Gaby Del Valle investigated multilevel marketing companies and found. According to the Direct Selling Association, the multilevel marketing (MLM) industry’s lobbying arm, one in six American households is involved in the industry. Most MLM salespeople don’t make a ton of money —…
Blog Archives
Milton Friedman was not a rational actor
The rational-actor paradigm came to dominate economic thinking in the mid-20th century. It assumes that people are selfish and try to rationally maximize their self-interest without regard for the effects on people around them. Critics sometimes call it the rat-actor…
Posted in Medianism
Maurice Hilleman, millionaire superhero
Almost nobody has heard of Maurice Hilleman, but everyone should know his name. As Radiolab said, “his work is estimated to save about 8 million lives a year… he was the greatest scientist of the 20th century… We live longer…
Posted in Millionaire Superheroes
Interest rates are low because of demographic changes and rising corporate power
Greg Mankiw wrote in the NYT about the puzzle of persistently low interest rates. Interest rates have been lower than ever before in history and they have been very low for decades so low interest rates seems to be the…
Posted in Macro, Managerial Micro
How many Americans have had Covid-19? The answer explains why the infection rate will have to start dropping in the coming weeks.
As of yesterday 14.76million Americans had had Covid-19 as confirmed by testing and the numbers continue to spike due to holiday gatherings. That is only four percent of all Americans who have been confirmed to have had Covid-19 according to…
Posted in Health
Guns, Toilets, and Steel: Different customs regarding humanure explain a lot of the differences in economic development.
The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins, is a pioneering guide for people who want a simple composting toilet system. I have used toilets that were inspired by the Handbook both in Guatemala and at a community a couple hours drive…
Posted in Development
Crime is down. Police brutality is down. Racist policing is down. Why do most Americans believe the opposite?
Crime has been dropping for three decades straight now, but about 60-70% of Americans have been misled into thinking that crime is increasing this whole time. I feel a lot safer nowadays partly because I pay attention to statistics and…
Posted in Violence & Peace
