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His selfish motives resulted in a new product that many people seem to like. I think it’s amazing that we have a system that can harness his ambition, benefitting both him and the consumers of his product.

Milton Friedman wasn’t wrong. It’s important to mention that he specifically stated that businesses should operate within both legal and ethical norms. Suggesting that unethical or illegal behavior is excused by his theory is wrong.

In addition, businesses are only “islands of socialism” to the extent that it increases profit. Ronald Coase’s ‘Theory of the Firm’ lays out the logic of this arrangement. Business relationships are voluntary, and the threat of monopoly is greatly exaggerated.

Build more housing capacity. An increased supply of housing could support both long term housing and legal Airbnb rentals.

Because of static supply, the two use cases are competing in a zero sum way, but that needn’t be the case.

The point about the range of most cars meeting maximal needs reminds me of when some people buy a vacation home vs renting.

People are willing to pay a premium to know for certain that something is available for them to use on a whim, even if they would never do so.

There’s something about the increased flexibility and redundancy afforded by long range capability.

Health insurance should be decoupled from employment. Its tax advantaged treatment causes distortions in the costs and coverage offered. I’d rather see people get more of their compensation in cash rather than a health insurance benefit. It would especially help poorer workers who would have more flexibility and choice.

It depends on whether you sign up within the app or sign up on the Netflix site and simply log into the app. Paying through Apple will give them the 30% cut.

This is really cool.

One suggestion. Allow the mouse to control the spaceship movement in both x and y directions. It’s intuitive to try to point the mouse to the place you want your ship to go, however the mouse only controls the Y axis.

The government has distorted the market by subsidizing college with guaranteed student loans unable to be discharged in bankruptcy.

I’m confident that a fully private market would limit student loans to those with a positive ROI. Of course, that’s politically unpalatable in the US.

That’s not true. If an organization benefits its customers/users in some way, it’s still doing a good thing if it captures some of that benefit in the form of profit.

The relentless competition in retail never ceases to amaze me. I remember when online order delivery times for basic items were measured in weeks. Now, I can order the most obscure of items and get it at my door in 1-2 days.

Any ideology or policy prescription that does not accurately reflect the reality of human nature is bound to be ineffective or counterproductive.

A lot of the claims in this article are intuitive or common sense. However, there is a subset of people who wish to engineer society in such a way as to erase variation between different groups.

Men are more aggressive than women. Men will probably continue to be more aggressive than women. We should try to harness this variation for good outcomes rather than try to eliminate the variation altogether.

This episode discusses the incentive structure of insurance companies, drug companies, and other middlemen driving up the price of drugs.

The patent system with respect to drugs is a mess. The proliferation of secondary patents on established drugs has to be done away with. Drugs are expensive not because they’re any better, but because of monopolies gained through abuse of patents.

The 80/20 rule on insurance company profits also has a perverse effect. The only way for insurance companies to earn bigger profits is by increasing costs. If they try to save money for their customers, they would be forced to earn less.

In my opinion, the system needs less tinkering by government and more control by individuals over their own care.

Think about the demand for tax preparers each year. Higher demand Jan-Apr. Lower demand the rest of the year. Should companies be forced to hire tax preparers full time year round or should they be free to contract for only when they are needed?

If you remove the opportunity to earn some money with gig work, you are forcing them into their next best alternative, which is starving or losing their home. I don’t see how that makes people better off.

I think that the cost to the wealthy person is understated because of the opportunity cost of their time/resources. The fact that wealthy people don’t do this now without congestion pricing makes it unlikely that they would do so with an additional cost applied.

This is a great example of the opportunity created by ‘the long tail’ of web platforms. I’m glad that people can make money making music and that listeners have so much more choice. Very insightful.

It’s immediately obvious that increasing the money supply and spending the money will result in inflation.

MMT says that the only constraint on spending is inflation, but also turns around and says that you can always print more money. That’s a contradiction.

Printing more money does not change the real wealth in the economy. You can’t create additional purchasing power with an increase in the money supply because prices will adjust to the new level.

This is a perfect example of the increase of government paternalism. Why shouldn’t kids have a choice of whether they want to eat meat or not? One size does not fit all.

“The specialization of labor is limited by the extent of the market” - Adam Smith

Having more people is better for us on net because it gives us more human capital and allows us to develop technologies that pay off at scale.

As the world population has grown, our society has gotten wealthier on a per-capita basis, and we still have more than enough food to go around.

It’s not true that overpopulation is happening or that increased population is a negative phenomenon.

Not every episode is like that.

Take [0], where John Allison of BB&T discusses his business philosophy, and as an aside mentions that his bank doesn’t issue negative amortization mortgages (a cause of the recession) in 2007.

Or [1], where Michael Lewis discusses Moneyball and The Blind Side.

Or [2], where Christopher Hitchens discusses George Orwell.

Or [3], where Paul Graham talks about Hackers and Painters.

EconTalk has something for everyone.

[0] http://www.econtalk.org/allison-on-strategy-profits-and-self...

[1] http://www.econtalk.org/michael-lewis-on-the-hidden-economic...

[2] http://www.econtalk.org/hitchens-on-orwell/

[3] http://www.econtalk.org/graham-on-start-ups-innovation-and-c...

EconTalk.

It covers everything. It has helped me sharpen my decision making.

It exposed me to Paul Graham, which eventually led me here [0].

It is a collection of conversations, the quality of which is unmatched by anything else I’ve come across.

[0] http://www.econtalk.org/graham-on-start-ups-innovation-and-c...