Building Tomorrow

One of the most remarkable aspects of the last few generations is that for the first time in human history, at least to this degree, stuff has been getting cheaper while human labor gets more valuable. It’s a technology-enabled humanist revolution! At the same time, labor-intensive sectors like healthcare and education have become more expensive relative to the declining price of goods. Economists call this the “Baumol effect,” though it’s sometimes referred to as the “cost disease.” But economist Alex Tabarrok joins the show to discuss how that curse might actually be a blessing in disguise and how the Baumol effect radically disrupts our preconceived notions about effective government policies.

Why are some prices getting higher while innovation causes the lowering of other prices? Why has the price of education gone up? What is the Baumol Effect? How can we substitute for skilled labor?

Why Are the Prices So Damn High?, written by Eric Helland and Alexander Tabarrok

Marginal Revolution

Stubborn Attachments, written by Tyler Cowen

The Automation Revolution is Upon Us, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Will Artificial Intelligence Take Your Job?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

On Innovation: Don’t Ask for Permission, Building Tomorrow Podcast

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As the threat of government regulation of the internet mounts from both the political Left and Right, Paul and Matthew sit down to talk about the foundational law that made the internet as we know it possible. Ironically, Section 230 was one of the few bits of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that wasn’t struck down by the courts as a violation of the First Amendment, giving the internet more legal protection than it would have if the moral scolds of the 1990s hadn’t passed the law in the first place. Then, Paul talks with Jennifer Huddleston from the Mercatus Center about her research into the common law origins of Section 230, which rebuts claims that the amendment was some kind of unprecedented “gift” to tech companies.

What was the primary purpose of the Communications Decency Act? What are the ramifications of Section 230? Without Section 230, what would the internet look like? Why is censorship important to the conservative movement?

What Senator Hawley Gets Wrong about American Identity, written by Aaron Ross Powell

Section 230 Is the Internet’s First Amendment. Now Both Republicans and Democrats Want To Take It Away, written by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

What Republicans are getting wrong about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, written by Zachary Mack

Free Speech Online: Unfriended, Building Tomorrow Podcast

How the FOSTA Rules Create a “Bootleggers and Baptists” Scenario for the 21st Century, written by Paul Matzko

New Conspiracism and Modern Politics (with Russell Muirhead), Free Thoughts Podcast

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Parenting is a wonderful, terrifying, joyful, horrible, lovely thing. And one of the more annoying aspects is the firehose-worth deluge of information about what you should and should not do with your children, the thousands of books, websites, and expert all clamoring with advice. Emily Oster, best-selling author of Cribsheet, offers a way to wade through the often contradictory advice without losing your mind. In short, she’ll teach you how to approach parenting like an economist and data scientist.

How do parents making parenting decisions based off of data? How important is data in parenting decisions? Is anyone an actual parenting expert? Why are infant mortality rates so much higher in the U.S. compared to other developed countries?

Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool, written by Emily Oster

Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong—and What You Really Need to Know, written by Emily Oster

Economist Emily Oster explains the science of parenting, written by Angela Chen

Overparenting & Bad Public Policy, Free Thoughts Podcast

Why Schools Haven’t Changed in Hundreds of Years, Free Thoughts Podcast

The Best Work/Family Arrangements Come from Families, Not Governments, written by Steven Horwitz

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Facebook and a coalition of major tech and financial companies are planning on creating a new crypto-currency called Libra that promises to make online payment processing swifter, safer, and less expensive. Diego Zuluaga joins Paul to discuss how Libra differs from other crypto-currencies and to provide some calm, rational analysis about a topic that has provoked intense knee-jerk reactions.

What is Libra? What are the constitutional behaviors of Libra? What is Libra’s structure of governance? How do you switch from U.S. dollars and your Libra account? How can Libra help you send money to your families in other countries? How will Libra be regulated?

Of Libras and Zebras: What Are the True Financial Risks of the Facebook-led Digital Currency (Part I: Systemic Risk), written by Diego Zuluaga

Facebook’s Libra Is Part of a Welcome Trend, written by Diego Zuluaga

Facebook has a second chance to sell Libra on Capitol Hill today, written by Clare Duffy

What’s in Your (Crypto) Wallet?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

How a Honey Bear Is Reinvigorating Cryptocurrency Mining, written by Spencer Neale

Decentralization and Privacy Are Inevitable — in Tech and in Government, written by Aaron Ross Powell

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As recent scandals on social media platforms have shown, content moderation is hard, thankless work. The lines between political satire, hate speech, historical documentation, and obscenity get blurry very quickly even in a single country, let alone when trying to create a one-size-fits-all global moderation standard. Companies like Facebook and Twitter are attempting to routinize their content moderation processes, but Matthew and Paul discuss whether those efforts—however well-intentioned—are too little, too late.

What happened between Crowder and Maza? What debates are happening in the tech space about content moderation? How do we determine hate? How does Facebook respond to questionable content? What is too radical to be posted online? What are the limits to hate speech?

YouTube’s week from hell: How the debate over free speech online exploded after a conservative star with millions of subscribers was accused of homophobic harassment, written by Benjamin Goggin.

Where’s the Real Harm from Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple?, written by Ryan Bourne

Free Speech Online: Unfriended, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Speech Police, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Practical Problems with Regulating Tech in the Public Interest, written by Will Rinehart

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It is an accident of history that so many tech and social media companies are based in the United States. For example, Facebook has several times more users than there are citizens of any nation in the world. Thus, when a company like Facebook sets rules for content moderation of things like hate speech and pornography, it has truly global implications. David Kaye, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, joins the show to argue that supranational tech companies should adopt supranational standards for content moderation, namely the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with hopes that doing so will constrain governments from limiting basic speech rights.

What is the interaction between surveillance and free speech? What is the digital access industry & what role do they play? Is there a tolerable censorship? What is the Google Spain, “right to be forgotten” case? How do we think of democratization of social media platforms? What is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet, written by David Kaye

Mr. David Kaye, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Press Release from the United Nations

UN Expert: Content moderation should not trample free speech, written by David Kaye

Free Speech Online: Unfriended, Free Thoughts Podcast

Toward an Uncensored Internet, written by Sonya Mann

The Brazilian People Reject Censorship, written by Mauricio F. Bento

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HBO’s show about the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster is the highest rated show on IMDB of all time in part because of its ability to make otherwise dull topics—meetings, shoveling, courtroom exposition—riveting. To suss out fact from fiction, Paul and Matthew invited Matt Crozat from the Nuclear Energy Institute to discuss the show’s portrayal, the history of nuclear plant disasters—including Three Mile Island and Fukushima—and the future of the nuclear energy in America and around the world.

How accurate was the HBO show Chernobyl? Why was Chernobyl so catastrophic? What is considered a high radiation level? Should we be optimistic about nuclear power? Have we come a long way since Chernobyl? How is Chernobyl a story about toxic leadership?

Why HBO’s “Chernobyl” Gets Nuclear So Wrong, written by Michael Shellenberger

Chernobyl and the dangerous ground of ‘dark tourism’, written by Francesca Street

Photographs capture an abandoned world inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, written by Oscar Holland

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Free Thoughts Podcast

A Libertarian Approach to the Green New Deal, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Capitalism Can Save the Environment, Free Thoughts Podcast

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More than 48 billion robocalls bombard American phones each year, taking the ‘phone’ out of ‘smartphone’ for many consumers. Yet while the problem has drastically worsened over the past several years, there may be hope on the horizon. Private, third party companies are giving consumers ways to divert or even combat robocalls. And the FCC has finally cleared up the regulatory confusion that contributed to phone carrier reluctance to directly address the problem themselves. We can hope that in ten years, the robocall scourge will seem as quaint as worries about spam email do today, despite being just as seemingly intractable an issue in the 1990s.

What is spoofing? What is audio fingerprinting? Why don’t cell phone carriers prevent robocalls? How serious is the problem of spam calls? How has email spam become more manageable? How did email change the world?

Why Robocalls Are Even Worse Than You Thought, written by Tim Harper

Robocalls are overwhelming hospitals and patients, threatening a new kind of health crisis, written by Tony Romm

RoboKiller App

How to Stop Robocalls— Or At Least Slow Them Down, written by Lily Hay Newman

Practical Problems with Regulating Tech in the Public Interest, written by Will Rinehart

The Social Consequences of Multilevel Marketing, written by Pamela J. Hobart

Has Your Phone Hacked Your Brain, Building Tomorrow Podcast

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How will people respond to artificial intelligence taking their jobs? The rise of political radicalism on both Left and Right in the early twenty-first century is in part a reaction to rising income inequality and slower wage growth despite the increasing automation of jobs and gains in productive efficiency. We are in an ‘Engels pause,’ the lag between new technology that benefits whole economies and the moment those gains filter down to the families of displaced workers. Something similar happened during the industrial revolution during the 19th century, the moment that birthed Marxism. Paul interviews economic historian Carl Frey to discuss what we can learn about our present moment of technological innovation and the social reaction to it from the history of industrialization.

What is the technology trap? Why didn’t the industrial revolution happen earlier? Who are the beneficiaries of technological progress? Can algorithms be creative? What is the difference between originality and creativity?

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and the Power in the Age of Automation, written by Carl Benefikt Frey

Engel’s Pause: A Pessimist’s Guide to the British Industrial Revolution, written by Robert Allen and Robert C. Allen

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, written by Thomas Piketty

Industrial Revolution, written by Deirdre McCloskey

Will Artificial Intelligence Take Your Job?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Will Algorithms Replace the Price System?, written by Adam Gurri

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The gig economy is transforming cities. Companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit are hiring thousands of workers on a contract basis rather than as formal employees, a legal distinction with broad implications for both workers and the future of the American economy. Matthew and Paul discuss the reasoning behind the contractor classification and whether it will be a net benefit to gig economy workers. They also talk about smart policy fixes—including expanded access to portable health insurance and various benefits-focused startups—that can address the downsides of contingent labor.

What is the gig economy and how is it different than the regular economy? What is rent-seeking behavior and how is it threatening the gig economy? What is the best interests of consumers? What is the precautionary principle?

New Employment Regulations Could Destroy California’s Gig Economy, written by Christian Britschgi

Gig workers are fighting to be classified as employees. Trump’s Labor Department just came out against this., written by Chavie Lieber

The Truth About the Gig Economy, written by Annie Lowrey

On Innovation: Don’t Ask for Permission, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Welcome to the Sharing Economy, Free Thoughts Podcast

Ride-Sharing Services Aren’t a Problem, They’re a Solution, written by Aeon Skoble

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