About 10 days ago, i showed that Milton Friedman was a much better economist than Joseph Stiglitz by comparing Chile (which followed Friedman’s ideas) and Venezuela (which followed Stiglitz’s ideas). It was a slam-dunk win for Friedman. Chile started poor and has become relatively prosperous. The opposite happened in Venezuela, which started relatively prosperous and […]
I’ve written many times about how Americans are much richer than Europeans. And I’ve also written many times that the U.S. economy has been growing faster (which shouldn’t happen according to convergence theory). There’s a simple reason for America’s superior performance. The U.S. is burdened by a medium-sized welfare state and a bad tax system […]
Enough is enough. Former PMs Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern should come clean about how they were the Chief Architects of the omni-shambles that has become our health system. They should take responsibility for the folks who suffered from long waiting lists and declining health-care quality, some of whom didn’t make it. The person who…
In 2021, the Listener Letter fracas erupted in New Zealand when seven professors at Auckland University argued that the indigenous “way of knowing,” Mātauranga Māori (MM), while valuable in anthropology and sociology classes, should not be taught, as the government planned, as coequal with modern science. The seven signers were right: while MM does contain […]
As a Senator, Kamala Harris embraced all sorts of terrible ideas, such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. But she’s now disavowed those proposals in an attempt to make herself seem more reasonable. Trump, by contrast, is consistent. For better or worse, he’s pushing in 2024 the same agenda that he ran […]
The recipe for economic growth is not complicated. You can put it in very simple terms, as Adam Smith did a few hundred years ago. Or you can develop and utilize data-heavy indexes like the ones published by the Fraser Institute and Heritage Foundation. In either case, the result will be the same. If you […]
Roger Pielke Jr. explains at his blog Why Climate Misinformation Persists. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. H/T John Ray Noble Lies, Conventional Wisdom, and Luxury Beliefs In 2001, I participated in a roundtable discussion hosted at the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with a group of U.S. Senators, […]
I met Yale Law’s David Schleicher when he was still a law professor at GMU. Back then, we argued about the best model of non-rigged one-party democracy, often seen in major cities… and Singapore. Since then, David’s become a powerful academic voice for YIMBY. Last month, David joined me for another Fast Take on Build,…
New Zealand citizen, Peter Thiel, who is one of the world’s richest men, and business associate of Elon Musk, has had his house application in Wanaka rejected on appeal by the Environment Court. Theil was the first investor in Shane Legg’s company, Deep Mind, which started the Artificial Intelligence revolution. Legg is a former student…
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealand’s government sacked the entire board of Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora) last week, replacing it with a sole commissioner. The move marked more than just another shake-up in the country’s beleaguered health system. It signalled the spectacular failure of a grand experiment that has turned New Zealand into […]
She’s been one of the rising stars of the British Conservative Party for some time now, and I’ve covered stories about her before (Would be nice if a US Democrat said this about Critical Race Theory and A Tory warning for the National Party of 2032), but I’ve finally decided to add Kemi Badenoch as a tag […]
When a city bids to host the Olympic Games, part of the bid is a commitment that the city or the national government will cover any cost overruns–and experience suggests the cost overruns will be large. Alexander Budzier and Bent Flyvbjerg discuss the patterns in “The Oxford Olympics Study 2024: Are Cost and Cost Overrun…
The Miami Herald reports: A stunning 10% of Cuba’s population — more than a million people — left the island between 2022 and 2023, the head of the country’s national statistics office said during a National Assembly session Friday, the largest migration wave in Cuban history. Isn’t it such a weird coincidence that the queue […]
Here’s a lively AIER podcast on Build, Baby, Build with the one and only Veronique de Rugy. Best French libertarian since Bastiat? Décider vous-même!P.S. Capla-Con 2024 starts two weeks from tomorrow in Fairfax, Virginia. You’re all invited! Feel free to coordinate ride-sharing in the comments.
Recall that Chemist Warehouse found a structure that let them operate in New Zealand despite pharmacy guild regulations that had seemed aimed to block such entry. The pharmacists are having another tilt at it.In Australia, a pharmacy that wanted to fill prescriptions could not set up within 200m, 1.5km or 10km of an existing pharmacy depending…
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.”
“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.
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