The Obvious Made Clear

09/27/2022

More Admin Competence Issues:

by Alex Tabarrok

08/17/2022

Worry About Things That Matter Where Something Can Be Done

Avoid shiny object syndrome:

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

08/17/2022

More Administrative Competence Issues?

A new paper, The Injustice of Under-Policing, makes a point that I have been emphasizing for many years, namely, relative to other developed countries the United States is under-policed and over-imprisoned. …the American criminal legal system is characterized by an exceptional kind of under-polici...

08/04/2022

The Issue Is Administrative Competence: Part XXI

The Department of Health and Human Services delayed asking the manufacturer to process the bulk vaccine the government already owned into vials.

07/17/2022

The Issue Is Administrative Competence: Science Example

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/07/science-as-a-source-of-social-alpha.html

07/13/2022

Program ROI Is Not The Only Measure; Sustainable Magnitude Is Key

"The paper shows that adding “psychosocial” elements–“life skills training” or “community sensitization on aspirations and social norms”–to anti-poverty programs might be cost-effective addition to anti-poverty programs and have a high rate of return. But that is not how, in fact, poverty has been substantially reduced in any country, ever."

https://lantpritchett.org/development-work-versus-charity-work/

07/08/2022

The Structure Of The Medical System Was A Breakthrough 100+ Years Ago. Not Any More.

“Nowhere in nature do we see an equivalent to the billion-dollar RCT. Facebook engineer Jeff Hammerbacher is famously quoted for having said: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads". Maybe they weren't totally wasting their time after all?”

07/01/2022

Where's My Flying Car?

Besides administrative competence, "If our society remains suspicious of high energy expenditures, at least part of the reason is a lack of vision of what we might realistically do with superabundant energy."

https://www.thecgo.org/research/energy-superabundance/

This affects poverty, productivity, food supply, transportation and...

06/25/2022

The Issue Is Administrative Competence, Part XV

Suppose that you wish to achieve the following 4 objectives: 1. Helping Vladimir Putin win the war in Ukraine. 2. Worsening global warming. 3. Worsening the budget deficit. 4. Enriching oil refiners at a time when supply is constrained and they are already earning extraordinary profits. What is the....

06/22/2022

All Is Not Doom and Gloom: Fusion Power By 2040?

a.k.a. another element of possible progress on the global warming front, geopolitical front and poverty front

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06/21/2022

The Issue Is Administrative Competence. Again.

Why a new report is so troubling

06/13/2022

The Issue Is Administrative Competence

Congestion pricing in Manhattan should have happened years ago. The reason it hasn’t is instructive.