Tag: economics

Wealth and Happiness

In a forthcoming paper, Norton and his colleagues track the effects of getting money on the happiness of people who already have a lot of it: a rich person getting even richer experiences zero gain in happiness. That’s not all that surprising; it’s what Norton asked next that led to an interesting insight. He asked these rich people how happy they were at any given moment. Then he asked them how much money they would need to be even happier. “All needed 2-3x more than they had to feel happier”. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that money, above a certain modest sum, does not have the power to buy happiness, and yet even very rich people continue to believe that it does: the happiness will come from the money they don’t yet have. To the general rule that money, above a certain low level, cannot buy happiness there is one exception. “While spending money upon oneself does nothing for one’s happiness, spending it on others increases happiness.”

80% poverty reduction

not sure about greatest in human history given norman borlaug saved 1B lives, but this comes close.

“the chart above could perhaps qualify as the ‘chart of the century’ because it illustrates one of the most remarkable achievements in human history: the 80% reduction in world poverty in only 36 years, from 26.8% of the world’s population living on $1 or less (in 1987 $) in 1970 to only 5.4% in 2006.

see also

But there was another significant development, which is connected to the ongoing debate about the T.P.P., and which has received rather less attention.The World Bank announced that the % of the earth’s population that is living in extreme poverty is likely to fall below 10%. As recently as 1990, the proportion was more than 33%. “This is the best story in the world today—these projections show us that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty”

Destroy Red Cross

time to shut these clowns down. if you’re donating to the red cross, you might as well burn your money, for all the good that does.

IN 2012, 2 MASSIVE STORMS pounded the United States, leaving 100Ks of people homeless, hungry or without power for days and weeks.

Americans did what they so often do after disasters. They sent $100Ms to the Red Cross, confident their money would ease the suffering left behind by Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Isaac. They believed the charity was up to the job.

They were wrong.

2015-06-03: the red cross is an utter failure and is giving nonprofits a bad name.

many of the Red Cross’s failings in Haiti are of its own making. They are also part of a larger pattern in which the organization has botched delivery of aid after disasters such as Superstorm Sandy. Despite its difficulties, the Red Cross remains the charity of choice for ordinary Americans and corporations alike after natural disasters.

why you shouldn’t donate to the red cross

the best charities are 100s of times more effective at improving lives than merely “good” charities

EVE Online economics

EVE Online changes everything about capital-class ship travel

Possibly one of the largest game changes ever seen. Eve has started to suffer from stagnation in its null-security space operations and politics. After the large $300k+ battle of B-RVRB, many of the large alliances and coalitions settled in to rebuild their massive capital ships. Many of them brokered deals to not attack each other and this has been going on for quite some time. Without high-end targets to go after, those operating large capital fleets get bored and find ways to PvP on lesser well-equipped players with their Titans and supercarriers. This type of PvP has been around for a long time of course, but now it is to the extent that CCP Games has announced highly drastic changes to the way that capital ships and others travel via jump mechanics (teleportation), bridging structures and gate travel. All jump ranges by most capital ships, usually in the 11-15 light year range, will be reset to a 5 light year range in the upcoming Phoebe expansion in early November. This, along with the introduction of fatigue timers, will drastically alter the travel map for very large ships in that old routes between regions will no longer exist for most areas of the galaxy. The player base has been split between being overly-exhilarated and highly-wronged. But all agree, the in-game universe size has been re-writ enormously.

or see this article about the “democracy”

4 years earlier, CCP had commissioned a study into the political state of New Eden, hoping to understand how they could better manage this vast virtual society. The study’s authors argued that the game needed a player-run political body. Eve’s society had evolved past tribal structures into complex social hierarchies. In response, CCP established the Council of Stellar Management (CSM), an invention unique to Eve, the only example of a game-based democratic organisation designed to represent a virtual society. Each year scores of candidates stand for election in 1 of the 14 places on the council. In 2015 there were 75 candidates, drawn from across different areas of space. Just as in real life, candidates come with platforms, create propaganda and muster both in the game and out for votes. 2x a year, CCP flies the successful candidates to their headquarters in Reykjavik for a few days of intensive debate – an audience with the gods, if you will. During that time, the council meets with CCP’s staff and hears about the new features planned for the galaxy’s future. The meetings can be heated and, on more contentious issues, there can be in-fighting between council members. But the council performs a crucial role in bridging the gap between the game’s makers and players. Indeed, after the 2011 riots, CCP called an emergency summit in Iceland for the council. Pétursson admits that the CSM’s advice directly influenced his mea culpa.

Tirole wins Nobel

since tirole is a successor to coase in some sense, here’s one of my favorite papers, by Yochai Benkler on how open source could help revolutionize the nature of production:

we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode “commons-based peer-production,” to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets

the paper has remained under-appreciated since it came out in 2002, and deserves to be more widely known.

Economic analysis

this a a super wordy, but still interesting, overview of the changes around on demand services.

Instant, pervasive access to goods and services, tailored to individual needs, often without the burden of long-term ownership or commitment Combining the best of the village economy with the best of modern commerce

Poverty is fractal

53% of children in the central region of Burkina Faso finish primary school compared with 8% of children in the most remote Sahel region; that’s a gap of 45%. And the worst-off are from the minority Tuareg ethnic group, where only 3% finish primary school. If governments want to improve education and get all children into school, they have to understand the pattern of inequalities that underlie the national figures. Otherwise, they can’t make effective use of resources, public education campaigns, political attention or anything else. The mainstream narrative – about the runaway incomes of the richest people in the richest countries, the absurdities of boardroom pay and tax avoidance and so on – might prick our sense of fairness, but it has only a limited amount to offer the analysis and treatment of extreme poverty. The second, lesser known, inequality story is about the things that keep people poor. This story offers fertile ground for the coalitions and policy agendas that can actually address both poverty and inequality.

Did Industry Cause Nations?

In 1800 almost nobody in France thought of themselves as French. By 1900 they all did. Unlike farming, industry needs steel, coal and other resources which are not uniformly distributed, so many micro-states were no longer viable. Meanwhile, empires became unwieldy as they industrialized and needed more actual governing. So in 19th-century Europe, micro-states fused and empires split.

Youth unemployment

In the EU-28 in 2012 there were 57.5M persons aged 15-24, of whom 5.6 M were unemployed. This gives a youth unemployment ratio of 9.7 %. Rapid reeducation is needed and a culture of making and entrepreneurship – employment and skill retooling and career relaunching. Students are coming out “qualified” and educated but not work ready. They do not have the desired skills and experience. The difficult economic times has meant that companies are unwilling to spend the resources to bring anyone up to speed.