Idiocracy

You may know I am a big fan of the film Idiocracy. Here is one of the downsides to it:
http://xkcd.com/603/

Of course Idiocracy's premise is totally bogus: the returns to education and IQ are higher today than ever before, and (I would suppose) that means democracies are more than ever under the control of the elite. Really Idiocracy only works because the disparity between the educated and the uneducated is now so much greater than it was two generations ago. But it's a funny movie. Check it out. Then think about Sarah Palin -- is it reassuring that she lost or scary that she was nominated?

I still stand by my earlier suggestion that not all parents are well suited for the task. I include myself in that group! (and I don't think IQ is a good predictor of parental skills, anyway!)

Smartest Man Alive

Demi-god Peter Suber just got linked on one of my fave blogs: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/06/the-dark-theorem-of-economics.html

Of course, it's just a handout, but it's a really good handout. Makes me wish I'd taken Logical Systems when I had the chance... I have no idea what this means or even what it says:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/logsys/low-skol.htm

The Family and the State

How much more would we invest in education if children could contract with parents? What is the optimal public policy solution when our most profitable investments are made between the years of 0-2, and those decisions are made by people (parents) whose incentives may or may not align with our own?

Sure, there are positive externalities to education and that justifies government intervention. But the scarier and more depressing problem is this: Government intervention is even more justified in the case of early childhood education, exactly where government intervention is least likely to be found.

That intervention is justified on totally different, much more depressing grounds: Infants are not sufficiently developed to decide for themselves, and their utility does not always sufficiently enter into their parents' utility functions.

In our society, the right of a parent to decide for his/her child is valued much more highly than the right of a child to live a healthy, prosperous life. You need a license to drive a car but not to have a kid. What's up with that?

Rubber rooms

Teacher unions are straight-up evil. If you grew up in District 150 in Peoria, you know what I am talking about.
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/06/not-from-the-onion.html

Obama gets markets

Obama knows how markets roll:

http://www.slate.com/id/2221147/

Now we just need to bring this kind of sanity to the marijuana markets.

Markets and Morals

http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2009/06/michael-sandel-on-markets-and-morals.html

A lot of markets are "repugnant", that is, many people don't think they should exist. The boundaries of what is viewed as repugnant changes dramatically over time.

My view on this is that markets exist whether you like them to or not. Steve Jobs recently bought himself a liver in the US, even. Markets are everywhere. Life is full of trade-offs and everyone has a price. There is no distinction, to me, between prostitution and someone who quits his/her job once he/she has a baby.

There is no distinction between the economic, the moral, and the political-- economics is not just about money. People pay with their time, their effort, their reputations, etc. "Political capital" and "social capital" are just two manifestations of that idea. Even a hermit in the woods has a market with himself--the marginal value of everything is equal to the marginal value of everything else.

I'm against the legalization of prostitution and the legalization of kidney markets; indeed, I think they're currently massively under-regulated. Coercion is a huge problem in both of those, and until coercion can be effectively eliminated without too many restrictions on other freedoms (i.e. markets).

Yes, maybe this is a bizarre way to go through life, but I think it's a framework more helpful than not. It obviously can't be both consistent and complete, but so far I haven't found any contradictions or gaps.

100 most beautiful words in English

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/100_most_beautiful_words.html

Iranian randomness

Apparently Iran didn't even bother to randomize their fake numbers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000004.html

If you know me, you've probably heard me say how humans find it very difficult to replicate randomness. This is the most important example of that phenomenon that I've ever heard of.

Auto-Tune the News just gets better and better

I can't get enough.

Turns out terrorism isn't caused by poverty

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/what-makes-a-terrorist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win

So why are almost all American terrorists right-wing? My guess is access to guns?