Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 410
January 2, 2013
Paywalls for blogs?
Andrew Sullivan will give it a try, as you probably have heard by now. I wish him well with it, but I also hope no one else tries too hard. (Note by the way that Sullivan will allow a free RSS feed, with complete posts, and free links from other blogs, so this is hardly a full gate.) In the limiting case, imagine a blogosphere where everything is gated for some price. What could we at MR link to? There would be every day “What I’ve been Reading,” with links to Amazon (they’re not going to gate), rather than every few weeks. More from Wikipedia, and more travel notes. More abstract requests from readers (“what should I do with my life?”, and “does she really love me?”). More government statistics and more BBC.
I’ve long thought that the last ten years have been a golden age for the blogosphere, and that soon the financial constraints are really going to start biting on MSM. Many of you already get upset at FT links, which have a fairly strict gate, and perhaps the few remaining newspapers will all work that way within two or three years’ time.
What do you all think? Here are comments from Felix Salmon.
What has San Diego contributed to American culture?
In honor of the AEA meetings I was going to do “My Favorite Things San Diego” but frankly I came up with what is more or less a total blank. Eddie Vedder? I like Tom Waits. Lots of athletes. What else?
San Diego, by population, is the eighth largest city in the United States. Yet it seems to have had hardly any cultural influence. What gives?
Movie, set in: Almost Famous, or perhaps A Day Without a Mexican.
End of story, unless you can tell me more. I’m sure to enjoy the weather, though I’ll look longingly at Tijuana just across the border.
Ice Cream Buybacks
NYTines: Mayor Blomberg announced today a new program to help reduce obesity and heart disease, ice cream buybacks. Any ice cream that citizens wish to turn in will be bought for up to $5 a pint. No questions asked. ”Heart disease is the number one killer in the nation,” said Mayor Blomberg, “and we must do everything we can to get Ben and Jerry and these other killers off our streets.”
Critics argue that consumers are likely to reach into the back of their freezer to sell ice cream that is half-eaten, iced-over, and past its sell-by date, with little effect on heart disease. In previous buybacks, enterprising individuals have even bought cheap ice cream at Walmart and sold it back to the city at a profit. Economists have pointed out that local ice cream buybacks don’t make a lot of sense when ice cream remains widely available for sale. The National Academy of Sciences reported that the theory underling “buyback programs is badly flawed and the empirical evidence demonstrates the ineffectiveness of these programs.” Nevertheless, ice cream buybacks remain popular with voters.
More here, here and here on similar programs and here is my earlier op op-ed on a closely related topic.
Picture from Story Draw.
January 1, 2013
Kevin Kelly on why Robert Gordon is wrong
This is a very good piece. Here is the closing bit:
In his paper Robert Gordon talks about the huge value gained from “one-time” events, such as the one-time (first and last) move of a large proportion of women into the workforce. This new gain happens only once (assuming they remain). In this computer-internet economy we are experiencing a one-time gain from a huge one-time event. This is the first and only time a planet will get wired up into a global network. We are alive at this critical moment in history, and we are just at the beginning of the beginning of the many developments that will erupt because of this shift.
Cory Doctorow has interesting comments.
Ross Douthat asks
If a newly re-elected Democratic president can’t muster the political will and capital required to do something as straightforward and relatively popular as raising taxes on the tiny fraction Americans making over $250,000 when those same taxes are scheduled to go up already, then how can Democrats ever expect to push taxes upward to levels that would make our existing public programs sustainable for the long run?
Here is more.
The Ricardo effect in Europe (Germany fact of the day)
Six percent of the value of all mowers sold in Germany are now robotic, and the country’s automatic mower market is growing in “double digits,” according to research company GfK Retail and Technology GmbH…
The market for hands-free mowers, which expanded by more than 30 percent last year, offers a rare bright spot in Europe’s consumer climate. The European market may grow as much as 20 percent annually over the next five years, Olsson said. Most of the customers are in Sweden, Germany, France and Switzerland — countries that have so far proven resilient to the debt crisis.
Demand for the garden robots has “exploded the last couple of years,” said Mats Gustafsson, owner of Moheda Jarnhandels AB, a hardware store in the southern Swedish town of Moheda. Gustafsson said he’s sold almost 60 robomowers this year, compared with fewer than 10 five years ago.
They cost about 1,700 euros, with falling prices, and they work like this:
The mowers use sensor technology to stay within a defined area of the yard, and are typically able to avoid obstacles such as trees and lawn furniture. Some of the mowers, including those made by Husqvarna, move around in random patterns, while others such as Bosch machines follow distinct lines.
For obvious reasons, this technology is less widespread in the United States. By the way, for those of you who doubt whether machinery can exert a negative effect on wages, it is still worth reading David Ricardo’s chapter “On Machinery.”
The article is here, and hat tip goes to the excellent Daniel Lippman.
Assorted links
1. Wonkbook summary of the final deal. Notably, Rubio and Rand Paul — two guys who may want to run for President — voted against it.
2. Has immortality been achieved?
3. Horoscopes for bureaucrats (the culture that is India).
4. Forthcoming economics books for 2013.
Markets in everything
Instead of long beards and robes, they wear track suits and T-shirts. Their tablets are electronic, not hewn of stone, and they hold smartphones, not staffs. They may not look the part, but this ragtag group of Israelis is training to become the next generation of prophets.
For just 200 shekels, about $53, and in only 40 short classes, the Cain and Abel School for Prophets says it will certify anyone as a modern-day Jewish soothsayer.
The school, which launched classes this month, has baffled critics, many of whom have dismissed it as a blasphemy or a fraud.
Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Asher Meir. By the way, I found this to be an especially odd and ineffective response:
“There is no way to teach prophecy,” said Rachel Elior, a professor of Jewish thought at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “It’s like opening a school for becoming Einstein or Mozart.”
I wonder what Bryan Caplan will think of this line:
Hapartzy can’t guarantee his course will give his students a direct line to God. But, he says, the syllabus provides the essential tools to bring out the prophet in anyone.
Here is another oddly incorrect statement:
Roie Greenvald, a 27-year-old tennis instructor attending the classes, also showed some skepticism. While he expressed interest in the spiritual development the course offers, one crucial detail stands in the way of his religious elevation.
“I’m not going to become a prophet,” he said. “I don’t think it pays very well.”
The school takes on all comers and it is run by a Russian immigrant and software engineer.
December 31, 2012
Health care chart of the day
Here is Austin Frakt. Here is Dan Munro. Here is Matt Yglesias, and Mark Roth, all with commentary. The original source seems to be this Hagist and Kotlikoff paper (pdf, by the way that would seem to mean data from around 2000).
Update: this graph may be wrong.
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