Thomas Lumley wrote a great post today on the unavoidably brutal arithmetic of rationing the budget of PHARAC – the New Zealand government agency that buys drugs for the public health system.
Would you spend $200,000 per drug for two thousand melanoma cancer patients. It doesn’t work 66% of the time, but helps 34% of patients and cures 6% of patients.
The trick in the tail is funding the drug would cost half the entire budget of PHAMRAC.
Many more wonder drugs, more correctly, semi-wonder drugs coming down the pipe, so these life or death decisions will not get any fewer in a world of scarcity.
In 1979, Gordon Tullock wrote a 1979 New York Law Review book about avoiding difficult choices. As per Gordon Tullock, he barely mentioned the books are mainly discussed as a stream of consciousness his reactions to the book. His review was a review of a book by Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt called Tragic Choices which was about the rationing: the allocation of kidney dialysis machines (a “good”), military service in wartime (a “bad”), and entitlements to have children (a mixed blessing). Tullock argued that we make a decision about:
how to allocate resources,
how to distribute the resources, and
how to think about the previous two choices.
People do not want to face up to the fact resources are scarce and they face limits on their powers.
To reduce the personal distress of making these tragic choices, Tullock observed that people often allocate and distribute resources in a different way so as to better conceal from themselves the unhappy choices they had to make even if this means the recipients of these choices are worse off and more lives are lost than if more open and honest choices about there are can only be so much that can be done.
The increasing number of both wonder drugs and semi-wonder drugs that cost the earth will increase the importance of facing up to difficult choices more honestly than in the past.
Some poor bugger died shortly after escaping from the Australian immigration detention facility on Christmas Island a few days ago. I wonder where he was intending to escape?
Christmas Island is in the middle of the Indian Ocean and the only way off is by the airport. He had nowhere to run. There would be lucky to be 2000 people living on the small island of Christmas Island so he would stand out very quickly.
Many years ago, a fight broke out one breakfast time between the different nationalities regarding the management of the canteen at the Port Hedland immigration detention facility. They resolved the differences about this largely self-managed canteen where each cooked their own foods by deciding to stage a spontaneous escape.
As they marched down the road, free at last, the manager of the facility caught up with them. He asked them where were they going? He said it already telephoned Greyhound buses and told them not to sell them bus tickets. Perth is 1300 km away from Port Hedland. The manager of the facility suggested they all come back to settle things over a cuppa as it was warming up as noon was approaching.
Yeah, I mean, we really are an international outlier in the sense that we don’t really tax wealth in any form. We don’t tax capital gains except now in very limited circumstances. We don’t tax inheritances. We don’t tax gifts. We don’t tax wealth in general, and this is a complicated area. In a lot of countries inheritance taxes are falling out of fashion. They get called death taxes and that kind of thing. But in response to that, what a lot of people are talking about are things like kind of a lifetime capital receipts tax. So rather than taxing the giver, you tax the recipient, and you say, ‘Look, over your lifetime, you can inherit, say, $200,000 tax free,’ so that your parents can pass on a bit to you.
That means an inheritance tax on the family home given current house prices in Auckland and Wellington and small families. I can’t see the Labour Party or even the Greens following him in on that one if they want to win office ever again.
My 1,200 word backgrounder on wealth inequality in NZ via @PolicyObsAUT. It's even greater than income inequality. http://t.co/zS68mbX1uG
Currently, the most recent publicly available information on wealth inequality in New Zealand comes from the 2004 round of the Survey of Family, Income and Employment, known as Sofie… Because wealthy people often refuse to take part in surveys such as Sofie, such data tends to underestimate how much of the pie is owned by the wealthiest people and overstate the share of everyone else. But it is still the best data we have.
Rashbrooke used this 2004 survey to draw a number of conclusions about the distribution of wealth in New Zealand:
The wealthiest tenth of individuals (including that wealthiest one per cent) had 52 per cent of all assets. In contrast, the poorest half of the country had just five per cent of all wealth. Some 190,000 people had negative net worth (more debts than assets), owing $4.7 billion between them.
Did Rashbrooke make his case that there is 52% of all assets in New Zealand are held by the wealthiest 10%? He did not because his definition wealth is too incomplete. Because of that, his focus on inheritance taxes and wealth taxes as solutions are equally poorly made. Any definition of wealth including that by Rashbrooke that doesn’t include human capital or acknowledge the limitations of not including human capital isn’t worth serious attention in public policy circles.
Rashbrooke ignores 70% of the capital, the wealth in any economy. Gary Becker’s estimate that human capital is 70% of all capital in the US economy travels well to New Zealand as shown in the chart below.
Source: Lˆe Thi. Vˆan Tr`ınh, Estimating the monetary value of the stock of human capital for New Zealand, University of Canterbury PhD thesis (September 2006), Table 4.8: Human and physical capital stocks.
Over 70% of all capital in New Zealand is human capital. That cannot be ignored in any discussion of a widening wealth gap or in a case for inheritance and wealth taxes.
Dollar value estimates were available to Rashbrooke of human and physical capital of the same vintage as his wealth data from an excellent New Zealand PhD thesis by Lˆe Thi. Vˆan Tr`ınh. Her estimates of the aggregate dollar value of New Zealand physical and human capital are charted below. These estimates show that physical capital doubled between 1981 and 2001 but New Zealand human capital quadrupled.
Source: Lˆe Thi. Vˆan Tr`ınh, Estimating the monetary value of the stock of human capital for New Zealand, University of Canterbury PhD thesis (September 2006), Table 4.8: Human and physical capital stocks.
The rich are clearly not getting richer and the poor getting poorer and some people have no wealth at all. Human capital is the dominant form of capital in New Zealand and is growing rapidly. Any discussion of wealth does not include estimates of human capital or acknowledge the limitations of not having those estimates, which are easily available, should not be considered in public policy debates on inequality.
Source: Lˆe Thi. Vˆan Tr`ınh, Estimating the monetary value of the stock of human capital for New Zealand, University of Canterbury PhD thesis (September 2006).
The only group in New Zealand that doesn’t have more human capital in 2001 than in 1981 were the unskilled as the chart above shows. This was because their numbers dropped by one-third as a share of the working age population.
Source: Lˆe Thi. Vˆan Tr`ınh, Estimating the monetary value of the stock of human capital for New Zealand, University of Canterbury PhD thesis (September 2006), table 3.1.
I don’t think a solution to skills gaps is to increases taxes on those who investing in human capital. But that is the logic of Rashbrooke. When someone gets ahead, drag them back down rather than lift everybody up.
The reason for the lack of growth in the dollar value of unskilled human capital is the massive increase in investment in higher education in New Zealand. More New Zealanders go to university, Polytech or other diploma education. Working class New Zealanders are taking the advice of that unrepentant Stalinist but brilliant screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
Few labour market statistics have any meaning unless broken down by gender. Whenever you don’t see statistics with a gender breakdown, the first question for any sort of credible audience is “Gender analysis! Gender analysis! Where is your gender analysis?”
To paint pre-1984 New Zealand, pre-neoliberal New Zealand as an egalitarian paradise, Rashbrooke had to ignore two thirds of the population. He brushed over the inequalities they suffered in the heavily regulated, heavily taxed economy so looked upon with dewy eyes by the left of politics:
“New Zealand up until the 1980s was fairly egalitarian, apart from Maori and women, our increasing income gap started in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” says Rashbrooke. “These young club members are the first generation to grow up in a New Zealand really starkly divided by income”.
Racism and patriarchy can sit comfortably with a fairly egalitarian society if you are to believe a leading spokesman of the Left. I disagree as would John Rawls with this boy’s own view of trends in New Zealand inequality. Boy’s own because trends in gender inequality are not discussed. No weight is given to the closing of the gender pay gap, a massive increase in female employment and women out-numbering male university new graduates for well over a decade.
Perry (2014) reviews the poverty and inequality data in New Zealand every year for the Ministry of Social Development. He concluded that:
Overall, there is no evidence of any sustained rise or fall in inequality in the last two decades. The level of household disposable income inequality in New Zealand is a little above the OECD median. The share of total income received by the top 1% of individuals is at the low end of the OECD rankings.
As there is no evidence of any sustained rise or fall on inequality New Zealand for the last 20 years, the case for inheritance and wealth taxes simply doesn’t get out of the box.
That case for inheritance and wealth taxes by Max Rashbrooke doesn’t deserve to get into the box to go under starter’s orders if that analysis doesn’t include an analysis of human capital and a gender analysis. For example, male human capital increased by 31% in New Zealand between 1981 and 2001. Over the same period, female human capital increased by 112%. This not insignificant achievement in gender empowerment by capitalism and freedom bears celebration in any discussion of inequality.
Source: Lˆe Thi. Vˆan Tr`ınh, Estimating the monetary value of the stock of human capital for New Zealand, University of Canterbury PhD thesis (September 2006).
The only group of women for whom the gender pay gap has not all but disappeared over the last 30 years are the top 10% of women. This is the very group that Max Rashbrooke wants to tax heavily to prevent them accumulating and inheriting wealth.
The reason for those taxes on wealth and inheritances on successful women in the professions and business is growth in inequality but there is little to no evidence of that in New Zealand for at least 20 years.
The case of wealth and inheritance taxes as a way of coping with inequality is just not keeping up with recent trends in superstar wealth. New Zealand top 1% is lazy when compared to their more entrepreneurial American brothers.
Our local top 1% earns the same share of total income as 30 years ago or even 60 years ago. Any growth in wealth gaps in New Zealand isn’t showing up in top incomes shares.
As for overseas, Piketty and Saez (2003) concluded that a substantial fraction of the rise in top incomes was due to surging top wage incomes. These world-renowned social economists concluded that top executives (the ‘working rich‘) replaced top capital owners (the ‘rentiers’) at the top of the income hierarchy in the USA and Canada. The largest portion of the top incomes comes from earning wages. Top wage earners work for their living founding, building and/or directing successful businesses.
Labour will free up density and height controls to allow more medium density housing and reform the use of urban growth boundaries so they don’t drive up section costs. This will curb land bankers and speculators.
Labour has struck at the heart of two major constraints on urban land supply New Zealand: restrictions on density and height of new developments, and much more importantly, the use of urban growth boundaries to drive up land prices. These proposed regulatory reforms could not be more welcome.
The other new element is changing the way we fund infrastructure for new developments. Currently those costs are either subsidised by the ratepayer or passed by the developer onto the price tag of a new home. That makes houses much more expensive. It also means they are paid off through mortgages at expensive bank interest rates.
Our new policy will see infrastructure funded by local government bonds, paid off over the lifetime of the asset through a targeted rate on the properties in the new development. This will substantially reduce the cost of new housing.
The reforms proposed by Labour to local government financing will reduce the financial burden on existing ratepayers of the local government funded infrastructure necessary to support new land developments.
These Labour Party reforms are fantastic because the main party on the left-wing of New Zealand politics has faced up to restricted land supply as a key reason behind housing unaffordability. I wonder what the New Zealand Greens will think of these major new reforms.
A few more sensible economic and fiscal policy announcements such as those today by the New Zealand Labour Party and it will start looking like a credible alternative government.
The Greens’ spokesmen refer to the biggest drawback of electric cars. Right now, it takes hours to recharge an electric vehicle. With generous investment by the long-suffering taxpayer, this recharging period will still be reduced to a still unacceptable 30 minutes.
Range anxiety is the biggest drawback of the electric car unless you’re willing to buy a very expensive Tesla. Even with a Tesla, because of the amount of time it takes to recharge even when a short is 30 minutes, the effective range is much less than the maximum range.
The motorist will have to build a larger buffer into their range of their batteries because of the time it takes to recharge. It takes a couple of minutes to fill my tank. Half an hour out of my day is still unsatisfactory, much less the current hopeless several hours.
Rather than fill up when you near empty, the green motorist will have to recharge when say a quarter empty or even half empty. The buffer must be larger than for a conventional car because the motorist does not necessarily always have time spare in the day to fill up.
With a conventional car, you can fill up at any time. With an electric car, you must plan in your week to ensure you have that half hours spare when you won’t need your car, can retrieve it from the recharging station with convenience and anticipate no urgent use of the car will arise.
In an quirk, the Greens want to increase electric car ownership by subsidising alternatives to car ownership for commuting purposes. People have fewer reasons to buy a car, much less an expensive sort of status symbol car, if they can commute for less because their employer gave them a free bus pass to take advantage of a fringe benefits tax concession.
Electric cars are a poor investment to begin with and what’s the point of shelling out all that cash if you don’t even drive it much? What more, electric buses are to be phased out in Wellington soon you will be commuting in a diesel bus to work courtesy of a free bus pass supported by the Greens.
Psychopath and sociopath are popular psychology terms to describe violent monsters born of our worst nightmares. Think Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs (1991), Norman Bates in Psycho (1960) and Annie Wilkes in Misery (1990). In making these characters famous, popular culture has also burned the words used to describe them into our collective consciousness.
Most of us, fortunately, will never meet a Hannibal Lecter, but psychopaths and sociopaths certainly do exist. And they hide among us. Sometimes as the most successful people in society because they’re often ruthless, callous and superficially charming, while having little or no regard for the feelings or needs of others.
These are known as “successful” psychopaths, as they have a tendency to perform premeditated crimes with calculated risk. Or they may manipulate someone else into breaking the law, while keeping themselves safely at a distance. They’re master manipulators of other peoples’ feelings, but are unable to experience emotions themselves.
Sound like someone you know? Well, heads up. You do know one; at least one. Prevalence rates come in somewhere between 0.2% and 3.3% of the population.
If you’re worried about yourself, you can take a quiz to find out, but before you click on that link let me save you some time: you’re not a psychopath or sociopath. If you were, you probably wouldn’t be interested in taking that personality test.
You just wouldn’t be that self-aware or concerned about your character flaws. That’s why both psychopathy and sociopathy are known as anti-social personality disorders, which are long-term mental health conditions.
Although most of us will never meet someone like Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs, we all know at least one sociopath. from shutterstock.com
What’s the difference?
Psychopaths and sociopaths share a number of characteristics, including a lack of remorse or empathy for others, a lack of guilt or ability to take responsibility for their actions, a disregard for laws or social conventions, and an inclination to violence. A core feature of both is a deceitful and manipulative nature. But how can we tell them apart?
Sociopaths are normally less emotionally stable and highly impulsive – their behaviour tends to be more erratic than psychopaths. When committing crimes – either violent or non-violent – sociopaths will act more on compulsion. And they will lack patience, giving in much more easily to impulsiveness and lacking detailed planning.
Psychopaths, on the other hand, will plan their crimes down to the smallest detail, taking calculated risks to avoid detection. The smart ones will leave few clues that may lead to being caught. Psychopaths don’t get carried away in the moment and make fewer mistakes as a result.
Both act on a continuum of behaviours, and many psychologists still debate whether the two should be differentiated at all. But for those who do differentiate between the two, one thing is largely agreed upon: psychiatrists use the term psychopathy to illustrate that the cause of the anti-social personality disorder is hereditary. Sociopathy describes behaviours that are the result of a brain injury, or abuse and/or neglect in childhood.
Psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made. In essence, their difference reflects the nature versus nurture debate.
There’s a particularly interesting link between serial killers and psychopaths or sociopaths – although, of course, not all psychopaths and sociopaths become serial killers. And not all serial killers are psychopaths or sociopaths.
Thomas Hemming murdered two people in 2014 just to know what it felt like to kill. Tracey Nearmy/AAP Image
But America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has noted certain traits shared between known serial killers and these anti-social personality disorders. These include predatory behaviour (for instance, Ivan Milat, who hunted and murdered his seven victims); sensation-seeking (think hedonistic killers who murder for excitement or arousal, such as 21-year-old Thomas Hemming who, in 2014, murdered two people just to know what it felt like to kill); lack of remorse; impulsivity; and the need for control or power over others (such as Dennis Rader, an American serial killer who murdered ten people between 1974 and 1991, and became known as the “BTK (bind, torture, kill) killer”).
A case study
The Sydney murder of Morgan Huxley by 22-year-old Jack Kelsall, who arguably shows all the hallmarks of a psychopath, highlights the differences between psychopaths and sociopaths.
In 2013, Kelsall followed Huxley home where he indecently assaulted the 31-year-old before stabbing him 28 times. Kelsall showed no remorse for his crime, which was extremely violent and pre-meditated.
There’s no doubt in my mind he’s psychopathic rather than sociopathic because although the murder was frenzied, Kelsall showed patience and planning. He had followed potential victims before and had shared fantasies he had about murdering a stranger with a knife with his psychiatrist a year before he killed Huxley, allegedly for “the thrill of it”.
Whatever Kelsall’s motive, regardless of whether his dysfunction was born or made, the case stands as an example of the worst possible outcome of an anti-social personality disorder: senseless violence perpetrated against a random victim for self-gratification. Throughout his trial and sentencing, Kelsall showed no sign of remorse, no guilt, and gave no apology.
A textbook psychopath, he would, I believe, have gone on to kill again. In my opinion – and that of the police who arrested him – Kelsall was a serial killer in the making.
In the end, does the distinction between a psychopath and sociopath matter? They can both be dangerous and even deadly, the worst wreaking havoc with people’s lives. Or they can spend their life among people who are none the wiser for it.
The Green Book was an indispensable survival guide to black Americans traveling in America in the Jim Crow Era if they wish to “sidestep humiliation (or worse) on the journeys”. As Richard Epstein noted when reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill:
Title II was passed when memories were still fresh of the many indignities that had been inflicted on African American citizens on a routine basis. It took little imagination to understand that something was deeply wrong with a nation in which it was difficult, if not impossible, for African American citizens to secure food, transportation, and lodging when traveling from place to place in large sections of the country. In some instances, no such facilities were available, and in other cases they were only available on limited and unequal terms.
The Green Book spoke in code about how to avoid “embarrassing situations”. This was code for “the violence and discrimination inflicted by bigots”. The diffusion of the car into the black middle class was a godsend to escape racism.
The founding publisher was a US postal worker who with typical entrepreneurial flair initially published the Green Book from his apartment in Virginia starting in the late 1930s. To find businesses that welcomed black patrons, Victor Green tapped into his network of fellow mailmen. His book covered the entire 50 states, parts of Canada and even extended to Europe in later editions.
The Green Book stopped publishing a mere two years after the passage of a major civil rights bill in 1964 and the voting rights bill of 1965. These two bills strengthened voter rights and outlawed discrimination by businesses and employers.
By 1966, just two years after the passage of the civil rights bill, the market collapsed for information on businesses that welcomed black patrons in America. This was because so many businesses now welcome black patronage in every part of the southern states and elsewhere in America that a special booklet no longer had buyers. At the height of its popularity, the Green Book sold 15,000 copies per year.
Yes, there were law reforms but the closing of the Green Book is a sign of surprisingly rapid social change given the dogged resistance of the Democratic Party led southern states to all previous attempts at racial integration.
As an example of this tenacious resistance to civil rights legislation, Texas divided itself into 252 counties and delegated considerable responsibility to them. Local sheriffs in southern states would campaign on slogans such as “the man who can take care of situations that may arise”.
Control of the police and local courts was central to the enforcement of racial segregation in the southern states of America. This was backed up by the monopoly that the Democratic Party had over local and state offices.
To register to vote in Texas, for example, a black voter had to register with the local voter registration board in one of the 252 counties. Assuming you could find a member – they came in late, took long lunches and went home early – they would fail the applicant on the literacy test or some other criteria.
The aggrieved black would be voter would then have to take is local voter registration board all the way to the Supreme Court to overturn that decision. The members of the local voter registration board would refuse to follow the orders of the US District Court orders. The criminal contempt citation would be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
Once the criminal contempt citation is upheld by the Supreme Court, the voter registration board resigned so the litigation would have to start all over again against the new board members. This was because the state of Texas could not be named as a co-defendant under the 1957 civil rights law – the first past 100 years by Congress.
Such was the hostile legal environment, the lawlessness, the FBI had an eight part go to strategy in case a local sheriff arrested FBI agents in southern states when they are enforcing civil rights law. Black civil rights leaders in the USA were keen gun owners and owned a lot of them for home defence and they used them.
James Heckman was one of the first economist to note the rapid social change in the southern states of America over the course of the 60s. Heckman spent two years as a teenager in the late 1950s in racist Southern States of America and returned in 1963 and in 1970. His parents were received a delegation of neighbours upon their arrival to explain Southern ways.
There was organised segregation in 1963 when Heckman visited again as a college student. His 1963 visit with a college roommate from Nigeria was monitored by the local sheriff. In Birmingham, they stayed at the black YMCA. The people at the YMCA were frightened to death because Heckman and his Nigerian friend were breaking the local Jim Crow laws. Shops closed in New Orleans to avoid serving them.
In 1970, Heckman re-visited New Orleans as an academic, going back to the same places as in 1963. They were completely integrated, totally changed. This rapid social change fascinated him.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 broke the control of segregationists over their political and legal institutions. The racial segregation collapsed because it could no longer rely on Jim Crow laws and the private violence and boycotts through the White Citizens Councils which police turned a blind eye too when they were not actively involved.
Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens’ Councils met openly and was seen as “pursuing the agenda of the Klan with the demeanour of the Rotary Club” by “unleashing a wave of economic reprisals against anyone, Black or white, seen as a threat to the status quo”. In Mississippi, the State Sovereignty Commission funded the Citizens’ Councils.
The 1957 and, particular, the 1964 civil rights laws overthrew racial segregation because more Black Americans could vote in the Southern States in state and local elections. Politicians soon courted those votes and there was a political realignment and a social revolution. The lawlessness that back-up most of segregation quickly came to an end because its victims could now vote. Richard Epstein explains:
With Jim Crow in the South this set of insidious practices was not accomplished by explicit laws mandating racial segregation. Rather, those inflexible social and economic patterns were supported by four interlocking strategies. First, illicit control of the electoral franchise, which in turn translated into control of the police and the courts. Second, corrupt use over the infrastructure translated into an ability to deny water and electrical hook-ups to firms that did not toe the segregationist line. Third, private violence to which southern police forces turned a blind eye when they did not actively support it. Fourth, social ostracism to those who spoke up against the system. Sensible people either left, stayed away or remained silent.
LBJ was behind the first civil rights bill of the 20th century. This was the 1957 civil rights bill. LBJ’s astute understanding of public choice processes was central to how he crafted the 1957 bill.
Then Senator Johnson could see that his fellow Southern Democrats would not live with racial integration at the social level. But he knew from his dealings with the Southern Democrats that in their heart of hearts that they could not ultimately deny that people have a right to vote. LBJ knew that if Black Americans in the Southern States could secure the right to vote, all the other rights they sought would soon follow and would be protected by law. He was right.
The Voting Right Act had a huge impact on many southern states. For example, black voter registration rates in Mississippi increased from a mere 6.7 percent in 1965 to 59.8 percent in 1967, according to the US Commission for Civil Rights. For a state that’s historically around 40 percent black, this represented a massive shift in politics — a change that much of the predominantly white leadership at the time feared but would have to accept due to the Voting Rights Act.
Timur Kuran in “Sparks and Prairie Fires: A Theory of Unanticipated Political Revolutions,” suggested that political revolutions and large shifts in political and social opinion will catch us by surprise again and again because of people’s readiness to conceal their true political preferences proclivities under perceived social pressure.
Kuran begins with a simple, even mundane point: social pressures can make people say that they want and believe something that they really don’t want or believe… The result of social pressures is to produce what Kuran calls “preference falsification,” a phenomenon that occurs when you make an inaccurate public statement about your actual preferences (or beliefs). Falsified preferences might be described more simply, of course, as lies; but they are a distinctive, and distinctly interesting, kind of lies, with particular social implications… People joined organizations they abhorred, followed orders they considered nonsensical, cheered speakers they despised and ostracized dissidents they greatly admired.
Those ready to oppose racism or who were lukewarm about it, kept their opposition private until a coincidence of factors gave them the courage to bring their views into the open. In switching sides, they encouraged other hidden opponents to switch. Fear changes sides. Genuine supporters of the old older falsify their publically professed preferences, pretending that they support the new order. These are late-switchers. Do not trust them. These opportunists will just as easily switch back.
Plenty of people have had personal experiences of this in the 1980s and the 1990s when there was rapid change in social and political attitudes about racism, sexism and gay rights. A few people had to stand up for what was right and a surprisingly large number quickly joined their side.
Once Blacks in the southern states started voting for the local sheriff and judges and for state-wide officials, the local legal infrastructure helped the market work rather than frustrated it. As Richard Epstein noted when writing a freedom of association but his remarks equally apply to the market process:
The practice of freedom of association cannot survive in a society that has corrupt electoral institutions, corrupt provision of public services, corrupt use of public force, and unrestrained use of private violence. The hard question in these settings is to ask exactly what legal changes should be made. In one sense, the thought that some non-discrimination principle could gain hold through legislation seems laughable. Indeed, it was only because federal legislation could work, with much huffing and puffing, to override state legislation that the local monopoly was broken… The competitive market works well when supported by well-ordered public institutions.
The rapid demise of the Green Book is a testament to the shallowness of racism in America apart from a hard-core full of hatred of whatever comes along. Certainly, the collapse in the market for a specialised information on businesses willing to accept black patch and suggests that many southern businesses opened their doors to black customers once it was physically safe to do so. The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 bought an end to lawlessness in the South principally because black people could now vote. Epstein again:
At its best, and in its original form, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 sought to break the control of the local segregationist forces over their political institutions. First on the list was Title I, which attacked exclusion from voting.
The Danish top 1% and top 10% is even lazier than their transnational co-conspirators. No success at all at either grinding the Danish unions down or extracting more labour surplus from the long-suffering Danish proletariat.
Source: OECD StatExtract and Top Incomes Database.
Source: OECD StatExtract and Top Incomes Database.
The Swedish top 10% and top 1% have done a bit better since the economic liberalisation in that country from the early 1990s. But none of that additional labour surplus has anything to do with grinding the unions down because Swedish union membership has not declined.
Source: OECD StatExtract and Top Incomes Database.
Source: OECD StatExtract and Top Incomes Database.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
As they marched down the road, free at last, the manager of the facility caught up with them. He asked them where were they going? He said it already telephoned Greyhound buses and told them not to sell them bus tickets. Perth is 1300 km away from Port Hedland. The manager of the facility suggested they all come back to settle things over a cuppa as it was warming up as noon was approaching.
Recent Comments