BSS: Pretty Interesting Talk

Is the USA the "Microsoft of Nations"?  He is leaning toward "yes."  He does not mean it as a compliment.   (I took a shot at this kind of thing, a while ago.  But BSS is great, here).

Can we have "no-drive" cars?

Could we have cars with no drivers?

Maybe not, unless we had an America with no lawyers.

Who to sue?

"Anyone who gets into the convoy business will have a lot of legal work ahead of them "

Econ Blogger Conference MVTs

MVTs = Most Valuable Talkers:

Lots of smart people with a lot to say. Was great to see some old friends and meet some people face to face for the first time.

The panelists I got the most from though were Alex Tabarrok and Michael Mandel speaking about intellectual property and innovation.

Based on his remarks, I highly recommend Alex's new book on the same subject.

Thanks to the Kauffman Foundation for (A) putting on such a cool event, and (B) inviting me to attend.

If Your College Major Contains the Word "Studies," You are Part of the Problem!

"Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly. What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent — to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic. Then we need to download the updates that are running more successfully in other countries, from Finland to New Zealand, from Denmark to Hong Kong, from Singapore to Sweden. And finally we need to reboot our whole system. I refuse to accept that Western civilization is like some hopeless old version of Microsoft DOS, doomed to freeze, then crash. I still cling to the hope that the United States is the Mac to Europe’s PC, and that if one part of the West can successfully update and reboot itself, it’s America." [Niall Ferguson, Newsweek]

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

Patenting Dad

Creativity and the Family Tree: Human Capital Endowments and the Propensity of Entrepreneurs to Patent

Albert Link & Christopher Ruhm, NBER Working Paper, September 2011

Abstract: In this paper we show that the patenting behavior of creative entrepreneurs is correlated with the patenting behavior of their fathers, which we refer to as a source of the entrepreneurs’ human capital endowments. Our argument for this relationship follows from established theories of developmental creativity, and our empirical analysis is based on survey data collected from MIT’s Technology Review winners.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

In Honor of Steve Jobs....

Some time ago, I published a celebration of private innovation, "Two Steves and One Soichiro." One of the "Steves," of course, is Mr. Jobs.

Rereading it, I am reminded sharply how badly we would have done in innovation if democracy had been the decision rule. Just look at the quotes from the "experts" in the article. Wow.

Cheaper is an innovation

I have this on-going argument with my man K-Koopa.

My claim is that the Chinese are performing important innovations in solar power panels. Not big changes, but marginal ones that will make production cheaper and will make use of solar power possible.

(And, as Angus has noted, this is a GOOD thing...for us)

Anyway, Matt Ridley makes a more general form of that argument: marginal changes that reduce cost are the core innovations we can expect from active economies. The major innovations (steel, steam engines, transistors, silicon circuits) are pretty rare. The key innovations are finding ways to make other innovations affordable and mass produced.