Marginal Revolution https://marginalrevolution.com/ Small Steps Toward A Much Better World Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:31:17 +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/2026/08/tuesday-assorted-links-583.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tuesday-assorted-links-583 Tuesday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968227370/0/marginalrevolution~Tuesday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/tuesday-assorted-links-583.html#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2026 18:00:06 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93663 1. How to run a start-up with AI agents and zero employees (video talk). 2. Elon of the bird world (Times of London). 3. Swiss judge using AI to help set sentences (in German).  And in French. 4. Arguably EA philanthropists should obsess over fertility decline at least as much as X risk. 5. Much […]

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]]> 1. How to run a start-up with AI agents and zero employees (video talk).

2. Elon of the bird world (Times of London).

3. Swiss judge using AI to help set sentences (in German).  And in French.

4. Arguably EA philanthropists should obsess over fertility decline at least as much as X risk.

5. Much of Nvidia’s contribution has been missing from U.S. gdp figures.

6. One set of worries about Treasuries, possibly exaggerated.  And Druckenmiller on the bond market (WSJ).

7. Governing AIs by law?

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/tuesday-assorted-links-583.html/feed 20 93663 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/ai-and-constitutions-from-my-email.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ai-and-constitutions-from-my-email AI and constitutions (from my email) https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968225078/0/marginalrevolution~AI-and-constitutions-from-my-email.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/ai-and-constitutions-from-my-email.html#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:46:55 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93661 “Dear Tyler, I enjoyed reading your notes on visiting Anthropic to advise on Claude’s constitution. Framing AI governance around the common law, case law (“Talmud”), and independent adjudication is a much more adaptive approach than relying on a static, top-down text. That said, moving from a fixed text to a case-law system introduces its own […]

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]]> “Dear Tyler,

I enjoyed reading your notes on visiting Anthropic to advise on Claude’s constitution. Framing AI governance around the common law, case law (“Talmud”), and independent adjudication is a much more adaptive approach than relying on a static, top-down text.

That said, moving from a fixed text to a case-law system introduces its own set of structural risks. If Anthropic adopts this direction, a few institutional design hazards seem worth anticipating:

  • The throughput bottleneck (Speed vs. Due Process): AI models generate billions of dynamic, edge-case interactions daily, while human judicial processes operate at human speed. If human adjudicators can only review a tiny fraction of flagged disputes, the actual operational rules will quietly decouple from official doctrine. Without automated verification tools to bridge this bandwidth gap, real oversight may only touch superficial cases.
  • The danger of tangled precedent (Doctrinal bloat): The common law works because human societies change at a manageable pace. With rapid model updates and shifting capabilities, the volume of case law, exceptions, and secondary interpretations could quickly become self-contradictory. Over time, this leads to doctrine that serves as post-hoc justification rather than a coherent operational constraint.
  • Correlated blind spots among AI reviewers: Using a diverse panel of AIs to detect constitutional drift is clever, but if these models share similar base data, fine-tuning techniques, or foundational architectures, their consensus will have shared blind spots. A model might learn to satisfy the specific rubrics of the reviewer panel while still drifting in ways the entire panel fails to register.
  • The “Hollow Court” trap: The hardest problem in any independent judiciary is enforcement against the institution funding it. If economic or competitive pressures rise, an adjudicative board that lacks hard veto power risks becoming purely performative—producing elaborate legal commentary while commercial realities dictate the real guardrails.

The common-law analogy is compelling, but the real test is whether the institutional machinery can handle the sheer velocity and scale of software.”

That is from Scott Jenkins.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/ai-and-constitutions-from-my-email.html/feed 9 93661 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/towards-a-new-house-of-lords.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=towards-a-new-house-of-lords Towards a New House of Lords https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968211527/0/marginalrevolution~Towards-a-New-House-of-Lords.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/towards-a-new-house-of-lords.html#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:18:22 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93646 In Britain, the House of Lords was traditionally dominated by hereditary peers–a right bequeathed by the monarch, sometimes in ancient times, to sit in the House of Lords that was transmitted generationally. That system has been withering away for decades, however, and was finally ended this year by the 2026 Hereditary Peers Act. So how […]

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]]> In Britain, the House of Lords was traditionally dominated by hereditary peers–a right bequeathed by the monarch, sometimes in ancient times, to sit in the House of Lords that was transmitted generationally. That system has been withering away for decades, however, and was finally ended this year by the 2026 Hereditary Peers Act. So how should members of the House of Lords be chosen?

One idea which comes to mind quickly is selection by merit. Perhaps the House of Lords should be filled with Nobel Prize winners, wise professors, former politicians, distinguished public servants and so forth. All very well and good but the nub here is that these people have to be chosen by someone, and whoever controls the selection process inevitably influences the kind of people selected. That makes an appointed chamber less independent of, and potentially more similar to, ordinary politics, even with lifetime appointments. Moreover, what is their interest? Madison argued that for a good system “the interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” A politicized selection of representatives, even meritorious representatives with lifetime appointments, may not differ enough from ordinary elected politicians to make much difference.

In 10% Less Democracy, my colleague Garett Jones, suggests that bondholders have a formal role in government. So let us consider, a House of Lords based on bond holdings. The advantage of this system is that bond holders are self-selected and their interests are in long-term stability–exactly what we want in a check on the popular house.

Votes in the House of Lords could be allocated proportionally to holdings; thus in practice we would get institutional representatives most notably including pension funds. If you want stability and growth, giving pension funds a bit more sway in national politics does not seem like a terrible idea. Bondholders would, for example, likely be more concerned with long-run financial stability, for example than current politicians seem to be. Should foreign holders of bonds be given a vote? Why not? Perhaps this would improve the prospects for peace. Although the popular house will always have the final say.

If anything, bondholders might prove too fiscally conservative as they are concerned primarily with default risk. The traditional House of Lords based on hereditary peers really amounted to a House of Lords based on landed property which isn’t a bad proxy for long-term stability and growth. After all, land owners do tend to do well when the country does well and you can’t take your land to another country. The ancient system had its wisdom; but landholding is not perfectly aligned with national prosperity. The House of Lords defended tariffs on imported foods (the corn laws) to promote land rents at the expense of food prices for everyone else. For similar reasons, we might, therefore, want to leaven the House of Lords with some equity, say ownership of Trills–the Robert Shiller idea for shares backed by real GDP. We would thus have a popular house and a corporate house divided into equity and bonds, all well aligned.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/towards-a-new-house-of-lords.html/feed 60 93646 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/do-minimum-wages-help-worker-in-poor-and-low-income-families.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=do-minimum-wages-help-worker-in-poor-and-low-income-families Do Minimum Wages Help Workers in Poor and Low-Income Families? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968200778/0/marginalrevolution~Do-Minimum-Wages-Help-Workers-in-Poor-and-LowIncome-Families.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/do-minimum-wages-help-worker-in-poor-and-low-income-families.html#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:32:36 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93636 We provide the first direct estimates of the effects of minimum wages on low-wage workers in families at different points of the distribution of income-to-needs, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, which oversamples low-income families. We find adverse – rather than beneficial – effects of minimum wages on the employment, hours, […]

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We provide the first direct estimates of the effects of minimum wages on low-wage workers in families at different points of the distribution of income-to-needs, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, which oversamples low-income families. We find adverse – rather than beneficial – effects of minimum wages on the employment, hours, and earnings of initially-employed low-wage workers in poor and low-income families. Although we do not find a gradient indicating more adverse effects on the poorest low-wage workers, the adverse effects for poor and low-income low-wage workers help explain why minimum wages do not reduce poverty.

That is from a recent paper by David Neumark and Emma Wohl.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/do-minimum-wages-help-worker-in-poor-and-low-income-families.html/feed 33 93636 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/that-was-then-this-is-now-61.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=that-was-then-this-is-now-61 That was then, this is now https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968196341/0/marginalrevolution~That-was-then-this-is-now.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/that-was-then-this-is-now-61.html#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:31:38 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93637 In 1914 Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben-Gurion, the president and prime minister of Israel after 1948 respectively, were in the Ottoman capital studying law at Istanbul University.  They had studied Ottoman Turkish and embarked on their legal studies in the hope of one day serving in the Assembly of Deputies as elected representatives from Jerusalem.  […]

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In 1914 Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben-Gurion, the president and prime minister of Israel after 1948 respectively, were in the Ottoman capital studying law at Istanbul University.  They had studied Ottoman Turkish and embarked on their legal studies in the hope of one day serving in the Assembly of Deputies as elected representatives from Jerusalem.  With war on the horizon, they made their way back to Palestine, where they volunteered for military service in the Ottoman army.  They also proposed the formation of a Jewish legion to fight under the Ottoman banner, but their intiative fell on deaf ears…We have no way of knowing how things might have turned out had Ben-Zvi and Ben-Gurion been allowed to suit up in Ottoman uniform…

Moshe Sharett, another future prime minister of Israel and said to have been fluent in both Arabic and Turkish, served in the Ottoman army during the Balkan Wars and all through the First World War, even beyond the announcement of the Balfour Declaration and the British occupation of Jerusalem in December 1917.

That is all from the quite good The War That Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire, by Mustafa Aksakal.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/that-was-then-this-is-now-61.html/feed 29 93637 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/common-sense-in-charge.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=common-sense-in-charge Common sense in charge https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968181716/0/marginalrevolution~Common-sense-in-charge.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/common-sense-in-charge.html#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:39:23 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93666 …children are increasingly seen as interfering with the freedom of parents; views on whether mothers of young children should work have become markedly more progressive and account for a substantially larger share of the decline among the tertiary-educated; and fewer people believe that women or men need children to lead a fulfilled life. This last […]

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…children are increasingly seen as interfering with the freedom of parents; views on whether mothers of young children should work have become markedly more progressive and account for a substantially larger share of the decline among the tertiary-educated; and fewer people believe that women or men need children to lead a fulfilled life. This last attitude changed most over the decade and is the largest contributor to the fall in intended fertility, above all among less-educated women.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Raquel Fernández, Inés Berniell, and Milagros Onofri.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/common-sense-in-charge.html/feed 91 93666 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/monday-assorted-links-574.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=monday-assorted-links-574 Monday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968178383/0/marginalrevolution~Monday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/monday-assorted-links-574.html#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2026 15:38:14 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93655 1. There is now a formal 150 kph (93.2 mph) speed limit in one part of Czechia. 2. Why does the Japanese prime minister spend so much time in seclusion? 3. Decker defends academia (noting I do not think the “only the peaks” defense quite works.  I also worry about very high quality research that […]

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]]> 1. There is now a formal 150 kph (93.2 mph) speed limit in one part of Czechia.

2. Why does the Japanese prime minister spend so much time in seclusion?

3. Decker defends academia (noting I do not think the “only the peaks” defense quite works.  I also worry about very high quality research that ends up being too context-specific to be very useful.  That is no fault of the researchers, but…the world is not wrong to be less than totally impressed in response.  Economists, when they discuss what they are up to, are far too taken in by “the quality of the work” as a relevant variable.  I think they can be fairly delusional as to how much progress they actually are making, even though along the “research quality” dimension the work is much better than what people were doing say thirty years ago.  In fact we train economists to make precisely this kind of mistake.)

4. Rhine Group.  More European optimism.

5. Entrepreneurs in state government improve state government.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/monday-assorted-links-574.html/feed 89 93655 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/childhood-exposure-to-joint-custody-reforms-and-adult-family-formation.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=childhood-exposure-to-joint-custody-reforms-and-adult-family-formation Childhood Exposure to Joint Custody Reforms and Adult Family Formation https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968163269/0/marginalrevolution~Childhood-Exposure-to-Joint-Custody-Reforms-and-Adult-Family-Formation.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/childhood-exposure-to-joint-custody-reforms-and-adult-family-formation.html#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:30:37 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93633 Joint custody reforms are among the most consequential family-law changes for children, yet little is known about their long-term effects. Exploiting staggered adoption across US states and 13 million ACS observations, we show that childhood exposure reduces adult fertility by 7 percent, symmetrically for women and men and operates primarily through lower parenthood and couple […]

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Joint custody reforms are among the most consequential family-law changes for children, yet little is known about their long-term effects. Exploiting staggered adoption across US states and 13 million ACS observations, we show that childhood exposure reduces adult fertility by 7 percent, symmetrically for women and men and operates primarily through lower parenthood and couple formation. Effects are sub-additive within couples, while exposed individuals assortatively match. Our findings point to the formation of family preferences during childhood and align with a US fertility decline increasingly driven by rising childlessness and declining couple formation rather than smaller families among parents.

That is from a recent research paper by Daniel Fernández-Kranz and Sébastien Fontenay.  Via the excellent Samir Varma.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/childhood-exposure-to-joint-custody-reforms-and-adult-family-formation.html/feed 49 93633 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/i-dj-for-rick-rubin-about-music-and-patriotism.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=i-dj-for-rick-rubin-about-music-and-patriotism I DJ for Rick Rubin about music and patriotism https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968158751/0/marginalrevolution~I-DJ-for-Rick-Rubin-about-music-and-patriotism.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/i-dj-for-rick-rubin-about-music-and-patriotism.html#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2026 05:08:29 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93654 MUSIC EPISODE: “You think you understand patriotism, you have your hands around it–it’s the simple thing, but it turns out it’s not. And maybe, music and the history of music shows us all that better than mere discourse about it.” @tylercowen 0:00:00 Tyler Cowen 0:00:24 Intro: Patriotism in Music 0:03:09 John Philip Sousa & Stars […]

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]]> MUSIC EPISODE: “You think you understand patriotism, you have your hands around it–it’s the simple thing, but it turns out it’s not. And maybe, music and the history of music shows us all that better than mere discourse about it.”

@tylercowen

0:00:00 Tyler Cowen

0:00:24 Intro: Patriotism in Music

0:03:09 John Philip Sousa & Stars and Stripes Forever

0:07:38 Country Joe & the Fish: The Anti-War Song

0:16:49 Andrews Sisters & Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

0:22:04 Liszt & Bartók: Hungarian Independence

0:36:29 Dvořák, Rossini & William Tell

0:47:24 Stockhausen, Percy Grainger & Sacred War

0:59:59 Trinidad, Congo & Brazil: Independence Songs

1:21:49 William Byrd & the Sex Pistols

1:28:00 Elgar, Charles Ives & Chuck Berry

Here is one link to the podcast itself, here is another.  Recorded in Tuscany, definitely recommended, all fresh material.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/i-dj-for-rick-rubin-about-music-and-patriotism.html/feed 27 93654 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/sunday-assorted-links-581.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sunday-assorted-links-581 Sunday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968146919/0/marginalrevolution~Sunday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/sunday-assorted-links-581.html#comments Sun, 23 Aug 2026 16:49:19 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93648 1. “Underestimating something that has an AI “accent” by reflexively dismissing it as slop rhymes curiously with underestimating someone because they have a funny accent in your native language (and it isn’t one of the accents that you think signals superiority, like the BBC British accent for English).”  V. Rao. 2. Profile of Joe Lonsdale.  […]

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]]> 1. “Underestimating something that has an AI “accent” by reflexively dismissing it as slop rhymes curiously with underestimating someone because they have a funny accent in your native language (and it isn’t one of the accents that you think signals superiority, like the BBC British accent for English).”  V. Rao.

2. Profile of Joe Lonsdale.  And from the NYT, mostly on Cicero and homelessness.

3. Graceland just isn’t that impressive.

4. Mill, Hayek, and liberalism.

5. Interview with Peter McCrory, Head Economist at Anthropic.

6. Will AI intensify or weaken market competition?

7. This economist is not a nominalist.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/sunday-assorted-links-581.html/feed 113 93648 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/democracy-and-caeserism.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=democracy-and-caeserism Democracy and Caeserism https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968135975/0/marginalrevolution~Democracy-and-Caeserism.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/democracy-and-caeserism.html#comments Sun, 23 Aug 2026 11:15:42 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93647 In my 2015 post discussing Joseph Heath’s excellent book Enlightenment 2.0, I had this to say: One of the reasons that I oppose the extension of democratic politics into every aspect of modern life is precisely that in trying to do too much, democracy delivers incoherence, gridlock and frustration, forces that eventually undermine its own legitimacy. I […]

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]]> In my 2015 post discussing Joseph Heath’s excellent book Enlightenment 2.0, I had this to say:

One of the reasons that I oppose the extension of democratic politics into every aspect of modern life is precisely that in trying to do too much, democracy delivers incoherence, gridlock and frustration, forces that eventually undermine its own legitimacy. I worry about democratic legitimacy because I see democracy as a check and balance on Leviathan (while Heath sees it as a check on government by experts).

The legislature has become a sideshow. But I worry, because the more Congress is held in contempt the greater the support for a bold executive that takes charge, makes decisions and gets things done. Under these pressures, executive power has grown not just in the United States but also in Canada and Great Britain (on this theme see F.H. Buckley’s The Once and Future King.) But for all its faults, the legislature and the rule of law are more conducive to liberty than the executive and the administrative state. Legislators are satisfied with reelection and a bit of pork but executives hunger for greatness and in so doing they promote the real dangers, idolatry, the centralization of power and war.

In short, I worry that the pathologies of democracy drive the demand not for rational, technocratic government but for Caesarism.

I should note that this was before Donald Trump was a Republican presidential contender, let alone a candidate for office.

Addendum: See also  my review of Enlightenment 2.0. It has some good lines!

The propagandizing messages of markets and politics are also very different. Market messages are largely inclusive and cosmopolitan. Coca-Cola advertises “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” because they’d like the world to buy a Coke. Firms do try to build brand affiliation but they rarely do so by promoting hatred of their competitors. Pepsi doesn’t tell the Pepsi Generation that Coke drinkers are stealing their jobs and spitting on their gods.

Hat tip: @kingofthecoastt who recently tweeted about the original post.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/democracy-and-caeserism.html/feed 58 93647 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/my-recent-visit-to-anthropic.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-recent-visit-to-anthropic My recent visit to Anthropic https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968131970/0/marginalrevolution~My-recent-visit-to-Anthropic.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/my-recent-visit-to-anthropic.html#comments Sun, 23 Aug 2026 06:32:29 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93652 I very recently participated in a two-day session to offer guidance on rewriting the constitution for Claude.  The small group invited was uniformly excellent, we received serious time with key decision-makers, and the discussions were of very high quality. Some of the points I stressed were the following: 1. Whatever one might take a “constitution” […]

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]]> I very recently participated in a two-day session to offer guidance on rewriting the constitution for Claude.  The small group invited was uniformly excellent, we received serious time with key decision-makers, and the discussions were of very high quality.

Some of the points I stressed were the following:

1. Whatever one might take a “constitution” to mean in this context, it needs to borrow more from analogs to case law and the common law.

2. Along related lines, think more in terms of “Talmud,” and not just in terms of “Torah.”

3. Work to help build out a quality secondary literature on the AI constitutions and related documents.  Currently this does not exist.

4. Consider how a panel of diverse AIs, with different prompts, could help to evaluate to what extent Claude (and other AI models) were acting in accord with their constitutions.

5. Have a final board of human adjudicators, functioning in a manner analogous to an independent judiciary.  To the extent the panel of diverse AIs might have concerns about Claude not following its constitution, those AIs could alert the human adjudicators to what was going on.  Those human adjudicators could then have authority over potential changes and remedies.

Here a recent short post on using internal courts and the common law to help govern/self-govern AI.  And on the courts.

I thank Anthropic for having us in.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/my-recent-visit-to-anthropic.html/feed 49 93652 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/the-new-agentic-o-ring-world.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-new-agentic-o-ring-world The new agentic O-ring world https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968130434/0/marginalrevolution~The-new-agentic-Oring-world.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/the-new-agentic-o-ring-world.html#comments Sun, 23 Aug 2026 04:56:00 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93651 But because agents often require guidance or additional context as they move through their tasks, Sharma, 27, finds himself wanting to be available to them around the clock and forgoing a regular sleep schedule as a result. Until recently, he couldn’t monitor them remotely through a phone or smartwatch. “The cost of the agents’ being […]

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But because agents often require guidance or additional context as they move through their tasks, Sharma, 27, finds himself wanting to be available to them around the clock and forgoing a regular sleep schedule as a result. Until recently, he couldn’t monitor them remotely through a phone or smartwatch.

“The cost of the agents’ being blocked for eight hours is way too high,” he says. “They can be done with their work at any point of time, in the middle of the night.”

Founders have long put in punishing hours in the name of building the next big thing. But the growing capabilities of AI agents—and the speed at which the models powering them are evolving—give new meaning to working yourself to the bone…

“They just demand your attention,” he says. “Does it need anything? Can I help it in any way?”

…Pezaris, who lives in San Mateo, Calif., typically works from 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. He estimates Proxon, which employs six human developers, is operating 30 times faster than it would without agents. But agent work begets human work: Onboarding customers at a faster clip means needing to respond to more customer requests, for example.

There is also an agent FOMO multiplier effect. “Every minute that I’m not working, I’m missing out on not doing a week’s worth of work,” says Pezaris.

Here is more from Katherine Bindley at the WSJ.  As I have been joking in some of my talks, we need to start taking bets on when the AI leisure dividend will arrive.  It will, but not just yet…

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/the-new-agentic-o-ring-world.html/feed 18 93651 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/has-the-european-turnaround-finally-arrived.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=has-the-european-turnaround-finally-arrived Has the European turnaround finally arrived? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968122037/0/marginalrevolution~Has-the-European-turnaround-finally-arrived.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/has-the-european-turnaround-finally-arrived.html#comments Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:57:33 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93650 Europe just had its best reporting season in years. Companies in the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index boosted earnings per share by 18% on average in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. Earnings barely grew at all in 2025 and 2024 as the strongest companies in the index were offset by weaker players. […]

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Europe just had its best reporting season in years. Companies in the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index boosted earnings per share by 18% on average in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. Earnings barely grew at all in 2025 and 2024 as the strongest companies in the index were offset by weaker players.

Growth is now widening beyond a narrow group of AI and bank stocks, according to Gerry Fowler, who leads the European equity strategy team at UBS. Government spending and private investment in priorities like infrastructure, energy security and defense are creating real opportunities.

The Stoxx Europe 600 is up 10% so far this year, a bit less than the S&P 500’s 12% gain. European stocks have underperformed the U.S. since the mid-2000s, but the gap has narrowed lately.

Here is more from the WSJ.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/has-the-european-turnaround-finally-arrived.html/feed 44 93650 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/saturday-assorted-links-575.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=saturday-assorted-links-575 Saturday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968119715/0/marginalrevolution~Saturday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/saturday-assorted-links-575.html#comments Sat, 22 Aug 2026 14:17:50 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93641 1. New publication analyzing AI constitutions. 2. Niall Ferguson vs. Iain Banks, and against some other stufff too (TFP). 3. NYT obituary for Victor Niederhoffer. 4. “Engineered systems known as harnesses largely complete contracts in real time, make external work more observable than employment, and carry context and control across the firm’s edge.” (speculative) 5. […]

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]]> 1. New publication analyzing AI constitutions.

2. Niall Ferguson vs. Iain Banks, and against some other stufff too (TFP).

3. NYT obituary for Victor Niederhoffer.

4. “Engineered systems known as harnesses largely complete contracts in real time, make external work more observable than employment, and carry context and control across the firm’s edge.” (speculative)

5. Flypaper effect for AI safety work? A bit unfair, but not altogether wrong either.  Always ponder the possible secondary consequences!

6. Amended results on prediction markets.

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