This time of the year I like to reflect on all the great new #music I've discovered and enjoyed, and on the classics that I keep on playing on loop and dancing to.
I'm talking wonderful tracks such as _“The Wheels on the Bus”_, _“Five Little Ducks”_ or _“The Potty Song”_.
Keep this verbatim quote from #Hitler's _“Mein Kampf”_ at hand for the next time someone suggests that the #nazis did what they did in the name of #atheism:
> _“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. […] For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people trust always remain inviolable.”_
I love #economics because its basic principles are so powerful and generalisable (ie, it's not just “about #money”).
I started using Greg #Mankiw's very popular textbook _“Principles of Economics”_ as a reference a few years ago, and since then I find myself applying its “ten principles of economics” often in everyday life.
This week I learnt that David #Henderson has been teaching his own “ten pillars of economic wisdom” for decades. Those seem good, too.
So I decided to merge both!
Hereby I present the main insights of economics condensed in **fourteen principles of economics**. Even if you don't like econ as a subject, you'd do well to heed these ideas:
👉 In common (_Mankiw ≃ Henderson_):
* Rational people **think at the margin**. ≃ Economic thinking is thinking on the margin.
* People respond to **incentives**. ≃ Incentives matter; incentives affect behavior.
* **Trade** can make everyone better off. ≃ The only way to create wealth is to move resources from a lower-valued to a higher-valued use. Corollary: both sides gain from exchange.
* A country's standard of living depends on its ability to produce **goods and services**. ≃ The only way to increase a nation’s real income is to increase its real output.
* **Markets** are usually a good way to organize economic activity. ≃ Competition is a hardy weed, not a delicate flower.
* Society faces a short-run trade-off between **inflation and unemployment**. ≃ Creating jobs is not the same as creating wealth.
👉 Mankiw's:
* People face **trade-offs**.
* The cost of something is **what you give up** to get it.
* **Governments** can sometimes improve market outcomes.
* Prices rise when the government **prints too much money**.
👉 Henderson's:
* TANSTAAFL: There ain’t no such thing as a **free lunch**.
* **Information** is valuable and costly, and most information that’s valuable is inherently decentralized.
* Every action has **unintended consequences**; you can never do only one thing.
* The **value** of a good or a service is subjective.
tripu
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@tripu Of course these round allocations are not the optimum strategy, it's an oversimplification so people get the main idea: diversifying reduces risk. Those who want to dive deeper can tweak the allocations towards their risk tolerance (e.g. more crypto and stocks for higher risk but also higher upside).
@fidel
Who knows 🤷 🙂
I do think that _some_ #crypto is a must in a balanced portfolio, yes. On the other hand, these pretty round allocations always seem whimsical and irrational to me. I guess one should weigh all components according to their relative risk, volatility and performance…?
I don't know, it's like saying: “want a balanced training regime? make sure you run 10 km, cycle 10 km and swim 10 km each week!“ 😆
Best #investing strategy, according to Harry #Browne:
* ¼ in **precious metals** (protection against _inflation_)
* ¼ in **stocks** (performance during _bullish_ times)
* ¼ in **bonds** (performance during _bearish_ times)
* ¼ in **cash** (protection against _deflation_)
(Disclaimer: don't trust him, don't trust me; quite old: eg #crypto didn't even exist back then.)
tripu
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Thomas Sowell nails it on the head again.
'Too much of what is called "education" is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.'
Hear, hear.
@Hyolobrika Absolutely.
@caranmegil What “handicapped individual” “in the 300”?
> _“#Bigtech platforms were quick to shut down the #lableak hypothesis. For instance, in February 2020 #Facebook censored a New York Post article by the social scientist Steven Mosher arguing that the virus may have leaked from a lab, and a few months later #Twitter suspended the account of the virologist Li-Meng Yan for claiming the virus was made in a lab. Meanwhile, #Google ensured that typing terms like ‘#coronavirus lab leak into its search bar didn’t autocomplete (so users wouldn’t be led ‘down pathways’), and that searches for the terms would always yield statements by the WHO and other consensus-upholders as the top results. However, these measures were not enough for many liberal journalists and politicians, who demanded more be done, and so, in February 2021 Facebook issued a blanket ban on all posts suggesting the virus was ‘man-made or manufactured,’ a policy it awkwardly reversed four months later when the consensus began to change.”_
https://rabbitholemag.com/how-can-we-know-whats-a-conspiracy-theory-and-whats-not/
> _“The idea that the [#covid] lab-leak hypothesis was a #conspiracytheory was more of a conspiracy theory than the lab leak hypothesis.”_
https://rabbitholemag.com/how-can-we-know-whats-a-conspiracy-theory-and-whats-not/
Another article that's golden to help with this epistemic dizziness.
I decided that these merry days leading to Christmas, when we're infused with positive sentiments and hope for humanity, are as good as any other to read… #Hitler's _Mein Kampf_.
😲
Not really! In fact, I'm a bit embarrassed to leave my e-book reader lying around so that others can see what I'm reading… But my Theory of Reading actually supports and encourages reading _anything_ that has been very influential (for good or for ill) regardless of its literary merits, its veracity, its applicability today, or its moral qualities.
Not to put them all necessarily in the same bucket, but I have read _The Iliad_, _The Odyssey_, _The Communist Manifesto_ and _Atlas Shrugged_ — and I would read _The Bible_ and _The Quran_ too: all of them #books that are ( in a way or another) wrong, false, corrosive, harmful, evil, racist, sexist, pro-violence, or pro-war — or even all of those things at the same time!
Granted: #MeinKampf may well be the wrongest among the wrong books… And in a way, that contributes to making it “useful” as a reading.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/64930929-tripu?shelf=currently-reading
That was about 📚 #reading (#books).
Related, about the 📰 #news:
> _“I don’t know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a whole bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs.”_
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t #read all the time — none, zero. You’d be amazed a...
tripu
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@tripu I share your feeling about this manifesto, I think all the cussing is a marketing move to attract attention. The spirit of the old web is still alive if you look for it, like the IndieWeb that you mentioned.
Nowadays I try to focus on the parts of the web that I like, and ignore most of the rest, I think it's making me happier. I'm very surprised when I see what people consume out of Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tik Tok, the TV... Thank you, no, thank you.
tripu
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@tripu It seems like a really long way of saying "I'm nostalgic for old geocities sites". Was it really worth setting up a whole domain for this blog post?
👎
**Too long**, and **too histrionic**, to say many things that the good folks at [IndieWeb](https://indieweb.org/), the [EFF](https://www.eff.org/), etc have been saying for a decade or two now.
Not to mention **incoherent** (if _“the #web is fucked and there's nothing we can do about it”_, why should I care about it, bother to read the post, or try to change anything at all?), **inaccurate** (_“web 1.0 […] was better”_… there are few breaking changes in the development of the #WWW: that web the author misses didn't go anywhere; anyone can still create and browse sites like those) and **naïve** (have fun using alternatives to Gmail, Google Maps, Wikipedia, many kinds of streaming, collaborative editing of online docs, some kinds of feeds or syndication, sites with 3D capabilities, microblogging, etc!).
> _“In my whole life, **I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't #read all the time — none, zero.** You'd be amazed at how much Warren [#Buffett] reads — and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a #book with a couple of legs sticking out.”_
— Charlie #Munger
@cy@mstdn.io
😏
Are you guessing, or are there credible reports of the #Pocket browser extension doing just that? I'd be interested to know, because I confess I didn't read the fine print.
No issues preventing one from uninstalling it though, right?
