H.R. Haldeman was the White House Chief of Staff for President Nixon. As the Watergate/Pentagon Papers scandal was slowly unfolding, he at one point tried to explain how the revelations damaged the administration. In doing so, he accidentally composed the most damning accusation of his own administration's wrongdoing: "But out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the president can be wrong." If anybody has done a better job of summarizing the failures of the Nixon administration in five lines or less, I am not aware of it. Though of course, the best summary in five WORDS or less was given by Nixon's famous one-liner: "I am not a crook! Which,...
One of my ongoing research projects is on the Mongol invasions. Doing some background research, I realized there's an interesting asymmetry between male and female rulers, in terms of available imperial sexual strategies. Say that the Mongol hordes have just finished annexing another city along their ever expanding frontier. Let's call it Elbonia . In this case the local elite had the good sense to surrender peacefully, and accept the Mongols as their rightful overlords. Everybody knew that if they put up a fight, the Mongols would typically exterminate a significant proportion of the local population, and enslave the rest. What did the Mongols want from Elbonia? Well first of all, obviously they didn't want the inhabitants to ever attack their other dominions, regardless of any preexisting local feuds which may have existed. Secondly, they wanted them to send them money or tradable goods regularly. And thirdly, they wanted them to furnish soldiers for use in their next...
Mankiw recently posted about ticket prices and scalpers, and this reminded me that a while ago I thought of a reason why performers might allow some people to make so much money in their stead. It works more for music groups and football teams, but is more relevant for theater performances. Say you are a music band who has just had a string of hits. You have two options: sell concert tickets for $60, in which case about half of them will go to lucky fans who have been following you since yours early days, and half will go to scalpers who will resell them for $500 to wall street traders that will use them to impress their dates. Or you can sell all of them for $400, and they will all go to wall street types. It seems a no brainer, but what happens if the next album flops? In the first case, the guys that followed the band from the garage days will still go to the concerts to hear the old songs, and maybe your next effort has a better reception. Even if you never have another hit,...
Great to see that you are back to blogging! Keep it up.
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