Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Fun Facts on Jun 7th, 2013
Among my “favorite” aspects of reading “E”nvironmental books is the usage, oftentimes with authority, of myriad facts completely devoid of context, illustration or even in many cases sources or evidence. In the book on trash I am reading one of the many, many, many, many facts tossed around like a bludgeon is that in our […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Aug 30th, 2012
Why do I think a 7 gallon wastepaper basket is a pretty neat thing? I like my little Mazda3. It’s “zippy” and pretty comfortable to drive for a compact car. And it cost us somewhere in the range of $16,500 for the car (we actually lease it). And while it is nowhere near the best […]
Posted in Economics 238W, Environment, Extended Order, Institutions, Price System, Property Rights, Resources, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jun 28th, 2012
George Stigler, I think, once quipped, "If you never missed a flight in your life, you've spent too much time in an airport." While there is much wisdom in this observation, I would recommend not taking it too seriously. We like to get to airports early so that we do not miss our flights. There […]
Posted in Government Gone Wild on Mar 2nd, 2012
Tim Geithner pulls the same rabbit out of the regulatory hat today in the WSJ: Remember the crisis when you hear complaints about financial reform—complaints about limits on risk-taking or requirements for transparency and disclosure. Remember the crisis when you read about the hundreds of millions of dollars now being spent on lobbyists trying to […]
Posted in Environment, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jan 12th, 2011
Land in cities like New York is extremely valuable. Thus it probably makes a great deal of sense to dedicate very little of that land to waste disposal uses like landfills. Using scarce Manhattan land comes at the cost of not using that land for the myriad awesome uses it might otherwise be put to, […]
Posted in Environment, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jan 11th, 2011
That’s not exactly a canard, it’s closer to a non-sequitur. Nonetheless, it is invoked often by those who favor an even heavier hand of government to regulate and restrain market activity. First of all, there is no such thing as “markets.” Does the New York Stock Exchange wake up in the morning and throw out […]
Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Aug 15th, 2010
More from Rose George’s wonderful book. I promise this is the last post on human waste! … the material itself is as rich as oil and probably more useful. It contains nitrogen and phosphates that can make plants grown … it can be both food and poison. It can contaminate and cultivate. Millions of people […]
Posted in Government Gone Wild on Aug 10th, 2010
In 2005, the American Society of Civil Engineers graded the nation’s water infrastructure a D-minus. The US Environmental Protection Agency has responsibility for the nation’s wastewater management. The EPA itself estimates that 25% of the nation’s sewer pipes were in poor or very poor condition. They also estimate that this share will rise to 50% […]
Posted in Health Care on Apr 23rd, 2010
Would you prefer a world where we “waste” 10% of our expenditures on administrative costs, or one where we only “waste” 5%? Of course you cannot answer that question without knowing how much we spend. If you get the same product in each case, but total spending in the first is $100 and total spending […]
Posted in Paternalism on Dec 8th, 2008
I would love to know how many hours per month that a typical person or student spends on Facebook or other social networking sites each month. My back of the envelope guess would be that in the US, we spend over 300 million hours per month on such sites.
