“The Amazon business model, though revolutionary, is visibly in the line of descent from mail-order businesses such as Sears Roebuck. It is a system for the efficient distribution of existiing products. The e-book is a new product in one sense, though in another sense it is merely a new channel for distributing the content of books. It is not yet apparent what advantages e-books have over print books except for travelers, other than easier ordering and faster delivery even of printed books from Amazon.”
Richard Posner, in this wonderful post about Bookstores, Libraries, and eBooks. A friend of mine runs ‘The Kindle Monologues’ which roughly espouses my own personal views on eBooks and how they are a good thing for readers and authors in general.
March42012
February272012
“But naïve extrapolation with respect to national economies is treacherous, as Becker points out with the examples of Japan and the Soviet Union, though the examples are slightly different: Japan was growing rapidly, and then stopped; the Soviet Union had stopped growing rapidly when (in our 1960 presidential election, for example) we began fearing that it was growing more rapidly than the U.S. The Soviet Union was about to enter the era of stagnation associated with the Brezhnev years.”
Richard Posner, Will China Overtake Us? Another great quote is later in the article:
To some extent this adjustment will take place independently of Chinese monetary policy. As wages of Chinese workers in the export sector rise, exports by other nations become more competitive, reducing Chinese exports, beginning a painful transition to a consumer society.
(Source: becker-posner-blog.com)
January142012
Once again, Judge Posner puts wonderful pictures in his opinions.
November242011
Generally we here at Fuck Yeah Richard Posner love Posner for his law and economics opinions. However, you have to admit the guy has great wit.
(Source: abovethelaw.com)
November202011
“The police I think made a tactical mistake in routing the “Occupiers” from Zuccotti Park near Wall Street. That is the lesson of the 1960s. Arrests, whacking demonstrators with billy clubs, dragging screaming women to paddy wagons, and other police just create anger, martyrdom complexes, and sympathy for the demonstrators. The Occupiers had made the mistake of—occupying urban spaces (in imitation of the Egyptians who occupied Tahrir Square in Cairo), rather than marching in them. The occupations attracted criminals, panhandlers, and lunatics, and created unattractive, unsanitary conditions.”
Richard Posner, on Occupy Wall Street and the Police reaction to the protests. I like Posner’s response here because it suggests that neither party is lilly white in the situation. Further, I tend to agree with a closing statement of his:
Railing against income inequality, job loss, and banking abuses is thus understandable, but it doesn’t do any good. The “Occupiers” are anarchic and disruptive, and the solid middle of American society, which rejects the Tea Party because of its goofy ideas, is likely to reject the Occupy movement because of its style, while broadly sympathetic to its antipathies.
One of the faults of the post, though, is that he later compares a brief editorial written by two members of the Occupy movement with the (in)famous Port Huron Statement—an incredibly more voluminous work—of the largely unlamented Students for a Democratic Society. Although we can argue about the positive and negative impact of the SDS (and the significantly more malignant Weather Underground the grew from it), it is fair to say that the Port Huron Statement was a manifesto with defined ideas and a clarity of purpose. I am not sure the same can be said for any Occupy transmission.
September272011
“…[the central] meaning of justice, perhaps the most common is – efficiency… [because] in a world of scarce resources waste should be regarded as immoral.”
Richard Posner (via arkoftheache)
September92011
A public discussion between Aharon Barak of the Israeli Supreme Court and Richard Posner on “Can Democracy Overcome Terror?”.
September82011
The New Republic: "Let's Be Honest: We're in a Depression, Not a Recession"
“What can be done now? Probably nothing. Anything that involves spending, such as a new stimulus program, would come too late to be effective… At a 7 percent annual growth rate, our public debt in 2012, estimated at $12.4 trillion, will grow by 40 percent in five years if none of the reforms…
August12011
“The economy faces a short-term problem, a medium-term problem, and a long-term problem. The short-term problem is the debt ceiling, the medium-term problem is the depression that the economy is still wallowing in (the orthodox description of it as a mere “recession” that ended in 2009 is misleading), and the long-term problem is entitlements for old people—Medicare, social security, and (to a lesser extent) Medicaid, which to a significant degree operates as medigap insurance for many old people. The three problems are intertwined. The third, the long-term one, may well be the most serious.”
Richard Posner
(Source: becker-posner-blog.com)
June12011
Five followers!
Seriously. I never thought it would happen.
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