Monthly Archives: January 2014

Not the robots are coming for your jobs but the capitalists (but what else is new?)

Posted on January 26, 2014 by

The Economist posted a piece called “The future of jobs: The onrushing wave”, and Naked Capitalism cross-posted a comment from MacroBusiness – uncommented. Which is a shame because coming from The Economist, the original piece is expectedly bullshitty. The main … Continue reading →

Posted in machine learning and data mining, Predictive Modeling, science, techno utopianism | 2 Comments

Experiencing rent extraction in riskless asymmetric “markets”

Posted on January 25, 2014 by

There are aspects of capitalism one doesn’t fully understand until one is confronted with them. We are currently looking for an appartment. Now, the housing “market” and this is something I hadn’t fully appreciated until now, is not really a … Continue reading →

Posted in developed countries, housing, human rights, standards of living | Leave a comment

RWER 66: “Modern Money Theory and New Currency Theory”

Posted on January 25, 2014 by

The Real World Economics Review issue 66 is out for a while already and includes a number of interesting, high-level papers. One of which I hoped for some additional clarification of MMT is titled “Modern Money Theory and New Currency … Continue reading →

Posted in debt, macroeconomics, MMT, public debt, wealth distribution | Leave a comment

Possible global standard of living?

Posted on January 17, 2014 by

When we arrived in Argentina, my wife said after a couple of days: “I have come to terms with the fact that our (first-world) standard of living for the entire world is impossible to achieve. But what standard is possible? … Continue reading →

Posted in anthropogenic climate change, developed countries, environmental sustainability, Real resources, standards of living | Leave a comment

Map supremacy

Posted on January 14, 2014 by

We also visited the former prison in Ushuaïa, which is now a museum for a bunch of different things. Among those things are models of explorers’ ships and different maps (from different ages) that show South America and in particular … Continue reading →

Posted in belief systems, geostrategy, Musings | Leave a comment

Patriarchical Myths

Posted on January 11, 2014 by

We visited the Yamane museum in Ushuaïa, and one of the displays recounted their patriarchical myth, which goes roughly like this: In the beginning women claimed to communicate with the spirits in a secret ceremony, and to obtain orders for … Continue reading →

Posted in belief systems, evolution, gender, pseudo-science, religion, science | Leave a comment

Spiky things and evolution

Posted on January 1, 2014 by

We’ve been in the mountains and arid regions quite a bit and have noticed how many more spiky and bristly plants, rosehip, thistles, small bushes whose chlorophyll carriers are all spikes, there are here as compared to temperate climates. Now, … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, Musings | Leave a comment