Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Education, Voluntary Society on Feb 4th, 2013
Here’s an editorial excerpt from tomorrow’s WSJ: … the message from a December 27-28 memo to local union presidents and board members from Michigan Education Association President Steven Cook, which recommends tactics that unions can use to dilute the impact of the right-to-work law. One bright idea is to renegotiate contracts now to lock teachers […]
Posted in Religion, Voluntary Society on Feb 4th, 2013
Serious people are proposing that the Federal government establish … a Federal Department of Cities. We’re doomed. Like, that’s a great idea. After all, local urban planners have failed to revive their cities after a century of “Local Departments of Cities” have operated. And believe me, spend some time in your city’s library and read […]
Posted in Entrepreneurs, Money, Voluntary Society on Feb 4th, 2013
Aside from the carbon footprint of thousands of people heading to the Nevada desert and literally “burning the man” there may be something actually illegal about Burning Man. For the uninitiated, Burning Man is a weeklong event that attracts over 40,000 very interesting and eclectic people. You can read lots about it here. As I […]
Posted in Voluntary Society on Dec 12th, 2012
As if that was ever seriously in question. Here is Coyote: In Obamacare, it was mandated that health insurance companies spend 85% of premiums on care (vs. marketing, profits, and overhead) or else they owe their customers a refund. So if the same standard was applied to unions, how much of their dues would they have […]
Posted in ethical foundations, Extended Order, Price System, Property Rights, Voluntary Society, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 11th, 2012
A popular sentiment regarding health care is that unlike other goods, we simply cannot tolerate differences in consumption based on income differences. Having a rich guy with a 90-inch plasma TV as compared to a poor guy suffering with a 36″ cathode-ray tube TV is not nearly as intolerable as the idea that if both […]
Posted in Politics, Voluntary Society on Dec 5th, 2012
It turns out that when the people who live in areas where fracking would be a profitable and valuable option, they vote in favor of it. In the local elections that were held just to the south of where we live here in Rochester, candidates who ran on an anti-fracking campaign appear to have been soundly thrashed […]
Posted in Government Gone Wild, Voluntary Society, Welfare State on Dec 4th, 2012
So this is what it now comes down to. We institute a Medicare program in the 1960s that was supposed to cost a fraction of what it does today. When we realize it has bankrupted itself, and possibly the government, we celebrate when its present rate of growth is lower than in the heavily regulated […]
Posted in Education, Taxation, Voluntary Society, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 4th, 2012
Let’s make this short and sweet, but I think it is probably my most impassioned policy preference among the many that I hold. I, too, support raising taxes on “the rich.” I’ll repeat it, I support raising taxes on the rich. And I support that tax at much lower levels of richness than even the President […]
Posted in ethical foundations, Methodology, Voluntary Society, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 29th, 2012
It is almost tautological that people who create value by being particularly successful in markets will be treated as parasites who prey on unwitting customers, exploit unwitting workers and otherwise use mischievous means to get where they are. Indeed, watching any of Michael Moore’s films (which counts as economics in high school economics courses) will […]
Posted in Property Rights, Voluntary Society, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 27th, 2012
There is an element of the left which disdains property in any and all forms. I don’t mean this to characterize many people, though there are antI-property tendencies in most people. And I don’t mean this to imply that we need to or ought to live under so rigid a property rights absolutism that I […]
