The failures of progressive politics
12 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in Milton Friedman, politics Tags: Alex Millmow, failure of progressive politics, Friedman in Australia, Joan Robinson, Milton Friedman
Limiting ourselves to democratically elected governments, and there are many of these even in the under-developed countries, progressive ideas seem to fail, and fail again at the ballot box right around the globe as you concede the strong right-wing bias of many governments across the globe.
There was one left-wing federal government in Australia in the last 60 years. That was for three years between 1972 and 1975, and it lost in a landslide. the Whitlam government got in buy a few seats in 1972by beating tired and smelly government that had held office for 23 years
This inability of progressive politics get anywhere is important because every set of ideas needs effective critics to keep it on its toes and stop it from slouching into error and special interest capture.
The Right needs a vibrant Left to keep the Right fit, trim and down to its fighting weight so as to be able to thrash the Left once again at the next election. That is the function of left-wing governments: mind the shop while the right-wing parties are fed and rested and rejuvenated.
Prior to the 1990s, all it took to see progressive ideas off the political and economic stage in a country was a visit or two by Milton Friedman, if some are to be believed. I do not believe that political transformations are as easy as this.
However, some still want to maintain the rage over, for example, Friedman’s April 1975 trip to Australia for 18 days leading to a paradigm shift to neo-liberalism and Hayden’s supposedly monetarist budget shortly after if Alex Millmow is to be believed. Apparently, the spirited, witty Joan Robinson’s visit the same month and her own Monday conference program did not do the trick as an anti-biotic and vaccine.
Progressives will have no role in future political transformations because if you scratch a progressive you will find a left wing populist.
A left-wing populist is too busy telling you who to fear and who to blame to put up policies that are actually robust enough to work and to have worked in the past in a society where people are not perfect in their motivations, they do not have perfect knowledge in a changing world, and there is no offsetting behaviour and unintended consequences when these policies are put in practice.
The deliberate intermingling of civilians and combatants is a breach of the Law of International Armed Conflict
12 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
Piketty’s Class-Warfare Tome: Bad Numbers, Bad Analysis
12 Jul 2014 1 Comment
in economics
Why do statists make so many mistakes with data? Paul Krugman, for instance, has butchered numbers when writing about fiscal policy in nations such as France, Estonia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
But Krugman isn’t alone. We also have Thomas Piketty, who was lionized by the left after publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
Ever since his book was published, various experts have called into question the veracity of Piketty’s numbers. Most recently, here’s some of what Alan Reynolds, my colleague at the Cato Institute, wrote about his data for the Wall Street Journal.
Thomas Piketty…remains a hero on the left, but the honeymoon may be drawing to a sour close as evidence mounts that his numbers don’t add up. …data are so misleading as to be worthless. They attempt to estimate top U.S. wealth shares on the basis of that portion of…
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Sure, there’s a temptation to fix prices, but it isn’t as strong as the urge to put one over on your competitors
12 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, industrial organisation Tags: Bill Allen, cartels
The desire to collude and thereby to raise prices must be distinguished from the ability to do so.
Not only is it difficult for rival companies to agree on the production cuts each must make in order to force up price, but it is difficult to prevent each company from undercutting the others in order to increase its sales. It is unlikely that, without–and sometimes even with–government support, firms will long curb their rivalry–even in industries with high levels of concentration…
It is not easy to organize a cartel, melding highly autonomous organizations into a monopolistic facsimile. There are markets to divide, prices to set, and production quotas to assign.
Successful operation is even harder than initial organization. Members must remain persuaded that they enjoy net benefits from collusion compared to acting as independent agents.
The more profitable the collusive efforts, the greater the incentive for outsiders to seek admission or to organize their own club or individually to compete.
The more numerous the participants and the more lucrative the tightening of the screws on consumers, the greater the temptation for individual members to cheat–and the greater the fear of each that some other member will cheat.
Long-term survival of the cartel has two fundamental requirements: first, cheating by a member on the stipulated prices, outputs and markets must be detectable; second, detected cheating must be adequately punishable without leading to a break-up of the cartel.
Bill Allen
Conspiracy Theories Debunked: The Twin Towers and Building #7 fell because of explosives placed in advance of 9/11
12 Jul 2014 1 Comment
in politics - USA Tags: 9/11, conspiracy theories
The clip shows the lack of the sounds of the explosions and flashes that occur with planned demolitions.
Vox Millennials
12 Jul 2014 1 Comment
in economics, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: Millennials, public opinion
- 73 percent of millennials favor allowing private accounts for Social Security; 51 percent favor private accounts even it means cutting Social Security benefits for current and future retirees because 53 percent of millennials say Social Security is unlikely to exist when they retire
- 64 percent of millennials say cutting government spending by 5 percent would help the economy
- 59 percent say cutting taxes would help the economy
- 57 percent prefer a smaller government providing fewer services with low taxes, while 41 percent prefer a larger government providing more services with high taxes
- 57 percent want a society where wealth is distributed according to achievement
- 55 percent say reducing regulations would help the economy
- 53 percent say reducing the size of government would help the economy
- 74 percent of millennials say government has a responsibility to guarantee every citizen has a place to sleep and enough to eat
HT: reason.com
Institutional Failure and the Tragedy of Climate Change
12 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in economics
I am a Libertarian. I believe that market processes based on secure property rights and competitive ‘exit’ provide the best hope of discovering ‘solutions’ to the vast majority of socio-economic problems including environmental ones. Profit-driven capitalism and its desire to ‘make people pay’ for goods they were previously consuming ‘for free’ provides the key to solving most environmental dilemmas – it is the embodiment of the ‘polluter pays principle’. Seen through this lens, there are many environmental assets currently held under ‘open-access’ conditions or subject to government ownership and/or regulation that could and should be ‘privatised’ – whether at the level of individuals or companies, or as suggested by Elinor Ostrom at the level of cooperatives and mutual associations. These include land-based assets such as forests, minerals, and wildlife, which can be subject to various ‘fencing’ technologies; stationary resources such as oyster beds; and water-based assets such as rivers and…
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Fighting the World’s Biggest Environmental Problem – With Fossil Fuels | Bjorn Lomborg
12 Jul 2014 2 Comments
in development economics, environmental economics Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, indoor pollution
The golden thread running through British justice
11 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: British justice, common law, presumption of innocence, rule of law
Managerial Econ: What happened when Tennessee kicked 170,000 out of medicaid?
11 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, labour economics Tags: medicaid, welfare traps
There was an immediate increase in job search behaviour and a steady rise in employment and health insurance coverage following the disenrollment. These results suggest a significant degree of employment lock: workers employed primarily in order to secure private health insurance coverage
via Managerial Econ: What happened when Tennessee kicked 170,000 out of medicaid?.
Putting Economic Inequality in Perspective
11 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in economics
Many people are concerned about income and wealth inequality. I am not concerned about economic inequality as such; I care about absolute poverty (how many people live in misery because of wretched physical conditions), and I care about a broad distribution of opportunity (everyone’s having a “fair shot” at economic success), but I don’t see it as a problem if someone earns vastly more money than someone else, just as I don’t see it as a problem that poorer people tend to have more leisure time than richer people. Only those consumed with envy could see economic (or leisure!) inequality simpliciter as a problem, right?
But I actually don’t think people on the left care about economic inequality or leisure inequality or inequality of looks or appealing personalities or anything else of value, in themselves, either. They care about economic inequality because they think it has negative consequences, particularly…
View original post 935 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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