Whereas Sweden has long been known for its wonderful socialism, it is also known for being a “pirate nest” in terms of lack of respect for “intellectual property.” The torrent based file sharing site The Pirate Bay was founded and is hosted in Sweden, as are the servers for whistle-blower web site Wikileaks; the country has a Pirate Party represented
Catherine Rampell lays it out state by state in her New York Times “Economix” article. According to Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. 53,508 people passed the bar exam in 2009, but there are only 26,239 openings. The only area in deficit, Washington D.C.
In a piece entitled, “Even for Cashiers, College Pays Off,” David Leonhardt looks to throw cold water on the idea that college just isn’t worth it. Europe has it wrong that some kids shouldn’t even go to high school. Thank goodness America got it right, writes Leonhardt.
In a clever post on his blog for June 21, 2011, Brad DeLong offered a reconstruction of Robert Nozick’s political philosophy. He claimed that “to successfully explain Nozickian political philosophy is face the reality that it is self-parody.” Hence only liberals like himself could explain it, because anyone who grasps the structure of the argument would at once see that he could no longer be a Nozickian believer.
This is a fantastic book.
Clear thought and discussion suffer when all sorts of good things, like liberty, equality, fraternity, rights, majority rule, and general welfare — some in tension with others — are marketed together under the portmanteau label “democracy.”
The world of Thomas the Tank Engine is impressively “bourgeois” — everyone is hard at work building civilization. The reason Thomas is the hero of the show isn’t his strength (Hiro is stronger) or his speed (Spencer is faster). Rather, Thomas’s one superlative trait is that he’s a “Very Useful” engine.
Washington Post has an article today on “Five economic lessons from Sweden, the rock star of the recovery.” While it is certainly true that the economy of Sweden quite quickly bounced back after the short crisis, WaPo’s analysis is more of wishful thinking than statements of facts. Granted, the facts stated are true – but the offered interpretations of their effects are not.
Mathematics can sometimes make smart people dumb. Let me explain what I mean by this. I don’t mean that it is dumb not to be good at mathematics. After all, mathematics is a highly abstract and challenging discipline requiring many years (decades even) of study, and there are plenty of very smart people who have little understanding of it, and little ability to use it.
