This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Modern Economists: The Inept Firefighters’ Club — Dean Baker in Democracy Journal: The problem is not that modern economics lacks the tools needed to understand the economy. Just as with firefighting, the basics have been well known for a long time. The problem is with the behavior and the incentive structure of the practitioners. There is overwhelming pressure to produce work that supports the status quo (i.e. redistributing to the rich), that doesn’t question authority, and that is needlessly complex. The result is a discipline in which much of the work is of little use, except to legitimate the existing power structure.
• ANZ: Australia “place of choice” for property money laundering — Leith van Onselen at MacroBusiness: Legislation to implement the second tranche of anti-money laundering (AML) legislation covering real estate gate keepers has been gathering dust for a decade. The end result is that realtors, lawyers, accountants and other real estate gate keepers are currently exempted from AML requirements. And this exemption has provided an easy avenue for foreign buyers to launder funds through Australian property.
• I have run out of interesting things to write about edtech — Jonathan Rees: What I’ve learned in my years of studying this topic, is that there are actually a ton of really devoted people who are trying to develop and utilize various educational technologies to create useful and – at least in some cases – superior experiences to how colleges and classes operate now. These efforts are, as you might expect, hugely labor intensive. Therefore, they seldom appeal to private Silicon Valley companies trying to make a quick buck. They do, however, appeal to all of us who are in higher education for the long run and a willing to try something new.
• Universities' greed and phony prestige to blame for appalling drop-out rates — Tracie Winch in the Sydney Morning Herald: In terms of classroom engagement, it's fair to say that the centuries-old method of formal lectures and tutorials is outdated, but simply shunting classes online is not the answer and, of itself, it certainly isn't innovative. It's sending a message to students saying "hey you don't really need to show up" and so the majority don't – unless there is some kind of assessment hurdle attached. And we are shocked?
• America’s hidden philosophy — John McCumber in Aeon: As far as rational choice theory is concerned, it doesn’t matter if I want to end world hunger, pass the bar, or buy myself a nice private jet; I make my choices the same way. Similarly for Cold War philosophy – but it also has an ethical imperative that concerns not ends but means. However laudable or nefarious my goals might be, I will be better able to achieve them if I have two things: wealth and power. We therefore derive an ‘ethical’ imperative: whatever else you want to do, increase your wealth and power! Results of this are easily seen in today’s universities. Academic units that enable individuals to become wealthy and powerful (business schools, law schools) or stay that way (medical schools) are extravagantly funded; units that do not (humanities departments) are on tight rations.
• Why Race Is Not a Thing, According to Genetics — Simon Worrall interviews geneticist Adam Rutherford for National Geographic: It says something about us that we look for simple answers to complex questions. Inevitably, people have turned to the relatively new science of genetics to try to explain otherwise unfathomable human behaviors, such as spree killing or murder. […] If we sequenced [mass-shooter] Adam Lanza’s genome, we would simply find that he has a human genome and that all the variants in him would be found in other people that don’t commit spree killings. Turning to genetics to try and find out why this guy killed all of those kids in this wicked act completely misses the point! The single common factor in all spree killings is access to guns. That seems straightforward to me.