The courts have sanctioned the right to organize community opposition that urges government officials and agencies to deny land use permits to applicants, even when the underlying motive of the opposition is protecting market share and eliminating competition.
What’s more, the courts are protecting third-party funding sources, in many cases anonymous funding sources, which support the opposition efforts in order to block potential competition.
Managerial Econ: Make the rules or your rivals will: use anti-growth activists to erect entry barriers
08 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of regulation, environmental economics, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: bootleggers and baptists, rent seeking
If Scotland votes yes
07 Sep 2014 4 Comments
in constitutional political economy, international economic law, International law, law and economics Tags: English nationalism, Scottish independence
Ideas: When Mao died, The Economist wrote
06 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, growth disasters, liberalism, Public Choice Tags: China, communism, How China Became Capitalist, mao, useful idiots
In the final reckoning, Mao must be accepted as one of history’s great achievers: for devising a peasant-centered revolutionary strategy which enabled China’s Communist Party to seize power, against Marx’s prescriptions, from bases in the countryside; for directing the transformation of China from a feudal society, wracked by war and bled by corruption, into a unified, egalitarian state where nobody starves; and for reviving national pride and confidence so that China could, in Mao’s words, ‘stand up’ among the great powers.
via Ideas and http://www.scottmanning.com/content/visualizing-the-great-leap-forward/
Film review – Elysium
03 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, development economics, economic growth, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, law and economics, liberalism, P.T. Bauer, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, Rawls and Nozick, technological progress Tags: democracies, movies, rule of law, The Great Enrichment
Elysium was on TV. When I saw it on the big screen, no one told me it was a depiction of contemporary capitalism and the class war.
I read it as a contrast between third world countries lacking the rule of law and capitalist democracies.
The ships shooting up to the space station reminded me of Cubans trying to cross into the USA by boat to Florida.
Sorry, but I am just a simple country boy from the back blocks of Tasmania.
Pro-free enterprise does not mean pro-business
28 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of religion, liberalism, Milton Friedman, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: Milton Friedman
The role of job sorting and job matching in constitutional political economy
25 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
What is the precariat?
24 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, entrepreneurship, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, rentseeking, technological progress, Uncategorized Tags: Leftover Left, precariat, The Great Act, The Great Enrichment, The withering away the proletariat
With the withering away of the proletariat because of the great enrichment, the Left over Left coined the word precariat.
The precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity: a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare as well as being a member of a proletariat class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labour to live. Specifically, it is applied to the condition of lack of job security, in other words intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence. The term is a portmanteau obtained by merging precarious with proletariat.
Very similar to the Karl Marx’s Lumpenproletariat: the layer of the working class that is unlikely ever to achieve class consciousness and is therefore lost to socially useful production, of no use to the revolutionary struggle, and perhaps even an impediment to the realization of a classless society.
One of the drawbacks of the precariat is they are inconveniently happier than Left over Left are willing to give them credit. For example, a lot of women in part-time jobs are happier than those in full-time jobs because of the greater worklife balance. Casual and seasonal jobs pay more too.
0
What if Scotland votes for independence on 18 September 2014
23 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, politics Tags: English nationalism, grumpy late-night blogging, Hadrian's Wall, Scottish independence, why should parting be sweet?
Draft bill for passage under urgency by the Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
(1)On and after 20th September 2014 (” the appointed day “) Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom shall have no responsibility for the government of Scotland.
(2)No Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on or after the appointed day shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to Scotland.
(3)On and after the appointed day the British Nationality Acts shall have effect as if in section 1(3) of the British Nationality Act 1948 (Commonwealth countries having separate citizenship) there were added at the end the words
“and Scotland”.
(4)Except as provided by section 3 of this Act, any person who immediately before the appointed day is a citizen of the United Kingdom shall on that day cease to be such a citizen if he becomes on that day a citizen of Scotland.
(5) The Union with Scotland Act 1706 is repealed on the appointed day .
(6) On and after the appointed day, no one may be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a Scottish peerage.
(7) On the appointed day, members of the House of Commons representing Scottish constituencies shall vacate their seats and the Scottish constituencies in the House of Commons are abolished.
Charles de Gaulle had a simple option for nationalists in the French colonies in 1958. Hold a referendum on remaining with France and elect members of Parliament to Paris on equal terms with metropolitan French or you can have immediate full independence.
You are one of us or you are on your own. After the Guinean constitutional referendum in 1958 voted for independence on 28 September 1958 and its declaration of independence on 2 October 1958, the French left within the week and cut off all development assistance.
Independence is independence, and the Scots should get what they voted for good and hard. The sooner, the better. Why should Scottish independence cost the British taxpayer one pound.
Nationalists are are greedy lot who expect their former metropolitan power to still pay their bills and not resent rejection.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments