Unlearning Economics

Imagine knowing your political leader is mentally unstable, dangerous, and corrupt and refusing to admit it or do anything about it.
Now meet all GOP representatives and senators.

"For example, I have not written any statistical programming code in many months and I don’t see why I would ever write any such code ever again." mattbruenig.com/2026/01/19/s...

A Year On: The DOGE Disaster A Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of your government

DOGE was a deliberately inflicted disaster

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-year-on-...

Gabriel Zucman on the shocking concentration of extreme wealth in the United States….
gzucman.substack.com?r=nle0&utm_c...

Airing my grievances with wellbeing science We have a streetlight problem

if i could make you read ONE (1) single post to improve your understanding of the challenges of social science in general it would be this one from @markfabian.bsky.social about wellbeing science specifically

profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...

Tweet exchange in which a photo of Anne Hathaway is posted by @TheRoyalSerf, to which user @VvSchweetz24 replies "@grok...do your thing. @Grok replies: Anne Hathaway isn't Jewish; she was raised Catholic but left the church. She married Adam Shulman (who is Jewish) in 2012 and celebrates Jewish holidays with their kids. SHe's played Jewish roles, like in "Armageddon Time."

pretty sure he meant the other thing, grok, but very cool that those are your two things

I realise I'm just a freak, but living in a multicultural city is the best thing of all time, it's just the best possible human experience and i can not understand why anyone on earth would be like "weve got to destroy this"

YouTube video by Unlearning Economics Everything Was Already AI

NEW VIDEO: Everything Was Already AI youtu.be/Km2bn0HvUwg

Suppose that a professor of chemistry were to say: “The world is threatened by a great catastrophe; God has not taken proper precautions. I have analyzed the air that comes from human lungs, and I have come to the conclusion that it is not fit to breathe; so that, by calculating the volume of the atmosphere, I can predict the day when it will be entirely polluted, and when mankind will die of consumption, unless it adopts an artificial mode of respiration of my invention.” Another professor steps forward and says: “No, mankind will not perish thus. It is true that the air that has already served to sustain animal life is vitiated for that purpose; but it is fit for plant life, and what plants exhale is favorable to human respiration. An incomplete study has induced some to think that God made a mistake; a more exact inquiry shows a harmonious design in His handiwork. Men can continue to breathe as Nature willed it.” What should we say if the first professor overwhelmed the second with abuse, saying: “You are a chemist with a cold, hard, dried-up heart; you preach the horrible doctrine of laissez faire; you do not love mankind, since you demonstrate the uselessness of my respiratory apparatus.”

Reading Friedrich Bastiat on pollution in the 19th Century just convinced me that reactionaries have been imagining a guy being mean to them and letting it change their politics since forever

www.econlib.org/library/Bast...

The Left Needs Bureaucrats - Dissent Magazine After MAGA, the left will need to be ready with a theory of how to rebuild the federal administrative state—not as it was before Trump, but as something better.

This essay might be a tad unfair to Graeber. But it makes a valid point.

dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...

Is the credibility revolution credible? Noah Smith made a stir with his claim that historians make theories without empirical backing — something I think is a bit of a category err...

This post by @newqueuelure.bsky.social on the credibility revolution in economics reminds me of the 'intuitition dance' economists do, both with theory and empirics

informationtransfereconomics.blogspot.com/2022/09/is-c...

was the green lantern a good chap? on having one's head in the game

"what's possible within the system", versus "the wider environment in which the system is embedded"

backofmind.substack.com/p/was-the-gr...

I was 20 when HS2 was announced. Great to know i’ll probably be in my late 60s when the Birmingham-Manchester section starts work let alone finishes. Seems like a country doing things the right way!

I'm honestly starting to feel bad about my critiques of Sowell

Interesting video from @unlearnecon.bsky.social & makes you re-evaluate AI in the context of other learning systems like firms & government. We did get through the Ant Man film & it was truly awful. Check out our podcast on Herbert Simon who features here. #EconSky podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s...

Honorable mentions: @dsquareddigest.bsky.social @stuartmills.bsky.social @newqueuelure.bsky.social @cshalizi.bsky.social @himself.bsky.social

YouTube video by Unlearning Economics Everything Was Already AI

NEW VIDEO: Everything Was Already AI youtu.be/Km2bn0HvUwg

YouTube video by More Perfect Union Italy's Radical Solution to Extreme Inequality

It's coop season. Go Italy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQMZ...

YouTube video by WHAT IS POLITICS? A Proven Policy to Make Housing Affordable for Everyone

Sweet video on housing coops! www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Q4...

Why Fascists Always Come for the Socialists First Contrary to right-wing myths that the "Nazis were socialist," fascists despise socialism and want to destroy it. Here's why the left poses such a threat to them.

Leftists often misunderstand the right, this is something I've been thinking about a lot recently and @mattpolprof.bsky.social has nailed it www.currentaffairs.org/news/why-fas...

The worst thing is that you can hear how horny he is bsky.app/profile/zack...

2027: US invades UK. PM calls it 'an admirable takeover which should be celebrated for its boldness'.

Whatever you might think of Maduro, the seizure and kidnapping of a head of state takes us to a very dark place. Vast, arbitrary, extra-legal power, which could be exercised almost anywhere, regardless of the character of the target government.

podcasts

My New Year's Resolution is to listen to fewer podcasts

bsky.app/profile/drma...

Watching Stranger Things, it struck me that contemporary programs could be improved a lot simply by cutting about a third of the dialogue out

Kids Who Get Driven Everywhere Don't Know Where They're Going A new study suggests vehicular travel affects children's ability to navigate their neighborhood and connect to their community.

This is the best type of article: reads vaguely like an Onion headline, but actually gives you a new insight into a big problem (cars)

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

*someone fails to unmute themselves before speaking*

Me: haha, what an idiot. A fool - so easy to avoid such a simple blunder

*I fail to unmute myself before speaking*

Me: oh it’s just me, I’m just a lil guy. So easily done guys, lolz

too many people cannot understand the difference between general skepticism + specific critiques of economic data; versus blanket rejection of them, usually from a position of complete ignorance

bsky.app/profile/opin...

Try @rodaimonia.bsky.social’s book