Trade-offs in an high-gun arms race equilibrium
28 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, economics of regulation, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: game theory, gun control
Lawrence of Arabia on the economics of Albanian blood feuds
26 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, David Friedman, economics of crime, law and economics Tags: economics of feuds
About 3000 Albanian families are caught up in blood feuds; the adult males hunt each other down; the reasons are long forgotten.
These blood feuds are common in rural Albania, which is rather lawless. Efforts to resolve them are largely futile because each family wants to be the last to get revenge.
Observers, of course, look upon these feuds with horror. For those involved, they are the down side of a Doomsday machine that keeps order in rural lawless areas.
Proper film buffs will remember the great scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Anthony Quinn and his son rode into the camp of a rival tribe on their own to demand payment for the water they were using.
Lawrence asked why did they go in because they could be so easily killed. Anthony Quinn said he was in no danger because if he was killed there would be a blood feud between his clan and the offending clan. This kept order. The linked clip is just fascinating rather than the actual clip.
Of course, film buffs also remember that a blood feud almost destroyed the entire Arab revolt. Lawrence resolved it by executing the murder so that he neither died at the hand of the rival clan but the rival clan felt vengeance had been satisfied.
David Friedman wrote on how feuds are common in many legal systems in their early days:
Feud is one of the mechanisms by which legal rules are enforced. Its essential logic is simple: If you wrong me, I threaten to harm you unless you compensate me for the wrong. The critical requirement for it to work is some mechanism that makes my threat more believable when you actually have wronged me than when you have not, some way of converting right into might, in order to prevent the enforcement mechanism from being used instead for extortion.
For a simple example, consider the feud system of the Rominchal gypsies, the largest gypsy population in England. If you wrong me, I threaten to beat you up. Both of us know that if you have wronged me, as judged by the norms of our community, my friends will back me and your friends won’t back you, making it in your interest to either compensate me or leave town.
Feud system have existed in many human societies. In addition to the Rominchal, well recorded examples include saga period Iceland and traditional Somali. In the Icelandic case, the mechanism for converting right into might was an explicit law code and a court system. You sued the person who wronged you. If you won, the verdict was a damage payment he owed you. If he failed to pay, he was outlawed and had two weeks to leave Iceland, after which it was legal to kill him and tortious for anyone to defend him. That system functioned for about a third of a millennium, producing substantial amounts of violence only in the final fifty year period of breakdown.
The Somali version was somewhere between the Icelandic and the Rominchal, with customary law and customary mechanisms for setting up courts to arbitrate disputes, along with a fascinating system of prefabricated coalitions to deal with both paying damages and enforcing their members’ claims.
Feuds work well as a deterrent mechanism, but if someone triggers a feud, there is a lot of mayhem. That is why third-party arbitration comes into play to prevent abuse and escalation.
I am not too sure how feuds work well if someone is murdered without a witness or is poisoned or in some other way surreptitiously done away with.
A good summary of competition law
26 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in industrial organisation, law and economics, survivor principle Tags: cartels, competition law, monopoly pricing, predatory pricing
Source: CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: When Antitrust Runs Amok: Bulletin Board Material via Anti-Dismal: When antitrust runs amok: bulletin board material
How the World Grew Rich
22 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, industrial organisation, law and economics Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, The Great Enrichment, The Great Fact
.@4corners @amnestynz evidence standards hit new low on #Nauru refugee reporting
18 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in Economics of international refugee law, international economics, politics - Australia Tags: economics of immigration, Nauru, refugees
The ABCs journalistic standards have dropped so low that they continued to regard as credible a witness who compared Nauru with Syria. Neistat wrote the report for Amnesty which Four Corners then built on.
Syria is a war zone. Nauru is not. This is the Australian Government’s travel advice for Syria
We strongly advise Australians not to travel to Syria because of the extremely dangerous security situation, highlighted by ongoing military conflict including aerial bombardment, kidnappings and terrorist attacks…
Australians are also warned not to travel to the northern Caucasus included Chechnya for any reason because of the threat of terrorism and kidnappings.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade does not issue travel advice for Nauru at this time.
I doubt that the state of law and order in Syria or Chechnya in peacetime is any different from Nauru at its worst. Refugees seek asylum from persecution. That does not guarantee them asylum in a country that is materially wealthier than the one they fled.
Many people engage in considerable hubris to avoid making difficult decisions about immigration and refugees. Tullock talked about how people avoid difficult decisions. They 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. This even if this means the recipients of these choices are worse off and more lives are lost than if more open and honest choices were made up about there only being so much that can be done.
The Australian Greens, for example, call for a doubling of the refugee quota. A drop in the ocean when there is 59 million refugees out there. This allows them to feel righteous when they go to sleep at night
When it is pointed out that their policies will encourage more people to get on a boat, some of whom will drown, the Greens suggest people should be free to fly to Australia without documentation and then be released after a short security check.
#LetThemStay https://t.co/n1hA7W3q3Q—
Sarah Hanson-Young (@sarahinthesen8) February 04, 2016
Naturally, no government will ever adopt this suggestion. It shows that the Greens are not serious participants in managing refugee flows across borders. They prefer to feel righteous rather than actually systematically help people to the maximum available.
Arriving by boat in Australia does not increase the size of the refugee quota. It just changes who gets to the head of the queue and how many died trying to get to the head of the queue.
Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?
18 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economics of crime, economics of religion, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: economics of oppositional identities, war on terror
.@JudithCollinsMP showed that @JacindaArdern does not know when to stop digging
13 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: crime and punishment, family poverty, law and order, New Zealand Labour Party
Judith Collins today in Question Time showed that Jacinda Ardern does not know when to stop digging. Ardern quoted a snippet of the question put to the police minister at the recent police conference.
That selectivity allowed Collins to right to quote the conference question in full and her full answer, which was not just about money poverty but also about
“… a poverty of ideas, a poverty of parental responsibility, a poverty of love, a poverty of caring …”.
Later Collins said she does not agree with Labour saying today that poverty causes crime.
The Labour Party showed that it is no longer rooted in working class values when it argues that poverty is not linked to a poverty of responsibility and of parental love.
There are plenty of poor people who do not resort to crime and who despise those that do, in part because they often make them the victims of their crimes including burglary.
Killed by police by threat level, January – September 2016
13 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: crime and punishment, law and order, police shootings
Meet the Pink Pistols: slogan – armed Queers don’t get bashed
12 Oct 2016 1 Comment
in economics of crime, law and economics Tags: gun control
Crime victimisation rates of Maori compared
08 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: crime and punishment, law and order, Maori economic development, racial discrimination
Source: New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey, Resources & downloads | New Zealand Ministry of Justice.
Source: New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey, Resources & downloads | New Zealand Ministry of Justice.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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