For the past four or five years or so, there has been intense interest and debate online about why healthcare in America is so expensive, and what can be done about it. Sites such as Vox and The Atlantic frequently publish articles trying to diagnose America’s healthcare cost problem. Scott has written many posts about… Continue reading Explaining why America’s healthcare is so expensive

Yesterday, gave an optimistic forecast for Tesla, but reiterate my negative forecast for Ethereum (ETH), which as of 5/4/2019 is still the second biggest cryptocurrency with a market cap of around $17.5 billion, followed by Ripple (XRP). The ETH/BTC ratio now at .028, which is close to new lows. 6 months ago, I said to… Continue reading Why Ethereum (ETH) is dying

Looks like Lobos Motl is at it again with yet another critical Tesla post. Tesla can raise any amount of money it needs at a very low cost, which a position very few companies are fortunate enough to be in. Just yesterday, Tesla raised $2 billion in a secondary offer, and the stock went up… Continue reading Tesla is not going bankrupt

From Quillette: Marx Deserves Better Critics. If Marx wanted better critics, maybe he shouldn’t have devised an economic system that sucks so much. As someone in the comments notes: Marx does not deserve better critics, because his ideas are so bad both in theory and in practice that it is a waste of time 150+… Continue reading Not the Real Marxism

Articles that challenge conventional wisdom frequently go viral, especially if such wisdom is unsubstantiated, as part of the recent backlash online (offline, people are less intelligent and more impressionable, which is why people still shell out thousands of dollars for useless Tony Robins seminars) against sentimentalism and bullshit. As an example, a recent the galmour.com… Continue reading The ’90s and now, part 4

The NYTs retracts the only true thing it has ever published. The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove spoke with Murphy in the wake of the newspaper’s publication of a second controversial cartoon that drew critical condemnation from the Jewish community–after a first cartoon, which the paper now admits was antisemitic, was retracted and then subsequently apologized… Continue reading Deleted for Truth

One question that has vexed me for awhile is how and why trans issues and trans people have so much influence and such a large voice despite being such a small minority. “A survey in 2016, from the Williams Institute, estimated that 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender. Studies from several nations, including the… Continue reading The trans sports debate

A long essay from The Washington Post The strongmen strike back: Authoritarianism has reemerged as the greatest threat to the liberal democratic world — a profound ideological, as well as strategic, challenge. And we have no idea how to confront it, by Robert Kagan. And, of course, the United States has been experiencing its own… Continue reading The Myth that Refuses to Die

Many on the left justify affirmative action by arguing that racial groups that get preferential treatment are only slightly less meritocratic than better-performing groups and or that such differences are small. As this excellent presentation by Glenn Loury shows (starts at 15 minutes in), the disparities and amount of favoritism given to blacks is huge,… Continue reading Affirmative action: much worse than expected

One thing I have noticed is, is how there is so much fact-checking and how little tolerance there is for bullshit online, especially on Reddit and in the comments. As the viralness of mundane, non-politicized topics shows, smart people–especially in recent years with the rise of the IDW–are tired of: moralizing sentimentalism the imposition of… Continue reading The ’90s and now, part 3