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Tag Archives: Matt Ridley
“Energetic Government”
In the American Enterprise Institute’s Debate, How Much Government is Good Government?, David Brooks makes a case for an “energetic government” that “builds character.” I believe the following passage from Brooks provides the key assumption for his energetic government stance: … Continue reading
Star Wars Geek Friday
Those familiar with the Star Wars universe know that episodes 4 through 6 were produced and released in the 70s and 80s and episodes 1 through 3 were released in the late 90s and 00s, making for an interesting way … Continue reading
Posted in Government, Innovation, Politics
Tagged Matt Ridley, Palpatine, Rational Optimist, Star Wars
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Health care and obesity
Recently, Matt Ridley posted a piece on his blog entitled Thinning Vouchers. The idea is to give vouchers to overweight folks and allow them to use them to find ways to lose weight. Personally, I think this is a bad … Continue reading
Bottoms Up
Chapter 8 is my favorite from Ridley’s The Rational Optimist. In it, he builds the case that even though many people imagine progress comes from a top-down world, it really emerges from the bottoms up. This is not a new … Continue reading
Posted in Bookmarks, Emergent Order, Markets, Trial and Error
Tagged Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist
3 Comments
Bureaucrats vs. Innovation
I’m enjoying Chapter 8 of Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist. The following two passages remind me of this post of mine on business experimentation and also this previous post about Ridley’s book, on how countries generate and accumulate wealth and … Continue reading
Posted in Bookmarks, Business, Innovation, Value Proposition
Tagged Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist
4 Comments
This has all happened before, and it will all happen again
Fellow sci-fi geeks might recognize this as a phrase that was repeated throughout the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica TV series. It’s popped up elsewhere also. Those words have crossed my mind repeatedly as I read Matt Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist. … Continue reading
Posted in Government, History, Markets, Politics
Tagged Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist
5 Comments
Being Human
What differentiates humans from other animals? While driving in our minivan once we stopped and waited for a deer family to cross the road. A five-year-old in the van asked where the deer were going. We joked how they were … Continue reading
Posted in Capitalism, Emergent Order, Liberty, Markets, Reading Recommendations
Tagged exchange, Matt Ridley, Trade
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Bringing DNA to life
Here’s a great description of how DNA works from this blog post by Matt Ridley: There are close parallels between DNA and a language like English. Just as evolution uses the same 22,000 genes in a different order to make … Continue reading
Posted in Emergent Order, Science, Trial and Error
Tagged DNA, language, Matt Ridley
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Education: It Doesn’t Need to be One-Size-Fits-All
While watching my kid with his gymnastics teacher last weekend it occurred to me how much my child has learned from private education: preschool, gymnastics, swimming lessons, soccer league, story time and reading programs at the local library (though technically … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Economics, Education, Experimentation, Feedback, Systems thinking, Trial and Error
Tagged Bastiat, Education, experimentation, Matt Ridley
7 Comments
We Should Expect Better for WSJ and Gates
Last weekend the Wall Street Journal ran the type of feature that I enjoy very much. It was a debate-style format between Bill Gates and Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist. Gates’ portion of the debate can be found … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Debate, Economics
Tagged Africa, Bill Gates, Matt Ridley, Trade, Wall Street Journal
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