Jose Antonio Vargas and the Politics of Compassion
Jose Antonio Vargas’s riveting story about life as an undocumented immigrant has been taking the Internet by storm. It powerfully illustrates the contrast between our nation’s professed ideals of...
View ArticleImmigration and the “Rule of Law”
Was my last post, despite its claims to the contrary, a brief for open-borders zealotry? That seems to have been the reaction of a number of commenters and folks on Twitter. Josh Barro, for example,...
View ArticleImmigration Links
Here are some immigration links: Jose Antonio Vargas’s new website, Define American, is really fantastic. It’s a pitch-perfect example of the kind of humanizing effort I wrote about on Wednesday. Not...
View ArticleImmigration and Pie
There’s a long-running argument between the left and right about whether economic policy should focus more on efficiency questions or distributional questions. At the risk of oversimplifying,...
View ArticleA Response to Reihan on Immigration
My brilliant and thoughtful friend Reihan Salam was kind enough to critique last week’s immigration posts. Here, I think, is the gist of our disagreement: My basic frustration with my interlocutors on...
View ArticleThe Solution to Bad Speech is More Speech
I’m a longtime donor to the Institute for Justice, the nation’s premiere libertarian civil liberties organization. They’ve taken cases to the Supreme Court a number of times, and on every previous...
View ArticleOn Calling a Pie a Pie
Two quick responses to Reihan’s latest. First: It is by no means obvious to me that it is morally sound for us to treat “criminals and deadbeats” who’ve lived in the United States from, say, the age of...
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Paul Graham on America’s Heritage of Disobedience
On the Fourth of July, the day when we celebrate the treasonous act that led to the creation of our nation, I think everyone should read Paul Graham’s essay about what makes America great: Hackers are...
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Moving Day
Tomorrow will be a big day for this blog. After two happy years hosted by the good folks at Dancing Mammoth, I’ve accepted an offer to join the growing Forbes family of bloggers. More details about...
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This Blog Has Moved
The blog that used to be here is now hosted at Forbes. Click here to go to the new site. Please update your bookmarks.
View ArticleNew Job
I’m excited to announce I’ll be starting a new job on Monday, covering tech policy with the Washington Post‘s Wonkblog team. Led by Ezra Klein, WonkBlog provides in-depth analysis of domestic policy...
View ArticleNew job
After spending a fantastic year at the Washington Post, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve accepted a position at Vox Media, where I’ll be helping Ezra Klein launch a new website focused on explanatory...
View ArticleHere’s why Bitcoin-the-network needs Bitcoin-the-currency
This week I was making the argument on Twitter that it’s more helpful to think about Bitcoin as a new kind of payment network than a new kind of currency. Multiple people asked variants of the same...
View ArticleThe case against land value taxes
Alice and Bob were both born in 1957, and became friends after they both settled in Washington, DC. In 1986, Alice bought a 2-bedroom home in the up-and-coming Dupont Circle neighborhood. Bob thought...
View ArticleWhy Satoshi Nakamoto worked so hard to hide his identity
We may now know who Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, is. According to Newsweek, he’s a reclusive 64-year old Japanese man who lives in Temple City, California. And Satoshi Nakamoto is his real...
View ArticleDorian Nakamoto: “I did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin”
Last month, an engineer named Dorian Nakamoto was identified by Newsweek as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. Early Monday morning, Dorian issued his strongest statement yet denying the report....
View ArticleHow to be better at PR
Most of my experience with PR people involves them cluttering my inbox with unwanted pitches. But yesterday I had a PR experience that was so positive that I thought it was worth sharing. In an ideal...
View ArticleSome thoughts on the end of economic growth
Here are some thoughts on economic growth that aren’t yet coherent enough to be a Vox article… 1. Technological progress in a particular industry often has diminishing returns, and it’s possible to...
View ArticleFred Hirsch’s Social Limits to Growth
After my last post, reader Joe pointed out the parallels to Fred Hirsch’s classic book the Social Limits to Growth. I hadn’t read Hirsch’s book, but the similarity isn’t entirely a coincidence, since...
View ArticleThe Pokémon Go Economy, Explained without a Silly Headline
In a recent Vox post I tried to combine a headline designed to troll my least favorite website — “Pokémon Go is everything that is wrong with late capitalism” — with a serious policy argument....
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