Monday, March 21, 2011

"Broken window"

A few quick things I wanted to throw out there.

First of all, I'm going to go ahead and keep plugging both Battle: Los Angeles and my rebuttal of Rodger Ebert's review.

Second, I'd like to spread the word on a resource that I have been listening to for some time now. There is a radio show out of Melbourne, Australia called Tech Talk Radio.

They kind of cover all the bases about personal technology, including a newly added commentator who talks about games. Some of the stuff is Australia-centered, but they also cover software and gadgets that we use in the states. You can listen live on an internet connection (its on at 4 am, Mondays), or you can download it and listen to the podcast (recommended for normal people, unlike me, lately). I thuroughly enjoy it, and have been listening for over 6 years now.



Next, I wanted to throw something out there that keeps coming up every so often, and I feel is continuously relevant, in my opinion. I have heard some people, with the best of intentions, comment that the recovery effort in Japan might serve as a catalyst for economic growth. Well, unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Allow me to introduce you to the broken window fallacy (Wikipedia article), More or less, this is a parable that reminds us that there are both seen, and unseen costs involved in any economic activity, and about the only way an act of destruction (eg, a broken window) can be deemed beneficial  is to completely discount the existence of costs that we can't see, even though they are (or were) very real.

Here is a short video that more or less summarizes the concept. This was produced in response to the September 11th attacks on the US, so don't let the first 45 or so seconds scare you off.

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