YouTube - Benoit Mandelbrot thinks we're all screwed

YouTube - Benoit Mandelbrot thinks we're all screwed

Among other interesting insights in this piece is the identification of efficiency as one of the causes of fragility in the system. In turn, this is a "Tragedy of the Commons" problem - it is in the interest of individual firms to be as efficient as possible but that may cause small problems to have large negative consequences on the rest of us. Is it a job for government to ensure that there is slack in the system?

YouTube - Atheist IQ - Faith vs Reason

YouTube - Atheist IQ - Faith vs Reason Is religious belief negatively correlated with intelligence? You decide.

The Investment Deficit in America | OurFuture.org

This is why Reaganomics destroyed America. (And why the middle class is shrinking.)

The Investment Deficit in America | OurFuture.org: "Previous generations of Americans built interstate highways and transcontinental railroads. Now we sit in traffic."

The GOP's McCarthy gene

The GOP's McCarthy gene - Los Angeles Times: "the real father of modern Republicanism is Sen. Joe McCarthy, and the line doesn't run from Goldwater to Reagan to George W. Bush; it runs from McCarthy to Nixon to Bush and possibly now to Sarah Palin."

Paul Samuelson: The Dynamic Moving Center - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Paul Samuelson: The Dynamic Moving Center - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: "Libertarians are not just bad emotional cripples. They are also bad advice givers. I refer of course to the views of both Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. The “serfdom” they warn against is not that of Genghis Khan or Lenin-Stalin-Mao or Hitler-Mussolini. Rather, they warn against the centrist states of the modern world. Think only of Switzerland, Britain, the US, the Scandinavian countries, and the Pacific Rim. Why do citizenries there report high indexes of “happiness” and enjoy broad freedoms of speech and belief?"

The decline of the Republican Party | Ship of fools | The Economist

The decline of the Republican Party | Ship of fools | The Economist: "JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the “stupid party” now belongs to the Tories’ transatlantic cousins, the Republicans."

"Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future."

GOP Moderates 'will be cheerfully ignored'

As long as the Republican Party remains chained to the twin anchors of religious and (club for growth) economic extremists, it will continue to sink as a national political party.