Making a Difference: Save-the-World Posts as of December 3, 2013
One of the reasons I blog is to do what I can to make the world a better place. In a useful hyperbole, I call this “saving the world.” This is my selection of posts that are in that vein. I have done posts with selections of “save-the-world” posts periodically since July 8, 2012, but it has been a long time since the last one on January 17, 2013.
I hope you will join me in trying to save the world–perhaps in a way very different from anything I have contemplated.
A word about the selection. My definition of “save-the-world posts” is the posts I most want you to read when I think of the objective of making the world a better place. Because of my view that the usual partisan debates are already well-discussed, for the most part, I am leaving aside posts that are about the current policy debates you would read about in regular news outlets. If you are interested in my contribution to those battles, take a look at my monetary policy sub-blog, the list of posts on taxation I give A Year in the Life of a Supply-Side Liberal, and the post I wrote immediately after watching Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech for the Republican nomination for President: The Magic of Etch-a-Sketch: A Supply-Side Liberal Fantasy.
Let me try to categorize these save-the-world posts in a way that makes sense.
It is Possible to Make a Difference
- Lars Christensen: Beating the Iron Law of Public Choice
- Anat Admati’s Words of Encouragement for People Trying to Save the World from Another Devastating Financial Crisis
- Steven Pinker on Scientific Etiquette
- Jonathan Rauch on Democracy, Capitalism and Liberal Science
and
for which the full text is
May the best in the human spirit vanquish the worst in the human spirit.
Where Does the Motivation Come from to Want to Make a Difference?
- Human Grace: Gratitude is More than Simple Sentiment; It is the Motivation that Can Save the World
- Noah Smith: God and Supergod
- Teleotheism and the Purpose of Life
- Why I Write
- David Byrne on Non-Monetary Motivations
- The Great Sacrifice (fictional heroes)
Vision
- Miles’s April 9, 2006 Unitarian Universalist Sermon: UU Visions
- Visionary Grit
- What is a Supply-Side Liberal?
- Off the Rails: How to Get the Recovery Back on Track.
Handbook for Making a Difference
Appreciating the Progress Has Been and Is Being Made
- Dylan Matthews: 23 Charts to Be Thankful for this Thanksgiving
- Michael Huemer on Moral Progress
- Jessica Tozer: Boldly Going into a Future Where All Men and Women are Created Equal
- Franklin Roosevelt: The Hard Road to Democracy
- Things are Getting Better: 3 Videos
- Future Heroes of Humanity and Heroes of Japan
Ending Recessions and Inflation
- America’s Big Monetary Policy Mistake: How Negative Interest Rates Could Have Stopped the Great Recession in Its Tracks
- How Subordinating Paper Currency to Electronic Money Can End Recessions and End Inflation
- How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide
Economic Stabilization in the Euro Zone
- Symbol Wanted: Maybe Europe’s Unity Doesn’t Rest on Its Currency. Joint Mission to Mars, Anyone?
- How the Electronic Deutsche Mark Can Save Europe
- Getting the Biggest Bang for the Buck in Fiscal Policy
- Monetary vs. Fiscal Policy: Expansionary Monetary Policy Does Not Raise the Budget Deficit
- Leading States in the Fiscal Two-Step
Financial Stability and Its Interaction with Monetary Policy
- How to Avoid Another Nasdaq Meltdown: Slow Down Trading (To Only 20 Times Per Second)
- Get Real: Robert Shiller’s Nobel Should Help the World Improve Imperfect Financial Markets
- What to Do About a House Price Boom
- Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig and John Cochrane on Bank Capital Requirements
- Banks Now (2008) and Then (1929)
- Cetier the First: Convertible Capital Hurdles
- High Bank Capital Requirements Defended
- Anat Admati Defends High Bank Equity Requirements
- Canadians as the Voice of Reason on Financial Regulation
- Matt Griffin: How Paul Krugman Convinced Me to Support Miles Kimball’s E-Money Idea
- Monetary Policy and Financial Stability
- Why the US Needs Its Own Sovereign Wealth Fund
- How to Stabilize the Financial System and Make Money for US Taxpayers
- Miles’s First TV Interview: A US Sovereign Wealth Fund
- How a US Sovereign Wealth Fund Can Alleviate a Scarcity of Safe Assets
- Libertarianism, a US Sovereign Wealth Fund, and I
- Miles Kimball, David A. Levine, Robert Waldmann and Noah Smith on the Design of a US Sovereign Wealth Fund
Long-Run Budget Balance
- The Red Banker on Supply-Side Liberalism
- Scott Adams’s Finest Hour: How to Tax the Rich
- No Tax Increase Without Recompense
- Yes There is An Alternative to Austerity vs. Spending: Reinvigorate America’s Nonprofits
- Obama Could Really Help the US Economy by Pushing for More Legal Immigration
Geopolitical Stability
- Benjamin Franklin’s Strategy to Make the US a Superpower Worked Once; Why Not Try It Again?
- Allison Schraeger: The Economic Case for the US to Legalize All Drugs
Economic Growth
- The Government and the Mob
- Paul Romer on Charter Cities
- Why Austerity Budgets Won’t Save Your Economy
- Ryan Avent on a Key to Growth: Markets Broad and Deep
- The Wonderful, Now Suppressed, Republican Study Committee Brief on Copyright Law
- Copyright
- What Would Economic Growth Look Like If We Properly Valued the Web?
Education
- Two Types of Knowledge: Human Capital and Information
- Magic Ingredient 1: More K-12 School
- There’s One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don’t
- The Unavoidability of Faith
- Visionary Grit
- Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice
- Daniel Coyle on Deliberate Practice
- Shane Parrish on Deliberate Practice
- Joshua Foer on Deliberate Practice
- Joshua Foer on Memory
- Steven Pinker on the Goal of Education
- Why My Retirement Savings Accounts are Currently 100% in the Stock Market (financial education)
Saving Nature
- Evan Soltas: How Economics Can Save the Whales
- Noah Smith on How to Slow Global Warming
- Ramez Naam: Smaller, Cheaper, Faster: Does Moore’s Law Apply to Solar Cells?
- A Supply-Side Liberal Joins the Pigou Club
- Henry George and the Carbon Tax
Happiness
- How I Became Optimistic
- The “Wait But Why” Blog on Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy
- The Egocentric Illusion
- Does Ben Bernanke Want to Replace GDP with a Happiness Index?
- Ori Heffetz: Quantifying Happiness
- Judging the Nations: Wealth and Happiness are Not Enough
Making Religions that Work Even for Agnostics and Atheists
- Godless Religion
- Teleotheism and the Purpose of Life
- An Agnostic Prayer for Strength
- Daniel Dennett’s Spirituality
- The Message of Mormonism for Atheists Who Want to Stay Atheists
- How to Introduce the Next Generation to Literature
- David Byrne on the Japanese Way of Art
- Milan Kundera on the Contribution of Novels to the Liberal Imagination
Freedom
- John Stuart Mill’s Brief for Freedom of Speech
- John Stuart Mill on Humans vs. the Lesser Robots
- Michael Huemer’s Libertarianism
- David Byrne: De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum
- The Rise and Fall of Venice
- Milton Friedman: Celebrating His 100th Birthday with Videos of Milton
Moral Dimensions of Public Policy
- Michael Huemer’s Immigration Parable
- You Didn’t Build That: America Edition
- The Moral Case for Immigration Reform
- The Ethics of Immigration Policy, Revisited
- Immigration Tweet Day, February 4, 2013: Archive
- Nicholas Kristof: “Where Sweatshops are a Dream”
- When the Government Says “You May Not Have a Job”
- Inequality Aversion Utility Functions: Would $1000 Mean More to a Poorer Family than $4000 to One Twice as Rich?
- Rich, Poor and Middle-Class
- Will Mitt’s Mormonism Make Him a Supply-Side Liberal?
- Jobs
- Scrooge and the Ethical Case for Consumption Taxation
Hard Problems I Don’t Have a Good Solution For: Reforming Health Care and Women’s Second Shift
- Don’t Believe Anyone Who Claims to Understand the Economics of Obamacare
- Robert Graboyes on Enabling Supply-Side Innovation in Health Care
- Clay Christensen, Jeffrey Flier and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan on How to Make Health Care More Cost Effective
- Evan Soltas on Medical Reform Federalism–In Canada
- Debora Spar on the Dilemma of Modern Women