Joakim Book
Research Fellow
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Playing Fast and Loose with Numbers
“Journalists keep talking about a future without ice, about ice-free summers in the Arctic, and casually throwing in ‘sea level rise if x were to melt completely’ as if x was in any danger of melting away entirely over anything but geological time frames. This places the completely wrong ideas in their readers’ heads and…
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Is Opposing Lockdowns Seditious?
“Instead of having the red-shirters and the blue-shirters (or climate activists and deniers, nationalists or open border-types, lockdowners and covidiots) having it out in every aspect of integrated life – in the office, at the supermarket, on the town square, in the football stadium, even over what they voluntarily read on the Internet, and what…
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The Geographic History of Us
“Dartnell’s lesson isn’t that geography determines, but that geography shapes. It set the ground rules for how the climate behaves, how the currents run and the winds blow, and along those rules all human history progressed. ‘The Earth,’ he appropriately ends, ‘shaped our history.'” ~ Joakim Book
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Pandemic Policy Has Not Improved Our Lifestyles
“We almost never know the full bundle of what we are giving up. Individual, social, and professional structures are evolving processes, trial-and-error, where we only find out what works over time. ‘The only effective judge of things is time,’ writes Nassim Taleb energetically in his excellent essay on the Lindy Effect – the tendency of…
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An Age of Patronage
“If we widen our scope, large companies have long donated funds to support causes they think are important or channel the values they wish to portray, often entirely detached from their business. A twenty-first century age of patronage is here. Perhaps it will support the foundation for a twenty-first century Enlightenment too.” ~ Joakim Book
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Where New Zealand Goes, the World Goes
“In the 1990s New Zealand pioneered inflation targeting, an approach that every major country followed for the next three decades. In a few years we might look back at this fleeting Kiwi attempt at incorporating asset markets into monetary policy with the same admiring eyes that we now see their move to inflation targeting. Where…
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MMT’s Inflation Battle Will End In A Draw
“Maybe this time is different, and perhaps this is the turning point – for MMT or for inflation. More likely, the fears and the ebullient promises will converge in a middle-of-the-way third option similar to what we saw after 2008: Politicians, pundits, economists, and central bankers talk, yet nothing much happens.” ~ Joakim Book
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Tell Me Again How Governments Are Essential
“I’m still routinely shocked that people think governments are essential to the operating of civilized life and crucial for our well-being. The more interactions like these that I have, the more confused I am that not everyone jumps ship and embraces a smarter world. So: tell me again, why do we need governments?” ~ Joakim…
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Bitcoin Bros Rediscovering Our Monetary Past
“For all the revolutionary creed that surrounds the emerging monetary commodity that is bitcoin, it seems that its future more and more resembles the past it tried to escape. Happy times for us monetary nerds.” ~ Joakim Book
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What Inapt Pandemic Response Is Doing to Our Societies
“That Wall Street Journal editorial doesn’t muck about with qualifications: ‘The goal of this Democratic program isn’t Covid relief. The point is to expand and solidify the role of government as the guarantor of every American’s income unlinked to any obligation to work.’ Salute your new Washington savior; (s)he’s probably here to stay.” ~ Joakim…
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•
Playing Fast and Loose with Numbers
“Journalists keep talking about a future without ice, about ice-free summers in the Arctic, and casually throwing in ‘sea level rise if x were to melt completely’ as if x was in any danger of melting away entirely over anything but geological time frames. This places the completely wrong ideas in their readers’ heads and…
-
•
Is Opposing Lockdowns Seditious?
“Instead of having the red-shirters and the blue-shirters (or climate activists and deniers, nationalists or open border-types, lockdowners and covidiots) having it out in every aspect of integrated life – in the office, at the supermarket, on the town square, in the football stadium, even over what they voluntarily read on the Internet, and what…
-
•
The Geographic History of Us
“Dartnell’s lesson isn’t that geography determines, but that geography shapes. It set the ground rules for how the climate behaves, how the currents run and the winds blow, and along those rules all human history progressed. ‘The Earth,’ he appropriately ends, ‘shaped our history.'” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
Pandemic Policy Has Not Improved Our Lifestyles
“We almost never know the full bundle of what we are giving up. Individual, social, and professional structures are evolving processes, trial-and-error, where we only find out what works over time. ‘The only effective judge of things is time,’ writes Nassim Taleb energetically in his excellent essay on the Lindy Effect – the tendency of…
-
•
An Age of Patronage
“If we widen our scope, large companies have long donated funds to support causes they think are important or channel the values they wish to portray, often entirely detached from their business. A twenty-first century age of patronage is here. Perhaps it will support the foundation for a twenty-first century Enlightenment too.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
Where New Zealand Goes, the World Goes
“In the 1990s New Zealand pioneered inflation targeting, an approach that every major country followed for the next three decades. In a few years we might look back at this fleeting Kiwi attempt at incorporating asset markets into monetary policy with the same admiring eyes that we now see their move to inflation targeting. Where…
-
•
MMT’s Inflation Battle Will End In A Draw
“Maybe this time is different, and perhaps this is the turning point – for MMT or for inflation. More likely, the fears and the ebullient promises will converge in a middle-of-the-way third option similar to what we saw after 2008: Politicians, pundits, economists, and central bankers talk, yet nothing much happens.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
Tell Me Again How Governments Are Essential
“I’m still routinely shocked that people think governments are essential to the operating of civilized life and crucial for our well-being. The more interactions like these that I have, the more confused I am that not everyone jumps ship and embraces a smarter world. So: tell me again, why do we need governments?” ~ Joakim…
-
•
Bitcoin Bros Rediscovering Our Monetary Past
“For all the revolutionary creed that surrounds the emerging monetary commodity that is bitcoin, it seems that its future more and more resembles the past it tried to escape. Happy times for us monetary nerds.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
What Inapt Pandemic Response Is Doing to Our Societies
“That Wall Street Journal editorial doesn’t muck about with qualifications: ‘The goal of this Democratic program isn’t Covid relief. The point is to expand and solidify the role of government as the guarantor of every American’s income unlinked to any obligation to work.’ Salute your new Washington savior; (s)he’s probably here to stay.” ~ Joakim…