CategoryEconomics
COSM 2025: Publisher Steve Forbes’ Take On National Debt Crisis
He will be one of the participants in a panel discussion on That Unpleasant Subject at COSM 2025 in Scottsdale, Arizona, in November this year
If China Wins the Blockchain Derby, a Global Chill Will Follow
COSM 2025: While the West fusses about cryptocurrencies, China aims at building a blockchain to control the global internet. And few pay attention…
International Tribunals Grant Rights to Nature, Restrict Energy
This means restricting fossil fuel development, including in areas where people are currently living in destitution
Erik J. Larson Reviews Sobering Recent Book on AI Shaping Society
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, he examines the ideas in Robert Sidelsky’s recent book, Mindless - and their implications
The Job Market is Telling Us Something About AI and Jobs…
But it’s not telling us the same things as the AI hypesters are telling us
Why LLMs Are Not Boosting Productivity
If LLMs were as reliably useful as economist Tyler Cowen alleges, businesses would be using them to generate profits faster than LLMs generate text. They aren’t.
Sloppy Science is a Statistical Sin
Evidence of sloppy science encourages readers to wonder if the entire research project is compromised
COSM: Ethernet Inventor Asks, Are We Ready for New IT Technology?
Bob Metcalfe will talk about new technologies like electromagnetic waves from the “dead zone” of the spectrum that are slowly becoming economically viable
The Government-Debt Tipping Point Is Nonsense
There are serious problems with the economics paper by Reinhart and Rogoff, whose recommendations were widely followed
How can someone who fails be faulted when everyone else is failing?
Market turbulence can cause endowment fund managers to travel with the herd — sacrifice returns in order to reduce annual volatility
What We Can Learn From the Crowdstrike Fiasco
A lot of things that we try to do to remove risk actually make the problem worse — but also less visible
Tech Industry: Are the Unicorns an Endangered Species?
The canaries are cheeping loudly that new tech startup funding is fading
LLMs Can’t Be Trusted for Financial Advice
The LLM responses demonstrated that they do not have the common sense needed to recognize when their answers are obviously wrong
Why Are Some Retail Stores Ditching Self-Checkout?
Rising theft rates are a key motivator but other problems have arisen, like preventing alcohol sales to minors
Economics Assumes Human Beings Have Free Will
Every waking moment we humans live out a constant fact underlying all economic science: we act.“Free will denial is a cornerstone of materialist–determinist ideology,” wrote Dr. Michael Egnor here in February 2024. The deniers say we are “purely physical machines, meat robots.” Dr. Egnor cited well-known people who have prominently denied humans have free will. Dr. Egnor challenged deniers to demonstrate through their own actions that they truly have no free will. They will fail for Dr. Egnor’s stated reasons, plus one more: economics. The science of economics describes the behaviors of individual humans as they pursue their lives. Economics has discovered certainties, such as the Law of Supply and Demand, that describe how people produce, consume, trade, save, invest, and anticipate the future. Economics succeeds because it grasps certain universal truths about free-will, non-material, Read More ›
Retracted Paper Is a Compelling Case for Reform
The credibility of science is being undermined by misuse of the tools created by scientists. Here's an example from an economics paper I was asked to comment on
How Data Can Appear in Science Papers — Out of Thin Air!
At Retraction Watch, Gary Smith explains how one author team apparently copy pasted missing data about green innovation in various countriesRecently, Retraction Watch, a site that helps keeps science honest, noted some statistical peculiarities about a paper last September in the Journal of Clean Energy, “Green innovations and patents in OECD countries.” The site was tipped off by a PhD student in economics that “For several countries, observations for some of the variables the study tracked were completely absent.” But that wasn’t the big surprise. The big surprise was when the student wrote to one of the authors: In email correspondence seen by Retraction Watch and a follow-up Zoom call, [Almas] Heshmati told the student he had used Excel’s autofill function to mend the data. He had marked anywhere from two to four observations before or after the missing values Read More ›
Full-Time: Why We Need More Creative Productivity, Not Less
A new book shows how we lost the meaning of work and the ways we can get back on track.