Knowledge Problem

Dairy Farming, Tariffs, and Trump’s “12 Billion Dollar Crutches”

1 Comment / Economics / By Knowledge Problem

Farming has always been an uncertain business. Weather and the price-taking nature of being small relative to large commodity markets lead to feast or famine. The Trump Trade War and today’s palliative farm subsidies to farmers harmed by Trump’s tariffs combine with pre-existing subsidies to amplify that underlying boom and bust cycle, imposing high costs on …

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Us Steel Reopening Plant and Bringing Back Jobs: Ceo on Trump Tariffs

Uncategorized / By Knowledge Problem

The proposed steel tariff will benefit the steel industry. This is what is seen as a consequence of the steel tariff. What is unseen is the higher prices for goods that use steel, the lower quantity demanded of those goods, and the resulting lost jobs in industries like automobile manufacturing and construction. Bastiat’s “What Is …

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BBC News: World’s Fishing Fleets Mapped from Orbit

Uncategorized / By Knowledge Problem

This BBC article on big data and fisheries is fascinating. Using satellite photography, researchers have mapped all of the world’s fisheries by area, finding that fishery area is larger than arable acreage while providing less than 2% of all calories consumed. I also found the conclusion thought-provoking that the patterns reveal larger effects from politics …

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Will 2018 Be the Year of Solar or Coal?

1 Comment / Economics, Electricity, Uncategorized / By Knowledge Problem

Happy New Year! At Forbes Brian Potts asks a pithy question: will 2018 be the year of solar or coal? He starts with an observation familiar to most who have a passing familiarity with energy innovation in the past decade: the decline of coal as an electricity generation fuel source is a consequence of the …

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Pencil or Peach, Either Way, a Marvel of Decentralized Coordination

Economics, Education, Liberty / By Knowledge Problem

Many of you are probably already familiar with Leonard Read’s famous 1958 story I, Pencil. Told through the eyes of a pencil, it describes the process of producing a pencil and how many people are involved in doing so, but without ever having met or consciously, deliberately set out a plan under the control of …

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Good Environmental News from the Chesapeake

Economics, Environmental policy, Regulation / By Knowledge Problem

I think we could use some good news this week. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, the current blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay is one-third larger than it was at the same time in 2015: There are more than 550 million blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay, an increase of more …

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The Day We Fight Back

Liberty / By Knowledge Problem

Google Reader Coda: Will It Become Social Media?

1 Comment / Uncategorized / By Knowledge Problem

Lynne Kiesling Apparently I’m not the only one musing on the relationship between social media and RSS readers. Since I wrote the previous post, this Ars Technica post has suggested that Google will fold Reader into Google+. To which I respond: Meh. Too social. Too visual. Not mobile friendly because it uses too much screen …

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Best Wishes for 2013

2 Comments / Uncategorized / By Knowledge Problem

Lynne Kiesling Happy New Year to all of you, and best wishes for a productive and peaceful 2013.

Updated Theme

4 Comments / Uncategorized / By Knowledge Problem

We are updating the theme here, particularly to streamline it and make it read well on a variety of devices and platforms. Comments welcome!

Author name: Knowledge Problem