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A new version of Mines Ahoy is up! It turns out that my earlier post titled “Finished!” was a little premature. Not only were there problems that needed fixing, but there were a couple features present in the desktop minesweeper game that were not in Mines Ahoy. In particular, a timer and a list of best times were absent. So, over the last week or so I have completed a major overhaul of the game. The interface is spiffier, there is a timer, and you can see the top 10 scores for each setting (easy, medium, hard, and any custom settings that have been used). Read the rest of this entry »
Ahead of a cs class titled “Artificial Intelligence” that I will take in Winter, I’m learning Python. So, I thought, why not write Mines Ahoy in Python? It would require creating a GUI (I’m using the wxPython module for that) and using many of the language’s core features. I’m going to give it a try. I can see that it will be substantially more complicated that writing Mines Ahoy as a javascript web application, mostly because I won’t be able to leverage the browser to draw the game and listen for events. Hopefully, wxPython will make that part not too much trouble. Perhaps I can implement some additional features as well, like a timer and high scores.
Updates after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Depending on how experienced you are with minesweeper, this situation may not seem very difficult. It gave me a little pause, though. In the process of making this game, I have played it many times, but it’s interesting moments like this one that keep the game from being monotonous. Sudoku is ultimately a better pure logic game, in that it can provide a consistent level of difficulty. The random setup of a minesweeper-type game, by contrast, means that more interesting situations arise haphazardly (indeed, solvability is not assured), though adjusting the number of mines is a crude lever for changing the difficulty. The answer to whether or not there is a solution in this situation is after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Mines Ahoy is now playable and pretty much done. It was a fun journey. Ironically, a month and a half ago, I chose this project because I thought it would be quick and easy. I was cloning an existing, relatively simple game, Minesweeper. Of course, I haven’t been working nonstop on this. More like three or so concentrated chunks of time. Some interesting problems came up, and there was plenty of the usual debugging frustration. Yet, somehow I am just completely sure that it was worth it. Which is sort of a different experience for me. Very enjoyable.
Updates related to ironing out bugs and other topics appear after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
I was reading xkcd last night (John has made me a fan). Then I found a youtube video of author of the comic, Randall Munroe, talking at Google (here). Donald Knuth was in the audience and asked a question. I had heard of Knuth before and knew he’s a big figure in computer science, so I went searching for a little more information about him. I noticed on his Wikipedia entry that he had a written a book related to surreal numbers, which I had never heard of. Intrigued, I discovered an introduction to the subject by a Danish IT consultant, Claus Tondering (here). Though he is not a mathematician, the document looks well written. There is also the wiki entry (here), of course, and this podcast featuring the inventor/discoverer of surreal numbers John Conway (here). In 1996, then high school student Jacob Lurie won an award for doing research on the subject (here).
I’ve only started reading Tondering’s introduction. The surreal numbers are an entirely different system from the reals we all know and love, built up from set theory. Their definition is very strange. A surreal number number consists of a pair of sets, a left set and a right set. These sets contain other surreal numbers. For a pair of sets to be well-formed and thus a surreal number, none of the surreal numbers in the right set can be less then or equal to any member of the left set. So what does “less than or equal to” mean for surreal numbers? To quote Tondering: “A surreal number x is less than or equal to a surreal number y if and only if y is less than or equal to no member of x’s left set and no member of y’s right set is less than or equal to x.” So less or equal to is defined in terms of itself. How do we get anywhere with this? We need one surreal number to start off with, the surreal number with no elements in either its left or right set. After showing that the number is well-formed, call this zero and go from there.
Yikes, war has begun a mere two weeks before I was due on Georgian soil! Russia bombed military targets next to the airport I would have flown into outside of Tblisi. (Just search for “georgia” on Google News to find out more.) I was going there for a short study abroad program offered by UW (some info here and here). This is very unfortunate. I was looking forward to enjoying a supra (feast), meeting my host family, and seeing Georgia’s diverse landscapes and historical sites. Info on Georgian cuisine at Wikipedia and this ugly but informative site.
MR links to a Slate review of a cookbook on Chinese cooking of the non-Han variety, Beyond the Great Wall. On a related note, when I went to China two years ago for a study-abroad, I liked the Uighur food we had on several occasions more than the mainstream Chinese food. (It’s pronounced “wee-gur” as far as I know.) I remember dishes involving lamb, spices, yogurt, not drowning in oil… yum. Similar to Afghan food I’ve had here. Perhaps I didn’t have the best mainstream Chinese food (we spent most of our time in Beijing). I wonder where I could find Uighur food here in the US?
For a little context, here are the news results that came up for “Uighur” on google.
My year-old iphone has suddenly become more diverting than ever. I found a free app called Midomi that allows you to search for a song by singing into the phone or holding it up to a speaker. The accuracy is so-so, but the new app kept a few of us entertained last night for quite a while. My poor DS has never seen much use and now surely never will. On the other hand, at the moment I am experiencing a lagginess in the response of the phone’s UI that I probably wouldn’t get with the simpler DS platform. Hopefully things will improve with the next iPhone software update.
I took a web programming class last quarter, where I gained a little familiarity with javascript. I’ve been working on a minesweeper clone (link).
I’m almost halfway through a wonderful econ class this quarter, the best I’ve had at UW. In contrast to all my past econ classes, it is small and discussion/writing oriented. Here are some highlights.
Modern growth theory starts from the work of Robert Solow in the mid 1950s, who in turn reacted to the Harrod and Domar model of the previous decade. Solow’s innovation was to use a different form for the production function, an important part of the model, yielding very different results. Harrod and Domar are nowadays only of historical interest, whereas Solow’s work underlies contemporary theory. Read the rest of this entry »
In response to John’s post, I’d like to point out that values are not necessarily heuristics standing in for more thorough utilitarian analyses. People often think an act is wrong inherently, not because they believe it will reduce human welfare. Indeed, if a value is based on welfare, isn’t it really a position supported by a deeper underlying value, that increasing welfare is good? It seems to me that a defining characteristic of a moral value is that it is cannot be reduced to more fundamental beliefs about what is right and wrong.
As people become more informed, then, their values will not be updated based on new information. However, when formulating positions on the issues of the day, they may find the newly available utilitarian reasoning on a particular issue more compelling than the guidance provided by their values and take a different position than they would have before. Another way to look at it is that deciding your policy preferences based a utilitarian rationale is difficult and relatively expensive (in time and mental effort) when you are uninformed. Of course, somebody might stick to their values regardless of new information, but I would expect that if you made a given sample of people better informed, some would switch to voting based utilitarian concerns. So I come to the same conclusions — I’m just quibbling over details.
A fascinating AP article about commercial surrogacy in India. It’s legal to pay someone to have your baby here in the US and in many other countries, but apparently the Indian clinic profiled in the article is on the leading edge of making surrogacy less niche and more routine. Infertile couples need only supply the sperm and eggs and sign on the dotted line. The clinic finds and cares for the surrogate mothers, making the process easier and more affordable for the parents-to-be. Included in the article are the stories of several of the surrogates and couples, all upbeat and heart-warming. But of course, there are “critics.”
Critics say the couples are exploiting poor women in India — a country with an alarmingly high maternal death rate — by hiring them at a cut-rate cost to undergo the hardship, pain and risks of labor.
My first reaction was “ick.” Don’t let these people pass laws than make surrogacy like organ donation. (Here’s an MR post that links those two subjects.) Let me be a little more careful, though. Regarding the high maternal death rate, the clinic might do well to keep its costs low by making sure that the pregnancies are successful and healthy for both woman and child. Perhaps the proliferation of such clinics would actually lower India’s rate of deaths in childbirth. The fear is that the incentives will run the other way. Read the rest of this entry »
Arnold Kling takes issue with Mencius Moldbug’s favorable opinion of the corporate city-state. Kling points out (I think; it wasn’t entirely clear) that there is an incentive for groups outside of the government to attempt to take control by force, citing Latin America’s many military coups as an example. All regimes are vulnerable to armed takeover, since there is no higher power to protect their property rights. In Moldbug’s terminology (not sure if it is borrowed from somewhere else), an organization like the US government is a primary property holder, meaning it enforces its own rights by force. Corporate city-states, then, will also be vulnerable to coups. Adding a reference to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Kling apparently feels he has shown that “you would have violence and instability in the corporate city-state world.”
I don’t think he has. Though it’s true that many governments have been toppled over the years, many have persisted for long periods of time. Kling gives no reason for why a corporate city-state would be less able to defend itself and enforce its property rights than a democracy or a monarchy.
Further discussion happens in the comments on Moldbug’s blog. Brendon objects that the management might prevent citizens from leaving, eliminating the competition between states that we would expect to spur good government. Moldbug argues that this would be unprofitable for the corporation. Explaining the situation in North Korea becomes the focal point; there, a nondemocratic regime has run the country into the ground, seemingly in contradiction to what Moldbub. TGGP mentions the Iron Law of Institutions. Kim Jong Il might not care that his country is poor, if he can maintain his position of power within it. Certainly, the state would get more revenue if the country were rich, but taking the necessary steps to achieve prosperity might bolster opposition to the regime. The behavior of nondemocratic regimes would seem to be determined by what decisions the leadership percieves will yield the best mix of stability and riches. Maybe Dubai and Singapore are relatively successful because the people in those places don’t care much about democratic reform, so officials can focus more on prosperity and less on securing their power.
John directed me to this essay, which contained quotes from Bernard Bailyn’s Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. The essayist at one point sums up Bailyn’s analysis of political pamphlets from the Revolution thusly: “America obtained its independence because of a war that was started by people who were genuinely terrified of the 18th-century equivalent of black helicopters.” He is referring to the belief in late colonial America that there was a big plot to subvert liberty, both in the American colonies and in England. In hindight, apparently, it is pretty clear that no such conspiracy existed.
Reading about these colonial conspiracy theorists, I was reminded of another blog post I read recently about the mentality cultivated in madrasas in Pakistan. What a strange parallel to draw between different places at different times, from colonial America to the tribal areas of Pakistan.
I was irked by this segment on NPR news today. The energy bill recently passed by the Senate mandates higher efficiency for car engines and light bulbs, among other things. My gripe is that, even if consumers are buying too much gas and electricity (given negative externalities from carbon), what if the specific strategies mandated by this bill are not the best way to reduce consumption? Ideally, we would want to raise the price of energy, so that carbon and other environmental issues are accounted for, and then let each consumer decide the best course of action for himself/herself. Read the rest of this entry »
The new farm bill is stalled in the Senate and under threat of veto from Bush. Brief details at the site for a long-running Australian radio program and Wikipedia. And here’s a rather uncritical CNN story (just look at how they frame the issue with the headline — “those poor farmers!”).
Proponents of subsidies argue that farming is a risky business. But many industries are risky and do just fine. So it seems to me like the comfortable beliefs of (rationally) incautious voters are enabling unjustified handouts to a small group.
One argument in favor of subsidies might be that the existence of agriculture in the US creates a positive externality, in that many people seem to be sentimental about farming. However, it’s difficult to know just how much people value the existence of domestic farms, and it’s also unclear whether it matters if there a few farms here and there or a big industry like we have now. Perhaps the warm fuzzies could still be had if a few historic farms were spruced up and turned into parks. Plus, the alternative to no subsidies might not be (realistically) whatever ideal government program we can dream up but rather something more distortionary like what we have now.
A couple of entertaining links from Jeff:
The first quarterly economic newsletter for the virtual world of Eve Online has been released. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, economist at CCP Games, is already pointing an example of real world relevance in the report. The fast pace of the game world relative to the real world makes the weaknesses of using a fixed basket of goods to estimate inflation especially obvious. Instead, Gudmundsson uses a chained price index.
A fixed basket price index looks at the percent change over time in a representative set of goods (based on how much consumers purchase of different goods in the starting year). The idea is that price changes should be weighted by how much of a good is consumed. However, new goods appear and old ones fade, altering the purchasing patterns of the typical consumer so that a basket isn’t representative for long. One solution is to use a chained index, constructing a new basket every year and then “chain” a series of one-year price changed together. The price of each basket is observed for the year it was created and the year after, allowing the percent change in the price level over the one-year period to be calculated. From these one-year price changes, we can find the price change over a longer period. (More info.)
In other news, a pair of economists and a pair of psychologists did a study on dating preferences at Columbia University (Slate). The researchers ran a speed dating service, with men and women randomly paired for four minute dates and asked afterwards if they would like to see the same person again. It appears men prefer looks and women brains and ambition. An unexpected finding was that men discriminate much less than women based on race. And, yes, the most common interracial match was a white guy with an asian girl, per the stereotype, although the reason for it is not that white guys prefer asian girls but that asian girls discriminate less against white guys than they do against other ethnicities.
It would have been nice to see the experiment play out.
Voucher opponent Rep. Sheryl Allen said, “It [improving education] goes beyond choice.” But choice lights the fire under school administrators to imitate successful practices.
In New York, Michael Bloomberg is trying to design competition into the existing public school system (article in the Economist). But, as the Economist points out, what happens if his successor decides to do something else or is less competent? A law creating vouchers might be more durable than a good mayor. Read the rest of this entry »
Per John’s request, I am posting my comment to his post “A logic for rational voting” that discussed a paper by Bryan Caplan and others on a model for voter altruism.
My first impression is that there ought to be a constant tacked on to the formula for expected benefits from voting, to account for benefits that aren’t affected by the probability of casting a deciding vote (like feeling good about carrying your civic duty, etc.). Also, I was confused for a moment before realizing that B-social refers to per capita social benefits (hence the need to multiply by N).
Is it possible for people to make errors in either direction with regard to low probability events? Or is the evidence that they discount them too often? Seems like sometimes we are overly scared of events with extremely low probability (terrorist attacks vs. car accidents).
I’m on an iPhone, so including a link is difficult. Just google “Italy Romanians.” It would appear that Romanians are more prone to commit crime (presumably due to cultural differences) than native Italians. As a consequence, a relatively lax criminal justice system in Italy has lured a disproportionate number of criminals since Romania’s recent entry into the European Union in January. Another consequence of liberalizing migration is competition in punishment, I guess. I would think this wouldn’t be a problem for the US - our system isn’t exactly known for being lax. Then again, I don’t know how ours compares to, say, Mexico’s. If we had an arrangement with Mexico allowing citizens of each country to live and work freely in the other, would we face similar difficulties? A question to think about for those of us who would like to see freer movement of people between nations.
It would be cool to do research like this paper from Maria Petrova.
The author does, however, assume that better informed voters will vote for better policy – “independent media is important for the quality of governance.” Thinking of Caplan’s book, I was skeptical at first but realized that his argument seeks to explain why the collective decisions of the electorate are as bad as they are given some level of information (is this right, John?). A better informed electorate might vote relatively well, though still poorly by economists’ standards. Of course, for many poorer countries, “relatively well” means a huge step up.
It might also be possible for the quality of voting to decline as the public becomes more aware of what their representatives are doing, depending on your point of view. For example, Petrova mentions in her paper that “countries with low media freedom. . .have lower level[s] of social spending (Petrova 2007).” As elected officials become more responsive to the public, Caplan’s preferences over beliefs become more of a problem. So, increasing the amount of independent information (where non-independent information is assumed to be discounted by voters and thus doesn’t create incentives for politicians) available to voters has mixed effects. Voters usually dislike corruption but applaud trade barriers. This ties in with that article about the success of China’s authoritarian government. Looking at the world today, though, it looks like countries with freer media and hence more information tend to perform well more consistently than ones where information is more limited. MR had a post about growth in democracies vs. non-democracies a while back.
A provocative article. I am a little troubled that the author isn’t more cautious about trusting government officials. A nondemocratic first world nation is an intriguing idea, but let’s focus our attention on why the incentives that Chinese bureaucrats face are apparently so good and how they could be better.
While searching for something unrelated, I came across this bill that was introduced in the House a few months back that tried to make recruiters and employers more accountable for abuses of guest workers. It struck me as odd that proponents of this legislation name the source of the problem, that guest workers are tied to a particular employer, but want to solve it by regulating employers and recruiters. Regulation might deter abuse, but it might also deter recruiting, making it more difficult for guest workers to come work here and enjoy a higher income. Why not tackle the problem at the source and disentangle guest worker visas from particular employers? Then, as with US residents, firms would compete for guest workers and not have the ability to treat them like quasi-slaves. I have a feeling that the reason for tying visas to jobs has something to do with employers needing to “prove” that they have a “need” for labor that domestic workers will not fill.
Okay, time to get a little informal. I’ve been scornful of moralizing lately, but this is just too compelling. Man, the idea of “proving a need for foreign workers” is such total BS. Read the rest of this entry »
Heretical thoughts are nice, so here’s one: why should the death of a volunteer soldier be more outrageous than the death of a fisherman (sexist?), a coal miner, or, poignantly, a private security contractor? Everyone admits that the premature death of a human being is tragic, but the outrage expressed toward the government in this case goes beyond that. The sentiment seems more like what you would expect if a police officer were to shoot and kill someone needlessly. It is as if the state has put these men and women in harm’s way against their will. What about their role in it? They signed up.
However, after joining the armed forces, a soldier is forced to stay for a period of time, and there’s where I can see a basis for outrage. In particular, I could imagine that some individuals who entered the military before 2003 would have chosen not to do so, had they known that the US would soon be engaged in deadly low-intensity warfare for a number of years in Iraq. Though it is commonplace to work under a contract, you can’t sign away your liberties, except in the case of the military (and perhaps some other government organizations?). Read the rest of this entry »
Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor just became the first Malaysian in space. I was a little amused at how daily Muslim rituals had to be adapted for space travel.
“At the speed the space station travels, orbiting the Earth 16 times every 24 hours, Sheikh Muszaphar would have been obliged to pray more than 80 times a day. . .The guidelines allow the astronaut to pray only five times a day and that the times should follow the location of the spacecraft’s launch.”
It’s a little ridiculous how religion, which is supposedly of universal scope, is so embedded in the narrow context of human experience.
I laughed a little when I read this article because it reminded me of my prof from my first econ class, who used the example of ticket scalping to teach about supply and demand. It’s just such perfect fodder for a curmudgeonly old econ prof.
The folly of the outraged parents is that they think scalpers somehow make people pay high prices. Of course, the scalpers (unless they have decided to become armed robbers) have not forced anyone to pay them anything. The trouble arose because the quantity of Hannah Montana tickets demanded at the the price set by promoters exceeded the quantity of tickets available for purchase. There was a shortage. Scalpers apparently anticipated this shortage very well, scooping up a large proportion of tickets moments after they became available. They are now eliminating the shortage by reselling the tickets at higher prices. Read the rest of this entry »
Hillary doesn’t like it:
“With the stroke of a pen, President Bush has robbed nearly four million uninsured children of the chance for a healthy start in life and the health coverage they need but can’t afford.”
According to the California Nurses Association,
“it sounds like it’s the president, not Congress, who is playing politics with our children’s health.”
Most of the results on Google News highlighted criticisms of the president’s veto. The Christian Science Monitor gave the other side some coverage. The Taxpayer’s Union says that “the sincerity of this effort will be judged by the number of vetoes,” referring to Bush’s pledge to control spending. Apparently, he may veto a number of bills this year.
One point that I would like to see his critics address is where the income cutoff should be for social programs. From what I’ve read, their claim is basically that he doesn’t care about children, but they do. However, it seems to me that Bush is raising a substantive issue. Suppose we all agree that the poor “need” help. Is the same true for the middle class? For the well-off? For the very rich? I can’t imagine many people supporting social programs for the wealthy, but I suppose as a matter of ideological simplicity one might flatly state that all people should be guaranteed health insurance. One might claim that there is a right to healtcare. Getting more specific, though, isn’t it hard to justify subsidies to a household with an income of $83,000 (here)? Maybe that figure is wrong, but if the children of a family with a comfortable income don’t have coverage, where is the compelling moral tale in that?
Of course, my view is that any discussion of a program like this should not start from alleged “needs” but rather from the presence of a market failure. I have heard that such a failure may be present in the health insurance market. Tim Hartford mentioned it in his book. I remain suspicious of the claim that anyone needs anything, in the sense used in political rhetoric.
Now, it is time for the fundamental model of all economics!
The supply and demand model allows us to determine how much of good will be sold and at what price it will be sold in the market under given conditions. It works well for most markets. Mathematically, we achieve this end by finding relations between price and quantity for both buyers and sellers. We expect that buyers will want to buy more when the price is lower, while sellers will want to sell more when the price is higher. We then find the equilibrium price and quantity, where the price is such that buyers want to buy exactly as much as sellers want to sell.
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For this post, let’s find a relationship between price and quantity for buyers. We assume that other factors that might affect how much of a good buyers would like to buy (quantity demanded) are held constant. Such factors include tastes, income, how much information buyers have about the good, and government policy.
Let us consider watermelons.
These numbers are all made up, by the way. This line is a demand curve, a depiction of how quantity demanded changes with price. We can see on the graph that 24 watermelons are purchased if the price is $3, while 15 are sought if the price is $4. If the price changes and there is a corresponding change in quantity demanded, we say that we’ve “moved along the demand curve.”
A tangent regarding notation: You may be used to seeing x on the horizontal axis and y are the vertical axis, where x determines y — this convention holds across math and science for the most part. For example, if we were looking at a function, we would ordinarily put the value that goes into the function on the horizontal and the value that comes out on the vertical. However, economics does things differently, and I have no idea why. It’s a silly convention, but unfortunately it is widespread. Quantity (or sometimes quantity per unit time) is on the horizontal, price is on the vertical, but price determines quantity, not the other way around.
The demand curve for all buyers is built from the demand curves of each individual buyer.
Here is what an individual demand curve might look like. Jane, our hypothetical consumer, is very keen on having at least a single watermelon and will buy one if the price for watermelons is between $6 and $4 . She’ll buy a second and third watermelon as well, provided that the price is low enough. Between $4 and $2, she buys two watermelons, and at $2 or less, she buys three. Beyond the third, she doesn’t want any more (for any positive price, at least). By adding up many individual “stair step” curves that are all a little different from one another, you can imagine how a fairly smooth curve would be built, approximating the line above.
Implicit in the slope of that line I have chosen for my example is the assumption that as price falls, buyers demand more of a good. This assumption is important in economics, earning the title Law of Demand. According to this “law,” if other factors affecting demand are held constant, demand curves slope downward. This law isn’t quite ironclad; one could contrive an example of a good where its value to buyers increases with price.
Of course, economists also wonder what happens when other factors are varied. Such a variation results in a “shift of the demand curve” (as opposed to “movement along…”). If, say, the price of cantaloupes were to fall, then at any given price for watermelons, we would expect quantity demanded to be less than before (since canteloupe is a decent substitute for watermelon and some consumers will switch over to the now-cheaper cantaloupe). The same effect might result if consumers began to dislike watermelons, if the government put a tax on them, or if it was discovered that they are bad for your health.
Here, a $1 reduction in the price of cantaloupe causes consumers to buy fewer watermelons at any given price for watermelons. In other words, the demand curve for watermelons shifts to the left. (Sometimes a shift in this direction is called a shift inwards, a shift downwards, or a decrease in demand.) After the shift, a price of $3 elicits demand for 18 watermelons, while a price of $4 corresponds to a mere 8.
In the next post, we’ll look at how price and other factors affect the quantity of a good that sellers are willing to sell and, finally, put it all together to determine price and quantity based solely on those other factors.
Edited: 12/15/07
After Ron Steenblik of the group Global Subsidies Initiative commented on John’s recent ethanol post, I followed the link to the Initiative’s website. It’s good stuff for those of us who get fired up about subsidies. I did have a chuckle, though, when I saw this underwhelming Reuters piece about a shift in Egyptian energy policy:
“The trade and industry ministry said it will gradually reduce the subsidies, which are a main factor behind the country’s deficit…”
Great!
“…and then set prices based on the international market.”
Oh.
I found it tough to get too excited about a statist regime finally being forced by a budget deficit to crudely mimic the forces of supply and demand. Just let the market do its thing!
After hearing so much negative commentary on econ blogs about what gets printed on the WSJ editorial page (admittedly mostly from more left-leaning economists), I hesitated a bit when I came across this piece from a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute (linked to on Greg Mankiw’s blog). I braced myself against the temptations of right-wing economic punditry, knowing that my own sympathies tend in that direction, but I was pleasantly surprised. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m going to write a series of posts briefly summarizing the ideas from my intermediate micro textbook, partly for my own benefit and partly to allow others to get a quick introduction to the subject. Read the rest of this entry »
I haven’t been posting all summer due to a heavy load of math classes, but that’s over with (whew!), so I’m back.
Jeff sends me yet another intriguing link. The developer of the computer game Eve Online is employing a phd economist in order to better understand the game’s virtual economy and anticipate the consequences of gameplay tweaks. One big advantage to a simulated economy is that complete information is available on every transaction that occurs. “We watch price bubbles happen in Eve.” Cool.
Jeff sends me a link (here) regarding the work of Rufus Pollock, a PhD student at Cambridge. He thinks the optimal length for copyright protection is 14 years. This fits with the vibe I got in my industrial organization class. The article has a link to Pollock’s essay on the subject.
So says David Friedman in an article I found on his website. It covers the same theme as my very first post on this blog, albeit in a more compact and entertaining way. Particularly interesting for me was the comparison of private “governments” (condo/homeowners associations) to local governments. They don’t seem radically different (both allow free exit), but Friedman notes an important difference. If a city is formed by means of a vote, minority voters have a government thrust upon them; whereas condo associations usually exist prior to any residents moving in, so that each resident participates in the “social contract” by virtue of their choice rather than the majority’s will. Democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
If only a city could be formed in an area where no one lives. Perhaps it could be a for-profit corporation and own its land as private property. New residents who arrive would need to join a city association. There might or might not be some degree of democratic decision-making (like with condo associations), but the board would be elected by shareholders, not the residents (unless the residents decided to buy the corporation). Of course, to ensure that no one’s rights are violated and that state/federal taxes are collected, the higher levels of government would need to have a presence on the city’s land and access to every part of the city (perhaps this would be the role of the county government). There would still be government in the background, ensuring that rights are protected and laws enforced. But certainly most city functions could be handled by the profit-seeking corporation, like transportation, utilities, and city planning.
John mentions guest worker programs in a comment to my last post. He cites Dani Rodrik’s support for the idea. I also have been following the discussion Dr. Rodrik’s blog, as well as on George Borjas’s blog (Borjas has a very different point of view on the matter). Rodrik emphasizes that a guest worker program spreads around the wealth, by rotating in fresh workers eager to close that wage gap. Thus many more people enjoy the benefits of American wages. Part of the motivation here for Rodrik, I think, is that he is concerned about distributional effects in addition to aggregrate gains. Borjas counters that a guest worker program is not workable, in particular that some guest workers will inevitably become permanent workers. Rodriks thinks the argument is still good, though, even if some or all the workers don’t go home.
I have been on the fence on the possibility of greatly increased immigration for a while. It seems stupidly nationalistic to not allow individuals to live and work where they please, but then I am also cognizant of the artificial incentives to migrate created by social programs and the dangers to social stability that might exist (if existing citizens see the migrants as “others” and do not identify them with the national community). Read the rest of this entry »
Or so it would appear, given the links you can find under the heading “Liberty and Freedom” on the left sidebar:
We shouldn’t.
I came across this post by Stephanie Mehta on a blog associated with Fortune magazine about how copper may soon almost disappear from telecommunications infrastructure. From what I understand, the backbone of telecommunications uses fiber optics currently, with copper covering the “last mile” to the customer. But soon, fiber or other technologies may claim that last stretch as well. The post draws inspiration from Tom Evslin, a former VoIP entrepreneur.
What bugged me was the anxiety about whether rural residents will get left behind. Nothing wrong with that per se, but predictably Mehta and Evslin move on to support the use of taxpayer money to solve the problem, in particular a Vermont program that subsidizes rural infrastructure investment through government bonds. Read the rest of this entry »
Jeff sends a link to a Von Mises Institute article that puts a positive spin on IP infringement (piracy). It reminds me of arguments from David Levine and Michele Boldrin. The idea is that innovative companies and individuals derive a substantial advantage from being first movers or from being imitated (free advertising) without IP laws, so that these laws should be gotten rid of or at least companies should realize they have more to gain than to fear from imitation.
The argument that positive effects exist from being the inventor or creator of something and from having your idea imitated sounds reasonable, but of course the existence of positive effects doesn’t necessarily mean that they are sufficient to bring us to the socially optimal state of affairs. Based on conversations I had last quarter with Prof. Jaques Lawarree, with whom I had Industrial Organization, I got the sense that the (tenuous) consensus among economists is that the current IP regime in the US is pretty good (for the US) but certainly could be better — a bit too restrictive, especially with copyright.
P.S.: A neat, somewhat recent paper of Lawarree’s.
My friend Jeff directed me to an article about new advances in combustion engine technology. Reading about new technology has always been pleasurable for me. It’s almost like I can sense the future rushing past. It’s very refreshing. Maybe I should be a journalist who writes about new technology. Would be pretty nice — I could travel, meet interesting people. Alas, I have chosen to be an economist. But then I am pursuing something brighter on the horizon in that field, too; a world in which unimpeded commerce and trade ties us all together in peace and allows us to have as much of the things we value as possible.
I don’t know how many Americans have been following the French presidential election, but it just ended and the center-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has won. This outcome, based on what I have been reading over the last few months, represents a HUGE shift in French politics. Strike one against the French social model! According the NYTimes, “Sarkozy has pledged to remake France by, among other things, slashing unemployment, cutting taxes, keeping trains running during strikes, making people work harder and longer, shrinking the government bureaucracy, reforming pension rules and making it easier to create new businesses.”
Great stuff, though I’m not sure about “making” French people work longer hours — I think the idea is to give them the option of doing so, as it is currently against the law. The promise to make entrepreneurship easier is particularly encouraging.
John, your argument is that education produces positive externalities that cannot be captured by the person who is educated. Seems reasonable enough, but let me try to pick some holes in it. (All in good humor, eh?)
Jeff asks: “And this is a good thing why? I mean I love the idea of overpopulation and depleting resources the same as everyone else but…” (Referring to my half-serious suggestion to promote a higher birthrate in the US.)
Overpopulation is a non-issue, at least on a global scale. The world is pretty close to the replacement fertility rate (2.5 children per woman currently vs. 2.2 replacement rate) and should get there around 2050 (though the error bars are pretty wide). There is a lag between the fertility rate and the population growth rate, so the world’s population will keep growing for a while after we reach replacement.
Loyal reader Jeff sends this link.
Do women recieve less pay than men for the same work because of employer discrimination?
Mass transit in the 19th century, such as animal-powered omnibuses and street cars, was primarily a private enterprise. It played a big role in urbanization.
Mass transit appears in Greek mythology in the form of Charon, who ferries the souls of the dead to the Hades — for a price.
This post continues from my last comment under my previous post about democracy (which nobody talked about!) and public transit. It provides an opportunity for me to make a point I’ve been wanting to make for a while.
Jeff:
“I guess the idea that I want to get across here is that I don’t think we should be providing everything they WANT but should rather be ensuring that they receive what they NEED.”
I would like to propose that need is not a basis for action, either in private affairs or in public policy. When I say “I need food,” what do I mean? Of course, I need food to survive, but it does not follow necessarily that I am going to get food. I will get food only if I want to. And my wanting food is contingent on my wanting to stay alive (or perhaps on my wanting to taste something or wanting to socialize with others over a meal). I don’t really “need” food. I want food, for various reasons.
Bryan Caplan of the blog EconLog has a new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter (some good comments over at MR).
I really need to learn more about public choice theory. I am studying economics and am often cynical about our cherished system of elected representation, so it would seem only natural. Churchill was partially right — democracy is better than other forms of government, but there is an even better way for most of the decision-making in society to be conducted, the market. To a large extent, putting more decision-making into private hands would improve this or any country. Some exceptions would be correcting externalities, national defense, and the legal system (though I’m always open to more radical ideas).
