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Micropayments
1. Nick Szabo on how small price changes can become
3. Why Facebook isn't the future of the web
4. Follow the numbers: why U.S. health care won't be cheap anytime soon
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 1, 2007 at 06:10 PM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Regarding granularity, I hate to be boring, but one can keep accounts of internet activity or whatever in thousandths of a cent,
but when it comes time to pay the bill, there will be a rounding to the nearest legally defined unit of granularity for which
payments can be made, and that is a cent. Ironically, we have had such accounting before, on the stock market until quite
recently, prices were denominated in eigths of a dollar, recalling the pieces of eight or bits of the Spanish dollar era.
But, while two bits are a quarter, nobody can pay one bit, or 12 1/2 cents. So, granularity may exist more finely mentally or
in accounting, but when money has to change hands, there are arbitrary limits.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jul 1, 2007 10:02:28 PM
Are people just not paying attention to the fact that we're in the age of globalization? Why not open up a Medical Free Trade Zone in, say, Detroit? Health care workers in the zone would not be required to get US visas or licenses, and any malpractice claims would be resolved in the courts of the worker's home country.
Posted by: Don Marti at Jul 2, 2007 12:51:21 PM
Actually, going Don one better, my two major concerns about national health care are:
1. They would stymie pharmaceutical innovation.
2. They would stymie or delay medical outsourcing, which offers the greatest promise of lowering health care costs and increasing access.
Posted by: Keith at Jul 2, 2007 3:12:27 PM
Keith, perhaps this post by Ezra Klein will address #1.
http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/06/things-you-wont.html
Posted by: eriks at Jul 2, 2007 3:38:20 PM
Eriks, at best one can say Klein's post implies that overly strict IP laws may lower innovation. Okay.
I don't see how that alleviates my concerns about national health care, unless you believe that our current health care system or any other possible system besides national health care is doomed to such an overly strict IP regime that R&D gets destroyed anyway and we may as well have national health care.
And maybe you could address #2 by assuring me that we'll starve the national health care system of funds while demanding so much from it that it will be forced to pursue outsourcing, so we'll gain that, too. Generally, bureaucracies are only innovative when you starve them.
Posted by: Keith at Jul 2, 2007 5:37:05 PM
The REASON facebook is more popular than myspace, friendster, etc, is that it is private, a closed intranet.
Well, that and its ability to interlink. But the (relative) privacy of the network allows people to be much more comfortable in putting information online.
It would not function as an open network, it is meant to connect people who know each other in real life. Anyone who is a college student understands this in a way older observers do/can not. Its growth has been an organic process, and I believe it will continue.
Come to think of it, I should buy some stock in facebook if and when they IPO. Barring that, maybe I can add Tyler
Posted by: graeme at Jul 3, 2007 12:51:22 AM
