Made Glorious Summer by Economics

This crappy weather calls for something fun, which is why I'll be posting several items over the next few days about my favorite social science. The first is an interview of Paul Romer by Reason Magazine, a sort of libertarian thing that I don't read much. I'll explain my distrust of libertarianism later.

For now, enjoy the awesome interview with Paul Romer. My favorite part (not representative of the rest):

Romer: On any conceivable horizon -- I’ll say until about 5 billion years from now, when the sun explodes -- we’re not going to run out of discoveries. Just ask how many things we could make by taking the elements from the periodic table and mixing them together. There’s a simple mathematical calculation: It’s 10 followed by 30 zeros. In contrast, 10 followed by 19 zeros is about how much time has elapsed since the universe was created.