Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Technology and unemployment

rdan Sandwichman, the go to guy on labor issues and author of the series Chapman, Labor, and Unemployment at Econospeak suggests an alternative to the myth of supremacy of capital, which is after all an idea that reminds me of King Midas in our little child version, but in the adult world has several versions […]

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean Law Enforcement Isn’t Out to Help You

From the coolest possibly-corporate-espionage story of the week: If only the FBI were to tackle cases of national security and loss of life with the same speed and precision as they confront presumed high-frequency program trading industrial espionage cases… especially those that allegedly involve Goldman Sachs. The original is from Reuters.

A Short Note on Optimality

Via Eszter, there is one thing that is very clear from this graphic (duplicated below because I can’t figure out how to embed it): There is an excess of home-based internet capacity in the United States, for which people are definitionally paying too much. The question is whether this is a problem. If you argue […]

A Civil Libertarian is a Congressperson who got Wiretapped

Greenwald on Harman. Read the whole thing. Sample: when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was “both legal and necessary” as well as “essential to U.S. national security,” and it was the “despicable” whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime […]

Non-Hormel Spam is also an Inferior Good, and there are also Inferior Enablers

Why Yahoo! e-mail may be worth using again, non-Jerry Yang edition: Security researchers, anti-spam groups and the whole security community in general were taken by surprise yesterday when reports of a sudden drop in junk mail activity started flowing in. This was the result of ISPs depeering McColo Corp., a U.S. based company offering web […]