March 27, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:People opposed to smut filters
People opposed to smut filters complain that they don't work. So a sensible economist asks why we don't require content providers to label their adult content and then let consumers decide.
From the same site (just discovered it, and boy, it's good): will boredom save Microsoft from the Linux threat? I've been arguing here for a while that the problem with Linux is two-fold: first, that I haven't seen an actual realistic revenue model for a largely open-source world; and second, that it is good code but bad marketing, insufficiently responsive to the needs of the ordinary consumers who would have to use it, rather than the desires of the advanced users who code it. This bit points to a real-world example of what you might term an open source market failure.
And on the well-traveled subject of faculty bias, he makes a suggestion that I've approached asymptotically: the next time your college calls you for money, ask how many Republicans are on the faculty. If enough of us demand to know, colleges will respond to the fundraising market by getting some conservatives on board.
Market-based solutions for social problems -- who would have thought that stuff this good could come out of Smith College?
Posted by Jane Galt at March 27, 2002 10:54 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links