 24%. That gets us about $3.14 trillion. That is 42% higher than the $2.21 trillion in the 2nd quarter of 2020. Which is still much higher than the 3.3% increase in the U.S. population. That means per capita wealth increased for the bottom 50%. That makes me skeptical that the median wealth went down.

What Is Personalized Pricing—and Why Are Lawmakers Scrambling to Ban It?

Companies already track your every move online. Some researchers say it is only a matter of time until retailers start using that data to set prices just for you.

By Jackie Snow of The WSJ.

The print edition titled this article "How to Prevent Personalized Pricing." This sounds like a form of price discrimination, which I will explain a bit after excerpts. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I will get into that later as well. And as the article mentions, sometimes this personal pricing can get you a lower price (see some text highlighted in red).

Excerpts:

"what if the price you get is set for you alone—a measure of what the retailer thinks you’ll pay based on the data it has about you"

"Dynamic pricing, where the same fare or rate shifts for everyone based on supply and demand, also has become common across industries, including airfares and ride-shares."

"retailers could use personal data to set a higher base price for individual consumers, without their knowledge, when algorithms detect things like urgent need (like business travelers who need to fly somewhere right away as I explain below) or high disposable income." 

"companies now have access to much more detailed profiles of customers based on information drawn from across the Web, and pricing algorithms make it easier to adjust prices for individuals based on that data."

"In early 2025, the Federal Trade Commission . . . determined that companies were selling pricing and consumer-data tools to help retailers across various industries set individualized prices"

"Pricing based on ZIP Code, for instance, often correlates with race. What’s more, there are increased privacy and cybersecurity risks when businesses share a lot of customer data drawn from various sources across companies and platforms."

"Maryland in April became the first state to ban food retailers and delivery services from using personal data to set higher prices.

In New York, a law took effect in November 2025 requiring companies to disclose when they use personal data to set prices. State legislators are now pushing to go further, introducing two new bills that would ban the practice outright while preserving loyalty programs and coupons, as well as discounts for veterans and seniors."

"experts suggest a few steps worth trying, especially for big purchases.

—Compare prices across devices or browsers before committing. The differences may be small but it takes minutes and is worth the check.

Use incognito or private browsing mode, which prevents cookies from persisting between sessions and makes it harder for sites to recognize you as a returning visitor"

"Use aggregator sites like Google Flights or Kayak before going directly to a company’s own platform. Searching through an aggregator avoids triggering demand signals on a single site"

"personalized pricing cuts both ways. The same tools that can be used to charge you more when you seem desperate also can be used to offer you a discount when you seem hesitant. 

"If it knows you are a price-sensitive (meaning more elastic demand than average) shopper who compares across sites, it may offer you a better deal" 

Price discrimination is when a business charges different prices to different consumers who have different elasticities of demand (or responsiveness to price changes). If you spend a small share of your income on a good, your demand will be inelastic and if price goes up, quantity demanded will not fall very much.

If you have a short time horizon, like a business traveler, your demand is inelastic and you will get charged a higher price. 

Investopedia has a good article on Price discrimination by Melissa Horton. There are three degrees of price discrimination. This personalized pricing is an example of the first degree case. It says

"this strategy occurs when businesses can accurately determine what each customer will pay for a specific product or service and then sell it for that price." 

Price discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing. Firms that use it increase profits. I show this with a graphical and mathematical example at an earlier post of mine called FTC to Examine if Companies Raise Prices Using Consumer Surveillance. This also shows that quantity is higher when the firm price discriminates, which gets mentioned below as welfare enhancing. Customers with low elasticity will tend to get higher prices than those with high elasticity. My example has two graphs with demand lines that each have a different elasticity of demand.

Here are some examples of how price discrimination can be good:

See A Love Letter to Tyler Cowen by David Henderson. 

"The web has also, notes [Tyler] Cowen, facilitated price discrimination, which typically gives low prices to people with low time values. Since time values and income are highly positively correlated, price discrimination “is usually an egalitarian development.”"  

This happens when leisure travelers have more time to shop around than business travelers, so they have a higher elasticity of demand and they get a lower price. A business traveler who is told by their boss to fly to another city tomorrow does not have much time to shop around. So the airlines know that anyone who is wanting a ticket for flight tomorrow has low elasticity and will get a higher price. 

Also see Price Discrimination by Tejvan Pettinger. A key passage is:

"Price discrimination will enable some firms to stay in business who otherwise would have made a loss. For example price discrimination is important for train companies who offer different prices for peak and off-peak. Without price discrimination, they may go out of business or be unable to provide off-peak services."

Then see See Progressive taxation as price discimination.Tyler Cowen said:

"The point of price discrimination is to sell more goods and services while taking in more profit; the low demanders can pay a lower price, yet the company still sells for a higher price to the high demanders.  If output goes up, social welfare usually does too."

These Americans Are Scrimping to Save Their Summer Vacations

More expensive food, tickets and fuel prompt some families to rethink their plans; ‘everybody has a breaking point’

By Katherine Hamilton of The WSJ. 

I have done several posts on how people have been dealing with the inflation of the last few years as well as how they have been affected. Links to those posts are listed after some excerpts from the article.  Many of the things consumers are doing involve more time and effort doing things they would not normally do. This is one of the costs of inflation, what we have to do to avoid it or mitigate it.

Excerpts:

"This season’s shrinking vacation marks a shift for many Americans, who for years have refused to let inflation and tariffs dampen their travel plans, said Geoff Freeman, chief executive of the U.S. Travel Association. 

“Everyone has a breaking point,” he said. “We’re seeing that with some travelers today.”

Airlines and cruise companies have raised fares to offset surging fuel costs related to the Iran war, though gasoline prices have come down by nearly $1 a gallon in recent weeks, according to AAA. 

Rising costs have prompted 52% of U.S. workers to stay home more this summer, according to a poll of more than 1,000 Americans conducted by Monster, the job platform. For that half of the population, staycations are a way to save on dining out, entertainment and driving, the survey showed.

"More people now say they are willing to forgo an airfare or hotel purchase because the costs are too high, the survey showed."

"All-inclusive deals are one of the main ways travelers on tight budgets are managing to travel internationally, said Shenika Baisley-Woodley, the owner of Divine Dream Destinations Travel. She said she has stopped recommending St. Lucia and St. Martin to many customers, because their resorts have fewer package deals and often don’t include airfare."

"Travelers are turning to advisers more for help finding deals and making their dollar stretch, too. Rather than coming to her with a destination in mind, many of Baisley-Woodley’s clients give her a budget and ask where they can afford to go. She often suggests a cruise because they can include meals and sometimes excursions in one price."

"A lot of travelers are waiting to make last-minute decisions, because of the uncertainty around prices"

Related posts:

New products, smaller packages and value meals are being rolled out to attract inflation-weary customers (2026) 

Where Americans Are Drawing the Line on Price Increases: Shoppers are buying less where prices are rising fastest, showing that inflation isn’t being driven by demand but by companies passing on costs (2026) 

The 2025 Inflation Numbers Are Finally In. Here’s the Good and Bad News: Gasoline prices are down, but rising grocery costs continue to weigh on consumers (2026) 

The Middle Class Is Buckling Under Almost Five Years of Persistent Inflation: Workers growing tired of economy in which everything seems to get more expensive (2025) 

The Lengths Americans Are Willing to Go to Make Every Penny Count: From buying half a cow to watering down soap, people are experimenting with frugality—and it is affecting sales at consumer companies (2025) 

Are you hurting the economy if you bring your lunch to work? (2025)

More people are bringing their lunch to work because restaurant meals have been going up in price. Again, more tasks that people are performing to avoid inflation 

Inflation Has Cooled, but Americans Are Still Seething Over Prices: Many people—though not all—saw wage increases that kept pace with the pandemic’s rapid price hikes, but the psychological toll remains (2024)

Child Care, Rent, Insurance: Where Inflation Hits Hardest Now (2024)

Why do workers dislike inflation? (2024) 

"workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation" They have to bargain with or fight their employers to get a wage increase to match inflation.

Inflation Usually Hits Harder for Poor Families. For a Couple of Years, It Didn’t. New research on how inflation varies between the poor, middle class and rich paints a different picture of poverty and inequality (2024)

The Haves and Have-Nots at the Center of America’s Inflation Fight: There’s a growing gap between Americans who are battered by high inflation and interest rates and those who are actually benefiting (2024)

An Increase in Uninsured Drivers Is Pushing Up Costs for Everyone Else (2024) 

Inflation has caused consumers to choose what they need to cut back on (insurance)

Costco and Sam’s Club Aisles Are Full of Gen Z Shoppers (2024)

Consumers are buying in bulk to save money by getting a lower per unit price

Inflation is mentally taxing (2024)

Inflation is mentally taxing. Dealing with a straitened budget exacts a psychological toll as well as a financial one

Store Brands Are Filling Up More of Your Shopping Cart (2024) 

People are on the look out for cheaper alternatives due to inflation

Consumers Fed Up With Food Costs Are Ditching Big Brands (2024) 

After years of price increases, food companies say more consumers pull back; fast-food chains and snack makers plan new deals and flavors

Are Americans Worrying Too Much About Inflation? Two opposing views (2024)

The Era of One-Stop Grocery Shopping Is Over (2024)

One thing that I always talked about with inflation was that one of its costs was all the things we had to do to avoid it. Consumers are making 8% more trips to different retailers as inflation continues to upend household budgets. They are going to more stores to find lower prices. But it costs time to do that and probably more money on gas.

When workers were paid twice a day and given half-hour shopping breaks (Germany, 1923) 

By mid-1923 workers were being paid as often as three times a day. Their wives would meet them, take the money and rush to the shops to exchange it for goods. However, by this time, more and more often, shops were empty. Storekeepers could not obtain goods or could not do business fast enough to protect their cash receipts. Farmers refused to bring produce into the city in return for worthless paper. The requirements to calculate and recalculate commercial transactions in the billions and trillions made it practically impossible to do business in paper Marks.

The % of 25-54 year-olds employed was 80.2% in June after being 80.8% in May; Average hours worked was unchanged at 34.3

One weakness of the unemployment rate is that if people drop out of the labor force they cannot be counted as an unemployed person and the unemployment rate goes down. They are no longer actively seeking work and it might be because they are discouraged workers. The lower unemployment rate can be misleading in this case. People dropping out of the labor force might indicate a weak labor market.

We could look at the employment to population ratio instead, since that includes those not in the labor force. But that includes everyone over 16 and that means that senior citizens are in the group but many of them have retired. The more that retire, the lower this ratio would be and that might be misleading. It would not necessarily mean the labor market is weak.

But we have this ratio for people age 25-54 (which also eliminates many college age people who might not be looking for work).

It was 80.6% in Jan. 2020 and 69.6% in April 2020.  Click here to see the BLS data. Here is what it was for each of the last 4 years

2022) 79.883% 

2023) 80.683%

2024) 80.717%

2025) 80.600% (just an 11 month average due to no data for October instead of 12)

 

There have been only 5 months since April 2001 when the % of 25-54 year-olds employed was as high as 80.9%.

The last time before now that it dropped by at least 0.6 was during Covid in 1920. It fell from 80.4% in Feb. 2020 to 79.4% in March and then fell to 69.6% in April. But it started rising after that.

The last time before Covid was in Jan. of 2009. It was 77.6% in Dec. 2008 and fell to 77.0%.

Outside of Covid, the largest one month decline since 1948 is 0.7 which has happened 4 times, the last was in 1960. A 0.6 drop has happened 8 times outside of Covid.

The unemployment rate was 4.2% in June after being 4.3% in May. Click here to go to that data. Here is what it was for each of the last 4 years. 

2022) 3.6%

2023) 3.6%

2024) 4.0%

2025) 4.3%

Labor Force participation fell to 61.548 % from 61.834%. Here is what it was for each of the last 4 years 

 

2022) 62.2%

2023) 62.6%

2024) 62.6%

2025) 62.4%

 

The % of the adult population employed fell to 58.969% from 59.178% (that is people 16 years old and older).  Here is what it was for each of the last 4 years 

 

2022) 60.0%

2023) 60.3%

2024) 60.1%

2025) 59.7%

Here is the timeline graph of the percentage of 25-54 year olds employed since 2016.

Now since 1948.  

 

Now hours worked. This comes from the St. Louis FED. See Average Weekly Hours of All Employees, Total Private. It was 34.3 in June and 34.3 in May. Shaded areas indicate U.S. recessions. 

 

Related posts: 

This one has to do with the difference between two employment surveys. See The economy added 339,000 jobs in May according to the establishment survey but the household survey showed a loss of 310,000 and a rise in the unemployment rate from 2023. 

"The reason for the discrepancy is that there are two surveys. The establishment survey is used for the Labor Department's monthly jobs report. They contact businesses for this survey. The household survey is used to put together the unemployment rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics contacts households for this one."

See also Comparing employment from the BLS household and payroll surveys from the BLS.

Click here for a good Twitter thread on the jobs report and wages by Harvard professor Jason Furman. 

See U.S. job creation cools in June with payrolls growth of just 57,000; unemployment rate at 4.2% by Jeff Cox of CNBC. 

Average U.S. real income is 46 times higher than it was in 1774

See Happy Birthday, USA economist Jeremy Horpedahl.

"For America’s 250th birthday, my present to all of you is this chart showing our economic history. Average income in the US has increased dramatically since the country was founded. This chart attempts to provide one, continuous series, using the best available income data and inflation adjustments (well, mostly continuous — before 1790 there are just a few estimates). Sources are listed at the bottom of the chart. The y-axis is a log scale." 

 

Related posts:

The World Isn’t Actually Going to Hell in a Handbasket: Human beings have been complaining about a moral decline since, well, forever (2024) 

There is still reason to hope despite the fact that more than three-quarters of Americans say the United States is headed in the wrong direction (2024)

We are privileged to live in an age of medical miracles that increase human welfare (as the share of the world’s people living in extreme poverty has fallen) (2023) 

Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2020) 

The World Is Getting Quietly, Relentlessly Better (2019)

This Has Been the Best Year Ever (2019)

Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History (2018)

The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it (2018)

How Much Has Life Expectancy Improved?  (2018)

Some Good Economic News (2013)

Pre-market societies could sometimes have alot of violence

Non-capitalist or pre-capitalist societies can have quite a bit of violence. The first quote comes from The Making of Economic Society, 13e by Robert L. Heilbroner and William Milberg.

"It is difficult for us to reconstruct the violent tenor of much of feudal life, but one investigator has provided a statistic that may serve to make the point: Among the sons of English dukes, 46 percent of those born between 1330 and 1479 died violent deaths. Their life expectancy when violent death was excluded was 31 years; when violent death was included, it was but 24 years."

That came from T. H. Hollingsworth, “A Demographic Study of the British Ducal Families,” Population Studies, XI (1957–58). Imagine if someone told you that 46% of the sons of senators or Fortune 500 CEOs were going to die violently over the next 150 years.

Now there is a study out called "The Better Angels of Their Nature: Declining Violence through Time among Prehispanic Farmers of the Pueblo Southwest", American Antiquity, Volume 79, Number 3 / July 2014. See The Most Violent Era In America Was Before Europeans Arrived. It discusses some periods when native American life was quite violent. Here are some excerpts:

"Writing in the journal American Antiquity, Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler and colleagues document how nearly 90 percent of human remains from that period had trauma from blows to either their heads or parts of their arms.

"If we're identifying that much trauma, many were dying a violent death," said Kohler. The study also offers new clues to the mysterious depopulation of the northern Southwest, from a population of about 40,000 people in the mid-1200s to 0 in 30 years."

"It wasn't just violent deaths that poke holes in the harmony with the land and each other myth. A paper in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the Southwest also had a baby boom between 500 and 1300 that likely exceeded any population spurt on earth today. The northern Rio Grande also experienced population booms but the central Mesa Verde got more violent while the northern Rio Grande was less so.

Kohler has conjectures on why. Social structures among people in the northern Rio Grande changed so that they identified less with their kin and more with the larger pueblo and specific organizations that span many pueblos, such as medicine societies. The Rio Grande also had more commercial exchanges where craft specialists provided people both in the pueblo, and outsiders, specific things they needed, such as obsidian arrow points.

But in the central Mesa Verde, there was less specialization.

"When you don't have specialization in societies, there's a sense in which everybody is a competitor because everybody is doing the same thing," said Kohler. But with specialization, people are more dependent on each other and more reluctant to do harm."

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