Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Corporatism, Environment, Public Choice on Jun 8th, 2012
At the southern end of the prettiest of the Finger Lakes, Canandaigua Lake, sits the quaint little town of Naples. It is home to the Naples Grape Festival (a huge winery is in town, and it’s in the middle of NYS’s underestimated wine country) and also one of my favorite local places to hike, particularly […]
Posted in Public Choice on Jun 3rd, 2012
From my colleague Steve Landsburg’s Armchair Economist: In the United States farmers are routinely paid to leave land uncultivated, whereas nobody would think of paying motel operators to leave rooms vacant.
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Politics, Property Rights, Public Choice, You Can't Have it Both Ways on May 25th, 2012
As you surely know, I believe that a strong system of property rights protections is the foundation of a prosperous and free society. Property rights emerge from human custom when there is an economic incentive for them to be defined and defended. Harold Demsetz has a great article discussing this process, but it is not […]
Posted in Education, Politics, Public Choice on Dec 12th, 2011
Remember that we spent nearly $800 billion to arguably get something ranging between $0 and $1 trillion of additional economic stimulus? Remember that even under the most optimistic of cases, this stimulus happened by raising taxes on Americans (in the future of course). Remember that even under the most optimistic of cases, this stimulus is […]
Posted in Public Choice, Regulation on Nov 7th, 2011
Here is an interesting new paper which demonstrates that lobbying at both the extensive and intensive margins is almost exclusively determined by firm size. … Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly persistent over time. … we […]
Posted in Politics, Public Choice on Aug 30th, 2011
Warren Meyer helps answer our dear technocrats’ question: In an idealized Platonic technocratic world that many Lefists still insist on believing we actually live in, trustworthy and knowledgeable agents of the state would work up such a list and we could fund it, happy we have made a good financial decision. But we don’t live in that world, as […]
Posted in Public Choice, Religion on Aug 22nd, 2011
Growing up Catholic, we did not eat meat on Fridays during Lent, and we tried to not eat it on Fridays during the rest of the year as well. Like many other parts of my catholicism, I was never told why, or if I was told why, I certainly did not remember it. Thanks to […]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Economic Illiteracy, Property Rights, Public Choice on Jan 1st, 2008
May the statists, stasists, technocrats, planners, idealists of all stripes consider the following during 2008 and beyond. I will bear the burden of proof. Before advocating to grant a favored group or individual special privileges, or before imposing taxes and regulations on individuals or unfavored groups, I will recognize that the natural state of humans […]
Posted in History, Politics, Public Choice on Aug 2nd, 2007
Here’s more from Keynes: It is the method of modern statesman to talk as much folly as the public demand and to practise no more of it than what is compatible with what they have said, trusting that such folly in action as must wait on folly in word will soon disclose itself as such, and […]
Posted in Environment, Public Choice, Regulation, Standards of Living on Jun 25th, 2007
… and hits one to the warning track. Writing in Foreign Affairs, the typically excellent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Surowiecki has a nice review of Indur Goklany’s new book on the Improving State of the World. However, he slips into all too easy dogmatic territory with this critique: The environmental transition hypothesis is the most striking example of this view, […]
