On the one side, Sir Entrepreneur of Northkirznerland. On the other, Sir Ardee of the Order of the Knightian Knights, Master of the Uncertain. Which gallant contender will win in this duel? In the past, Sir Entrepreneur has defeated Sir Ardee's younger brother, Sir Risk of Martingale. It turned out if you studied his past jousting activities you could predict his moves, and thus win. However, doing this with Sir Ardee has proven impossible, and thus he is a fearsome fellow.
Days before the jousting commence…
Bryan caplan defends the concept of desert in a recent series of posts. He says
When people seriously suffer as a result of committing _major_offenses, however, I call that just deserts.
Here, I will argue that Caplan's philosophical views contradict his views on desert. Concretely, you can't follow Michael Huemer's overall ideas and also accept desert.
On the Huemerian view, which is moral realism, moral facts are true or false. We then may ask ourselves why do people do wrong things. In the Huemerian v…
Ruttan (2006) argues that large-scale and long-term government investment has been the engine behind almost every GPT [General Purpose Technologies] in the last century. He analysed the development of six different technology complexes (the US ‘mass production’ system, aviation technologies, space technologies, information technology, Internet technologies and nuclear power) and concluded that government investments have been important in bringing these new technologies into being.
Thus argued Mazzucato i…
Consider the following sentences
Without the State/Elon Musk we would have no iPhone/SpaceX
The role of the State/Elon Musk was crucial for the success of the iPhone/SpaceX
The State/Elon Musk played a very important role in the development of the iPhone/SpaceX
The State/Elon Musk were one of the factors that played a role in the development of the iPhone/SpaceX
The State/Elon Musk played a minor role role the development of the iPhone/SpaceX
The State/Elon Musk had nothing to do with the development of …
If you've been reading the series on Mazzucato, Innovation and so on, you may have found holes in my arguments, or unaddressed reasonable concerns. Rest assured, I'm aware of that. Here I will present some of that objections that can be made to my arguments, but I won't respond to them yet. To make things extra fun, I will write what follows as if the writer were another person criticising me, with a slightly angry tone.
The Hayekian argument is wrong
So you are one of those market fundamentalists. If so, o…
You probably know Nikola Tesla, the man who according to a series of sites you can find around invented basically everything. Not quite, however. If you go and read a proper Tesla biography, such as W. Bernard Carlson's Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age you will discover that many things said about Tesla are myths.
However, there is consensus in attributing Tesla the invention of the induction motor and of rotating magnetic fields. Now, suppose Tesla hadn't ever been born. And I present you with a quest…