All sushi is not created equal. If I brought you a tray of gas station sushi, you’d have a different […]
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Tag: business
Well Done, Billionaires
The dominant narrative that billionaires are greedy and big companies like Amazon are monopolistic, exploitative tyrants is not only misguided but deeply troubling for the future of prosperity and human progress.
Coronaggravation
It would be one thing if this were a natural disaster and there were actual reasons businesses couldn’t open or that people couldn’t gather, but this is a natural event turned into a disaster by politics. Politics makes people stupid!
Smallest Actions Can Have Big Effects
It’s a quirk of human nature that a crisis can bring people together, bring out our best, and give our lives meaning. Sure, it can also bring out the worst in some damaged people, but we can acknowledge their existence then continue to ignore them as insignificant.
Gouge Is Good
If you’ve bought anything in the past six weeks, you’ve seen shortages. In grocery stores, you’ve see empty shelves. Online, you’ve seen long waits. If you know econ 101, there’s an obvious explanation: price-gouging laws. When supply falls, the market’s normal reaction is to raise prices. Government’s reaction, however, is to paint the market’s normal reaction as vicious exploitation – and order prices to stay flat despite reduced supply. Shortages inevitably result. While this story has great merit, you don’t have to look closely to realize that it’s not the full story of shortages. Why not?
State Priorities, Not State “Capacity”
In the last few years, social scientists have started heavily appealing to “state capacity” to explain the wealth of nations. Why do some countries prosper? Because they have great state capacity. Why do others flounder? Because they have crummy state capacity. What do floundering countries need to do in order to prosper? Build state capacity, naturally.
“Essential”: What’s in a Word?
Are you an “essential worker” who needs to be on the job? Do you run a “non-essential business” that’s required to close and isn’t eligible for a government bailout? When you leave your home is it for “essential travel” or are you engaging in “non-essential activity?”
Protesting the Protestors Who are Protesting Tyranny
It seems that the protests against the coronavirus shut-downs are really upsetting government-supremacists around the world; turning them into protestor-haters.
From Telework to Flexible Wages?
The simplest explanation is that the current recession is terrible. Quite right; maybe it’s twice as terrible as the Great Recession. But last time around, I heard zero first-hand reports of nominal wage cuts, and near-zero such stories in the news. I can understand a doubling of incidents, but not this.
Making One More Coronavirus Prediction
I’m going out on a limb to make another coronavirus prediction. You can decide for yourself, with hindsight, how my previous predictions have held up — and hindsight will get clearer as more time passes.