Some thoughts about AI.......

 As soon as economists started doing experiments on generative AI, they found an incredibly consistent pattern: AI narrowed the productivity gap between high-skilled and low-skilled workers.

-Noah Smith, from here

What happens when information................

 .........................is widely available:

More information led to a more functional market for both suppliers and consumers. Profits increased and consumers experienced far less volatility in the price of the fish they were eating. Plus there were fewer fish going to waste.

Competition................

       One area where all American steelmakers could maintain absolute, almost religious agreement was on the topic of British steel.  British steelmakers were more efficient, and as a result, their rails were cheaper even than Carnegie's.  As with the iron industry before, the Americans' collective strategy was equally simple: tariffs.  Congress complied.  The tariff on a ton of imported British steel started at $28 per ton.  Given that Carnegie's first-ever order was fulfilled at $68 per ton, the British would have had to sell steel at $40 per ton, with overseas shipping included, to pay the tariff and match the price in the market.  In an era without a personal income tax or corporate income taxes, the federal government relied on duties and tariff generated income for a significant portion of its revenue . . .

      Even Carnegie, with all his competitive, Darwinian pride, granted that tariff protection "has played a great part in the development of manufacturing in the United States." . . . But laissez-faire capitalism it was not.  The invisible hand of Adam Smith's free market was accompanied by the guiding hand of government policy.

-Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

Please tell me this is meant as satire.......

"It’s long been obvious that the most acute problem facing America’s education system is recess: Too many children engage in rough-and-tumble games during school play periods."
-as excerpted from this post at The American Interest

When I become king............................

Congress and their minions will be subject to all the same rules and regulations as all us other folks.  If it is good for the regulatee it must be good for the regulator........

"For months massive discontent over a potential rise in out-of-pocket premium expenses under Obamacare has haunted Capitol Hill. Currently, the federal government pays 75 percent of the health insurance premiums for congressional staffers. Senators and representatives feared they would lose staff if this heavy subsidy disappeared as it was scheduled to do under the ACA. The White House, reportedly including the President himself, has now directly intervened to solve this knotty problem—for congressional staff, anyway."

"So congressional staffers will still be forced onto the health insurance exchanges, but they will get a subsidy much higher than average Americans in a similar situation would get. It’s a lot easier to look at Obamacare as a brilliant piece of legislation when you get its benefits without paying its costs."

Quotes, and more on the story, from WRM - here