There is no reason to think that the state will be a responsible steward of our culture. Our cultural history gives us every reason to believe that capitalism will continue to provide the diversity and quality of forms that we have come to take for granted.
Ultimately only experience will tell us what kinds of niches Bitcoin will be able to fill, and how it will adapt.
Richard Dawkins’ statements about Mitt Romney and Mormonism show that it is religiosity itself that draws his ire, not just Islam. Dawkins may be religious hater, but he is an equal opportunity hater.
Regulating technologies always poses a tradeoff, and in regulating new technologies that are platforms for innovation we cannot know ahead of time what innovations we will be foreclosing by regulating. This is as true for 3D printing as it is for commercial drones.
Quasi-stationary stratospheric drones will be better than communications satellites in almost every way.
Whether arising from the direct reduction of violence through the state’s capacity as the keeper of order, or as an accidental adaptation built on a tendency for the strong to exploit the weak, the rise of the state is associated a reduction in violence and increase in conditions that are favorable for trade and growth. At a time when the milk of human morality was only reserved for one’s closest kin, the reduction in violence brought on by the brute force of the state allowed for the development of commerce and culture that has since made the state irrelevant.
Video games have long been an icon of modernity’s ills. But in reality, they can be the perfect vehicles for personal satisfaction.
The homelessness of modern folk music.
The problem of doping in cycling is a classic prisoners dilemma. The way to do this will seem scarily counterintuitive to many, but at the same time so simple: give the riders more power, not less.
Frugality is increasingly high-status. This is a major hole in neo-Veblenian theories of “conspicuous consumption.”
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Not Doing Better Than Our Parents and Loving It (Or, Why Keynes Was Right)April 1, 2013
‘Binge Learning’ is Online Education’s Killer AppMarch 6, 2013
Why is Communist Iconography Still Cool?May 8, 2013
Filter Bubbles Versus Viral Memes: Why We Have More Common Ground than Ever BeforeMarch 18, 2013
