I don’t buy much music. Last album was U2’s No Line on the Horizon.
Today I bought an interesting package of permissions to Derek Webb’s new album, including a T-Shirt. I didn’t notice if there was a bumper-sticker.
The entire marketing campaign for this album was interesting, including obscure clues to hidden copies of portions of the [...]
So, I’ve been learning the same stuff as many other Economics students around the world have been learning for the last year. Some teachers are better than others at presenting material. But many of them have been using the same set of questions and answers for years. Most of these questions and answers are freely [...]
I joined the facebook group for Graduate students in Economics at George Mason University. It’s a closed group, which is important because we’ll want to keep some things private amongst ourselves. But its also a shame because the rest of you out there can’t get in on what is going to be the greatest and [...]
Let’s kill IP.
Michael Boldrin and David K. Levine both teach at Washington University of St. Louis in the Economics department and agree that the existence of a patent regime have turned innovation into a rent seeking activity, corrupting a market process into a political process, and at the cost of efficiency.
The whole book is free [...]
and Wal-Mart.
Google is about openness (when it’s convenient, is their search engine algorithm free and open?)
They want to make cell phones, gphones, open. Take away the proprietary op systems and put in a google-y os which allows programmers to create killer aps.
Read the article in Slate.
Profits don’t have to be rents, they can be producer [...]
The dependence on copyrights by artists and authors is waning. Cory says it better than I can in a respose to the question: why give your books away for free?
There are three reasons why it makes sense to give away books online. The first is that publishing has always been in this kind of [...]
At a certain point it will become more expensive to prevent counterfeiting of ideas than any profit garnered through protection. At that point ideas will become free.
This has important implications for patents, as well as the already obvious music and movie industries, and the more aware newspaper industry.
The WSJ is dead if they don’t [...]
Boetke goes to a RATIO conference and learns something. Wish I could have been there!
I am currently enrolled in both a Principle – Agent Problem course, and an Economic Development Course. How can Chicago meet Havard? Perhaps at GMU, but only if LvMI stays in Auburn. Romer’s work is relevant, and tries very hard not [...]