Codex: productivity debt, occupational licensing, eugenics, income gaps, assisted suicide, Haiti
learn how to be more productive, why occupational licensing is bad, how activists have come to label everything eugenics, why income gaps between ethnicities and genders persist, and more.
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Now, let’s dive into today’s codex.
Retrofuturist utopian city, 8k—Midjourney V6
March 27th, 2024 Learn Arena Codex
Fantastic productivity and mindset tips for those of us who feel like we awake every day with a massive productivity debt, a mountain of tasks we have no hope of ever climbing successfully. https://www.oliverburkeman.com/donelist
Activists are now attempting to make it socially and in some cases legally impossible to pursue the goal of reducing physical or emotional disability amongst humans. Yes, really. Sometimes it feels as if we live in a strange mirror world where everything is precisely the opposite of how it should be.
Occupational licensing increases the wages of people in those professions that are being regulated, but at the cost of far less employment in that profession. The decrease in employment is larger than the increase in pay. Regulation is always bad. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4735997
Researchers looked at what the impact of confidence, risk tolerance, and competitiveness are on income disparities between all sorts of ethnicities and genders. Really fascinating study with lots of interesting implications for thinking about modern American culture, I have NO idea how they got this paper published in the year of our Lord 2024. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4737328
Canada’s assisted suicide program is speeding down the slippery slope to “healthy people can get the government to kill them” at the speed of light. A healthy 27 year old female with ADHD and mild autism is being killed by the Canadian government. Government funded healthcare is cheaper if you can just kill the patients, eh? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-maid-father-daughter-court-injunction-judicial-review-decision-1.7154794
There’s a big debate going on right now in the world of economics around trying to answer this question: why does literally of the data say the economy is great, yet the general public is utterly convinced the economy is terrible? Some possible answers here.
Fascinating commentary on intra-elite competition, which is all that really matters for determining world affairs anyway; us peons are along for the ride. https://archive.is/ueYPq
You may have seen the news that Haiti has no government and is being ruled by violent criminal gangs. You may wonder why—I sure did! How does this happen? This article lays out some possible explanations for the root cause. Basically, every single smart/high human capital Haitian leaves the country. If literally all of your smart people leave, you’re out of luck!
More empirical evidence that my deep disdain bordering on hatred for ethicists in general and medical ethicists specifically is justified: the general public is strongly in favor of high financial incentives for things like stem cell donation, while our supposedly enlightened ethicists are against it. Let me put that more bluntly: ethicists are opposed to paying people for their stem cells which could save lives and improve lives because they value silly abstract ideas (abstract ideas that are also wrong) over the actual health and well being of real humans. https://academic.oup.com/ej/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ej/ueae018/7625081?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Large corporate mergers typically result in gains for consumers. Once more, populism is wrong and economics is right. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4736059
An argument that pay secrecy is actually better for workers than pay transparency. https://academic.oup.com/aler/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/aler/ahad004/7510880