economics
-
On government intrusion and addiction.
To beat the opiate epidemic, we need strong communities. But prosecutors’ reliance on police informants destroys communities.
AA, addiction, Akhil Reed Amar, ants on the melon, Bill of Rights, constitution, Cor Urbis, creative writing, Daniel Dennett, death before dishonor, economics, emotion, evolution of emotion, exclusionary rule, FBI, Fourth Amendment, freedom of religion, game theory, Homo economicus, human evolution, jailhouse tattoos, Jeremy Waldron, mandatory minimums, mass incarceration, mosque, NA, opiate epidemic, poetry, poetry in jail, police, police informants, policing, prison, prisoners’ dilemma, privacy, protection, rats, recovery, repeated prisoners’ dilemma, rights, search, signaling, snooping, teaching writing in jail, tip, Virginia Adair, War on Drugs
-
On fairness (and how we treat the utility monster).
How do you measure someone’s capacity for joy? And what does that say about our opiate epidemic?
animal welfare, Betham, competetive equilibrium, distribution of resources, distribution of wealth, economics, equality, evolution, fairness, heroin, heroin epidemic, human evolution, mass incarceration, Milton Friedman, moral philosophy, natural selection, negative externalities, opiate abuse, opiate epidemic, opportunity, Pareto optimal, Pareto optimality, political philosophy, survival of the fittest, tax policy, utilitarian, utilitarianism, utility monster, utility theory, War on Drugs
-
On wasted ingenuity.
Everyone strives, but we force some to waste their efforts reinventing the wheel – or the water heater, or the piano, or…
Albany, Attica, automation, Blood in the Water, capitalism, childhood trauma, criminal justice, Deirdre N McCloskey, Demetrius Cunningham, economics, Growth Not Forced Equality Saves the Poor, Heather Anne Thompson, imprisonment, injustice, jail, Learning to Hear on a Cardboard Piano, Lori Milks, New Yorker, one sheet per day, poverty, prison, prison writing, punishment, punitive justice
-
On Robert Gordon’s ‘The Rise and Fall of American Growth.’
What if technological innovations are a cause of, not a solution to, our post-1970s economic morass?
Amazon, artificial intelligence, automation, CAFO, clean water, concentration of wealth, delivery drones, distribution of wealth, driverless cars, economics, electric appliances, factory farming, feminism, future technologies, GDP, GDP is not an effective measure of quality of life, GDP undercounts the value of caregiving, guaranteed basic income, Impossible Foods, increasing gains to capital, invention, labor versus capital, negative tax, no one’s choices should be curtailed because of gender, parenting, Pat Brown, pessimism, poverty causes stress, productivity, quality of life, reparations, Rise and Fall of American Growth, Robert Gordon, robotics, slow growth, social breakdown, Steven Rattner, technological progress, the value of a stay-at-home parent, wealth tax, William D. Nordhaus, women’s work has been historically undervalued
-
On bitcoins and privacy.
Bitcoins: either I or other people were suffering from some fundamental misunderstandings.
antibiotic resistance, antibiotics, Bitcoins, black markets, blockchain, Canadian pharmaceuticals, civil liberties, cost of medicine, cost of prescription drugs in the U.S., drugs, economics, freedom of speech, GHB, gun control, healthcare spending in the U.S., how anonymous are bitcoins?, how could the government protect your property rights if they don’t know what you own, how much computer power would it take for someone to steal your bitcoins?, imported pharmaceuticals, John Bohannon, law enforcement, legalized drugs, legalizing drugs, monetary policy, money supply, opiate abuse, ownership, ownership by majority vote, policing, prescription drugs, privacy, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, senseless regulation, Shadow, ShadowCash, speculation, The Silk Road, transaction log, War on Drugs, wealth, what makes a law just
-
On productivity, and the risk of accidentally making the world worse when we’re trying to make it better.
If efficiency were all we were after, why bother with human consumers? Robots could grow the food, and gobble it all up, too.
-
On Akerlof & Shiller’s ‘Phishing for Phools’ and the increasing heterogeneity of the United States.
People aren’t exactly the same everywhere, but we’re all suckers. And huckersters know.
-
On medical spending.
We spend huge amounts on medical care in the U.S., but cheaper interventions would improve people’s lives more.
-
On proving that elections will make you miserable.
Somehow I’d deluded myself into thinking that typing this essay would make me happy. I see now that I was wrong.
-
On crashing waves of violence and Paul Kingsnorth’s ‘The Wake.’
People are raving about the new film “Racing Extinction.” What might impending extinction feel like for those last few survivors?
ancient humans, Beowulf, CK Scott Moncrieff, distribution of wealth, economics, extinction, Homo sapiens, human evolution, inequality, land holdings, land rights, Marcel Proust, mass extinction, Neanderthals, Norman Invasion, Old English, Paul Kingsnorth, Sapiens, Seamus Heaney, Stonehenge, The Wake, Translation, wealth, Yuval Noah Harari
Frank Brown Cloud 