You Get One Guess

Posted on by David Wright

What prompted Minnesota to enforce this law on Coursera?

Coursera offers free, online courses to people around the world, but if you live in Minnesota, company officials are urging you to log off or head for the border.

The state’s Office of Higher Education has informed the popular provider of massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, that Coursera is unwelcome in the state because it never got permission to operate there. It’s unclear how the law could be enforced when the content is freely available on the Web, but Coursera updated its Terms of Service to include the following caution:

Notice for Minnesota Users:

Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

Welcome to Public Choice Economics.

The Most Compelling Book Review I’ve Read in Years

Posted on by David Wright

Am I really going to buy another crisis book? Probably.

Second, to a remarkable degree, she sees everyone else in the process as filled with fault and herself as never at fault.  She has zero qualms about ceaselessly flinging mud out the rear view mirror, and does so for even the tiniest and pettiest of squabbles, including ones the readers never knew or cared about.  Geithner by the way is villain number one but no one else on the scene matches her virtue and common sense and scarcely a page flies by when we are allowed to forget this.

She is beloved of sentences such as “Maybe the boys didn’t want Sheila Bair playing in their sandbox.”  Who am I to say she is wrong?  Reading this book now I know why!

This is arguably the most _______ book I  have read, ever, and I am still looking for the right word to fill in that blank.  It is in any case stunning.

…This tract is a performance of terror, in good and bad ways.  Few books will teach you more about the politics of bureaucracy and regulation, though not exactly as the author intends.

 

If Ray Kurzweil is Wrong (worse if he’s right?)

Posted on by David Wright

Neither of these two methods, however, would keep Social Security in actuarial balance permanently. The projection periods for future trustees’ reports will include years beyond 2080. In all years after 2080, projected expenses will significantly exceed projected income.

Really. After 2080, eh… is that a fact? My chortle is haughty.

Yet maybe it’ll be worse.

More here.

One More Step And The Barbarians Are In

Posted on by David Wright

I’m immersed in the history of insurance regulation these days. What was that? Oh, yeah, it’s hilarious and stuff. Good one.

Anyway, know what’s striking about the history of insurance regulation? Let’s quote Bastiat:

The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.

Insurance is brutal: everyone thinks that they can screw someone else over indefinitely. Consumers do it, insurance companies do it, the government does it.

Take the National Flood Insurance Program. Here’s a report from the Government Accountability Office:

Why GAO Did This Study

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has been on GAO’s high-risk list since 2006, when the program had to borrow from the U.S. Treasury to cover losses from the 2005 hurricanes. The outstanding debt is $17.8 billion as of June 2011.

17.8 billion with a ‘b’. All because nobody will bother to do either of these things:

1. Move out of flood zones.

2. Pay enough for insurance to cover the cost of repairing flood damage.

Realistically this is a risk that is too costly to insure for most. If your house costs $100,000 and you annual insurance policy is $10,000, what’s the point?

But how did the government get involved? Get this: FANNIE And FREDDIE! A timeline from my notes:

1973: Flood disaster protection act is passed for owners of properties who had mortgages from federally regulated lenders.
1994: National Flood Insurance Reform Act strengthened mandatory purchase requirement for owners of properties in flood zones and with mortgages from federally regulated lenders.
2004: Bunning-Bereuter-Blumenauer Flood Insurance Reform Act authorized grant programs to mitigate properties that experienced repetitive flood losses. Owners that did not mitigate *could* face higher premiums.

They vacillate between statist coercion and open market reforms. But we’re at 17.8bn now and private capital is the only way out of the mess.

It’s a dizzying spiral of interlocking regulations and market distortions that press down on our economy. If only, like before, it were strong enough that we didn’t care.

Two Lessons From Iron Mike

Posted on by David Wright

Mike Tyson is my favorite boxer. Obviously this has something to do with his in-ring feats, sure, but everything that’s interesting about him comes from his mind. He has one of the most interesting and powerful minds on earth. Seriously.

All the more so because he agrees with one of my more ridiculous beliefs: there’s no such thing as the good ol’ days. Everything’s better today:

“They would be tough for anybody to fight. I know people hate to believe this but they’re tough for anybody. Sometimes we don’t want to believe it. We’re stuck on apple pie in our era. We like Chuck Berry; we like Elvis Presley. People get better as men from the cavemen to now. We are supposed to get better. From the 80s to now we’ve got better. We’ve got more technology, more people are made, we get more money, the world is bigger, and we become better. So these guys would be difficult to beat for anybody who came before them.”

And, next, knowledge and wisdom can sometimes be a burden:

Tyson is a changed man. Gone is the bristling machismo, and sparks of aggression. “I wasn’t ready to know all this back then [as champion of the world]. I am now. If I’d learnt all that then I probably would never had been a good fighter. I’d have been too docile and meek then. At that particular time it was suitable for me and now that’s not too suitable for me.”

I like that lesson. Sometimes a deep understanding hinders success. I would argue that’s because knowledge is often illusory. In other words, mostly we’re all full of shit. Stop talking. Do stuff.

What Retail Is All About

Posted on by David Wright

Many city-types with fancy jobs like to imagine ditching the rat race and settling back to some small town. Maybe open a B&B. Maybe just run a small restaurant or something. Do it RIGHT, know what I mean? Like they do in the city but without the madness.

Well, guess what your number one fear will be:

Little by little the truth dribbled out, I’ll likely never know all the details but it seemed that some people figured that since the cash isn’t counted on a daily basis, why not take that cash and visit the casino. Surely if you gamble a bit then you can make some money, pay back the difference and nobody will be the wiser. And then, if it doesn’t work the next time you go gambling, you just take a bit more. And so on. In a span of 3 months a business that was the 3rd largest employer on the island was destroyed by those that were supposed to be minding it.

Theft. Not quality, not cleanliness, not the little touches that make a space beautiful. All takes a back seat if someone’s dipping into the till.

I’ve never run a small business but I’ve worked in a bunch as a student and bosses are often jerks. Maybe you would be too if you’re genuinely worried about getting cleaned out.