amateurpolymath

I don't see this as evidence that economists => inequality. Even if we accept the notion that economists are directly responsible for growing inequality, it's worth remembering that there are disagreements within their ranks.

I would argue this is when most economists lost influence in Washington, while a few like Art Laffer gained massive influence. The New Deal era prior to this was largely motivated by the work of noted economist John Maynard Keynes. Although the causality is debated, the New Deal was followed by recovery and economic growth. Economists gained influence in the public sphere because of the effectiveness, real or imagined, or "Keynesian" economic policy. These folks had lost sway in Washington by the early 70s due to the stagflation crisis[1] and the collapse of the "New Deal coalition" after the tumultuous 1968 presidential election.

The late 1970s was dominated by the ideas of economists like Art Laffer, who took an uncontroversial economic idea "tax revenue is maximized at some point between 0% and 100%" and turned it into "the tax revenue maximizing rate must be lower than our current rate" without presenting sufficient evidence for his claim. This was a convenient for some in Washington who already believed this to be true, and thus the "Laffer curve" was born. The following era of deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy likely played a large role in increasing income inequality.

[1] The causes of stagflation are still debated, but I am convinced this was directly caused by the OPEC oil cartel using it's market power to quickly inflate the price of oil by 400%, creating a massive supply shock that started the stagflation spiral.

In the US, our democratic process has delegated all these roles to regulatory agencies that are staffed with economists. The FTC, FCC, Justice Dept., etc. all employ many PhD economists. Whether their bosses and the politicians listen to their recommendations is another matter.

Whether people are upset by price discrimination or not depends on how it is perceived. For example, no one seems upset at discounts for seniors, students, or military, despite this being a form of price discrimination.

To your second point, customers often do try to fool vendors into thinking they are in the consumer group that is offered lower prices. As an example, non-students use their old student IDs all the time.

Re: correlation with a legally protected class, this can be solved with marketing. Price discrimination based directly on gender would be illegal. But if you put one product in a blue box in the "men's" section and one in a pink box in the "women's" section, consumers will self-select. This is very common with razors, soap, and other such products.

Lastly regarding your edit, if a consumer pays his or her reservation price they are left with zero surplus. But that doesn't mean the transaction was pointless. The consumer gets the consumption value of the product. I'm willing to pay at most $2 for a bottle of Coke. That's my reservation price. If I'm offered a Coke for $2, and no vendor offering a lower price is available, I will pay that price and enjoy the Coke.

> Intelligence is the capacity to achieve your goals. Intelligence is highly heritable. A goal of most people is to become wealthy. So people who acquire wealth tend to be much more intelligent than average, as wealth is graded on a curve

That is an impressive syllogism you've got there.

I've taught many MBAs and I can attest to their disappointing analytical skills. However, a company like Amazon already has plenty of analytically skilled employees. What they need from the MBAs are their management skills. I suspect Amazon is particularly targeting those MBAs who have experience with operations and supply chain management experience. At Amazon's scale, even a small reduction in costs is worth the cost of hiring all these MBAs.

My impression when reading this was that the author intended it to be taken seriously. It is written with a decidedly "academic" tone. However, it is very light on actual research and evidence. Author says "Humans are inherently cooperative" is a bias on the Left. Where does this come from? More unsourced claims that strike me as suspect: "Respect for the strong/authority" is a bias on the Right. Women have more "Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness."

I can't help but wonder how the author would respond to having zero men awaiting her swipe.

> Monopolies don't last.

This is simply untrue.

I think many people who are physically unable to take a hike (disabled, elderly, ill, etc.) would appreciate a VR system that can closely mimic a real hike.

Also, if a VR system can perform well as a hiking simulator it would be able to realistically simulate things that don't exist, places that are too difficult/expensive for an average person to visit, or experiences that are too dangerous to attempt in reality.

EDIT: For example, I'd love to visit the moon or Mars but it's highly unlikely I'll ever be able to physically go there. A highly immersive VR simulation would be very appealing to me!

I recently listened to an interesting discussion[1] about VR on a friend's recommendation. One of the guests had a great test for quality VR: can it perform as a hiking simulator? Can it mimic all the qualities of a good hike -- visuals, body movement, sounds?

It seems to me we're much closer to a great AR experience than truly great and immersive VR.

[1]: https://www.relay.fm/rocket/20

Economists Ted Bergstrom and Preston McAfee (currently at Microsoft) have long studied journal pricing. Here is Ted's page on the matter: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/%7Etedb/Journals/jpricing.html

His table of particularly overpriced journals in economics is dominated by Elsevier journals: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/roguejournals02.html

Hopefully we see more academics collectively abandoning such journals like Knuth and the Journal of Algorithms board and these other examples from Ted's website: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/%7Etedb/Journals/alternatives.html

This stuff is rampant because the incentives are there. Academia values original publications all else. Tenure, promotion, and respect of your peers depends almost entirely on publication in academic journals. Doing replications is not considered original and often raises the ire of more senior members of your field (the ones you're probably criticizing). In fact, making your research difficult to replicate is probably a smart career move --- no one can come along and use your data to publish something better!

Until replicability is required by top journals, and replications are appropriately valued by these fields, you'll continue to see this kind of drek trotted out.

Publish or perish.

I don't see the problem. Fred can sell his time/labor to make up the difference. If that is not possible for some reason, Fred could also default on the debt. Then the lender takes what she can get and learns not to make loans that cannot be repaid.

No, it is predicated on the assumption that $500 at time t is worth $600 at time t+1.

I was homeschooled my entire life. I taught myself how to read as a toddler, so my parents decided that I needed to have a great education. However, they had no faith in public education and no money for private school. I'm currently finishing up a Ph.D. and have a healthy social life, so I consider homeschooling a success in my case. My thoughts, in case anyone is interested:

I imagine it is much easier to homeschool now that PCs and the internet are ubiquitous. My mom had to do a lot of work assembling curricula and sifting through textbooks that would be much easier today.

Homeschooling works better in groups. It ends up being like a regular school environment but with much smaller class sizes and heavier investment by the teachers. In my teens, my group met on Saturdays for a long intense literature class, Mondays for most other classes, and individually for math. Naturally we had lots of reading and homework to do the rest of the week. Some of the "classes" I took were more in-depth than my university courses.

Homeschooling taught me my most valuable skill: how to teach myself. I taught myself algebra because I didn't like the way it was explained to me (textbooks offered more rigor). I read lots of classic literature in my spare time, taught myself how to touch type, play guitar, etc.

The biggest downside was not having a guidance counselor. No one in my family had been to college, and that led to me making dumb mistakes in the college application process (like not applying to top schools because they were too expensive, not knowing they offered substantial need-based financial aid). I also struggled to learn to program on my own.

I can't speak for other states, but in Florida it's very easy to do dual enrollment, possibly the best option for a gifted high school student. As long as your courses are at a public university or community college, your tuition is fully funded by the state. Your high school credits are satisfied by college courses, you get college credits that are easily transferred to other universities when you graduate, for free.

There are also plenty of challenging classes for gifted students, but this might vary from school to school.

Procreation is not needed for survival.

These crowdfunding platforms heavily rely on trust between backers and creators. I wonder how many failed projects, scams, etc. it will take before that trust is eroded? If fraud isn't policed better, Kickstarter will permanently lose many of its best backers.

Example: I once invested in a small Indiegogo art project. The creator was supposed to produce and ship a small book of comic strips to the backers. This was a very doable project but the creator never delivered and has to this day never refunded the backers. I haven't funded anything since and probably never will.

They do. Broadband access in rural US is terrible [1].

[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/rural-broadband-access-still-lacking-...

University of Virginia does this as well:

"Out of respect for the founder of the University who did not have a Ph.D., University faculty are referred to as Mr. or Mrs. instead of Doctor, even if they have a Ph.D. Students and faculty historically addressed each other in this manner. Medical doctors are the exception to the rule and they should be referred to as Doctor."

http://www.virginia.edu/deanofstudents/studenttraditions.htm...

At my university it is already hard to get students to fill out the evaluations (they aren't mandatory but probably should be). Asking them to do so a year later would result in a near 0 response rate.

Even if evaluations were mandatory, that is no guarantee they will be taken seriously. A lot of students just "Christmas tree" their evaluations and don't offer comments.

Ability in physics could be considered a proxy measure of student ability to understand abstract mathematical models. Or perhaps it's just another "are you smart?" filter.

I really like that you aren't simply offering unpaid internships. A lot of people fail to realize that high school kids from low income families often have to take on summer jobs to help support themselves and their family. The stipend will enable many of these students to take this opportunity. I only wish this program existed when I was a poor kid with no connections!

That's impressive! I'm skilled in math but a novice programmer, so I've not gotten far (yet! still hopeful).

"There is no room to expand without replacing something that’s already there. Since few of the Victorian residences that give the city its character are taller than three stories, housing is perpetually in short supply."

The problem isn't yuppies, it's zoning.

San Francisco residents and municipal government are more interested in preserving old buildings than increasing housing supply, then complain that prices are going up? Well yeah, Supply < Demand.

In Miami, we had a similar problem: the booming financial industry brought in yuppies that threatened to displace the Cuban immigrants that give the city character. So the city simply turned the area around the financial firms (Brickell) into a bunch of fancy high-rises.

I'm sure there were plenty of cool old buildings in Brickell. But the municipal government compromised and Miami is better for it.

[1] http://marketurbanism.com/2015/04/20/travel-update-a-tale-of...

I see you are a fellow Project Euler-er! How far have you gotten?

Good to see Florida is determined to remain a national joke.

There has been plenty of debate about this in other fields as well. Deirdre McCloskey and Stephen Ziliak have a particularly well-written paper titled "The Cult of Statistical Significance" on this very topic. Their main point is that statistical significance is meaningless without a discussion of magnitudes.

[1] http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/docs/jsm.pdf

From the article (EDIT: emphasis mine):

"Uber screened and trained its drivers, and drivers could get deactivated by Uber for having their rating dip below what local managers set as a cut-off, for not accepting a certain percentage of trip requests, or for customer complaints.

I don't see the problem.

If Uber's costs will go up if they are no longer able to classify their employees as contractors, they can simply raise their prices. Uber appears to provide both a lower price and higher quality taxi service than traditional cabs, so even if their prices go up they will still be competitive.

If they have to raise prices above traditional cabs (highly unlikely), that suggests their service depended too heavily on a legal loophole that traditional cabs did not have.