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The invisible hand is the idea that people operating based on their own self interest in a market economy will optimize “value” and by doing so will increase human welfare. If a person runs a company which makes something that people are willing to buy, they must want or need that thing, and the person will want to make more of that thing so that they can become richer. They do it out of greed, but the richer they get the more they improve the common weal, as it were.

So even though they aren’t doing what they do because they care about the welfare of others (Adam Smith is very clear about that) operating from greed leads to increase human welfare.

Works, except when it doesn’t.

Descriptive statements describe how the world objectively is. Prescriptive statements describe how the world ought to be.

Shake tables are way more complex than I thought

Before the late 1960s, it would have been hard to find anyone in the USA...

On this week's episode of The Audit, Dave and Josh break down why PragerU loves Bill Maher.

Pull back firmly A neighbor approached me last week about the possibilities for using A.I. in support of political campaigns. No way would I let it anywhere near campaign communications. Humans are not savvy enough not to include stock imagery from foreign sources in political ads. You’d let A.I. do it? Or generate audio that might pronounce Nevada Ne-VAH-duh? The neighbor asked Bard to list “North Carolina state representatives who voted to overturn the governor’s veto on abortion bill.” What Bard came back with after a blazing fast search of the Net was a blazing hot mess. With a few more seconds I, Human, grabbed the accurate list at the source here. Perhaps “voted to overturn the governor’s veto on abortion bill” is too vague. Which governor? Which override? Which abortion bill? (SB 20, 2023-2024 Session). I’m reminded of an old Isaac Asimov short story, “Risk.” Briefly: Gerald Black, the etherics engineer responsible for causing the NS-2 model to “get lost” in the previous story, is watching the next stage of hyperspace testing.

I’m writing an open access textbook on homelessness, with a focus on high-income countries. Each chapter gets uploaded to my website as it is completed. The latest chapter, on health, is now available. A ‘top 10’ overview of the chapter can be found here:https://nickfalvo.ca/health-and-homelessness/ All information pertaining to the book can be found here:https://nickfalvo.ca/book/

Open Rights Group has warned that the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill could allow Meta to get around the suspension of data transfers from Europe to the United States, which was imposed by Ireland’s data protector regulator today. The Data Protection Commission issued Meta with a fine of €1.2bn (£1bn) for mishandling Facebook […]

Time again to defend the ancien régime America does not negotiate with terrorists.* Unless, of course, they’ve been elected to Congress. The terrorists threatening to blow up the U.S. and world economy over paying debts the country has already incurred have demands. And hostages. “House Republicans decided to hold the economy hostage to slash assistance for low-income Americans while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy,” asserts E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. “That’s a factual statement, not a partisan complaint.” The rest of Dionne’s Monday column details the hypocrisy at the heart of conservative backsliders’ demands for deficit reduction. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wants the Trump-era tax cuts made permanent, “adding $3.5 trillion to the deficit over a decade.” McCarthy demands cuts to domestic discretionary spending that impact poorer Americans. Republicans want work requirements before The Irresponsibles may receive government benefits or they’ll trigger their MAGA suicide vests.

We are all realists and we all — Mäki, Cartwright, and I — self-consciously present ourselves as such. The most obvious research-guiding commonality, perhaps, is that we do all look at the ontological presuppositions of economics or economists. Where we part company, I believe, is that I want to go much further. I guess I […]

The Police — The Firemen

Foo Fighters — Foo Non-Violent Conflict Resolvers

Grateful Dead — Grateful We Got On the Right Dose of Antidepressants Before We’re Dead

Maroon 5 — Maroon 4 Because That One Guy Was Actually Super Toxic

The Jesus and Mary Chain — Jesus and Mary Are No Longer Chained to Gender Norms

The Killers — The Weaponized Incompetence Killers

Tom Waits — Tom Waits for Women to Finish Talking Without Interrupting Them

The Allman Brothers — Not All Men But Enough of Them Brothers

Red Hot Chili Peppers — Evenly Tempered Chili Peppers

Sting — It Stings When You Ignore My Feelings

The Rolling Stones — The Ethically Non-Monogamous Stones

Ween — Now We Know Not to Take Out Our Ween When No One Asked for It

The Strokes — The No Longer Need Ego Strokes

Steely Dan — Emotionally Available Dan

The explosive growth of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT threatens to disrupt many aspects of society. Geoffrey Hinton, the former head of AI at Google, recently announced his retirement; there is a growing sense of inevitability and a concomitant lack of agency.   An initial humanistic hope might be that people would simply reject […]

As the world shifts away from Western dominance, China demands substantive reforms to the UN Security Council, challenging the archaic power structure and advocating for fair representation, signaling a crucial moment for global diplomacy and the future of the UN.

The post Led by China and India: The Global South Is Trying To Fix the UN appeared first on MintPress News.

TigerSwan worked with law enforcement to fight an information war against the Indigenous-led water protectors.

The post Pipeline Company Spent Big on Police Gear to Use Against Standing Rock Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.

The debate on inflation in Government, in Parliament and in the Bank of England is dominated by the need to curb workers’ wages. But this approach has ignored the elephant in the room: the role that corporations are now playing in driving up inflation through price hikes designed to boost their profits. There is mounting […]

Now, more than ever, we need people willing to verbally tear down the set and bring reality into the play of broadcasting, writes Reverend Joe Haward

In a bonus episode for supporting subscribers, we discuss the skyrocketing rent prices in cities across the country.

ingredients: 1 cup chick-peas1 pound carrots½ pound turnips1 small celery root2 onions1-2 pound chicken2 pounds mutton neck, boned breast or shoulder, cut into pieces4 tomatoes1 sprig thyme, or ½ teaspoon dried1 bay leaf2 cloves1 pinch saffron2 cups semolina3 cups salt water2 cups zucchini1 Tablespoon oil1 handful raisins (optional)1 teaspoon harissa sauce instructions: A vegetable steamer […]

Should we believe in beliefs? A radical philosophy of mind says its time to ditch such immaterial concepts once and for all

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

The idea that AI can be conscious is a mistake. It’s just a very shiny mirror of humanity, reflecting what we want to see

- by David Bentley Hart

Read at Psyche

The debate on inflation in Government, in Parliament and in the Bank of England is dominated by the need to curb workers’ wages. But this approach has ignored the elephant in the room: the role that corporations are now playing in driving up inflation through price hikes designed to boost their profits. There is mounting […]

Recent St. Louis Fed research examined shipping costs and inflation, the COVID-19 shock worldwide, emerging markets, and teens in the U.S. labor force.

The people spoke. Unlike in 2019, when MeRA25 won nine seats in Greece’s Parliament, in yesterday’s election we failed to clear the 3% hurdle, thus, electing no MPs. However, this freshly minted Parliament was condemned before it got a chance to convene. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the conservative party leader, who won handsomely, is about to dissolve […]

The post Our defeat in context: Greece’s Erdogan-isation is almost complete appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

The Government has yet to take any action to address evidence that firefighters are more likely to die of cancer than the general population, Andrew Kersley reports