Publications, December

Beating November's outpouring (11 articles) was always gonna be hard. For December, I focused on branching out a little bit – adding more outlets to my repository. Despite lots of rejections, I have some valuable trails to work on.

Travels and Christmas holidays interrupting, I only managed seven publications from December.

Human Progress: 

• [1] 'Worldviews Are Pessimistic Because They Are Outdated', my first piece on the wonderful asset that is HumanProgress.org. Using Hans Rosling's wonderful work on international health and Andrew McAfee's recent book on the greening of our economies, I point out that we operate on some seriously outdated information. 
• Quoted at the Clemmer Group.

Notes On Liberty: (see all my posts here)

• [2] 'Confessions of a Fragilista: Talebian Redundancies and Insurance', some reflections from my Taleb spree (see here, here and here) put together into one. It deals with the silly point that insurance is a wasted resource, which Taleb correctly ridicules, and the clash between optimization and redundancies. 
• While this precise piece only made it into Brandon's nice NoL-review list (and way-too-nice praise) in a roundabout way, many other of my most cherished NoL pieces did. I really appreciate the platform and the kinds of topics I get to explore there. I quote these very nice words in full as they absolutely define me: 
• "[Joakim] is also beginning to bud as a cultural commentator, too, as you can probably tell from his sporadic notes on opinions [and yes, there are some really great pieces in that series!]. Joakim wants a more rational, more internationalist, and more skeptical world to live in. He’s doing everything he can to make that happen."

American Institute for Economic Research (all my pieces here)

• [3] 'Technology Has Made Flexible Work Possible, and That’s Wonderful', where I was pushing back against Izabella Kaminska's FT piece about Uber a few weeks back. She misidentifies trends in the labor market and she forgets the wonders that technology have brought in reducing transaction costs. We should cherish that, not lament it. 
• [4] 'Jim Simons and his Quants', where I reviewed Greg Zuckerman's latest book, about Jim Simon's firm Renaissance Technologies. For those less-nerdy about finance, RenTech's fund Medallion is considered to be the most profitable hedge fund ever - and how they make their returns has always been clouded in secrecy. Zuckerman does a great job describing the life of Simons and this many colleagues, interviewing countless of old business partners, employees and friends. We don't quite get an explanation for how Simons managed to beat the markets for so long, but we get some hints. Lovely book
• I received a lot of good feedback from this, for which I'm very grateful!
• Re-published on Actionable Insight. 
• [5] 'What Is Money? It's All About Liquidity', where I argue that money is all around us: gift cards, airplane miles, Uber credits and company-specific cashbacks. While notionally described in "U.S. dollars," this is merely an accounting practice - we could transact in Uber money or Amazon cash, and indeed most airlines allow you to purchase things with acquired miles already, priced and available in those units. "Money is what money does", the old saying goes, and current money does all kinds of things. 
• Naturally, this piece made it straight to WallStreetWindow.
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine as 'Money and Liquidity'
• My two-pronged piece on Carbon Taxes included
  [6] 'Troubles in the Economists' Case for a Carbon Tax', which was strikingly similar to something my AIER colleague Phil Magness had written about a year ago
• The most strange rendition of this piece was the audio-version at AIER. My words, created in a written format, sound very strange as they are read back to me. 
• The site "Pun Salad" discussed it and voiced the common-sense point that revenue-neutral carbon tax schemes allow people to consume their previous bundle, and so won't have any effect. While that's right, it's not quite the full story: as relative prices have changed, I am still disincentivized from consuming goods where the carbon tax applies. 
• [7] 'More Good Arguments Against a Carbon Tax', where I delve down into the three major reasons carbon tax don't make sense: (1) Perspective: econ growth swamps everything else - including even the worst estimates of climate damage. Whatever trouble the climate gives us, riches and wealth and innovation (you know, standard capitalism) can help us. (2) Externalities are strange, and I wonder why the Pigouvian club jumped on carbon emissions and not some other more profound externality - or, you know, subsidize all the wonders of the world, say my pretty face. Intellectually carries the exact same weight as carbon taxing does. (3) Realism, please. The big conclusion from Public Choice economics over the last few decades is that shit doesn't play out the way some idealizing economist imagines. Nice try, hon, but the carbon tax perfectly rebated to the poor isn't gonna work that way, #politics. 
• And both of these little puppies made it to Don Boudreaux's first reading suggestions of the decade. Pretty psyched about that!

I'm starting 2019 at the most extreme pace so far, and November's 11-publication may very well be topped. Happy New Years, everyone!