Articles 2024
-
Love Your Homemade Quilt? Thank Capitalism.
Reason, January 2017
Patchwork quilts wouldn't exist without trade, industrialization, and material abundance. They are the physical embodiment of what economist Deirdre McCloskey calls the Great Enrichment: a bourgeois art par excellence.
-
Pokemon Go Just Can't Catch a Break
Bloomberg View, December 18, 2016
Novelty and a sense of accomplishment are what make Pokemon Go, or any other game, interesting. To hold players' attention, Niantic Inc.'s mobile game needs to work on both.
-
How Trump Can Build the Best Airports and Roads
Bloomberg View, December 16, 2016
How can Donald Trump live up to his infrastructure promises without just wasting a lot of money?
-
Innovators Succeed Outside of Regulators' Boxes
Bloomberg View, December 12, 2016
Airbnb and Blue Apron are but two examples of the “permissionless innovation” that is so important to economic growth. Entrepreneurs need the freedom to test ideas that don’t conform to existing categories. New value often comes from trade-offs and combinations that regulatory definitions never envisioned and might not approve. A better name for these businesses might be “category-free” or “uncorseted” innovation.
-
It's Not Just About the Paycheck. Ask Workers.
Bloomberg View, November 29, 2016
The Obama administration's new overtime mandate illustrates an all-too-common blindness to the diversity and nuances of employment arrangements. Not every workplace is, or aspires to be, the civil service. Not every worker longs to be on an assembly line. And not everybody is working entirely for money. One size does not fit all.
-
Trump Is the Change Voters Wanted
Bloomberg View, November 09, 2016
No, Trump doesn't have a mandate to be deplorable. Liberals should stop saying he does.
-
50 Million Fitbits, 2.1 Billion Smart Phones, and a Whole New You
ELLE, November 2016
Whether you know it or not, you're being tracked. And figuring out how all that data converges could change how we live—and how long we live.
-
Clinton Isn't Everywoman. She's a Politician.
Bloomberg View, October 18, 2016
Making Hillary Clinton the representative of Every Woman Ever may seem like good politics, especially against a guy like Trump, but turning every criticism of Clinton into evidence of misogyny strains credulity and harms serious political discussion. In the likely case that Clinton is elected president, it will make running harder for other women in the future by tainting them with all of Clinton’s flaws. It reduces a real person, with individual strengths and weaknesses, to the one and only representative of Women in Public Life, obscuring the achievements of other women.
-
Don't Leave Your Kids Near Judgmental Strangers
Bloomberg View, September 12, 2016
"No child left alone" has become the social and, increasingly, the legal norm in America. But it's based on moral judgments, not actual risks.
-
The Frayed Reputation of Egyptian Cotton
Bloomberg View, August 30, 2016
“Egyptian cotton” means exactly what it says. Not better, not softer, not stronger. Just grown in Egypt.