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Warning: There will be spoilers in this post for the plot of Dune, including plot points from the second book that will serve as the basis for the as-yet unmade third movie. The recently released Dune: Part 2 has been a big box-office success, as was the first movie. These two movies were based on .. MORE
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Macroeconomics
During the period following the 2020 Covid pandemic, many countries experienced relatively high inflation. This reflects two factors: 1. All countries were hit by shocks such as Covid-related supply chain disruptions and the Ukraine war. 2. Most countries enacted very extensive stimulus programs, which had similar effects in each case. It was appropriate to allow .. MORE
Liberty
First, Happy Cinco de Mayo. Now to the content. Backpage: A Blueprint for Squelching Speech by Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason, April 29, 2024. Excerpt: From the beginning, this prosecution has been premised on a bogus rationale (authorities yammer on about sex trafficking though none of the defendants are charged with sex trafficking), overreaching in its scope (attempting .. MORE
Regulation
For many people, a world without zoning sounds like a dystopia. Uninformed people often assume that zoning laws protect homeowners from the risk of ugly industrial plants being built right next door. In fact, there were rules against that sort of “public nuisance” even before the first zoning laws were enacted. The actual purpose of .. MORE
Media Watch
American “lawmakers” and “policymakers” are responsible for the one million references to what people must do or may not do that are found in the Code of Federal Regulations. This does not include state and local regulations. The situation is not much different in other Western countries. How could economists be more useful to policymakers, .. MORE
Regulation
Now before you get your torches and pitchforks, hear me out. In many industries, but aviation in particular, a stellar safety record is a competitive advantage. In High Reliability Organizations (HRO), such as airlines, safety is paramount to the success of the organization. After all, a single accident, regardless of how rare an occurrence it .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Warning: This post, like my previous post on the subject, will involve a discussion of plot points and spoilers for the Dune series. If you haven’t seen the movies or read the books and wish to avoid spoilers, feel free to skip this one. I recently discussed what I take from the character arc of .. MORE
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Browse our archive of posts by author last nameAdam Smith
Running the risk of retreading old ground, I wanted to talk one more time about how definitions can be either clarifying or misleading, depending on how they are used. In my first foray into this area, I briefly mentioned Eliezer Yudkowsky’s essay Taboo Your Words, where Yudkowsky suggests people replace words with descriptions of the .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Dogmatism is bad. If someone calls you dogmatic, an ideologue, he implies that you are irrevocably wedded to your ideology and your belief system. You refuse to consider stringent counterarguments and quibbling counterevidence. Instead of taking into account the arguments for and against, say, the support of a subsidy for the—surely incredibly important—chip industry, you, .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Political and moral philosophy are related to economics, and even less stealthily to the older political economy. The economist cannot recommend a government policy without making or accepting a value judgment consistent with who is going to be helped and who will be harmed. At least, he must believe that the policy falls within the .. MORE
Ludwig von Mises The works of Ludwig von Mises and James M. Buchanan reflect the best of the classical liberal intellectual tradition. Given the centenary of the publication of Mises’ Socialism,1 and since 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of the passing of Buchanan, it seems an excellent time to remember their contributions. Both defend methodological .. MORE
A Book Review of Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose World Wars, by Alan Bollard.1 Most economists go through their lives wondering if any of their work has had an effect on the world beyond academe. The seven economists that Alan Bollard writes about in Economists at War probably .. MORE
One main reason why rational expectations macroeconomics, in particular its implication that the Phillips Curve for anticipated changes in money is vertical even in the short run, caught on was the allegation that the incumbent Keynesian tradition had failed to either control or explain high inflation. “Failed to control,” I suppose, is true, though the .. MORE
The story of how I became an economist is its own odyssey: I started college as an English major, intending to hone my creative writing skills, and hopefully to drop out after I wrote the first book of an extremely long, best-selling fantasy epic. The winds of fate blew in other directions and I found .. MORE
You are correct regarding cost; depending upon the state in question, housing an inmate incurs a cost between roughly $32k to $40k per year. The more the prison population grows, the more stressed corrections budgets..
Tarnell S Brown, May 1