Economics
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On sex work, reparations, a global wealth tax, and the connection between the three.
Many people are upset that Amnesty International finally came out in favor of decriminalizing sex work. Not me. I think decriminalizing sex work is a step in the right direction. Sex workers’ lives are often miserable. Their underground status denies them police protection; instead, they are often actively abused by the police. The philosophical rationale for…
a good idea in theory, abuse of power, Amnesty International, amphetamines, arguments against legalizing drugs, Ayn Rand, Behind every great fortune there is a crime, black market heroin is unsafe, childhood nutrition, communism, cotton, creepy parallel between gene duplication and oppression, decriminalization, decriminalized prostitution, decriminalized sex work, economic reparations, empirical evidence, feminism, feminist, free school breakfasts, free school lunches, global wealth tax, guaranteed income, heroin, heroin overdoses, history of United States, how did the United States become a superpower, how high would the wealth tax need to be to guanantee everyone a subsistence income, how much money do people need to live, human dignity, human rights trading cards, immigration, immigration laws, income inequality, inequality, justice, land entitlement, legalized prostitution, legalized sex work, link between current wealth and slavery, Lydia Cacho, misogynistic culture, misogynists, misogyny, original sin, police abuse, poverty, Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function, price and demand, price equilibrium, prostitution, quality control, racist home loans, racist lending policy, reparations, school funding, selling organs, sex slavery, sex work, slavery, Slavery Inc, supply and demand, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, United States, violence in Mexico, War on Drugs, War on Drugs harms Mexico, wealth begets wealth, wealth inequality, wealth tax, welfare, where did United States wealth come from, which laws are fair, which laws are just, who should receive reparations, why are drugs illegal
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On slow driving as protest.
My apologies to anyone who has been stuck driving behind me recently. I’ve been driving very slowly. As in, actually following traffic laws. Whereas most people drive between one and fifteen miles per hour over the posted speed limit, I’ve been driving about two miles per hour below posted speed limits. It can be frustrating. …
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On growing up poor, and hamsters.
I recently read a cute article by Emily Underwood, “How to tell if your hamster is happy.” There is an easy answer, too. The hamsters in question are research animals, so the answer is, “No, they probably are not.” Of all the research animals I’ve interacted with, the only one that seemed happy was the narcoleptic…
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On the mortgage crisis and buffoonish, unethical prosecution.
…of course, despite the title of this post, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office called the jury’s verdict exonerating Abacus bank “disappointing.” But that’s getting ahead of the story. One of the most disheartening things you’ll learn if you read Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia is that, of all the gigantic banks that perpetrated fraud before, during,…
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On death (by gun violence) and taxes (progressive ones).
Devone Boggan’s opinion piece in the New York Times, which discusses a gun violence reduction program where counselors work with & pay at-risk young people to help them stay out of trouble, is lovely. Well worth reading, especially to get a sense of the numbers: these young men are being given such small amounts of…
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On fire myths and the origin of knowledge
EDIT 5/4/2018: a finished essay based on this research was published here. If you’re writing about conflicts between religious and scientific worldviews, there is absolutely no reason why you’d be forced to write about fire. But, c’mon… fire is cool. Eventually you probably would. While researching myths about the origin of fire, I realized that…
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On Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth (until devolving into senseless tangents about cash transfers as medicine, the U.S. criminal justice system, work as exercise, and flawed science).
As long as you think feeling angry is fun (does it say awful things about my personality that I do?), Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth is a fun little book. Unlike Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Tirado’s main focus isn’t analyzing why people are poor — she states, bluntly and in my opinion correctly, that the…
academic doublethink, academic science, Alia Crum, An Investigation of Exercise and the Placebo Effect, at-will employment, bizarre data interpretation, court fees, Dixie Stanforth, economic injustice, Ellen Langer, Emily Willingham, Evil Dave versus Regular Dave, Exercise and the Placebo Effect, flawed science, Hand to Mouth, hotel cleaning as exercise, John Oliver, Linda Tirado, low-wage work, Mindset matters, municipal fees, On the Run, overcriminalization, police abuses, poverty, psychology, replication crisis, scientific studies that can’t be replicated, speeding, The New Jim Crow, Tirado, traffic laws, Walter Scott, work as exercise, worker protections -
On a global wealth tax, automation, and human trafficking.
If you wanted a super-brief summary of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century (which I’ve discussed in a previous essay, here), it’d probably be: “Piketty presents extensive historical data to demonstrate why we ought to have a global wealth tax, followed by a brief, snappy, depressing summary of why we won’t have one anytime…
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On how there isn’t enough lyrical writing about insurance … and taxation in The Pale King.
There’s a little bit about insurance in my novel. Not much. Just enough to get people excited. But there used to be more. Honestly, I think it’s a shame there’s so little lyrical writing about insurance out there in popular literature. Insurance is fascinating. A good insurance product is a beautiful thing. Which, right. Let…
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On cheating in school.
Find the first essay I wrote about this topic here. I have a little bit more to write about McBrayer’s “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts” editorial. But this’ll be the end of it, I swear! It’s just that I didn’t manage to cram anything in as a response to this passage:…
Frank Brown Cloud 