Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan: The Calculus of Consent After 25 Years

What is intuition?

George Stigler on the prevalence of self-interest

Image

Deirdre McCloskey on Piketty, the Bourgeoisie Deal, the Bolshevik Deal, and the Bridal Deal

.

Do the European welfare states free ride off American entrepreneurship and innovation?

image

Source: Daron Acemoglu A Scandinavian U.S. Would Be a Problem for the Global Economy – NYTimes.com.

In addition to being patient No. 1 of Bush derangement syndrome, @NYTimeskrugman suffers from wrong headedness as well

https://twitter.com/BennSteil/status/659103748199981056

Did government pick the Internet as a winner? @stevenljoyce @dpfdpf

Mises on Nazi socialism

Watch Milton Friedman visit the Berlin Wall @NaomiAKlein

@NaomiAKlein agrees with #MiltonFriedman on Mancur Olson’s theory of how nations escape institutional sclerosis

Source: quoted by Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine”.

1. There will be no countries that attain symmetrical organization of all groups with a common interest and thereby attain optimal outcomes through comprehensive bargaining.

2. Stable societies with unchanged boundaries tend to accumulate more collusions and organizations for collective action over time.

3. Members of “small” groups have disproportionate organizational power for collective action, and this disproportion diminishes but does not disappear over time in stable societies.

4. On balance, special-interest organizations and collusions reduce efficiency and aggregate income in the societies in which they operate and make political life more divisive.

5. Encompassing organizations have some incentive to make the society in which they operate more prosperous, and an incentive to redistribute income to their members with as little excess burden as possible, and to cease such redistribution unless the amount redistributed is substantial in relation to the social cost of the redistribution.

6. Distributional coalitions make decisions more slowly than the individuals and firms of which they are comprised, tend to have crowded agendas and bargaining tables, and more often fix prices than quantities.

7. Distributional coalitions slow down a society’s capacity to adopt new technologies and to reallocate resources in response to changing conditions, and thereby to reduce the rate of economic growth.

8. Distributional coalitions, once big enough to succeed, are exclusive, and seek to limit the diversity of incomes and values of their membership.

9. The accumulation of distributional coalitions increases the complexity of regulation, the role of government, and the complexity of understandings, and changes the direction of social evolution.

image

Source: Obituary: Professor Mancur Olson | Obituaries | News | The Independent

Angus Deaton on slow growth as a force for distributional conflict

image

Source: ‘Economic growth is the engine of the escape from poverty and material deprivation’ – economist and 2015 Nobel laureate Angus Deaton – AEI | Economics Blog » AEIdeas

@CarlyFiorina says it all on action to fight global warming @jamespeshaw @AndrewLittleMP @garethmorgannz

@EricCrampton @KhyaatiA should New Zealand divide into Cantons?

Suggestions by the New Zealand Initiative for regions to be able to ask to be exempt from some national policies was against a background that New Zealand is too small to be a federal state. The New Zealand provinces were abolished in 1876. Switzerland seems to still put bread in the shops despite having many tiny Cantons and half-Cantons.

image

Source: Swiss Statistics – Cantons, communes.

So many American states have smaller populations are New Zealand, half in all, that is difficult to present them on a chart. All managed to be richer the New Zealand despite the horrors of federalism or because of it. These small state populations are before considering how much  local government legislative power there is, including taxing and spending powers, city income taxes and city sales taxes, and county and local police forces.

image

Source: List of U.S. states and territories by population – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The median national population size of countries is not much more than New Zealand’s current population.

  • Controlling for location, Easterly and Kraay (2002) found that smaller states were richer than other states in per capita real GDP.
  • Rose (2006) reviewed the impact of size on the level of income, inflation, material well-being, health, education, and the quality of a country’s institutions and found that small countries are more open to trade than large countries, but are not systematically different otherwise.

As I argued in my previous post on distance, New Zealand were prosperous from the time of European settlement despite a small population and their great distance from the main markets of the world on each side of the Atlantic.

Of the ten richest countries in terms of GDP per capita, only four have populations above one million people (Alesina 2003). These countries are the USA (290 million people), Switzerland (7 million people), Norway (4 million people) and Singapore (3 million people). Of these four nations, two are below the global national population median of six million (Alesina 2003).

Mises on prosperity and inequality

Image

Candidate Lessig’s Bad Example

Previous Older Entries Next Newer Entries

Bassett, Brash & Hide

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Truth on the Market

Scholarly commentary on law, economics, and more

The Undercover Historian

Beatrice Cherrier's blog

Matua Kahurangi

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Temple of Sociology

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Velvet Glove, Iron Fist

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Why Evolution Is True

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.

Down to Earth Kiwi

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

NoTricksZone

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Homepaddock

A rural perspective with a blue tint by Ele Ludemann

Kiwiblog

DPF's Kiwiblog - Fomenting Happy Mischief since 2003

The Dangerous Economist

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

The Logical Place

Tim Harding's writings on rationality, informal logic and skepticism

Doc's Books

A window into Doc Freiberger's library

The Risk-Monger

Let's examine hard decisions!

Uneasy Money

Commentary on monetary policy in the spirit of R. G. Hawtrey

Barrie Saunders

Thoughts on public policy and the media

Liberty Scott

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Point of Order

Politics and the economy

James Bowden's Blog

A blog (primarily) on Canadian and Commonwealth political history and institutions

Science Matters

Reading between the lines, and underneath the hype.

Peter Winsley

Economics, and such stuff as dreams are made on

A Venerable Puzzle

"The British constitution has always been puzzling, and always will be." --Queen Elizabeth II

The Antiplanner

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Bet On It

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

History of Sorts

WORLD WAR II, MUSIC, HISTORY, HOLOCAUST

Roger Pielke Jr.

Undisciplined scholar, recovering academic

Offsetting Behaviour

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

JONATHAN TURLEY

Res ipsa loquitur - The thing itself speaks

Conversable Economist

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.”

The Victorian Commons

Researching the House of Commons, 1832-1868

The History of Parliament

Articles and research from the History of Parliament Trust

Books & Boots

Reflections on books and art

Legal History Miscellany

Posts on the History of Law, Crime, and Justice

Sex, Drugs and Economics

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

European Royal History

Exploring the Monarchs of Europe

Tallbloke's Talkshop

Cutting edge science you can dice with

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.

STOP THESE THINGS

The truth about the great wind power fraud - we're not here to debate the wind industry, we're here to destroy it.

Lindsay Mitchell

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

Alt-M

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

croaking cassandra

Economics, public policy, monetary policy, financial regulation, with a New Zealand perspective

The Grumpy Economist

Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law

International Liberty

Restraining Government in America and Around the World