Utopia, you are standing in it!

Western Nations are determined to prevent the World’s poorest from having cheap and reliable energy, a fact laid plain at the Glasgow gabfest, where the Climate Industrial Complex did its best to ensure that the likes of India will never have any hope of dragging themselves out of agrarian misery and grinding poverty.

The wind and solar obsessed in the first world are quite prepared to ensure that it stays that way. With economic development agencies peddling ridiculously expensive solar panels – seen as ‘fake electricity’ by those lumbered with it – and forcing tinpot governments to sign up to costly and pointless wind and/or solar power schemes, the ratio of haves to have-nots is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

More than a billion humans struggle through daily life without access to power at all, and two billion more are limited to a meagre trickle…

The United Kingdom Constitution Monitoring Group published itsfirst annual reportin 2021. It described the UK Government as ‘set upon legislating over a range of substantial matters with a constitutional dimension’, with its overall programme being ‘notable for its scale, the speed with which it is being implemented’ and this being ‘far from a model of good practice in constitutional change’ (p5).

A significant aspect of the ‘constitutional dimension’ of such changes is that they expand executive power in a number of different ways. This post presents a brief summary of key expansions of executive power via legislation introduced to or passed in the Westminster Parliament in 2021. It then assesses the substance of these expansions, arguing that two key themes emerge. First, that there is an increase in the executive’s capacity to use coercive force, and, second, there is a reduction in the accountability of the executive to…

Back in 2014, I compared the long-run economic performance of Cuba and Hong Kong.

Both jurisdictions were roughly equal about 60 years ago. But the data show a dramatic performance gap ever since the communists took power in Cuba, with Hong Kong (which was very pro-market back then) enjoying much bigger increases in prosperity.

Sadly, not much has changed in Cuba since I wrote that column.

The communist dictatorship is still there, and the economy is still socialist (notwithstanding even Castro admitting its failure).

And this means ongoing misery for ordinary people.

Here are some excerpts from a story published by Agence France-Presse.

Cubans are no strangers to queuing for everything from bread to toothpaste, often standing for hours under a blazing sun with no access to a toilet or drinking water, and always with the fear of leaving empty-handed. It is a daily ordeal Cubans have endured…

David Friedman recently got into an online debate with Walter Block that could be seen as a boxing match between “Austrian economics” and the “Chicago School of Economics”. In the wake of this debate, Friedman assembled his thoughts in this piece which is supposed (if I understand properly) to be published as a chapter in an edited volume. Upon reading this piece, I thought it worthy of providing my thoughts in part because I see myself as being both a member of both schools of thought and in part because I specialize in economic history. And here is the claim I want to make: I don’t see any meaningful difference between both and I don’t understand why there are perpetual attempts to create a distinction.

But before that, let’s do a simple summary of the two views according to Friedman (which is the first part of the essay). The “Chicago”…