One of the best moments at Techonomy this year was the debate between George Mason economist, Cowen, and MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson. The two men could hardly be more different in demeanor. Cowen is reserved, awkward, his words crisply pressed; Brynjolfsson is expansive and punchy, quick to laugh. Cowen argued the line from his latest book, The Great […]
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This chart sums up pretty well what I was trying to say in my defense of commerce post. Keeping the state in one corner and markets in another is a good rule of thumb. That’s why I advocate for a state that mostly provides safety nets like universal healthcare, and let’s markets operate as freely […]
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Mike Konczal has an excellent post up parsing out the data and ideology found on the ‘We are the 99%’ tumblr. The whole thing is terrific so you should click over there and read it and then come back… He concludes: Upon reflection, it is very obvious where the problems are. There’s no universal health […]
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I mentioned in my last post that nothing serves consumers more than healthy competition. This is the point of capitalism or, more appropriately, of free trade. It’s not to make some people fabulously wealthy while others just barely scrape by. Proponents of markets want to raise everyone up out of poverty and into prosperity where […]
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