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Created
Thu, 11/01/2024 - 20:59
Understanding Morality

I have a simple morality:

  1. I like feeling good.
  2. I don’t like feeling bad. (Suffering)
  3. I want other people to feel good.
  4. I don’t want other people to feel bad (to suffer.)

Most people have some of this as part of their morality.

How much is a matter of moral transitivity. How many people are part of three and four?

Let’s outline some variations:

The psychopath. Only my suffering and happiness matters.

The Patriarch/Matriarch. Only the suffering and happiness of me and my relatives matter.

The Back Slapper. The suffering and happeiness of me, my relatives, and my friends matters.

The Noble. The suffering and happiness of me, my relatives, my friends and my dependents matters. (Modern version is the good boss.)

The Aristocrat or Oligarch: Only the suffering or happiness of my class matters.

Created
Thu, 11/01/2024 - 20:52

This week, the government opened new plans intended to protect social housing tenants from unsafe homes to consultation. The plans consist of strict timeframes to which housing association landlords will have to adhere when investigating and repairing hazards, or face court. This proposed legislation is being called Awaab’s Law, in reference to the death of […]

Created
Thu, 11/01/2024 - 20:01
Here’s a piece I wrote for The Guardian. It’s also at my Substack. Some of it is Australia-specific but some may be of more general interests The policy debate about the cost of living is among the most confused and confusing in recent memory. All sorts of measures to reduce the cost of living are […]
Created
Thu, 11/01/2024 - 20:00
Julia Giese and Charlotte Grace In response to the global financial crisis, the Bank of England (BoE) began using Product-Mix Auctions (PMA) to provide liquidity insurance to financial institutions. The PMA, designed by Paul Klemperer, allows the quantity of funds lent against different types of collateral to react flexibly to the economic environment and market … Continue reading How auction design can make a difference: the case of the Bank’s Indexed Long-Term Repo Facility
Created
Thu, 11/01/2024 - 10:30
Chris Christie dropped out of the race today and gave quite a speech. He didn’t endorse anyone and I think we know why: Christie’s speech was the best one I’ve ever seen him give. He didn’t mince words about Trump and chastised those who are giving him a pass. He talked honestly about the stakes for the country in this election. A couple of highlights:
Created
Thu, 11/01/2024 - 10:30
National Review says that Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis “are far and away better on the merits, more likely to win in November, and, if elected, more likely to deliver — free from the wild drama of a second Trump term — conservative results.” I don’t know about Haley and DeSantis but we can certainly agree on the horror of another Trump term. But maybe they could have been consistently critical of the MAGA cult over the past 7 years? I dunno. But they were “Never Trump” in 2016 and they are again, so I guess that’s something. Mediaite reports: The editorial minced no words in prosecuting its case against Trump, bluntly stating that Trump “lost to Joe Biden in 2020″ and “did everything he could to overturn the result, including trying to bully his vice president into violating his oath and preventing and delaying the counting of the electoral vote.” “When a mob, fervently believing Trump’s lies, fought its way into the U.S. Capitol to try to end the count, Trump did little or nothing to try to stop it,”  it added.