“cost” is defined as an amount that has to be paid or spent to buy or obtain something. suppose you can buy a cookie at the local bakery for 3$. the cost of that cookie is thus, by definition, 3$. that’s what you pay to obtain it. but what if…

neoliberalism and classical liberalism are both ideologies that advocate for limited government intervention in the economy and for the protection of individual rights and freedoms. however, there are some key differences between the two. classical liberalism, which emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, emphasizes the importance of individual liberty…

there are two necessary checks a system must pass to demonstrate intelligence. a computationally challenging goal suppose alice hands a note to her son and he responds, “17,375”. at this point, her husband bob has no evidence of mathematical talent in his son. now suppose bob looks at the note and it says, “pick…

in order to compare a carbon tax to cap-and-trade, we must first describe what a negative externality is. imagine a single unit of two products or services, X and Y. X costs 2$ and Y costs 3$. alice values X and Y both at 4$. thus if she buys X…

an ideal policy-making body has two fundamental characteristics. aim alignment aim is like an archer’s ability to accurately relate the position, angle, and tension of his bow to the arrow’s point of impact. in policy terms, it is the ability to accurately assess the outcome of a particular policy. alignment…

a lot of people intuitively believe that ranked choice voting (RCV) is better than approval voting because it seems to be more expressive to indicate a ranked ordering than to simply indicate which candidate you approve of. this intuition is false. here’s why. imagine a simple example of preferences like…

but approval voting does — the alaska house election this november 2022 will use ranked choice voting (RCV), and will feature three candidates. moderate republican nick begich is almost certainly preferred head-to-head against peltola to his left, and palin to his right. but based on these numbers, he’ll be eliminated by the RCV process, and…