Month: December 2015

2016 Predictions

How confident should we be? People tend to be overconfident.  One way to figure out if our confidence levels are correct is to test our calibration levels by making predictions and seeing how many of them pan out. Inspired by Slate Star Codex’s predictions, here are my predictions and accompanying confidence levels. For the sake of convenience I will choose from confidence levels of 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 95% or 99%. All predictions are by December 31, 2016 unless noted otherwise.

Postlibertarian Specific

  1. Postlibertarian to have >10 additional posts by July 1, 2016:  70%
  2. Postlibertarian Twitter to have more than 240 followers:  70%
  3. Postlibertarian.com to have >10k page loads in 2016: 50%
  4. The predictions on this page will end up being underconfident: 60%

World Events

  1. Liberland will be recognized by <5 UN members: 99%
  2. Free State Project to reach 20,000 person goal in 2016: 50%
  3. ISIS to still exist: 80%
  4. ISIS to kill < 100 Americans 2016: 80%
  5. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 80%
  6. No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 80%
  7. Donald Trump will not be Republican Nominee: 80%
  8. Hillary Clinton to be Democratic Nominee: 90%
  9. Republicans to hold Senate: 60%
  10. Republicans to hold House: 80%
  11. Republicans to win Presidential Election: 50%
  12. I will vote for the Libertarian Presidential Candidate: 70%
  13. S&P 500 level end of year < 2500: 70%
  14. Unemployment rate December 2016 < 6% : 70%
  15. WTI Crude Oil price < $50 : 80%
  16. Price of Bitcoin > $500:  60%
  17. Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 80%
  18. Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
  19. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  20. Customers will not be able to rent trips on self-driving cars from Uber/ Lyft: 90%
  21. Humans will not land on moon by end of 2016: 95%
  22. Edward Snowden will not be pardoned by end of Obama Administration: 80%

Intellectual Property and Cultural Appropriation

The point of intellectual property is to promote the creation of new content, but IP has become so cumbersome it actually thwarts creativity rather than promote it.  However, restrictions do not just come in the form of laws, but also critiques of what society finds socially acceptable.  Concerns about avant-garde art pushing boundaries would normally be considered the domain of traditional conservatives.  Nonetheless, recent developments have made unlikely critics on the Left, concerned about new art “appropriating” the culture of minorities.

I.

In a previous post, I made a strong argument that copyright has become too restrictive.  Other forms of intellectual property, like patents, aren’t much better. Duke Law Professor James Boyle has written extensively on this issue: What Intellectual Property Should Learn From Software, A Manifesto on WIPO and the Future of Intellectual Property, and a free book, The Public Domain.  Software patents are especially annoying, just ask Richard Stallman.

I had previously stated that IP is interesting because it has a utilitarian basis, not a moral one. Professor Boyle has more degrees than me and says it better:

Yet intellectual property rights are not ends in themselves. Their goal is to give us a decentralized system of innovation in science and culture: no government agency should pick which books are written or have the sole say over which technologies are developed. Instead, the creation of limited legal monopolies called intellectual property rights gives us a way of protecting and rewarding innovators in art and technology, encouraging firms to produce quality products, and allowing consumers to rely on the identity of the products they purchased.

While some academics, technology groups, and libertarian groups (like the Cato Institute) have talked about the problems with IP, mainstream politics has yet to really embrace the discussion, with one exception: the Left is not a fan of pharmaceutical patents.  For example, ThinkProgress lauds the Vatican for speaking out against drug patents, and the Huffington Post bemoans the extension of drug patents in the TPP.  Naturally, these articles do not have a great grasp of markets or how they work to benefit individuals, but they do bring forward some interesting points; ThinkProgress holds drug patent laws as more of a moral issue keeping lifesaving drugs away from the poor, while the Huffington Post piece (written by the founder of the CEPR) supplies alternative, more efficient ways to run the drug patent system. If you want a counterpoint, I’d recommend The Economist’s commentary on this topic.

I think this discussion is excellent, and more Republicans should start talking about the most obvious IP reforms, like reducing the amount of patents issued (especially in software), and making it easier for the FDA to approve more drugs at lower cost to companies. Unfortunately much of the discussion about cultural appropriation is decidedly less excellent. Continue reading Intellectual Property and Cultural Appropriation