Joakim Book
Of Course Capitalism Can Save Nature
Various schemes have turned rhinos and other scenic African animals from victims of the tragedy of the commons to valuable commodities that hunters and farmers and former poachers sustain, in no small part thanks to ecotourism.
Are All Cryptocurrencies Pyramid Schemes?
All moneys and valuable items are pyramid schemes, and all holders of money and valuable items hope that the next person in line will pay more for them. That’s how monetary balances work. No big deal.
The Implausible Claims of Green High Finance
It is highly doubtful that having a central bank selectively buy outstanding debt with green labels would in any meaningful way contribute to a greening of the economy.
Search Engines are Better Than Hogwarts
We live better lives today than the aristocracy and the richest of our forefathers did in the past. But in some ways, we also live better lives than the wizards and witches of J. K. Rowlings’ wonderful world.
All Hail Statistics!
Yes, statistics can deceive — think Mark Twain’s apocryphal claim about lies and damned lies — but statistics can also give nuance to our worldviews.
Greetings from the Bitcoin Mansions
Bitcoin’s monetary dreamworld does look rather fanciful and full of strange beliefs: a land of fairies, castles and – I imagine – princesses, a land, writes Jemina Kelly at Financial Times, “where bunk and baloney thrive.”
The Economics of Price and Quantity Signals
The first time I thought about the relationship between quantity and price, I was a teenager working at the same job that taught me about transaction costs in labor markets. […]
Should We All Be Flying Less?
I have long been a fan of the writer, statistician, and “flaneur” of financial markets Nassim Nicholas Taleb. His eye for the unseen and his heavy emphasis on sample selections […]
When Perfect Correlations Dissolve Into Dust
Statistical relations can be tenuous, and statistics can be fishy. Perhaps with time, Harvey’s yield curve relation will go the way of pedestrians and South Dakota lawyers — a near-perfect correlation dissolving into dust.
Was Bitcoin the Best-Performing Asset of the Decade?
Bitcoin’s returns over the last decade have dominated every other asset we can compare it with, but that still doesn’t tell us what we need to know about the future viability of this extraordinary development in human monetary affairs.
