This Townhall.com column by Walter Williams illustrates a very important point about markets: they are not things, they are not places, they are not individual people. Markets are the interaction of our choices and decisions, based on our private, local knowledge. What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in …
When I am writing, I like to listen to ambient techno music. My favorite source for this music has been, for the past two years or so, SomaFM from San Francisco, on their channel called “Groove Salad.” Like most people, I suspect, I have been meaning to send them a donation for a while, but …
Hal Varian, writing today in the New York Times’ Economic Scene, describes auctions, how they work, and how design can influence whether or not participants can collude. This article summarizes a recent journal article by Paul Klemperer, an economist at Nuffield College, Oxford, and one of the most pre-eminent auction theorists. Mr. Klemperer argues that …
Sonia’s Tech Central Station article on the proposed bill is very good. She hits the nail on the head with Many of Hollywood’s Internet pirates are also paying customers in real space, putting Hollywood in the strange position of wanting to attack its own customers. Intellectual property is, of course, important both in principle and …
This Dow Jones newswire article indicates that one consequence of more stringent SEC regulatory enforcement to reduce corporate accounting fraud will result in increased litigation and decreased settlement out of court. This is one of the most striking costs of increased regulation — the litigation and slow-as-molasses process of resolution. Lawyers are probably raisin’ the …
This Wired News article highlights remarks by Martin Shubik, an eminent economist and game theorist, who is advocating pushing the use of game theory in economics beyond its grounding in rationality and strategy, to incorporate such human traits as emotion and error. Last Wednesday, Shubik told the audience of game theorists with mathematics backgrounds that …
I have an article on Tech Central Station this morning, on how markets discipline companies who are not transparent and full of integrity.
As Janis Ian wrote in an article on her website, the internet and music downloads can and do benefit artists. This is a well-researched and well-written article. Thanks to my husband for forwarding it to me. UPDATE: I thought that Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit had mentioned this article before, and he did, here, in reference …
Here and here are two articles from Wired that are good complements to Dan Gillmor’s article referenced below. Not only would this bill have unintended consequences, as the first article discusses, the large media companies would not have to stop their P2P music distribution under this bill.
Dan Gillmor on the proposed “Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act,” under which the music and movie industries would be legally allowed to hack into computers running file-sharing programs. Dan puts it very gloomily.
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