pvnick

That's always been my biggest concern. It appears to have happened to Trump's team, which is very ironic because the republicans are supposedly the national security hawks that want this surveillance; but at the same time now the dems turn a blind eye because it happened to someone they despise.

Not sure that's true. His team seems to have been the victim of it, so that complicates things. May be a wake-up call to the party that's currently in power. It's fascinating because political abuse was exactly what Snowden and Greenwald warned against and yet they don't seem to care much because they dislike Trump. Deep down everybody is a political hack.

You make an important point. Those with the most power in this country are perhaps the decision-makers of media companies (NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, FOX) and online platforms (Google, Facebook, Twitter). Funny that their political leanings are mostly homogeneous.

> American conservatives love to talk about freedom [but here's why they are hypocrites]

> ... if the Freedom Caucus gets its way, [bad thing]

> ... few expect the Trump administration to [good thing]

> the Trump administration is [bad thing]

Even in an article about non-competes Krugman can't help but slather on the bias. It amazes me that people still take this man seriously and that his books are so widely used in economics classrooms. Krugman has long since abandoned any hint of objectivity, and thus his conclusions should be considered with a heaping scoop of skepticism.

Companies that waste too much go out of business and are replaced by organizations that are more efficient.

Governments that waste too much suck up ever more of your taxes or go bankrupt and cause misery for all.

Henry Hazlitt, one of the economists quoted in the article, wrote a book called Economics in One Lesson [1]. It is a brilliant, and very approachable, piece of writing that should be read by everyone interested in the basics of economic theory.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Underst...

Ok well you made it about 10% through the article - at least you made a modest attempt at understanding the other side of the debate.

I prefer the rule of nobody but the consumer. That's what markets are for.

Read this article by the brilliant Ben Shapiro: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/11/10/7-reasons...

Edit: To those knee-jerk rejecting the argument based on the Breitbart domain, besides being intellectually lazy, you should know that Ben Shapiro is a very well-respected author on matters of economics and politics (and indeed that Breitbart used to be a very respectable media outlet before the founder, Andrew Breitbart, passed away and the company was taken over by Steve Bannon)

Be careful of wishing for judicial oligarchy, because when it happens you may not enjoy what it looks like.

I'm a consumer and I think this is a good thing. Can't make all the people happy all the time.

Edit: Besides, government policies reflexively guided by consumer sentiment is called populism, which is dangerous.

Fascinating. Would have thought artificial sweetener would be implicated, not the CO2.

Ok but that's not the point I was making.

Good to know, thanks

Completely unrelated, but thank you for posting the chicken papricash recipe on your website. Sounds really good. Just printed it out, am planning to try it.

Awesome. Maybe you can change the part of the culture that thinks it's good to censor troublesome (read: conservative) viewpoints.

Best of luck. Reddit needs a good kick in the arse. Since shortly before Steve Huffman's (Spez) return, Reddit has adopted a policy of top-down content curation - banning controversial subreddits, changing the voting algorithm to dis-favor /r/the_donald, and most recently introducing /r/popular which is basically /r/all without that pesky /r/the_donald subreddit (ffs just man up and ban the group rather than pretending to support the free exchange of ideas).

Reddit management prefers for their website to only showcase non-controversial content in order to attract advertisers. Which is their right, but I'm rooting for the disruptive upcomer that will kill that website like Reddit originally did to Digg back when Reddit was cool and stood for something.

It's not capitalism that pays for the author's salary - it's the state (he is a professor at a public university)

This article is garbage. Feels like the author pulled up a chair, sat in it backwards to seem hip, then laid down some "real talk, kids."

The author is a professor at a state college. Which means taxes pay for him to think up such nonsense.

Hope you're right

Corporate interests currently support net neutrality regulations for whatever reason. So you get entertainers like John Oliver pushing young folks who don't know any better to submit comments. Free market solutions are rarely in vogue. Thus the discrepency.

If you lack the intellectual capacity to consider the motives of the other side believing that a freer healthcare market is a superior means to save lives (a notion backed by history and economic theory), then you have completely discredited yourself with regards to speaking about political topics.

Tangent: Why does so much modern political discourse resort to profane language, either overtly or with puns?

For those who do not want to save Net Neutrality and would rather the FCC stay out of regulating ISPs, here is a website to find details to contact your representative:

http://whoismyrepresentative.com/

This is a good point. If we could avoid massive expansion of arbitrary and innovation-killing biotech regulations, then the market will eventually correct the current shortcomings and will catch up and work within the current framework. This will lower costs and drive up quality of care. Silicon Valley potentially has an important role to play here.

I'm very torn on these kinds of studies. In my field we see a lot of studies looking at gender and racial disparities in healthcare offered (e.g. what kinds of _______ therapy are prescribed to various racial groups). While such disparities are probably important in some cases, the "why" is generally not addressed in the study outcome, and rather the results are open to all sorts of interpretations based on our biases.

And then of course any disparities, properly normalized for alternative factors (or not), have to be corrected. Very messy science. It's also easy and politically expedient science - these days we're obsessed with inequality, and if you just comb around you're bound to find some statistically significant disparities and that gets everyone's attention. If researchers were trying to investigate population-level thoughtcrime, this is what it might look like.

My opinion regarding the NSA has changed over time. During the Snowden revelations (Snowden is still a hero of mine), I was greatly opposed to foreign spying, e.g. on Petrobras and Angela Merkel.

Over the years I've realized how powerful and important such information is for peaceful diplomacy, and that the United States has a post-WWII responsibility to maintain that peace.

However, the recent debacle regarding potential political spying has vindicated my earliest fears - that this can be used to subvert the domestic democratic process. Doesn't matter whether the spying did or did not occur (probably both sides are stretching the truth). We're living in an age where it is at least conceivable by a large portion of the country that the NSA's tools were improperly used against US citizens. It's time for a vigorous debate on clear guidelines regarding these powers.

First question - yes, duh. Except it is unrealistic in the context of free market because some other guy will just copy your drug and sell it to me for the cost of half of my life savings. A silly argument you have made.

Second paragraph - get the corrupt politicians out of the picture and the problem solves itself.

You're right - government officials (not necessarily corrupt even) write legislation influenced by lobbyists who are hired by the big guys to protect their own interests. All legislation is influenced by lobbyists. It's just the name of the game. More legislation and regulation generally has the opposite effect of getting in the way of innovation and market efficiency.

Regarding sustainable energy - a lot of government funding is already going to that in the form of research grants awarded to people in academia looking at those things. We can increase funding, but that's already happening. The surest way to kill those chances would be, for example, create a carbon tax which has the effects of getting government dependent on revenue coming from fossil fuel emissions, and introduces incentives to ensure that revenue source continues.

Regarding your last question - I don't know. Haven't done the research. But I have read enough of classical economics to know that it's probably not a big deal - or if it is an issue that it will be short-lived. If the consumer is sufficiently fucked then it is the corporation who will have shot themselves in the foot. Law of supply and demand in action

Correction: "Most people currently have..."

In the long run, the only barrier to competition is regulatory capture, which is much harder to overcome than short-term problems like there not being enough competition. Technical challenges are a lot easier to solve than regulatory challenges, which 100% of the time increase the barrier to entry by, among other things, raising the cost of compliance (have to pay more lawyers, accountants, etc to make any moves in the market).