Russell Roberts's Blog, page 1582

A total waste of time

And absolutely beautiful. TY to Ken Tremendous.

How Noble was this Experiment?

Uncle Sam can be murderous.  (HT Sam Grove)

Property Rights and Safety

In today's Washington Post, Anne Applebaum rightly argues that levels of destruction and death sparked by natural disasters are determined by more than natural-disasters' physical magnitudes, such as earthquakes' Richter-scale measures.  Political, social, and economic institutions also play huge roles.

And while Applebaum is also right to note that Chileans can, much more reliably than can Haitians, sue negligent builders for damages, she misses a deeper difference between the laws of these t...

Selgin on the Fed

The great scholar of money and banking, George Selgin, explains — in this 53-minute-long talk — why he's not keen on the Fed. It's a great talk.

A Swipe at Common Sense

Here's a letter that I sent this morning to a local DC radio station.

A Second Letter to the Hon. Gene Taylor

26 February 2010

Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Mississippi)

Capitol Hill

Washington, DC

Dear Rep. Taylor:



You propose legislation to remove the U.S. from NAFTA.  Your justification is that since 1993, the year NAFTA was ratified, manufacturing employment in the U.S. is down 29 percent – a fact that prompts you to assert that "NAFTA discourages investment in U.S. manufacturing facilities and accelerates the erosion of our industrial base."

Manufacturing employment is indeed down – and will continue to...

Tragedies Play Out According to Their Internal Logic

Mark Steyn's "Our Own Greek Tragedy" is a masterpiece of prose and wisdom.  To whet your appetite:

We hard-hearted, small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government. Once a chap's enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the...

Prosperity and Safety

Here's a letter that I sent to the Washington Post:

You report that experts give much of the credit for the relatively low death toll of Chile's recent earthquake to "the nation's enactment and enforcement of stringent building codes" – codes that were largely absent in Haiti ("Chile reels in aftermath of quake, emergency workers provide aid," March 1).

With a market-oriented economy, per-capita income in Chile is more than ten times higher than is per-capita income in Haiti.  One result is...

Hayek on management and war

From Tim Harford. Leveraging local knowledge is the single biggest challenge of any hierachical organization.

Hayek on managament and war

From Tim Harford. Leveraging local knowledge is the single biggest challenge of any hierachical organization.