Mailbag!!
Hi everyone! My finals are done, and I think a mailbag column would be fun. I have several blogposts sketched out — something on how we should treat data, something on whether effective altruists should have children, “Scrooge was good, actually”, and one covering some papers on the impact of trust on economic development — but I feel I am rehashing much of the same ground.
So, I am soliciting questions. I will likely answer all of them, and I guarantee that if you have a paid subscription I’ll answer at least one.
What are your thoughts on the economics of space travel? I've read Casey Handmer's excellent blog and it generally seems like space is massively overhyped relative to its economic value (https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/blog-series-countering-misconceptions-in-space-journalism/, https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/27/there-are-no-known-commodity-resources-in-space-that-could-be-sold-on-earth/). Satellites seem very valuable, but can you think of any other potential economic reasons to go to space?
Do you think something like The Journal of Economic Perspectives could exist in other fields, or is there something special about economics? If it could exist in other fields, what do you think would be needed to get something like that started? It seems like a potentially strong improvement to the epistemic ecosystem.