Category: Current Affairs
Is the conservative mind more closed?
Julian Sanchez writes:
I’ve written a bit lately about what I see as a systematic trend toward “epistemic closure” in the modern conservative movement. As commenters have been quick to point out, of course, groupthink and confirmation bias are cognitive failings that we’re all susceptible to as human beings, and scarcely the exclusive province of the right …Yet I can’t pretend that, on net, I really see an equivalence at present: As of 2010, the right really does seem to be substantially further down the rabbit hole.
Andrew Sullivan offers up some related links and commentary. I tend to agree with Sanchez and Sullivan, but I thought you all would be a good group to poll. Please offer up your opinion in the comments.
Colombia (China) estimate of the day
"It costs me as much to ship goods from China to Colombia's main Pacific port, as it does from the Pacific coast up to Bogotá," says one businessman.
The article is interesting throughout, for instance:
Until five years ago, only 15 per cent of Colombia's roads were paved, most of them single lane. In a country where some 70 per cent of cargo is hauled by truck, that made high transport costs a regular burden.
One more public talk
It's this Tuesday at 8:30 p.m., Room 301 of the Marvin Center at GWU, 800 21st Street Northwest, WDC. I'll open with some brief remarks on "Create Your Own Economy," but mostly I'll be answering written questions from the audience. All are welcome…
Still true, you beasts
I will try to buy an iPad later today, we'll see with what success. In the meantime, Matt Fraser reminds me of my words from a few years ago:
So go ahead, buy your iPad, and feel the joy of technological advance (and the status it conveys). But think twice before whining when Apple inevitably introduces its faster, sleeker, less-expensive next generation of iPads. As economist Tyler Cowen, himself an early adopter, put it during the iPhone kerfuffle: “It is you people, who resent Coase (1972), you people who induce wage and price stickiness and widen the Okun gap. You people, who don’t know what it means to sit back and enjoy your consumer surplus. You beasts!”
April Speaking Events: Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok
Here is a list of events that Tyler and/or I will be speaking at in the near future.
- Tyler and I will both be at the APEE conference in Las Vegas, April 11-13.
- I will be speaking about incentives and organ donation in New York at an event hosted by the Kidney and Urology Foundation of America on Monday April 19, 6-8:30 pm. RSVP here.
- Tyler will be speaking on “The Economics of the Jobless Recovery” at Emory University on Thursday April 22, 4-5:15 pm. More information here.
- Tyler and I will both be speaking at the Fifteenth Annual University of Kentucky Teaching Workshop on Saturday April 24. I will be talking about “Seeing the Invisible Hand” and Tyler will talk about the “Impact of the Financial Crisis on the Teaching of Macroeconomics.” More information and registration here.
China facts of the day
As far as China’s involvement with the rest of the world goes, the real story since the worst of the crisis is not China’s recovering exports but China’s strong imports. The forthcoming trade release – interestingly due a few days before the Treasury report – is likely to demonstrate enormous import growth again, absolutely and relative to exports. This is seen not just in Chinese data, but in those from many other important trading nations. Indeed, quite remarkably, Germany’s trade with China is showing such strong growth that by spring next year, on current trends, it might exceed that with France. China last year reported a current account surplus of 5.8 per cent of GDP, significantly lower than apparently assumed as the current level by many people in Washington. In 2010, it could be closer to 3 per cent – incidentally below the 4 per cent level deemed as “equilibrium” by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
There is more here. Resist the call of those who would have us start a trade war with China. Some of this is tasteless and stupid, but other parts are right on the mark.
Sentences to ponder
More than two months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, at least 30 survivors who were waved onto planes by Marines in the chaotic aftermath are prisoners of the United States immigration system, locked up since their arrival in detention centers in Florida.
The full and outrageous story is here. Their "crime," by the way, is not having proper visas. Some were pulled from the rubble of the earthquake and none have criminal histories.
Haiti fact of the day
Nearly 17 percent of Haiti's civil servants died in the disaster, including many senior managers…
Most likely these were the people most likely to be inside of relatively substantial buildings. It's also a reflection of how much Haitian government was concentrated in Port-au-Prince. Did you know that the U.S. occupation of 1915-1934 encouraged this centralization, if only to make the country easier to rule? The full story is here.
A Census ad on a Metro bus, socialist calculation debate edition
Chug relates to me that he saw the following, plastered on the side of a Metro bus:
If we don't know how many people there are
How will we know how many buses we need?
If you have a photo, please send it along.
Headlines to ponder
NASA to investigate cause of Toyota problems
The story is here. For the pointer I thank Steve Silberman.
China diabetes fact of the day
It's not surprising to see China as "number one" in so many things, but I was surprised by the magnitude of this development:
According to the report, more than 92 million adults in China have diabetes, and nearly 150 million more are well on their way to developing it. The disease is more common in people with large waistlines and in those who live in cities, the report indicates.
"For every person in the world with HIV there are three people in China with diabetes," said David Whiting, an epidemiologist with the International Diabetes Federation, who was not involved in the research.
The Federation projected last year that some 435 million people would have diabetes by 2030. "With this new study, we're going to have to rerun our estimate," Whiting told Reuters Health.
The full story is here.
The Haitian gourde
Mr. Dobrianskiy, the casino entrepreneur, said he was pleased that Haiti’s currency, the gourde, had recently strengthened against the dollar to a value higher than before the quake, in part because of the influx of money from abroad.
The article is interesting throughout.
Does Uruguay have multiple currencies? — hail Heinrich Rittershausen!
I'm holding back my post on mandates and penalties until comments are back up again. In the meantime, I have read the following:
Back in June of 2009, Uruguay embarked on a nationwide experiment with complementary currencies – a plan that evolved from a number of local trials of the alternative currency system in that country. The name of the currency is officially the ‘liquidity network”, but is known locally as the “charrua“.
Does that not sound like something out of a Borges story? The summary is this:
The system allows small- and mid-sized businesses to lend to each other, with debts being backed by the production value and assets of the lender.
The important fact is this:
…the charrua will be accepted for all debts, public and private. This means that taxes will be payable in both pesos and charrua (and I believe in US dollars, as well).
You'll find another description here. As I understand it, the system treats some corporate debt assets as money-like in a number of relevant ways, possibly to stimulate aggregate demand. Can it be that Uruguay has a version of Hayek's competitive currencies proposal, albeit without complete free entry? If you know more about this, do please email me. Googling "uruguay charrua moneda" doesn't yield much.
Here is a short article on Heinrich von Rittershausen.
For the hat tip I thank CheapSeatsEcon. Here is their graphic art for MR.
Addendum: Eapen Thampy sends me more.
Theory of optimal punishment, as applied to Haitian dominoes
Craig Stroup sends along the following photo:
That's one way to address the zero lower bound problem. Many other excellent photos can be found here.
*The Future History of the Arctic*
I loved this book, which is written by Charles Emmerson. Here is one short bit:
Despite the prominence of the colors of Norway on Svalbard — and the firm insistence from any government representative that Svalbard is an integral part of the kingdom of Norway — there are reminders that the archipelago is both something more and something less than that. Russians and Ukrainians live here, some in Longyearbyen, though most are at the Russian settlement at Barentsburg. The girls at the supermarket checkout counter speak Thai. Somewhere in town is an Iranian who came here six years ago and, under the terms of the Spitsbergen Treaty, was able to settle here. If he were to return south to the Norwegian mainland, he would almost definitely be forced to leave the country, his asylum claims having been refused. Import duties are nonexistent on Svalbard: Cuban cigars cost less in Longyearbyen, at 78 degrees North, than they do in Oslo, three hours' flight to the south.
Here is Wikipedia on Svalbard.
This book covers why and how Greenland might become independent, what kind of presence in the Arctic Canada can realistically expect to have, the changing historical fortunes of Vladivostock, what the Law of the Sea really means, and why Norway manages its fossil fuel revenues so well, among other matters. The Future History of the Arctic has fun and useful information on just about every page.