They use less resources in part because they have a smaller income (use of energy is a a positive function of the income). But it is not evident that they are more efficient (from the article - "In the Brazilian favelas where electricity is stolen and therefore free, people leave their lights on all day).

A positive side of most slums is that the streets are so narrow that you cannot drive a car through them, only walk, ride a bike or a motorcycle. The streets are narrow because it was a more efficient use of the land, but now the resident druglords like this “feature” because it makes some areas of the slum inaccessible to police cars. And crime is a big problem in slums, and it spreads to the streets surrounding it.

If more crime is a trade-off to a little less of CO2 emission of cars, I choose more emissions and less crime. But this is only my personal preference.

Models are created not to be exact replicas of the realities, but because they are easier to understand and manipulate than the reality - think of a car model, opposed to a car. From these models, we derive logic conclusions that are valid in reality . Eg: ceteris paribus, a reduction in the quantity of a good suplied to a market will make the price increase, for any quantity demanded.

I would say that most microeconomic models I have studied are consistent and "good enough". If you study most modern management theories, microeconomics is a very important foundation.

Macroeconomy, on the other hand, is still a field where the models are still not good enough, an there are a lot of changes in each decade or so. For instance, the Nobel Award for Stiglitz et ali, for the models that take in account Information asymmetry, was awarded in 2001!

Think of economic models as "physics", and applied economics (what the Fed or the government does) as "engineering". If an engineer builds a bridge and it colapses, nobody would claim that Newton or the gravity theory was wrong.

Apple is a great company, that makes great products. In the personal computer market, it is the underdog, and leaves the system pretty open for the user. Apple has developed Mobile Me, but it is not a vital part of the operating system, and I don't need to pay a monthly fee to Apple just to use my computer. The iPod is also pretty cool, because, back in the day, Apple had to compete in a crowded market to sell it.

However, when it comes to the iPhone and now, the iPad, things are different. The iPhone is not the dominant player in the smartphone market (Nokia still is), but Apple is the company that is growing at (much) bigger rates than the rest of the market, and is on the way to become the predominant player. With such a loyal following in the smartphone market, Apple is locking the iPhone to milk more money from its costumers.

I am out of this game. For S$ 30 I bought from my local carrier a Nokia phone with a System 60 3rd Edition, while the iPhone 3GS would cost me S$ 900 (most people prefer to switch to a more expensive monthly plan, and pay a fraction of this price). To compete with locked down device with a price of S$ 50, I would pay more for an open system, not for a locked-down iPhone. And the same reasoning goes for the comparison between the Kindle and the iPad.

You should a thing or two about Maltus, whose ideas are very similar to yours.

Human population will someday peak (we are not growing as fast as we have grown in the past), but starvation or war won`t necessarily be the cause. The productivity on agriculture is rising day after day, and I believe people in China (or India, or whatever) are rational, and will not have as many children as our parents or grandparents.

And to think only of the United States, the growth rate of the population is 0,9% per year, but the natural growth (which don`t consider migration) is only 0,6%.

It was pretty scaring in Rio de Janeiro. Traffic lights were gonne, and today I learned that the police had some work to do in a couple neighbourhoods. Subway and trains stopped. I was at home, but suddenly all my food in the refrigerator could spoil, and I had no air conditioning in a freaking hot night. Landline phones were gone, too. The mobile phone from TIM network was not working, but I could make some calls from a phone from Claro (after some atempts). Surprinsingly, I could use use a HSDPA modem and a notebook to have access to the internet. Then I realized it was not happening only in Rio or other cities, but the lights had gone out in half of the country.