- Softwod Subsidy a Stumper(Colby Cosh, National Post): “Canada’s federal government says the current stumpage fees reflect what would be fair market rates for the wood. The U.S. says they don’t. The NAFTA panel tried to puzzle out what the “real” price of the timber might be, using economic benchmarks, but the question defies hypothetical solution. In a free timber market, no two trees are alike. Every forest has its own mix of species, the quality of wood varies, and some places are much harder to log than others. The panel was stuck with what Ludwig von Mises called the ‘impossibility of economic calculation’ under socialism. If there is no market, you cannot know what price the market would choose. So the panel was left with no possible grounds to substitute its own guesswork for that of the U.S. government.”
- The GOP Recession Myth (Greg Kaza, UPI): “Economists disagree about the cause of business cycles, an important topic for public officials tackling issues such as unemployment, inflation, spending and tax policy. NBER researchers have considered a wide range of cyclical theories over many decades. These include the Keynesian emphasis on underconsumption and the Friedmanite monetarist theory that recessions are caused by high money supply expansion followed by sudden low growth rates. Rational expectations theory emphasized random monetary shocks as a causal factor while Hyman Minsky focused on the credit structure’s ability to cause an economic bubble. The economic bubble that preceded the brief recession of 2001 has renewed interest in the Austrian theory developed by 1974 Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, which centers on the divergence between the natural and money rates of interest. Another Austrian, Joseph Schumpeter, held that technological innovation and easy credit contribute to investment booms and busts. No theory has received acceptance among all researchers.”
- Private Power: Do-It-Yourself Power Catching On (WashPost): “After surviving the California energy crisis of 2000, with its recurrent blackouts and price spikes, Pokka USA Inc., a manufacturer of bottled health drinks, decided it needed its own source of electricity to make its beverages. So the Napa Valley company decided to have a power facility built on its property. In doing so, the company became one of a growing number of U.S. businesses, universities, government agencies and others that rely on their own power sources for part or all of their operations, often to help protect them from outages. The U.S. Combined Heat and Power Association says about 8 percent of electrical capacity in the United States comes from these facilities -- called cogeneration facilities or distributed power. But the number is expected to grow.”
- The Ten Commandments Question (Lew Rockwell, LRC): “The conflict is easily resolved by a simple tool cooked up hundreds of years ago: federalism. This is the one principle at work that hardly anyone wants to talk about. The very core of the constitutional system is that it permits divided power. The states created the central government to serve the states, not the other way around. According to the constitution, so long as the states have republican forms of government (not monarchies), they govern themselves.”
- Lynch the Gougers! (Dario McDarby, LRC): “The question of what is ‘price gouging’ has not been answered. Check out some ‘price gouging’ laws from around the country and you will notice one constant. It is the metaphysical element of ‘unconscionable.’ Though lawyers may squabble over this term and give it some distorted meaning, it has no meaning to real transactions.”
Posted by Mises.org News
