Russell Roberts's Blog, page 1533

Why are Crunchy 'Progressives' So Prejudiced Against Non-local Folk?

Here's a letter to the New York Times:

David Sassoon of Harlemville, NY, is a locovore because, in his words, he's "interested in restoring community through the act of eating, rather than swallowing the cold logic of global economics" (Letters, Aug. 28).

I wonder if Mr. Sassoon's refusal to "swallow the cold logic of global economics" goes beyond his dietary choices.  Does he promote community by wearing only clothes made from locally grown fibers and woven at local mills?  When he is ill...

No Resources Occur "Naturally"

Commenting on this blog post, Arrowsmith writes that

It's the peoples' natural resources. It's god-given by god.

I disagree.  Non-human nature supplies a wide variety of atomically and molecularly different things – things that we English speakers now call "petroleum" and "land" and "magnesium" and "helium" and "trees" and "gold" and on and on and on.  But none of these things is naturally a "resource" – that is, none of these things is something made exclusively by nature to be useful to...

How it sounds vs. how it really works

Here is how it sounds, from Whitehouse.gov:

At an event with homeowners and workers who benefited from the program, today in Manchester, New Hampshire, Vice President Joe Biden announced a major Recovery Act milestone – the weatherizing of 200,000 homes under the Recovery Act.  As a result of the Administration's unprecedented commitment to energy efficiency, more than 200,000 low-income families have been able to save money on their energy bills while saving energy, and thousands of people...

Investing Other People's Money

In a letter in today's Wall Street Journal, ZBB Energy president & CEO Eric Apfelbach argues that government subsidies to his firm are justified because his company has a promising future.

Don't buy it.

If ZBB Energy's future really is as bright as Mr. Apfelbach says it is, private investors would commit sufficient funds to keep it growing.  The fact that private investors aren't doing so is strong evidence that ZBB Energy's future is dimmer than Mr. Apfelbach thinks.

It's true, as Mr...

The End Ain't Nigh (for the world nor for predictions of its doom)

Here's a letter to the New York Times:

Reviewing Julian Cribb's book The Coming Famine, Mark Bittman approvingly summarizes Cribb's thesis that "we have passed the peaks for water, fertilizer and land, and that we will all soon be made painfully aware that we have passed it for food, as wealthy nations experience shortages and rising prices, and poorer ones starve.  Much of 'The Coming Famine' builds an argument that we've jumped off a cliff and that global chaos – a tidal wave of people...

DeLong on Hayek on Democracy

DeLong takes Hayek to task for not being a fan of democracy:

I have long been of the opinion that Friedrich Hayek saw more deeply into why the market economy is so productive–the use of knowledge in society, competition as a discovery procedure, et cetera–than neoclassical economics, with its Welfare Theorems that under appropriate conditions the competitive market equilibrium (a) is Pareto-Optimal or (b) maximizes a social welfare function that is the sum of individual utilities in which...

An Economic Yokel

Here's a letter to the Washington Post:

Harold Meyerson can learn a valuable lesson from you.  Yesterday you published an editorial opposing Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's effort to regulate abortion clinics more strictly ("The case against stronger abortion regulations in Virginia").  You pointed out that, because there's no strong evidence that these clinics pose undue dangers to women, it's bad policy to strengthen regulations that nevertheless will likely cause some clinics to...

Hayek on Unreasonable and Reasonable Reason

Cafe reader Walt wrote to me the following: "You and Russell named your blog Cafe Hayek.  So what do you recommend as the single best summary by Hayek of his philosophy?"

Great question.  I'm tempted to say Hayek's 1945 article, first appearing in the American Economic Review, "The Use of Knowledge in Society."  But having just re-read (for two different conferences this summer) Hayek's three-volume work Law, Legislation, and Liberty, I will single out the first chapter of the first volume of...

Some Links

Bob Higgs looks at the yield curve for corporate bonds and finds that, much as in the 1930s, the economy today is sorely afflicted by "regime uncertainty."

Here's a new book that I'm especially eager to read: Empire and Liberty, by Richard Immerman.

During a recent appearance on Judge Andrew Napolitano's Fox Business Network show FreedomWatch, guest Nancy Skinner poked fun at me for arguing in favor of divided government and the resulting greater likelihood of gridlock.  Mark Perry offers some...

Super-naive

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wants to improve public education in the U.S. by summoning into action "supermen and superwomen."

Relying on the intervention of superheroes is indeed one way to go.  A far better way, however, is to introduce consumer choice and competition.  Although much more mundane than the prospect of altruistic action heroes sweeping in to teach our children, giving parents choice (say, through tuition tax credits) will spark the many ordinary men and women...