Tyler Cowen
Tyler Cowen
Tyler Cowenis an American economist, academic, and writer. He occupies the Holbert C. Harris Chair of economics, as a professor at George Mason University, and is co-author, with Alex Tabarrok, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. Cowen and Tabarrok have also ventured into online education by starting Marginal Revolution University. He currently writes the "Economic Scene" column for the New York Times. He also writes for such publications as The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth21 January 1962
CountryUnited States of America
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In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters.
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A bad or mediocre meal is more than just an unpleasant taste, it is an unnecessary negation of one of life's pleasures - a wasted chance to refine our palates, learn about the world, and share a rewarding experience.
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Often, economists spend their energies squabbling with one another, but arguably the more important contrast is between our broadly liberal economic worldview and the various alternatives - common around the globe - that postulate natural hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, caste and gender, often enforced by law and strict custom.
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We're seeing an enormous amount of global upward mobility that's quite rapid and quite sudden, and undiscovered individuals have a chance - using the Internet, using computers - to prove themselves very quickly. So I think the mobility story will be a quite complicated one.
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At least in the United States, most economic resentment is not directed toward billionaires or high-roller financiers - not even corrupt ones. It's directed at the guy down the hall who got a bigger raise. It's directed at the husband of your wife's sister, because he earns 20 percent more than you do.
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When you look at the actual data on technological innovation, one thing you see is that what I call the 'low-hanging fruit' has been exhausted. So radio, flush toilets, electricity, and automobiles - a lot of very basic inventions - have spread to almost all households.
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The way to make the world a better place, through your eating, is simply to eat a bit less meat. Local is sometimes good, sometimes bad. But even when it's good, its environmental impact is relatively small compared to other possible improvements.
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Sports is remarkably cognitive. I think it's underrated just how smart it is. Actually, if I had more time, I would spend more time with sports. Watching it, reading about it, I think it's oddly underrated.
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If we want to improve American food and make it much cheaper, we should deregulate the food trucks and the other street vendors, provided they meet certain sanitation standards. Many cities have already moved down this path, and people are not keeling over with salmonella.
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The iPhone is made on a global scale, and it blends computers, the Internet, communications, and artificial intelligence in one blockbuster, game-changing innovation. It reflects so many of the things that our contemporary world is good at - indeed, great at.
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Economics is everywhere, and understanding economics can help you make better decisions and lead a happier life.
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When I hear people express extreme optimism about the Internet, I say, we've had it in mature form for about ten years. Macroeconomically speaking, those are about the worst 10 years we've had since about the 1930s. I don't blame the Internet for that - that would be ridiculous.
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I see three forces militating in favor of growing inequality: increasing measurement of worker value added, automation through smart software, and globalization.
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Most of us are not pure self-starters; most people need role models, they need coaches, they need exemplars, they maybe need some discipline or some rewards. We need to be motivated.