A lottery is a tax on... people who are good at reasoning about risk-adjusted returns?
Rescued from the drafts folder because John Oliver has rendered it timely . People who consider themselves smart sometimes joke t…
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Ars on the YouTube-on-Windows-Phone fracas
Disclaimer: I used to work for Google, although not on YouTube. This post reflects only my personal opinions. So many crocodile …
Progressives should not support an Internet sales tax
Sales tax is one of the most regressive taxes. Sales taxes fall on those who spend money, not those who save it, and rich people…
What should an email client cost?
(Clearing out the backlog of old drafts...) This was pretty spot-on . $15 for a really well-written piece of complex client soft…
The death of refrigerators
Suppose that, around the time microwave ovens were invented, business analysts had a market category for "electrical devices…
On the nature of software ownership, yet again
Being a Google employee, I shouldn't comment on the specific case , but I do think this is an opportune time to repeat that b…
D. Lowery on copyright infringement: How to alienate potential allies through intellectual dishonesty, illustrated by example
Young people's cavalier attitude towards copyright infringement is maddening, but this essay by D. Lowery comprehensively m…
Federal budgets and applied public choice theory
Atrios writes something so true you should affix it in your memory for the next two decades : There's literally nothing that …
Sexual desire, authenticity, and Internet business models
Among the many errors in N. Vargas-Cooper's Atlantic article this month on Internet porn , one stands out as the major falla…
Electronic goods markets: end-to-end wins?
Hypothesis: As industries of cultural production adapt to digital distribution, content publishers in each industry will follow, …
Coase and Pareto optimality illustrated
The Coase Theorem states that absent transaction costs, a Pareto efficient outcome will be arrived at regardless of the assignm…
T. B. Lee on journalism and the Innovator's Dilemma
T. B. Lee ( not T. Berners-Lee ) has a newish blog and it has proved excellent enough* that it exceeded my expectations (which w…
A business model for reporting
I would pay $50 a year for Seymour Hersh's reporting alone.* So, suppose I did that. Then suppose that there are twenty tho…
C. Shirky on the end of newspapers (again)
You must Read The Whole Thing , but here is a taste: Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, peo…
Centrism begets extremism, in a precise game-theoretic sense
(Excavated from recent unpublished drafts.) This is not rocket science. Suppose a couple* is getting divorced and in joint posses…
C. Shirky vs. W. Isaacson on small payments and newspapers
Clay Shirky finally has a weblog, and his first post "Why Small Payments Won't Save Publishers" is, like everythin…
Two possible bailouts
A comment on my previous post suggested that I'm not considering the impact of throwing hundreds of thousands (maybe million…
Why I hate auto manufacturers
Consider this: Almost every car company forces you to deal with that semi-sociopathic middleman known as the car salesman. The fu…
Stop eating bluefin tuna
...if you haven't already, that is. Details at Time and BBC . See also World Wildlife Fund press release . While you'…
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