Marginal Revolution and the Martial Arts

It surely ranks high in the annals of the improbable that the August 2011 issue of Black Belt: The World’s Leading Magazine of Martial Arts contains an article (not online) in which your loyal authors are featured. Mark Hatmaker, writes:

Image: Martial monk

“I’ll borrow the phrase “marginal revolution,” a term coined by economists Tyler Cowen and Alexander Tabarrok. This esteemed duo defines marginal revolution as the tiny changes that can be made to a system that result in large changes at the end point–gold vs. silver, for example. These tweaks, these marginal improvements, are what steadily accrue into large rewards.

…Once you gain a fundamental level of skill and conditioning, you must make tweaks to nudge your progress upward. As a marginal revolutionary, you must recognize that small is fine, that shaving off one-tenth of a second can be an eternity and that one-eighth of an inch can be a great distance. Every gain is important, no matter how small.

The picture is from the Shaolin Temple. Here are previous MR posts on Kung Fu.

Hat tip to Carl Close.

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