Top all-time · #2273
Arnold Kling
Personal blog · arnoldkling.com/blogeconomicspolitics
Arnold Kling's personal blog at arnoldkling.com covers economics and politics. Since 2008, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 54 times, most often “The top 150 intellectuals, selected competitively”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Kling's blog for economics, education, healthcare and policy, often citing specific posts as support in debates. One commenter says everyone should subscribe to it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The top 150 intellectuals, selected competitively3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-29
- Gossip at Scale2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-19
- Being Uncharitable to Those Who Disagree2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-12-06
- Academic Corruption: Emasculated Culture2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-02-16
What Hacker News says?
I agree. I like the way Arnold Kling expresses a similar idea [1]: "One of my beliefs about competition is that the business world is very forgiving of mistakes... On October 11, 1999, our business, along with the Scottsdale relocation business, was sold to homestore.com for $85 million. My share was quite dilute by this point...But a couple of percent of $85 million is still real money, particularly considering the…
Comment linking /~arnoldsk/aimst2/aimst218.html
on “Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy”Submitted Reality vs. Kurzweil’s expectations as a story · 74 points
HN discussionWhile there was some pre-production, I disagree that vaccine supply is the only binding constraint we have going on. And the lack of sane regulatory approvals and sane distribution setups has been heartrending. If you look at https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... and scroll down to "U.S. Vaccination Campaign" you will see that in the US 74.5% of the vaccine doses that have been delivered ha…
Comment linking /blog/virus-update-3/
on “Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine”Submitted Did the Suits win the Internet? as a story · 62 points
HN discussionIt is not necessarily true that just because they are called scientists, real people with real motives, funded by organizations of real people with real motives, operating in a political regime controlled by real people with real motives, will act that way. (By "that way" I mean "your work will have a low impact factor- this is largely measured in how many of your fellow researchers cite your work" and "If your coll…
Comment linking /blog/a-grandparent-effect/
on “Simpson's Paradox”Submitted The Obamacare Suits/Geeks Divide as a story · 5 points
HN discussionArnold Kling: The New Commanding Heights are education and health care, which are rapidly expanding sectors where credentials and regulation are important sources of rents. http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/klassic-klingisms/ In Marxian economics, the "commanding heights of the economy" are certain strategically important economic sectors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commanding_heights_of_the_econ...
Comment linking /blog/klassic-klingisms/
on “You Can Thank Private Equity for That Enormous Doctor's Bill”Submitted The top 150 intellectuals, selected competitively as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI think you're putting too much weight into Picketty's fairly contentious conclusions. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99455/... https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/06/unpersuaded.html https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/capital-... http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/krugman-reviews-picketty/ (for some starters, if you somehow have not seen how it is not the Bible that some peopl…
Comment linking /blog/krugman-reviews-picketty/
on “Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?”Submitted The Top 150 Intellectuals, Selected Competitively as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere is now a vocal “net neutrality” chorus that will fight any form of price discrimination in wireless services, including fighting zero-rated apps. I think that they are misguided and represent no actual consumers. However, the FCC will do everything to make them seem important, because that in turn justifies having the FCC do more regulatory meddling. [1] And this how the comments will be used: mined to support…
Comment linking /blog/data-price-discrimination/
on “There Are Only Two Weeks Left to Comment on Net Neutrality”Submitted What I Have Come to Believe as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPreschool appears to have little if any benefit as measured by school achievement or teacher assessments of school readiness by first grade teacher http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/research/pri/VPKthrough3rd_fin... A Randomized Control Trial of a Statewide Voluntary Prekindergarten Program on Children’s Skills and Behaviors through Third Grade >The third question we addressed involved the sustainability of effects on a…
Comment linking /blog/null-hypothesis-for-pre-k-education/
on “Why Childcare Workers Are So Poor, Even Though Childcare Costs So Much”Submitted Prestige Hierarchy and Dominance Hierarchy as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI have yet to read it myself :) Dr. Kling is using the book as a template/metaphor more than as a specific proscriptive. But I've seen this myself in the wind as various crises have held forth since 1973 ( when I was first old enough to ask questions about what was going on ). http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/vickies-and-thetes/ http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/experts-surveyed-on-the-futu...
Comment linking /blog/experts-surveyed-on-the-future-of-work/
on “Genetics and intelligence differences: five special findings”Submitted John Cochrane vs. Financial Intermediation as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhile I am by no means one to claim that typical geek behavior is always correct, could it be the case that geeksplaining is ultimately inseparable from the positive aspects of the geek personality (even if we can mitigate it to some degree)? Also hashtags, particularly negative ones, have less to do with actually bringing about social good and more to do with social status games[1]. What I consider to be one of the…
Comment linking /blog/playing-the-status-game/
on “The XY Problem”Submitted Universal basic income: the basic trade-offs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe best I know of: http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?s=covid https://www.arnoldkling.com/ . https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=covid https://marginalrevolution.com/about Those are two blogs that I think everyone should subscribe to. arnoldkling.com is particularly interesting because it seems to have unusually high quality in the comments section.
Comment linking /
on “Ohio Prison Death Updates [pdf]”Submitted Top 150 Intellectuals, Selected Competitively as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPower hungry certainly, but if they were really greedy they could satisfy that far more easily in private industry for the same amount of talent and work. As for morality, well, I think there are two factors at play there. Powerful people tend to become less moral in their treatment of people below them, but that isn't the same as being willing to compromise their ideals. Also, people seem to have a finite desire to…
Comment linking /blog/being-uncharitable-to-those-who-disagree/
on “State of the World 2013: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky”Submitted Academic Corruption: Emasculated Culture as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Money is a complete fiction now It always has been: http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/steven-pinker-on-money-as-a-... https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/money-as-a-social-...
Comment linking /blog/steven-pinker-on-money-as-a-consensual-hallucination/
on “I’ve changed my mind on Bitcoin”Submitted Gossip at Scale as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThat the South Korean school system would do this is discouraging, no question. But I am also discouraged by how, when reading academic scientists and academic journals (_Nature_ in this case), it seems considerably easier to find concern about unscientific nonsense beloved of the right than about unscientific nonsense beloved of the left. E.g., individual genetic heritability is even more fundamental and even more…
Comment linking /blog/a-grandparent-effect/
on “50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution”Submitted The Boomer and the Millenial as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> It'd be better for this money to go to strengthen technical education (and more importantly, re-educution) in the CUNY system It's very difficult to say that with any level of certainty -- The Null Hypothesis in Education is Hard to Disprove http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/the-null-hypothesis-in-educa...
Comment linking /blog/the-null-hypothesis-in-education-is-hard-to-disprove/
on “Cornell NYC Tech Campus gets $133 Million from co-founder of Qualcomm”Submitted The New Minimum Wage as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFixing the Schools has been a massive political issue for decades. Huge amounts of money have been spent and all kinds of strategies have been tried. When you look at the long-term trends, though, you see only the standard, persistent performance gaps associated with demographic factors. The money and changes in education policy barely show up as blips. If there were an obvious way to change things, things would hav…
Comment linking /blog/the-null-hypothesis-in-education-restated/
on “Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level”Submitted Lockdown Socialism Will Collapse as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
