Posts about Economics (RSS, JSON)

6PM — Silicon Valley’s push to integrate AI into worker’s daily assignments is to increase worker efficiency and subsequently shareholder value; not to make the world better for everyone. And so fear about a future with AI is rooted in economic anxiety not worries that machines will take over and enslave us all. Terrific piece by Ted Chiang. (via)

8AM — The Yard Sale Theory tries to understand why wealth is so unevenly distributed these days. Wealthier people have more leverage to place bets, on the stock or property markets, for example, so they’re more likely to win big and find it easier to cover their losses. The Pudding explains the theory in a series of visualised experiments.

I came across a rare scenario where the poor person wins all the money when they have an early winning streak allowing them to accumulate wealth.

I ran the same experiment a couple more times, and, as expected, the richer always got richer.