It would be imprudent for the U.S. to adopt Europe’s more top-down regulatory model, however, which already decimated digital technology innovation in the past and now will do the same for AI. The key to competitive advantage in AI will be openness to entrepreneurialism, investment and talent, plus a flexible governance framework to address risks.
K. Lloyd Billingsley rightly laments the existence of the U.S. Department of Education (so-called).
My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan ably defends his work on immigration. A slice:
Assume we agree that immigrants get a large raise because immigration massively raises their productivity. The next question, then, is: When one segment of society massively increases its productivity, what happens to the rest of society?
When agricultural productivity massively increases, should we say, “It’s a benefit to agrobusiness, that’s all”?
When information technology massively improves, should we say, “It’s a benefit to tech workers, that’s all”?
When the construction industry builds a lot more houses, should we say, “It’s a benefit to developers, that’s all”?
Absolutely not. In each of these cases, increased productivity enriches not just producers, but consumers. How could matters be otherwise? Look at the world: Countries that produce lots of stuff are rich. Countries that produce little stuff are poor. As I love to say, the secret of mass consumption is mass production.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that the gains for immigrants are illusory. What it means, rather, is that immigrants’ massive gains are just part of the total gain.
There is no defensible case that Trump won the 2020 election. “We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election, and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity, and liberty to our nation.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein describes as “bums” both Trump and Biden. A slice:
The Jan. 6 committee investigation may end in a call for a criminal indictment of Mr. Trump. My hope is that at a minimum it will quash in the former president’s mind the idea of running again in 2024. The prospect of a second Trump-Biden election invokes a staggering sadness for the fate of our country. How did America come to such an unhappy choice, which it may face again in 2024?
My sense is that, just as Mr. Trump gave us Joe Biden, liberal culture earlier gave us Mr. Trump. It’s easy to imagine all those Americans, struggling to make a living, worrying about the fate of their families amid rising crime and plummeting educational standards, tuning their TV sets in 2014 and 2015 to the antipolice riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. Changing the channel, they heard college students say that disagreement made them feel unsafe. On another channel they were told that failing to celebrate transgenderism made them bigots. Bring on the Donald!
GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino decries corporatism.
Liam Cosgrove reports that Covid Derangement Syndrome still plagues Sri Lanka.
David McCune tweets: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
Regarding Biden’s COVID, 2 lessons:
1) If the most protected man on the planet can get COVID, you will also get COVID.
2) If COVID is not likely to be a serious infection for a 79yo man with evidence of frailty, it’s not likely to be serious for the vast majority who contract it.
