Category Archives: economics

Risk and the Price of Books

Posted on 2013-01-30 by TJ

I’m reading Alan Schom’s utterly brilliant biography of Napoleon at the moment, and noticed the price tag: about thirty bucks. Considering what I pay for other forms of entertainment, this is astonishingly low. I’ve already got dozens of hours out … Continue reading →

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More on Seasonal Markets

Posted on 2012-12-26 by TJ

Back in the spring I made some prognostications about the home price indices in the US that have turned out to be not so correct. I suggested that most of the “growth” in the Case-Shiller home price index was due … Continue reading →

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Some Notes on Reviews

Posted on 2012-12-13 by TJ

Carrie sometimes reminds me that my problems are other people’s dreams, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have problems. In the present instance, I’ve got the problem of figuring out what to read, and I find myself facing a problem … Continue reading →

Posted in bayes, economics, life, marketing, psychology, review, writing | 2 Comments

Love, Money and the Double Coincidence of Wants

Posted on 2012-11-23 by TJ

Toy-model economic discussions tend to critique the barter economy as dysfunctional due to the problem of the “double coincidence of wants”. In a barter economy, so the story goes, if Bob has a widget and wants a cow he must … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, life, psychology, sailing | 2 Comments

Calibre and E-books on Slackware

Posted on 2012-09-11 by TJ

Just in case anyone is thinking of running Kindle under WINE on Linux: it kind of works, so long as you want to just download books. It’s pretty crashy otherwise. And Calibre under WINE isn’t much for stability either, and … Continue reading →

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What Does “Climate Change” Mean?

Posted on 2012-08-18 by TJ

I argued in the previous entry that while it is uncontroversial that human activity has added 1 – 2 W/m***2 to the Earth’s heat budget (say 0.1 – 0.2 % of the total, equivalent to shifting Earth’s orbit by a … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, life, physics, prediction, science, thermodynamics | 2 Comments

Predictions

Posted on 2012-07-27 by TJ

In 1987 a group of science fiction writers and similar people were asked to predict what the future might look like in 25 years time… which is to say, in 2012 A quarter-century is in some ways not a very … Continue reading →

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The Mess That’s Texas

Posted on 2012-07-14 by TJ

The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) has released a platform that is so over-the-top stupid and self-contradictory it reads like a parody of itself. The brain trust of the RPT begins by affirming that governments in the US ought to … Continue reading →

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The Anti-Capitalist Mentality

Posted on 2012-06-27 by TJ

Mises, I think, wrote a book with the title “The Anti-Capitalist Mentality.” Yeah, here it is: including a downloadable PDF. You’d think they’d at least charge a quarter for it. To save you the trouble of reading it, Mises’ answer … Continue reading →

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Some Notes on Seasonal Markets

Posted on 2012-06-26 by TJ

The latest Case-Shiller home price index numbers are out and the commentary around them reminds me of sailing this weekend when one of my crew pointed out that the windmills on Wolfe Island were spinning at 7 or 8 seconds … Continue reading →

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