Month: May 2011
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How Corporations Became People
Most people don’t know this fascinating and appalling little bit of legal history. I first learned about it back in 2003, from my friend and colleague Ted Nace’s Gangs of America. Accounts of it are all over the web, but I’ll try to give you the short story here. In casual discussions from the bench prior…
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Libertarianism is Just an Instance of the Naturalistic Fallacy. Neoclassical Economics is its Enabler.
If everything is left to take its natural course — without intervention by humans — everything will be just peachy. Twirl finger in cheek. The monumental constructs of neoclassical economics are a tissue of circular definitions and self-contradictions (as demonstrated by its own practitioners, on its own terms) assembled to provide post hoc rationalizations for…
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Why Libertarians Should Love Government
Three assumptions: 1. We want to maximize aggregate individual liberty. Person A has 5 zlots of liberty, Person B has 12 zlots of liberty, etc. Add them up: sum(people:liberty). 2. Individual liberty is a function of wealth. If you have more money you have more liberty to do what you want day to day, year…
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Government Gets the Lead Out, Crime Plummets
No, this is not about lead-footed Starsky and Hutch-style car chases by law enforcement. Rather, it’s about damned convincing evidence that unleaded gasoline (introduced in the U.S. in the 70s) is largely responsible for the huge decline in crime rates since the early 90s. (Update: it continues.) Even more convincing than (but not precluding) Levitt’s Roe…
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Why We Have Such a Wacko Health Insurance System
Conservatives love to point out that our employer-based health insurance system is a result of wage controls under FDR. Since employers weren’t able to attract workers with higher wages, they started offering benefits instead — notably health insurance. I recently read Frank Freidel’s biography of FDR, and the whole story became clear. The post-Pearl Harbor…
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Economists Vote for Democrats
Those who perceive economists as being clear-eyed Sowellian realists, the benchmarks of “objective” (or objectivist) rationality, should — to be consistent with their own beliefs and admonitions — probably pay more attention to economists’ political choices, as revealed here in a survey of economists: The “liberalism” score here refers to what libertarians like to call…
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Why Don’t Shareholders Control Corporations?
I’ve always been at a loss to understand why big shareholders don’t boss around corporate management more. The shareholders are supposed to be the owners and ultimate authorities, right? Yes, the rules of corporate voting make it very difficult and expensive for even big shareholders to challenge management (they have to fund their own mail…
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If you reject your gay child, there’s a 68% chance (s)he will attempt suicide
I’m completely, utterly at a loss as to how any person, any parent, could care that much about perceiving themselves as being morally correct. The visual display of quantitative information in a funhouse mirror « The Reality-Based Community. Related posts: Yeah, Right: Government Regulation Is the Problem What’s Wrong with this Picture? Business Roundtable Proposes…
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Liberals, Conservatives, and Libertarians: Who’s More Economically Clueless?
Some of my readers may have seen the Zogby-based study a year or so ago suggesting that liberals are economic boneheads compared to conservatives. As it turns out — according to the researchers who did that study — not so much, really: “One year ago, we reported the results of a 2008 Zogby survey that purported…
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Staunch Conservatives Hate Trade, Prefer Chest-Thumping
Section 9: Foreign Policy and National Security | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Related posts: Demilitarize U.S. Foreign Policy: Mullen Agrees with Gates (and Me) A Lean, Mean Fighting Machine: Radical Plan for Cutting the Defense Budget and Reconfiguring the U.S. Military It’s Unanimous: Cut Spending! (As long as…
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Another of Those Reagan Inflection Points…
Note: ’95–’01. Exchange rates: Forty years of hurt | The Economist. Related posts: The So-Called Credit Crunch, Again Some More Tax the Rich! And make us all richer? U.S. Versus Europe: Who’s Winning Now? Am I Channelling David Stockman, or Is He Channelling Me? Repeat After Me: Low Taxes (on Rich People)…
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Proofiness!
I love this usage. Lies, damn lies, and… Proofiness – Charles Seife – NYTimes.com. HT: Kitty Related posts: David Frum Savages Charles Murray — And Rightly So Koch Brother Lures Hayek to America With…Social Security! Religious “Indoctrination”? Conservatives Love to Point Out that Personal Incentives Matter Must. Make. Gubmint. Smaller.
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The (de)merits of meritocracy
…elite education is structured not only to replicate the status quo but to find a way to collect the best minds across society and dedicate them to the replication of that status quo. … the best working-class minds … would be scooped up by the meritocracy and become the foot soldiers for management… If you view entrepreneurial…
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No Kidding: Loan Demand, Not Credit, Is the Problem
Alert the media. William Dunkelburg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) since 1971, tells us what we already know: If lending is picking up, it is because customers are showing up and there is a reason to invest and hire. The reverse doesn’t work – you can’t force feed the credit…
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It’s About the Money, Stupid, Not Principles
Dean Baker gets it totally right, as usual: the Ryan plan will transfer tens of trillions of dollars from the middle class to the insurance and health care industries The Republicans are not about small government; Reagan and both Bushes made it larger (and vastly expanded the national debt). Under the vast George dub expansion,…