bokonist

71 ms·

541.
by bokonist 17y ago
Within a territory, you'll always have one actor who is the ultimate arbiter - ie, the government. Ideally, that government would be a neutral judge who simply enforces common law, and not a meddlesome theocrat who tells me how to live.
542.
by bokonist 17y ago
To say that people are not smart enough to run their own affairs is quite interesting. I'm not sure how to reply to that. Say we converted social news sites into voting platforms. Would you rather be ruled be Hacker News or Digg? Votes a
543.
by bokonist 17y ago
Direct democracy does not solve the problem, see California. The Swiss cantons work well because they are small. Direct democracy does not scale. One of the best ideas for reform I've heard is the idea of unpredictable elections, a la Veni
544.
by bokonist 17y ago
I live in Japan so I've got an obvious bias, but growing up I don't remember many Americans who went with Japanese cars because they were cheaper. In the absence of the Japanese buying dollars, the price of Japanese cars would keep rising
545.
by bokonist 17y ago
I don't buy your arguments. I see no evidence that Boston and New York were any more diversified than cities such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Cleveland, or New Haven. Baltimore and Philadelphia had industries rise and fall for centuries. Bu
546.
by bokonist 17y ago
The rust belt cities have been the victims of two great forces, one internal, one external. The internal force is the incompetence of democratic city governance. Detroit had utterly incompetent elected leaders who in the 1960's and 70's all
547.
by bokonist 17y ago
Can you name anything that Krugman said that was both a) novel and b) true? Can anyone? Did he really say anything about trade that wasn't known to Alexander Hamiliton? Did he say it in a way that wasn't already said more eloquently by J
548.
by bokonist 17y ago
Any exchange between two actors can be in one of four categories: 1) voluntary in-kind exchange ( Christmas presents, buying each other rounds of drinks) 2) coercive in-kind exchange ( corvee, slavery, conscription, bound serfdom) 3) volunt
549.
by bokonist 17y ago
Well documented? Where? Links?
550.
by bokonist 17y ago
They should code into law the divide by 2 and add 14 rule :-)
551.
by bokonist 17y ago
Thanks!
552.
by bokonist 17y ago
Does anybody know how well it renders books from Google books? For example: http://books.google.com/books/download/An_inquiry_into_the_n... I've been holding off on an e-reader until one is good enough to display scanned google books. E
553.
by bokonist 17y ago
Politics. The political left is the faction of academia. As institutions, the universities and the teachers unions wish to reallocate money to education spending [1]. To do so, they must simultaneously get people to believe two things: 1
554.
by bokonist 17y ago
it's only used because it's a legal way to keep minorities out of the workforce. Evidence? I've never heard anyone who does hiring say anything like that, not even in private late night conversations after many libations.
555.
by bokonist 17y ago
The actual problem is not credentialism per se, but legal credentialing requirements that are pushed by the professional lobbies for the purpose of creating artificial barriers to entry. For instance, lawyers used to be able to pass the bar
556.
by bokonist 17y ago
This article is both is both fallacious and intellectualy dishonest. Richard Nisbett cites each of these groups in his superb recent book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” Dr. Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michig
557.
by bokonist 17y ago
Twin studies are not worthless, but they are limited. If you are trying to figure out why people from the same city and class have differences in trait X, then a twin study will help find that out. But if you are trying to find out why pe
558.
by bokonist 17y ago
Simply, if you believe that IQ measures intelligence, you lose 80 IQ points. Your comment is a self-negating insult. If IQ does not measure intelligence, than saying "you lose 80 points" is not derisive.
559.
by bokonist 17y ago
In my observation, the causation usually runs the other way. People enjoy things that give them a good effort->reward loop. If something is too hard, it is frustrating and not fun. Too easy, and it is boring. I enjoy programming bec
560.
by bokonist 17y ago
I think it's important to remember that Columbus was funded by the Queen of Spain, so it wasn't all private efforts. The kingdoms and the city states of 15th century Europe were like competing family owned businesses (large property ownin
561.
by bokonist 17y ago
My views come from years of working in government and politics, following current events, and reading inside accounts of how the political system works. Probably the best book on getting an understanding of how government works in practice
562.
by bokonist 17y ago
The government is not a charity. The programs that have the outward appearance of charity in reality operate for the benefit of the employees.
563.
by bokonist 17y ago
Funding space travel on the other hand is something that would not exist without public funds. So it's outside of the effecency debate. If activity X is to matter in people's lives, it needs to be scalable. To be scalable it needs to be
564.
by bokonist 17y ago
In general, people tend to view their own level of book smarts as the optimal level. In high school a fellow student was a math genius who made into the U.S. math Olympiad at age ~14. He could do fractions in his head to multiple signific
565.
by bokonist 17y ago
2009 China is far different from 1989 in part because this event happened. Do you think it's different because of the protests, or because of the reaction of the government, or both? I'd be very interested to hear any elaboration you hav
566.
by bokonist 17y ago
The govt's actions might seem heavy-handed, but their stewardship of the change process has undeniably been impressive, even exemplary. I actually think the Chinese government did the right thing in Tiananmen. They had the fortitude to d
567.
by bokonist 17y ago
I said left-right, not Republican-Democrat. Left versus right hasn't always matched up with party politics. The Dixiecrats were basically still on the right before 1970. Leaders and institutions on the right - Buckley, Goldwater, the John
568.
by bokonist 17y ago
Man, this kind of stuff gets tiresome. It's cliched and devoid of useful advice. People want money for one of two things: 1) in order to spend it on enjoying life (ie enjoying the roller coaster). Most people cannot check out of their job
569.
by bokonist 17y ago
Which society? The left loved both Ghandi and MLK. The right not so much. The left ended up winning and wrote the history, so now everyone views them as heroes. In Ghandhi's case at least, I think the right was right ( read http://hist
570.
by bokonist 17y ago
I'd really like someone to investigate how much money the AIG bailout saved Harvard. AIG was in the credit default swap business and Harvard invested heavily in that area. There were a lot of interconnections between Wall St, AIG, Harvard,

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