corporateVeal27

I really like this. If these guys are smart, they could use it as an experiment to isolate how much impact a given "bad practice" has on a user's ability to accomplish their goal. Then if they're REALLY smart they could monetize that knowledge in the form of a course...

This reminds me a lot of the book The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley (author of the Red Queen). It's effectively an anthropological study that goes over how bottom-up self organizing systems occur even in human sub-cultures

More bottom-up = more robust != centrally planned economies. This is what socialists don't understand.

There are certainly spill over externalities that the free market hasn't yet curtailed (like pollution) but government coercion should be our last resort to solve problems

This is a good article. I'd say it draws heavily on the same themes as "Hard Facts, Dangerous Half Truths and Total Non-Sense" by Sutton and Pfeiffer. Drinking Wild Turkey every morning isn't going to turn you into the Southwest Airlines CEO lol

Agreed. Graeber brings up some valid points about how market systems which should make economies more efficient sometimes fail to do so due to elite's/manager's self-image enhancement practices. On the other hand, I think that Graeber is heavily biased due to the fact that he is an academic who probably has not had a job that required operational excellence

Edit: I meant 22.8k not 228k. Type on my part. Good thing I don't publish articles :)

I wasn't implying they DO measure it from conception I'm just an example that could explain a discrepancy that is not indicative of better results

Agree on the point about underreporting everywher

Skeptical of these numbers:

1. "4 (Cuban) vs 6 (American) deaths per live birth."

Are we sure they're measured the same? Are we sure that the count for deaths starts at the same time? Could easily be that Cuban mothers are more likely to lose a baby at an earlier stage of pregnancy (for example Cubans measure it from 2nd trimester on, Americans measure it from conception so Cubans fail to count early stage deaths).

2. "7500 deaths per year in US".

The author does not seem to have his figures correct. Approximately 3.8 million american babies are born per year. If 0.6% of them die that's 228,000 total deaths and a differential of about 60,000 between US rates and Cuba's. Not to nitpick here but if you can't get these objective facts right how can I take you seriously about other things you're saying?