Efficiency vs. Equality

"Liberal economic institutions have historically played a larger role in promoting peace than liberal..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:27:00 +0200

“Liberal economic institutions have historically played a larger role in promoting peace than liberal political institutions. During the nineteenth-century era of globalization, free trade promoted peace whereas democracy promoted conflict.”

- Patrick J. McDonald in “The Invisible Hand of Peace”

(via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:00:46 +0200

(via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

"I realize that if you ask people to account for “facts”, they usually spend more time..."

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:49:51 +0200

“I realize that if you ask people to account for “facts”, they usually spend more time finding reasons for them than finding out whether they are true. They ignore the whats and expatiate on the whys. They skip over the facts but carefully deduce inferences.”

- Michel de Montaigne in Les Essais de messire Michel, seigneur de Montaigne, Book II (1580)

(via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:41:47 +0200

(via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

"Tanzi argues that in countries where interpersonal relations are relevant in activating economic..."

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:33:48 +0200

“Tanzi argues that in countries where interpersonal relations are relevant in activating economic transactions, the only way to deter corruption is to reduce significantly the scale of public intervention. This line of analysis seems to be particularly relevant when one considers the possibility of collusive agreements between organized crime and the elected members of the public administration. […] Most scholar think that by now the greatest business of the Sicilian mafia is precisely that of appropriating the different sources of public expenditures and of organizing frauds against the local, national and European Community schemes of subsidization.”

- Gianluca Fiorentini and Sam Peltzman in “The Economics of Organized Crime”

"Irrespective of the analogy chosen to describe organised crime [as firm or as government], its..."

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:28:00 +0200

“Irrespective of the analogy chosen to describe organised crime [as firm or as government], its investment decisions strictly depend on the role played by the legal government as law-enforcer and law-maker. In this respect, the legal government’s definition of the illegal markets, and also its choice of regulation in the legal markets and of fiscal legislation, can be regarded as the most important factors in determining the areas in which the criminal organisations choose to allocate their resources.”

- Gianluca Fiorentini and Sam Peltzman in “The Economics of Organized Crime”

(via Toothpaste For Dinner - 2,600 comics by Drew - Updates...

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:24:53 +0200

(via Toothpaste For Dinner - 2,600 comics by Drew - Updates daily at midnight)

"High-skill immigrants innovate, patent and start new firms at higher rates than natives. At least..."

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:21:43 +0100

“High-skill immigrants innovate, patent and start new firms at higher rates than natives. At least one-quarter of the new firms in technology and science fields, from software and semiconductors to biotech, are founded by immigrants. In Silicon Valley, more than half of the high-tech start-ups were founded by immigrants.”

- Alex Tabarrok - Launching The Innovation Renaissance

"It’s interesting that it’s more than a decade since Napster, and the music industry..."

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:02:00 +0100

“It’s interesting that it’s more than a decade since Napster, and the music industry hasn’t gone bust yet. It’s almost like P2P cannot destroy the main music industry.”

- It’s interesting that it’s more than a decade since Napster, and the music indus… | Hacker News

Profiles in Liberty: Henderson Part I of III (by...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:51:29 +0100

Profiles in Liberty: Henderson Part I of III (by ProfilesInLiberty)

Christopher Hitchens - In Defense Of Unpopular Speech (by...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:47:56 +0100

Christopher Hitchens - In Defense Of Unpopular Speech (by LibertyPen)

Is Harrisburg’s Nightmare America’s Future? (by...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:09:53 +0100

Is Harrisburg’s Nightmare America’s Future? (by ReasonTV)

laliberty: Developing Self-Reliance (1951) Cheesy but earnest...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:23:58 +0100

laliberty:

Developing Self-Reliance (1951)

Cheesy but earnest film for youngsters (via AoM).

The four principles in the video:

Assume Responsibility

Be Informed

Know Where You’re Going

Make Your Own Decisions

Solid advice for all ages.

I have a bad feeling about this - raganwald's posterous

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:38:00 +0100

I have a bad feeling about this - raganwald's posterous:

They tell us that only a “managed economy” for intellectual “property” will preserve jobs, and that more “freedom” will actually lead to slavery, that roving bands of pirates are living it up like drug barons on movie downloads. They explain how they need the senate to grant them special, temporary powers to download the contents of your phone or laptop when you cross the border, they explain why they need to send violent special forces police to arrest and extradite the owners of a file downloading business, they explain why they need to monitor the entire world’s tweets looking for jokes in poor taste.

We are, I think, at the beginning of Act III. Some of you will agree with me that surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative in extreme circumstances. But others will climb into their trusty ships and continue the fight, harassing and wounding the entrenched interests until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own corruption. The future of our economy really does depend on the rebels succeeding. At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our economy has been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies.

More jobs and businesses have been created by VCRs than destroyed by them. More jobs and businesses have been created by the breakup of AT&T than destroyed by it. More jobs and businesses have been created by the decline of IBM than lost in Armonk. More jobs and businesses have been created by the stagnation of Microsoft than lost in Redmond. And it will be the same with the RIAA, the MPAA, Intellectual Ventures, and everyone else scheming to enthral the people with digital “rights” management and criminal prosecution of “file sharing.” In the destruction of the monopolization of ideas, lies the seeds of another revolution, one that will bring wealth, freedom, and jobs.

Rebels, may the force be with you. Always.

Ask the Expert: David Henderson (by HooverInstitution) Great...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:20:49 +0100

Ask the Expert: David Henderson (by HooverInstitution)

Great talk by David Henderson:

Do you know were the term Dismal Science really come from?
Would you change your life with that of John D. Rockefeller 100 years ago?

"Thrun was eloquent on the subject of how he realized that he had been running “weeder” classes,..."

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:29:55 +0100

“Thrun was eloquent on the subject of how he realized that he had been running “weeder” classes, designed to be tough and make students fail and make himself, the professor, look good. Going forwards, he said, he wanted to learn from Khan Academy and build courses designed to make as many students as possible succeed — by revisiting classes and tests as many times as necessary until they really master the material.”

- Udacity — Marginal Revolution

The last sentence is important. You don’t have to make super-easy courses to get people passed. Give them enough time and feedback and they will learn your material over time.

111 books in 2011: #105/111: change.edu

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:24:44 +0100

111 books in 2011: #105/111: change.edu:

111in2011:

How does the future market of higher education looks like? Andrew Rosen, the CEO of Kaplan, presents his ideas and takes a look in the past of higher education in the USA. At the beginning there were colleges, like the Harvard College. Interestingly, there isn’t much known about John Harvard. The most important thing was that he donated his library and half of his money after his dead to the nearby college.

At this time, Harvard was a college where young men could learn about science and the arts. Most, didn’t graduate. It was rather so that they stayed two years there and learned about different subjects. Other universities like Brown or Princeton had a similar history. They play be the same rules. Tons of money, highly prestigious, strong in research. Rosen says they use the Ivy-League Playbook.

The next higher education institutions came later when people found out that American agriculture is much less efficient that European because the lack of knowledge. This lead to land-grant colleges which provided knowledge for farmers. The older colleges were strictly against this type of colleges because it would undermine the spirit of higher education. Today, some of those land-grant colleges evolved into Cornell University or the MIT.

A more modern form of these land-grant colleges are community colleges. The offer education for everybody, for people who aren’t “college material”, who want to improve their skills or who want to learn something new. These colleges play be the All-Access Playbook.

If we move a bit in time a new form of higher education institutes evolves. Like the Kaplan University or the University of Phoenix. These institutions focus on learning and a lead like a company. Basicially they are like All-Access institutions but a bit more advanced. This is the For-Profit Playbook.

Before we go future playbook, I will show why Rosen made this distinction. Lots of decent institutions try to play the Ivy-League Playbook which is called Harvard-envy. Instead of spending money on the education of their students, they spend their money on new buildings or try to buy famous professors. They try to build up their prestige.

A nice example is the High Point University that spend tons of money in building a prestige luxury resort for students. That’s nice, sure but you can’t argue that these investments are necessary for better learning.

The future playbook is the Learning Playbook. Rosen shows what could be and encourages institutions to try to become a learning institution instead of accumulating more prestige. The Learning Playbook focuses totally on student’s learning. It will use modern technology, use new scientific findings to improve the learning. Learning will become more individualist, more mobile and more global.

Andrew Rosen did a great job in presenting the history of higher-education in the US and differentiating it. I don’t know if the Learning Playbook will be so institutionalized because we saw more and more small players and micro education platforms like skillshare.com. But of course, it’s uncertain but it would be nice if he included that. Great book!

"As with technology, you have to be able to do more with less. Alternative energy has to be cheaper...."

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:10:49 +0100

“As with technology, you have to be able to do more with less. Alternative energy has to be cheaper. And until it is cheaper, it’s going to be very hard to get it to work. If you had Amazon as a computer company- if you had said in ‘96, “Yeah it’s gonna cost twice as much to buy a book and it’ll take you 6 months to get it, but we’re going to get subsidies that are really big and that will make the business work and that’s why you should invest.” That would be quite difficult to work.”

- Peter Thiel at Singularity Summit

(via Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust | Hacker News)

Yeah, that’s why reading comments on reason is nearly...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:59:35 +0100

Yeah, that’s why reading comments on reason is nearly always educating!

self-ownership: It always frustrates me when Obama is on TV so passionately talking...

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:09:23 +0100

self-ownership: It always frustrates me when Obama is on TV so passionately talking...:

self-ownership:

It always frustrates me when Obama is on TV so passionately talking about how much he cares about small businesses. He seems so genuine about creating an economic environment to help people start their own business and people actually believe it.

More regulations and red tape is not the way to help someone create a business. THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT.

Leave people alone. Nobody forced these people to make these websites or gave them taxpayer money to do so. Entrepreneurs saw a business opportunity for online specialty vendors and other entrepreneurs saw an outlet to sell their goods. Everyone’s happy!

If you want to create an economic environment that will help create economic growth, stop trying.