Steve Wozniak may be a brilliant technician, but this quote shows why Jobs was so important to Apple’s success. Wozniak is talking about how much he preferred Siri before Apple bought it. “I start telling everyone I knew and speaking around the world about how this was the future of computing, speaking things in normal […]
Eric has pointed me to the discussion that happened at Cato Unbound over libertarian/new paternalism. It went a bit like this: Glen Whitman alleges: New paternalist policies, and indeed the intellectual framework of new paternalism itself, create a serious risk of slippery slopes toward ever more intrusive paternalism. Richard Thaler (a founding father of LP) […]
In the comments of a recent post I claimed that philosophers and economists have little sway over important social policy decisions. Discussing the subject with colleagues I was pointed to this stunning quote by Keynes: The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful […]
A recently released report from the Grattan Institute in Australia surveys ‘game-changing’ ways to increase GDP. Its conclusions on the priorities for economic reform are summarised in a diagram: Notably, two of the three most urgent changes that they identify relate to lifting workforce participation. That’s a tricky topic because, while more labour might increase […]
In a follow up post about nudges and shoves Eric recommends a piece by David Friedman on slippery slopes that argues: An optional charge where the default choice is to pay it is the sort of thing Sunstein and Thaler propose, a nudge in the direction of doing what those responsible believe, possibly correctly, that […]
In Texas you’ll soon be able to pay less than the price of a speeding ticket to go faster. If you’re a young entrepreneur then you might want to pay to contact influential people and be guaranteed they’ll actually read what you write. A former NZ diplomat has co-founded an internet startup to allow you […]