10 Street Drugs That Used To Be Legal
05 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, liberalism, libertarianism, political change, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: drug decriminalisation, marijuana decriminalisation
Environmental Law 101 | Richard Epstein
05 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, law and economics, liberalism, property rights, Richard Epstein Tags: environmental law, law of nuisance, Richard Epstein, tort law
Back in 1999, Richard Epstein wrote a great summary of what should be environmental law from an old common law perspective, from a classical liberal perspective, and a pragmatic economic libertarian perspective:
Stated bluntly, nothing in the theory of property rights says that my property is sacred while everybody else’s property is profane. That single constraint of parity among owners should lead every owner to think hard…
This recognition of the noxious uses of private property is the source of the common law of nuisance.
That law dates from medieval times, certainly by 1215, at the time of the Magna Carta. It is no new socialist or environmentalist creation for the twentieth century.
When the common law of nuisance restricts the noxious use of property, it benefits not only immediate neighbours but the larger community. If I enjoin pollution created by my neighbour, others will share in the reduction of pollution.
Simply by using private actions, we have built a system for environmental protection that goes a long way toward stopping the worst forms of pollution.
Epstein does not stop there. He recognises as he should that the common law of nuisance is not enough to stop all problems of pollution:
Yet before we leap for joy, we must recognize that private actions are not universally effective in curbing nuisances.
Sometimes pollution is widely diffused—waste can come from many tailpipes, not just one—so that no one can tell exactly whose pollution is causing what damage to which individuals.
Under those circumstances, private enforcement of nuisance law can no longer control pollution…
We do not change the substantive standards of right and wrong, but we do use state regulation to fill in the gaps in private enforcement.
Epstein then makes a plea for private covenants to deal with a great deal of the social frictions that arise in the suburbs:
But often when individuals worry about their local environments, they’re not particularly happy to treat the nuisance law, however enforced, as the upper bound of their personal protection.
They want (especially as their wealth increases) more by way of aesthetics and open spaces. Fortunately, our legal system has a way to accommodate these newer demands.
One of our most important land-use control devices is the system of covenants by which all the holders of neighbouring lands agree among themselves and for their successors in title
Covenants might work in Greenfields developments in modern cities. But they really doesn’t work in managing land use conflicts in the inner city where regulation is been used to substitute the covenants for many decades.
Epstein’s ideal for modern environmental law is:
In sum, the system of public and private enforcement of nuisances and public and private purchases of environmentally sensitive sites is the way that sound environmental policy should proceed.
Apparently, this is how the Mont Pelerin Society rules the roost!?
05 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: conspiracy theories, Leftover Left, Mont Pelerin Society, neoliberalism, nutters on the bus, Quacks, vast right-wing conspiracy
Solid lines refer to funding and dashed lines refer to mostly ideological connections
HT: old-rothschild-and-rockefeller-hands-controlled-the-libertarian-communist-dialectic/
Four Distinct Foreign-Policy Orientations
03 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in International law, liberalism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: non-interventionist foreign policy
|
Four Distinct Foreign-Policy Orientations |
||
| Internationalist: Willing to intervene in foreign affairs | Isolationist: Reluctant to intervene in foreign affairs | |
| Emphasis on the national interest as primary value in foreign policy | National-interest interventionism | National-interest isolationism |
| Significant emphasis on altruism in foreign policy | Altruistic interventionism | Altruistic isolationism |
|
Source: Reichley 2000. |
||
Alcohol? Divorce? Affairs? See how views of morality differ around the world
03 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
Jeffrey Miron — “Legalizing Drugs” | Harvard Thinks Big 5 – YouTube
02 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, liberalism Tags: drug decriminalisation, marijuana decriminalisation
More on More Efficient Tax Systems Leading to Bigger Government
02 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, liberalism, Public Choice Tags: Casey Mulligan, Gary Becker, growth in government, public choice
…in Deadweight Costs and the Size of Government (NBER Working Paper Number No. 6789) , [Gary Becker and Casey Mulligan] conclude that flatter and broader taxes also tend to encourage bigger government because taxpayers offer less resistance to increases in flat tax rates than in rates of more onerous and less efficient forms of taxation.
Any decline in the resistance of taxpayers leads to larger government budgets since an endless number of groups agitate for greater government support.
Flat tax rates, such as the VAT and Social Security taxes on earnings, usually start at very low levels but invariably increase over time.
The VAT is now 20 percent and higher in some countries. And payroll taxes began at a modest 2 percent in the 1930s in the United States, but have been increased 21 times to the present 15 percent combined rate on employees and employers.
The perils of foreign interventions – Syria/Iraq version
01 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism, war and peace Tags: Iraq, non-interventionist foreign policy, Syria
Constitutions are brakes, not accelerators
30 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, Gordon Tullock, James Buchanan, liberalism, Public Choice Tags: checks and balances, constitutional political economy, economics of constitutions, public choice
Much of constitutional design is about checks and balances. This division of power slows the impassioned majority down.
Constitutional constraints are basically messages from the past to the present that you must think really hard, and go through extra hurdles before you do certain things.
The 18th and 19th century classical liberals were highly sceptical about the capability and willingness of politics and politicians to further the interests of the ordinary citizen, and were of the view that the political direction of resource allocation retards rather than facilitates economic progress.
Governments were considered to be institutions to be protected from but made necessary by the elementary fact that all persons are not angels. Constitutions were to constrain collective authority.
The problem of constitutional design was ensuring that government powers would be effectively limited. The constitutions were designed and put in place by the classical liberals to check or constrain the power of the state over individuals.
The motivating force of the classical liberals was never one of making government work better or even of insuring that all interests were more fully represented. Built in conflict and institutional tensions were to act as constraints on the power and the size of government.
Milton Friedman on Competition in Education
30 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of education, liberalism, Milton Friedman Tags: Milton Friedman, School choice, The meaning of competition
The Top Five Feminist Myths of All Time
30 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in discrimination, gender, labour economics, liberalism Tags: feminist myths, gender wage gap
Have We Lost the War on Drugs? – Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy – WSJ 2013
29 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, economics of regulation, Gary Becker, health economics, law and economics, liberalism
One moderate alternative to the war on drugs is to follow Portugal’s lead and decriminalize all drug use while maintaining the illegality of drug trafficking. Decriminalizing drugs implies that persons cannot be criminally punished when they are found to be in possession of small quantities of drugs that could be used for their own consumption.
Decriminalization would reduce the bloated U.S. prison population since drug users could no longer be sent to jail.
Decriminalization would make it easier for drug addicts to openly seek help from clinics and self-help groups, and it would make companies more likely to develop products and methods that address addiction…
A study published in 2010 in the British Journal of Criminology found that in Portugal since decriminalization, imprisonment on drug-related charges has gone down; drug use among young persons appears to have increased only modestly, if at all; visits to clinics that help with drug addictions and diseases from drug use have increased; and opiate-related deaths have fallen.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments