Publications, June

Summer is here, and here's this month's breakdown. For more news about my publications, follow my work on Authory and on Twitter.

HumanProgress.org

• [1] 'This Summer, Remember That Ice Was Once a Luxury' where I discuss the American Ice Industry in the 1800s. Off Gavin Weightman's super interesting The Frozen Water Trade – a mesmerizing easy-read I simply couldn't put down. 
• Translated into Spanish and published on Cato's Spanish site. 

American Institute for Economic Research

• [2] 'The Environmentalist's Dream Came True', where I made the commonsense point that despite the largest closure of commercial society in peacetime, emissions did not fall very much. Certainly not enough for environmentalists' most aggressive dreams to be achievable. The craziest experiment they've mused on for years was tried – nobody liked it, and we had almost no positive green changes to show for it. Let's not have more where that came from. 
• Republished at Zero Hedge. My fourth appearance at this great – and controversial – site. 
• Republished at finanz.dk.
• Republished at Capitalism Magazine. 
• Republished at Charlemagne Institute's Intellectual Takeout.
• Translated into Portuguese and republished at Instituto Rothbard.
• [3] 'Can We Talk About Something Else Now?', another corona rant. Yes, I'm sick of it. Other things matter too – can we please return to talk about those? Zoom out, people. Read a book. Educate yourself. Stop obsessing over this silly virus.  
• [4] 'Are Humans Naturally Nice?', my review of Rutger Bregman's Humankind: A Hopeful History. This was one of the books I singled out as must-reads for 2020 and I was super excited to finally get my hands on it. But oh, so disappointed. I love the message, I love the writing, the stories, the take-down of famous psychology experiments – but the history sucks. And the econ is absurd. Which made me think the epic things I liked, all in fields I know next-to-nothing about, were perhaps equally sh*t...?
• [5] 'Don't Mention the Virus', yes, another one. I know, I know, but now I was reflecting over the strange wording I'm increasingly experiencing. People go out of their ways not to mention the virus, but only hint at it. How odd. Are we afraid of it? Sick of it? Afraid that someone else might be out-of-this-world tired of hearing about it?

Medium

• [6] 'Somewhere I Belong – But That's None of Your Business', a much more extensive -- and hostile – review of David Goodhart's book. I really was not happy with a number of things in his book: how is it really any of your concern that your local supermarket sells polish food?
• [7] 'My Library is Still Sexist', a tongue-in-cheek provocative piece on my reading habits – a follow-up and update to a more incinerating piece from a few years ago. Yes, my growing library is heavily male; and no, that's not a problem. 

Publications, May

I'm back to spreading my writing around a little more, after some weeks with a heavy focus on covid-19 and AIER.

Hands-down the coolest thing that happened this month was that I was cited, by name in the Financial Times! In an article about cities and the coronavirus, Camilla Cavendish in her column at the FT named me and linked my Sweden-article from a few months back:

Because of it, I was cited in a whole bunch of echo sites in numerous languages. My poor monitoring service went bananas.

Otherwise, here's a round-up of published material:

CapX

• [1] 'In a big city pandemic, comparing countries has limited value', where I reported corona death rates in cities and regions instead of entire countries. That nuance changes much of the tired media discussions we've had recently.  

HumanProgress.org

• [2] The Rousseauian Myth of a Passenger Pigeon, where I discuss the iconic environmental-decline story of the Passenger Pigeon - the vast natural bounty of North America that mankind in its hunt for forests and riches destroyed. Apparently, that's not the full story! The passenger pigeon was, when colonists started to notice it, an "outbreak population" - a symptom of an ecosystem in complete disarray, as the previously dominant species on the continent (Native Americans) had been eradicated with disease and with colonial warfare. Nothing was left to keep a check on passenger pigeons, and so they multiplied unsustainably. 
• Translated into Spanish and published at Cato's Spanish-speaking cite "Elcato.org"

Medium

• [3] 'Webinar Complement: Corona in Scandinavia', a statistical appendix and summary-of-argument for the Webinar I gave before the Bastiat Society's D.C. chapter in early May.  
• 
  

AIER: 

• [4] 'Matt Ridley on Innovation', my review of the great Matt Ridley's latest book How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom. No words left: just read it. 
• Retweeted by Mercatus Center Research Fellow Adam Thierer and Matt Ridley himself. My life is complete <3. 
• Republished by Crusoe Research.
• Listed and shared by Real Clear Markets, May 6. 
• Translated and Republished in Italian on MiglioVerde. 
• [5] 'Governments Don’t Have Magic Wands To Ward off Asymmetric Information', where I discuss some reasons for why the "asymmetric information bogeyman is a pretty weak concept. 
• Praised by the wonderful Don Boudreaux. I'm speechless. 
• Republished on Capitalism Magazine
• [6] 'There Will Be No New Bitcoin Man', where I attacked some ideas that prominent bitcoiners often advance. In the Brave New World that bitcoin will remake from the ashes of fiat money bubbling central banks (yes, sarcasm), we will 1) spend less, save more, and use debt less carelessly, 2) be much less bothered by price uncertainty and so be happy to have prices for rents or our wages fluctuate as do portfolio balances:
  "bitcoiners believe that if we just had a better monetary regime, fallen men would see the errors of their fiat ways and reestablish some long-lost monetary Eden"

That strikes me as unlikely. Fiat monetary regimes are to blame for many things, but not those (or at least not single-handedly). 

• Translated and re-published at the French site CGSP-silver.
• Republished on Capitalism Magazine. 
• Ridiculed and attacked on Reddit, so I must have done something right. 

• [7] 'The Guns of August: A Look Back at the Financial Shock of the Great War', with a beautiful picture over London Bridge! In this piece I looked at the Bank of England's actions in August of 1914 when the war outbreak sent intricate European financial markets into a tailspin. Remarkably, considering the economic freeze and hibernation that governments and central banks are pursuing in these corona times, the Bank of England took over assets that had fallen behind enemy lines, such that the private sector could move on. That's an interesting comparison to make today. 
• Republished on Capitalism Magazine.  
• Republished at Property Chronicle.
• [8] 'The Climate Impact of Meat', where I gave some nuance to the remarkably bad and unfitting arguments made against meat by Jonathan Safran Foer in the New York Times. Take-away: 

"meat is not the greatest threat to the climate; meat is not a uniform category of emissions, strictly dominated by vegetarian (or vegan) diets; livestock are not a horror, easily and prudently replaced by fields of soy and corn. But ideologues have no patience with nuances like that. It’s “go vegan” or “go home.” It doesn’t matter much what the facts are, as long as The Cause is advanced."

• Republished at The Property Chronicle. 
• [9] 'You Can Stop Rio Tinto Mining... By Paying For It!', the beauty of markets and subjective value condensed into a controversial topic: mining companies vs Aboriginal ancestral land. Here's the key paragraph:

"If you want to be the one to make decisions about the use of a resource, we have an established system for that: tradeable property rights; If you want to decide whether a plot of land is farmed, deforested, or subdivided for real estate, you must first buy the land. If the archeologists and activists and Aboriginal tribes value the site more than the money offered, giving up the dough is a great gain for them.

Altogether a pretty good month, with quality and breadth, over quantity concentrated to single outlets. 

Publications, April

Premier at Institute for Energy Research, a consistently brilliant outlet that I use a lot in my environmental writing. I'm really happy about this addition and looking forward to hopefully working with the IER staff in the future.

Apart from that, it's been a month of heavily concentrated writing: AIER and some brief comment on my own Medium page - but a ton of mentions everywhere. The coolest must be that Princeton University Press, publisher of Case and Deaton's Deaths of Despair, added me to their official Reviews page. Holy. Moly.

Medium

• [1] '10,000 Swipes Later', a numerical/personal experience of Tindering in the last few weeks. Not great numbers, but not as awful as I thought either. Still, this app ranks close to the most miserable useless things I've ever encountered (yes, bitterness). 

AIER: 

• [2] 'The Coronavirus Pandemic is Not Exponential', where I make the commonsensical math claim that the growth of this disease is S-shaped, not exponential. And discuss how rare and how astonishing truly exponential phenomena are in our world. 
• Republished on Capitalism Mag.
• While Unherd didn't quite pick it up, my arguments are getting their (and Nobel prize scientist) Michael Levitt's support. 
• Shared on RealClearMarkets, April 6. 
• [3] 'No, Capitalism Did Not Fail', a neat and floridly-written piece laying out how resilient and impressive private enterprise has been during the corona crisis. 
• It also landed me on the Dan Proft Show (1:37:25 to 1:50:00)
• Republished on Capitalism Mag. 
• Republished on RealClearMarkets, April 8.  
• Republished on the blog PC. 
• Republished by The Property Chronicle. 
• [4] 'Prices Should Change in a Pandemic Shutdown', where I argued that as prices contain information about available supply and production capacities and consumer wants, forcing prices not to change when massive things like pandemic shutdowns happen is stupid. Update prices, please, so we can operate on today's information instead of yesterday's. 
• Republished at WallStreetWindow. 
• Shared on News Break, a site I've never heard of. 
• Picked up by Don Boudreaux's Café Hayek and even got a little paragraph of mine there. I did finish that piece by citing him, so I guess a little reciprocity is OK.  
• [5] 'Mortality Rates Were Already Rising in America. Why?', where I tried to combine a recount of Anne Case and Angus Deaton's Deaths of Despair with the on-going coronavirus shutdown. There is an economic/social/community connection that I fear: that the sacrifices we do to contain the spread have large unintended consequences, some part of them being Deaths of Despair. That future won't be bright. 
• Listed on Princeton University Press' Review section for Case and Deaton's book. Ye, I'm absolutely stunned:

• ...and on Amazon as well:

• 
  
• [6] 'The Scandinavian Experiment: Open vs Close', a trade-off piece with lots of provocative heat. I updated my arguments from What Has Sweden Done Right On Coronavirus? by comparing the almost perfect natural experiment of Denmark/Norway vs Sweden along two dimensions. In the media debate right now, the only dimension that matter is NUMBER OF DEAD (only occasionally as a share of population) and once in a while total spread. I placed that analysis in a more economic perspective by adding number of job losses/furloughed workers. As we don't yet have GDP numbers or increases of gov debt, that's the best I can do. When looking at two dimensions instead of one (death matters - but so do losing your job and all the financial and social ills they proxy for), the knee-jerk reaction of most policy-makers of closing their society looks like an exaggeration. As in many things, we should probably be more like Sweden. 
• This one landed me a guest appearance on the D.C. wing of the Bastiat Society. 
• A French translation and re-publishing here. 
• Reprinted on The Property Chronicle. Pretty cool!
• Translated into Spanish and published by Los Mercados with the nice title "La Economía También Importa" (The Economy also matters); then shared again at Somos Innovación with the sassy title "Vale la Pena Gararle al Coronavirus a 'Cualquier Precio'?" (Roughly: Is it worth conquering Corona at any price?).
• [7] 'It's Not Capitalism Bringing Us Deaths of Despair', a follow-up to the Mortality piece above, where I criticized Case and Deaton's surprisingly conspiratorial explanation for why working class Americans have been killing themselves in troves. Health care capitalism did it, the authors claim, in an explanation that makes very little sense. Really, now...
• [8] 'Individual Freedom Works for Disease Mitigation, says WHO', a short piece where I noted the comment by Michael Ryan at the WHO that Sweden is a model for how to deal with pandemics. For illustration, then, I showed how the Swedish daily deaths had long since peaked, and that apples-to-apples comparison between the U.S. and Sweden (not country-level, but epicenter/metropolitan comparison) should be between New York City and Stockholm. In that light, NYC fares worse.  
• Republished on Capitalism Mag. Third time in one month - I must be on to something. 
• For the third time in my writing career, I made it onto Don Boudreaux's reading list. 

Institute for Energy Research (IER)

• [9] 'Negative Prices: How Green Electricity Destabilizes the Grid', my premier at this amazing institute, on a topic I've been increasingly fascinated by: what is wrong with electricity markets? 

Publications, March

Another solid month with great material. Corona madness has meant that I have had a lot of interesting material to engage with while I keep working through my book list for 2020.

Happy reading.

Medium

• [1] 'Feeling Good, Not Doing Good', my biggest problem with the environmental movement: they're not really about improving people's lives - they're about feeling good about themselves. In this piece I discuss John Tierney's suburb essay "The Perverse Panic over Plastic"
• [2] 'Debt vs Government Cash Assistance', a quick and simple comment on so-called stimulus packages following Corona panic: just send cash. Not to "stimulate demand" or some such nonsense, but to fulfil financial obligations taken while presuming a stable future income. Financial insurance for those who most need it; no need for partisanship or complicated loan structures - just send cash. 

Notes on Liberty

• [3] '13 Books for 2020 - What a Year!', where I go through the books I'm most excited about for this year. I've already finished two of them, working on a third. I'll come back around discussing these themes, authors and titles as the year progresses. 

AIER: 

• [4] 'Of Course Capitalism Can Save Nature', with rhinos, elephants, gorillas and other such majestic animals. They're all going extinct, right? Dead wrong! And capitalism is saving them. 
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine, titled "Capitalism and Free Markets Can Save Nature for Humankind" and nice elephants in the caption picture. 
• [5] 'The Economics of Thinking One Step Further', a call to thinking further and embracing dynamic impacts. Alternatively: everything you thought you knew about the world was actually wrong:

"Killing animals in places where property rights over animals have been established doesn’t actually decimate the species. Instead it usually provides the financial incentive to keep more of them alive"

• Republished on CFI (Center for Individualism). 
• [6] 'The Fed and the Mad Urge to Do Something', a comment on the Fed's second round of emergency stimulus. Crazy - and probably to very little avail. Take-away message: we're done, Treasury. It's on you from now on.  
• [7] 'The Insoluble Perils of Prediction', where I married my love for writing about failed predictions with counter-signaling the most hysterical of commentators right now. Collateral damage = the ever-gloomy Nouriel Roubini whose clever-sounding predictions were so majestically debunked. Not that he noticed, of course, claiming that he predicted this and that his advice going forward are amazing and impressive. Bitch, please. 
• Translated and re-published into French (New language, I believe) at the French silver firm CGSP.
• [8] 'Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest', exactly that - plotting economic well-being against deforestation in some ~135 countries, showing that Brazil is pretty much exactly where we'd expect it to be given its economic development. Indeed, as Brazil's North, where the Amazon is, is much poorer than its urban South, it would make a lot of sense for them to keep slashing relatively unproductive rainforest for more productive agricultural/logging purposes. Also: 

"It's fair to say that almost everyone wants to preserve nature – but that nobody wants to do it at the expense of their children going cold or hungry. For quite a lot of the world’s remaining poor, planting trees isn’t their main priority – and shouldn’t be.
Let poor countries grow rich, and in due course they will, too, look after their forests."

• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine under another of their consistently brilliant titles: "Only The Rise of Capitalism Can Save The Brazilian Amazon Rainforests"
• Translated into Portuguese by the always-great Wallace Nascimento: 'Brasileiros devem continuar desmatando sua floresta tropical'
• [9] 'What Sweden Has Done Right On Coronavirus', oh boy did this spread. I made the case for Sweden's surprisingly calm and serious response to Corona - chill out, trust the experts, be careful, take care of one another - and have I heard it! Countless emails informing me in various degrees of persuasiveness how horribly ignorant I am; and a bunch of positive comments from people who matter. Very interesting experience - well worth a read.
  Oh, and you know you've made it when some a**faces on Reddit takes apart your article. 
• Discussed and featured in a Financial Times article by Camilla Cavendish. Life goals, accomplished. 
• Re-published on The Libertarian Republic's site. 
• Re-published on The Property Chronicle. 
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine with title intact, for instance. Interesting!
• Republished, in English, on some Polish blog. 
• Shared at RealClearMarkets with the title "Sweden Fights C19 w/o Lockdown." No surprise there, as John Tamny has very much taken my side of things in this pandemic.
• Widely shared among Swedish Twitter and Facebook users - even features on the news site fPlus. 
• Listed and commented on by Karolinska, Sweden's premier medical university, in news compilation.
• Translated and published at the Italian site Miglio Verde. 

Mises

• [10] 'Even When They Are Wrong, We Can Learn From Understanding Others' Theories', ye pretty much that. Plus Assar Lindbeck impetus to learn from others and John Stuart Mill quotes about diversity of opinion. 
• Translated into Spanish and published by the Centro Mises. 
• Re-published at the Austrian Economics blog. 
• [11] 'Central Banks Are Running Out of Options', a snarky commentary on the impotence of central banks: they do every imaginable thing in their power, yet nothing happens. To no avail. Goodbye, Sayonara, see you never.  
• Shared on the Dutch site Veren of Lood.
• Re-published at the Austrian Economics blog. 
• Praised and re-published by Peter Schiff at his Schiffgold site (and echoed on the Danish financial site Finanz.dk). Very cool!
• Translated and re-published in Spanish at Centro Mises. 

A wonderful month of lots of cool and unfortunate development. Looking forward to April.

Publications, February

Glad to report that February saw my first publication at the British site CapX – and a very snarky, anti-bitcoin piece at that. A second piece at HumanProgress, where I got to discuss CPI in economic history. Lovely!

For the rest of the month: Stats, Harry Potter, Finance & Environmentalism and, of course, a little bit of crypto towards the end of it. Another decent month.

If you like my work, consider supporting it at Buy Me a Coffee and follow my work at Twitter.

CapX: 

• [1] 'No Matter the Facts, Bitcoiners Cling to the Crypto Creed': fiat's average life-span is 27 years? Nop. Bitcoin's volatile exchange rate falls with scale? Nop. Bitcoin a better transfer of value across the globe? Nop. None of these facts matter: crypto enthusiasts maintain their creed: "Facts, truth, reality, or science are archaic ideals unsuited to an era of bitcoin supremacy."
• Re-published, with permission, on Austrian Economics Center.

HumanProgress:

• [2] 'Nineteenth Century Inequality Not As Bad As We Think', echoing Vincent Geloso and Peter Lindert's wonderful paper in Cliometrica "Relative Costs of Living, for richer and poorer, 1688-1914" 

Medium

• [3] 'Three Phases of My Personal Finance Journey', where I outlined Richest Man in Babylon creed - always pay yourself first - and how that advice has led me to where I am today. I also featured a shout-out to two of my greatest (non-fictional!) sources of inspiration: DividendMantra and Lundaluppen. 
• [4] 'Feeling Good, Not Doing Good' a rather vicious piece on environmentalists, fuelled by the excellent John Tierney's "The Perverse Panic over Plastic." Read at your own peril. 
• [5] 'Making a Living as a Freelancer', a comprehensive outline of my earnings, taxes and expenses over the last 6-7 months, where I always compared benefits of this #nomad lifestyle of mine to the next-best option. I included some discussion of what would entice me to give this up and settle for a Regular Job.

Notes On Liberty: (see all my posts here)

• [6] 'The Least Empathic Lot', where I discuss three cool topics: male-female divides, empathy & Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations, and libertarianism!
• Shared and re-published by Rational Review. 
• Cross-posted on the blog Utopia. 

American Institute for Economic Research (all my pieces here)

• [7] 'All Hail Statistics!', a stats-loving piece on a) how empathy can lead us astray, and b) how statistics can help us counteract the very biases and moral mistakes that empathy induce us towards. 
• [8] 'Search Engines Are Better Than Hogwarts', ah! Man, do I love my cheesy pop-culture pieces. Here's another one: sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, said Arthur C. Clarke. Mhm. And I'm saying that search engines – those magnificent technologies that allow us unlimited access to the sum total of humanity's knowledge – trumps even the magical world of J.K. Rowling's fictional world. 
• Featured on AIER's daily spoken edition (still weird to hear my words read aloud...)
• Featured on Rational Review.
• Republished on The Libertarian Republic. 
• [9] 'The Implausible Claims of Green High Finance', where I discuss green bonds, central banks supporting the *Green Revolution*, and various fund managers and banks around the world signaling their greenwashing virtue. Next bubble: the ESG bubble!
• Re-published on Capitalism Magazine with the title "Climate Crusades and Green Finance."
• Re-published on RealClearMarkets.
• [10] 'Are All Cryptocurrencies Pyramid Schemes?', a cheeky piece where I make two claims, at least one of which is bound to annoy everyone I know: (1) all cryptocurrencies are pyramid schemes; (2) that's a trivial statement as all moneys, property and valuable items – like pyramid schemes – rely for their value on the ability to offload them later to another person. 
• Re-published at WallStreetWindow. 

Stay tuned and enjoy!

Publications, January

Welcome to the next decade! Exciting, isn't it?

There are some minor changes here too. From now on, I'll post some of my work on Medium –particularly work that didn't fit anywhere else or re-edited tweetstorms. I begin, timely enough, with reviewing my best and most important pieces during 2019.

In terms of quantity, this Medium addition helped - and made it fairly easy to hit the November record of 11.

Next month, my recent attempts of branching out should be paying off. We'll see!

Medium

• [1] 'My Year In Writing', there's something beautiful with kicking off a new decade, on a new platform, with a review of the achievements of the past year. Yes, sirs and madams, that's what we're doing.  
• Nobody knows why this was re-published by "Crypto New Media".
• [2] 'Dan Carlin on the Doomsdays of the Past', my take on Dan Carlin's book The End is Always Near, released in the fall of 2019. This was originally written as a tweetstorm. 
• [3] 'Bitcoin's Financial Returns (Full Calculations)', a supplement to my AIER piece on bitcoin's returns during the 2010s (see below). 
• Predictably, this made some waves in the crypto-community: Alex Dovbnya wrote about it, which AE daily swiftly echoed. 
• [4] 'If You've Never Missed a Flight...', a re-hashing of the popular post I wrote at Life of an Econ Student in 2016: using expected utility theory to decide how long in advance one should arrive at the airport. Conclusion? It depends on your a) risk-aversion, b) opportunity cost, c) stuff to do at airport. 

Notes On Liberty: (see all my posts here)

• [5] 'A Lesson in Inventing Your Own Statistics', a typically snarky Joakim-esque piece about economist Daniel Lacalle and his recent attempt at making shit up. No thanks. Contrary to common belief, you can't prove whatever you want with statistics. I mean, you can invent numbers and pretend they're real, but that doesn't really do much, does it? 
• Claire Jones at Financial Times' Alphaville site appreciated the piece enough to put it in that week's Further Reading - magnificently titled "SIWOTI: Riksbank Edition."

American Institute for Economic Research (all my pieces here)

• [6] 'The Hobbit Teaches That We Can't Eat Money', inspired by some holiday LOTR and Hobbit-watching, here's a serious point – and silly mistake – that humans, dwarfs and elves alike make in the last Hobbit movie. When your productive capacity is destroyed, say, after a dragon decimates your village, why would you ever turn to a treasure trove of gold coin for your salvation? Surely, you need to rebuild your societies – as in rebuild your lost capital, make new houses or shelter and quickly get some food. Since we can't eat gold, the treasures of Erebor does nothing for the humans who survived Smaug's attack. Being pretty isolated in the middle of a vast and mountainous area means you couldn't even get real goods from cities or other civilizations far away; your people would die before the goods acquired by gold would reach you. 
• Re-published on RealClearMarkets.
• [7] 'Was Bitcoin the Best-Performing Asset of the Decade?', where I investigated this peculiar 9,000,000% return-argument that seem to be popping up left and right. Perhaps bitcoin was the best-performing asset of the 2010s, but that's statistically trivial as it started from a very, very low base and – more crucially – the suggested prices at the beginning of the decade of $0.07 dollars etc, were not exactly readily available for anybody to buy. That is, there was almost no way anybody could have accessed bitcoin at those prices (in stark contrast to other high-performing assets like Netflix's or Amazon's or Monster's stock, which were publicly listed and tradeable for all). 
• Re-published at Capitalism Investor.
• Re-published by Crusoe Research, a Bolivian wealth management and consulting firm. 
• Commented on by Alex Dovbnya at U.today and again at AE daily
• [8] 'When Perfect Correlations Dissolve Into Dust', where I use some examples from Tyler Vigen's wonderful site 'Spurious Correlations' before illustrating that even the much-hyped yield curve is probably just another such correlations where some numbers happened to align. 
• Re-published at RealClearMarkets. 
• [9] 'Should We All Be Flying Less?', a mildly misleading title as I wasn't really assessing that question, but rather telling a story that illustrates the hidden order or airline industry: flying useful, efficient and beneficial routes (reasonable opinion) sometimes require airlines to fly inefficient and less-beneficial routes (seemingly unreasonable opinion) for the simple reason that they need to move the planes in the opposite direction. And some Taleb-esque redundancy stuff. 
• Re-published at CapitalismMagazine which, as always, has the best titles: "The Purpose of Flying a Nearly Empty Plane."
• Discussed by "Patria Finance" on the Czech site Kurzy.cz – according to Wikipedia, the largest czech finance site. 
• In turn echoed on Metebox.
• [10] 'The Economics of Price and Quantity Signals', a comparison between the price signals that economists often use to illustrate markets' impressive ability to convey information - and the quantity of goods and services demanded and sold, as this similarly acts as a signal for entrepreneurs to follow. 

Mises Institute (see all my writing here)

• [11] 'Investors, Randomness and Entrepreneurial Thinking', basically Jim Simons meets Nassim Taleb with an Austrian twist. In essence, I compare my review of Zuckerman's book on Simons with some of the randomness literature inspired and personified by Taleb. My editor's summary is perfect: "It's possible for investors and entrepreneurs to make a lot of money in markets without understanding the economic theory behind their actions."
• Translated to Portuguese by Wallace Nascimento and published on his Medium page ("Investidores, Aleatoriedade e o Pensamento Empreendedor")
• Re-published at Austrian Economics Blog.

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!

Publications, November

November is over – Almost Christmas! This month saw lots of work with my editing service, but I still managed to churn out some interesting stuff:

Notes On Liberty: (see all my posts here)

• [1] 'You're Not Worth My Time', where I offered some opportunity-cost thoughts on the idea that the perspectives and experiences of random people I meet are valuable. I estimated that I have some 60,000 hours left in life for curious intellectual endeavours: given that the full treasure trove of humanity's work on philosophy, economics, or literature, I simply don't think your half-drunken rant about "bankers", "inequality" or "climate change" is going to cut it. Your unique "perspective" is probably not worth my time. 
• This was read, liked, quoted and retweeted by Branko Milanovic whom I've followed and been a great admirer of since 2015. Omg, fangirling so much. 
• It was also on RealClearPolicy, which I think is a first for me (fantastic caption photo!)
• Shared on Naked Capitalism, which I think is merely the second time my work appears there (the first was my review of Collier's Future of Capitalism). Flattered! 
• Apparently, also shared on Hacker News. 
• [2] 'Intellectuals You Should Know About', a piece long in the making, where I originally just wanted to point out one or two intellectuals whose work I believe most people would benefit from – and then it spiralled out of control, ending with 11 different well-known and wonderful writers. Brandon's response was appropriate and added some people I also admire ("why didn't I think of them?!"). If you're wondering what to read for the holidays (or books to gift your loved ones), these two overview posts contain some tips. 

American Institute for Economic Research (all my pieces here)

• [3] 'The Real Reason Nobody Takes Environmental Activists Seriously', this piece has everything: fire and fury, bitterness, hypocrites – and turtles!
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine with the great title "Climate Activism: Doublethink and Cognitive Dissonance"
• Re-published at the Australian blog Catallaxy Files. 
• Re-published at "Micronesia's leader newspaper", Marianas Variety. 
• Re-published at Center for Individualism.
• Featured and quoted on the blogs Australian Image and Green Jihad (!), both of which – let's say – seem a bit wacky...
• [4] 'What's the Difference Between Michael Burry and Alexander Fordyce?', a follow-up to 'If You Are Early, You Are Wrong' where I elaborate what I mean by *being wrong in financial markets*. I do this by comparing the famous Big Short investor Michael Burry with the very unknown Scottish 18th century investor and banker Alexander Fordyce. They both predicted similar things and put their money behind their conviction. Both were right on paper, but only one escaped hailed as a successful forecaster and investor. 
• Re-shared at RealClearMarkets, for what I think is my eight appearance on this great site. 
• Strange comment/twist by Dan Hugger. 
• [5] 'Why We Are Getting More For Less', where I review Andrew McAfee's great book More From Less. Completely contrary to common knowledge, economic growth does not rely on us extracting more and more resources from the planet. Indeed, for the past twenty years, the U.S. and UK and most European countries have decoupled their use of resources from their economic growth; our economies keep growing, but our use of materials, metals, agricultural land etc is falling. Surprise! Capitalism is not "wrecking the planet"; it's saving it. 
• [6] 'Don't Hand Over Your Money to Uncompetitive Banks', which included some anecdotal stuff on how high-street banks screw you over – not only on the up-front fees, but by using seriously uncompetitive rates when exchanging your funds into a different currency. There are solutions.
• Re-printed on WallStreetWindow, with a perfect little caricature image.  
• [7] 'The Great Redistribution: Who Benefits from Ruthless Capitalism?', a pretty cool piece where I emphasized three recent instances in which low-interest rate policies and ruthless capitalists benefits consumers – and almost exclusively consumers as these firms happily run their businesses at a loss: the much-lamented venture cap sector, with the plethora of unicorns (most of which are operated at a loss); the airline Norwegian's recent low-cost offering; and the online broker Charles Schwab's recent move to zero-commission stock trading. What these ruthlessly competitive capitalists do is handing over wealth and resources to us consumers. Thank you, kindly!
• Re-printed on Capitalism Magazine with the title "Economically Capitalism and Free Markets Best 'Distribute' The Wealth."
• Translated and published on Mises Brasil! I always sound so vicious and amazing in Portuguese: 'Como o atual capitalismo já está provocando uma grande redistribuição de renda: Todo mundo vê e sente, mas ninguém reconhece'
• Translated and published on the Slovak site Peniazoch.

• [8] 'An Unexpected Climate Hero: Equity Markets', my reading of EBRC economist Ralph De Haas and ECB economist Alexander Popov's article working paper 'Finance and Carbon Emission'. It turns out that economies financed by relatively more equity than debt are associated with lower per-capita CO2 emissions. Cheekily summarized: stock markets are climate heroes. 
• Re-published at Battleground State News. 
• Re-published at The Michigan Star and a similarly weirdo site called The Ohio Star.
• Re-published at The Minnesota Sun.

Mises Institute (see all my pieces here)

• [9] 'Why Behavioral Economics Isn't Very Useful', where I outlined two of my objections to behavioral econ: dressing up the very equation you just objected to, but added a mere variable ("inequality aversion") and drawing conclusions on universal human behavior based on artificial experiments or bait-and-switch techniques that compare apples and oranges.
• Republished at Sovereign Nations. 
• [10] 'When Nassim Taleb Channels Ludwig von Mises', another one of those Twitter-interactions that turn into an actual article; when reading Taleb I kept being reminded of Mises - the unapologetic, almost ruthlessly logical, treatment of various topics; the beautiful prose, the profound topics. Very similar. Though, I discuss instances of how Taleb is similar to Mises rather than when. 
• Shared on SNLS Network
• Translated into Spanish for Mises.org.es. 
• [11] 'Some Fundamental Differences Between Ludwig von Mises and Nassim Taleb', the necessary counterpart to [10]: Taleb is clearly not a Misesian, and the difference between them are as important as the similarities. 
• Re-published at WallStreetWindow. 
• Shared on SNLS Network. 
• Shared on the Flipboard site for Taleb. 

Finally blowing that old record number of publications/months out of the water! Yes! Let's see what December has in store.

Publications, October

Following last month's exciting change of lifestyle (I launched my freelancing business full-time – check it out!), October has been the first real month of trying my wings. So far, they seem to work.

Here are all the publications:

Notes On Liberty: (see all my posts here)

• [1] Davies' "Extreme Economies" - Part 1: Survival", best and most captivating book I've read in some time, so much so that it deserved a thorough 3-part (4-5?) review and summary. Must-read. 
• [2] Davies' "Extreme Economies" – Part 2: Failure", the second part including a visit to the Darien Gap in Panama and Kinshasa in DRC. 

American Institute for Economic Research (all my pieces here)

• [3] 'The Mythology of Cantillon Effects', a piece, long in the making. For a while, Austrians' emphasis on so-called "Cantillon effects" (= monetary redistribution) has bothered me a while. I finally found enough time to go through Cantillon's original writing. It turns out not only does every monetary system have Cantillon effects, but Cantillon himself was analyzing an increased money supply coming from gold mines – not money-printing central banks. 
• [4] 'Gresham's Law Is Not the Reason for the Corruption of Democracy', where I discussed the actual origin of Gresham's Law and the real meaning (no, it doesn't mean anything 'bad' drives out anything 'good'). 
• [5] 'Yield Curve Inversions Don't Improve Investment Outcomes', a piece that I could have audaciously named "Fama-French vs Harvey" – but then only literature-savvy financial economists would have gotten it. I reported the results that esteemed financial economists (one of which a Nobel Laureate) Eugene Fama and Kenneth French found while investigating the infamously scary inversions of the yield curve: negative relative returns, for 1-, 2-, 3- and 5-year across close to all strategies. In plain English: even if yield curve inversions predict recessions (questionable), switching from stocks to bonds earns you lower returns than simply staying invested in stocks. There is no outperformance by obeying yield curve inversions. 
• Top on Real Clear Markets on October 12. 
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine
• [6] 'The Limits to Hostile Takeovers' So-called Hostile "take-overs" get a bad rap; greedy capitalist investors buy up a company and do all kinds of horrible things to it (like take it apart and sell its subdivisions!), somehow "obviously" destroying wealth in the process. If that's true, I always wondered, why would anybody ever sell? 
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine
• Re-published at WallStreetWindow
• Shared at RealClearMarkets with the epic title 'Nothing "Hostile" about Hostile Takeovers'
• [7] 'The Rise of Edinburgh, Financial Empire', where I (rather favourably) reviewed Ray Perman's latest book, The Rise and Fall of the City of Money. How could I not like it, 336 pages filled with Scottish financial history?! Banks, insurance companies, financial crises, colourful characters and easy prose. Highly recommended for anyone wanted to get a fairly comprehensive outline of Scottish banks, the 1690s to the present.
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine
• Shared at RealClearMarkets with a very nice Scottish flag as centerpiece. 

Mises Institute (see all my pieces here)

• [8] 'Difference Between Economy and Ecology', like all of us reasonable people in the age of St. Greta and Extinction-level delusions, I eventually had enough. As Ryan McMaken and Marian Tupy and Michael Shellenberger had already debunked her religious following, I looked into where the environmentalists actually go right; they do understand economic principles – they just apply them selectively to other areas. 
• Translated and re-published at the Polish Mises Institute.
• [9] 'The New York Times Gets Neoclassicals, Austrians, and Schumpeter Wrong, all in One Article', where I hit back at Justin Fox's pretty confused account of the Austrian School: it's quite a stretch to call it "neoclassical"; early 20th century Viennese intellectuals were not predominantly market-oriented scholars; Schumpeter ≠ Austrian economist. Free-market economists don't run the world, and book reviewers at the NYT should stop pretending they do.
• My third Zero Hedge appearance – very happy!
• Echoed on South African investment site Investing Matters
• Re-published at Marketworld.com

On par with my July record of 9 publications in a month, October was as good as can be expected considering the time I spent on editing and proofreading. Next month is going to blow that record out of the water!

Publications, September

September was filled with interesting topics (Finance-Finance-Finance-Climate-Monetary History, which pretty much sums up my intellectual life) and at least one interesting development: I have now launched my freelancing business full-time!

In addition to my writing, I offer copyediting services, proofreading and research assistance. I'm on all the major sites (Fiverr, UpWork, Freelancer) but the easiest way to get in touch with me is to drop me a line at info@joakimbook.com or reach out on Twitter (or contribute to my work via Buy Me a Coffee). All things finance, banking, and money – research reports, blogs or dissertation and manuscripts for journal articles, I'm your guy.

Despite all the editing work I did this month, I managed the following publications:

Notes On Liberty: (see all my posts here)

• [1] 'Musings on Opinions: De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum', a well-polished afternoon rant about whether you can believe anything you want. Sometimes – surprisingly often, I posit – you cannot. 

American Institute for Economic Research (all my pieces here)

• [2] 'If You Are Early, You Are Wrong', the pop culture-induced financial analyses are back! And I got ridiculed on twitter for it, meaning that it was probably successful.
• [3] 'The Return of the Century Bond', where I observed an unintended outcome of low-interest rates and aggressive monetary policy: the revival of really long-term debt contracts
• This piece was reprinted in the Berkshire Eagle and on Bennington Banner. 
• Featured on RealClearMarkets too. 
• [4] 'In Defense of Share Buybacks', where I attacked Martin Wolf at the FT for his weak arguments over how bad it is that companies buy back their own shares. 
• Re-run on Capitalism Magazine as 'Capitalism and Finance: In Defense of Share Buybacks' 
• Featured on RealClearMarkets. 
• [5] 'The Myth of Imminent Collapse', my timely dusting off of Jared Diamond's work in light of environmental hysteria – particularly Collapse and his recent Upheaval. 
• Featured on RealClearMarkets – I'm on a decent RCM streak now!
• Oh, and the piece ran on ZeroHedge too – my second-ever ZH appearance. Very proud of that!
• Featured on the South African site Investing Matters
• and echoed on 1BUV, Nation and State and shared at StoriesFlow.

Mises Institute (see all my pieces here)

• [6] 'What John Law Taught Us About the Perils of Money Printing', where I started the 300th anniversary of the "Bubble Years" of 1719-1720 a little early (Mississippi Bubble + South Sea Bubble). There will be a lot of amazing financial history coming out in the next year, so keep your eyes open. 
• Spanish Mises-institute translated it: 

While 6 publications is less than the July record of 9, it's still decent all things considered. Overall, a pretty successful month!

Publications, August

August was an intense and heavily concentrated month – all writings this month at AIER and Notes On Liberty. Almost exclusively financial history, money and bitcoin!

Notes On Liberty: (see all my posts here)

• [1] 'On Translating Earnings From the Past', I illustrated the troubles all economists and economic historians are faced with: how do we show how much a certain sum (income, wage, price) was really worth in the past? Measuringworth.com is a great resource, but be aware of what you're comparing and getting at. 
• I started a new series that I manage at Notes, 'Financial History to the Rescue', where I attempt to show how a lot of monetary writing on bitcoin does a very poor job in its generalized claims for monetary change. Not to mention erroneously invoking monetary/financial history. The impetus came from the very inspirational debate between Saifedean Ammous and George Selgin at the Soho Forum at the beginning of this month. A few days after the debate, the deep dark corner of the cryptosphere descended upon me. That was fun. Two pieces on Notes: 
• [2] 'On Bitcoin's Many Troubles', the Master post for 'Financial History to the Rescue', examined some of the problems with Ammous' bitcoin position.
• [3] 'The Harder Money Wins Out', which was featured on RealClearMarkets, used the history of the Bank of Amsterdam (1609-1791) to show that sometimes softer money wins out over harder money. The "Bitcoiner's History of Money" is, in other words, pretty mistaken.

American Institute for Economic Research (all my pieces here)

• [4] 'Egregious Errors in The New Yorker's Account of Financial History', where I took apart John Lanchester's poorly researched long-piece in The New Yorker magazine (mistitled 'The Invention of Money'). 
• Out of everything I wrote this month, I received overwhelming feedback on this one. 
• It was linked to and shared in the Society of Paper Money Collectors Inc's monthly publication
• and mentioned at the Numismatic Bibliomania Society. 
• [5] 'The Life and Times of Bagehot, the Greatest Victorian', reviewing James Grant's biography of Walter Bagehot. Despite pre-ordering Grant's great book and reading like a maniac, I was late to the party. And very surprised that pretty much every major outlet had a review of their own (NYT, Economist, FT, the Times, WSJ, Washington Post). Impressive work by Grant's publisher!
• [6] 'Rothbard's First Impression On Free Banking Were Correct', where I outlined some of the major historical and empirical mistakes of Rothbard's 1988 article 'Myth of Free Banking in Scotland'. Every mention of "free banking" and "Scotland" among Austrians and bitcoiners run straight into The Rothbard Objection: Rothbard rebutted it in 1988, so any banking argument based on Scotland 1700-1845 is forever null and void. My former Mises colleague Kristoffer Hansen objected, first in comments and later on Mises.org – I replied in two instructive Twitter threads  (here and here). Great discussion if you're into banking history and fractional reserves
• This piece was re-printed in Capitalism Magazine with a stunning caption of Neist Point Lighthouse on Isle of Skye. 
• [7] 'Bitcoin's Fixed Money Supply is a Weakness'. In another episode of 'Financial History to the Rescue' (which for this piece is more appropriately titled "monetary theory to the rescue"), I objected to Bitcoin's fixed money supply and its viability as base money/outside money regime. 
• Reprinted at WallStreetWindow.com. 
• [8] 'Why Shouldn't Brazil Burn its Rainforest?', I finished off the month addressing some of the absurdities and environmental hysteria surrounding the fires in the Amazon and added a Swedish twist – only to have the brilliant Matt Ridley outdo me in a piece in The Spectator a few hours after publication.
• This piece ran at the Italian site Miglioverde with the title "Foresta Amazzonica, Tutte Le Balle Degli Ambientalisti E Una Sola Soluzione"
• Also on Mises Brasil as "Por que proibir o Brasil de explorar suas florestas? – E o exemplo sueco"; like all things, credentials and arguments sound much better in Portuguese
• Shared (In Portuguese) by the site MoneyReport.com.br
• Shared by the Singaporean Adam Smith Center. 

Overall, a pretty successful months! It seems like September has some pretty exciting things in store, which I'm definitely looking forward to.