Top all-time · #736
interfluidity
Personal blog · interfluidity.comeconomicspolitics
interfluidity is a personal blog at interfluidity.com about economics and politics. Since 2008, 87 different Hacker News readers have linked it 118 times, most often “Home is where the cartel is: On the politics and economics of land-use controls”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Often recommended · 16 of 39 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Read for economics and economic philosophy, including a welfare economics series, housing and rents, bailouts, bubbles and inequality. Commenters often cite its posts to back their own points.
- Recommended for · 16 comments
- Called a great post and insight, one of the best economics blogs, and better stated than commenters manage.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 39 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Home is where the cartel is: On the politics and economics of land-use controls6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2015-12-23
- Bank runs are a feature, not a bug6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2018-05-05
- Greece5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-07-04
- Four Functions of Markets4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-05-02
- Trade-offs between inequality, productivity, and employment3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-06-06
- Predatory Precarity3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-08-25
- Advice for Twitter3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-10-28
- “Uber is a cartel; sets prices according to demand, not supply”3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-01-07
- There’s no substitute for a substitute2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-06-29
- Why is finance so complex? (2011)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-07
What Hacker News says?
salaries rarely and hardly ever go down. however inflation does exactly that in real terms. This is an interesting article about it: https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9566.html
Comment linking /v2/9566.html
on “Meta lays off 11,000 people”Submitted Greece as a story · 236 points
HN discussionDead Voles - https://deadvoles.wordpress.com/ Interfluidity - https://www.interfluidity.com/ The Debate Link - http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/ Econbrowser - http://econbrowser.com/ Empassive - https://mandelcabrera.com/ Dead Voles and Econbrowser may have more than one contributor, but its not part of some institute or organization or anything like that.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Why is finance so complex? (2011) as a story · 164 points
HN discussionYou raise some extremely good points here, and you're right, the trade offs are massive, partially due to how early the project is. My view is that maturity of the project will bring some of the answers everyone is looking for. As an anecdote, the first name auctions are actually ending in the next 48h. Mean bids for early names (a few hundred) from the last time I looked in a cli were under 10 HNS, so under 5 USD a…
Comment linking /uploads/2019/02/tao-of-decentralization-v3.pdf
on “Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council”Submitted Fiat is Effective: fiat for the crypto crowd [pdf] as a story · 163 points
HN discussion> But it’s how businesses were always designed to work [citation needed] As far as I can tell, that's a modern, MBA-ish fantasy about the nature of business. I have small business owners in my family going back generations. Maximizing profit was not the goal. It was making a living and being part of a community. This is definitely not uncommon. See, for example, the writings of the late economist Alison Snow Jones:…
Comment linking /v2/1095.html
on ““Location-Based Pay” – Who are we to complain?”Submitted “Marriage promotion” is a destructive cargo cult as a story · 98 points
HN discussionhttps://www.interfluidity.com/ , on economics and economic philosophy
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What niche blogs are worthwhile to follow?”Submitted Home is where the cartel is: On the politics and economics of land-use controls as a story · 88 points
HN discussionWe will retire and the Fed will end up bailing out the IOUs on the SS trust fund. This is not a problem so long as it's done once. All SS money ends up strengthening the metric formerly known as M3, so it'll work out just fine. The problem is the closely-held belief that There Must Be Suffering or we're not being responsible adults. The economy has been liquidity constrained ( outside of bubbles ) since 1980, with t…
Comment linking /v2/3212.html
on “Stocks Off Sharply as Market Upheaval Grows”Submitted Consensus not censorship as a story · 58 points
HN discussionSteve Waldman has a great blog post on this topic that goes beyond big city rents (though I agree that's a huge issue): https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7263.html
Comment linking /v2/7263.html
on “Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time”Submitted Four Functions of Markets as a story · 13 points
HN discussionRemember Germany's history of debt forgiveness and non-forgiveness. Don't know about it? Look at the treaty of Versailles, and John Maynard Keynes's polemic against it. Also look at the Marshall plan, and the debt forgiveness of 1953. And then consider how you want Greece to be treated. And consider how Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany should be treated when they run to big a deficit. Also read this post…
Comment linking /v2/5965.html
on “Greeks Reject Bailout Terms”Submitted Three Levels of Controversy over MMT as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI have been collecting links for days now, here are a few. The picture is really not pretty and while you can place some blame on the Greeks, for the last five years at least it would seem they are not the one to blame. if you want a very simplified slightly hilarious explanation, https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bhwij/what_i... this will do. https://twitter.com/cstross/status/617775611642257408 http:…
Comment linking /v2/5965.html
on “Greeks Reject Bailout Terms”Submitted Advice for Twitter as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe person willing to pay the most may not be the person who most desires it, considering the differing marginal utility of money across the vast spectrum of income/wealth inequality. Trump can buy on a lark what I would only shell out for as a matter of deepest, life-or-death desire. (See also: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/10/do-economists-actuall... , http://www.demos.org/blog/12/23/14/when-inequality-ruins…
Comment linking /v2/5117.html
on “Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute”Submitted Fix the Senate I: Scrap the filibuster as a story · 4 points
HN discussionneither am i comparing them. you're observing that the NYT comment section is free of trolls/spam but is otherwise a liberal echo chamber. that's another way of saying that it's lacking a counter-balance of intelligent conservative comments. i'm accepting that critique for the purpose of argumentation, and replying by asking you to look around and find anywhere on the web that has a majority critical mass of intelli…
Comment linking /v2/6400.html
on “NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments”Submitted Externality Lenses as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7065.html
Comment linking /v2/7065.html
on “The Lonely Life of a Yacht Influencer”Submitted A blockchain is just a parliament without a parliamentarian as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe best suggestion I've seen is 1¢ for the 141st character, 2¢ for the 142nd, 4¢ for the 143rd, etc. Going slightly over 140 costs a trivial amount, but it would be stupidly expensive to tweet anything really long. EDIT: I found where I stole this idea from: http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6207.html
Comment linking /v2/6207.html
on “Twitter Considering 10,000-Character Limit for Tweets”Submitted Bank runs are a feature, not a bug as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe real bailout happened in the shadows, while TARP was publicly paid back. Read: http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2587.html
Comment linking /v2/2587.html
on “Obama Announces $2B Fund for Startups”Submitted Real Inflation Cycle Theory as a story · 3 points
HN discussionInterfulidity is one of the best economics blogs out there. Last year he did a five-part series on welfare economics[0] that, while quite lengthy, was very well-done. Anybody that's interested in political economy, but has a more traditional Econ 101 background, it's a good place to start. [0]: http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5149.html
Comment linking /v2/5149.html
on “Greece”Submitted Four Functions of Markets as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
