Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetence, corruption and policy failures:
• Incentivized Stupidity: Stupidity comes in different flavors. We humans are shockingly prone to bad ideas, ideas that escalate to terrible decisions, and then metastasize into actions that undermine, damage, or even ruin our lives. We’d all like to think that we’re a lot better off than the letter-writer above, and we probably are (if not so self-aware), but vanishingly few of us have a consistently good track record of decision-making and none of us is as good as we think we are. (The Better Letter)
• Obscure Chinese Stock Scams Dupe American Investors by the Thousands: The Justice Department is making a push to disrupt the schemes, which use social media to find buyers for risky stocks. (Wall Street Journal)
• How Much Does Silicon Valley Rely on Stolen Video? TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook are making billions on scrolling video feeds, and they all recycle the same (apparently pirated) video clips. Is this really legal? (The Honest Broker)
• A Quiet Betrayal: The Largest Public Lands Sell-Off in Modern History. Let me repeat that: 250 million acres of public lands eligible for sale. Forests, rivers, mountains, migration corridors, wilderness study areas, inventoried roadless areas, local recreation lands, critical wildlife habitat, and sacred tribal sites. Public lands held in trust for the American people, handed over without debate to the highest bidder. (Firewatch)
• RFK Jr. is coming for your vaccines: ‘This is going to cost lives. Children are going to suffer.’ (The Verge) see also Why a Vaccine Expert Left the C.D.C.: ‘Americans Are Going to Die’ Dr. Fiona Havers is influential among researchers who study immunizations. The wholesale dismissal of the agency’s scientific advisers crossed the line, she said. (New York Times)
• Facing a Precarious Future in Hong Kong: While Beijing has not yet clamped down on religion in the city, three churches are preparing. (Christianity Today)
• Print and shoot: How 3D-printed guns are spreading online: 3D-printed guns could become “the weapon of choice” for criminals and violent extremists around the world, an expert has told the BBC. These DIY, untraceable firearms have been recovered in several recent criminal cases, including the alleged use of a partially 3D-printed gun in the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (BBC)
• Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy: This article is more than 8 years old For 25 years, invoking this vague and ever-shifting nemesis has been a favourite tactic of the right – and Donald Trump’s victory is its greatest triumph. (The Guardian)
• How Ivermectin Became Right-Wing Aspirin: Once a suspect COVID treatment, now a cure for everything. (The Atlantic)
• Author Jonathan D. Cohen on how sports gambling became a public health crisis: “Lots of people, predominantly young men, are losing more money than they can afford gambling on sports.” (Awful Announcing)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Steve Laipply, Global Co-Head of Bond ETFs at BlackRock. Previously, he was Head of U.S. iShares Fixed Income Strategy and a member of BlackRock’s Systematic Fixed Income Product Strategy Team.
The impact of proposed new BBB tax cuts
Source: @JustinWolfers
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