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Cutting Without Measuring
We’re having our front steps replaced. They are made of concrete with embedded tiles (the old steps were badly cracked, and had to be removed anyhow when we had our foundation rebuilt). We were able to salvage about half the tiles from the old steps as they were destroyed, and managed to find matching new…
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Broken Programs
I’m a programmer by profession, so I sometimes wonder: why are most programs so bad? All sizeable programs are full of bugs. Mostly these bugs don’t matter so much, but why are they there? If computer hardware had as many glitches as computer software, computers would never manage to boot up at all. My current…
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Escaping Malthus
How have we escaped the Malthusian trap, and is our escape only temporary? Malthus argued that human population was naturally at the limit of what resources could support. To put it another way, the very poor were always on the edge of starvation. Any increase in resources would only bring temporary respite: the population would…
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Immigration
Why do we have immigration restrictions in the U.S.? Does it make sense to advocate for free trade and free flow of capital without also permitting free flow of labor? It’s interesting to ponder how much immigration would increase if there were no restrictions. Many people enter the country one way or another despite the…
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Medical Expenses
So why is health care so expensive in this country? This is a subject I don’t really know anything about, which gives me even more opportunity than usual to speculate freely and leap to broad conclusions. Obviously a big chunk of it is profits taken by pharmaceutical companies, profits which would have much more justification…