“Facebook, the online social network, has more than 2 billion global users. Because those users do not pay for the service, its benefits are hard to measure. We report the results of a series of three non-hypothetical auction experiments where winners are paid to deactivate their Facebook accounts for up to one year. Though the populations sampled and the auction design differ across the experiments, we consistently find the average Facebook user would require more than $1000 to deactivate their account for one year. OK, so the value users gain from Facebook is $1k a year, there are 2 billion of them, that’s two thousand billion, or $2 trillion in value a year. Of which Zucks has 10%, that $200 billion. Pretty good deal for us, really. But that’s not right, not at all. For Zucks’ money is a one off capital sum, the consumer benefit is an annual one.” (03/17/26)
“Today, we are bombarded with claims that the lands of the Fifty States (i.e., the United States) are ‘stolen lands.’ And demands that the only option is to give the ‘LandBack.’ (An organization based in South Dakota, demanding that the Black Hills be returned to the ‘Great Sioux Nation’ (a/k/a the Seven Council Fires, consisting of the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota people.) … Obviously, as lovers of liberty, we understand that going around stealing people’s land is a heinous act …. But we detect just a few problems with the proposed solution of returning hundreds of millions of acres of land to the descendants (and presumably heirs) of millions of people who owned that land from 400 to 150 or so years ago. And forcing more millions of people who live on that land (and think they own it) to go someplace else – where back where they came from or somewhere else.” (03/16/26)
“Next time your flight’s delayed or canceled, or you’re stuck in an endless TSA line, thank a congressional Democrat. Senate Dems have decided to make a show of their support for lawless immigration by inflicting pain on American travelers. They’ve blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Transportation Security Administration, even though their stunt doesn’t affect the budget of the agency Democrats really want to hurt, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. … It’s bad enough congressional Democrats are taking their anger at immigration enforcement out on American travelers. What’s yet worse is they’re doing it in a time of war. Do we want less secure airports — or unhappy, unpaid agents — at a moment when terrorist attacks are more likely?” [editor’s note: TSA should be abolished. The “you wouldn’t give us what we wanted, so we started a war, now you should because DANGER” con is old and tired – TLK] (03/16/26)
“I hate the term ‘hallucinations’ for when AIs say false things. It’s perfectly calculated to mislead the reader — to make them think AIs are crazy, or maybe just have incomprehensible failure modes. AIs say false things for the same reason you do. At least, I did. In school, I would take multiple choice tests. When I didn’t know the answer to a question, I would guess. Schoolchild urban legend said that ‘C’ was the best bet, so I would fill in bubble C. … So the interesting question isn’t why AIs hallucinate: during training, guessing correctly is rewarded, guessing incorrectly isn’t punished, so the rational strategy is to always guess (and increase your chance of being right from 0 to 0.001%). Since AIs in normal consumer use follow the strategies they learned during training, they guess there too.” (03/16/26)
“Any historian will tell you that propaganda is part of warfare. One can see plenty of cartoons from World War II that made the Japanese look subhuman including Superman shorts. As a kid, I remember t-shirt makers using ‘The Simpsons’ to make light of Desert Storm and Saddam Hussein. As a young man after 9/11 I was convinced that the perpetrators were simpletons who lived in caves. Whether we have won the war, lost it, or finagled our way out of losing it, the same themes emerged. Our enemy is subhuman and brutal might is the way to beat them. Except they aren’t and it isn’t. And Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is playing into the same trap with potentially even worse consequences.” (03/16/26)
“Trump’s repeated promises to not start new wars, especially in the Middle East, have turned out to be empty, and Republicans are set for a crippling defeat in the upcoming midterm elections. Iran had been warning for months – since the last US/Israeli surprise attack in June – that if they were attacked again they would not hold back on US bases in the region and that they would close the Straits of Hormuz. Trump and Netanyahu attacked anyway, and Iran has done what it said it would do. Now the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil is about to go out of control, and the global economy – along with the US dollar – seems about to implode.” (03/16/26)
Source: Macroeconomic Policy Nexus
by David Beckworth
“Why integrating the Discount Window into liquidity regulation could reduce reserve demand, shrink the Fed’s footprint, and strengthen financial stability.” (03/16/26)
“At moderate schools, those where the average student is close to the middle politically, a lot of issues are difficult for both sides to discuss. At hyper-liberal schools, those where the average student is strongly liberal, every issue is easy for liberal students to discuss — except for one: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict. … One generally assumes people are more comfortable sharing their views when surrounded by others who think the same way. So then why are liberal students at very liberal schools scared to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?” (03/16/26)
“With thousands of supporters behind them, roughly 100 faith leaders sang, ’Before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail — everybody’s got a right to live,’ as they blocked a key road to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. It was an act of civil disobedience against federal immigration agents outside the busy Terminal 1 drop-off. Some of the faith leaders held signs showing photos of abducted members of Unite Here Local 17, which represents food service workers at the airport. It was late morning on January 23, and the crowd — including striking workers and union members, some of whom work at the airport — stayed outside in subzero temperatures to cheer on the faith leaders. Supporters passed around hand warmers and snacks to help sustain the crowd.’ (03/16/26)
