MachineMachine /stream - tagged with economics http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com Death of a data haven: cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the world's smallest nation http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco.ars A data haven is "the information equivalent to a tax haven," a country that helps you evade other countries' rules on what you can and can't do with your bits. (Think "Swiss banking" for data.) The best-known example comes from Neal Stephenson's 1999 best-seller Cryptonomicon, whose heroes go up against murderous warlords, rapacious venture capitalists, and epic authorial digressions in their quest to bring untraceable communications to the masses and get rich in the process. ]]> Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:46:28 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco.ars Death of a data haven: cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the world's smallest nation http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco.ars A data haven is "the information equivalent to a tax haven," a country that helps you evade other countries' rules on what you can and can't do with your bits. (Think "Swiss banking" for data.) The best-known example comes from Neal Stephenson's 1999 best-seller Cryptonomicon, whose heroes go up against murderous warlords, rapacious venture capitalists, and epic authorial digressions in their quest to bring untraceable communications to the masses and get rich in the process. ]]> Wed, 28 Mar 2012 03:42:27 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco.ars What Immanuel Kant got right about digital piracy http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/01/caleb_crain_why_matt_yglesias_is_wrong_about_copyright.html It turns out that Kant didn't think that an author could mount a strong legal case against piracy based on property rights in words. After all, even after pirates copied an author's words, the author himself still had them. It was better for an author to argue that his book was not an object but an exercise of his powers, which "he can concede, it is true, to others, but never alienate". In other words, ... a pirated book was not to be understood as property that had been stolen; it was rather a speech act that had been compromised.… ]]> Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:28:23 -0700 http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/01/caleb_crain_why_matt_yglesias_is_wrong_about_copyright.html Internet Regulation & the Economics of Piracy http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/internet-regulation-the-economics-of-piracy//internet-regulation-amp-the-economics-of-piracy-cato-liberty Internet Regulation & the Economics of Piracy http://t.co/CXiWp8I0 ]]> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:08:17 -0700 http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/internet-regulation-the-economics-of-piracy//internet-regulation-amp-the-economics-of-piracy-cato-liberty The Dark Sides of Our Digital Self http://www.theemotionmachine.com/the-dark-sides-of-our-digital-self/the-dark-sides-of-our-digital-self RT @furtherfield: The Dark Sides of Our #Digital Self - http://t.co/C9JyB0O9 ]]> Sun, 18 Dec 2011 04:51:26 -0700 http://www.theemotionmachine.com/the-dark-sides-of-our-digital-self/the-dark-sides-of-our-digital-self How Fear Turned A Surplus Into Scarcity http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/04/142016962/the-friday-podcast-how-fear-turned-a-surplus-into-scarcity?sc=tw&cc=share/the-friday-podcast-how-fear-turned-a-surplus-into-scarcity-planet-money-npr How Fear Turned A Surplus Into Scarcity http://t.co/xYUXyLn3 via @nprnews ]]> Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:52:00 -0700 http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/04/142016962/the-friday-podcast-how-fear-turned-a-surplus-into-scarcity?sc=tw&cc=share/the-friday-podcast-how-fear-turned-a-surplus-into-scarcity-planet-money-npr The King of Human Error http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/12/michael-lewis-201112.print%22 The paper that resulted five years later, the abovementioned “Prospect Theory,” not only proved that one of the central premises of economics was seriously flawed—the so-called utility theory, “based on elementary rules (axioms) of rationality”—but also spawned a sub-field of economics known as behavioral economics. This field attracted the interest of a Harvard undergraduate named Paul DePodesta. ]]> Thu, 10 Nov 2011 08:36:37 -0700 http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/12/michael-lewis-201112.print%22 The Great Tech War Of 2012 http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/tech-wars-2012-amazon-apple-google-facebook And as every sci-fi nerd knows, you totally need a tricked-out battleship if you're about to engage in serious battle. To state this as clearly as possible: The four American companies that have come to define 21st-century information technology and entertainment are on the verge of war. Over the next two years, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will increasingly collide in the markets for mobile phones and tablets, mobile apps, social networking, and more. This competition will be intense. ]]> Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:25:13 -0700 http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/tech-wars-2012-amazon-apple-google-facebook The London Riots: On Consumerism coming Home to Roost http://www.social-europe.eu/2011/08/the-london-riots-on-consumerism-coming-home-to-roost/ These are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers.
Revolutions are not staple products of social inequality; but minefields are. Minefields are areas filled with randomly scattered explosives: one can be pretty sure that some of them, some time, will explode – but one can’t say with any degree of certainty which ones and when. Social revolutions being focused and targeted affairs, one can possibly do something to locate them and defuse in time. Not the minefield-type explosions, though. In case of the minefields laid out by soldiers of one army you can… ]]> Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:32:53 -0700 http://www.social-europe.eu/2011/08/the-london-riots-on-consumerism-coming-home-to-roost/ Our data, ourselves http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-22/bostonglobe/29571858_1_data-privacy-public-health Who owns the data in that cloud has been the subject of ferocious debate. It’s not all stored in one place, of course — our lives are tracked and documented by a diffuse assortment of entities that includes private companies like Google and Visa, as well as governmental agencies like the IRS, the Department of Education, and the Census Bureau. Up to now, the public conversation on this kind of data has taken the form of an argument about privacy rights, with legal scholars, computer scientists, and others arguing for tighter restrictions on how our data is used by companies… ]]> Mon, 30 May 2011 15:11:01 -0700 http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-22/bostonglobe/29571858_1_data-privacy-public-health A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/viewFile/2465/2463/untitled-httpraulicbsdkindexphpfoucault-studiesarticleviewfile24652463

RT “@IlllllllllllllI: A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity" #Foucault

]]> Thu, 12 May 2011 05:28:59 -0700 http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/viewFile/2465/2463 To Have Is to Owe http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/10/to_have_is_to_owe We need to understand what philosophers in the Middle Ages, from Italy to India to China, already understood perfectly well: Money is not a thing, and is certainly not a scarce resource. Money is a promise. And it is a promise we keep to those we value and break to those we do not. In Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, sovereign-debt default seems ever more likely. If it occurs, then what will happen? Certain promises will be kept, and others will be broken. As we learn from politicians every day, it is rarely possible to keep all promises exactly as… ]]> Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:36:15 -0700 http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/10/to_have_is_to_owe Capitalism's Dismal Future http://chronicle.com/article/Capitalisms-Dismal-Future/126659/ A remarkable feature of the commentary on today's economic troubles is that, despite constant reference to the Great Depression of the 1930s, as well as to the many downturns since World War II, there has been little mention of the fact that business depressions have been a recurrent feature of the capitalist economy since the Industrial Revolution. But even the briefest attention to history makes recent events appear far from unusual. From the early 1800s to the late 1930s, in fact, capitalism spent between a third and a half of its history in depressions (depending on how they are dated… ]]> Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:30:54 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/Capitalisms-Dismal-Future/126659/ What the science of human nature can teach us http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks?currentPage=all We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far from being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world where character is formed and wisdom grows. They are giving us a better grasp of emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, predispositions, character traits, and social bonding, precisely those things about which our culture has least to say. Brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy.
]]> Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:17:38 -0700 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks?currentPage=all Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic http://www.economist.com/node/17723223?story_id=17723223 Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time:

In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of postdocs too. Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American faculty jobs in the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20% of students would land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or less per year before tax—the average salary of a construction worker. The rise… ]]> Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:47:00 -0700 http://www.economist.com/node/17723223?story_id=17723223 Conflict or Cooperation? http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66802/richard-k-betts/conflict-or-cooperation?page=show Among the theorists who jumped into the market for models of the future, three stood out: Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, and John Mearsheimer. Each made a splash with a controversial article, then refined the argument in a book -- Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man, Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, and Mearsheimer in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Each presented a bold and sweeping vision that struck a chord with certain readers, and each was dismissed by others whose beliefs were offended or who jumped to conclusions about… ]]> Fri, 05 Nov 2010 05:54:00 -0700 http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66802/richard-k-betts/conflict-or-cooperation?page=show Ha-Joon Chang: The net isn't as important as we think http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/29/my-bright-idea-ha-joon-chang Is it really true that the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet?

When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago. Of course, the internet is great – I can now google and find the exact location of this restaurant on the edge of Liverpool or whatever. But when you look at the impact of this on the economy, it's mainly in the area of leisure.

The internet may have significantly changed the working patterns of people like you and me,… ]]> Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:30:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/29/my-bright-idea-ha-joon-chang The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134 In the 1990s, Paul Romer revolutionized economics. In the aughts, he became rich as a software entrepreneur. Now he’s trying to help the poorest countries grow rich—by convincing them to establish foreign-run “charter cities” within their borders. Romer’s idea is unconventional, even neo-colonial—the best analogy is Britain’s historic lease of Hong Kong. And against all odds, he just might make it happen.

Halfway through the 12th century, and a long time before economists began pondering how to turn poor places into rich ones, the Germanic prince Henry the Lion set out to create a merchant’s mecca on… ]]> Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:21:00 -0700 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134 Evolution and Creativity: Why Humans Triumphed http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703691804575254533386933138.html Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success—tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language—seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened. Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of thousands… ]]> Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:53:00 -0700 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703691804575254533386933138.html Writing off the UK's last palaeographer http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/09/writing-off-last-palaeographer-university Dry, dusty and shortly to be dead. Palaeographers are used to making sense of fragments of ancient manuscripts, but King's College London couldn't have been plainer when it announced recently that it was to close the UK's only chair of palaeography. From ­September, the current holder of the chair, Professor David Ganz, will be out of a job, and the subject will no longer exist as a separate academic discipline in British universities. Its survival will now depend entirely on the whim of classicists and medievalists studying in other fields.

The decision took everyone by ­surprise. "It… ]]> Sat, 29 May 2010 10:04:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/09/writing-off-last-palaeographer-university