Thursday, October 13, 2022

Trade and Culture


It is by character and not by intellect the world is won. --Evelyn Beatrice Hall, biographer

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The ACT is a standardized test used for college admissions in the United States. Results are the lowest in 30 years.

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U.S. refineries are running at full capacity, or just short of full capacity. This is why oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases got sent to Europe and Asia, because they had the room and equipment to turn it into actual usable fuel.

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The SEC is after Kim Kardashians for her touting Crypto. My bet is they have a lot of regard for her influence and little regard for her audience; they want to save us.
But this is still a free country. Kardashian should be able to sell her influence like all these public figures do.

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The U.S. is preparing to ease sanctions on oil producer Venezuela. This, and the countries of the West shutting down energy production, damaging their own countries, and placing themselves in thrall to some pretty awful leaders and cultures, will be a headscratcher for the ages. At any other time in history, the public would assume treason.

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Originally the word 'hipster meant a person who carries a hip flask.

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Trade and Culture

So how are trust and cultural adhesiveness generated?

From a new paper:

"We conduct rule-breaking experiments in 13 villages across Greenland (N=543), where stark contrasts in market participation within villages allow us to examine the relationship between market participation and moral decision-making holding village-level factors constant. First, we document a robust positive association between market participation and moral behaviour towards anonymous others. Second, market-integrated participants display universalism in moral decision-making, whereas non-market participants make more moral decisions towards co-villagers. A battery of robustness tests confirms that the behavioural differences between market and non-market participants are not driven by socioeconomic variables, childhood background, cultural identities, kinship structure, global connectedness, and exposure to religious and political institutions."

Markets and trade increase trust, cooperation, and universal moral action without regard to background or religion.
Whoa.

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