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For those who feel compelled to document progress in our times, here is a point to add. The music played when you are on hold for tech support has generally improved in recent years. It's not perfect by a long stretch but it is getting there.

For those too young to remember the bad old days, I have one word for you: trumpets. It was a cool jazz with trumpet doing the melody line, and then it would be followed by a spontaneous improvisation, which is fine the first time around.

But of course the nature of tech-support is that you are on hold for 10 minutes up to an hour, so of course the music must loop. The trumpet is fine once or twice but 10, 20, 30 times? It loses spontaneity. Then it gets on your nerves. Then it makes you crazy. Then you can't stand it anymore. Finally you hang up, rattled and disoriented, and open the web chat feature or fix the problem yourself.

And maybe that was the point after all. Every good tech support person knows that the number one best way to fix a problem is to delay as long as possible, thereby creating massive frustration on the part of the end-user, which in turn gets the creative juices flowing to the point that the user fixes his or her own problem.

Tech support did its job! You see, this was not a market failure. It was an efficient management strategy. There is nothing worse than a tech-support person who is always there for you, babying you at every step. This does as much good for a person's technical education as a GPS does for one's sense of direction. Too much, too fast, tech support can actually dumb us down.

Of course a greater challenge that tech support faces is how to keep people from calling in the first place. The trumpet-based hold music eventually gave way to extended electronic instructions to reboot your computer, and over a period of time the calls diminished, understandably.

At some point, it became more likely that serious people were the main callers and so it became important not to annoy people to the point of insanity.

The other day I experienced some tech-support hold music that was genuinely interesting and over a long period of time. The background had a long wave to it that suggested a kind of forward motion indicating that something progressive was taking place. On top of that was a mild percussive rhythm that had an inviting quality. Then as a separate motif, there was a regular pattern of a digital clapping sound, one that you can sort of mimic with your mouth, which gives you something to do while on hold.

Even today, however, some companies persist in playing music with a singer yammering on about love or some social theme. This is terrible because it effectively prevents multitasking, so while you are on hold, your whole life is on hold. Then every once-in-a-while a voice comes on to tell you to continue to hold because your call is important. The less of this the better, since it is obviously not true. And it raises credibility questions in the caller's mind.

Even the best possible singing, for example, a choir singing Machaut's amazing Messe Notre Dame, would be a disaster for holding on the phone. It just wouldn't convey that sense of urgency and progressive passage of time that is essential to quality hold music.

Actually, one can imagine worse. The Jonas Brothers come to mind.

Libertarian Papers, Vol. 1 (2009), Art. No. 32: "Gold, the Golden Rule, and Government: Civil Society and the End of the State," by D.G. White

Abstract: Properly speaking, money and law are natural outgrowths of human society, evolving over time via the voluntary cooperation that lies at the heart of the social enterprise. And as gold and the golden rule have for millennia formed the basis, respectively, of society's money and law, they accordingly constitute the "twin pillars of civilization," governing the social enterprise such that, in Mises's words, "the human species has multiplied far beyond the margin of subsistence." It stands to reason, then, that if money and law are corrupted, the social enterprise will be corrupted as well. And as this is precisely what the state has done, essentially toppling the twin pillars of civilization, it is necessary to understand what the state is, where it came from, and how it has systematically gone about corrupting money and law, and thus the social enterprise as a whole. For only then can money and law be returned to their rightful owners, and only then can the state be put in its proper place. Which is no place so far as the proper functioning of civil society is concerned.

Libertarian Papers, Vol. 1 (2009), Art. No. 33: "Reply to Matt Mortellaro on 'Block's Paradox': Causation, Responsibility, Libertarian Law, Entrapment, Threats and Blackmail," by Walter Block

Abstract: Matt Mortellaro's "Causation and Responsibility: A New Direction" is a brilliant Rothbardian analysis that makes numerous new and important points. It also critiques some of my own previous publications. In this piece I focus on Mortellaro's rejoinders to me, and set forth a defense of my own positions.

The status quo with respect to medical care does not deserve to be preserved. It does bear the earmarks of financial lunacy. It does call for reform - for radical reform. The question is, what kind of radical reform? FULL ARTICLE

It has in common with the classics all those qualities of clear thinking, objective presentation and lucid exposition which distinguish the wise philosopher from the merely intellectual pamphleteer. FULL ARTICLE

Travel with me back to yesteryear, the early days of the Reagan administration, when taxes were being cut and spending increases were being curbed (actual spending cuts were few), and when journalists were losing their heads about the supposedly catastrophic state of the economy.

The prevailing ethos in those days in the White House was somewhat sensible. The idea was that the recession had to be permitted to run its course. The late-1970s inflation coupled with recession had wrought dollar depreciation plus high unemployment and high interest rates. These were part of the adjustment process. No one doubted it. FULL ARTICLE

European politicians want to achieve broadband access for all. They think that this is a panacea and could even drive Europe out of the current economic situation. In fact, the European Commission "considers it of the greatest importance that, within the European Union, key services such as e-communications are widely available to citizens and businesses, independently of their geographical location, and at an affordable price and specified quality."

Current regulation is failing to achieve this goal. So, politicians are looking for new ideas to push forward their vision for society. There is one proposal that has been in the making for some time, but which has only recently gained momentum due to the impulse of the UK government. It consists of including broadband service as part of the scope of the universal service obligations.FULL ARTICLE

People have a natural intuition about risk, and in many ways it's very good. It fails at times due to a variety of cognitive biases, but for normal risks that people regularly encounter, it works surprisingly well: often better than we give it credit for.

This struck me as I listened to yet another conference presenter complaining about security awareness training. He was talking about the difficulty of getting employees at his company to actually follow his security policies: encrypting data on memory sticks, not sharing passwords, not logging in from untrusted wireless networks. "We have to make people understand the risks," he said.

It seems to me that his co-workers understand the risks better than he does. They know what the real risks are at work, and that they all revolve around not getting the job done. Those risks are real and tangible, and employees feel them all the time. The risks of not following security procedures are much less real. Maybe the employee will get caught, but probably not. And even if he does get caught, the penalties aren't serious.

Given this accurate risk analysis, any rational employee will regularly circumvent security to get his or her job done. That's what the company rewards, and that's what the company actually wants.

"Fire someone who breaks security procedure, quickly and publicly," I suggested to the presenter. "That'll increase security awareness faster than any of your posters or lectures or newsletters." If the risks are real, people will get it.

You see the same sort of risk intuition on motorways. People are less careful about posted speed limits than they are about the actual speeds police issue tickets for. It's also true on the streets: people respond to real crime rates, not public officials proclaiming that a neighbourhood is safe.

The warning stickers on ladders might make you think the things are considerably riskier than they are, but people have a good intuition about ladders and ignore most of the warnings. (This isn't to say that some people don't do stupid things around ladders, but for the most part they're safe. The warnings are more about the risk of lawsuits to ladder manufacturers than risks to people who climb ladders.)

As a species, we are naturally tuned in to the risks inherent in our environment. Throughout our evolution, our survival depended on making reasonably accurate risk management decisions intuitively, and we're so good at it, we don't even realise we're doing it.

Parents know this. Children have surprisingly perceptive risk intuition. They know when parents are serious about a threat and when their threats are empty. And they respond to the real risks of parental punishment, not the inflated risks based on parental rhetoric. Again, awareness training lectures don't work; there have to be real consequences.

It gets even weirder. The University College London professor John Adams popularised the metaphor of a mental risk thermostat . We tend to seek some natural level of risk, and if something becomes less risky, we tend to make it more risky. Motorcycle riders who wear helmets drive faster than riders who don't.

Our risk thermostats aren't perfect (that newly helmeted motorcycle rider will still decrease his overall risk) and will tend to remain within the same domain (he might drive faster, but he won't increase his risk by taking up smoking), but in general, people demonstrate an innate and finely tuned ability to understand and respond to risks.

Of course, our risk intuition fails spectacularly and often, with regards to rare risks , unknown risks, voluntary risks, and so on. But when it comes to the common risks we face every day – the kinds of risks our evolutionary survival depended on – we're pretty good.

So whenever you see someone in a situation who you think doesn't understand the risks, stop first and make sure you understand the risks. You might be surprised.

This essay previously appeared in The Guardian.

In his book, Capital and Production, Richard von Strigl clearly shows that an advanced economy exists due to two social funds: the subsistence fund and the renewal fund. Neither of which is the product of printing presses.

For those wanting to show that redistribution (i.e. soaking the rich to benefit everyone else) is an impossibility, Bertrand de Jouvenel's book, The Ethics of Redistribution, contains an appendix with a sound refutation. Of course, times and places change. Regardless, to my knowledge, the bulge in the wealth distribution curve is always to the left.

Jonah Lehrer's article DON'T: The secret of self control in a recent issue of the New Yorker describes some fascinating research by on the importance of time preference by Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel.

Though he doesn't call it time preference, Mischel measured children's ability to choose between some candy now and more candy in a few minutes. Mischel found that children generally have very high time preferences, that there was considerable variability among children. (Friends of mine have estimated their own childrens' time preference at around 100% per two minutes).

Later in life, Mischel returned to the data to do follow-up studies on the adults he had studied decades before. He found that a relatively higher or lower time preference (within the study group) was consistent over the individual's life, and that low time preference correlated with greater success in all areas of life, including work, friends, family, substance abuse, and weight control.

This is consistent with the findings of political scientist Edward Banfield whose argued that time preference was the major factor in determining the ability of urban poor people to earn income and maintain employment.

The findings not surprising to Austrian economists, who have demonstrated that societies with a lower average social rate of time preference will accumulate more capital and experience a more rapid rise in their standard of living over time.

In the Eighties, we all stayed away from grease fires and old refrigerators, because G.I. Joe taught us that knowing is half the battle. Twenty years later, those of us that are interested in the bigger picture find ourself stuck — not aware of that essential other half. By using SCIENCE, The Nerduo discovered the answer. And then, they had it hand screened by a team of Ohio-based black ops, in four (four!) patriotic colors on top a heavyweight Anvil Metro Blue T-shirt.

Always wondered what the other half was? Find out and order the shirt on the Nerduo site.

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In the Eighties, we all stayed away from grease fires and old refrigerators, because G.I. Joe taught us that knowing is half the battle. Twenty years later, those of us that are interested in the bigger picture find ourself stuck — not aware of that essential other half. By using SCIENCE, The Nerduo discovered the answer. And then, they had it hand screened by a team of Ohio-based black ops, in four (four!) patriotic colors on top a heavyweight Anvil Metro Blue T-shirt.

Always wondered what the other half was? Find out and order the shirt on the Nerduo site.

[Become a sponsor]

A 1934 story from the International Herald Tribune:

SPOKANE Discovery of a box of useless dynamite on the railway track two and a half miles southwest of this city led to special precautions being taken to guard the line over which President Roosevelt's train passed this morning [August 4] en route to Washington. Six deputy sheriffs guarded the section of the line near which the discovery was made. The President's train passed safely at 10 a.m. Officials are skeptical about the dynamite having any connection with a possible plot against the President.

Imagine if the same thing happened today.