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Assorted links
1. The perils of underpaying doctors and dentists
2. Feature creep, by James Surowiecki
4. Book reviews by Herbert Gintis; see #2 in particular on heterodox economics.
These round-up posts are hard to do from Norway, easy to do from home.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 30, 2007 at 12:40 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Nice article on feature creep. This problem has been recognized within some areas of computer science for probably a couple of decades now. (Guess how many Google hits you get for the phrase "users don't know what they want", for example. Would you have thought as many as 19,000?) It's not a simple problem with a simple answer, of course: it's not the "fault" of users, interface designers, software developers, hardware engineers, or marketers, but rather the way they all come together. . .
Posted by: RSA at May 30, 2007 11:12:56 PM
I just wish to point out that although there have up until this point been
zero comments here about Herb Gintis's review(s), there is now a raging debate
about them, all linking to here, with scads of comments on Crooked Timber alone,
with somehow nothing here.
So, I am really commenting that there is some kind of weird paradigm shift
or qualitative leap going on right now in the economics blogosphere, triggered
as near as I can tell by the debate over this Nation article, with this Gintis
review getting dragged into it big time. This whole thing is metastasizing in
some completely unprecedented way.
I made my own remarks on this over on maxspeak under a posting on inquisitions...
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 31, 2007 12:25:00 AM
Regarding the LouDobbs smear, you might want to check out the link. There's a few things the "reporter" forgot to tell you.
Posted by: NoMoreBlatherDotCom at May 31, 2007 1:31:38 AM
Typepad put in the wrong link, try this. Then, be intellectually honest and ask yourself: who profits from such smears?
Posted by: NoMoreBlatherDotCom at May 31, 2007 1:34:34 AM
Ironic that Lou Dobbs is spreading hysterical misinformation about illegal immigrants spreading leprosy in the U.S., while in reality an American is spreading incurable TB in Europe.
Intellectual honesty: Lou Dobbs is a kook.
Posted by: Jan at May 31, 2007 7:20:12 AM
Has that Gintis review been taken down? I couldn't find it by following the link; I think this is it via Google cache.
Posted by: pete at May 31, 2007 8:28:52 AM
NoMoreBlatherDotCom,
Did you even bother reading the NY Times article? I read your link and it did 0% to rebut the facts in the article, unless you consider ad hominem attacks a rebuttal.
Some quotes from the NY Times article (on Lou Dobbs):
Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality.
This is a polite way of saying he is either a liar or irresponsibly careless in his demagoguery.
He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives
Your link repeats the lie that immigrants are more likely to be criminals, and doesn't even try to rebut the Justice Department stats.
it defies belief — and a whole lot of economic research — to suggest that the problems of the middle class stem from illegal immigrants. Those immigrants, remember, are largely non-English speakers without a high school diploma. They have probably hurt the wages of native-born high school dropouts and made everyone else better off.
No response from your link. The fact is that Lou Dobbs relentlessly tries to frighten his viewers into thinking that immigration is a threat to the middle class. In reality he gets it backwards.
Ms. Romans, the CNN correspondent, relayed: “There were about 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years.”
“Incredible,” Mr. Dobbs replied.
The NY Times story points out that that number is for over the past 30 years, not the past 3 years. Your link on the other hand still tries to make it out to be an epidemic. This is nothing but classic Lou Dobbs scaremongering.
The fact is that there is nothing in the article that unfairly smears Lou Dobbs, it is all documented facts, and your alleged rebuttal link doesn't do anything to rebut the facts that buttress the NY Times accusations. I'm willing to read anything that contradicts the facts in the article that finally tries to take down Lou Dobbs, but you'll have to do better than that.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at May 31, 2007 12:17:55 PM
"Intellectual honesty: Lou Dobbs is a kook."
Lou Dobbs is a populist. The average person intuitively thinks that protectionism is good for the economy, and immigration steals jobs. Lou Dobbs is just pandering to what people want to hear.
Posted by: Rex Rhino at May 31, 2007 3:38:06 PM
The big thing I take out of the Dentists article isn't that there's a danger of underpaying dentists, it's that it is such a highly regulated "professional" service. Many states discourage dentists from entering their states. The fact that you have to get licensed by going through an accredited graduate program (I am assuming they need accreditation like Medical and Law schools) is the primary reason the cost is so high. Sure, at some levels of service you get a higher quality of service (given whatever outrageous insurance plan you have), but at some levels you don't get service at all.
Let others practice. Let the market decide.
Posted by: Admiral Waugh at May 31, 2007 3:57:37 PM
happyjuggler0: please get a clue and go to the link I provided. I didn't attempt to "rebut" his claims, but I never said I was going to either. Further, there's nothing about the crime stats in my post.
However, you'll note that the NYT quote you provide about crime mixes apples with oranges. As pointed out by someone at halfsigma.com/2007/05/a_defense_of_lo.html , Dobbs was talking about the feds, the NYT then switched to talking about all the "prisoners in this country".
Chew on that for a moment: you posted what may be a highly misleading statement from the NYT article, and you didn't even notice it.
As I stated above, my link discloses a couple of the things the NYT didn't tell you:
* the NYT itself has previously raised alarms about leprosy
* the SPLC - which is deeply linked into the anti-Dobbs campaign - has an indirect link to the MexicanGovernment
It also discusses the talking points the NYT uses and a couple smears.
And, unlike everyone else who's commented on this, I actually bother to look at the subtext and why the NYT might run smears like this.
Posted by: NoMoreBlatherDotCom at May 31, 2007 7:17:28 PM
大家好，我是臺灣人，從臺灣一個人搬家來到美國，環境很陌生，感覺很孤單。以前在臺灣幾家知名的徵信社工作過，我是一個優秀的徵信工作者，希望早點找到適合自己的工作。希望通過貴站，認識更多的朋友。
Posted by: 謝文豪 at Apr 2, 2008 3:48:39 AM
