What was that judge thinking? Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on the case in Stuff in 2016 and another story about them […]
The Ghahraman Conflict
The Ghahraman Conflict
15 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: crime and punishment, law and order, media bias
Bari Weiss interviews Roland Fryer
22 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economic history, economics of crime, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: academic bias, crime and punishment, free speech, law and order, political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left
A lot of readers and heterodox colleagues have sent me this link to Bari Weiss’s interview with Harvard economics professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr., often accompanied by big encomiums. Despite my unwillingness to watch long videos, I did watch all 77 minutes of it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t mesmerized, or even much interested. There are interesting […]
Bari Weiss interviews Roland Fryer
Glenn Loury (and, to some extent, John McWhorter) backpedal about the death of George Floyd
15 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of crime, law and economics, movies, politics - USA Tags: crime and punishment, law and order, racial discrimination
The death of George Floyd, and his presumed murder by Derek Chauvin with the complicity of several Minneapolis policemen, was an iconic moment in today’s race relations, the most important event leading to the “racial reckoning” of the last few years. In late December of last year, I posted a movie, “The Fall of Minneapolis” […]
Glenn Loury (and, to some extent, John McWhorter) backpedal about the death of George Floyd
Doing the jobs the SF cops won’t do
23 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, entrepreneurship, law and economics Tags: crime and punishment, law and order

Back in the lockdown depths of 2020 I posted about series of YouTube videos made by a former NASA engineer called Mark Rober who had built a fantastic set of squirrel mazes and then videoed the little buggers getting around his obstacles to get to the bowls of nuts that were the prize. But I’d […]
Doing the jobs the SF cops won’t do
How to Sell Protest Footage to FOX AND CNN
25 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, television Tags: free speech, law and order, political correctness, regressive left
Calls to ban free speech at Auckland University in New Zealand
24 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, law and order, political correctness, regressive left

Troubles continue at the University of Auckland as it’s being sued by a somewhat off-the-rails professor named Siouxsie (real name Susannah) Wiles. Wiles apparently made some statements about Covid-19 as a public communicator of science, statements that the public didn’t like. The result was that she claimed to be inundated with hate mail and threats. […]
Calls to ban free speech at Auckland University in New Zealand
The media wants a hate crime
02 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics Tags: law and order, political correctness, regressive left
You have surely heard that three young Palestinian-Americans, Kinnan Abdalhamid, Hisham Awartani, and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, were shot on November 25 in Burlington, Vermont. Two of the injured were American citizens; the other a legal resident. The alleged shooter, Jason Eaton, was captured and appears to be mentally ill. From the NYT: They were shot […]
The media wants a hate crime
Still under-policed and over-imprisoned
07 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of crime, Gary Becker, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice, Public Choice Tags: crime and punishment, criminal deterrence, law and order
A new paper, The Injustice of Under-Policing, makes a point that I have been emphasizing for many years, namely, relative to other developed countries the United States is under-policed and over-imprisoned. …the American criminal legal system is characterized by an exceptional kind of under-policing, and a heavy reliance on long prison sentences, compared to other […]
Still under-policed and over-imprisoned
Law-Abiding Immigrants
08 Sep 2023 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of crime, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: economics of immigration, law and order
The subtitle is The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the U.S.-Born, 1850–2020, and the authors are Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, Elisa Jácome, Santiago Pérez, and Juan David Torres. Here is the to-the-point abstract: Combining full-count Census data with Census/ACS samples, the researchers provide the first nationally representative long-run series (1870–2020) of incarceration rates for immigrants […]
Law-Abiding Immigrants
More gender gaps
28 Mar 2023 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of crime, economics of education, gender, health and safety, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: gender wage gap, law and order, sex discrimination

Everything Jacinda Ardern ‘tried’ had been a failure : David Seymour
27 Jan 2023 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, economics of crime, law and economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: law and order, racial discrimination
S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons and Tactics)
07 Nov 2022 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics Tags: law and order
Mickey Cohen: The Mob Goes Hollywood
02 Oct 2022 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics Tags: law and order


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