EconTech

Perhaps the Best Argument for the Destruction of the Music Companies Ever Made

DymaxionWorldJohn
Cogitamus: The Music Industry’s talking points: “Hey, we’re obsolete.”: via Matt, the RIAA gives consumers holiday advice:
Watch for Compilations that are “Too Good to Be True”: Many pirates make “dream compilation” CDs, comprised of songs by numerous artists on different record labels [...]

Amusing and serious at the same time. I’m sure there is something evolutionary biology can tell us here too. The next question is, of course, if this is a market failure, what is the role of government in redistributing sex? Robin writes:

In this generous season, consider the greatest gift we regularly and personally give (even [...]

These things are delicious. Natchitoches is a small town in Louisiana, near where I grew up, where these things were “invented” (they are of course very similar to samosas and various similar culinary devices in other cultures). The dough recipe comes from here. I typically replace the shortening with lard, but it is not a [...]

The CBO has a blog. This is great. Adding to the blogroll. That is all.

I want to grab my Chicago Manual before reading this, but it is lost in a box right now, so I’ll just pass this along before reading.

The right to keep and bear adjuncts
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has taken on District of Columbia v. Heller, commas and clauses are in the news. Adam Freedman [...]

People often make the argument that lawyers file suits to get things done because they can bill it and get money from doing it that way. There is, of course, TONS of confirmation bias with so many lawsuits to accomplish so many different ends. GPL enforcement, I think, is a possible counter-example. The foundations litigating [...]

I haven’t written much about e-voting initiatives, and there is too much to be written in a single space. But a few quick thoughts before passing you on to the well-versed Stokes. Avoiding the technical issues of which I am not capable of commenting on intelligently, the economic issues in these devices and processes are [...]

Or thereabouts. Another post in the theme of “Doctors Kill.” Click the link to read the full article. I really need to get down and dirty with some health care data one of these days. Too bad not all data is open, and use of it is considered plagiarism.

No. 1 Book, and It Offers [...]

There is an interesting line between copyright law and policies regarding plagiarism. In my mind, the latter is clearly the worse offense, though it is often accompanied by the violation of the former. For example, unattributed sentences may not be copyright violations but are incidents of plagiarism. Randy Picker had an interesting series of posts [...]

As usual, Rodrik hits the nail on the head, with easy explanation. I am left with nothing else to say. I’ll just quote him in full:
The (mis)use of ICAs

If the term ICA does not mean anything to you, you have not been paying much attention to development policy in recent years. The acronym refers to [...]

VoxEU is great. Professional summaries of academic articles and books. As usual, I want more hyperlinks (they are the footnotes of the web!), but since it points to an academic article for further research, I’ll say good enough. Note: their table is not reproduced here (I don’t think the layout will transfer over very well), [...]

For anyone who has insurance and has looked at their hospital bill, they will see something like this:

Cost of Procedure: $10,000
Insurance Paid: $4,000
 CoPay: $200

The sane wonder where the hell the other $6k went. Of course, if you have insurance, parts of your medical bills just disappear for reasons I have not yet figured out. If [...]

I’m with Obama on this one, I think. I am no master negotiator; so, I do not claim insight as to the best strategies for implementing some of these reforms is. But, whether we want them there or not, the drug and insurance industries will get their place at the table. Maybe foregoing the process [...]

If you live under a rock, an overview of knols. This is not what I had in mind when I said I was no longer going to be linking to Wikipedia. A Wikipedia replacement/substitute may be an alright initiative (if it does well, so be it, if not, that is ok too), but it still [...]

More on this when I get to finishing my posts on affirmative action and race. But the rhetorical question here: “if careful economic analysis had instead favored taxing men less than women, how many supporters do you think that proposal would have found, even among economists” is, in my mind, useless. Careful economic analysis that [...]