Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Central Planning, Government Thuggery, History, If I Really Hated the Poor ... on Dec 21st, 2016
See this gate? … Well, every night trucks stacked with bodies came back here and dumped them in a heap. They’d already been shot in the back of the head – you bleed less that way … They stacked the bodies in old wooden ammunition crates. The workers stoked up the underground ovens – right […]
Posted in Central Planning, History on Dec 14th, 2016
I am a big fan of harp-guitar players and one of my favorites is Stephen Bennett. Here is one of my favorites from him, entitled Merry Christmas Mr. Gorbachev. It’s a happy sounding song, as it should be. I imagine he wrote it as a reference to the (in)famous Christmas night in 1991 when Soviet […]
Posted in Central Planning, Disingenuous, Employment, Fun Facts, Government Gone Wild, Special Privilege, Taxation on Dec 4th, 2016
Via Coyote without comment.
Posted in Central Planning, Extended Order, History, Institutions on Nov 24th, 2016
Today I reprint a slightly edited piece I put together several years ago. I’d change a lot of it, from the content to the tone, if I were to do it over – but one must live with one’s younger self. Happy Thanksgiving to all. Four centuries after the celebration of the first Thanksgiving, there […]
Posted in Central Planning, Disingenuous, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Institutions, Why Hillaryism and Trumpism Exists, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 10th, 2016
Hamilton in Federalist 68: The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man […]
Posted in Adaptation, Central Planning, Knowledge on Sep 6th, 2016
I’ve spent most of my “academic” time the past two summers studying and writing on the economics of climate change. It has become quite clear to me that were we to line up the honest economic and environmental experts and received their honest assessments about what the worst case scenarios look like, and where the […]
Posted in Central Planning, Disingenuous, Economics Problems, Environment on Jul 14th, 2016
In Nordhaus’s Climate Casino (recommended), in describing the problem when market prices do not fully capture all resource costs, as there are many casinos options everywhere so you should learn about different casinos in USA to find the best one for you: However, the unregulated invisible hand sets the prices incorrectly when there are important externalities. Therefore, […]
Posted in Central Planning, Development, Entrepreneurs, Extended Order, growth, Innovation, Macroeconomics, Market Failures on May 27th, 2016
In revisiting my class discussions on the economics of public goods, I came across a paper from the OECD that incredibly I had never been aware of. One of the major results in the paper is shocking. Now the sample size, as with all cross-country analyses, is small, and there are the usual caveats about […]
Posted in Adaptation, Central Planning, Disingenuous on May 17th, 2016
One reason I think some folks are suspicious of geoengineering solutions to climate change or biotechnology solutions to feeding people and clothing people is that these are not solutions where we “pay for our sins.” If humans perceive “easy” technical fixes to problems, that will not only make us less nervous about what future damages […]
Posted in Central Planning, Standards of Living, Taxation, Welfare State on Apr 28th, 2016
As you probably all know, social security is a transfer program, not a retirement program. Aside from eliminating the program entirely, which advocating for would have you removed from polite company, here are some things to consider about it. The system is in far better shape than Medicare. Medicare is the big elephant in the […]
