The American Economic Association recently held their annual conference in Denver. David Warsh reports that members were working on a variety of thorny issues, like what caused the economic crisis, how to prevent future crises, and even what to name the current crisis. No solutions are yet available. On a promising note, he reports that there appeared to be some interest in reviving the study of the history of economic thought.
I’ve disagreed before with J. Neil Schulman on IP issues — see Kinsella v. Schulman on Logorights and IP. Here’s an edited version of a query I put to him on Facebook this morning:
Neil, in your Logorights article, you say (if you’ll forgive me copying your pattern):
Back in 2006, Objectivist Greg Perkins wrote a defense of IP entitled Don’t Steal This Article!: On the Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property.
One year ago today a major earthquake devastated Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince. One year ago and one million people remain homeless, with less than 5 percent of the debris cleared from city streets. One year ago today.
Why the lack of meaningful progress with rebuilding efforts? Before you draw any conclusion, let me provide some on-the-ground observations of rebuilding efforts following a similar, though less destructive, natural disaster — Jamaica after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988.
State court judges in New York are unhappy with their pay and are not getting any satisfaction from their paymaster legislators in Albany. The New York City Family Court Judges’ Association polled it’s members and 90% of those who responded are for creating a judge’s association to negotiate on behalf of the jurists.
“The message is: United we stand,” Judge W. Dennis Duggan said.
Labor unions like to argue that the payment of higher wages is to the self-interest of employers because the wage earners will use their higher wages to make additional purchases from business firms, thereby increasing the sales revenues and profits of business firms. However, wrong and foolish it may be, this is an argument worth analyzing in some detail, because it can provide a gateway to a discussion of the actual sources of profit in the economic system.
The New York Times’ David Segal has a lengthy piece out detailing the malinvestment in going to law school. Owing 6-figure loan balances after graduation seems to be the norm. And while U.S. News says 93% of law school grads are gainfully employed, any law grad working at anything–waiting tables or stocking shelves–after 9 months is considered employed. But it’s tough fading a $2,000 or $3,000 monthly student loan payment if you’re slinging drinks at the local pub.
