Milton Friedman Series – Free To Choose

Without any introduction, here is the PBS Series of Milton Friedman – Free To Choose. About free markets and every corner of it.

Use Google Search “Milton Friedman PBS Free to Choose 1980 Vol [1 to 9] of 10” for the complete series. You might wonder why they include debate round tables in the series. Well, Milton Friedman was an excellent debater and speaker.

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Further Readings:

• econlib.org Search:Milton Friedman

Writing All lowercase Versus CAPITAL Letters.

Writing in English as your 2nd second language can be really hard, especially when you try to make your point and argument clear and precise in a stylistic and shortest way possible. Hello blogging versus rant versus academic writing. I know that Jerry Yang was (and is as uber Yodel and Chief Yahoo) writing his memos to Yahoo! employees in lowercase letters, only (but blogs on Yodel Anecdotal normal). So I tried that, to be able to pay more attention to the topic and not to lose touch while reviewing grammar and style on the go.

Time Constraints Versus Quality.

It saved me time writing the posts, as intended. But after some couple of days passed and re-reading it, I discovered that it reads terrible. So I wanted to let you know about the failed experiment. Not only might my readers having a hard time reading along the lines, but I can imagine that readers think I am lazy to use the shift key, or that I am not familiar the English grammar rules. Let me put it that way, I am not a professional.

The Economic Part. The Bright Side.

Thanks to technology, my effort (and failed experiment) wasn’t worthless, now that you know all. You don’t make the same mistake, as you have read and learned (and you even had not to leave your home to learn this), and saved lots of your resources.

Example; considered time as finite resource and everything else held constant. Because of advances in medical technology, an increase of life expectancy means your time is not finite anymore. With even more time into the future of medical discoveries, infinite life (a reversal or stopping of cell damage) is maybe possible. Not necessarily for my generation, but for my kids who take a tour to Mars every now and then.

Glad to be of value. MJ.

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Further Readings:

• London School of Economics (LSE) has a style guide for its web presence.
• Associated Press (AP) has dedicated a whole book and web presence and Twitter account. You might want to have a look at scribd too.
• There is a GNU style checker.
• A little googling will give you some ideas, what to look for when you are writing, um, blogging.
  • Good Blog Writing Style.
  • Ten Tips for writing a blog post (ProBlogger.com).
  • The 4 Pillars of Writing Exceptional Blogs (ProBlogger.com).
  • Blogging Tips for Beginners (ProBlogger.com).
  • Writing Style to Keep in Mind for Blog Posts.
  • Blogging Techniques for Getting More Hits.
  • 20 Usability Tips For Your Blog (check out the follow-on resources).
  • George Orwell’s 5 Rules of Effective Writing (check this out too).

Our Technology For The Betterment Of Our World

In austria, students use twitter, ustream, qik, facebook and other ‘over the wire’ communication tools to organize their protests, flash mobs and events for

• higher education for everyone who want to pursue higher education, no entry barriers.
• against planned tuition fees.
• improvements in the education and university environment at large with more government funding.
• reform of the bologna reform (masters and bachelors which are practical orientated and tuned towards speedier graduation).

US Health Care Reform Done Right. The Liberal Way.

Here is the same about education in the US (with empirical evidence).

Internet Age, Our Own Industial Revolution, And More.

The Big Switch

nick carr, the author of the big switch, spoke recently (YouTube) at an event organized by google about cloud computing. which really reminded me again about the transformative time we are in. not only will we end up within ten years with a different economic system (partially), ecological system, cultural environment, and technology we use as necessity during the day to get over the day but don’t necessarily perceive as technology. one way, I can think of this theory is, how we use technology to get rid of paper. to use flexible and foldable oled technology that I can put in my pocket, that has wifi (or any other futuristic over the air communication) and a longer battery life the the duracel bunny. which means that there will be no printing press in 20 years, receiving a print edition will be a premium for the reader in the future. news stands you know on the street will be made obsolete. period. another thing which nick carr picks up in his presentation is the shift where information is stored, and when the wire becomes as powerful as the processor, then something big will happen. imagination and innovation off the leash.

The Economics

you wonder what that has to do with economics!? well, think about markets; monopolies, oligopolies, regulated markets, competitive markets, and perfectly competitive markets. the future markets of the internet (and everything in it consisting of bytes only), will be (and are) perfectly competitive markets.

@TwtTimes could you integrate Twitter Lists?

The Twitter Tim.es

This post was origanlly published on my tumbler here. But due to some requests and the problem that nobody can leave comments on tumblr, I’ve deceided to post it here again with a poll. Thank you all twittertim.es fans and userland in advance. Michael.

Hi @TwtTimes,

I have some of my own lists and some lists subscribed to which I would love to see integrated into The Twitter Times experience. Either as Tabs or into the header. I would prefer Tabs. But having it on the right hand side as extra object above “Top News History” would suit the flow even better (I think)

[Video/TEDTalk] The Post-Crisis Consumer

Crisis equals opportunity.

 

[YouTube] Joseph Stiglitz Talks About US Economy, Dollar, And Rescue Efforts

The part in the Q&A where he mentions ‘giving out the insurance money for a burned down house which didn’t burn down’ is here (I think).

A.I.G.’s insurance commitment stood at “only” $302 billion in part because the government has already voided $62 billion of the protection A.I.G. had written on pools of especially toxic securities. The underlying collateral on those contracts, valued at about $32 billion or so, now sits in a facility that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York oversees and which we, the taxpayers, own.

In order to rip up those contracts, the taxpayers had to make A.I.G.’s counterparties whole by buying the debt that A.I.G. had insured and paying out — in cash — the remaining amount owed to the counterparties.

Of the $302 billion in insurance outstanding at A.I.G., about $235 billion was sold to foreign banks and covers prime home mortgages and corporate loans. The banks that bought this insurance did so to reduce the money they must set aside for regulatory capital requirements.

Here is more (ForaTV) of Joseph Stiglitz at the beginning of 2008, and on ForaTV at the end of 2008 and here again. Here @Google Talks in 2006 with his book ‘Making Globalization Work’. Here @Google Talks with his more recent book ‘The 3 Trillion Dollar War’.

• Joseph Stiglitz and his works (Econlib.org)
• Joseph Stiglitz bio (Econlib.org)

Real Estate 101 and Investment Advice By Peter Schiff

Prelude to this investment advice is here. And here. Watch it. Amen!

[Chart Of The Day] Venture Capital Index Versus Other Markets Indices

On October 20th, the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) released the latest numbers of the venture capital markets. Many technology bloggers wrote mainly about how weak the latest raising rounds were. But I found more interesting, that the VC Index is remarkably strong compared to other indices. Please be reminded that the numbers are not inflation adjusted.