1. Species extinction and international trade (gated past the abstract).
2. New paper on Canadian inequality.
3. The case that China will do OK.
4. Bob Keleher has passed away at 67; he pioneered a market price approach to monetary policy.
5. Video games that adapt themselves to your Twitter feed and Facebook page.
5. Meh, Peter Molyneux. He’s great at discovering ways to interact and altering the environment to fit the action… but he’s less strong on providing fun. I’ll be interested in seeing what he comes up with, but probably just from a distance.
5. Giant’s Drink Game, anyone? And for what it’s worth, IVV, the Giant’s Drink game didn’t sound like much fun either.
Yep, it does sound similar.
In a related note, they are currently filming the movie adaptation of Ender’s Game.
Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1731141/
Tyler, could we sometime get a post on how serious you take threats like #1? As a non-scientist, I cannot evaluate threats from studies mentioned above, or ones like this (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html) yet I worry about them. OTOH, I know you’re a supporter (or sympathizer) with the optimistic Julian Simon-esque view of the future. I cannot help but still see the emphasis of “doomsday” coming from many scientists these days, and I wonder to what extent they address the fact that many warnings similar to theirs haven’t panned out, historically.
A good antitode to doom science and doom philosophy is Matt Ridley. I heart his blog and books very much: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog
I too
In this case unlike, say, future catastrophic global worming, I think the point is we’re seeing it pan out right now–massive currently ongoing species extinctions and dwindling population numbers measured by camera traps throughout the world. That said, I’m not sure what we learned specifically from this paper, besides what I thought everyone ‘knew,’ that if you consume things that come primarily from the habitats of adorable animals, you will kill adorable animals. A better question is why on earth we can’t at least get a fair playing field, for example by having the EU (and no doubt soon the US) stop subsidizing Bornean deforestation and orangutan deaths from mandated palm oil “biofuel” usage.
Add 7 billion humans to Earth’s biosphere and you have to make room somehow. It is what it is.
‘it is what it is’ means that policy, economics and incentives are irrelevant, which makes no sense.
Sorry but what makes you think there is an on-going species extinction problem? The Earth has lost some species in recent times. Usually as a result of introductions of animals like cats, weasels and foxes to places like Australia and New Zealand. But the idea that we are in the midst of a massive extinction event is based on estimates of what we may or may not be losing in places like Brazil. How do you know that is true? Or to put it another way, if we are losing X thousand species a year, can you name one we lost last week?
We do have a biodiversity problem are habitat is reduced. Thus numbers of individual members of certain species are too. This is a tragedy and we ought to be working towards a solution. But given most extinctions are the work of the poor and the ignorant, economic growth ought to solve many of those problems. Japan has not lost a species in recent times despite being small, heavily populated and even more heavily industrialized.
What is more, one of the reasons for species loss may well be those well meaning people with the camera traps. Remember the disaster of the on-going frog decline – a disease, probably from Africa, spread by scientists studying frog species who didn’t wash their boots properly. Unintended consequences.
Schools:
Edwin O. Wilson –> biodiversity is good for unknown future cures to disease.
Julian Simon–> you don’t really need rain forests, as oxygen can be produced by slime mold (I believe he made this point indirectly)
rich people –> biodiversity is good because animals are getting scarcer, and that is a luxury good (Giffen good)
middle class–> parks are good to take the kids to on weekends, and cheaper than the movies.
I think I covered most bases here from a economics point of view.
#2. Of course Canadian income inequality is rising, and it’s worse than we thought! The only possible answer is to tax the rich, redistribute their income down the ladder, increase government power, and have government “invest” in every progressive cause. How innovative! Why hasn’t anyone ever thought of this before?
GDP per capita data, scroll down a bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and_territories_by_gross_domestic_product#Consolidated
#1
Like so many bleeding heart pleas against the market and for government restriction, the proponents neglected say why I should give a damn.
Unless it impinges on the livelihood of sapient individuals, you shouldn’t.
They don’t have to. Everybody else does (give a damn).
(I know, life’s tough for Libertarians when living in a nation of bleeding hearts.)
I’m a Vegan. So you’d think that I’d be first to say “save the animals”. We are not talking about slaughter houses here. It makes no more sense to save animals that can’t compete than to keep people alive who can not think.
don’t know why this point isn’t made more often, it’s simple really: if the US government passed a law tomorrow allowing us to continually burn down your houses, and you failed to survive as a result, that would be an indication that you do not deserve to live.
No. If someone can not survive, then we/I should not be forced to expend resources on beings whom we/I do not value. Deserve is a stupid and charged word to use. Not valuing others is not the same as violating their natural rights (Which is exactly what is being suggested happen to me).
Zachery, I spent, or I should say, i was dragged to an Government funded institution whose whole purpose is to care, very expensively mind you, for people without the mental faculty to care for themselves…the argument by many is that civilized societies provide support for such people, after all and it is a roll of the genetic/environmental dice that i did’nt spend the afternoon singing happy songs to you too, so are you advocating we attache a death chamber to the place?
But to the original point. Government regulation is only an accurate reflection of my preference (This is where my should exists) if I am taxed at the exact amount which I would choose to give voluntarily. Not to mention that I may think that another competitor can fulfill my demand better. I lose this option, or other options elsewhere, when I am taxed. Seems like a weak set of assumptions on which to build the “we should regulate because we’re achieving what we want” argument. Revealed preferences anyone??
The only thing that I’m willing to advocate here is the abstention from coercion. It is merely factual that something will not exist, unless incidentally, if someone (Something) doesn’t value it. If the incompetent are not valued by others or by themselves to the degree necessary to provide them with survival, then they WILL die (tautology maybe?). I am not advocating whether they SHOULD die. Of course, I/we/you should not kill them (natural right here – that’s not the current issue). If NO ONE values them, including themselves, then it destroys value/happiness/utility/liberty to FORCE resources from others (who do not value the incompetents enough [to keep them alive]) in order to keep them alive.
The same argument applies to a brain dead senior citizen who is kept alive by machines. Whether they SHOULD die is an economically meaningless question. That they die when others do not value them enough to afford to keep the machines running is what is happening when the machine is unplugged.
So no. No death chamber. Dying people/animals is not avoidable if the resources aren’t there. That is all I am saying. Reality is not optional.
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