Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Central Planning, Environment, ethical foundations, You Can't Have it Both Ways on May 15th, 2014
You might remember the 2012 campaign trail when the Commander in Speech uttered, “You didn’t build that.” OK, so maybe that was out of context, and he didn’t really mean what his critics thinks he meant. Fine. Let’s assume the charitable version of his point – that even private enterprise “requires a village” and that it is […]
Posted in ethical foundations, Inequality, Taxation on Apr 24th, 2014
He just wants to fix it. No comments from this peanut gallery. But Scott Sumner hits a 600 foot homer, do read the whole thing: Here’s what Yglesias misses. Unequal consumption matters because of opportunity cost—another bedrock of economics. The resources that went into that $200 million yacht could have produced lots of other goodies […]
Posted in ethical foundations on Apr 15th, 2014
He concludes an excellent piece with: I don’t mean to criticize anyone in particular. (I used to be the economics instructor.) In all of these cases, there really isn’t anything any one individual can do to remedy the bad practices. Making a big issue of them would lead to useless excommunication. Instead we shrug ironically. […]
Posted in Behavior, ethical foundations, Flotsam and Jetsam on Apr 15th, 2014
Just had the pleasure of watching Rocky with my daughter and that line above was one I missed when I first watched it 30 years ago. At the end of the epic fight, where Rocky had just gone the distance against Apollo (and lost), the news folks and TV folks are swarming Rocky, and upon […]
Posted in Central Planning, ethical foundations, Taxation, Voluntary Society, Welfare State on Mar 17th, 2014
It is typically asserted that on utilitarian grounds we can and should redistribute wealth from the richer to the poorer. On its face and all-alone the argument makes some sense. The argument goes like this: since there is diminishing marginal utility of wealth, a dollar to a rich person is worth less than a dollar […]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Competition, Corporatism, Economics Problems, Environment, ethical foundations, Regulation, Special Privilege, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Feb 25th, 2014
Among some of the most unproductive questions I am asked regularly include questions of the type, “are you in support of XYZ?” As if XYZ is some monolithic, black and white, easy to understand and represent with the word XYZ, thing. Of course, it is not. So, in the past I’ve been very evasive when […]
Posted in ethical foundations on Jan 21st, 2014
Austen Frakt thinks so: I’m simultaneously more cynical and practical. First the cynical: we’ll never have honest intellectual debate. … Can Avik and I have an honest intellectual debate about whether Medicaid helps or harms people, about whether Singapore’s low health spending is due more to the nature of its insurance and provider markets or to government intervention […]
Posted in Environment, ethical foundations on Dec 18th, 2013
If you accept the conventional estimates for what a life in the United States is worth, statistically, you come up with a number around $7 million. This of course is not to say that any particular life is “worth” $7 million. After all, if I asked you how much money you would accept to allow […]
Posted in ethical foundations, Religion on Dec 11th, 2013
In my news feed: Foes say the buses jam up municipal bus stops and remove potential customers from cash-strapped public transportation systems, including regional rail service, that could use their revenue. Right, so public transportation is not about delivering service people want at a good value? Not that this is news. I’m sure this will […]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Competition, Corporatism, Economic Illiteracy, Economics Problems, ethical foundations, Government Thuggery, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Market Failures, Methodology, Politics, Religion, Voluntary Society, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 10th, 2013
The “left” sees the last 34 years as a revival (was there ever a VIVAL?) of laissez-faire dogmatism. Some folks like myself see it as almost the diametric opposite. Of course, some of this could be “settled” by empirical evidence. The number of pages of regulations? The dollars spent complying with regulations? The number of […]
