Thousands of TWEETS, Posts, Articles, Pages, chapters, Notes, Diagrams, drafts, sketches and Quotes from 2009 to present
A Hobby Can’t Be A Market Failure
On economics help, we get to see a how political failure is cast as market failure. Agriculture often appears to be one of the most difficult industries, frequently leading to some form of market failure. In the EU, agriculture is the most heavily subsidised industry, yet despite the cost of the subsidy, it fails to…
The Economic Spectrum: Five Competing Groups Of Economists
There are five competing ideological groups of economists: Modern Monetary Theorists, Monetarists, Keynesians, Neoclassicals and Austrians. These five groups describe a spectrum of policy actions that are available to government because of its ability to print money, borrow money, spend money, lend money, write laws and enforce them. The government can insert money into the…
Monetarists Picked The Wrong Ally in Keynesians
Scott, Well, I’m in the middle of the Monetarist-Neoclassical-Austrian spectrum and I agree with the Monetarists and objects to the Keynesians. The unstated argument here is that: 1) The American people do not trust their government. All spending is suspect. And they would rather suffer in order to starve the beast than gain relief by…
Bryan Caplan’s Current Work On The Limited Benefits Of Education
Bryan Caplan writes 1. The vast majority of research on the [returns on higher] education – including IVs, RTCs, etc. – does not empirically distinguish between human capital and signaling. The better papers explicitly admit this. 2. Students spend a lot of time learning subjects irrelevant to almost all occupations (except, of course, teaching those…
What Is Evil?
At a dinner conversation last night, someone seeded the discussion with a common parlor-game question. Although it isn’t a complicated topic, I thought it would serve as an example of how to translate archaic moral speech into contemporary language by applying propertarian reasoning. Now, I’ve shortened it a bit, and probably done a disservice by…
Changing Identity: From American to English-American, to Diasporic Englishman
Sometime within the past six months, I have unconsciously ceased to consider myself an American, and begun to think of myself as an English American – or even just a diasporic Englishman. It wasn’t something I chose. It wasn’t a decision. It was the result of living through these interesting, and increasingly fractious times, while…
A Counter To Complaints Against Indefinite Detention
My libertarian friends seem to be making a lot of noise about recent policy that allows the USA to conduct “indefinite detention” in its fight against terroris. And, despite my desire to circle the wagons whenever possible, I don’t have any problem with “Indefinite Detention”. Although, I’ll qualify that later on. We have a long…
The Arab Spring Demonstrates The Stability Of Monarchy
From Tyler Cowen – Arab Spring and the stability of monarchy Victor Menaldo has a new paper: This paper helps explain the variation in political turmoil observed in the MENA during the Arab Spring. The region’s monarchies have been largely spared of violence while the “republics” have not. A theory about how a monarchy’s political…
The Second and Further Questions Of Politics
The first question of politics is ‘why do I not kill you and take your stuff?’ (Why should we form a cooperative order, versus a dictatorship) The Second question of politics is ‘what are our property definitions, both communal and several?’ (how shall we break the world into actionable bits) The second question of politics,…
The First Question of Politics
I’ve said this many times, but given what I’ve read today, I’ll say it again: Per Camus, the first question of philosophy is ‘Why don’t we commit suicide?’ That one question is one of philosophy’s most informative riddles. But I have another riddle that adds just as much insight as Camus’ does to philosophy, into…
Proudhon’s Crusoe Presents A False Moral Dilemma
In reference to What is Property? Dual Meanings from Punk Johnny Cash at Gonzo Times, where the author uses the artificial moral dilemma put forth by Proudhon, where a castaway arrives upon a Robinson Crusoe island and is left to die because there are not enough resources to keep two men alive. Crusoe’s Single Man…
A Propertarian Analysis Of Your Bedroom Activities
John Quiggin of Crooked Timber writes another misguided criticism of libertarian methodology in Keeping the state out of your bedroom. A standard theme in (propertarian) libertarian thinking is that personal freedom in matters such as choice of sexual partners goes naturally with economic freedom, defined as the lack of state interference with property rights. To…
EVERYTHING FRENCH IS BAD EXCEPT THE FOOD AND ARCHITECTURE
A quote from Hans Hermann Hoppe: Hoppe also condemned the French revolution as belonging in “the same category of vile revolutions as the Bolshevik revolution and the Nazi revolution,” because the French revolution led to “Regicide, Egalitarianism, democracy, socialism, hatred of all religion, terror measures, mass plundering, rape and murder, military draft and the total,…
Classifying People By Their Government Rather Than Occupation Simply Justifies The Expansion Of State Power
Today, Krugman yet again argues that there is a lack of demand. Yes, there is a lack of demand, I agree. There is a lack of demand because our lower classes are unproductive in comparison to their peers in the world. There is a lack of demand for their labor. Since there is a lack…
Four Reasons For The Long Term Decline In Violence
Regarding Pinker’s new book on the decline in violence in the world over time. I would argue that there are the following reasons for the worldwide decline in violence. 1. The Abstraction Of Property Stated by an unnamed commenter on The Economist: Odd that no mention is made of the most obvious point: that when…
List of 20th Century Genocides
The worst genocides of the 20th Century (160 million killed) – Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000 – Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine’s famine) – Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII) – Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908) 8,000,000 – Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44)…
Honduran Experiments In Creating The Libertarian Paradise
Over On The Economist, an unnamed author writes that the Hondurans are sponsoring a libertarian experiment: , libertarians have a real chance to implement their ideas. In addition to a big special development region, the Honduran government intends to approve two smaller zones. And two libertarian-leaning start-ups have already signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding…
Pravda Rails Against Fox News Without Realizing That They’re Looking In The Mirror.
Over on Pravda, the popular, nationalistic and jingoistic Russian news agency, Fox News is attacked for it’s nationalist sentiments. I replied: Fox news is not exactly a minority business. It’s the most popular cable news channel. A better point of view, would be that Fox caters to the same audience that Pravda does: Nationalists. Just…
Defining ‘Rich’. It’s Easy: Whomever Can Exit Participation In The Market
On Economix at the NYT, Bruce Bartlett writes that it’s difficult to count who’s ‘rich’. The first thing to know is that there is no formal definition of who is rich, middle class or poor. Of course, there is an official definition for the poverty rate, but that figure is just a back of the…
Is Membership In The 1% Club Education Or IQ?
Greg Mankiw makes a case for graduate school education: Apart from their bank accounts, Gallup finds education to be the greatest difference between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and everyone else. The Gallup analysis reveals that 72% of the wealthiest Americans have a college degree, compared with 31% of those in the lower 99 percentiles.…