Updated Feb/25/2023 There are only two possible ways to get wealth inequality: some people either make more or they take more. Making is positive sum creation and taking is zero-sum redistribution at best or destructive at worst. Plus there are…
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The Economics of International Trade Textbook Chapters
I am teaching International Trade this semester and there are two models of trade that are important to teach, but there weren’t any resources that teach all the main intuitions without excessive complexity so I wrote my own “textbook” chapters…
Posted in Medianism
Is Wokeism bringing back a colorblind aristocratic class consciousness?
Updated March 29, 2023 Matt Yglesias argues that the old British class system had a lot of features that were eerily similar to recent trends in political correctness. For example, educational institutions, particularly at elite levels, have embraced DEI, but…
Posted in Discrimination, Philosophy and ethics
There was no mass democracy before the printing press
In 1900, how many nations were democracies? 0%? 5%? 15%? 30? The correct answer is 0% of nations were democratic in 1900 according to our current standards of democracy. This is because there had never been any sovereign…
Posted in Development, Public Finance
Anarchy, State, and Capitalism
Anarchy is the absence of central government and there are two kinds of definitions. A society without a large-scale government hierarchy that has a monopoly on legitimate force. By this definition, most tribal foraging societies and other small-scale societies have…
Yuval Noah Harari says a simple story can save the planet
NYT: It’s important to have human enemies in order to have a catchy story. With climate change, you don’t. Our minds didn’t evolve for this kind of story. When we evolved as hunter-gatherers, it was never the case that we…
Posted in Environment
You can’t get no satisfaction from reducing your own personal carbon footprint.
Almost all moral reasoning concerns ideas about how we treat one another (including other sentient beings). Hence, what is moral depends upon what other people do. Driving on the right side of a busy highway is moral (and driving on…
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