From “Where Sweatshops Are a Dream” https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html
The predictable consequence of unleashing do-gooders in least developed countries
04 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
in development economics, growth disasters, growth miracles, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: bribery and corruption, do gooders, Labour standards, offsetting behaviour, The fatal conceit, unintended consequences
Book Review: The Complete Maisky Diaries
04 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
Having published The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, 1932-1943, an abridged version of the Soviet Ambassador to London diaries, in 2015, Yale University Press has now published The Complete Maisky Diaries in three volumes. The set is edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky, emeritus professor of history at Tel Aviv University, and presents the entire original diary which is 500,000 words in length. The editor provides annotations, extensive commentary to contextualize the diaries and fill gaps in their keeping, and three biographical chapters on Ivan Maisky (“The Making of a Soviet Diplomat,” “End of an Era: Maisky’s Recall,” and “The Price of Fame: A Late Repression).
Maisky was appointed Soviet ambassador to London in 1932, despite his having a dubious background as a Menshevik and member of the anti-Bolshevik Komuch government in 1918 who only belatedly joined the Bolsheviks. His earlier associations always cast “a huge…
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The Hippo vs. the Bulldog, Göring’s War – WW2 – 049 – August 3 1940
04 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: World War II
Legal Calamity: Climate Nuisance Lawsuits
04 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
It has come to this: Sue anyone doing anything you don’t like for profit as a “Public Nuisance.” Further on is reprinted a previous post explaining why it is legally wrongheaded to claim damages against purveyors of fossil fuels because of global warming/climate change. What is news today is a federal judge making exactly that mistake.
Michael I. Krauss writes at Forbes Federal Judge Allows Misuse Of Public Nuisance Doctrine. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
I have written, in this column and elsewhere, about the threat to the Rule of Law created by the misuse and abuse of Public Nuisance doctrine. Now I write to bemoan a federal judge’s tolerance of a particularly egregious effort by a state to invoke this ancient tort (typically used to sanction those who blocked the public roads) to judicially create legislative policy.
In State of Rhode Island v Chevron Corp. et…
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Predicted spread of humans around the world
04 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
in economic history, population economics
The History of Human Progress in Just Five Minutes
04 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
Back in 2014, I shared two videos – one narrated by Deirdre McCloskey and the other narrated by Don Boudreaux – explaining how the world went from near-universal poverty to mass prosperity (at least in the nations that embraced free markets and the rule of law).
Here’s a video with a similar theme, narrated by Dan Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament (hopefully not for long).
I like this video because it goes back 10,000 years to the invention of agriculture.
Hannan explains how this led to the creation of governments, basically acting as “stationary bandits.”
And for thousands of years, a tiny elite of kings and nobles basically acted as dictators while 99 percent of people endured horrid lives of slavery, oppression, poverty, and misery.
But then, as Hannan discusses (and also explained in the McCloskey and Bourdreaux videos), arbitrary power eventually…
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A Shot that Changed the World – The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand I PRELUDE TO WW1 – Part 3/3
04 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: World War I
Interesting referendum
04 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
in defence economics, discrimination, gender, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, Public Choice, war and peace Tags: conscription, Switzerland
New Brunswick’s Lieutenant Governor Has Died In Office
03 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
Without a Lieutenant Governor, the Legislature of New Brunswick (which consists of the Legislative Assembly and the Lieutenant Governor) can pass no laws, and the Government of New Brunswick can promulgate no Orders-in-Council in the name of the Lieutenant Governor-in-Council and no proclamations in the name of the Lieutenant Governor. Administrators who can act in place of Lieutenant Governors also lose their functions upon the resignation or death of the Lieutenant Governor whom they serve.
Jocelyne Roy-Vienneau, the Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick, has just died of cancer after having revealed the diagnosis in the fall of 2018 around the time of the last change of government from Gallant to Higgs. CBC News reports that the province’s Protocol Office will make more announcements in the coming days. Canada has lost two Lieutenant Governors to cancer in as many months, after W. Thomas Molloy, the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan, died in office on 2 July.
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Soon to be #HateSpeech in New Zealand?
03 Aug 2019 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, economics of religion, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: free speech, political correctness, regressive left
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