Random Articles

• Only Do “We are not good at knowing, we are not good at planning, we are not good at forecasting, we are only good at doing.” - Nassim Taleb, author The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
• A Middle Man’s a Middle Man “Apple is no different than Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or RIAA….No modern consumer is going to stop listening to their favorite band because Circuit City doesn’t carry their CD.” - Benn Jordan Benn’s post is one of the many articles online showing how little compensation musicians receive from the business organizations that are said to be supporting
• Why Buying Local, Frontier House, and the Trade Deficit are All Silly Russ Roberts’ EconTalk is consistently interesting and engaging podcast covering economics as a perspective and a practice. I spent the first half of this week listening to his hour long conversation with colleague Don Boudreaux on the economics of buying local for the sake of buying local. Boudreaux and Roberts expand on many of the same points
• Gifted “When a holiday is the pretext and the value of the gift is (possibly) linked to merit, we can self-deceive and believe that a small-valued gift simply represents a cheap gift-giver, or a friendship of uncertain strength, rather than our own lack of merit.” - Tyler Cowen Ouch.
• They Probably Paid Off Their Student Loans Faster, Too “It turns out that most CEOs of major US companies did not attend Ivy League schools, but rather their local state university or a smaller, less-known college.” - Peter Klein