I recently wrote a post about using property rights to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Jesse Jenkins, of The Energy Collective, responded to my draft post that he thought my idea of allocating property rights based off of land use was too complex. I assured him that it was not and gave a logical and concise rebuttal. However, his challenge to me left me thinking about how to simplify the regulatory approach. This post is my effort to sketch out such a simplified approach. Continue reading
Tag Archives: policy
Measuring Privacy
Edward Snowden’s revelations about the scope of government surveillance made me think about how we can quantify privacy between each other and our government. Here statistical economics can provide the framework needed to do so, through the use of measuring the index of probability of human action, and specifying that government knowledge of an individual cannot be less than some minimum index, without the use of a warrant to obtain specific information delineated in the warrant. Continue reading
Hayek’s Demon
After reading Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society“, I was immediately reminded of Maxwell’s demon, or rather of Leo Szilard’s response. The similarity between the logic of Szilard and Hayek are what I discuss today. Continue reading
Statistical Economics 