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Paternalism can be kind, just not to present-you
You may want to file this under ‘incredibly obvious’, but I haven’t seen it noted elsewhere. Liberals and libertarians have an instinctive aversion to paternalism. Their key objection is: how can...
View ArticleThe value of time as a student
When I was at college, many of my associates had part time jobs, or worked during school breaks. They were often unpleasant, uninspiring, and poorly paid jobs, such as food preparation. Some were...
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Could risk aversion be from friend thresholds?
If you are going for a job that almost nobody is going to get, it’s worth trying to be unusual. Better that one in a hundred employers loves you and the rest hate you than all of them think you’re...
View ArticleCan a tiny bit of noise destroy communication?
If everyone knows a tenth of the population dishonestly claims to observe alien spaceships, this can make it very hard for the honest alien-spaceship-observer to communicate fact that she has actually...
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Invent yourself and think through your impact – graduation ceremony speech
I was lucky enough to be chosen to be the student speaker for my graduation ceremony. Unsurprisingly, I decided to talk about some key ideas emerging from the effective altruist movement, in which I...
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US laissez-faire serves a greater global good
Liberals across the developed world are very concerned by inequality within the United States, as demonstrated by global interest in the Occupy Wall Street movement. This is peculiar because poverty...
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Is US gun control an important issue?
After the shocking massacre in Connecticut it looks like gun control is going to draw a lot of attention from Obama and Congress this year. This got me thinking about how important gun control might be...
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In the long run, we’re all still exposed to risk
Many of you will be familiar with the fact that past returns from notable stock indices, such as those in the US, are a biased indicator of the likely future returns to investing in equities. The...
View ArticleEconomists too thoughtful to be kind
A result the media loves to report is that people who study economics are more likely to react like jerks when asked to respond to game theoretic predicaments like the prisoners’ dilemma. Are...
View ArticleBeware Intuitive Econ
Economists have two standard very simple models of product competition: firms can compete on price or compete on quantity. Early in the Dotcom internet revolution, I remember some people, including...
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