Posts Noted 2011 April 1

Blogs posts noted on 1 April 2011

• Seth Godin ponders Compared to perfect: the price/value mismatch in content:

Price is often a signalling mechanism, and perhaps nowhere more than in the area of content. Free enables your idea to spread, price, on the other hand, signals individuals and often ends up putting your idea in the right place. Mass shouldn't always be the goal. Impact may matter more.

• Ted Rall writes about The Devils We Don’t Know:

War should be voted upon by the citizenry. After all, we—not Congress—bear the costs. If a president can’t be bothered to explain why we should kill and be killed and spend billions of dollars on a conflict, too bad for him and his pet defense contractors.

• Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution in the USA:

Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2.

…

Wake up folks. The Super-Rich Delusion is destroying the American Dream for the rest of us. The Super Rich don’t care about you. They’re already stockpiling for the economic time bomb dead ahead. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Time for you to plan ahead for the coming revolution, for another depression.

• Paul Kedrosky writes about Unearthing America's Past and quotes:

Conventional wisdom has it that invading Europeans simply wiped out the Native way of life. In fact, Richter argues, it's better to think of what happened in terms of historical layers, each new layer inheriting the shape of the previous one. In the fifteenth century, conquistadores brought the European Middle Ages to America, fueled by religious zeal; but, almost at the same time, European traders built a different kind of life, learning to coexist with Native civilization and importing a sensibility we might recognize as modern and capitalistic.

• Walking the Line Between Good and Evil: The Common Thread of Heroes and Villains

Conformity and standardization serves a purpose, but it isn’t universally applicable, and is context-specific. We should question authority. If no one ever broke a rule and unquestionably followed the given outline, there would never be any advancement in this world. Creativity, by definition, is rule-breaking. However, there needs to be a way to recognize rules that are being broken for the sake of doing social good, and those that are broken for illegal or immoral intent.

At any given point in time, there is a significant portion of the population fighting against conformity, refusing to get shoved into a box, breaking rules in order to advance civilization—but what if they all stopped? What if every single person stopped bucking the system, stopped challenging convention, and marched obediently to take their expected place in society?

• Mickey Z gives another reason to go vegan: Peak Dirt (and yours truly on the radio)

It’s been estimated that 75 percent of original US topsoil has already been lost and 4,000,000 acres of US cropland is lost each year to soil erosion (that’s roughly the size of Connecticut). An acre of US trees disappears every eight seconds. Since 85 percent of US topsoil loss is directly associated with livestock raising, there is a good first step we can take to battle Peak Dirt: go vegan.

Read more!

Posts Noted 2011 March 31

Blog posts noted on 31 March 2011. Most are comments on John Taylor's post highlighted by Greg Mankiw which was noted yesterday.

• Pincus re-presented ponders how:

Pincus marshalls his evidence to tell a significantly different story from the received one. And as an academic work, it is highly readable and logical. But it is from beginning to end a complex canvas, and it is difficult for a non-specialist reader to keep it all in mind. How might an author -- or a producer -- more fully engage the reader's historical imagination in these complex events? How might the material be presented in a way that gives the reader a more comprehensive apprehension of this history of the English Revolution?

• Debt: The first five thousand years is introduced as:

Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt's potentially catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary administrative system largely in order to protect the interests of creditors.

• Paul Krugman notes in What’s Behind Low Investment? that:

What the data actually say is that we had a catastrophic housing bust and consumer pullback, and that businesses have, predictably, cut back on investment in the face of excess capacity. The rest is just politically motivated mythology.

• Paul Krugman notes in More on Unemployment and Investment that:

Investment is low as a share of GDP; well, that’s no surprise given how depressed the economy is. And if anything investment is a bit stronger than you might have expected from past behavior.

• Noahpinion says that John Taylor draws a Phillips Curve:

To reiterate, Taylor's graph is perfectly consistent with a world in which demand shocks drive the business cycle and demand-side policy is the key to stabilizing investment. His supply-side conclusions are purely a function of his assumption that we live in an RBC-type world. But there are good reasons to think he's wrong. For an argument as to why New Keynesian models are better than RBC models, see this 1989 paper by...Greg Mankiw.

• Mark Thoma points to some more remarks about About That Striking Graph from John Taylor including Paul Krugman's one listed above.

I still think that the time span is important: 1990 to the present. It was during this time that housing became a commodity. Thus, housing should now be included in the overall investment cycle.

Read more!

Posts Noted 30 March 2011

Blog posts noted on 30 March 2011

• Mark Thoma reposts an interesting graph from Greg Mankiw: A Striking Scatterplot at Striking Scatterplot: Unemployment and Investment.

As we move into an economy dominated by Department I, this correlation will continue to strengthen. The countervailing trend of a decrease in importance of Department II means that corporate profit rates must continue to decrease.

• Yves Smith publishes Zeitgeist Watch: Art Critic Questions Winner Take All Society. His comment is:

The fact that a member of a world that has always depended on discretionary spending by the well heeled is raising questions like this is striking. Is this a sign that those at the top have become so isolated and increasingly irresponsible that even support personnel are wondering about the true costs of their allegiance? One of the fundamental assumptions of the new world order is that everyone has a price. Yet social animals of all sorts have developed what looks like a sense of fairness and reciprocity in their dealings, and will incur personal costs to punish cheaters. The wealthy may err in assuming loyalty can be bought.

• Paul Krugman notes in Road to Appomattox Blogging that:

It was, in a very real sense, the victory of modern America — of a democratic nation, in manners as well as politics — over an aristocratic ideal.

And the way modern America won was characteristic. Southerners were better warriors — man for man, they almost always outperformed Union armies, although the gap narrowed over time. But the North excelled at the arts of peace — that is, in industry and ability to get things done. The North couldn’t stop Bedford Forrest from raiding supply lines; but it could repair track incredibly fast. And it was that Northern superiority in logistics, in production, that eventually proved decisive.

Read more!