~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (75)

Google plagiarism and you will find definitions like “stealing someone else’s ideas” or “literary theft.” Here the emphasis is on the stealing–it’s the original author who is being harmed. I prefer the definition of plagiarism given by Wikipedia, plagiarism is the *fraudulent* use of other people’s words or ideas. Fraudulent emphasizes that it’s the reader […] The post In Defense of Plagiarism appeared first...

The Scottish Enlightenment will die on April 1st 2024, exactly 327 years, eight months and 24 days after the incident that provoked it. For on April 1st the Hate Crime and Public Order Act (Scotland) 2021 comes into force, an Act which will criminalise speech and opinion deemed ‘hateful’ even if spoken in the privacy of […] The post R.I.P. The Scottish Enlightenment 1697-2024 appeared...

Indiana’s Republican governor has just signed new law that introduces “intellectual diversity” as a standard for tenure decisions in state universities. Under the law, campus boards of trustees will determine what intellectual diversity consists of, and lack of such diversity can be grounds for denying tenure. Intellectual diversity also must be considered in the post-tenure review process. […] The post Indiana’s new intellectual diversity law for...

We conducted the first randomized controlled trial to study the effect of AI assistance on human legal analysis. We randomly assigned law school students to complete realistic legal tasks either with or without the assistance of GPT-4. We tracked how long the students took on each task and blind-graded the results. We found that access […] The post Lawyering in the Age of Artificial...

Pacific Heights is a 1990 movie starring Michael Keaton, Melanie Griffith, and Matthew Modine. Conventionally described as a “psychological thriller,” or a horror movie it’s actually a Kafkaesque analysis of tenancy rights and the legal system. The movie centers on a young couple, Drake and Patty, who purchase a San Francisco Victorian with dreams of […] The post Pacific Heights: A Movie Ahead of...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: Marilynne Robinson is one of America’s best and best-known novelists and essayists, whose award-winning works like Housekeeping and Gilead explore themes of faith, grace, and the intricacies of human nature. Beyond her writing, Robinson’s 25-year tenure at the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop allowed her to shape and […] The post My excellent Conversation with Marilynne Robinson...

Here is my blurb for the book: “Bryan Caplan is a pioneer in the use of graphic novels to expound economic concepts. His new book Build, Baby, Build is thus a landmark in economic education, how to present economic ideas, and the integration of economic analysis and graphic visuals. If you want to learn the economics, ethics, […] The post *Build, Baby, Build*, by Bryan Caplan...

Bryan Caplan has a good post on out-of-state tuition: [State schools] almost always charge students from their own state much lower tuition. In the most recent data, average out-of-state tuition for four-year colleges was $26,382, versus $9,212 for in-state — roughly a 3:1 ratio. I’ve argued for a long time that an enterprising lawyer ought to sue […] The post The Puzzling Law and Economics of...

I am setting aside most of the cultural and “macro” issues, and just considering policy, in my latest Bloomberg column.  Excerpt: Consider agriculture. If you fly over Hispaniola, you can see a notable difference between the Haitian and Dominican sides of the border. The Dominican side has plenty of trees, whereas the Haitian side is denuded. Much […] The post Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic appeared...

a16z has issued the talks from that event, and we are issuing it too, as a bonus episode of CWT.  But note it is shorter than usual, and not the typical CWT format — this was done for an audience of actual DC human beings! Excerpt: COWEN: Why is open-source AI in particular important for national […] The post Marc Andreessen and I talk AI...

Via the excellent Samir Varma, hail to Handyman Flash Shelton: After local law enforcement couldn’t help, Shelton spent days dissecting laws around squatters’ rights. He managed to get rid of the women within a day by drafting a lease agreement with his mother designating him the legal resident of the home, then took over the house […] The post Those new service sector jobs, squatter...

I’ve blogged this in the past, and don’t have much to add to my previous views.  I will say this, however: if TikTok truly is breaking laws on a major scale, let us start a legal case with fact-finding and an adversarial process.  Surely such a path would uncover the wrongdoing under consideration, or at […] The post TikTok divestiture appeared first on Marginal...

Ireland’s effort to remove old-fashioned family values from its constitution suffered a double defeat Saturday as voters rejected the amendments on offer as maddeningly vague and threatening to property rights… In final results announced Saturday night, the amendment to change the constitutional definition of family was rejected by 67.7 percent of voters. The proposed changes […] The post The Irish reject a “Woke” constitutional...

During my visit to Prospera, one of Honduras’ private governments under the ZEDE law, I interviewed Prospera CEO Erick Brimen and Vitalia co-founder Niklas Anzinger. I learned a lot in the interview including the real history of the ZEDE movement (e.g. it didn’t begin with Paul Romer). I also had not fully appreciated the power […] The post In Conversation with Próspera CEO Erick...

Just flagging that while YIMBY is important…it’s only part of the solution. And it’s unclear just how important it is compared to the issues below because so few projects are even proposed and most that are do in fact get built without too much NIMBY delay (though it certainly does happen and as an attorney […] The post A different perspective on power grid...

The amount of new transmission line installed in the United States has dropped sharply since 2013, when 4,000 miles were added. Now, the nation struggles to bring online even 1,000 new miles a year. The slowdown has real consequences not just for companies but for the climate. A group of scientists led by Princeton University professor […] The post We need YIMBY for the U.S....

In the OpenAI blog post they mentioned "Albania using OpenAI tools to speed up its EU accession" but I didn't realize how insane this was — they are apparently going to rewrite old laws wholesale with GPT-4 to align with EU rules https://t.co/7RZLwBYosK — sophia (@cis_female) March 6, 2024 The post It’s happening, Albania fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.        ...

From an MR reader: Good story here about one man in Washington state fighting the battle against the progressive tide. He single handedly got six initiatives on the ballot to repeal progressive reforms over the past few years. These include a police pursuit law that prevents police from chasing criminals in most cases, and a […] The post Tide turning in Washington State? appeared...

Besides the usual, that is.  Max Thilo of the UK has a new and excellent study on this, here is one excerpt from the foreword by Lord Warner: Second, and critical, the Singaporeans are not fixated on delivering services from acute hospitals – the most expensive part of any healthcare system because of its fixed […] The post What can be learned from Singaporean...

This paper provides the first long-run assessment of adolescent alcohol control policies on later-life health and labor market outcomes. Our analysis exploits cross-state variation in the rollout of “Zero Tolerance” (ZT) Laws, which set strict alcohol limits for drivers under age 21 and led to sharp reductions in youth binge drinking. We adopt a difference-in-differences […] The post Further data on alcohol use amongst...

Fast Grants, the rapid COVID funding mechanism created by Tyler, Patrick Collison and Patrick Hsu continues to inspire change around the world. Jano Costard, the Head of Challenges at SPRIND, the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation writes: Lots to learn from Fast Grants! Can we implement it in a public institutions that face a […] The post The Continuing Influence of Fast Grants...

The nation’s 56 organ procurement organizations collect organs — mainly kidneys — from deceased donors at hospitals and arrange for them to be transported to surgeons at the 250 U.S. medical centers that perform transplants. Each procurement group holds a government-guaranteed monopoly over a swath of U.S. territory where it operates. Some have failed for […] The post Monopolized organ collection appeared first on...

Tom Hazlett whose op-ed on the T-Mobile Sprint merger I quoted earlier writes me: A few thoughts on your robust MR debate: (1) Were we to observe the counterfactual over the post-merger period we would have additional evidence – no disagreement. But the counterfactuals are themselves controversial to construct, and antitrust analyses typically make just […] The post Hazlett on T-Mobile/Sprint appeared first on...

Doug of course is one of the top trade economists.  Here is the audio, video, and transcript, from the same wonderful Mercatus team that brings you CWT.  Here is one excerpt: RAJAGOPALAN: I have a different question on Adam Smith. We’re all taught Adam Smith’s division of labor, specialization, economies of scale, the cliff notes […] The post Shruti Rajagopalan interviews Doug Irwin appeared...