The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Extended Order on Jan 13th, 2010
I ask my students the following question:
Briefly characterize why the argument that “we are dependent on foreign oil” as a justification for developing alternative energy sources is a poor one.
You could attack this issue in one of three ways:
(1) Understanding the extended order of human [...]
Posted in Extended Order on Jul 31st, 2009
Last weekend I put together a 1,500 word article. In doing so, I selected four words that I commonly use to be added to the Microsoft Word dictionary. And no, this was not one of them – I, Mike Rizzo, am Wintercow.
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Extended Order, trade on Jul 24th, 2009
Monroe County (the country where Rochester resides; outside the city are many quaint villages and still lots of pretty farmland): Eat fresh, buy local, grow Monroe!
In their Grow Monroe brochure they celebrate, in pages facing one another: (1) Our county is home to successful national food brands, and then (2) Smart “buy local” choices reduce [...]
Posted in Extended Order, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 30th, 2009
I typically enjoy reading articles about local currencies, local farms, buying local, etc. – they are choc full of economic nonsense that make for great teaching. But every once in a while a piece comes along that demonstrates the anti-humanity of the community-minded folks who often support such ideas.
Note that I celebrate the use of [...]
Posted in Extended Order, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 16th, 2009
“Rizzo, what do you think about regulating short-selling?”
Posted in Corporatism, Extended Order, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 14th, 2008
In today’s news Congress is inching ever so closer to providing a $25 billion emergency loan package for bail out the “Big 3″ American auto-manufacturers. This is not the first time they have done it.
Posted in Extended Order on Aug 27th, 2008
Think of the knowledge required to create something like this. Does any one human, or government or religious organization have even the remotest capability of assembling it? And to imagine the potential applications from something like this, and all relying on the personal (selfish) input of millions and millions of internet users. And economic processes [...]
Posted in Extended Order, Standards of Living on Aug 25th, 2008
As the economy seems to be sliding into recession, and pundits claim the walls of the world are crumbling all around us, my experience of the past three days helped me put things into perspective. (particularly in regard to how things compare even to 7 years ago during the last recession)
Posted in Extended Order, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 15th, 2008
So that you can drink 1 calorie of diet soda requires 2,200 calories of fossil energy,” he said. “A glass of water is significantly less.”
Read the story here. And yes, I did go to that school. I’ll just pose this one question. The nutritional content of the machine I am using to write this post [...]
Posted in Corporatism, Extended Order on Apr 8th, 2008
the typical trucker of the “typical” politician? It’s not even a close competition! This interesting article from the Quad-City Times illustrates why.
Truckers appreciate and understand Hayek and Leonard Read:
Hills then removed his wristwatch, using it to explain his point of view: “Every piece of this watch was trucked from somewhere. If you can’t keep up [...]
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