Utopia, you are standing in it!

Prorogation is a quintessentially political power, sometimes deployed toward some of the most brazen of political ends. Charles II prorogued Parliament several times to prevent discussion of the Exclusion Bill. John Major (in)famously prorogued Parliament in order to prevent a report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards on the cash-for-questions scandal from being tabled before the 1997 general election. In 2003, the Canadian Parliament was prorogued to delay the tabling of a report by the Auditor-General into a major sponsorship scandal. In 2011, the New South Wales Parliament was prorogued in order to prevent the production of State papers pursuant to Standing Orders of the Legislative Council. Numerous other examples abound (see Gerard Horgan, “Partisan-Motivated Prorogation and The Westminster Model” (2014) 52 Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 455-472; “Prorogation as a Tool of the Executive in Intercameral Conflict” (2014) 29 Australasian Parliamentary Review 159-76). Oh, if only the loyal opposition –…

(Abraham Lincoln)

The French writer, Alexis de Tocqueville described America as enduring a “quadrennial crisis” every four years as it held its presidential elections.  The 1860 election was an exception because the artificial passions that were easily stoked reached unheard of levels.  de Tocqueville remarked that “a self-absorbed president, catering to the ‘worst caprices’ of his supporters, could easily distract their attention from plodding matters of governance, and whip their enthusiasm into a frenzy, especially if he divided his supporters and his critics into hostile camps.”  He spoke of “feverish obsessions” and warned “the potential for lasting damage was always lurking.” As the ominous warnings came to fruition in the Civil War in 1861, today we stand on another ominous precipice as the 2020 election approaches.  de Tocqueville’s view of America is as plausible today as it was in the 19^th century as even a pandemic and how to…

There may not be many reasons for optimism about the economic outlook, but one is the relative flexibility of the UK labour market. This should help unemployment to fall back and activity to recover more quickly – provided the government gets out of the way.

There is no doubt that many jobs are being lost as a result of the coronavirus crisis. The data over the next few months will look horrible. My own guesstimate is that the unemployment rate will jump to around 8%. That would be bad enough, but others are even more pessimistic. The OBR’s first attempt at a ‘coronavirus reference scenario’, published in April, predicted a surge to 10% – an increase of more than 2 million in the number of people without work.

However, the labour market did at least enter the crisis in good shape. The employment rate was a record high…

We are in uncharted waters in comparative terms. Israel held three election cycles within 12 months to end the political stalemate that prevented the formation of a government until recently. One of the thorny issues was the allegations of serious corruption against Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted and suspected of committing serious offences involving fraud, bribery, and breach of trust.

Public law as well as moral considerations should have led Netanyahu to resign and quit public life until the end of his trial. Yet, he refuses to do so, arguing that he is not only innocent but also enjoys a mandate from the public to continue in office. Israel has adopted a parliamentary system following the British model. In a parliamentary system, no executive is elected directly. Rather, the Israeli public votes for political parties, which, in turn, hold a proportional number of seats in…

The Single and Separate Sex Exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 are the bit of UK law which allows single sex services. They are tucked away in Schedule 3, Part 7, Paragraphs 26 and 27 and it is sometimes said they are ‘rarely used’, or that service providers have to choose to use them in exceptional circumstances. This is a myth and a misunderstanding.

Single sex spaces, such as women’s and men’s changing rooms, toilets, dormitories, hospital wards, and women’s refuges are not mountains or rivers to be explored. They are created through plans, policies and rules – you create a single sex space by having a policy that a service is only open to people of one sex (and in some cases their accompanying small children). In other word you discriminate. You communicate that discriminatory policy with words and signs.

When you do that you are using the single…

Memorandum on revolutionizing the Islamic territories of our enemies (Title of a paper written in October 1914 by German archaeologist and Orientalist Max von Oppenheim which argued for enlisting the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to call on the world’s Muslims to engage in a Holy War or jihad against the colonial powers, France and Great Britain)

This is a colourful and entertaining book about Germany’s military and diplomatic involvement with the Ottoman Empire during the Great War of 1914-18.

Kaiser Wilhelm’s enthusiasm for Islam

The first 80 pages or so provide background, describing Kaiser Wilhelm’s first state visit to Turkey in 1889 when he met the reigning Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, and his second visit in 1898 when Wilhelm grandiosely rode into Jerusalem through a breach specially made in its walls.

And they detail the very slow progress made on an ambitious commercial scheme to extend the railway line…

If you’re looking for the reason why wind power has never worked and never will? Here it is: THE WEATHER.

If you’re looking to wreck a grid and send power prices into orbit, then pin your power hopes to mother nature’s whims. South Australia did; it suffers the world’s highest retail power prices and became the butt of international jokes for a series of weather-related mass blackouts.

Looking for an example? Take a scan of what’s depicted above.

That’s the ‘performance’ of Australia’s wind power fleet during April – courtesy of Aneroid Energy

Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia its 6,960 MW of capacity routinely delivers just a trickle of that.

Collapses of over 3,000 MW or more that occur over the space of a couple of hours are routine, as are rapid surges of equal magnitude…

I was going to attempt to articulate today where I agreed and disagreed with both the New Zealand Initiative’s Bryce Wilkinson and Social Credit on money, banking, fiscal policy etc (Social Credit having taken out a half page advert in Saturday’s Herald to attempt to rebut Bryce’s recent Herald op-ed, itself drawing on a longer recent Initiative publication).  Perhaps tomorrow.

But in this morning’s papers I saw reference to a new plan (and/or critique of other plans) for policy in responding to the economic challenges of Covid, under the joint authorship of former Minister of Finance Roger Douglas and Auckland University economics professor Robert MacCulloch.  MacCulloch kindly sent me a copy of the ten page underlying paper which goes under the title “In a New World, New Thinking is Required: Why Prioritization of Resources is Crucial to New Zealand’s Economic Recovery in the Wake of Covid-19”.  MacCulloch’s Herald op-ed…

Dr. Boettke finishes his conversation with us from last time. We discuss the personal bonds between many GMU economics faculty. We talk about Hayek and his influence on economists. Are GMU economics professors ideologically biased? Dr. Boettke gives his answer. We also talk about college basketball. More great conversation with Dr. Boettke — we promise you’ll learn something you didn’t know before and laugh along the way. Marcus Shera cohosts.

Loose, Vague, and Indeterminate is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, RadioPublic, PocketCasts, and Breaker. You can listen and catch up on old episodes on any of those platforms in addition to our Anchor page at go.gmu.edu/LVI.

We have been increasingly troubled by the abuse of executive power that inevitably stems from democratic governments introducing emergency measures in the name of public safety to protect scared citizens.

Our musings led us to Austria (where a bloke called Adolf Hitler was born) and an observation on Austria’s Parliamentary website on the necessity for the separation of powers:

History has time and again shown that unlimited power in the hands of one person or group in most cases means that others are suppressed or their powers curtailed. The separation of powers in a democracy is to prevent abuse of power and to safeguard freedom for all.   

More to the point of what has happening around the world in recent months, we found this:

As the coronavirus pandemic has spread to all regions of the world, we have begun to see governments respond predictably to the threat by agitating…

This week is Parliament Week, a programme of events and activities that connects people across the UK with Parliament and democracy. To mark it, every day this week we are publishing a blog on ‘unlikely parliamentarians’  – the men and women across history who became parliamentarians only unexpectedly.

In today’s blog, Dr Paul Hunneyball of the Lords 1603-29 section discusses a group of parliamentarians unlikely because of their religion – Catholics in the early Stuart period – and asks whether they were in fact able to act freely…

The religious settlement at the start of Elizabeth I’s reign saw the return of Anglican Protestantism as the official faith of England and Wales, and, by definition, the rejection of Catholicism. Elizabeth famously had no wish to ‘open windows into men’s souls’, but she did expect public conformity to the new patterns of worship. Those who refused to comply could…

Dr. Peter Boettke joins the podcast to talk about the history of GMU economics. He discusses his days as an undergraduate student at Grove City College and as a graduate student here at GMU. We learn who the major professors were back then and how the campus has grown to its present size. We talk college basketball and the Nobel Prize. We also learn who told Dr. Boettke to “wear a proper pair of trousers.” This episode is full of fun stories from Dr. Boettke’s life in economics, and it’s only Part 1. Stay tuned for Part 2 next Friday. Marcus Shera cohosts.

Loose, Vague, and Indeterminate is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, RadioPublic, PocketCasts, and Breaker. You can listen and catch up on old episodes on any of those platforms in addition to our Anchor page at go.gmu.edu/LVI.

A Nobel Prize for applied theory – now this something I can get behind! Jean Tirole’s prize announcement credits him for his work on market power and regulation, and there is no question that he is among the leaders, if not the world leader, in the application of mechanism design theory to industrial organization; indeed, the idea of doing IO in the absence of this theoretical toolbox seems so strange to me that it’s hard to imagine anyone had ever done it! Economics is sometimes defined by a core principle that agents – people or firms – respond to incentives. Incentives are endogenous; how my bank or my payment processor or my lawyer wants to act depends on how other banks or other processors or other prosecutors act. Regulation is therefore a game. Optimal regulation is therefore a problem of mechanism design, and we now have mathematical tools that…

The Nobel Prize in Economics was given yesterday to two wonderful theorists, Bengt Holmstrom and Oliver Hart. I wrote a day ago about Holmstrom’s contributions, many of which are simply foundational to modern mechanism design and its applications. Oliver Hart’s contribution is more subtle and hence more of a challenge to describe to a nonspecialist; I am sure of this because no concept gives my undergraduate students more headaches than Hart’s “residual control right” theory of the firm. Even stranger, much of Hart’s recent work repudiates the importance of his most famous articles, a point that appears to have been entirely lost on every newspaper discussion of Hart that I’ve seen (including otherwise very nice discussions like Applebaum’s in the New York Times). A major reason he has changed his beliefs, and his research agenda, so radically is not simply the whims of age or the pressures of politics, but…