The Unbroken Window

When I discuss the various methods of rationing goods in class, we learn that non-price methods of getting goods to consumers suffer from three major difficulties (each is really tied into a transactions cost and scarcity problem). These are that: Whether the competition that arises over the rationing mechanism is destructive or constructive. The incentives [...]

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Can liberty survive the government’s expansion into the economy? What if that expansion is done by thoughtful, enlightened and zealous experts? John Stuart Mill did not think so. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the [...]

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In the Constitution of Liberty Hayek claims that society would be well served if we randomly selected 1 in 1000 people and endowed them with enough wealth so they could independently pursue any project of their choosing! The random part is important – if we had to decide as a “society” to reward a particular [...]

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“Libertarian” paternalists (it pains one to write this) make the strong claim that they only hope to improve the lives of people by “nudging” them to make better decisions than their irrational selves allow. Former commissioner of baseball (and evil Ephman) Fay Vincent makes an interesting point in tomorrow’s WSJ: that it is unusual that [...]

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… at least be a good one. But let’s assume the Obama administration is mentally stuck in 1930s Italy and thinking only of exports. It still can’t justify its position on Colombia, the third largest market for agricultural imports in Latin America. American farmers now pay an average 16.5% tariff on exports to Colombia. As [...]

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From David Henderson on the TSA: … one should be skeptical of government running airline security when that same government still requires that flight attendants show you how to fasten a seat belt I was reminded to blog this after a excellent current student of mine told me about a bus ride he took during [...]

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My wife and I purchased our home in May of last year at an interest rate of 5%. We got a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. As part of that, as anyone else does, we paid a slew of closing costs, including the stuff we seem to get value from such as title insurance, lawyers’ fees, [...]

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Or is it? For the sake of consistency, why don’t the czars in European Parliament mandate that this “trade” be made more fair? After all, the brick machine doesn’t play by the same rules as the manual bricklayers it has replaced (again, assuming it even replaced them). Maybe we should place a tariff on all [...]

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Bob Frank was a professor of mine in graduate school at Cornell. He is perhaps most well known for his argument in favor of a progressive consumption and income tax. Why? He argues that much of the consumption of goods by the rich (and perhaps middle class too) takes place over status competition and “positional” [...]

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I wrote this for Thanksgiving last year. Didn’t get around to a new article for this year, but I hope you can enjoy this “reprint.” Four centuries after the celebration of the first Thanksgiving, there is still widespread disagreement about the reason for the Pilgrims’ feast. But whether it was a harvest festival, a strictly [...]

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