kevindick - The Emergent Fool

The Emergent Fool

Small Government: Lesser of Two Evils...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Government, Socio-technical systems on 02 15th, 2010 | 9 Comments

Like many libertarians, I feel that small government is an eminently practical rule of thumb proven by hundreds (if not thousands) of years of observation. So when Rafe recently posted in response to a presentation that David Cameron made at TED, it got my dander up. Calling the small government philosophy,...

Even More Reason to Be a Skeptic...

Posted by kevindick in Climate, Government, Science on 02 3rd, 2010 | 7 Comments

Things just got worse if you put your faith in the “consensus” about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW). You’ll recall that the disclosure of internal emails undermined confidence in both the surface temperature record and the peer-review process that qualifies research for...

Robert Reich: Wrong About State/Local Ba...

Posted by kevindick in Economics on 01 29th, 2010 | 6 Comments

Rafe linked to this essay by Robert Reich. I don’t have much of a problem with his first point backing Obama’s plan to offer a tax credit for hiring. I think temporarily suspending the employer’s share of payroll tax is a better mechanism (as suggested by Bryan Caplan a year ago), but...

Quest for Insurance Part II: The Coverag...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Government, Health on 01 20th, 2010 | 6 Comments

The trials chronicled in Part I have a happy ending. I eventually obtained an excellent individual plan from Assurant Health. I followed my own advice and got a high deductible plan that covers no primary care. I thought it would be worth comparing to the traditional PPO coverage I had previously. The...

Quest for Insurance Part I: The Search...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Government, Health, Markets on 01 14th, 2010 | 4 Comments

As you may recall, I previously posted about my recommendations for fixing health care (Part I, Part II, Part III). Recently, I had to navigate the current system and thought I’d share my experience in the context of those recommendations. You see, COBRA ran out on my health insurance from the last...

I Admit It, I Panicked...

Posted by kevindick in Economics on 01 8th, 2010 | No Comments

I’m usually a rather optimistic person. But yesterday, I thought I saw a sign of the apocalypse and panicked. The usually insightful Coyote Blog posted a chart that I interpreted as saying that the number of people on government payrolls was now larger than the number of people on private payrolls...

Kevin Gets Acknowledged by a Real Econom...

Posted by kevindick in Economics on 12 9th, 2009 | 10 Comments

As I have written before, one of my goals is to resolve the differences between Arnold Kling’s and Scott Sumner’s views on macroeconomics. There is now some evidence that I may actually understand what is going on. Will Ambrosini, wrote about a Blanchard and Gali paper that combines two standard...

Micro-lending Is Not a Silver Bullet...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Poverty on 12 6th, 2009 | 6 Comments

Tim Harford has a good analysis of the latest research on micro-lending’s effect on poverty. The basic result is that the near and medium term effects are extremely modest. This isn’t too surprising given the relative magnitudes of the intervention and the problem. But there was always hope...

Why You Should Be A Skeptic...

Posted by kevindick in Climate, Government, Science on 11 23rd, 2009 | 5 Comments

As you may have heard, an unknown hacker breached the Hadley Climatic Research Centre and disclosed a large volume of email and documents, thus giving us a peek inside the sausage factory. First, let me say that the breach itself rather concerns me. We’re talking about a government sponsored research...

Stimulus Is a Bust: I Want My Money Back...

Posted by kevindick in Economics on 10 26th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Ever since he taught my Econ 1 class, I’ve liked John Taylor. He always struck me as a practical guy, especially for a macroeconomist. So I was not surprised at what I found when I followed Arnold Kling link to Taylor’s analysis of the stimulus. Using Department of Commerce data, he...

Fixing Health Care III: Hospitals...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Government, Health on 10 17th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Having addressed the uninsured and doctor’s visits, the next health care problem on my list is hospital spending. It represents the largest share health care costs, $696.5B in 2007 or roughly 32%. Now, it’s worth repeating that I don’t object to increased spending per se. It might be...

Must Read Paper On Overconfidence...

Posted by kevindick in Cooperation, Economics, Government, Incentives, Politics, Psychology, Society on 09 24th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Via the indispensable Tyler Cowen, a new paper from Johnson and Fowler explores whether overconfidence is, in fact, adaptive. They show that it it is under some very reasonable assumptions. They model competition for resources as a two-player game and then analyze the evolutionary dynamics of populations...

Fixing Health Care II: Doctor’s Vi...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Government, Health on 09 21st, 2009 | 24 Comments

Now that we’ve solved the problem of the uninsured, it’s time to move on to the problem of doctor’s visits. Spending on physician and clinical services was $479B in 2007, 22% of total health care spending. Only hospital spending accounts for a larger share at 32% (I’ll be addressing...

The Climate or the Uninsured?...

Posted by kevindick in Climate, Economics, Government, Health, Scarcity / Abundance on 09 16th, 2009 | No Comments

Declan McCullagh of CBSNews reports that a Department of Treasury analysis released under the Freedom of Information Act estimates that a cap and trade program would raise $100B to $200B a year in taxes. Those taxes come from us one way or another. Recall that my estimate of the cost to cover the uninsured...

Two Important Links...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Government, Health, Markets, Scarcity / Abundance on 09 13th, 2009 | 1 Comment

If you do nothing else intellectual this Sunday, do these two things: (1) Read Tyler Cowen’s NYTimes column on how the bestowing of political favors was at the heart of the financial crisis and how we’re about to make the same mistake with health care. (2) Remember Norman Borlaug. He is the...

Fixing Health Care I: The Uninsured...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Government, Health, Poverty on 09 8th, 2009 | 17 Comments

Yes, I’ve decided to wade into the health care waters again. One of the problems with the current debate is that it confounds several distinct problems. So I’m planning to briefly address each one individually in the hopes of achieving some clarity. First up, the uninsured. Most of us...

Manufacturing Fallacy...

Posted by kevindick in Economics on 08 24th, 2009 | 10 Comments

Just in case you hear phrases like, “America no longer makes things,” “…decline of American manufacturing,” or “China is now the world’s factory,” here are the facts… Don Boudreaux points out that the latest official statistics from 2007 show that US...

Killing Cancer Stem Cells...

Posted by kevindick in Cancer, Medical Breakthroughs on 08 18th, 2009 | 2 Comments

My second cancer post in a row. Rafe must have made my news antennae more sensitive to the issue. The Broad Institute announced that they have identified a compound that kills breast cancer stem cells: salinomycin. What’s particularly cool is the way they went about it. Evidently, cancer stem...

Incentive Problem in Cancer Drug Trials...

Posted by kevindick in Cancer, Economics, Incentives on 08 16th, 2009 | 4 Comments

I saw this brief New York Times article syndicated in the San Jose Mercury News. Evidently, one of the challenges in identifying new cancer treatments is recruiting enough patients for drug trials. The issue is that oncologists have little incentive to encourage their patients to enroll in drug...

Is Money an Emergent Phenomenon?...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Emergence, Levels, Markets on 08 11th, 2009 | 14 Comments

The two economists that have most informed my view of the current macroeconomy are Arnold Kling and Scott Sumner. In both cases, their models and explanations make sense to me. They use solid reasoning and evidence; I don’t feel I’m getting a lot of hand waving. Unfortunately, at first glance,...

Must Read Article on Farming...

Posted by kevindick in Scarcity / Abundance, Society, Technology on 08 4th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Some of you may recall my post Organic Farming Harms the Environment. As I wrote, one of the things that bugs me about organic proponents is that they act as if there are no tradeoffs. I don’t understand much about farming, but I do understand something about how economic activity works. I presume...

(Price) Inflation Is All In Your Mind...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Models on 08 3rd, 2009 | 1 Comment

I apologize for the non-existent blogging the past few weeks. I’ve been really busy with my new company. I’m going to try blogging more short items rather than my trademark essays in the hope that reduced barrier to entry will result in more supply. First up is a provocative post by the...

Save the Madagascar Rain Forest...

Posted by kevindick in Climate, Scarcity / Abundance, Socio-technical systems, Superorganism on 06 26th, 2009 | No Comments

Last night, I was lucky enough to get a personal tour of the California Academy of Sciences from Dr. Brian Fisher, a taxonomist specializing in ants. He’s doing some amazing work trying to help Madagascar prioritize and save the 10% of native rainforest they have left. It’s reminiscent of...

Specifying a Climate Bet...

Posted by kevindick in Climate, Markets on 06 24th, 2009 | 3 Comments

As I mentioned in the comments on this post, I am currently in the process of negotiating a bet on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) with another blogger. The challenges are interesting, so I thought I’d give you a peek inside the sausage factory. ...

Wall Street Wizards? Not so Much....

Posted by kevindick in Economics on 06 11th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Here’s a nice post on how little old Amherst Holdings of Austin, TX got the best of J.P. Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Bank of America. Amherst sold them all Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) against mortgages that were already under water. CDSs pay out if the underlying mortgages default. ...

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