The Unbroken Window

I was rereading this excellent old essay:
Many people, probably including Mr. Sulzberger, seem to think of the US as a charitable venture. Like the American Cancer Society, just with a broader mission. Perhaps the purpose of the US is simply to do good in the world.
This is a very understandable perspective. Surely, if anything ungood [...]

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From my single favorite blogger on the planet, Warren Meyer:
No one in government, that I have heard, has even suggested any sort of regulation holiday as a potential economic stimulus program. In fact, most of the legislative moves at the national level have made private investment less attractive
Seriously – if the economy is on the [...]

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The antiplanner reports:
A new report from the Federal Transit Administration says that America’s transit agencies need $77.7 billion to bring their systems up to a state of good repair. This report is an update to a previous report that just looked at seven of the nation’s leading transit systems (Boston, Chicago, New Jersey Transit, New [...]

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Does being on the short-end in some transaction empower the loser to become an expert on relevant policy? This is one of my largest pet peeves. For example, no doubt that the families of those murdered and injured in the 9-11 events have suffered a great deal, but does it make any sense at all [...]

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From tomorrow’s WSJ:
Without any public vetting, Dr. Berwick will now assume control of a bureaucracy with a budget larger than the Defense Department and that controls 4% of GDP today, hitting 5.9% by 2020 if the Congressional Budget Office is right.
Off the top of my head, I think there are other people who were neither [...]

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Alexander Tytler wrote:
A democracy … can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always [...]

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All that voting allows us to do is to make a choice among lemons vying for the right to exercise force over the rest of us. Voting is not a true expression of choice in a democracy because it does not permit us to cast our ballot in favor of “no one.” In other words, [...]

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… then why do governments nonetheless enact many policies that monied interests are strongly opposed to? Doesn’t big business abhor taxes? Then why is the corporate tax structure in the US perhaps worse than in any industrialized nation? Don’t monied interests want a race to the bottom in environmental and food safety and drug safety [...]

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The Honorable David Koon
268 Fairport Village Landing
Fairport, NY 14450
koond@assembly.state.ny.us

Dear Assemblyman Koon,
I’d like to respond to a flyer that was mailed to us – it was a flyer encouraging my family to “put our money where our heart is – buy local and support local farms.”
One reason we chose to locate in upstate, NY [...]

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Yesterday we discussed the idea of how bundling choices together may lead choosers to select vastly different things than if they voted for items a la carte. How does this idea translate into the political realm? There are two applications. First, how would the policies we get enacted from Congress change if rather than voting [...]

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