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 […]
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“This is, of course, a very unrealistic assumption … these operations are often extremely costly … to prevent many transactions.” That was him referring to the oft-straw man argument by opponents of Coasean insights about “transactions costs being zero.” Coase obviously knew that. And he obviously was making a different point. The Coase Theorem as […]
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Posted in Property Rights on Dec 10th, 2017
I would prefer to be the only propertyless person in a propertied world rather than the only propertied person in a propertyless world.
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Before I proceed with this post, let’s get this out of the way. Here is a really cute elephant picture: And let me get the following out of the way: even though I understand the economics and arguments about why we may want to allow and perhaps even encourage hunting, I don’t like it at […]
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As with just about every issue on Earth, most folks who are providing commentary on the Standing Rock Reservation protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline don’t have very much real information about the particular conflict. In order to have a reasoned and intelligent conversation about it, one would imagine wanting to learn more about the […]
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Not much to round-up today (well, actually, I am not in a position to round-up much), and some is sobering. Try this one: “We find that poor economic conditions do not drive participation in ISIS. ” Paper here. Read the abstract, intro and conclusion, you will be depressed. I think Trumpists will use this one fiercely […]
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Posted in Property Rights on May 5th, 2015
In my Living Bird magazine this month comes a feature article on the predicament the Greater Sage Grouse finds itself in. These birds are quite spectacular in particular for the dance that the males put on come mating season. It’s not just that male sage grouses strut their stuff, but that the typical “winning” male […]
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I promised last week that we’d have an interesting post on the “problem” of rent. Not sure about the interesting part, but here is the post nonetheless. First, a generic observation about property rights. For any economy to operate, we must have some institution of property rights that is reasonably well functioning. “Well-functioning” actually has […]
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Posted in Property Rights on Nov 19th, 2013
It depends of course. A great application is here. HT to Owen O.
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