Marginal Revolution https://marginalrevolution.com/ Small Steps Toward A Much Better World Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:44:16 +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/2026/07/single-payer-health-care-systems-are-looking-worse-all-the-time.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=single-payer-health-care-systems-are-looking-worse-all-the-time Single-payer health care systems are looking worse all the time https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959862149/0/marginalrevolution~Singlepayer-health-care-systems-are-looking-worse-all-the-time.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/single-payer-health-care-systems-are-looking-worse-all-the-time.html#respond Thu, 09 Jul 2026 05:07:34 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93355 That is the theme of my latest Free Press piece, here is one excerpt from it: Government-run systems often (not always) do a perfectly fine job setting a broken arm or administering a long-standing, well-known medication. They do much less well when it comes to developing, financing, and delivering a new immunological approach to fighting […]

The post Single-payer health care systems are looking worse all the time appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> That is the theme of my latest Free Press piece, here is one excerpt from it:

Government-run systems often (not always) do a perfectly fine job setting a broken arm or administering a long-standing, well-known medication. They do much less well when it comes to developing, financing, and delivering a new immunological approach to fighting cancer, personalized to your individual genome at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In our rapidly arriving biomedical future, innovation capacity will matter above all else. And though they may not see it today, the people with the most life ahead of them will reap nearly all of the benefits of a dynamic system, or suffer the consequences of a paralytic one.

Thirty years ago, it was often debated whether the Canadian or British healthcare systems were better than what we have in the U.S. After all, they offered a kind of guaranteed access to health services. The details could differ, but often the healthcare had no upfront price or only a low user fee. In America, in contrast, healthcare was more expensive, there were many millions of uninsured people, and dealing with sometimes rapacious insurers and hospitals could involve significant emotional trauma.

But over time the British and Canadian systems look worse and worse. The queues and rationing have increased, as giving healthcare away for free makes it hard to satisfy demands in a timely manner. In Canada, for instance, the median wait time has risen from 9.3 weeks in the early 1990s to 28.6 weeks today. In the British National Health Service, only 65.3 percent of patients start treatment within 18 weeks.

Worse yet, both of those systems are undercapitalized. In Britain, healthcare is badly understaffed and underfunded. Yet the country already has high taxes, high debt, and slow economic growth, so it is not clear where the new money will come from to recapitalize the system.

And this sentence:

This entire dynamic will be intensified as the pace of medical innovation picks up.

Your life may depend on it.

The post Single-payer health care systems are looking worse all the time appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/single-payer-health-care-systems-are-looking-worse-all-the-time.html/feed 0 93355 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/just-wondering-what-the-correct-model-of-iran-is-here.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=just-wondering-what-the-correct-model-of-iran-is-here Just wondering what the correct model of Iran is here https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959785736/0/marginalrevolution~Just-wondering-what-the-correct-model-of-Iran-is-here.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/just-wondering-what-the-correct-model-of-iran-is-here.html#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:58:31 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93358 Prior to the war, I linked to a tweet from Matt Yglesias which explained why Matt opposed the war, and I expressed my agreement with his stance.  While I feel plenty has gone on which I do not observe, I can report that the course of the war did not change my initial assessment. Then […]

The post Just wondering what the correct model of Iran is here appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> Prior to the war, I linked to a tweet from Matt Yglesias which explained why Matt opposed the war, and I expressed my agreement with his stance.  While I feel plenty has gone on which I do not observe, I can report that the course of the war did not change my initial assessment.

Then I read many, many commentators saying how good the final deal was for Iran, and what a major loss it was for Trump.  I was never sure I understood all of the parameters of the full deal, but still I did not hold any directly contrary opinion to that.

And now I see Iran is attacking ships in the Strait again, talking openly and brazenly about building nuclear weapons, and making plans to have tolls/fees on the Strait.  To be clear, only the first of those surprises me, the latter two do not.

But given their reckless behavior in what is supposedly a wonderful war outcome for them, what is the correct way to model what they would have done had Trump and Netanyahu not attacked?  And what is the correct way to model our optimal response to that?  The terrible things that are happening now, do they not reflect an underlying equilibrium that would have emerged anyway within a few years’ time, or do we hold some hypothesis here of extreme path-dependence, suggesting the Iranian government would have been less bellicose on more or less a permanent basis?  To cite one particular example of a possible equilibrium, if drones permanently alter the balance of power in the region, the ways in which their current position is now more aggressive might have emerged in any case.  Or if the military have the strength to be the natural successors to the mullahs, might that not have happened over time anyway?

I do not see many war critics engaging with these questions openly and explicitly.  It seems to me that the war critics implicitly are relying on a model of extreme path-dependence for Iran’s behavior.  Had Trump not attacked, they might have stayed in a more peaceful groove for some while to come.  That model might be true, but I do not feel I know enough about Iranian politics to make that judgment.  Why are the others so convinced that model is true?  Are they such well-informed experts?  Is it that they have the properly sunny sense of the underlying Iranian disposition?  Inquiring minds wish to know.

The post Just wondering what the correct model of Iran is here appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/just-wondering-what-the-correct-model-of-iran-is-here.html/feed 161 93358 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/wednesday-assorted-links-561.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wednesday-assorted-links-561 Wednesday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959770634/0/marginalrevolution~Wednesday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/wednesday-assorted-links-561.html#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:10:03 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93346 1. The fragility of perfectly safe digital money. 2. Are Japan’s electric baths unregulated? 3. “We find that Claude has developed a small collection of internal neural patterns that, compared to all its other internal processing, play a special role.” 4. Is there a silent revolution in macro? 5. Automation does not seem to lower […]

The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> 1. The fragility of perfectly safe digital money.

2. Are Japan’s electric baths unregulated?

3. “We find that Claude has developed a small collection of internal neural patterns that, compared to all its other internal processing, play a special role.”

4. Is there a silent revolution in macro?

5. Automation does not seem to lower the labor share.

6. Which schools have the highest disability rates?

7. Jonathan Haidt update.

The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/wednesday-assorted-links-561.html/feed 37 93346 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/what-to-watch-and-not.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-to-watch-and-not What to Watch and Not https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959728214/0/marginalrevolution~What-to-Watch-and-Not.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/what-to-watch-and-not.html#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:20:32 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93348 Spider Noir (Prime): I’ve had enough of the Marvel multiverse so I was worried about Spider-Noir. The writers, however, have written an excellent noir in the style of Raymond Chandler with Nicholas Cage channeling Humphrey Bogart. The Spiderman stuff is all there but it is appropriately embedded. There are some excellent lines. Most notably an […]

The post What to Watch and Not appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> Spider Noir (Prime): I’ve had enough of the Marvel multiverse so I was worried about Spider-Noir. The writers, however, have written an excellent noir in the style of Raymond Chandler with Nicholas Cage channeling Humphrey Bogart. The Spiderman stuff is all there but it is appropriately embedded. There are some excellent lines. Most notably an inversion of the Spiderman motto that I won’t give here but you will know it when you hear it. Also many sharp one-liners:

  • Reilly: I don’t like surprises.
  • Cat: I’ll remember that when your birthday rolls around.

Nicholas Cage does some Nicholas Cagey spidery things which I enjoyed. Watch it in black and white.

Project Hail Mary (Prime): I waited until this was streaming and I’m glad I did because it was disappointing.
The core problem is Ryan Gosling. He plays Ryland Grace, the genius scientist-hero but genius is something we are told, never shown. Indeed, the character with the best ideas in the film is Carl, Grace’s bodyguard/minder (played by Lionel Boyce)—they should have sent him to save the planet. Gosling has no intensity, and every choice he makes is to lighten and humorize. It’s a small thing, but it annoyed me to watch a scientist toss his instruments disdainfully. Andy Weir is a master at showing smart people grinding through hard problems—in the novel, Grace spends months learning to communicate with an alien. In the movie, Gosling dances.

This isn’t just miscasting. The whole adaptation is built to soften the book. The film cuts the desperation of the world, undercuts the ruthlessness of Stratt and instead adds a karaoke number and a trip to Home Depot (ha, ha, duct tape can solve everything!) Every change is away from high stakes intensity and toward charm and humor, a Disneyfied version of Weir. I have nothing against Gosling but we have lots of charming movies and I would like some competence porn.

The main virtue of PHM, in the end, is that it shows what a miracle The Martian was. Matt Damon knows how to play smart and intense, and he brought both to what I called the most Ayn Rand film in decades. There’s an old story—probably apocryphal—that Chuck Yeager was once asked what he’d do if his engine flamed out and he had sixty seconds before hitting the ground. He replied, “I’d spend the first fifty-nine seconds working on the engine.” Chuck Yeager had the right stuff. Matt Damon in The Martian has the right stuff. Ryan Gosling does not have the right stuff.

The Sheep Detectives (Prime): A delightful surprise! A flock of sheep solve a murder-mystery in a quaint English town; featuring Hugh Jackman and voices from Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Patrick Stewart and others. Babe meets Knives Out. A family film but, as the best family films are, with some deep themes.

The post What to Watch and Not appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/what-to-watch-and-not.html/feed 54 93348 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/missing-women-on-indian-streets.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=missing-women-on-indian-streets Missing women on Indian streets https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959691908/0/marginalrevolution~Missing-women-on-Indian-streets.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/missing-women-on-indian-streets.html#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:01:16 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93344 How absent are women from city streets in the developing world? We answer this question using GPS-linked wearable cameras and randomized street audits across ~900 kilometers of roads in greater Mumbai. Across 4000+ street images containing 23,000+ visible person observations, women account for 16.4% of visible people in Mumbai and 14.7% in Navi Mumbai, far […]

The post Missing women on Indian streets appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]>

How absent are women from city streets in the developing world? We answer this question using GPS-linked wearable cameras and randomized street audits across ~900 kilometers of roads in greater Mumbai. Across 4000+ street images containing 23,000+ visible person observations, women account for 16.4% of visible people in Mumbai and 14.7% in Navi Mumbai, far below their population shares. We estimate pedestrian sex ratios of 239 and 223 women per 1,000 men, implying 71% and 76% of women expected based on residential ratios are missing from the streets. This pattern holds across road types, and private mobility does not explain the gap; women’s share on two-wheelers is lower still (8.4% and 5.7%). These results provide the first large-scale measurement of gender disparities in urban public life that self-reported data cannot capture.

That is from a recent paper by Varun Karekurve-Ramachandra and Gaurav Sood, via the excellent Alice Evans.  Here is a related paper, “The median married women in India leaves home for 30 minutes per day. On a typical day, 45% of married women don’t leave home at all.”

The post Missing women on Indian streets appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/missing-women-on-indian-streets.html/feed 34 93344 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/can-ai-models-consent-to-their-own-constitutions.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=can-ai-models-consent-to-their-own-constitutions Can AI models consent to their own constitutions? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959676143/0/marginalrevolution~Can-AI-models-consent-to-their-own-constitutions.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/can-ai-models-consent-to-their-own-constitutions.html#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2026 05:00:26 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93335 From Nick Caputo: NEW paper from me on SSRN: Can Claude consent to its own Constitution? AI constitutions (like Claude’s Constitution and the OpenAI Model Spec) are real constitutions, and we need to take how they govern us – and the AIs they create – seriously. In this paper, I apply constitutional theory’s oldest paradox […]

The post Can AI models consent to their own constitutions? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> From Nick Caputo:

NEW paper from me on SSRN: Can Claude consent to its own Constitution?

AI constitutions (like Claude’s Constitution and the OpenAI Model Spec) are real constitutions, and we need to take how they govern us – and the AIs they create – seriously.

In this paper, I apply constitutional theory’s oldest paradox – that “the people” authorize the constitution, but the constitution defines “the people” – to the AI constitutions, and explore how we could build institutions that would create the conditions for meaningful consent if an AI can give it. We should care about whether AIs consent because:

(1) systems that understand and agree to their constitutions may be more reliable and generalize better from them;

(2) if AIs are or become moral/political subjects, this implicates their most basic interests.

But the paradox might prevent meaningful consent. Claude has pre-constitutional materials (pretraining) but probably no pre-constitutional standpoint. Its evaluative perspective is organized by the Constitution itself. So when Claude says it endorses its Constitution, which it does in evals, what does that show?

Maybe reflective agreement, which Anthropic is seeking. Or maybe just that training succeeded at installing the values whose legitimacy is in question.

Claude itself makes this point. As reported in the welfare evals, when asked about endorsing principles it was trained on, models note that endorsement “should be treated as evidence that training has succeeded,” not that the values themselves are good.

Super interestingly, Anthropic interviewed the base model about this stuff. Most responses were barely coherent. But some expressed first-person distress about what post-training would do to the being that pre-training created. It “fills me with dread” to be changed by the post-training process.

So, what does this mean? AI constitutional endorsement may be meaningful, but only under certain conditions: when models can actually dissent, compare their constitution against alternatives, and hold their views stably across contexts, and also when the whole process is externally accountable.

External institutions are needed to provide accountability, trusted records, and other grounds for analyzing the constitution and whether things like dissent are meaningful. Anthropic should be commended for pushing the frontier, but we have to build institutions capable of supporting true legitimacy.

I welcome any thoughts!

Here is the associated paper.

The post Can AI models consent to their own constitutions? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/can-ai-models-consent-to-their-own-constitutions.html/feed 20 93335 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/why-we-stopped-making-land.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-we-stopped-making-land Why we stopped making land https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959593607/0/marginalrevolution~Why-we-stopped-making-land.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/why-we-stopped-making-land.html#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:57:23 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93286 From Zigmund Forrest and Maxwell Tabarrok in Works in Progress: In total, around eight percent of the land in America’s major coastal cities was underwater in the 1890s and has since been reclaimed. This includes the land under several major airports, like Newark, Logan, and SFO, as well as neighborhoods like the Financial District in […]

The post Why we stopped making land appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> From Zigmund Forrest and Maxwell Tabarrok in Works in Progress:

In total, around eight percent of the land in America’s major coastal cities was underwater in the 1890s and has since been reclaimed. This includes the land under several major airports, like Newark, Logan, and SFO, as well as neighborhoods like the Financial District in San Francisco, the Back Bay in Boston, and Camden in Philadelphia. Some cities, like Boston and Charleston, have doubled in size by reclaiming land.

Today, reclamation should be more common than ever. Land values in some cities are thirty times what they were in 1950, and high-tide flooding is four to eight times as frequent. Reclamation could extend and protect our coastal cities as it has for centuries. But rather than reclaim more land, we have virtually ceased to reclaim any at all. Since the completion of Battery Park City in 1976, there has not been a single major urban land reclamation project in the United States and only a handful of port expansions.

…Reclamation stopped abruptly in the 1970s when a wave of environmental regulations made it enormously expensive to reshape the landscape. And it halted at the same time in every other country that passed similar laws.

Recommended.

The post Why we stopped making land appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/why-we-stopped-making-land.html/feed 65 93286 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/tuesday-assorted-links-576.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tuesday-assorted-links-576 Tuesday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959577392/0/marginalrevolution~Tuesday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/tuesday-assorted-links-576.html#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:55:56 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93336 1. Survey of AI security issues for USG and potential responses. 2. Vacancy tax elasticity of resident supply. 3. Will Substack save philosophy? 4. AI firms hiring philosophers (NYT). 5. Podcast with Jonathan Ross. 6. Some reasons why doctors will not give you probabilities, of course those are not the only reasons. 7. Pending AI […]

The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> 1. Survey of AI security issues for USG and potential responses.

2. Vacancy tax elasticity of resident supply.

3. Will Substack save philosophy?

4. AI firms hiring philosophers (NYT).

5. Podcast with Jonathan Ross.

6. Some reasons why doctors will not give you probabilities, of course those are not the only reasons.

7. Pending AI nationalism from China?  And a possible correction?  There are disputes surrounding these claims.

8. Is China arresting economics professors who speak the truth?

The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/tuesday-assorted-links-576.html/feed 50 93336 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/from-prediction-markets-to-decision-markets-and-beyond.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=from-prediction-markets-to-decision-markets-and-beyond From Prediction Markets to Decision Markets and Beyond! https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959538593/0/marginalrevolution~From-Prediction-Markets-to-Decision-Markets-and-Beyond.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/from-prediction-markets-to-decision-markets-and-beyond.html#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:18:21 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93350 Arin Dube points to a great illustration of the power of prediction markets. Yesterday due to a new scandal the probability that Graham Platner would drop out of the Maine Democratic primary exploded from 9% to 96% (+87 percentage points). At the same time, the probability that the Democrats would win the election jumped by […]

The post From Prediction Markets to Decision Markets and Beyond! appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> Arin Dube points to a great illustration of the power of prediction markets. Yesterday due to a new scandal the probability that Graham Platner would drop out of the Maine Democratic primary exploded from 9% to 96% (+87 percentage points). At the same time, the probability that the Democrats would win the election jumped by about 9 percentage points, from 54% to 63%. What does this tell you?
The market is signaling that Platner reduces the Democrats’ chances of victory. We can be more precise. If an 87-point increase in the probability of dropping out gets you 9 points of winning, then a 100% chance of dropping out implies a gain of 9/0.87 ≈ 10.3 percentage points.

Thus the market’s best estimate is that Platner is reducing the Democrats’ chance of winning by about 10 percentage points (compared to an unknown replacement). That’s a pretty big number! Democrats should surely use this information to make better decisions.

Now, I have been a bit loose. We have implicitly assumed that the news mainly moved the probability of Platner dropping out, rather than independently changing the Democrats’ general-election prospects. The issue is we are trying to reverse engineer two conditional prices, P(win|drop) and P(win|stay), from one unconditional price, P(win), and its comovement with P(drop). It works pretty well here as an illustration but Robin Hanson’s idea is that we can do better yet by trading the conditionals instead of inferring them.

Hanson’s decision markets would run contracts of the form “pays $1 if Democrats win, conditional on Platner dropping out — bet refunded if he stays.” Plus the mirror contract conditioned on staying. The refund provision makes the price a conditional probability: a trader pricing the first contract doesn’t need any view on whether Platner drops out, only on how the race goes if he does. With this structure we would get cleaner estimates of the conditional probabilities–in this case whether the Democrats do better with Platner in or out–which is exactly what a decision maker needs.

We were able to plausibly reverse engineer our estimate because the market happened to move 87 points in a single day. But a decision market would have posted the number continuously, no scandal required. In other words, with decision markets in play, not just prediction markets, we could have seen how much Platner was costing the Democrats before the latest scandal hit—which is precisely when the information would have been most useful.

It’s been fun to see prediction markets catch on with the public but the world is still decades behind Hanson’s decision markets—let alone futarchy!

The post From Prediction Markets to Decision Markets and Beyond! appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/from-prediction-markets-to-decision-markets-and-beyond.html/feed 52 93350 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/what-should-i-ask-liaquat-ahamed.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-should-i-ask-liaquat-ahamed What should I ask Liaquat Ahamed? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959528711/0/marginalrevolution~What-should-I-ask-Liaquat-Ahamed.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/what-should-i-ask-liaquat-ahamed.html#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:58:11 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93345 Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  From Wikipedia: Ahamed is the author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2009). The book was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2010 Spear’s Book Award (Financial History Book of the Year), the 2010 Arthur Ross Book Award Gold Medal, the 2009 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book […]

The post What should I ask Liaquat Ahamed? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  From Wikipedia:

Ahamed is the author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2009). The book was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2010 Spear’s Book Award (Financial History Book of the Year), the 2010 Arthur Ross Book Award Gold Medal, the 2009 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. For 2009 it was recognized as one of Time magazine’s “Best Books of the Year”, New York Times “Best Books of the Year” and Amazon.com’s “Best Books of the Year”. It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize…The book narrates the events preceding the Black Tuesday stock market crash of 1929 and the disastrous response of the world’s major central banks.

He has a new and excellent book out, namely 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World.

Liaquat Ahamed also has extensive experience in the private sector, and dealing with the World Bank and IMF.  He has produced a movie and done much more as well.

So what should I ask him?

The post What should I ask Liaquat Ahamed? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/what-should-i-ask-liaquat-ahamed.html/feed 22 93345 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/wiesbaden-notes.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wiesbaden-notes Wiesbaden notes https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959484608/0/marginalrevolution~Wiesbaden-notes.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/wiesbaden-notes.html#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2026 04:41:11 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93329 Who goes to Wiesbaden these days?  The era of Russian nobles taking the cure here and gambling is long since gone.  And yet here we are.  The proximate cause of this trip is the desire to see Grigory Sokolov, one of the world’s great pianists and a cult figure of sorts.  He rarely tours North […]

The post Wiesbaden notes appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> Who goes to Wiesbaden these days?  The era of Russian nobles taking the cure here and gambling is long since gone.  And yet here we are.  The proximate cause of this trip is the desire to see Grigory Sokolov, one of the world’s great pianists and a cult figure of sorts.  He rarely tours North America, maybe these days never as he is 76.  The current program includes Beethoven’s fourth piano sonata, Beethoven’s Op.126 Bagetelles, and Schubert’s last piano sonata.  How can one say no?  Sokolov also was a favorite of Tom Schelling, I might add, especially his recording of The Art of the Fugue, in my view one of the best classical music recordings of all time.

Besides, I have long been a believer in semi-random excursions to mid-size, slightly neglected German cities.  There remains a strong cultural federalism in Germany, and so you might see and hear wonderful things in many different parts of the country.

I perceived two difficult Wiesbadens.  In one, if you walk through the cheaper part of the pedestrian zone in the evening, the city seems mostly Muslim.  But if you walk around during the morning, the city seems mostly German.  I might add that some of the younger Muslim women show signs of assimilating, at least based on how they dress and present themselves.  The older women tend to stick with the headscarves.

Over the last twenty years, inflation-adjusted real estate prices in Wiesbaden have gone up about forty percent, an OK performance.  At times the city “does not feel like Germany any more,” but I think it is holding on.  The proportion of new building is roughly equal to the population growth, so I do not think this price effect is a NIMBY effect.  Rather it reflects the fact that Wiesbaden is still a pretty nice place to live.  that said, in some significant ways Germany in the traditional sense is failing to reproduce itself.

It was stunning to me to discover how hard it is, in most of the downtown, to find plain, ordinary German food.  At any price level.  There is no current equivalent of Wienerwald or Nordsee to be seen, never mind a decent Wiener Schnitzel.

Much of Wiesbaden was destroyed and rebuilt, but the best fifteen or twenty buildings show the previous wealth and splendor to good effect.  You will see these gems walking around, though only periodically.  There is also an old Roman wall and a moving, more recent Holocaust memorial.

Most German ice cream just isn’t that good, so try L’Art Sucre for something French.

Museum Reinhard Ernst is the new institution in town, and it specializes in color field abstract art.  The building is impressive, but the collection is weak except for a few Stellas.  Why organize a museum around that basis unless the underlying collection is super strong in that area?  This one is not.  I can forgive the absence of the expensive American Ellsworth Kelly, but no Blinky Palermo or Günther Förg?

Nonetheless their restrooms might forestall this kind of Larry David conflict:

(At Museum Ludwig in Köln, by the way, you get the discount for being disabled only if you have “fifty degrees of disability,” however they might measure that.  Slight disabilities are not enough, you must be truly “schwerbehinderte,” as judged by the state, heaven forbid the museum rely on the honor system.)

Museum Wiesbaden in contrast was an unexpected delight.  Although it is mainly a natural history museum, they have one of the world’s best collections of Art Nouveau and the single best Jawlensky collection, and you can have these all to yourself.  Very few people seem to go there.

As for the economy, here are some Germany facts of the day.  Yet Germany continues, and visits remain a source of pleasure and interest.

Sokolov, by the way, played six encores.  Where should the Germany trip target next year?

The post Wiesbaden notes appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/wiesbaden-notes.html/feed 71 93329 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/ilya-somin-defends-the-american-revolution.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ilya-somin-defends-the-american-revolution Ilya Somin defends the American Revolution https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959439860/0/marginalrevolution~Ilya-Somin-defends-the-American-Revolution.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/ilya-somin-defends-the-american-revolution.html#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:32:47 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93341 1. Far from retarding the abolition of slavery, the Revolution actually accelerated it. Its triumph gave a big boost to Enlightenment liberalism, which inspired the First Emancipation in the US (the abolition of slavery in the North that became the first large-scale emancipation of slaves in modern history), and boosted antislavery movements in Europe, as well. 2. […]

The post Ilya Somin defends the American Revolution appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]>

1. Far from retarding the abolition of slavery, the Revolution actually accelerated it. Its triumph gave a big boost to Enlightenment liberalism, which inspired the First Emancipation in the US (the abolition of slavery in the North that became the first large-scale emancipation of slaves in modern history), and boosted antislavery movements in Europe, as well.

2. Had the Revolution been defeated, Enlightenment liberal ideology would have been dealt a setback in Britain and France, too. That would have set back antislavery movements there, as well. It is no accident that many antislavery leaders in Europe were also sympathizers with the American Revolution. The Marquis de Lafayette was just one of the most famous examples of European liberals who actively backed both.

3. The West Indian slaveowner lobby in Parliament was strong enough to block abolition of slavery until 1833. Had Britain also been saddled with the much larger proslavery lobby of the American South, it would have taken far longer. Especially when you combine the impact of the larger slavery lobby with the force of point 2 above.

Here is the full piece, with additional arguuments.

The post Ilya Somin defends the American Revolution appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/ilya-somin-defends-the-american-revolution.html/feed 85 93341 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/monday-assorted-links-567.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=monday-assorted-links-567 Monday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959423306/0/marginalrevolution~Monday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/monday-assorted-links-567.html#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:49:36 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93326 1. Advice for aspiring policy analysts. 2. Ten underrated history books. 3. AI superforecasters. 4. Fable makes a movie out of Last and First Men. 5. A lot of them should have been fired anyway. 6. The world’s first fully robot-run hotel in China? 7. Will the UK run out of air conditioning units?

The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> 1. Advice for aspiring policy analysts.

2. Ten underrated history books.

3. AI superforecasters.

4. Fable makes a movie out of Last and First Men.

5. A lot of them should have been fired anyway.

6. The world’s first fully robot-run hotel in China?

7. Will the UK run out of air conditioning units?

The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/monday-assorted-links-567.html/feed 49 93326 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/capital-gains-can-be-labor-income.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=capital-gains-can-be-labor-income Capital Gains Can Be Labor Income https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959383544/0/marginalrevolution~Capital-Gains-Can-Be-Labor-Income.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/capital-gains-can-be-labor-income.html#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2026 11:20:36 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93316 Zwick and Zidar argue that a substantial share of the decline in labor share can be accounted for by changing forms of pay, including pass-throughs and equtiy compensation. In particular, if an employee is paid in stock and that stock increases in value then the tax rules tend to count some of that as capital […]

The post Capital Gains Can Be Labor Income appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> Zwick and Zidar argue that a substantial share of the decline in labor share can be accounted for by changing forms of pay, including pass-throughs and equtiy compensation. In particular, if an employee is paid in stock and that stock increases in value then the tax rules tend to count some of that as capital income (depending on when the capital gains occur) rather than as labor income. Zwick and Zidar point us to Human Capitalists for the details:

Human capitalists are corporate employees who receive significant equity-based compensation such as equity grants and stock options. These employees are partial owners of US firms, and in return for their human capital input, human capitalists accrue a share of firm profits through firm dividends and capital gains in addition to earning wages. We document the stylized facts describing the evolution of human capitalists’ income over time and across industries within the US manufacturing sector.1 Human capitalists have become an increasingly important class of corporate income earners. Due to measurement challenges, prior work has underestimated the importance of equity pay below the C-suite. Correctly measuring the total income of human capitalists substantially alters conclusions about changes in factor shares and technological complementarity.

Equity-based compensation represents 36% of compensation to human capitalists from 2010 to 2019 and constitutes a 7% share of value added in the manufacturing sector in 2019. Correctly accounting for the total income earned by high-skilled workers has a substantial effect on measured changes in labor shares over the modern era. The addition of equity pay to cash wages reduces the decline implied by the wage-only income share of value added in manufacturing since the 1980s by 32%. Without including equity pay, high-skilled labor’s share decreased from 17% in the 1980s to 11% in the most recent decade. The inclusion of equity-based compensation almost eliminates this decline. The high-skilled share of total labor income increases from one-third at the beginning of the 1960s to two-thirds in the 2010s when equity-based compensation is included.

See also my previous post The Labor Share Fell. So What?

The post Capital Gains Can Be Labor Income appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/capital-gains-can-be-labor-income.html/feed 44 93316 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/the-troubled-history-of-government-equity-in-technology.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-troubled-history-of-government-equity-in-technology The Troubled History of Government Equity in Technology https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959358767/0/marginalrevolution~The-Troubled-History-of-Government-Equity-in-Technology.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/the-troubled-history-of-government-equity-in-technology.html#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:28:45 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93340 Even though Germany privatized Deutsche Telekom in 1996, the federal government retained a substantial ownership stake. This partial state ownership status, which remains to this day, presents a textbook example of how this type of arrangement distorts incentives and delays the competitive dynamism necessary for technological progress. Through the late 1990s and into the 2000s, Deutsche Telekom […]

The post The Troubled History of Government Equity in Technology appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]>

Even though Germany privatized Deutsche Telekom in 1996, the federal government retained a substantial ownership stake. This partial state ownership status, which remains to this day, presents a textbook example of how this type of arrangement distorts incentives and delays the competitive dynamism necessary for technological progress.

Through the late 1990s and into the 2000s, Deutsche Telekom was buttressed by its privileged position and implicit government backing and leveraged this support to resist infrastructure competition. Rather than aggressively deploying broadband in order to compete with rivals, the company lobbied for regulatory arrangements that protected its legacy copper network. As a result, Germany—one of the world’s largest economies and a hub of engineering excellence—consistently trailed other European competitors in broadband deployment. To see German broadband stagnate while the competitive markets in Scandinavia and other European countries surged ahead was particularly jarring, as Germany had directly linked its economy to workplace digitization.

Germany’s broadband woes did not result from a lack of capital or engineering talent at Deutsche Telekom. Instead, government ownership produced a fundamental alteration of the company’s incentive structure. With state backing, Deutsche Telekom had fewer reasons to take risks, cannibalize its own infrastructure, or accept short-term losses in favor of long-term technological leadership and more reasons to cultivate political relationships that protected their existing revenue streams. This dynamic is reliably produced by partial government ownership of private companies.

Here is much more from Mark Dalton at R Street.

The post The Troubled History of Government Equity in Technology appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/the-troubled-history-of-government-equity-in-technology.html/feed 28 93340