Pablo Soto, the author of popular peer-to-peer file-sharing software, is being sued for LOTS by the recording industry. Their case is that he broke the law by facilitating distribution of copyright protected material. While I understand the reasons they’re going after him, I can’t understand how finding him guilty would be a good outcome.
We’ve written a lot on this blog about taxing cigarettes. The usual arguments focus on health costs and potential ‘internalities’. When you look at the calculated costs of these things you usually get a number much smaller than the tax rate on a pack of cigarettes. Today it was suggested to me that cigarettes are […]
Matt’s bout of food poisoning has prompted an email discussion on whether he should complain to the store that sold him the offending item. He is of the opinion that a certain percentage of products are always going to be bad and he was just unlucky, so why bother complaining. I think he’s ignoring the […]
For all those who’ve been missing Matt’s regular lessons in economics, fear not. He was struck down by food poisoning over the weekend and hasn’t been able to post as he catches up on work (yes, he manages to hold down a day job too) but normal transmission will resume as soon as he has […]
People say to me ‘How come economists can’t predict things like REAL scientists?’ Well, just tell someone that you’ve found a closed solution for life and see how seriously they take you 😛
William Easterly has an absolutely bizarre reader survey on his blog: Please tell me which you think is more probable: a country succeeds at economic development, or a country succeeds at economic development with a wise and capable leadership. Since the probability of ‘wise and capable leadership’ is less than 1, the probability of option […]