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Bryan Caplan  
PERMANENT LINK | OCTOBER 11, 2007

Tim Kane's New Blog

Bryan Caplan
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Free Disposal... From Tabarrok Town to Caplan L...

Tim Kane has launched a new blog, and it looks promising. Kane's the primary author of the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom (which finds its way into Greenspan's new book), a Garett Jones co-author, and a comic book fan to boot. His most quotable post so far:

That post-milennial gloom is in the air. My theory is that people feel the future happening all around them and it's dizzying. We still remember the ways things were in the gentler era (you remember: the good old days when all you had to worry about was nuclear holocaust happening any milisecond?). But the 70s and 80s were a radically different, and quieter, time. Everyone wasn't hyperconnected. You could only watch movies at the theater (remember the lines in 1977?) or on ABC's Sunday Night Special.

We're living in the future. Fair enough, but what has the culture been telling us the future would be? Seems to me, the culture has been pretty clear. "Welcome to Dystopia!"

Check it out.


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CATEGORIES: Behavioral Economics and Rationality
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COMMENTS (4 to date)
aaron writes:

My cable provider picked up a network news channel, I don't remember which one (abc, cbs, nbc-- I think NBC). Occasionally it runs the network news for the date something like 20 or 30 years prior. I was astounded by all the catastrophe in the news, one week makes all the Iraq war look like picknik.

Posted October 11, 2007 12:14 PM
General Specific writes:

Since he's forward thinkng--and a software entrepreneur to boot--he can figure out how to use a spelling checker:

"Welcome to Dystoipia!"

Given that his very first post contains this error, I'd say he's off to a pretty dystopic start.

Maybe he should call his blog the antidystoipic.

Posted October 11, 2007 12:33 PM
Matt writes:

Funny, interesting. Has the internet extended our common outlook?

Posted October 11, 2007 12:55 PM
Nathan Smith writes:

I'm not sure about that. 1984 is pretty bleak but Star Wars is cheerful enough about the future-- new adventures, new opportunities. It seems to me that political futurism is often dystopian, but technological futurism tends to be optimistic. Since our institutions are pretty much the same while our technology has changed, I'm not sure popular culture can explain the unaccountably facts-resistant pessimism of this decade.

Posted October 11, 2007 10:44 PM
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