Here is a list of all my public writings and videos (from before February 2025).
If you want to do a dialogue with me, but I didn't check your name, just send me a message instead. Ask for what you want!
If the decision is bad for the voters, the they will be replaced in the next election.
The central thesis of my post is that individual voters are not individually incentivized to vote well. For this reason, bad decisions by politicians do not necessarily result in them getting replaced in subsequent elections. Politicians are removed for violating mass stated preferences, which differ from good policy in predictable directions.
You awknowledge that learning about economics has costs. The same can be said about arts, literature, physics, social sciences, or ecology. It is not possible for everyone to learn all these subjects, but it is possible to select a few of our best to learn about them. The tragedy of commons would happen if everyone would need to learn about boring (for them) subjects for years.
Yes. I used economics in this post because it could perform double-duty, since this post also discusses moral hazard. The principle applies for foreign affairs, law, etc.
My favorite answer to "why 'they' didn't just print more money until everyone had enough" is that after the USA left the gold standard in 1971, the US government really did just print more money.
Meanwhile, >50% of the federal budget goes to healthcare and pensions. In this way, the US government kind of is just printing money until everyone has enough. In this way, the US government is doing what voters demand.
This is among my top two favorite things that you have written.
My understanding is that Mormons banned polygamy because the US government was cracking down on polygamy around that time. Their choice was to change their doctrine or be destroyed by the State, and they chose to change their doctrine.
I'm glad someone likes the name. Our intuitions seem to differ on this one. For me, "infectiousness" implies self-replication. Cost disease is more like cardiovascular disease.
What makes the term "cost disease" unintuitive to me is that calling cost disease a "disease" implies that it's a bad thing. But wages increasing due to increase productivity of labor is mostly a good thing. I mean, it's bad for people who want to hire the labor that didn't increase in productivity (and people who buy from them, etcetera). But it's good for basically everyone else, especially the people whose wages increased. It's only bad for non-working owners of capital in stagnant industries. I feel like the term was coined by an aristocrat.
First of all, thank you for the constructive comment.
The reason I consider journalism propaganda isn't that it's false; it's because of where the data comes from. In my experience, journalism is largely derived from press releases and similar information sources. In the extreme case, an article is effectively written by a corporation, and then laundered by a journalist. I agree that news in the AP and Reuters tends to be factually true, but what matters to me is the sampling bias caused by the economics of how they get their information.
I also agree that "a solid understanding of how wars start and progress based on many detailed examples will help us prepare and react sensibly when that happens". However, I haven't gotten this from reading the news. I've gotten this from reading history, and watching explanations by specialists such as Perun.
Thank you for filling in so many historical details.
If you really want to be "traditional" (rather than "culty" or "unchurched"), and move to Utah, arguably you should convert to Mormonism?! Arguably?
I find this hot take hilarious.
Please be polite or I will block you from commenting on my posts.
The last time I saw someone unconscious on the side of the road with a concussion due to a bicycle crash, there was bystander already attempting to render aid. I stopped to help anyway, and discovered that the bystander in question had failed both to render first aid and to call 911. In this situation, I think I did the right thing getting involved. I produced a trivially observable net positive effect.
That same year, I visited a protest against the current war in the Middle East, and tried talking to the participants. I left with the impression that their desire to act collectively and rebelliously for a righteous cause exceeded their curiosity to find out whether the cause was indeed righteous. This is a result of selection effects. The situation was morally complicated, but the people who protest are angry about it, and to be angry about it, they had to believe the situation was morally simple.
To put things another way, if you're in a situation that 10 people know about, then there's a good chance nobody is doing anything about it. However, if 10,000,000 people know about a situation, then it's statistically impossible that nobody is doing anything about it.
This is so true. In my experience, the reasons people give for doing things are mostly useful for determining how someone wants to be perceived. Otherwise, I dismiss them as fake and made-up on the spot.