Marginal Revolution https://marginalrevolution.com/ Small Steps Toward A Much Better World Fri, 29 May 2026 20:36:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cropped-MR-logo-thumbnail-32x32.png Marginal REVOLUTION https://marginalrevolution.com/ 32 32 42693868 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/80000-hours-the-book.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=80000-hours-the-book 80,000 Hours: The Book https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957538715/0/marginalrevolution~Hours-The-Book.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/80000-hours-the-book.html#respond Sat, 30 May 2026 11:16:52 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93099 Forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, forty years: a career is about 80,000 hours. Yet it’s striking how little serious thought goes into career decisions relative to, say, choosing a mortgage. Indeed, you are almost supposed to tell a story about how a random incident changed your life. One summer a circus came […]

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]]> Forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, forty years: a career is about 80,000 hours. Yet it’s striking how little serious thought goes into career decisions relative to, say, choosing a mortgage. Indeed, you are almost supposed to tell a story about how a random incident changed your life. One summer a circus came to town—and that’s the whole reason I became an economist! (True story!). Career advice, when it exists, often amounts to the platitude of “follow your passions!” Ugh. If you ask people what their passions are, music, arts and sports top the list but guess what? There aren’t enough jobs in those categories to go around.

Benjamin Todd’s newly updated book, 80,000 Hours is a unique examination of careers that runs the numbers in a serious way. The book is framed along Effective Altruism lines and it has some good public policy material. Pandemics, for example,

The world has plenty of religious cults, despots and would-be school shooters who might decide they want to take everyone else down with them…. The world [c]ould be one lab leak away from catastrophe.

Given what we know about the pace and accessibility of bioengineering tools, the chance that there will be a pandemic that kills over 100 million people during the next century seems high, plausibly similar or greater than the risk of large-scale nuclear war or climate change above six degrees. An engineered pandemic could also kill over 90% of the population,suggesting its overall scale is significantly larger.

But risks from pandemics are, even now, far more neglected than either of these. In comparison to $6bn–$10bn of philanthropic funding for climate change, and $1.6 trillion of total climate finance, pandemic prevention only receives $1bn of philanthropic funding, and total spending aimed at reducing the chance of worst-case pandemics is probably under $10bn.

See also my paper Pandemic Preparation Without Romance on what to do about it.

The opening chapters present the EA framing but most of the book has good advice even for the purely selfish–advice on building skills, networking and how to actually get a job. From what I have said so far, one might get the impression that the idea is to rationally choose your career at age 16 and then optimize your life around that plan. Not so! Todd rightly divides career paths into explore, build and deploy categories. Most people under-explore. It’s ok to jump around jobs and places, especially when you are young, so long as you are building skills and not just accumulating items for the CV. There’s evidence, for example, that scientists’ best work tends to follow periods of exploration with exploitation.

I also appreciate that Todd specifically warns about about armchair theorizing. Pro-and-con lists, for example, are ok but far less useful than getting out of the chair and actively exploring. Go talk with people, try something for a week, go somewhere. Look for cheap tests.

Start with what’s easiest. We often find people who want to, say, try out economics, who then apply for a master’s degree. That’s a huge investment of time. Instead, think about how you can learn This could mean first reading an economics textbook, or taking a single course.

You can think about creating a ‘ladder’ of tests. Start with the cheapest ways to test your options, then after each step, re-evaluate. A ladder might look like this:
a. Read our relevant career reviews, all our research on a given topic, and talk to LLMs about what the jobs are like (two to five hours).
b. Speak to someone in the area (two hours).
c. Speak to a friend to get an outside perspective on what’s best (two hours).
d. Speak to three more people who work in the area and read one or two books (twenty hours).
e. Given your findings, look for a relevant project that might take one to four weeks of work – like applying to jobs, volunteering in a related role, or doing a side project in the area – to see what it’s like and how you perform.
f. Only then consider taking on a two- to twenty-four month commitment – like a work placement, internship or graduate study. Being offered a trial position with an organization for a couple of months can be ideal because both you and the organization want to quickly assess your fit.

80000 Hours is The Random Walk Down Wall Street of career advice, the one book that really matters.

Explore, build rare and valuable skills, point them at a meaningful problem, and passion will follow rather than lead. And for those who don’t want to read a book, speak to an 80,000 Hours advisor. It’s a very cheap test.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/80000-hours-the-book.html/feed 0 93099 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/how-to-improve-british-procurement.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-improve-british-procurement How to improve British procurement https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957530024/0/marginalrevolution~How-to-improve-British-procurement.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/how-to-improve-british-procurement.html#comments Sat, 30 May 2026 07:33:59 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93102 Until two years ago, West London’s Greenford Tube station used to flood whenever it rained heavily. The train tracks are aboveground, but the ticket office would often get inundated. Sandbags still line the corridor. But in October 2023, a new family moved in nearby, determined to halt the water. The family members built their house […]

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Until two years ago, West London’s Greenford Tube station used to flood whenever it rained heavily. The train tracks are aboveground, but the ticket office would often get inundated. Sandbags still line the corridor.

But in October 2023, a new family moved in nearby, determined to halt the water. The family members built their house from scratch with local wood and kept odd hours, sleeping all day and working only at dawn and dusk. They even put their young children to work.

The new neighbors were beavers.

In West London, conservationists got a government license to resettle a family of five beavers in a 20-acre urban park near the Greenford Tube station. It used to be a golf course, with a creek running through it. Within weeks, the beavers dammed up the creek, creating a pond that holds water and stops it from spilling into the city. They also diverted the creek’s flow into smaller tributaries, creating a wetland that better absorbs heavy rainfall — mitigating the risk of flooding downstream…

The beavers have also allowed the city to scrap expensive plans to dig a reservoir and levee.

Here is the full story, via Mike Doherty.  Should you need a government license to resettle beavers?

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/how-to-improve-british-procurement.html/feed 10 93102 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/supply-is-elastic-installment-1637.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=supply-is-elastic-installment-1637 Supply is elastic, installment #1637 https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957525653/0/marginalrevolution~Supply-is-elastic-installment.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/supply-is-elastic-installment-1637.html#comments Sat, 30 May 2026 05:18:59 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93098 With deadly precision, the Trump administration has launched dozens of attacks on small boats in the waters off South America, killing nearly 200 people in a campaign U.S. officials say is meant to curb the flow of illicit drugs to the United States. But almost nine months into the operation, epidemiologists, addiction scientists and public […]

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With deadly precision, the Trump administration has launched dozens of attacks on small boats in the waters off South America, killing nearly 200 people in a campaign U.S. officials say is meant to curb the flow of illicit drugs to the United States.

But almost nine months into the operation, epidemiologists, addiction scientists and public health experts say cocaine, by far the top drug smuggled out of South America, is as easy to get in much of the United States as it was before the strikes began.

The findings — based on evaluations of street prices, lethal overdoses, purity of samples and drug seizures at U.S. borders — raise questions about the effectiveness of the largest U.S. military deployment in Latin America in decades.

Here is more from the NYT.  And here is another report on supply elasticity, note that European airlines are still flying.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/supply-is-elastic-installment-1637.html/feed 8 93098 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/friday-assorted-links-574.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=friday-assorted-links-574 Friday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957492893/0/marginalrevolution~Friday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/friday-assorted-links-574.html#comments Fri, 29 May 2026 18:08:16 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93090 1. Where are the economies of scale in homebuilding? 2. Peter Thiel and Argentina (NYT). 3. Discourse on classical guitar. 4. How many dissertations are AI-written? 5. NYT talks with Macca. 6. New algorithm for ranking VCs.

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]]> 1. Where are the economies of scale in homebuilding?

2. Peter Thiel and Argentina (NYT).

3. Discourse on classical guitar.

4. How many dissertations are AI-written?

5. NYT talks with Macca.

6. New algorithm for ranking VCs.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/friday-assorted-links-574.html/feed 54 93090 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/what-i-have-been-learning-doing-new-aesthetics.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-i-have-been-learning-doing-new-aesthetics What I have been learning doing New Aesthetics https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957487553/0/marginalrevolution~What-I-have-been-learning-doing-New-Aesthetics.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/what-i-have-been-learning-doing-new-aesthetics.html#comments Fri, 29 May 2026 15:45:41 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93092 Patrick offered his observations here, I will add a few points of my own. I very often think in terms of regions and geographic places.  Currently, artistic movements (of most sorts, not just “New Aesthetics”) seem to lack a centrality of place.  New York City is no longer the center of the art world, high […]

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]]> Patrick offered his observations here, I will add a few points of my own.

I very often think in terms of regions and geographic places.  Currently, artistic movements (of most sorts, not just “New Aesthetics”) seem to lack a centrality of place.  New York City is no longer the center of the art world, high rents being one reason for that but not the only one.  It is simply no longer the city’s essence.  The rebellious spirit is largely gone.  Los Angeles has good galleries and plenty of creativity, but never quite stepped up as a number one city for the visual arts.  The Bay Area, in spite of all of its money, remains quite behind.  Berlin in some ways feels like it could be an art center, but it is not one.  Germany is too complacent.  Central Europe more generally has the heritage and still the potential, but I do not see “the engine of growth” there.  Paris and London are for certain high-end artistic activities, but they too are not centers of creative ferment at the ground level.  The visual arts scene in China has declined precipitously with restrictions on freedom of speech and creation.

Overall, looking through the applications my opinions of Spain and Mexico went up.  My opinion of parts of Africa, including South Africa, is relatively high, though that was not reflected in the applications I read.  Rather it is from my travel.  But I fear that none of those locales have the global oomph to lead the way more generally.

So currently I am still looking for a regional center or centers for the next set of artistic revolutions.  I see the contemporary world as failing at that.

I also would say that “Asian women” — from all over — put in a pretty impressive showing.  I take that to be a marked reason for optimism.  Perhaps future artistic revolutions will be less geographically centered than the past ones?

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/what-i-have-been-learning-doing-new-aesthetics.html/feed 35 93092 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/why-are-murders-down-in-baltimore.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-are-murders-down-in-baltimore Why are Murders Down in Baltimore? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957475229/0/marginalrevolution~Why-are-Murders-Down-in-Baltimore.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/why-are-murders-down-in-baltimore.html#comments Fri, 29 May 2026 11:19:44 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93093 In 2015 I wrote Baltimore Arrests are Down and Crime is Way Up and, as I predicted, Baltimore tipped into an high crime equilibrium. After the Freddie Gray riots, arrests declined and crime shot up but crime stayed high even after arrests rebounded. In my view, the surge fed on itself: higher crime strained police […]

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]]> In 2015 I wrote Baltimore Arrests are Down and Crime is Way Up and, as I predicted, Baltimore tipped into an high crime equilibrium. After the Freddie Gray riots, arrests declined and crime shot up but crime stayed high even after arrests rebounded. In my view, the surge fed on itself: higher crime strained police resources, and that strain—in and of itself—reduced the probability of punishment, sustaining the high-crime equilibrium, as in my crime wave paper.

Yet, beginning around 2022 crime in Baltimore—most especially murders—began to fall.

In April, Baltimore had four homicides, the lowest total for any single month since at least 1970. So far this year, there were 38, compared with 51 in the same period last year. At the current rate, Baltimore would end 2026 with fewer than 100 homicides. There were 323 just four years ago.

How did we get from a city in which the question was how high can crime rise, to one where the question is how low can it go? The answer might be linked to the nationwide decline in murder, spurred by a restoration of policing as the excesses of the George Floyd years recede. But that raises the question of what cities across the country are doing right.

So what caused the decline? We can’t be entirely sure as national trends confound but Charles Fain Lehman has a good piece in the FP arguing plausibly that the answer boils down to carrots, sticks and the non-random nature of murder. Begin with the latter. A significant subset of murders are highly predictable. A gang member gets gunned down today. Next week, you can expect retaliation. Moreover, you know who is going to do the murder even more than you know who is going to be murdered. Namely, a close associate—a fellow gang or family member—will be the one to do the killing. Sometimes pre-Cog is not so hard.

So with this in mind, Baltimore, under a new mayor and tough on crime prosecutor, began to intervene in the murder cycle before it happened, i.e. a focused deterrence program based on Boston’s Operation Ceasefire.

The approach involves a detailed investigation of every shooting that happens in the city. Every week, the Baltimore Police Department and its partners review the week’s incidents….For every shooting, GVRS prescribes reaching out to known associates of the victim.

…At one recent coordination meeting, about 20 people gathered around the table of the conference room at Baltimore’s Doxa Ministries Church Without Walls. Under the direction of Reginald Williams from the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, they talked through two new “referrals” associated with the victim of a recent shooting. One had a long criminal history and was on house arrest. Another, barely an adult, was himself a victim a few years earlier.

Both men will have their doors knocked on by several of the meeting’s attendees. They will be offered services—job training, tattoo removal, relocation, whatever they need to get out of the “life.” But they will also get a clear message, delivered verbally and in the form of a letter from Mayor Scott: Baltimore is watching them—and will come after them.

Carrots, sticks, and a little Pre-Cog. Together they appear to be working.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/why-are-murders-down-in-baltimore.html/feed 75 93093 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/are-we-undermeasuring-inflation-for-lower-earners.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=are-we-undermeasuring-inflation-for-lower-earners Are we undermeasuring inflation for lower earners? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957464939/0/marginalrevolution~Are-we-undermeasuring-inflation-for-lower-earners.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/are-we-undermeasuring-inflation-for-lower-earners.html#comments Fri, 29 May 2026 06:50:42 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93089 We document a new source of fluctuations in inflation inequality. When the cost of upstream inputs rises, varieties within a product category tend to have similar absolute price increases. However, the same absolute price increase constitutes a larger percentage change for low-price products, resulting in excess inflation at the low end (“cheapflation”). Since low-income households […]

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We document a new source of fluctuations in inflation inequality. When the cost of upstream inputs rises, varieties within a product category tend to have similar absolute price increases. However, the same absolute price increase constitutes a larger percentage change for low-price products, resulting in excess inflation at the low end (“cheapflation”). Since low-income households tend to buy lower-priced varieties, the inflation rates they face are disproportionately sensitive to upstream costs. Using data on food-at-home purchases, we show that this mechanism generates cycles in inflation inequality and excessive volatility in inflation for low-income households relative to high-income households. This channel parsimoniously accounts for observed fluctuations in inflation inequality over time, including surges in cheapflation and inflation inequality during both the Great Recession and the 2021–2023 post-pandemic inflation. Official statistics mask these within-category differences in inflation and thus understate the differences in inflation experienced by low- and high-income households by 70–90 percent. We provide evidence that this mechanism applies to a range of consumption categories beyond food at home. The same mechanism also leads to systematic differences in inflation across cities and import price inflation across countries in response to nationwide and global cost shocks.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Kunal Sangani.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/are-we-undermeasuring-inflation-for-lower-earners.html/feed 63 93089 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/how-much-has-shale-gas-saved-u-s-consumers.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-much-has-shale-gas-saved-u-s-consumers How Much Has Shale Gas Saved U.S. Consumers? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957460535/0/marginalrevolution~How-Much-Has-Shale-Gas-Saved-US-Consumers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/how-much-has-shale-gas-saved-u-s-consumers.html#comments Fri, 29 May 2026 04:46:21 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93088 It may seem like a distant memory now, but as of the mid-2000s, U.S. natural gas production had been flat for a decade, and the U.S. was importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), with plans to import much more. Then shale gas happened. Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling caused U.S. natural gas production to […]

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It may seem like a distant memory now, but as of the mid-2000s, U.S. natural gas production had been flat for a decade, and the U.S. was importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), with plans to import much more. Then shale gas happened. Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling caused U.S. natural gas production to increase significantly, and the U.S. went from being a net importer of natural gas to being the world’s largest exporter. This paper calculates how much shale gas has saved U.S. natural gas consumers. Using price differences between the United States, Europe and Japan, we calculate that U.S. natural gas consumers have saved $3.1-$4.3 trillion between 2007 and 2025, equivalent to $164-$227 billion annually. Access to low-price U.S. natural gas has been particularly valuable during major supply shocks such as the war in Ukraine, and the benefits of shale gas have been experienced broadly across sectors and states.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Lucas W. Davis.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/how-much-has-shale-gas-saved-u-s-consumers.html/feed 23 93088 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/ai-in-gdp.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ai-in-gdp AI in gdp https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957435731/0/marginalrevolution~AI-in-gdp.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/ai-in-gdp.html#comments Thu, 28 May 2026 17:19:16 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93087 Quality-adjusted AI production in the United States grew at over 2,000 percent per year in 2024 and 2025, driven by three compounding forces: expanding data-center capacity, hardware efficiency gains, and—the largest of the three—algorithmic progress. Treating the AI sector as a coherent economic entity yields preliminary estimates of nominal AI GDP at approximately $250 billion […]

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  • Quality-adjusted AI production in the United States grew at over 2,000 percent per year in 2024 and 2025, driven by three compounding forces: expanding data-center capacity, hardware efficiency gains, and—the largest of the three—algorithmic progress.
  • Treating the AI sector as a coherent economic entity yields preliminary estimates of nominal AI GDP at approximately $250 billion in 2025, growing at roughly 2,600 percent per year in quality-adjusted real terms.
  • National economic statistics accounts were not designed to track this kind of activity. Statistics agencies should begin developing AI-focused satellite accounts now, before the measurement gap becomes a policy gap.

    • Here is much more from Anton Korinek and Patrick McKelvey.  Via the excellent Samir Varma.

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    ]]>     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/ai-in-gdp.html/feed 48 93087     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/thursday-assorted-links-554.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thursday-assorted-links-554 Thursday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957430466/0/marginalrevolution~Thursday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/thursday-assorted-links-554.html#comments Thu, 28 May 2026 15:30:58 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93085 1. “Robinhood launched agentic trading and an agentic credit card today that will allow AI agents to trade equities and make credit card purchases on customers’ behalf.”  With cash back, of course. 2. Cultural Tutor and beauty. 3. Why has Napoleon so rarely been captured well on screen? 4. Guatemala agrees to joint strikes, with […]

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    ]]>     1. “Robinhood launched agentic trading and an agentic credit card today that will allow AI agents to trade equities and make credit card purchases on customers’ behalf.”  With cash back, of course.

    2. Cultural Tutor and beauty.

    3. Why has Napoleon so rarely been captured well on screen?

    4. Guatemala agrees to joint strikes, with the U.S., against drug gangs (NYT).

    5. Yuval on the encyclical.

    6. Emmanuel Roman on the need for deeper and thicker European capital markets (FT).

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    ]]>     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/thursday-assorted-links-554.html/feed 67 93085     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/those-new-service-sector-economics-jobs.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=those-new-service-sector-economics-jobs Those new service sector economics jobs? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957424667/0/marginalrevolution~Those-new-service-sector-economics-jobs.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/those-new-service-sector-economics-jobs.html#comments Thu, 28 May 2026 13:25:55 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93091 Russia has passed a law authorizing its central bank and other financial institutions to repel drone attacks with their own defense systems, as the country struggles to defend against Ukrainian strikes. The law, passed by Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday, will allow staff at Russia’s central bank to be armed and to operate […]

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    Russia has passed a law authorizing its central bank and other financial institutions to repel drone attacks with their own defense systems, as the country struggles to defend against Ukrainian strikes.

    The law, passed by Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday, will allow staff at Russia’s central bank to be armed and to operate the systems used to down unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) attacks without the involvement of special forces.

    Here is the full story.

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    ]]>     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/those-new-service-sector-economics-jobs.html/feed 36 93091     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/doc-in-a-box.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=doc-in-a-box Doc in a Box https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957419654/0/marginalrevolution~Doc-in-a-Box.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/doc-in-a-box.html#comments Thu, 28 May 2026 11:17:45 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93081 The first review of  the pilot for AI prescriptions refills in Utah is out and it looks very reasonable. In the 72% of cases where the AI recommend a refill at least one of two physicians agreed in 97% of cases. In the 28% of Cases Where the AI Escalated to a Physician Without Recommending […]

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    ]]>     The first review of  the pilot for AI prescriptions refills in Utah is out and it looks very reasonable. In the 72% of cases where the AI recommend a refill at least one of two physicians agreed in 97% of cases.

    In the 28% of Cases Where the AI Escalated to a Physician Without Recommending Renewal
    o When the AI declined to recommend renewal without further information, a human telehealth appointment was arranged.
    ▪ For these patients, 69% of physician reviews agreed that the escalation was appropriate, and more information was needed to authorize a renewal.
    ▪ In the other 31% of cases, the physician determined the escalation was overly cautious.
    ● For a new system like this, overcaution is appropriate and welcome. In the long term, reducing overcaution without compromising safety would improve patient access to care, but we aren’t rushing to see that happen.

    The founders of Doctronic, the firm running the AI doc, write:

    The cost of compute drops roughly 10x every five years. At the same time, the demand for care continues to rise. An AI consultation that costs a few dollars today will cost pennies in a few years. So if AI can safely handle even a fraction of care, we’ve turned an unsolvable supply problem into an engineering problem. And engineering problems have solutions.

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    ]]>     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/doc-in-a-box.html/feed 59 93081     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/my-excellent-conversation-with-toby-wilkinson.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-excellent-conversation-with-toby-wilkinson My excellent Conversation with Toby Wilkinson https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957403139/0/marginalrevolution~My-excellent-Conversation-with-Toby-Wilkinson.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/my-excellent-conversation-with-toby-wilkinson.html#comments Thu, 28 May 2026 04:33:45 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93080 Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Most of all, we cover Ptolemaic Egypt.  Here is part of the episode summary: Tyler and Toby cover how Alexander took over the empire almost without a fight, why Alexandria became the Manhattan of the ancient world, whether the era was as philosophically fertile as it was scientifically, […]

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    ]]>     Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Most of all, we cover Ptolemaic Egypt.  Here is part of the episode summary:

    Tyler and Toby cover how Alexander took over the empire almost without a fight, why Alexandria became the Manhattan of the ancient world, whether the era was as philosophically fertile as it was scientifically, whether your ancient doctor’s visit had positive expected value, what Egypt was actually exporting and selling, whether living standards rose above subsistence or stayed Malthusian, how the ethnic divide between Greek rulers and Egyptian subjects shaped society, what constrained the Ptolemaic Empire from becoming the next Rome, whether Cleopatra has been overhyped, what Julius Caesar was really thinking when he sided with her over her brother, the new frontiers in archeology, whether Herodotus can be trusted, what ancient Egypt knew about Israel and India, when Egyptian jewelry peaked and why, what triggered the sudden emergence of civilization across the ancient world, why a six-year-old Tyler knew King Tut better than Napoleon, and much more.

    Excerpt:

    COWEN: Either technologically or institutionally, what is it that the Persians had that the Egyptians did not?

    WILKINSON: The Persians had a pretty formidable army. Their military technology was certainly superior to the Egyptians at the time that they conquered Egypt originally in the 6th century BC. Like many empires, I suppose, throughout history, they overreached themselves. They overextended themselves, and they found it increasingly hard to hold together this empire stretching all the way from the Aegean to the borders of India. Bits of the empire started to fragment and pull away. Egypt had always had this very strong sense of its own identity. When it had a chance to throw off the Persian yoke, it took it.

    COWEN: Let’s think about some of the achievements of Ptolemaic Egypt as an era. Infrastructure. What did they do that was most impressive?

    WILKINSON: Build Alexandria. Alexandria the city was a new foundation established by Alexander the Great to bear his name. Unlike all previous ancient Egyptian cities, it was a city built from the outset for commerce. It was a city built on the Mediterranean coast with a great natural harbor, with facilities for loading and offloading ships. It had a great lighthouse guarding the entrance to its harbor, which became one of the wonders of the world. The whole city was really designed from the get-go as a great commercial center looking outwards to the Mediterranean, rather than inwards to the rest of Egypt.

    COWEN: Canals, artificial lake. What else did they do?

    WILKINSON: They built a city quite unlike anything previously seen in the valley of the river Nile. In fact, any inhabitant today of a modern city would recognize the grid iron pattern of streets. Streets intersecting at right angles, that was something completely unheard of until this point in Egypt with vast public buildings. This was the Manhattan of the ancient world, if you like, in scale, in grandeur, and in the level of commercial activity.

    And:

    EN: What were the main exports of the Alexandria region? What are they selling, making?

    WILKINSON: Oh, the two big exports that account for the lion’s share of Egypt’s wealth at the time are gold and grain. Gold has been mined in Egypt for millennia up to this point, but it’s still the place in the ancient world that produces large quantities of gold. Of course, gold has always been a great currency of international commerce.

    Then Egypt is famed as the breadbasket of the ancient world. It produces a superabundance of grain thanks to the fertility of the Nile and the benign climate. It produces more than it needed for its own consumption, by comparison with poorer agricultural regions in Greece and Asia Minor, which struggled to produce enough food. Yes, gold and grain were the absolute engine of Egyptian prosperity.

    COWEN: There’s metalwork, there’s glass. What else is there, manufacturing, as we would call it today?

    WILKINSON: Oh, yes. There’s a big ceramics industry, so producing not just pots, but terracotta statues and votive objects. There’s glassmaking, as you’ve said. There’s advanced metallurgy, goldsmithing, ironworking, copper and bronze foundries. There’s what we might call the decorative arts, so sculpture, painting. All of these things thrived in ancient Alexandria.

    COWEN: Do they have living standards sustainably above subsistence, or is this a Malthusian equilibrium, where they get some wealth and then more people survive and the wage falls again, and it doesn’t get much above what is required to keep people alive?

    Recommended, informative and interesting throughout.  And I am very happy to recommend all of Toby’s books, including his latest The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra.

    The post My excellent Conversation with Toby Wilkinson appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

    ]]>     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/my-excellent-conversation-with-toby-wilkinson.html/feed 26 93080     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/what-should-i-ask-richard-hanania.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-should-i-ask-richard-hanania What should I ask Richard Hanania? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957391955/0/marginalrevolution~What-should-I-ask-Richard-Hanania.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/what-should-i-ask-richard-hanania.html#comments Wed, 27 May 2026 23:07:20 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93086 Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Richard does have a new book coming out, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster.  While I liked the book (and blurbed it), I do not feel our conversation about the book would be that interesting — too much beating up on the stupidities of other people, […]

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    ]]>     Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Richard does have a new book coming out, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster.  While I liked the book (and blurbed it), I do not feel our conversation about the book would be that interesting — too much beating up on the stupidities of other people, which is an activity not in short supply.  So we agreed to (mostly) discuss Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo instead.  Given that, what should I ask Richard?

    The post What should I ask Richard Hanania? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

    ]]>     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/what-should-i-ask-richard-hanania.html/feed 84 93086     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/wednesday-assorted-links-555.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wednesday-assorted-links-555 Wednesday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/957371726/0/marginalrevolution~Wednesday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/wednesday-assorted-links-555.html#comments Wed, 27 May 2026 15:19:16 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93075 1. As meat prices rise, the economics of Texas barbecue. 2. Economic historian Eric Jones has passed away. 3. Claims about the Pope and Claude.  If true, further evidence for my Straussian hypothesis. 4. Koyama reviews Tyler Goodspeed on business cycles. 5. “Chinese battery manufacturer Calb has broken ground on a €2 Billion gigafactory in […]

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    ]]>     1. As meat prices rise, the economics of Texas barbecue.

    2. Economic historian Eric Jones has passed away.

    3. Claims about the Pope and Claude.  If true, further evidence for my Straussian hypothesis.

    4. Koyama reviews Tyler Goodspeed on business cycles.

    5. “Chinese battery manufacturer Calb has broken ground on a €2 Billion gigafactory in southern Portugal which is expected to represent more than 4% of the country’s GDP when in full swing.” Link here.

    6. Web site on Italian decline.

    7. Traveling around Syria.

    The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

    ]]>     https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/wednesday-assorted-links-555.html/feed 74 93075