The Unbroken Window

The worst kept secret in transportation circles is how inefficient high-speed rail is on both environmental and economic grounds. An equally poor secret, yet one that planners do not like to make well known, is just how efficient and convenient intercity buses are. In terms of both energy use, safety and carbon emissions, buses blow [...]

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The following is a simple map of all 3,000+ counties in the continental US. Does is strike anyone as odd that so many of the counties are perfectly sharp geometric forms (e.g. rectangles)? Think of what a county, as a political unit, is supposed to be capturing. Isn’t it supposed to be capturing an area [...]

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How many times have you seen this expression? It sounds great, right? Food going from the farm right to your table. The concept conjures up imagery of a bucolic past we have lost touch with, a community support for local farming that has been ripped from us by the heartless capitalist system we suffer under. [...]

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Have you ever been solicited by a fellow who wants to give you access to his incredibly insightful and prescient sports-betting strategies? Have you ever received a newsletter from an investment company showing how it has regularly beat the market? Have you ever seen a testimonial from someone who has been healed from homeopathy? And [...]

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In Hayek’s classic, The Use of Knowledge in Society, he discusses how prices alone have the ability to both capture and reveal information that is particular to time and place, and that no centralized institution could possibly accumulate or act upon. At dinner the other night, one of my companions (I do not believe I [...]

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The Marxists famously took a deterministic view of the world. They saw the evolution of society as one where certain stages of development were inevitable. So, they believed that capitalism emerged, but that it too must evolve into the next order, which they of course understood to be full-blown socialism. They were wrong. However, there [...]

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Those of us who respect the Hayekian view of the world emphasize the idea that markets (among many other kinds of “orders”) were not consciously designed by anyone. The market as a “spontaneous order” means that the free association of buyers and sellers came about through a long process on individuals trying to improve their [...]

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The Central Planner intends on spending $53 billion of other people’s money to build toy trains. President Barack Obama is calling for a six-year, $53 billion spending plan for high-speed rail, as he seeks to use infrastructure spending to jump-start job creation. … Obama’s push for high-speed rail spending is part of his broad goal [...]

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There are many reasons why people support the idea of “buying local.” (See here and here for a little more information). But the most prominent among these ideas is that buying local is somehow “good” for the environment. So, let’s focus on that one aspect of the “buying local” idea. Here’s my query: if the [...]

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In the latest episode of Bootleggers and Baptists running wild I noticed an absurd provision at the end of the Food Safety Bill being debated: SEC. 406. FOOD TRANSPORTATION STUDY. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, acting through the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, shall conduct a study of the transportation of food for [...]

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