Noah Smith reconsiders #libertarianism
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/i-owe-the-libertarians-an-apology

Not perfect, but so much better than Trumpist #economics.

Via #MarginalRevolution

Did shale gas green the U.S. economy? - ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988325002129

"Our findings indicate that the shale gas boom reduced average U.S. annual green house gas emissions per capita by 7.5%."

Via #MarginalRevolution

#RobWiblin on X: "Prediction market guesses: • 11% chance China attacks Taiwan this year • 70% chance the US would intervene • Then 70% chance China attacks the US back • 20% chance the UK joins in Only guesses... but are they pessimistic or optimistic?"
https://x.com/robertwiblin/status/1898335203636007391

Via #MarginalRevolution

"Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, Tolstoy wrote stories for the children who lived on his family estate; they went on to become popular throughout Russia and summon up the same feelings of delight and warmth that you find in Anna Karenina’s suicide scene."

Katherine Rundell · Why children’s books?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n02/katherine-rundell/why-children-s-books#:~:text=In%20being%20written%20for%20those,a%20piece%20of%20concentrated%20meaning.

Via #MarginalRevolution

"When sports gambling was legalized in America, I was hopeful it too could prove a net positive force, far superior to the previous obnoxious wave of daily fantasy sports. It brings me no pleasure to conclude that this was not the case. The results are in. Legalized mobile gambling on sports, let alone casino games, has proven to be a huge mistake. The societal impacts are far worse than I expected."

#ZviMowshowitz

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-online-sports-gambling-experiment?source=queue

Via #MarginalRevolution

"Put otherwise: the tenets of the tenants are tenaciously held."

That was from dearieme, in a discussion of #RentControl at #MarginalRevolution.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/09/the-affordable-rent-act.html#comments

My comment today on #MarginalRevolution :

"What will be the first company to suffer massive losses due to AI? A law firm with faulty research? An engineering firm whose skyscrapers collapse? An airline whose planes are lost? A hospital which misdiagnoses? Prof. Cowen sees the undoubted power of LLMs, but he never worries about the risks of relying upon the plausible-looking results of an auto-correct function that writes in paragraphs."

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/08/it-is-wonderful-to-put-inefficient-firms-out-of-business.html#comments

(See my reply below.)

Liquid water found on #Mars, deep underground:

https://bbc.com/news/articles/czxl849j77ko

Via #MarginalRevolution .

New data on marijuana legalization
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/08/new-data-on-marijuana-legalization.html

I favoured the legalisation of cannabis in Canada (for the conventional reasons), though it was far down my list of priorities for what the government should do. Maybe I was wrong? Have there been positive social effects from this change?

#marijuana #cannabis #CanPol #cdnpoli
#MarginalRevolution

Over at #MarginalRevolution , there's a conversation about #RankedChoiceVoting this morning: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/08/what-to-think-about-ranked-choice-voting.html

(AKA the #AlternativeVote , #InstantRunoff voting.)

Personally, I support ranked-choice voting, but starting gradually, with municipal elections, and only moving to more important elections once citizens become comfortable with the system.

#ElectoralReform #elections #voting
#CanPol #cdnpoli #politics

Good news on Covid and your brain
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/07/good-news-on-covid-and-your-brain.html

"We find no evidence for a negative association between COVID-19 infection and subsequent measures of cognitive functioning. The associations found in earlier studies may at least partly reflect reverse causation."

This is of course not the last word on #covid19, but it would certainly be good if the disease is less destructive than we had reason to fear.

There's a discussion of #ElectoralReform for the UK at #MarginalRevolution today: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/07/pr-for-the-uk.html#comment-160778148

"But Britain has many serious problems, and I would rather see one party given a decisive mandate to handle them", says #TylerCowen, defending the First-Past-the-Post system.

Some commenters argue in favour of ranked ballot voting.

#FPTP #ProportionalRepresentation
#ukpol

Via #MarginalRevolution, an #AI risk that I hadn't considered:

"When a lot of people think about AI, they think, “Oh, it’s going to fool people into believing stuff that’s not true.” But what it’s really doing is giving people permission to not believe stuff that is true. Because they can say, “Oh, that’s an AI-generated image. AI can generate anything now: video, audio, the entire war zone re-created.” They will use it as an excuse."

They link to a Canadian example.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/06/ai-and-truth-evasion.html

Emigration from Canada to the U.S. hits a 10-year high as tens of thousands head south
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadians-moving-to-the-us-hits-10-year-high-1.7218479

Via https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/06/brain-drain-from-canada.html, where #TylerCowen celebrates this as a brain-drain to the US.

As the #MarginalRevolution comments point out, there's a real question about who's moving: is it young, ambitious workers, or older Canadians trading an expensive house in Toronto for a retirement in Florida? The #CBC article is essentially anecdotal.

Either way, we need to fix housing policy.

Lots of good points to consider in this post:
Ninety-five theses on AI
https://www.secondbest.ca/p/ninety-five-theses-on-ai

#SamuelHammond

Via #MarginalRevolution.

FTX Customers Poised to Recover All Funds Lost in Collapse
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/05/ftx-customers-poised-to-recover-all-funds-lost-in-collapse.html

#TylerCowen adds: "Here is the full NYT story, noting that account holders did not receive (significant) gains in the value of bitcoin that otherwise would have accrued."

#FTX #bankruptcy
#MarginalRevolution

I read a very interesting essay on female #equality in #Egypt, linked to by #MarginalRevolution:

Can Big Data reveal how Egypt - repeatedly - become so Patriarchal?
https://www.ggd.world/p/can-big-data-reveal-how-ancient-egypt

"Change is by no means linear. You may find my findings surprising, perhaps even shocking. Egypt actually transitioned from equality to inequality not once, but twice."

#AliceEvans

1/3

Over at #MarginalRevolution, #TylerCowen lists some things he's nostalgic about: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/04/what-i-am-nostalgic-about.html#comment-160746217. He's certainly right that newspapers used to be better.

My own contribution follows.

1/3

"Sen̓áḵw, an 11-tower development that will Tetrize 6,000 apartments onto just over 10 acres of land in the heart of the city. Once complete, this will be the densest neighbourhood in Canada, providing thousands of homes for Vancouverites who have long been squeezed between the country’s priciest real estate and some of its lowest vacancy rates."

https://macleans.ca/society/sen%cc%93a%e1%b8%b5w-vancouver/

Also discussed at #MarginalRevolution, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/03/indigenous-charter-cities.html

#Vancouver #SquamishFirstNation
#CanPol #cdnpoli
#Macleans