The International Monetary Fund refers to cryptocurrency only once in its 215-page World Economic Outlook for October 2018, but that reference is telling: “Continued rapid growth of crypto assets could create new vulnerabilities in the international financial system.”
Tag: history
The Problem Definition Fallacy
Any problem solution algorithm must go through a problem definition stage, but all problem definitions do not lead to an appropriate solution. You cannot solve, but by random luck, a problem that you do not understand. And that blind-hog solution will probably not survive downstream consequences for long.
Less Voice, More Exit
The fact that voice has become 1000x easier, while exit has become only maybe 2x easier in the last half century is interesting. It means, I think, that things are better overall, but the relative ease of voice over exit seems to have tilted culture heavily towards a “say something about it” vs a “do something about it” mentality.
Compulsory Schooling Laws: What if We Didn’t Have Them?
We should always be leery of laws passed “for our own good,” as if the state knows better. The history of compulsory schooling statutes is rife with paternalism, triggered by anti-immigrant sentiments in the mid-nineteenth century and fueled by a desire to shape people into a standard mold.
The US Makes One Too Many Parties to the Spratly Spat
No fewer than six states — China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Phillipines, Malaysia, and Brunei — assert territorial claims over all or part of the (largely uninhabited) Spratly archipelago. To which, if any, of those states do the Spratlys “belong?” That’s for them to work out between themselves, through arbitration and mediation or maybe even war. The US government, neither numbering itself among those claimants nor having any plausible basis upon which to do so if it wished to, needs to butt out.
What Do Judges Maximize?
Public choice analysts did not develop a standard way of analyzing the actions of judges. For the most part, judges were simply ignored. Of course, if the judges were elected, they could be analyzed in the same way as any other elected officials, but in regard to appointed judges, especially those appointed for life terms, as the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are, public choice had little to say.
Sleep Research Shows How Homework is Harmful
“More than 70% of high school students average less than 8 hours of sleep,” according to an October 1 research letter in JAMA Pediatrics (“Dose-Dependent Associations Between Sleep Duration and Unsafe Behaviors Among US High School Students”), “falling short of the 8 to 10 hours that adolescents need for optimal health. Insufficient sleep negatively affects learning and development and acutely alters judgment, particularly among youths.”
Schools Are Tracking Your Child’s Mental Health—Whether You Like It or Not
A worrying trend is emerging in schools across the country. With increasing regularity, school districts are tracking students’ mental health and raising flags if a screening shows something amiss.
Brett Kavanaugh is the Swamp
President Donald Trump was elected at least in part on a promise to “drain the swamp.” As a populist pledge, that would amount to smashing DC’s system of rule by entrenched, “connected” bureaucrats like Brett Kavanaugh.
Spinoza – A Man for Our Troubled Times
In these interesting times, we all need someone to admire. I have found such a one in Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677), the 17th-century rationalist liberal philosopher who advocated freedom of thought and expression, toleration, and simple kindness.