Russell Roberts's Blog, page 1572

Human Achievement Hour

Forget "Earth Hour."  Join with the Competitive Enterprise Institute to celebrate Human Achievement Hour.

Some Ecomomics and History of Civil Forfeiture

More than a decade ago, Adam Pritchard and I together wrote several articles on the uncivil practice of civil asset forfeiture.  Here's one that's available on line from the Independent Institute.  (Figure 1 is not included in this on-line version – my apologies.)  (I believe especially interesting is the section on the "The Legal Pedigree of Civil Forfeiture.")

Here are the paper's opening paragraphs:

Miguel Alvarez was arrested in October 1985 on a criminal drug charge. His bond was set at...

(Almost) Free at Last!

The Tax Foundation calculates that Tax Freedom Day for the typical American in 2010 is April 9th — the 99th day of the year.

Civil Asset Forfeiture

One of the most outrageous practices of modern governments in the U.S. – at the federal and state levels – is civil asset forfeiture.  This practice is what Leonard Levy called "a license to steal" – and what an unjust and dangerous license it is, as this recent piece by Radley Balko explains.

I'll write more on civil asset forfeiture in follow-up posts.  But I take this opportunity to applaud – loudly – the Institute for Justice's new initiative to put an end to this criminal practice that...

(Non-)Standard History

Some comments on this post wandered into the question of the actions, a century and more ago, of John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil company.  Here's a paper – appearing in the Fall 1999 issue of the Antitrust Bulletin – that I co-wrote with historian Burt Folsom that contains some detailed history of Standard's economic performance.

Some Links

One of today's finest science writers, Matt Ridley, reviews Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion.  Pretty telling stuff.

Bob Higgs, in today's Washington Times, describes the current recovery: "the recovery has been not only 'jobless,' but hollow – like a pinata with no candy inside."

John Stossel highlights yet another set of contradictory government policies.

Protectus, O Betterthanus

Here's a letter sent to the New York Times:

Bob Herbert, with his self-righteousness on full peacock-like display, calls for "the creation of an independent agency with strong powers of enforcement to protect consumers from exploitation by banks, mortgage companies, auto dealers and other purveyors of credit" ("Derailing Help for Consumers," March 27).  The notion that individuals can fend for themselves in competitive markets – for example, by exercising judgment, or by comparing one...

Don't Do Unto Me as I Do Unto You

Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) is upset that a handful of protestors peacefully demonstrated, against his vote for Obamacare, outside of his home.  He says "I understand people are going to criticize my decisions – I'm an elected official – but my wife, my kids, my neighbors are out of bounds."

As my friend Mark LeBar points out to me in a private e-mail (quoted here with Mark's permission): "Interesting that Rep. Driehaus himself doesn't take my wife, my kids, my body, or anything else about me, ...

Arrow on Collective Rationality

One of my former students at GMU Law e-mailed to ask me for a short verbal summary of Kenneth Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.  Arrow himself, on pages 24-25 of his 1974 book The Limits of Organization, provides a good summary:

The root facts here are the incommensurability and incomplete communicability of human wants and values.  George Bernard Shaw long ago observed, "Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  They may have different tastes."  Social good, as in the...

Bank Runs and the Great Depression

Here's a letter sent to the New York Times:

Paul Krugman writes that "we used to have a workable system for avoiding financial crises, resting on a combination of government guarantees and regulation.  On one side, bank deposits were insured, preventing a recurrence of the immense bank runs that were a central cause of the Great Depression" ("Punks and Plutocrats," March 29).  This claim is misleading.

Bank runs don't just happen; they have causes.  In the 1930s those causes were serious...